Karlsarm: "Whether or not they'll agree remains to be seen. But we've got to try, don't we?"
Evagail: "Do we?"
Karlsarm: "Either that or stop being the Free People."
-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 54.
And that is also why human and Ythrian Avalonians resist annexation by the Terran Empire and fight to remain within the Domain of Ythri. Poul Anderson presents sympathetic Imperials, Flandry, Ridenour and Desai, but also shows us more than one set of characters who have good reasons to fight against the Empire. This is authentic fictional history.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And i think the conflict on Freehold could have been avoided or minimized if the Outbackers had not been so hostile and disdainfully standoffish from the Nine Cities. If, for two centuries before "Outpost," both the Outbackers and the Cities had been in ordinary, regular, frequent contact with each other, then some kind of mutual adapting of each's other culture might have been possible, so they could have lived on the same planet.
I know that might have led to Outbacker culture changing in ways many might not have liked, but it would have been better than war.
Sean
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