"'We will stand on the battlements of Ey, under the banners of those very knights who long ago rid the land of the firearms, and watch the folk dance welcome to a new year -'"
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, The Long Night (New York, 1983), pp. 242-310 AT pp. 272-273.
Firearms? Disarmament? Or, at least, banning of guns by sword- and spear-wielding knights? We, or at least I, can check three other editions of this text. (That is not all that there are but four is all that I have.)
In Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), on p. 748:
"'...firearms...'"
However, in Beyond The Beyond (London, 1973), on p. 192:
"'...firegarms...'"
And, in Explorations (New York, 1981), on p. 275:
"'...firegarms...'"
So we do not know what they are but we do know that they are not firearms.
Without quoting chapter and verse on all of these right now, I have also found:
"conducive" in The Long Night and Explorations but "conductive" in Beyond The Beyond and Flandry's Legacy;
"'...it's be...'" in The Long Night and Flandry's Legacy but "'...it'd be...'" in Explorations and Beyond The Beyond.
Occasionally, it is helpful to own multiple copies of a single text.
3 comments:
Sort of hard to enforce a firearms bad with a spear if your opponent has a Glock. Bang-bang-bang...
Of course Japan managed to ban firearms for a few centuries.
In that case there was a powerful central government to do it.
Are there other cases of a powerful weapon being *effectively* banned?
I recall reading about ineffective attempts to ban crossbows in Medieval Europe.
Poison gas & nuclear bombs have a sort of ban from fear of the other side using them. I'm not sure if that should count.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: Ha, ha, ha!!! I agree.
Jim: There were some ineffectual efforts to get cross bows banned. Which failed.
That's because of the Peace of the Mushroom Cloud. But I am not at all convinced that can last forever. I can easily imagine rogue regimes like those of Iran and N. Korea using nukes or supplying them to terrorists.
Ad astra! Sean
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