Fenn, like Flandry, becomes engaged to a woman who believes in sex only within marriage and who is shot dead before they can be married. Kinna's insistence on sharing the risks during a gunfight with a band of Inrai, Martian Lunarian guerillas, gets her killed completely unnecessarily.
Fenn lists "Findings from across the whole electromagnetic spectrum..." and more (p.300):
radio waves kilometers in length;
microwaves;
infrared;
visible light;
ultraviolet;
X ray;
gamma rays;
particles;
gravitational waves;
supernova radiation;
radiation from colliding neutron stars and black holes;
images made by the lenses of galactic clusters and smaller bodies.
A black hole collision is a major event in Anderson's For Love And Glory. See here.
Rereading Chapter 26, we know that Chuan lies to Fenn about "'...a cosmic civilization...'" (p. 332) and this realization is sickening.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would need to reread THE FLEET OF STARS to judge whether Kinna's death was unnecessary, or whether it made sense due to it advancing the plot of the story. I think St. Kossara's death in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, however tragic and much to be regretted, did make sense in helping to advance the plot of that novel. But perhaps you found a weak point in THE FLEET OF STARS.
Sean
Sean,
My criticism is of Kinna's own action, not of its place in the novel.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That makes me wonder if Kossara Vymezal's death was unnecessary. True, the Merseian agents posing as "revolutionaries" who burst into that meeting of the Dennitzan parliament made a deliberate point of killing her. So she might not have survived even if Kossara had heeded Flandry's desperate cry to "Get down." The rostrum she was speaking from was very exposed, after all.
Sean
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