Not On Earth

Poul Anderson, "The Three-Cornered Wheel" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 199-261 AT I, p. 202.

David Falkayn reflects that the Ivanhoan's brain:

"...had not evolved on Earth. And when, in addition to every inborn strangeness, the mind was shaped by a culture that no man really understood...how much communication was possible?" (p. 202)

But man and Ivanhoan are conducting a mutually comprehensible conversation that we read in English just as if both of these characters were human. British sf writer, Bob Shaw, believed that human beings and aliens would think so differently that no easy communication would ever be possible and he never showed inter-species conversations in his fiction. If this Shavian dictum were to be taken seriously, then how many sf works would be invalidated?

(The three works shown in the attached image form a loose trilogy:

Trader To The Stars, van Rijn;

The Trouble Twisters, Falkayn's early career and his leadership of van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew;

Satan's World, the team calls on van Rijn when Falkayn is kidnapped.)