-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT XIV, p. 188.
This concluding sentence reads like an expected or intended culmination of the entire Dominic Flandry series - and almost is. The following novel is a "coda":
"This book is a sort of coda to the biography of Dominic Flandry..."
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Flandry's Legacy, pp. 189-453 AT INTRODUCTION, p. 191.
This introduction, together with the fact that The Game Of Empire is collected in a volume of The Technic Civilization Saga, informs us, even before we have begun to read its text, that the novel is part of the Technic History. However, any text should be read and assessed without presuppositions. How soon does the novel itself tell its readers how it connects with any other works by the same author?
A young woman called Diana is on a colonized planet called Imhotep where a Pyramid houses Imperial offices and the sun is called Patricius. We appreciate the description of:
"...a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space."
-CHAPTER ONE, p. 195.
We recognize this as good sf writing by Poul Anderson but, so far, it could be set in almost any fictional future.
p. 196 refers to the Troubles and the Terran Empire. p. 197 states that the vaz-Siravo have been settled in the Seas of Yang and Yin. Now we know that we are reading a sequel to Ensign Flandry. And when a marine growls, "'Merseian bastards...,'" (p. 198) we feel at home.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sure we would both have liked to have seen a coda to that coda called THE GAME OF EMPIRE showing us Dominic Flandry in his old age, around age 100. And Crown Prince Karl might have succeeded his father Gerhart as Emperor by then. And would Flandry be one of his most trusted advisers?
And that bit about the "...sprawling, polyglot, multiracial" population of Olga's Landing reminded me of a similar description of Irumclaw Old Town many years before in A CIRCUS OF HELLS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I agree. Most people would think of a Diana Crowfeather series, not of a further coda. But, to be true Andersonians, we must wish that the Technic History had continued in every possible direction.
Paul.
Ah, would that it had been so.
BTW, THE GAME OF EMPIRE is also in some respects a SFnal retelling of Kipling's KIM.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Heck, I would have been grateful for just or two more Technic stories. E.g., a Young Nick story and the one I speculated about showing us Flandry in his old age.
Mr. Stirling: Amen! And I did know THE GAME OF EMPIRE was a homage by Anderson to Kipling's novel KIM. Way back in 1985 I wrote a LONG letter to Anderson about GAME and in his reply PA stated said the book was meant to honor Kipling.
Ad astra! Sean
I eventually read KIM so I got the point. British Empire, Terran Empire. India, Imhotep and Daedalus.
And Lancaster bookseller Pete Pinto's idea that Aycharaych should return but in an Aycharaych novel, not in a Dominic Flandry novel.
Kaor, Paul!
And Kipling's works, including KIM, also touched on those aspects or ideas and qualities which makes for lasting literature. As did the works of Tolkien, esp. in the "concentrated" form we see in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Careful! Or we would have had Anderson writing nothing but additional Technic stories till the year he died! (Smiles) I would have been satisfied with one or two more stories. And by 1985 Anderson seems to have decided he had said everything he could or needed in the Technic universe and it was time to turn to other topics and themes. Which he did, starting with THE KING OF YS and THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS in the later 1980's.
Ad astra! Sean
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