Flandry's crew are in their teens and twenties. I had imagined them as older. But we remember that Flandry was nineteen on Starkad and is still only twenty-five.
How young to be sent to fight in space and on other planets! If I could address my younger self, then I would say, "Do not express any opinions about anything until you are at least fifty." But that is my considered assessment of my younger self, not a judgement on anyone who is younger than me now. Quite the contrary. We have discussed generation gaps before.
Our personalities form before we have any say in the matter. Is a definite personality from an early age evidence for rebirth? No. It happens because a complex, sensitive psychophysical organism with a specific genetic combination must, right from the start, adopt some way of responding to environmental inputs. We can spend a lifetime coping with the problems caused by how we started. Or we might be the kind of person who never reflects on any of that.
Van Rijn, Falkayn and Flandry look outward at how to advance in the world as they find it.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I assume Rovian, Flandry's executive officer and second, would be somewhat older than the rest of the crew of HMS Asieneuve.
It's not really surprising most of Flandry's crew were so young--a large proportion of any military force tends to be like that.
Ad astra! Sean
War is usually predominantly done by young people, except in long-service professional armies -- the average American soldier nowadays is 28-29, and the Roman army had a similar age distribution. (Rome's army had a 25-year term of service, which compensated for the shorter lifespans.)
Also, young human males are... to put it gently... overdosed on testosterone, which among other things screws with your risk-assessment capacity.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That makes sense to me. And you don't even need to be in an army. I've seen too many young people, males and females, doing dumb, foolish, reckless things.
Ad astra! Sean
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