Years ago, I read a comic book in which Martians scared each other with a succession of mutually inconsistent tall tales about flying saucers from Earth. At the very end of the story, an authentic looking space vehicle landed and what we recognized as real Earthmen emerged from it.
In the opening chapter of The Man Who Counts, winged beings of a maritime culture have seen a floating, drifting, brightly shimmering object, like yet unlike ice, six times longer than their longest canoe, carrying three wingless, tailless, four-limbed creatures, neither fish nor sea mammals, more like "'...typical flightless land forms...,'" (p. 150) who, if they have not risen from the Deeps, might have fallen from the sky?
We do not yet know that these three creatures include Nicholas van Rijn but we get the idea that they might be human spacefarers. The novel begins in media res, in the midst of the action. Why has a spaceship crashed in an ocean and how will the survivors of the crash interact with the natives?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And of course we see Anderson examining the theme of UFOs in his story "Peek! I See You!" in both serious and humorous ways.
Ad astra! Sean
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