Wednesday, 22 January 2025

Neuroses

OK. I referred here to a passage in Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" but could not at the time summon up the motivation to go upstairs for the reference. Now I have done. The passage, with its brief reference to "neuroses," is in:

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT CHAPTER FOUR, p. 261.

I have previously quoted this passage in:

Emotion And Intelligence In Four Universes

Non-Human Races

"Man Remakes Himself"?

- and also referred to it in:

Inner Conflict

Both Hanno in The Boat Of A Million Years and Belgotai in "Flight to Forever" are survivors from past ages. Belgotai time travels whereas Hanno does it the hard way.

2 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Of course, we don't have immortals to compare in reality, but it's my observation that a human being's general outlook, moral reflexes and so forth are pretty much set by their mid-20's. This isn't -invariably- true, but it's -largely- true.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I think, however, the "immortals" we see in BOAT had to learn to at least outwardly adapt to changing times, simply to better the odds of surviving.

And I think most of us have some neurotic ticks and twitches. Because life does see us all getting some battering.

Ad astra! Sean