Three Worlds

I feel obliged to post again because page views today are already 80, twice as many as yesterday. However, I have not much to add at present. Today, I have revised Latin, performed chores, walked, meditated, eaten, watched a Smallville TV episode and reread to the mid point of Poul Anderson's Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966).

Human beings fight on Ganymede while Jovians fight on Jupiter. Anderson always describes combat well. There is one big surprise: a Jovian defensive fleet learns in battle that the invaders of a different species command large sea beasts which attack, destroy ships and slaughter those trying to swim to shore. Imagine what that would look like on screen.

The three worlds of the title must be Earth, Ganymede and Jupiter. The battle on Ganymede may settle whether a counterrevolution will succeed on Earth.

The Jovian Theor conversing with the Ganymedean Mark through a communicator hanging from his neck is like someone whose lucky charm really does give him access to another world. Theor is a Reeveling whose people are free and need not heed him. Hearing that the government on Earth had been overthrown, he asks:

" 'How could a leadership maintain itself in the first instance when not to the benefit of the people?' " (p. 39)

- and does not understand when he is told that some Terrestrials value security higher than freedom. Like Jonathan Swift, who imagined fantastic islands rather than other planets, Anderson uses an alien perspective to comment on human affairs.

Addendum, just after midnight: 85 page views yesterday and one already today. Thank you for all the interest.

12.30: 17 page views in half an hour. I need to turn in.