Brann addresses Lockridge:
"'No doubt [the Koriach/Storm] told you that her Wardens stand for absolute good and we Rangers for absolute evil. You would have no way of disproof. But think, man. When was such a thing ever true?'" (p. 65)
This begins to sound more like a plausible international/political/ideological conflict and less like an Edgar Rice Burroughs good guys-bad guys routine. (Burroughs has one villain say, "I am an I.W.W. I am working for the Germans. I hate all Americans.")
Of course, being a late twentieth centurian, Lockridge is able to offer the Nazis as an example of absolute evil but Brann responds:
"'Where is your evidence, other than Storm's word, that the situation in the time war is analogous?'" (ibid.)
Brann begins to chip away at Lockridge's trust in Storm.
When I first read these opening chapters well over half a century ago, I thought then that Lockridge had joined the wrong side. Before long, Poul Anderson will disabuse us of any idea that either of these two sides is "right."
Into the further future.
1 comment:
Also anyone who knows something of US history can point to the US Civil War as a case in which one side might not be absolute evil, but is definitely *worse* than the other.
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