-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER TWO, p. 14.
"[R] took out a photograph and handed it to Ashenden.
"'That's him.'
"To Ashenden, unused to oriental faces, it looked like any of a hundred Indians he had seen. It might have been a photograph of one or other of the Rajahs who come periodically to England and are portrayed in the illustrated papers."
-W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden (London, 2000) AT 7, p. 117.
Who could resist juxtaposing these two passages even at this time of night and even when trying to read Maugham instead of Anderson?
Both Abrams and Ashenden, the latter a fictionalized Maugham, work in intelligence but Abrams is better than Ashenden in this aspect of the work. How different are their settings! Long may we read different kinds of fiction.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Given FTL and the existence of many intelligent races, with beings from many of these species traveling back and forth, even many untrained civilians will become inured to seeing them.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yeah, but unless you have direct contact and -need- to see differences, you don't.
Note that the concept of 'race' as we understand it developed gradually after the Age of Exploration.
The reason it didn't exist prior to that is that if you walk overland, differences between populations are usually gradual.
If you walked in 1500 from Ireland to China, the appearance of people would shift gradually, village by village.
But if you -sail- from say, the Netherlands to China, you get massive differences shoved in your face.
But the first Portuguese voyagers to China remarked that the southern Chinese had the same complexion as "Moors" (by which they meant North Africans and Middle Easterners), and northern Chinese had the same complexion as French and Germans.
It was interesting, but not important to them -- religion was infinitely more significant.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
First, I was trying to suggest, in the scenario noted above, many humans would at least not be too shocked to see non-humans.
Yes, differences of faith were more important to the Portuguese explorers than fussing about skin pigmentation.
I have noticed that many northern Chinese and Manchus, if wearing Western apparel, would not appear markedly different from Europeans. Something I first thought from seeing photographs of the very European looking Kuang-hsu Emperor of China (r. 1875-1908).
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yeah. The difference is exaggerated by things like body language and costume. If you put a modern Japanese or northern Chinese into a Western suit, and they've lived here a while, the differences look much more minor.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Correct. What really matters are ideas, beliefs, cultures. I believe some will be good and others bad.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, they're certainly -different-. Genghis Khan used to boast that a year after his army sacked a city, you could ride a horse across it without your mount stumbling.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Fortunately, his grandson Kublai Khan was far less genocidal.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: more knowledgeable. The Mongols seriously considered wiping out the population of northern China in Genghis' reign, so that they could extend their herding economy there. A 'civilized' minister told them that the area would grow up in forest instead of grassland, so they didn't. But they thought it was an attractive alternative.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Knowledgeablity, if used for making practical and workable decisions, is at least a start. That's better than making crazed decisions.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment