Dominic Flandry:
"He was naive, wide-eyed, pathetically hoping to accomplish something for Mother Terra, simultaneously impressed by what he saw here. In wry moments he admitted to himself that this was hardly a faked character..."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ELEVEN, pp. 105-106.
(No one can possibly know that, nearly three decades later, Flandry's son will be impressed enough with the Merseians to work covertly for them.)
Matt Helm:
"I hoped I'd given it the right buildup: the arrogant, ruthless, unscrupulous government emissary prepared to stop at nothing to protect the reputation of his agency. Come to think of it, that wasn't so far offbase."
-Donald Hamilton, The Intriguers (London, 2025), 17, p. 173.
Two men at opposite ends of their careers: Flandry need not fake naivety; Helm need not fake unscrupulousness. Later, Flandry need not fake the latter...
Tomorrow, I visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop, this time for some Italian home cooking, so there might be quite a gap in blogging.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but Flandry was not ruthless and unscrupulous merely for the sake of those qualities, and only because it was sometimes necessary to be like that to get the job done. Unlike Helm, Flandry still had a moral core. He could still feel compassion or regret for enemies he had to kill.
Ad astra! Sean
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