I started out looking for insights into van Rijn but have got diverted into discussing every other aspect of Poul Anderson's Technic History but here is a good one. Thea Beldaniel, domesticated by the Shenna, stares fixedly at the approaching Shenn ships. Van Rijn cannot name the feeling that he gets while seeing her like that:
"'Embarrassment, probably,' the Wodenite suggested.
"'Oh, is that how it feels?'" (XX, p. 537)
Next, Adzel watches the nearest approaching ship:
"Its gaunt high-finned shape was partly silhouetted black upon the Milky Way, partly asheen by the distant orange sun." (ibid.)
That joins our list of descriptions not of the Milky Way, here, but of objects seen against the Milky Way, here.
Van Rijn hopes to negotiate with the horrible Shenna on behalf not just of the Solar Spice & Liquors Company but of Technic civilization.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree the Shenna were certainly barbarians, but calling them "horrible" seems a bit too much. They needed simply to be defeated in their wilder ambitions and made to accept that other intelligent races had as much right to exist as them. Which is exactly what Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn did.
True, the new Shen of Dathyna exterminated the older race of that planet and from which they sprang. No denying that was horrible.
Sean
Sean,
I was thinking of the domestication of human beings and quoting or echoing van Rijn. XIX, p. 532.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I will be looking up Chapter XIX of SATAN'S WORLD.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I did check Chapter XIX of SATAN'S WORLD, and I see now why you thought the Shenna so horrible. Old Nick hypothesized they raided fledgling new human colony named Leandra, killed off the adults and many of their children, and raised a few infants to be like dogs (or Lugals!) to them. And did they want to do the same to the rest of the human race? Rather like how the Merseians came to regard non-Merseians!
Sean
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