In this chapter, the opening paragraph of four sentences tells us in some detail what a great guy Miguel Fernandez was. The second paragraph is a single sentence:
"He died on Troas." (p. 74)
The third paragraph backtracks to lead up to his death so that we have to read about human beings and kangaroo-like aliens trekking on foot across a very Earth-like extra-solar planet.
This does not really work, does it? To care about a character dying, we have to have known him for some time beforehand and we also need to see up front how he dies. Question And Answer was written as one part of a Twayne Triplet with a scientist designing the planet, then Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov and James Blish each writing an independent story set on that planet. The idea does not seem to have inspired a great deal of creativity in Anderson.
I read somewhere, although I can't find it now, that Sandra Miesel had persuaded Anderson that this novel could be incorporated into his Psychotechnic History although obviously it cannot - although the novel clearly does parallel that History with religious dissenters colonizing Mars and a predictive science of society. The text ends by making the point that mankind needs diversity, a recurrent Andersonian theme, but one that in this case is merely stated by the viewpoint character, Lorenzen, in argument with the psychman, Avery. In other works, Anderson dramatically demonstrates diversity.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Maybe QUESTION AND ANSWER was not one of Anderson's better stories, at least partly because it was not wholly created by him. But "A Chapter of Revelation" was also originally written as part of a triplet of stories all using the same theme, the rotation of the Earth being stopped. And I thought that a very good story. So stories of this kind succeed!
Ad astra! Sean
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