Explanations

Satan's World.

This book cover describes El Mundo de Satan as "Liga Polesotecnica II"!

Quite often, Poul Anderson invents a reason for a character to tell another character something just so that the reader will know it. He seems to overdo this in Satan's World, II: Falkayn is frankly puzzled as to why a Serendipity, Inc. partner lectures him about the problem of information usage as against retrieval. Then he thinks of a single word that explains her behavior: "...fanaticism." (II, p. 347) Thus, Anderson has simultaneously told us something about Technic civilization information systems and also about Serendipity, Inc.

(A single word or phrase can have immense explanatory power. When attending a meeting in a Trade Union Centre where there was a memorial to the Spanish Civil War International Brigades, I was frankly disturbed to see a man in a black shirt with a swastika armband standing to attention outside a room. Then someone said two words that explained everything: "Drama group."

(An Irish relative of my mother told me that he went to Spain to fight for Franco. If I had known enough, I would have asked him whether he was a Greenshirt.

(I am still laid up, recuperating, and starting to maunder.)