We want to stay with Guthrie - or at least I do - but the book won't let us. After his conversation with Jendaire in Chapter 3, the download does not come back on-stage, as far as I can ascertain by scanning ahead, until his arrival in the Solar System at the beginning of Chapter 17:
"GUTHRIE WOKE." (p. 210)
The intervening chapters are concerned with characters and events in the Solar System which I cannot help but regard as mundane by comparison! But they deserve our respect, nonetheless. But not tonight. I am reading the book in which I know that Inspector Morse will die before the end. And maybe it is a welcome escape back to twentieth century Britain. But that is in our past now and already seems dated. We are always at the mid-point between historical fiction and futuristic science fiction.
Guthrie remarks that the Proserpinans who greet him must have been expecting him since before they were born. Individual lives are short by comparison with interstellar journeys. Guthrie's journey so far has been thirty years from Amaterasu to Alpha Centauri and another thirty from there to the outer Solar System. He is going to deal with people who are younger than that.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Other reading? A week ago, I ordered online a collection of Avram Davidson's stories called THE OTHER 19TH CENTURY. Mostly because I want to read the last of his Dr. Eszterhazy stories not collected in THE ADVENTURES OF DOCTOR ESZTERHAZY. I liked many of Davidson's works so I'm sure I'll read many of the other stories in the book.
Ad astra! Sean
Guithrie's effectively superpowered. You have to keep characters like that offstage a fair bit.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I never thought of Guthrie like that, but it makes sense. Anderson must have thought so as well, which explains the long interval before seeing him again.
Btw, I had occasion to look up stuff in the second edition of Clute and Nicholls THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (1993) and I looked up the entry about you on page 1167-68. This bit from page 1168 irritated me: "In the first volume [MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA] the start of WW II sees Draka allied with the USA against the Nazis, and winning a crushing victory against the German hordes in Soviet Georgia; subsequently, slavery is extended to newly conquered territories. This nightmare (which SMS presents with seeming affection) continues in subsequent volumes..."
I was irritated because anyone who has honestly read your Draka books knows youi did not like or approve of the horrible things done by the Draka. It's one thing to show how many of the Draka had admirable qualities--but you made it very plain you did not like how they used those qualities. So that "seeming affection" really ticked me off!
Your Draka books was DYSTOPIAN science fiction, based on the idea that crucial mistakes were made which allowed something as monstrous as the Domination of the Draka to arise.
Ad astra! Sean
SEEMING affection!
Authors have got to be able to present the viewpoints of characters that neither they nor their readers approve of.
Jerry Pournelle DOES approve of the slaughter in THE MERCENARY.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course, authors can show the viewpoints of characters neither they nor (most) of their readers approve of--albeit Stirling was disturbed finding out some "fans" like the Draka.
Stirling and I have discussed that scene from Pournelle's THE MERCENARY with you, explaining why we disagree with you about it. With real world historical examples like the Gordon Riots showing why force sometimes has to be used.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But not grenades and bayonets into a packed, unarmed crowd. I am as disturbed about this as about fans liking the Draka.
Paul.
Then surrounding, shooting and killing an unarmed crowd fleeing from the slaughter. I stopped rereading THE MERCENARY beyond that point.
Post a Comment