Larreka:
"Get more than a few Terrestrials together, and it was incredible what time they'd dribble away in laborious jabber." (p. 35)
Poul Anderson comments on his own species through an alien.
When the Great Khruath of Avalon debates, then votes 83% for continued resistance to Terra:
"...scarcely six hours had passed. Humans couldn't have done it."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT XI, p. 564.
We find parallels between Ishtarians and Ythrians.
Larreka knows human beings. After a hundred Ishtarian years of close acquaintanceships and some close friendships, he:
"...had learned to tell them apart as well as they could themselves..." (p. 32)
That is quite an achievement. Human beings have been on Ishtar for only a hundred years. Larreka is well into middle age at three hundred and ninety.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And greetings to whoever else may be reading. I’m more than a year behind on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog, but I wanted to say something: for a number of months, Reason magazine has had a Friday crossword puzzle in its online version, and yesterday’s was titled “Broken Sword: Puzzle #44.” The first clue is, going by memory, “sci-fi writer who called himself an eighteenth century liberal,” and the name fit into 1 across, four letters, and something else across, eight letters. The puzzle can be found at https://reason.com/2024;05/31/broken-sword-puzzle-44/
Best Regards,
Nicholas David Rosen
Oops. There should be a slash, not a semicolon, between 2024 and 05.
Nicholas D. Rosen
Humans do a number of things with talking.
There's information exchange, yes. But there's also a lot of social bonding mechanisms that just involve talking, including the non-verbal parts.
Human beings are intensely social animals and they need that sort of communication to cooperate on a large scale.
Note that Ythrians have intense difficulty in large-scale conflict with humans, precisely because humans are more social and therefore cooperate more effectively.
Individuall Ythrians may be more formidable than humans, but as the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own.
That's probably how humans supplanted "wilder" varieties of hominins. The evidence shows that even as hunter-gatherers humans had larger populations than, say, Neanderthals, and that their social groupings were bigger and more complex.
Kaor, Nicholas and Mr. Stirling!
Nicholas: Welcome back! I've not forgotten you. Once in a while I still remember you.
Mr. Stirling: I do see your point about how "chattering" is a means of social bonding among humans. Even if some of us, like me, find it often irritating.
Your comments makes me think that, for soldiers, training and discipline is necessary, not only for learning how to use weapons but also to do so in a cooperative large scale way. In THE WINTER OF THE WORLD we see Sidir working out tactics enabling disciplined infantry and cavalry to crush the Rogaviki, no matter how ferocious the latter were as individuals. Because the infantry and cavalry fought as cooperative units.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: exactly.
As Josephus said in "The Jewish War" about the Roman legions:
'Their drills are but bloodless battles, and their battles but bloody drills.'
Train so hard that the reality is just like more training.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: And I saw how right Josephus was in your draft version of TO TURN THE TIDE in that alternative version of the Marcomannic War. The raw courage and ferocity of the Germans was not enough pitched against the disciplined efficiency of the Romans.
Paul: Correct. And I read of how the Romans would double weight weapons and shields while training.
Ad astra! Sean
It was generally considered in the Roman army that recruits needed six months of training before they could do even the most elementary military tasks, and well over a year before they were fit for front-line duty.
Bear in mind that they'd already be fit by our standards; they were peasants' sons, or blacksmith apprentices, things like that.
You have to operate on conditioned reflex in combat, and that takes time to drill in so muscle-memory operates.
Besides that, Roman legions were expected to be able to do a lot of engineering stuff as well -- they made a fortified camp every day at the end of a march if they were anywhere near the enemy, for example.
March twenty miles carrying 60 pounds of gear and weapons and armor, then build a camp.
In peacetime, legionaries generally did one 20-mile route march and camp-building -every week-.
And for even the lowest NCO rank, you had to be able to write a report and do accounts; the literacy rate for soldiers was substantially higher than the general population.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I'm impressed, and intimidated! And the best modern armies have training routines like that: long route marches with complete packs. With the modern day equivalents of fortified camps.
Your draft version of TO TURN THE TIDE had new Roman legions which had finished their training stiffened with veterans to their flanks and rear, to help steady new troops experiencing serious combat for the first time. Which makes sense!
Ad astra! Sean
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