That none of the four explorers on Iapetus is a narrative viewpoint character is highlighted by the ending of section II. The three individuals that have left the lander discuss their environment in terms of the game that they are playing:
"The three faced the awesomeness before them. 'You can help me find the Princess when we are inside, Alvarlan,' Kendrick says.
"'That I can and will,' the sorcerer says.
"'I wait for you, most steadfast of my lovers,' Ricia croons.
"Alone in the spacecraft, Danzig well-nigh sobbed. 'Oh, damn that game forever!' The sound fell away into emptiness." (p. 23)
The omniscient narrator directly recounts to the reader what is said by each member of the team, by Scobie/Kendrick, Garcilaso/Alvarlan, Broberg/Ricia and Danzig. We are not told how any of these four perceives the others. Danzig, back in the lander, is below the horizon and the other three have just cut off their radio links to him so that Danzig has not heard this most recent gaming dialogue although he had heard enough before that to know what they are doing. That was why they had cut him off.
Only the omniscient narrator knows what words are uttered simultaneously at the "glacier"/the City of Ice and back in the lander. Standard practice in fictional narratives is that one of the four, Scobie or Broberg etc, would be the single viewpoint character if not for the entire text, then at least for each chapter, section or other discrete passage. Poul Anderson probably resorted to a ubiquitous omniscient narrator as a way of coping with the identity shifts of the three gamers.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I was never a role playing gamer, because such games never appealed to me. I did not want to, even merely for a short time, convince myself I was somebody else, living and acting somewhere else. It would have been so fake, dangerously close to self induced delusion and madness.
Ad astra! Sean
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