Monday 3 December 2018

"Who In Their Right Minds...?"

Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire, Chapter 3.

Venator reflects:

"Who in their right minds would want a return of war, poverty, rampant criminality, disease, famine, cancerously swelling population, necessity to work no matter how nasty or deadening the work might be, mass lunacy, private misey, and death in less than a hundred years? It was the metamorphs and their full-human adherents who were the malcontents, the troublemakers - Lunarians above all, but others too, perhaps more dangerous because less obvious...." (p. 63)

What others? Does the text hint that, in Venator's view, a frustrated poet like Jesse Nicol would be "...more dangerous because less obvious..."?

I want an end to war, the full list, and full respect for metamorphs who in their turn want not a return of war etc but greater freedom of movement than "...the leveling huge impersonality of World Federation and cybercosm..." (ibid.) allows them. Venator and the forces that he represents seem to have done what should have become impossible, found an "enemy within" to exterminate instead of fellow beings to coexist and negotiate with.

If antimatter can be produced and if the Proserpinans want/need it, then they should not have to hijack it! But does Anderson contradict himself first by imagining a civilization that should have transcended all internal conflicts, then by imagining conflicts continuing anyway?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

No, Anderson did not contradict himself. Because my view is that conflicts arise from within human beings. A post scarcity economy could meet all the merely materials needs of human beings and still fail to satisfy the needs of the heart and soul. Including the need to express aggressiveness. And that does not have to take the form of war, btw. It could take the forms of exploration and non lethal competition, as when Old Nick manages to hornswoggle his commercial rivals!

A society which fails to make room for people bored with a peaceful but pointless life WILL end up with frustrated people like Jesse Nicol. And the more who feel frustrated and alienated, the more dangerous it is likely to become.

Sean