Saturday 1 August 2020

Russians

"'The pussies may be great fighters, but as administrators they're worse than Russians.'
"What're russians? Jonah thought. Then, oh. Them."
-"The Asteroid Queen," Chapter VI, p. 107.

Not many Russians in Poul Anderson's works? Maybe in a couple of short stories?

Russia was the enemy in Fleming's James Bond novels and other Cold War thrillers. The two top UNCLE agents were ex-CIA and ex-KGB. Star Trek had to invent a Russian crew member for a later season. See image. In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Russia conquers Earth. In Jerry Pournelle's future history, the US and the USSR form the CoDominium. "Communism" is mentioned as a threat in Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon" but Earth becomes a Federation shortly afterwards in his Future History.

Blog readers can tell me what I have missed.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

We do see Russians in Anderson's "The High Ones," set in a time after the Soviets had conquered all Earth. And they are mentioned in "The Pugilist," after the Marxist/Leninist world was split between hostile Soviet and Maoist Chinese rivals. And we see Russians in several chapters of THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS. And another Russian is a character in THE DANCER FROM ATLANTIS.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Yes, I had "The High Ones" and "The Pugilist" in mind as a couple of short stories.

BOAT and DANCER have individual Russians but I was thinking more of "the Russians" as a national entity.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

In that case, I don't know of any stories by Anderson treating "Russians" in that sense, if you don't mean incidental, en passant mentions of them as seen in stories like "Wildcat" and "The Light."

Ad astra! Sean