Saturday 4 December 2021

Mentioning Previous Installments

A series gathers momentum as it gains new installments. In From Russia, With Love, Bond's enemies summarize his cases to date, only four at this early stage: Le Chiffre, Mr. Big, Hugo Drax and some diamond smugglers.

When van Rijn interviews Falkayn, he mentions what the latter did on Ivanhoe but not what he did at Beta Centauri because that story, although set earlier, had not been written yet. Later, the Serendipity computer tells Falkayn:
 
"'Your name is associated with a number of accounts in these data banks, most notably the episodes involving Beta Centauri, Ikrananka, and Merseia.'"
-Satan's World, III, p. 349.
 
The less notable will include Ivanhoe and some others that we do not know about and that does summarize Falkayn's career to date. After Satan's World, he will appear only in "Lodestar" and Mirkheim. Although it feels like it should be more, all that significance and substance is concentrated into these seven installments.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And these comments makes me regret how Anderson did not flesh out Falkayn more fully with one or two more stories about him. But we know he had a special fondness for Old Nick and Dominic Flandry, both of whom did get that fleshing out.

Ad astra! Sean