Even if the premise is familiar - another planet or an alternative Earth - the treatment must be fresh as if we were encountering the idea for the first time.
Examples
(i) Poul Anderson quoting Shelley:
"The world's great age begins anew..."
"A loftier Argo cleaves the main..."
- before two Polesotechnic League stories.
(ii) Young Flandry when we first see him, shot down by Merseians but rescued and traveling on a native ship on Starkad.
(iii) Manse Everard arriving at the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene.
(iv), (v) and (vi) SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, Conquistador and The Sky People. It is an adventure:
to live in the British Empire relocated to India;
to travel to a North America with no white men, including a San Francisco Bay with no Bridge;
to colonize a retro inhabitable Venus.
Sorry, folks. I am still mostly out of it with this cold and cannot sustain the usual rate of posting on the blog.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Your cold might be making you feel as tho you are down and out, but you are still far more active than many other guys with blogs!
I'm also reminded of how Stirling explained that the millennia long isolation of the American Indians from the rest of the world made them far more susceptible to things like the common cold. What was only a minor inconvenience for most non-Indians was lethally fatal to them, as we see in CONQUISTADOR and the three ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME books.
To say nothing, of course, of how dangerous diseases like smallpox was even more of a killer to American Indians than in the rest of the world. Accidentally introduced diseases killed far more Indians than wars ever did. An idea Stirling makes more of than did Anderson--probably because historical epidemiology came along long after he started writing.
Sean
Sean,
I am retired which, of course, makes a difference.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because you have more time free for blogging than many others do. True!
Sean
Sean: "historical epidemiology"
For one of the earlier books on the subject, which is still relevant see "Plagues and Peoples", by William H. McNeill, copyright 1976.
On recently rereading it I noticed a few hypotheses which were later disconfirmed, but it is still fascinating reading.
Note: McNeill mentions his inspiration for researching the book was reading about the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the importance of a smallpox epidemic in reducing the resistance to that conquest.
KAOR, Jim!
Because smallpox, which was more than bad enough in the rest of the world, was truly devastating to populations with zero resistance to it.
I recall reading that one reason the Black Death was so devastating to Europe in the pandemic of 1346-48 was from people trying to help the sick. With no understanding of how the Plague spread, the epidemic raged unchecked. Ironically, that outburst of the Plague was finally checked when people despaired and fled. That broke the chain of infection.
Ad astra! Sean
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