"Lucas...was thinking of certain men he had met one day in a Turkish camp: Greeks so embittered they had turned Moslem. They told of a land robbed bare. The only plentiful article was the bones of children who had starved to death." (p. 85)
We quote this scene from 1306 for its relevance to 2025. Both the date and the reference to embittered Christians switching to Islam remind us of the suppression of the Knights Templar which happened in 1312 and was the basis of Poul Anderson's last Time Patrol story, "Death and the Knight."
If Time Patrol agents are moving through the history experienced by Lucas Greco - which, notionally, they can be -, then he of course knows nothing about them just as he also knows nothing about any Sector Arcturus in a possible future Terran Empire. (See Several Stars And A Planet.) The various individual narratives and genres must retain their specific integrities even though we can at the same time view every one of them as an integral part of a single imaginative multiverse that reflects our collective experience in its author's and readers' minds. Dominic Flandry in the Terran Empire shares Lucas' concern about the consequences of warfare for civilian populations.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I was reminded of Haiti, also a land stripped bare and devastated by rival gang bosses/war lords, with a feeble national gov't so weak that it makes even the decadent Eastern Empire of ROGUE SWORD look benevolent!
Haiti is what you get when even a bad state fails to preserve some kind of order. And Chavista Venezuela is going down that road!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
The sheer viciousness and brutality of the gang bosses of Haiti had me thinking such Andersonian gang bosses as Haguan Eluatz, Leon Ammon, and Sumu the Fat would be vast improvements over what we are seeing in Haiti!
Ad astra! Sean
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