Friday, 17 January 2020

Biosculps

"Alicia's looks came from an expensive biosculp job. [Hauksberg] had seen too many slight variations on that fashionable face."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 7.

"...while [Flandry] enjoyed being gray-eyed, he considered his face unduly long and thin, and planned to get it remodeled when he could afford the best."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Young Flandry, pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER TWO, p. 208.

To Flandry:

"'I see you have a new face.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Young Flandry, pp. 367-520 AT CHAPTER TWO, p. 382.

"[Flandry] sometimes thought his last biosculp had made [his face] too handsome, and he ought to change it again."
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT I, pp. 152-153.

Later, Flandry's face is:

"...relic of a period when everybody who could afford it got biosculpted into comeliness."
-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT III, p. 31.

And somewhere else in the series - I can find it if I look - is the statement that Flandry's face resulted from an early biosculp that he had never had changed. I took this to mean that he had had only one biosculp, between A Circus Of Hells, when he earned some illicit money, and The Rebel Worlds and therefore that two, but only two, actors would be needed for any screen adaptations. However, that phrase, "...his last biosculp...," (my emphasis) suggests that there had been at least two biosculps, necessitating at least three actors.

I did not expect that complication when I began to assemble quotations about biosculps.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I still think, however, that your original supposition is most likely the true one: that Flandry had only one biosculpt job done on his face sometime after A CIRCUS OF HELLS and before his meeting with Admiral Kheraskov. That "last" biosculpting of Flandry's face mentioned in Chapter I of WE CLAIM THESE STARS could just as easily
refer to the one he commissioned soon after CIRCUS as to a more recent job not long before WE CLAIM THESE STARS.

Ad astra! Sean