In the Scothan ship that has captured Dominic Flandry, his guard:
"...blew a long hollow blast on a horn slung at his side. The wild echoes chased each other down the long corridor, hooting and howling with a primitive clamour that tingled faintly along Captain Flandry's spine.
"He thought slowly, while he waited: No intercom, apparently not even speaking tubes laid the whole length of the ship. And household articles of wood and animal and vegetable fibres, and that archaic costume there - They were barbarians, all right."
-Poul Anderson, "Tiger by the Tail" IN Anderson, Agent Of The Terran Empire (London, 1977), pp. 7-36 AT p. 10.
In the revised version, the guard:
"...unslung a horn from his shoulder, and blew a howling blast. That was pure flamboyancy; anyone who could build or buy spaceships would have intercoms installed. Old customs often lingered, though, especially when a people acquired modern technology overnight."
-Poul Anderson, "Tiger by the Tail" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 241-276 AT p. 243.
Behold auctorial rethinking.
OK. I have found something about barbarians worshiping in FTL ships:
-Poul Anderson, "The Star Plunderer" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 325-362 AT p. 332.
In the same Baldic ship, I found the slave, Manuel Argos, saying:
"'I only work here...'"
-op. cit., p. 334.
For other uses of this all-purpose catch-phrase, see here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I also have a book with the word "Barbarian" in the title. It's a collection of mostly fantasy stories edited by Robert Adams called BARBARIANS (Signet, 1983). I found it at a used book store and got it because it contains Anderson's "Swordsman of Lost Terra." Very much one of his early stories, first pub. in 1951.
Other SF writers have used the idea of "barbarians in space ships," such as Alfred Coppel's story "The Rebel of Valkyr" (GALACTIC EMPIRES, vol. 1, ed. Brian Aldiss, Avon Books: 1979).
Sean
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