"Konski expressed dignity."
-Robert Heinlein, "Gentlemen, Be Seated" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 50-60 AT p. 54.
Nicholas van Rijn alleges that a competitor with the ethics of a paranoid weasel paid fifteen thousand on espionage:
"'How do you know how much he spent?' Harry asked blandly.
"Van Rijn managed to look smug and hurt at the same time."
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 280.
Two guys for whom life is a prolonged act although, unfortunately, Konski did not graduate to his own series. The Technic History is like the Future History writ large.
In the Flandry period of the Technic History, there are fictional works called Outlaw Blastman and Planet Of Sin. A boy who visits the Moon with his parents in the Future History follows a character called Tom Jeremy in The Space Troopers - ironic since Heinlein later wrote Space Cadet and Starship Troopers.
Life in the future - if we have a future.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Ha! Yet again, we see the weasel metaphor!
Easy! Old Nick had spies in his competitor's outfit!
And we also see mention of the poems of Andrei Simich, in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, which I recently finished rereading. And Aycharaych quoted from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument" in that book.
If we have a reasonably tolerable future it will be because of men like Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment