Tuesday 3 December 2013

Interconnected Narratives

In Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Hoka (New York, 1985), three stories overlap:

while Alex Jones is on Earth applying for the upgrading of Toka, as recounted in "Undiplomatic Immunity," Leopold Ormen arrives on Toka, where he is greeted by a Hokan Gimli the Dwarf, and gets Tanni Jones' agreement to travel around the planet making a documentary, as in the opening section of "The Napoleon Crime";

then Tanni heads off the War of the Rings, gets caught up in the Jungle Book affair, as recounted in "Full Pack (Hoka's Wild)," and receives a letter from Alex explaining that he must remain on Earth indefinitely because the Kratchen delegation has started to use parliamentary tricks in order to delay the upgrading of Toka;

thus, when, later in "The Napoleon Crime," Tanni perceives an impending catastrophe resulting from Ormen's activities and urgently contacts Alex, "The Napoleon Crime" has, I think, disentangled its plot from those of the two earlier stories and is now free to present an independent narrative, although I have yet to learn what Ormen is doing.

If the title were "The Napoleon of Crime," it would suggest Moriarty but we have already had the Hokan Holmesian story so we can expect instead something referring to the original Napoleon - although anything is possible!

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