I have been doing "blog maintenance," which improves earlier posts but does not add any new ones. It will also take some time to complete the job.
Meanwhile, maybe the next Poul Anderson volume to be reread should be The Demon Of Scattery? It describes events post-Mother Of Kings and is narrated during The Broken Sword. Thus, these three Viking volumes are set centuries after War Of The Gods and Hrolf Kraki's Saga but before The Last Viking Trilogy.
SM Stirling's The Stone Dogs cannot arrive tomorrow because there is no post on Sunday. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers is extremely enjoyable to reread but I am determined not to google every unfamiliar word like sambhur. There are too many of them, in any case.
In ...Lancers, the King estate has a church, a temple, a mosque and a gurdwara and the Kings' business agent in Delhi is a Jew. Admirable pluralism, also to be found in Anderson's Terran Empire although not in its rival imperium, the Merseian Roidhunate. In Europe right now, terrorist fanatics are trying to destroy our pluralism and start a race war. These are bad times.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Just a comment about your last paragraph here. I disagree that fanatical Muslim terrorists are trying to start a race war. What motivates jihadists is a ruthless determination to conquer the world and impose a caliphate on all of us. And we KNOW the Islamic State is sneaking in agents disguised as "refugees."
I don't have much confidence that our currents leaders in both the US and Europe has a sound strategic understanding of the war we are in against radical Islam and the means that will have to be taken to effectively combat it. We indeed live in bad times!
Sean
No terrorist organization has ever achieved more than tactical victories. The closest any have come was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (definitely not Muslims), who managed to control parts of northern Sri Lanka for a little over a decade, and of course Da'esh (aka ISIS), whose downfall is obviously imminent. None have ever destroyed or overturned a state.
Dear Mr. Cowan,
Actually, I agree with you. I'll simply restate my point and say such terrorist groups can do far more harm than needed because I think many of our leaders don't take them seriously enough.
But I would not dismiss too hastily the danger we may face if fanatical jihadists do manage to take over a nation, as might have happened if the Muslim Brotherhood had not over played its hand in Egypt after Mubarak fell from power.
Sean
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