Wednesday 25 June 2014

Honorable Enemies


"Honorable Enemies" (1951) by Poul Anderson introduced three alien species:

large green Merseians, sitting on their tails;
tall golden Chereionites, with feathers instead of hair;
small blue Betelgueseans, playing off Terrans against Merseians.

Merseians are the collective continuing villain of the Dominic Flandry series and Aycharaych of Chereion became the main individual continuing villain. Compare SMERSH/SPECTRE and Blofeld.

The story assumed a large inhabited planetary system in orbit around a red giant star and later had to be revised to explain this anomaly. See here.

It refers to two previous exploits of Dominic Flandry:

his single-handed conquest of Schotania, described in Anderson's "Tiger by the Tail" (1951);

his recent discovery of how to nullify Merseian robolocks, an untold story.

The entire action of "Honorable Enemies" is incorporated into the time scale of "The Game of Glory" (1958), which, in turn, is referred back to in "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1959). Thus, the Flandry series grew and this process continued with the addition of novels, prequels and sequels.

Can anyone read what is printed on the cover of FUTURE between "Honorable Enemies" and "by Poul Anderson"?

Later: It says "Feature Novelet."

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Darn! You beat me to answering your question! I had just now looked up this cover. (Smiles)

And, more seriously, I too have written an essay discussing "Honorable Enemies." Which I called "An Unexpected Contradiction."

Sean