Wednesday 21 March 2018

Flandry, Kit, Svantozik And The Spiral Arm

Flandry asks Kit whether she could betray twenty of her comrades to save her planet. I could not. Apart from anything else, such plans can go wrong and the betrayal be in vain.

Svantozik has only secondhand information about human beings whereas Flandry:

"'...has spent a lifetime dealing with all shapes and sizes of other species. Already I see what the Ardazirho have in common with several peoples whom I hornswoggled in the past.'" (XIII, p. 250) (For full reference, see here.)

In this, Flandry exactly resembles van Rijn and Falkayn except that van Rijn speaks of:

"'...cultural comparisons and swogglehorning.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Trouble Twisters" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 77-208 AT II, p. 99.

While van Rijn briefs Falkayn about his new trade pioneer crew idea, the omniscient narrator reminds us that:

"The galaxy, even this tiny fragment of one spiral arm which we have somewhat explored, is inconceivably huge."
-op. cit., p. 98.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And Svantozik himself knew there were gaps in both his knowledge and experience, that he would need time to learn much more before he could be a match to Flandry.

And the bit about mankind knowing only a tiny part of one spiral arm was a precursor to the anxious reflections in later centuries about how small and insignificant the Terran Empire was.

Sean