We know that, barring accidents, we will die in our beds comparatively soon. I am 77 and a Romany palm-reader told me that I would live to 95. Of course, she might be wrong. I might have a lot less than another 18 years still ahead of me.
Felipe Argens and his crew know something very different:
"...our immortality isn't absolute, because sooner or later some chance combination of circumstances is bound to kill you." (p. 27)
They know that they will die by accident and they have no idea how soon. Their deaths are very different from ours and that makes their lives also very different from ours.
It is the attempt to imagine what it would be like that makes Poul Anderson's accounts of his characters, Hanno, Argens, Manse Everard, Jack Havig etc, so interesting.
I will retire to Inspector Morse and then to bed.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Agree, what you said about Anderson's abilities.
Ad astra! Sean
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