Tuesday, 5 June 2018

OK Corral And Alamo

"Hombre, this is the OK Corral."
-SM Stirling, The Council Of Shadows (New York, 2012), CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, p. 380.

I meant to include this cultural reference in the previous post but forgot. The OK Corral is up there with the Alamo. We grew up on the legends, then maybe learned the history.

We have previously mentioned the Alamo when discussing endings in the works of Poul Anderson and others. See here. (Scroll down.) The OK Corral has come up less often and in different contexts. See here. (Scroll down.)

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Nowadays, mention of the Alamo brings to mind how the Mexican commander, Santa Ana, was a fool. He seems to have made every blunder possible. Instead of simply leaving a blocking force at the Alamo and concentrating on the REAL threat to Mexico, Sam Houston and his army, Santa Ana wasted precious time and resources on a pointless siege. He gave the initiative and invaluable propaganda to Sam Houston.

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

I want a retelling of the Siege of the Alamo, in which they get out a message saying "Houston we have a problem" ;^)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

Or, alternately, there's Harry Turtledove's story, "Lee at the Alamo," in an alternate world Robert E. Lee ended up fighting for the Union when he refused to surrender the Alamo to the Confederates, before Virginia seceded from the US in 1861.

Ad astra! Sean