"...made a low-gravity leap towards his opponent, whipped about, and slapped with his tail."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 292.
- like one of ERB's Barsoomian plant men.
A quadrupedal Donarrian:
carries on his back a nuclear howitzer with the man who will fire it;
hurls, tosses, kicks and stamps Merseians.
Two Gorzuni, standing shoulder to shoulder, fire blasters held in each of their four hands, thus penetrating any metal armor. An inhumanly quick Scothanian wields a wrecking bar. Human beings use blasters, slug guns, grenades and karate. Flandry captures the Chereionite because he is from a larger planet and therefore has stronger muscles.
This is not just another fight scene but one that takes account of the different physical characteristics of all the participants.(See also here.)
Hi, Paul!
ReplyDeleteStill reading WE CLAIM THESE STARS. I agree, the different ways different races will engage in combat due to their physical variations is carefully shown here by Poul Anderson. I don't think all writers, even SF writers, would have shown as much care and thought as shown here by Anderson in a combat scene.
Glory to the Emperor! Sean