pleased to see Hauksberg;
doesn't see him often;
the Starkad affair is "'...dreadfully serious and constructive.'" (Ensign Flandry, p. 9);
hopes Hauksberg can relax this evening;
"hmph"'s when Hauksberg says must leave early;
beams when Hauksberg says that, for his nephew, meeting the heir apparent would be "'...better'n a private audience with God.'" (ibid.)
Hauksberg's earlier reflections are more pertinent:
"Everybody knows the Empire was won and is maintained by naked power, the central government is corrupt and the frontier is brutal and the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism." (p. 6)
So don't take the Empire seriously.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Crown Prince Josip's "How dreadfully serious and constructive" has become a byword or cliche with some SF fans!
All nations, without exception, have title deeds written in blood. But if a state, like the Terran Empire, managed to survive for centuries and was NTTB in how it governed, it should be taken seriously.
Ad astra! Sean
Did the fans get the phrase from Josip or vice versa?
Kaor, Paul!
I'm now unsure, I could have sworn I read somewhere of SF fans using "How dreadfully serious and constructive" years ago. I tried googling that line but found only one SFnal reference linking back to this blog. Maybe this was just a line that stuck in my mind!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I have indeed heard references to "sercon fandom" but I don't know whether the phrase is a quote from Josip.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I've seen "serious and constructive" applied to some SF fans, either sarcastically or more neutrally, but with no indication of Josip being quoted.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
ENSIGN FLANDRY was first pub. in 1966, and I don't know if "serious and constructive" was already being used by SF fans at that time.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I've also been annoyed by Hauksberg's dismissive view of the Terran Navy, that it "...lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism." Nearly every single Navy officer we see in the stories we see more than cursorily has been nothing like that!
Ad astra! Sean
In that story Hauksberg is portrayed as naive at best about the Mersian Rhoidunate. I think Anderson intends the reader to doubt Hauksberg's views on other things.
Right.
Yes, he's got a theoretical-intellectual approach to real politics. That can be... really disasterous.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: Absolutely! Hauksberg was dangerously naive about Merseia, which almost led to catastrophic results. Yes, we should doubt Hauksberg's views on other matters.
Anderson stated in one of his letters to me that the struggle between the Empire and Merseia was inspired by the similar conflict between the US and the unlamented USSR. There were far too many real-world analogs to Hauksberg in the US denying the Soviets had global ambitions inimical to the existence of the US.
Mr. Stirling: Too true! Theories can be fine--but they need to be corrected and revised by hard, real-world facts and experience.
Ad astra! Sean
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