Sunday, 10 November 2024

Retreat

"Virgin Planet."

"'I'm not going to retreat!' he said in a raw voice.
"'Yes, you will, duck, if we got to,' said Nelly. 'If you get killed, what's for us?'" (p. 103)

She is right. Front line fighters have to risk their lives but the person that the fight is about has to be kept alive. 

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Nova-class vessels are like mini-planetoids so that an admiral and his staff are safe deep inside them. Nelson should not have been standing on the deck of Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. Britannia ruled the waves from 1805 to 1945. To this day, we demonstrate under Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square and the police know how many people it takes to fill the Square. I have just learned by googling that Nelson supported slavery and despised the abolitionist, Wilberforce. Have I gone off the point? Everything connects. Nelson is referenced in the Psychotechnic History. See here. For other blog references to Nelson, see here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Exactly, Nelly Udall was thinking strategically. Admiral Nelson should have been more careful at Trafalgar, not letting vanity making him wear all those shiny medals--which would attract attention from snipers!

I usually think of Nelson as an admiral, commanding fleets, not as a man who, like everybody else, had his own political views, bad or good.

Ad astra! Sean