"Blood sheeted..."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 439)
"Then the deck rolled beneath him. He saw it split open. A broken girder drove upwards and sheared the head off Ramri's chess partner.
"Blood geysered."
-Poul Anderson, After Doomsday (Panther Books, 1975), CHAPTER SIX, p. 70.
The parallels between these passages are striking. Spaceship crews are not immune to physical danger during space battles.
The author decides which characters are to die randomly unless he chooses them by a random process, e.g., by spinning a coin. However, Anderson wants Ramri to be still alive later in After Doomsday so, in this case, it is Ramri's companion, unknown to the reader, whose head is sheared off.
The radar man is called Wells. (p. 68)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, it logically follows that an author will not want to kill off major characters too soon in a novel or series! Albeit, amusingly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes--till passionate popular protests induced him to "resurrect" Holmes.
Sean
Sean,
Fleming tried the same with Bond.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And these would be examples of authors creating characters MORE successful than they had expected or wanted!
Sean
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