Interesting use of the word "environmentalism." Was it used widely in that sense before it gained its more familiar meaning of concern about ecology, pollution etc?
Yamamura, on the track of a possible murderer, has to be concerned about where Torvald sneaks off to on his shore leave. He lies, presents a cover story, changes buses, goes into a bar and out the back to shake any tails etc. If not murder, then he could be engaged in espionage or sabotage. By a process of elimination, Yamamura deduces an innocent explanation and, in the process, gives us yet another Andersonian moment of realization (when our hero has solved the problem but does not yet tell us the solution):
"The time he blew up and attacked me was -
"Yamamura slumped bonelessly. 'Good Lord!' he said aloud." (p. 144)
Then, consulting maps and memory, he works out where to look for Torvald.
11 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Well, I knew "environmentalism" was a word used in the debates over whether heredity or one's background/upbringing/culture, etc. caused mental illness. For all I know mental health experts still use "environmentalism" with that meaning.
Sean
Sean,
Thank you.
I have been diverted from this blog by excessive activity on another one but it is still on my agenda to finish reading MURDER BOUND, then to start reading STAR PRINCE CHARLIE.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
And I look forward to any comments you care to make about those books! And maybe even MURDER IN BLACK LETTER, despite that Yamamura book being the most costly?
Recently finished Ben Bova's novel FARSIDE. Interesting plot idea but, alas, I found it rather "flat" reading and the characters lacking in color and personality. And since I've gotten so used to Poul Anderson using italics for interior thought/monologue, to distinguise it from spoken dialogue, I found Bova's use of plain font for that to be off putting.
Have since started Taylor Anderson's (no relation, as far as I know to PA!) INTO THE STORM, an alternate universe book. So far, it seems pleasing.
Next comes volume 6 of Wingrove's CHUNG KUO series. And Wingrove is a fellow Briton of yours! (Smiles). Except for volume 1, SON OF HEAVEN, I've been enjoying those books. And my chief complaints about volume is the flatness of the prose and the wearisome use of the F word. I have other doubts about the CHUNG KUO books too, such as the implausibility of the rulers of a world conquered by China stamping out Christianity, but still worth reading.
Sean
Sean,
Far more plausible that Christianity would remain as, if necessary, an underground movement.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
I agree! It would have been more plausible for the CHUNG KUO books to show Christianity still existing as a persecuted, underground faith. After all, the Peking regime, for all its hostility, has failed to wipe out Christianity in China alone, never mind the whole WORLD.
Sean
The point Poul's detective was making is a bit more general than mental health. Marxists -- the orthodox kinds, at least, and especially classic Soviet Marxist-Leninists -- tend to be extreme anti-hereditarians, ascribing almost all human attitudes, social organizations and behaviors to environmental factors. Hence "environmentalism". This was the basic reason why Soviet science fell victim to the Lysenkoist hoax, too. Lyskenko was a neo-Lamarkian, believing in the heritability of acquired characteristics and an almost infinite plasticity of living organisms, which was actually more compatible than Mendelian heredity with the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism -- particularly Lenin's rather crude and instrumental understanding of it, and even more to Stalin's even cruder one.
Mr Stirling,
Thank you. I value philosophical discussion and it is good to have it arising from the work of an sf writer or, in this case, a detective fiction writer!
Paul.
Marxism in what I think is its real undogmatic sense recognizes interaction as the key to change. Thus, not "environmentalism" but organism-environment interaction.
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Dang! I seemed to have misunderstood how Poul Anderson used "environmentalism" in MURDER BOUND. Anderson apparently had the Marxist sense in mind.
Sean
Sean,
It was because of Torvald's "environmentalism," that Trygve deduced he was a Communist.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that is a rather abstruse and subtle deduction to make. But I like it because it was so unusual.
Sean
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