"Cold Victory."
OK. Poul Anderson knows his job. Even if a situation is fantastic (to us) human responses to it must be realistic, which means diverse and complicated.
Will all men obey an order to bombard Earth with nukes? No. Will some? Yes, and their actions can be explained:
"Even in K'ung's command, there must be talk of revolt. Since his ultimatum, deserters in lifeboats had brought Dushanovitch-Alvarez a mountain of precise information. But the Humanists had had ten years in which to build a hard cadre of hard young officers to keep the men obedient." (p. 60)
This can happen - unfortunately.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And ALL gov'ts, bad and GOOD alike, will need such a core of hard young men determinedly loyal to them, if they were to survive at all in times of crisis. And that, in itself, is not necessarily bad. It depends on what kind of regimes they serve.
Ad astra! Sean
Very few men have ever refused orders to bombard cities, for instance.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I have to agree. I should have remembered the plentiful examples of that from both real history and your recently reread THE GENERAL books. Altho Raj Whitehall took no pleasure from doing so. It was merely necessary if that was what it took to break an enemy's will to resist.
Ad astra! Sean
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