Wednesday 11 April 2018

Late Night Parallel

Poul Anderson often underlines his narratives and dialogues with references to wind and weather and Frank Miller sometimes gives us parallels. Here is another. In The Dark Knight Returns, a single warhead detonation has caused an electromagnetic pulse and a dust cloud turning day into night for many weeks. However, after Kent and Wayne have had a cathartic, climactic, government-sponsored battle and Wayne is (officially) dead:

"Cloud has almost completely cleared in the past seventy-two hours. The President has declared a state of stabilized emergency..."
-Book Four, p. 45.

That will probably be our last Dark Knight parallel but I submit that it is a powerful one.

9 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

That's new to me, a state of "stabilized emergency" being declared. Is that less than an ordinary "state of emergency"?

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Heaven knows. It might be the author's way of saying that what we think of as stability is really anything but.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Another possibility is what I thought: that a "stabilized" state of emergency means order was being restored to an area where looting, plundering, rioting, mass violence of all kinds had broken out. The next step would be the lifting of martial law and cancelling the state of emergency.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
I am sure that the literal meaning is something like that.
Paul.

S.M. Stirling said...

In most places in Europe, they have a "state of siege" as a legal category.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Some of my off-the-wall posts get a lot of comments.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

A "state of siege" is a new one to me! Something to google about, when I have more time.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

"Estato de sito". There's a direct French parallel.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

And the frequent political instability of post-1789 France must have seen "states of siege" being declared more than once! Such as when the rebellion of the "Commune" in Paris was being crushed by the Provisional Gov't in 1871.

Sean