On Staurn

A Staurnian:

is about three meters long;
has no legs;
sits on the double coil of his one and a half meter long rudder-tipped tail;
has a prow-like keel bone, sharp muzzle, wolfish fangs, small round ears, dark-banded eyes, nostrils under the chin and seven-meter chiropteran wings;
is covered with a gray growth intermediate between hair and feathers;
wears only pouched belts.

A human xenological expedition to Staurn comprises, apart from xenologists, a semanticist, a glossanalyist, a biologist and graduate students. I have found Gloss Analyists but not glossanalyists on the internet and still do not know what the former do.

Gunner Heim says, "'The common man often shows more common sense than the intellectual elite.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (London, 1968), p. 79.

Does he? I distrust such generalizations and dichotomies. Common men and intellectuals alike are capable of considerable unexamined prejudices.

The novel has been narrated exclusively from Heim's point of view until p. 86 when, at the beginning of Part Two, Chapter Three, we switch to his friend, Endre's, pov. At the bottom of p. 87, it switches back. Endre whistles:

"'Malbrouk se va-t-en guerre -'
"-And aboard the Quest, Heim looked at a bulkhead clock..." (p. 87)

On p. 88, Jocelyn "...stopped before a full-length optex beside her dresser." (p. 88)

Heim was "...the least self-analytical of men. He shoved his questions aside for later examination and, with them, most of the associated emotions." (p. 89)

Good if you can do it. Heim is an Andersonian man of action who will not be incapacitated by self-involved thoughts. Earlier, contemplating the beauty of a planet, its moons and the stars seen from space, he wondered why people "'...waste time hating and killing...'" (p. 80) Good question.

I took the book to read in a waiting room and made notes which led to this post.