The friendship or special relationship between Flandry and Aycharaych begins when they converse while awaiting the start of the dragon hunt on Alfzar. In the case of two later conversations, in the Crystal Moon and on Talwin, we read some substantial dialogue between these two characters whereas, on this initial occasion, after some opening remarks about hunting and about the local dragons, which are the game to be hunted, we read only a summary:
"The conversation became animated, ranging over the peculiarities and mysteries of many intelligent races. When the final horn blew its summons, Terran and Chereionite exchanged a wryly regretful glance. Too bad. We were enjoying this. Too bad also that we're on opposite sides...isn't it?" (p. 285)
A film would probably show just a brief shot from a distance of two figures conversing animatedly but the opportunity would exist for a script writer to invent something interesting. We already know of several planers and intelligent species that Flandry would be able to mention.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Including the Alfzarians themselves! In his revision of "Honorable Enemies" Anderson strove to rationalize the story to fit it into later astronomical thought on how unlikely it was for red giant stars like Betelgeuse to have habitable planets. Developments not available when he wrote the first version of the story.
I can see Flandry and Aycharaych discussing how thousands of years before the Alfzarians first arrived at Betelgeuse with STL tech, could go no further, and toiled over centuries to make some of those planets habitable. A tremendous and impressive achievement!
Ad astra! Sean
According to my copy of "Agent of the Terran Empire", "Honorable Enemies" was first published in 1951 & reprinted in 1964.
According to my copy of "The Trouble Twisters", "A Sun Invisible" is copyright 1965.
So I take it that by the 1960s Anderson realized that planets orbiting *large* stars would need terraforming to be habitable and about then wrote "A Sun Invisible" and revised "Honorable Enemies" to be consistent with that.
That's it.
Kaor, Jim!
Basically correct, except the original version of "Honorable Enemies" was reprinted by Chilton Books in the 1965 ed. of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE. I think the revised text was first pub. by Gregg Press in its edition of the same collection in 1979.
Ad astra! Sean
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