Sunday 16 October 2016

Recruitment

The narrator of Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies -" recruits himself to the Temporal Bureau.

James Blish's "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time ends with the Service about to take in a new raw recruit.

Poul Anderson's "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" ends when Manse Everard recruits Pummairam to the Time Patrol:

"'You'll go to the Academy, elsewhere in space and time. There you'll spend years, and they won't be easy years - though on the whole I believe you'll revel in them.'" -The Time Patrol (New York, 1991), p. 203.

Anderson's "Esau" ends when Nicholas van Rijn promotes Emil Dalmady from factor to entrepreneur on 90% commission:

"'...you must have a while in an entrepreneurial school I got tucked away where nobody notices...mainly I think you will enjoy your classes, if you don't mind working till brain-sweat runs out your nose.'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 552)

Van Rijn cannot hide his school in The Oligocene like the Time Patrol but I bet he can hide it good.

And Blish wrote an appropriate conclusion for this post:

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"
-James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), p. 129.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Either Old Nick hid his special school for entrepreneurs in plain sight on Terra itself (a la Poe's "The Purloined Letter) or an obscure planet only he and trusted subordinates knew the coordinates of. Mention is also made of the students being able to have fine orgies! (Smiles)

Sean