Spain in our experience and in Poul Anderson's time travel fiction;
SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies;
Anderson's Technic History, continuing the blog theme from before departure to Spain;
someone interesting that we met while there.
I would start on some of this now if it were not so late and if I were not so tired after such a long return journey.
Fair winds forever.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Welcome back! I hope you and Mrs. Shackley had a VERY good time in Spain. It would have been even better if you could have been coming back from a trip to the Moon or an O'Neill habitat!
I too have been reading Stirling's THEATER OF SPIES, and I mostly love it! I did get tired of the O'Malloy/Whelan lesbian thing, but that's my only real criticism.
And I did remember how Stirling based James Cheine in THEATER on James Bond. A spot on depiction, I thought. I wonder if we will see more of him?
I was not surprised to see the US of Theodore Roosevelt annexing Canada. But what I did boggle at a bit was to see Canada VOLUNTARILY asking to join the US. I had thought TR would INVADE Canada the way he did Mexico. Even granting the British Empire would have been STAGGERED by the German nerve gas on London, would Canada have been that easy for the US to annex?
AND I recognized WHO Horst von Duckler's orderly was, from the Iron Cross, First Class, the Corporal had earned to his interest in the arts. But I've not yet seen the Andersonian allusion you or Stirling has hinted was in the book.
And I had a THOROUGHLY approving view of how the monstrous Lenin and his appalling cronies came to their miserable ends! They were sent by the Germans in a "sealed train" to Moscow, only to be "welcomed" by the Cossacks of the Regent, Grand Duke Nicholas, who SABERED them down as Lenin was bleating "What is to be done?" And I appreciated how the Cossacks derisively danced the Hopak around the bodies of these wretched Bolsheviks.
Leon Trotsky, I found out, had already been dead for three years. He was sent by the Bolsheviks to the US and Mexico, to see if he could stir up trouble. Leon was smart enough to see thru Luz's cover and realized she was a Black Chamber agent. They spent a harrowing 15 minutes stalking and hunting each other before Luz managed to smash in Trotsky's head with a mattock. Which reminded me of how our Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin's agent with an ice pick to the skull.
And what happened to Stalin? Did he go back to robbing banks and eventually get hanged as a common criminal? Or even repent to become an Orthodox priest?
I remember how Luz O'Malloy said Lenin and the Bolsheviks were so evil that they made Ivan the Terrible look like George Washington and St. Francis. And I agree she was right!
Gotten to the part of the book where Luz and Ciara had snucked into the Siemens factory disguised as French forced laborers.
I've also read the original version of Poul Anderson's "Margin of Profit," and am now reading his revision of that story. Both are good, but the revision improves the story.
Sean
Sean,
My reading of Lenin is that he would not "bleat" but how do we know how any of us would respond in such circumstances?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree we can't know how we would react or behave in such circumstances. I said "bleat" to show my contempt for Lenin. When I think of how cruel and tyrannical he was in real history, my anger and contempt is stirred up!
Sean
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