"The course of the story, with an enemy of the young Empire gradually becoming one of its supporters, and also helping to defeat a deadly menace to the Empire and its subjects, makes the piece look suspiciously like a work of propaganda, put together to drum up patriotic fervor for the Empire and its controversial annexation policies."
-Hank Davis/"Michael Karageorge," INTRODUCTION IN Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 363-365 AT pp. 363-364.
Sure enough, when approaching claws are heard rattling on stone:
"The Terrans moved together, guns in front, clubs and rocks and bare hands behind. They have guts, thought Donovan. God, but they have guts!"
-"Sargasso of Lost Starships," p. 404.
Needless to say, the Terrans are the Imperialists and Donovan is their enemy in the process of becoming a supporter. "Karageorge" has read the text well.
We see other characters responding differently to Imperial annexation in -
The People of The Wind
"Outpost of Empire"
The Day Of Their Return
"The Game of Glory"
- and with different results.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would still argue that, to my recollection, "Sargasso" still read like a fiction within the fiction to me. Which does not mean, of course, that its "author" was not an Imperial loyalist.
I disapprove of the apparent disparaging shown by the Terrans in this story. Even men serving monstrous regimes, like that of the USSR, can be brave. And the Empire was nothing like that horror!
Poor analogy, citing THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN. Aeneas was not a recent annexation, but had long been part of the Empire before it joined McCormac's rebellion.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I also suspect, if I'm recalling THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND correctly, not everybody on Ythri itself were entirely happy about Avalon succeeding in remaining part of the Domain. Humans, minority tho they were within it, could not help but be an unsettling influence.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But Aeneas had been annexed originally.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But long before McCormac's rebellion. And real world examples would be how the US annexed the former kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. Or, as in "Sargasso," the Empire annexing the Ansan kingdom.
Conquests and annexations are a perennial part of human history. Or attempted conquests, as in Russia's so far unsuccessful effort to reconquer Ukraine.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment