"'Service to the Cadre! Dismissed!'
"'Service to the Cadre!'"
-Poul Anderson, "Memory" IN Anderson, Beyond The Beyond (London, 1973), pp. 7-43 AT pp. 33-34.
An sf short story by Poul Anderson presents action and adventure - Torrek's aerial fight with the kraka - and also serious issues:
human beings evolved in forests and open air and with families whereas the Hegemony confines them indoors with machines, selects their mates whom they rarely see and takes their children to raise in creches;
Hegemonic units are prepared to exterminate the inhabitants of an entire archipelago in order to occupy a single island, especially since "deviationism" is anticipated among the crew who might even mutiny and join the enemy.
Clearly the Hegemony is unstable and we can expect our viewpoint character, so far a loyal "unit," to rebel against it.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I far prefer "Glory to the Emperor!" or even "Service to the Coordinator" to either Anderson's "Service to the Cadre!" or Stirling's "Service to the State" or "Glory to the Race." The Terran Empire and the Governance were at least NORMAL, not too intolerably bad states; while the Hegemony was a pretty nasty totalitarian regime. And the Draka were simply MONSTROUS.
Sean
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