Attacking the Earthmen who are defending the spaceship, the Arzunians come:
"...swinging their weapons and howling." (p. 433)
"Howling" seems to be prerogative of the enemies of civilization!
Will Donovan die defending the ship? No, but his faithful Donarrian slave, Wocha does, after killing Valduma. Donovan will remember the wildness but is now engaged to Helena and winds up singing a song of comradeship with his former enemies, the Terrans. And the moral of the story is:
"...even if this was a long ways from being the best of all possible universes, it had enough in it to make a man glad of his day." (p. 436)
The Technic History has strong series characters but also several one-off heroes like Donovan.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, "Sargasso of Lost Starships" was first pub. in the January 1952 issue of PLANET STORIES, very early in Anderson's writing career. One characteristic of his early years as a writer was to be somewhat "purple" in his use of language, such as this use of "howling." After about 1958-59 we see a lot less of this kind of rhetoric in Anderson's stories.
Sean
Post a Comment