Spacemen can get drunk, then buy (expensive) anti-hangover tablets.
We have already been told that the Last Chance on Achilles:
"...is a rowdy bar where Guardsmen come in trios." (p. 21)
- although I thought that that seemed unlikely, such a degree of lawlessness inside a small, entirely artificial environment.
A kilted Venusian spaceman picks a fight with Johnny, then kills him with a needle gun.We saw kilts on men in Heinlein's Future History and needle guns earlier in the Psychotechnic History in "Un-Man."
The Venusian escapes, other men tangle, then fight, one of them smashing a bottle and raising it high. Again, I find that degree of violence unlikely. Someone can casually threaten to attack others with a broken bottle, then return to work as a spaceman the following day?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I would expect SOME rowdiness in a small frontier outpost like this, but not quite that much. Precisely because it was both small and needed to be totally covered by a protective dome. So, I would expect both tolerance of some rowdiness and disapproval of excessive violence and crime from the community.
Part of the problem here might stem from "Holmgang" first being pub. in 1957, when it was still relatively early in Anderson's writing career. He probably still needed some time for thinking thru what would be most likely in scenarios like this. Anderson came to think his later, non Psyschotechnic stories "...better told, and better written, than formerly" (from his Afterword, in Vol. 1, of THE COMPLETE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE.
Ad astra and Happy Easter! Sean
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