In "Holmgang"
"Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of two.
"For a moment he lay there, rigid..."
-Poul Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), p. 160.
I did not know that about orbital velocity and that is the sort of technical detail that I usually read past without noticing it. This is the moment when the hero of this story realizes that he can fight his armed enemy on a small asteroid by flying right around the asteroid and attacking him from behind. Orbital velocity...
The view point character going rigid immediately after thinking about his situation is a sure sign to regular Anderson readers that the solution to the current problem has just been recognized but also that we will not be told what that solution is until we are shown its implementation.
In "Brake"
"Banning groaned. Per Jovem, it was too much to ask of a man!
"And then he stiffened.
"'What is it, sir?' Nielsen looked alarmed.
"'By Jupiter,' said Banning. 'Well, by Jupiter!'
"'What?'
"'Never mind. Come on.'" (p. 263)
This is quite explicit. They have a problem while they are approaching Jupiter. Banning will somehow use Jupiter to solve the problem but he will not tell his crewman, and therefore will not tell the reader either, how he is going to do it. And I do not remember, despite having read this story more than once before. Maybe posting a summary of the story's conclusion will help to fix it in memory.
3 comments:
A wiki known as TV Tropes refers to this as the "Unspoken Plan Guarantee." It points out:
"When there is a plan, things cannot go according to it. If they do, the plan becomes a Spoiler." (quoted from *How Not to Write A Novel* by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman)
TV Tropes adds, "When the characters come up with a plan to save the day, its chances of success are inversely proportional to how much the audience knows about it beforehand."
David,
Thank you. So I have noticed something in Anderson that is universal in fiction. But Anderson has a particular, noticeable way of doing it.
Paul.
"Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of two."
Poul *did* get a physics degree.
Since I did too, that is just bringing up something I knew but might not have seen the relevance to the problem until it is mentioned in the story.
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