This post reveals a surprise ending.
Captain Crane, introducing himself only by rank and surname, is the first person narrator of the framing dialogue. Robert Crane, the third person viewpoint character of the inner narrative, is a prisoner in his brother, Benjamin's, spaceship which is wrecked with few survivors in the battle that wins the war. Robert's side, the Solar Unionists, wins; Ben's, the Humanists, loses. The surprise ending is that Robert died in the battle and therefore that Ben, the loser, is the narrator. We expect the inner and outer viewpoint characters to be the same and the winner to live to tell the tale.
Two points made in the story:
two counteracting chance events determined the outcome of the battle;
Humanism has gone but the problems that created it have not.
After this, the Solar Union will survive for only four more instalments of the Psychotechnic History.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Having Benjamin, not Robert Crane, surviving the battle which defeated the Humanists was a neat device of Anderson.
Ad astra! Sean
Also, it's a good thing to remind people that sheer accident, unlikely chances, deeply influence history.
For example, the outcome of World War Two was ultimately dependent on the course of a pedestrian-auto accident in New York City in 1930. And that's a sheer random chance that we happen to -know- about.
It was also determined by the statistical miracle of Adolf Hitler's surviving World War One as an infantry combatant on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 -- statistically very unlikely. Especially for a 'runner', which was his military speciality -- carrying messages.
In one instance, he and three other runners were waiting outside the battalion HQ bunker. He got a message and went off; the other three were killed minutes later by a British shell.
Sheer blind chance.
Poul brought this out in THE SHIELD OF TIME.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! It was sheer blind chance that Hitler happened to be chosen to deliver that message or Churchill, used to looking right instead of left, looked the wrong way as he was crossing that street in New York city.
And there was the stupefying unlikelihood of Archduke Francis Ferdinand's driver making that wrong turn and then stopping directly in front of Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. Two "coincidences" at the same time!
Ad astra! Sean
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