It is true that the world was divided into three warring super-states, Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, in 1984 - if we know that we are talking about the plot of Orwell's 1984.
Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry exist in the same timeline - although, of course, neither of them really exists.
Gods and Buddhas co-exist - although I think that both kinds of beings are mythological.
Growing up in the post-War 1950s, I "knew" that germs and Germans were bad.
It is in this quotation marks sense of "know" that an Allied Planet cultural anthropologist says of the Lokonese:
"'They know a boy won't become a man unless he has eaten part of a man.'"
-"The Sharing of Flesh," p. 684.
Ironically, of course, it turns out that they do know this in the ordinary sense. Biologically, Lokonese boys cannot mature without cannibalism. When this is realized, something can be done about it.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, we know Buddha was a real man, an actual person.
A pity Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry are not real human beings!
Yes, the Lokonese knew as an actual fact their boys could not achieve sexual maturation and fertility unless they ate certain parts of a man at puberty. It was the Allied Planets expedition which had to discover Lokon had a very real problem.
Ad astra! Sean
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