Sunday 26 January 2020

Near The End Of The Rebel Worlds: The Milky Way And A Buckethead

The Rebel Worlds.

Dominic Flandry looks out from a spaceship:

"Twice he identified slivers of blackness crossing the constellations and the Milky Way; nearby warcraft."
-CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 504.

The captured ruka links with Cave Discoverer's noga and krippo to form the miserable entity who self-designates "Woe." Heesh was first mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the novel. See here. This noga and krippo were already accustomed to linking with another foreign ruka to form Raft Farer who was also mentioned at the beginning.

Before leaving Dido, Flandry and Kathryn were enclosed by:

"Steamy heat and jungle abatis..."
-CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 488. (Scroll down.)

Flandry thinks of Hugh McCormac as a "...bucketheaded mass murderer..." (CHAPTER TWELVE, p. 485) and Manse Everard uses the phrase, "...a blind buckethead..." in Time Patrol, p. 61. Technic History-Time Patrol parallels are always pleasing and have been noted before.  

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Dang! I missed that use of "buckethead" in my previous readings of THE REBEL WORLDS and Time Patrol stories. And I would almost certainly agree with Manse as I do with Flandry's low opinion of McCormac. Simplest put, why didn't McCormac, after being rescued from that prison satellite, make a beeline to Terra to NOISILY shout his accusations of both Snelund's abusive misgovernment of Sector Alpha Crucis and the kidnapping and rape of his wife? A two star admiral would have CLOUT, after all. A scandal of the proportions McCormac could stir up on Terra would be impossible for Snelund's agents there to hush up. That would have been far better than starting a civil war!

I've also been reading some of the stories collected by NESFA Press in Volume 5 of THE COLLECTED SHORT WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON: THE DOOR TO ANYWHERE. And I was very pleased to come across a story I don't recall ever reading: "The Door To Anywhere." I've also read, in the same volume, "The White King's War" and "The Fatal Fulfillment."

The late Jerry Pournelle also wrote a very nice "Appreciation" to this Volume 5. And one comment he made should be quoted: "Bob Gleason, then editor-in-chief at Tor, worked at nominating Poul for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Bob understood that given the politics of the world this was highly unlikely, but that didn't stop him. "Simple justice," he once said. It would have been.

And I agree! I think many of PA's works are far better than those of quite a few of the other winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature! If that had happened, Anderson would have joined writers like Rudyard Kipling and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in that august company.

Ad astra! Sean

Nicholas D. Rosen said...

Kaor, Paul!

I’m way behind on the digests, but I’d like to chime in that I agree: Anderson was worthy of a Nobel.

Best Regards,
Nicholas

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Nicholas!

Good. We both agree!

Ad astra! Sean