Familiar to readers of Poul Anderson are the combination of action-adventure fiction with colorful descriptive passages and conservative politics. Chandos:
"...had lately been sent down from Oxford for using some avowed communists as many thought they deserved..."
-Dornford Yates, Blind Corner (1927), CHAPTER I, p. 9.
When I read that in the early 1960s, I was amused. Now it turns me off big time. (Anderson treats characters with whom he disagrees with more respect.)
Andrea, who lives above his brother's shop, gave me a different perspective on the time travel paradoxes of a recent film. I encouraged him to comment on the relevant posts.
(At University, I was annoyed when I was listening with interest to a political speaker but his speech was interrupted by an English public school type throwing an egg at him. Instead of receiving applause or support, the egg-thrower found it advisable to beat a hasty retreat. Meanwhile, I was growing out of the Chandos mentality.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I like GOOD used book stores, as I think the Old Pier Bookshop was. And I'm sure you checked to see if any of the books of Anderson and Stirling were in stock!
And of course it's wrong to throw eggs at a public speaker, no matter how repellent his views might have been. That said, I would find it harder to disapprove of Communists being treated like that. I can never forget how brutal, cynical, and tyrannical Lenin and his Bolsheviks were. I would have to struggle NOT to throw eggs or worse at them!
Sean
Sean,
The egg-thrower was Jesuit-educated and argued against the admittance of women to the main debating society in the University.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And of course he was wrong to behave like that! Esp. on trivial a matter as a CLUB.
Sean
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