"Dawn here was an alien thing, too. Mist tinged blood-red drifted in dankness through the open windows of [Flandry's] bedroom. It smelled like wet iron. Someone was blowing a horn somewhere..."
-Poul Anderson, "Honorable Enemies" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 277-302 AT p. 283.
The combination of red mist through the windows with references to iron and a horn suggests that Flandry is a guest not of extraterrestrials in an sf story but of elves in a heroic fantasy.
In the immediately following story, Flandry arrives on Nyanza:
"The spaceport was like ten thousand minor harbors: little more than a grav-grid, a field, and some ancillary buildings, well out of town."
-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Captain Flandry..., pp. 303-339 AT II, p. 308.
Here, we are clearly in sf-land, even in a futuristic version of our own experience of approaching an airport.
"Honorable Enemies" (1951) and "The Game of Glory" (1958) represent different stages of Anderson's composition of this future history series but also are inter-connected:
"Two years went by. He was sent to Betelgeuse and discovered how to lie to a telepath."
-"The Game of Glory," I, p. 303.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember how Flandry grumpily thought that horn was being blown with needless vehemence and loudness! (Smiles) We should also keep in mind the text you quoted was probably the revised version of "Honorable Enemies" Anderson gave us in the 1970's.
And that spaceport on Nyzanza was a minor, provincial harbor. A lot like the small airports we see many small cities rating.
Ad astra! Sean
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