Wednesday 28 August 2024

Conflict On Freehold

"Outpost of Empire."

On Freehold, there is conflict both between human and Merseian-backed Arulian colonials and between human town-dwellers and forest-dwellers. This complicated situation exists only in this single story although, of course, there are similar conflicts on other planets in both earlier and later Technic History instalments. In the human settlement called Sevenhouses, there are:

fire-scarred buildings;
but mostly rubble;
crowds of refugees;
Imperial marines;
warcraft overhead.

How familiar. We appreciate both the exotic setting and the realistic description of a war zone. The Terrans have had no qualms about nuking the countryside so that there are craters as well as vast burned and radiation-poisoned areas. 

Why have nukes not been used in warfare on Earth since 1945 and how soon will they be? We cannot escape from the Chaos by reading about later periods of the Technic History.

5 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

God, those covers were lousy.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

But I am running of relevant images to use!

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I don't know if you can find them, but I like the GALAXY illustrations for the first publishing of "Outpost," esp. the one of Ridenour interrogating an Arulian POW. The artist read and thought about the story before he started drawing. He made the Arulian look like a convincing non-human.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I have looked but not found them.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Dang! At least you found the magazine illustration of Flandry and Lady Diana arriving at the Crystal Moon for "A Handful of Stars"/WE CLAIM THESE STARS. That was also very good!

Ad astra! Sean