Chandos:
"When the first of these things happened, that is to say upon the twentieth day of April, 192-, I was twenty-two years old..."
-Dornford Yates, Blind Corner (London, 1947), CHAPTER I, p. 9.
Falkayn:
"...with the bitterness common at his seventeen years: Why does everything always go wrong?"
-"The Three-Cornered Wheel," I, p. 204.
Two careers just beginning and two interrupted educations:
"...a little stronger than most men my age, and very ready for anything that bade fair to prove more exciting than entering the office of my uncle, who was a merchant of consequence in the City of London.
"I had lately been sent down from Oxford for using some avowed communists as many thought they deserved..."
-Yates, ibid.
Falkayn was expelled from the militechnic academy for a prank, was sent away from Hermes by his father and has become apprenticed to Martin Schuster of the Polesotechnic League on Earth.
Falkayn will become a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League, leading a spacefaring crew, not sitting in an office, whereas Chandos will avoid his uncle's office by fighting villains for buried treasure. Adventures indeed.
7 comments:
Adventure being someone else is bad trouble far away....
These guys like their adventures, though.
Kaor, Paul!
Another writer, contemporary with Dornford Yates, whose works had affected Anderson and his own stories, was Leslie Charteris, author of The Saint books. Anderson was a big fan of Charteris and The Saint also had many adventures. And I think Dominic Flandry was partly modeled on The Saint. I really need to get and read some of Charteris' books.
Ad astra! Sean
There's an old military joke that you need two different sets of officers and noncoms: one for peacetime, and another for combat. People who are square pegs in peace often do very well in actual fighting.
The father of a friend of mine was dangerous to be around in peacetime -- he casually tried to kill a noncom once for gigging him about his uniform and failed only because of a freak accident (it was hushed up, for complex reasons) and broke every rule in the book.
But in actual combat, he was a holy terror, repeatedly decorated for small-unit actions in which he -personally- killed dozens of enemy soldiers, often with nothing more than a sharpened spade.
Everyone who served with him was terrified of him but he was a valuable asset.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ernst Rohm, in your Black Chamber books, seems to be a lot like your friend's father. Very dangerous to be near in peace time, but exactly like the man you discussed here.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: very much, though smarter. Rohm was, in reality, a very complex man -- a bad man, but not in every respect.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that makes me wonder if that very dangerous AND smart man, Rohm, will be see in your fourth Black Chamber book.
Ad astra! Seam
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