Friday 19 July 2019

Conquerors

In Terran Conquerors, I referred to different meanings of the word "conquer." In the combox, regular correspondent, David Birr, made me aware of a heroic "Conqueror" in The General series by SM Stirling and David Drake. The first The General series omnibus volume, The Warlord, has just arrived here.

A cynical sf fan once said that a hero either "conquers" or "liberates" a planet, depending on which word we want to use. That is partly too cynical but partly also correct. Of course a conquest might be called a "liberation" but genuine liberation is possible nevertheless but it cannot be achieved by the same means as conquest. Dominic Flandry participates in the conquest of Brae but also liberates Unan Besar.

My next task is to continue rereading Poul Anderson's and Gordon R. Dixon's account of the liberation of the planet New Lemuria in Star Prince Charlie but first I need a night's sleep to recover from a lot of driving and walking today.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'll be very keen to know what you think of THE GENERAL series, co-authored by Dave Drake and S.M. Stirling! I took great pleasure in reading and rereading those five books. WARLORD collects the first two volumes: THE FORGE and THE HAMMER.

I'll be esp. interested in what you come to think of "Center," the ancient AI Battle Computer surviving from the time of the long fallen interstellar Terran Federation. Despite my skepticism about the practicality or likelihood of self aware AI computers, Drake and Stirling managed to persuade me to suspend my disbelief in such things!

Btw, it was not the entire planet of New Lemuria that was liberated, but only a fairly small part of it, the Kingdom of Talyina.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Thank you. I will continue to catch up with these details as I reread.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And your comments are a stimulus to my memories!

Sean