Saturday, 30 January 2021

A Curious Parallel

Endless posts about Poul Anderson's Technic History are the equivalent on this blog of endless Star Trek reruns on TV. Star Trek, being multi-authored, out-competes Anderson in quantity although not in anything else.

Poul Anderson contributed to several other fictional universes although not to Star Trek. James Blish's original Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, is prima facie non-canonical because it closes down the Klingon Empire way earlier than screen Star Trek. Robert Feist's Technic History story, "A Candle," is prima facie non-canonical because it treats the Chereionites as still extant, not extinct. This is a curious parallel.

See "A Candle" by Robert E. Feist.

"A Candle" describes the Chereionites as:

"'...the intellectual power within the Merseian Empire.'" (p. 303)

They are not. A single surviving Chereionite uses his planet's resources to dupe the Merseians into thinking that a planetary population is leading their intelligence service.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And this blog piece of yours actually kind of fits in with the article I've been working on lately. Which I've been going thru and revising. I hope to be sending it to you soon.

We "know" from A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, that the very last Chereionite, Aycharaych, probably died during the Dennitzan bombardment of Chereion, making that race completely extinct. Complications abound, tho, as we see with the Merseian Protector, Tachwyr the Dark, wondering in THE GAME OF EMPIRE if Aycharaych was dead. I have to argue Raymond Feist erred here in his story "A Candle."

Ad astra! Sean