Olaf Magnusson contemplates:
"Strength. Strength unafraid, unhesitant, serving a will which was neither cruel nor kind but which cleanly trod the road to its destiny.... He could not hold the vision before him for very long at a time. It was too superb for mankind." (p. 250)
What race is the vision fit for? And where else have we read about strength neither cruel nor kind? - apart from in the Nietzschean superman?
"Before [Djana] flashed the image of a Merseian Christ, armed and shining, neither compassionate nor cruel but the Messiah of a new day..."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 298.
"'...I will raise against them a new people under a new sun; and their name shall be Strength.'"
-ibid., p. 304.
But the truth about Magnusson hits us in the face when he tells Flandry:
"'...I now have one more proof that the God looks after His warriors.'"
-The Game of Empire, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, p. 400.
What! Magnusson cannot be a disguised Merseian! No. But he can have been indoctrinated by Merseians...
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteWhat Magnusson and Djana does not appeals to me!
Yes, Magnusson was a really deep cover Merseian agent. Miserable creatures like Alger Hiss (apt name!) and Kim Philby are US/UK examples of such wretches.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, MI6!
ReplyDeleteYou made very fair and interesting points, and I agree if there is anyone in the movie industry who has more than a few functioning brain cells, could try making movies like that.
I admit I was never much into more or less contemporaneous spy thrillers, aside from the James Bond books and William F. Buckley's Blackford Oakes novels.
I can see otherwise hostile intelligence agencies like the CIA and KGB sometimes cooperating in cases where their countries interests converged.
Ad astra! Sean
UNCLE: An American and a Russian agent.
ReplyDeleteKaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteAnd there's Buckley's novel STAINED GLASS, where we see CIA and KGB cooperating on a case, albeit reluctantly and with distaste by the Americans.
Ad astra! Sean