The sensory assault continues. Leaving the chugging boat, Flandry swims "...through warm slimy water..." (IV, p. 26) as a distant animal hooting approaches through the thick, hot, stinking, shadowy night. He is pursued by a pack of long-necked, gleaming, reptilian swimmers followed by the fierce searchlight of a whining police boat. A metal wall booms and planks resound as heavy, splashing, whistling bodies strike the pier and a blue blaster bolt decapitates a snapping beast. A full power narrow beam pierces the boat which sinks "...like a diving whale." (IV, p. 29)
Evading the police, Flandry contacts the local criminal underworld. The battered giant, Kemul, might slit Flandry's weasand with the kris thrust into his garish batik. (I did know what a kris was but it is interesting to read more.)
Kemul refers to a blindfolded house god, confirming polytheism on Unan Besar. Recently, we saw pantheism on Altai. Pantheism (God is all) is a kind of monism (all is one). Whereas prophetic monotheists necessarily reject polytheism, monists can accommodate it because the one appears as many:
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The idea of domesticating and training doglike, reptiloid animals used as tracking beasts interests me, and certainly makes sense on a world as watery as Unan Besar.
I was interested enough to look up "weasand" and "Kris."
As a Catholic, I simply cannot agree with any kind of monism. It does not make sense to think of God as somehow being immanentized in His creation.
Some Catholic writers have wondered about the spiritual status of non human intelligent races (if they exist) and whether or not they have Fallen. And, if the latter has occurred, how might God provide for their salvation. I've thought just now of both C.S. Lewis' essay "Religion and Rocketry" and the collection called EXTRATERRESTRIALS IN THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION (ed. J. Rosato and A. Vincelette).
I've finally finished Stirling's DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. And, with some hesitations here and there, I greatly enjoyed the book. I wrote some notes as I read thru the book, now I have to write them up into expanded comments which I hope to send to you.
After a long hiatus due to reading the first 007 books, EXTRATERRESTRIALS, and DAGGERS, I felt ready to get back to reading some of Anderson's stories. So I've started rereading the stories in FLANDRY OF TERRA, beginning with "The Game of Glory."
Ad astra! Sean
I think Unan Besar must have been settled by people ultimately derived from Bali, and/or Dyaks from Borneo. They’re sort of vaguely Malay, but not Islamic, and those are the two main possibilities.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I've thought of Bali, and somewhat vaguely thought most people there were at least nominally Muslim. Guess I was wrong!
Not sure I ever heard of the Dyaks of Borneo before. A people I will have to look up.
Ad astra! Sean
No, the Balinese are overwhelmingly Hindu. Muslims on Bali are nearly all part of a small minority of immigrants.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Got it. That strengthens the likelihood Unan Besarans descend from people who came from Bali or the Dayaks of Borneo.
Ad astra! Sean
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