This story begins and ends with two men playing chess.
"K-B2.
"Q-K7. 'Check,' said Roy Pearson." (p. 151)
"Before long, Pearson had recovered enough self-possession to suggest a game of chess." (p. 179)
Between these start- and end-points, much occurs. No less than six men of different nationalities interact with each other and with the Jovian environment. There are technical problems which have technical solutions although there is also and always the human element. An author must know a lot of science to write this kind of science fiction. The only sf premise is the gyrogravitics. Everything else is physics. One-man "scoopships" scoop methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, water vapour, ethylene, benzene, formaldedehyde and other organics out of the Jovian atmosphere.
There is an Andersonian moment of realization when Master Pilot Charles de Gaulle d'Andilly springs up, knocks over his chair and shouts:
"'Mon Dieu!'" (p. 171)
However, on this occasion, precedent is broken because d'Andilly explains his rescue plan to his colleagues immediately instead of leaving it to us readers to learn what the plan is when we see it implemented.
D'Andilly is a recognizable kind of competent, hard-working, hard-living, hard-drinking Andersonian character and sings the same French song as Piet Van Sarawak in Anderson's "Delenda Est" (which has a Latin title).
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
One thing I regret about this story was Anderson's use of "descriptive" notation for chess moves. A form of chess notation which has been wholly discarded over the past half century by "algebraic" notation. It would have been more "futuristic" for Anderson to have used the latter system.
And he could have! What we call algebraic notation for recording chess moves is not new, going back to the 1700's. H.J.R. Murray, in his massive and classic HISTORY OF CHESS (1913), adopted and advocated this type of chess notation. Algebraic notation is far superior to the clumsy and awkward descriptive notation.
Ad astra! Sean
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