When Davis Bertram acknowledges that he is alone and unarmed, the Doctors' legate announces:
"'This is no Man, it's a Monster. Kill it!'" (p. 87)
The Doctors control parthenogenesis. They can excommunicate a town by refusing to fertilize anyone who lives there. So a Man threatens their power.
When the protagonist of Samuel Butler's Erewhon departs in a balloon, he is thought to have returned to heaven. Returning to Erewhon twenty years later and claiming to be the celebrated Sunchild, he is nearly executed for blasphemy.
When Alan Moore took over the writing of a superhero comic strip, he quickly linked superheroes to the Superman. A German gunman remembers that, when he was young, his leaders had spoken of the coming blond giant and now (so he thinks) we have killed him...
Davis Bertram is about to suffer the fate of a rejected Messiah. Or, rather, he would have suffered that fate if an Andersonian action scene had not intervened.
A fitting conclusion to an evening's rereading.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
After three centuries of controlling the means of reproduction on Atlantis the Doctors had become comfortable enjoying the wealth, status, and power that gave them. Not in the least surprising!
Ad astra! Sean
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