As the Germanian merchant spaceship, the Ottokar, approaches Freehold, John Ridenour watches the planet in the viewport. He is joined by a young Germanian steward's mate who is naive and uniformed but also intelligent enough to ask just the right questions to enable Ridenour to expound the physical parameters of Freehold for the benefit of Poul Anderson's readers. This character, Dietrich Steinhauer, exists only as a plot device although we are to imagine that he has a life before and after his conversation with Ridenour.
I am not disposed to summarize the details about Freehold right now. They are there to be read. However, I find it interesting that Anderson reminds us of the cosmic context of sf, and indeed of all fiction, by informing us through Ridenour that Freehold's sun lacks heavy elements not because it is old - it is not - but because it formed in a metal-poor spatial region, then wandered into this spiral arm. Cosmic processes operate continually whether or not we are aware of them.
Freehold was settled more than five centuries previously so there is a lot of history which the story merely hints at.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
A transparent plot device? Yes, but a necessary one, being an example of the "infodumps" we see in SF stories. A device that can be handled either well or clumsily when writers have to impart information needed to make sense of their stories to readers. I think Anderson manages, most times, to integrate such infodumps smoothly into his stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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