Conversation And Correspondence

"The gentlest-looking environment holds a thousand death traps until you have learned what the difficulties are and how to grip them. (Earth is no exception.)"

-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 108.

This remark agrees with what I argued in the preceding post. 

The narrator is human although his reference to gripping a difficulty sounds slightly Ythrian, e.g.:

"Weak though [Hloch's] grip upon the matter be, bloodpride requires he undertake the task."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION WINGS OF VICTORY IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 75-77 AT p. 75.

"Pete and I got along well. He's a big, sandy-haired, freckle-faced young man..." (ibid.)

The unnamed first person narrator goes on to describe Peter Berg further and to "...recommend him as a companion." (ibid.) Hloch explains that this passage was "...part of a private correspondence..." (p. 105) on Earth. Thus, as in some parts of Robert Heinlein's Future History, the narrator addresses a contemporary audience about then current events. Peter Berg is still alive while his story is being told although Hloch comments centuries later, presenting a historical perspective.

Maybe it is appropriate that the narrator and Berg discuss the theological problems of pain and evil on an inhospitable planet named Lucifer and that, at the very end of the story, when the narrator has suggested that a text in Job might help but that he himself does not know:

"The sun lifted higher above the burning horizon." (p. 134) (My emphasis.)

The Technic History also includes a story about theological problems on a planet called Cain. And James Blish's A Case of Conscience presents a strong parallel.