Having read the conversation between Chee Lan and Adzel after their three year gap, we skip ahead to find the first account of the whole team together again in Muddlin' Through:
Chapter I is about the Falkayns, then Chee Lan and Adzel;
II is about Sandra Tamarin on Hermes;
III is about van Rijn and other League representatives on Luna;
IV, finally, describes the departure of Muddlin' Through from Falkayn's pov.
It is always possible to learn something new about the hyperdrive:
"Pulsed Schrodinger waves drove her at a psuedovelocity equivalent to thousands of times the true speed of radiation..." (p. 74)
The team and their ship's consciousness-level computer, Muddlehead, play poker, the computer represented by an audiovisual sensor and metal arms. There is a presumably amusing exchange about poker. After a three-year hiatus, they need to relearn each other's styles. Then they play "wild" games, dealer's choice. Adzel sips martini instead of drinking beer on a voyage because no ship would have been able to carry enough but should he drink anything alcoholic? It is his choice but the priority for a Buddhist is meditation which too much drink would interfere with.
When Muddlehead chooses a particularly offensive "wild" game, Adzel remarks that the Manichaean heresy has just scored a point, reminding us a similar remark by van Rijn. In fact, Falkayn reflects that van Rijn would have understood the reference although he himself does not.
The ship periodically increases its artificial gravity to accustom the crew to Baburite weight in case they have to land there. Falkayn, when alone on the bridge, quotes from "Ulysses" by Tennyson.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can well imagine some readers getting impatient because of that lengthy Prologue and the first three chapters of MIRKHEIM "delaying" the action of the book. And I would disagree with them. I would read with interest how Mirkheim came to be and Anderson's careful delineating of the background and main characters we would see in the story.
Instead of poker, I would prefer to play chess! Albeit, if I had been on a trader team myself, I might well have learned how to play poker. Considering how badly I play chess, I doubt I would do well with poker, alas.
Considering how large and massive a being Adzel was, I doubt alcoholic drinks would affect him as quickly as they do humans.
I would understand Adzel's mentioning of the Manichaean heresy. Which I first came across as a teenager while reading St. Augustine's CONFESSIONS. The disputes between Catholics and Manichaeans were matters of living interest to him.
That quoting of Lord Tennyson by Falkayn reminded me of how, centuries later, Aycharaych quoted Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
On Thursday this week and today I received by post all three volumes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "novel" MARCH 1917. I used the double quotes because this HUGE work comprises over 2000 pages of printed text in three volumes! The novel is Solzhenitsyn's examination of the catastrophic sank into a collapse leading to the even worse catastrophe in November.
These Russian writers (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn) really like to write huge books. No Hemingwayesque brevity or terseness for them!
Ad astra! Sean
I garbled the last sentence of the sixth paragraph. I meant to write: "The novel is Solzhenitsyn's examination of the catastrophic collapse of Russia, leading to the even worse catastrophe in November."
Sean
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