Conan tracks Nebset who pursues Valeria. Conan intends to kill Nebset before Nebset catches Valeria. I repeat names in order to avoid the confusing use of pronouns. Thus: Conan tracks Nebset who pursues Valeria, intending to kill him before he catches her. However, Conan is sidetracked into helping another woman pursued by other men, losing his horses and baggage in the process. This is the kind of plot twist that I remember from a couple of Tarzan books that I read. Characters travelling through a wilderness meet other characters travelling through the same wilderness and can be diverted in arbitrary directions. The scenario of Parts One and Two has been left behind, I think. I suspect that ERB did set off in arbitrary directions whereas I expect SM Stirling to have a plan.
8 comments:
Note that traveling through a wilderness is usually done on trails.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Frankly, I like ERB's Barsoom stories better than I did those about Tarzan.
Mr. Stirling: We see that very clearly when Thorin & Co. (with Mr. Baggins) struggled their way thru the vast forest o Mirkwood in THE HOBBIT.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I found Tarzan unreadable. I have read three: one because it was the first; one because it was Earth's Core; one I wish I hadn't.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I think I did read some of the Tarzan stories with pleasure as a boy--I simply like the Barsoom tales better.
Ad astra! Sean
A lot of the later Tarzan novels are sort of repetitive -- Burroughs had debts... 8-). The early ones are quite imaginative.
Note, for example, that the "native" tribal village around where Tarzan grew up isn't actually natives of the area -- it's founded by mutinous elements of the Congo Free State's armed forces (King Leopold's private preserve), with women taken violently captive.
The CFS's army were... how shall I put it... Not Good Guys. Mind you, the Arab/Swahili slavers they initially fought weren't Good Guys either -- they both employed cannibals paid in human flesh, for example. It's sort of hard to exaggerate how sheerly -bad- that part of the world was at the time.
In fact, the CFS was what Tarzan's father was sent out to investigate.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Then it might be a good idea to look up some of the early Tarzan stories.
And the laughably misnamed Democratic Republic of the Congo is scarcely better than the Congo Free State! Overrun by brutal war lords and torn by tribal conflicts. It might as well be a giant Haiti.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, that part of the world has had long runs of bad luck. In fact, the only period of reasonably stable and humane government it's had was the period after the Belgian state took over from Leopolde, and before independence.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely true! I recall the pessimism Anderson had for Africa that he expressed in one of his letters to me. He also wrote that he believed European (Belgian in this case) rule should have lasted another forty years.
Ad astra! Sean
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