Targovi, the Tigery itinerant trader, discloses to Rihu An, a Cynthian police lieutenant in Lulach, that he is an Imperial Intelligence agent although he self-deprecates:
"'Oh, I am no Flandry.'" (p. 331)
(Further evidence that we are in an era of "Flandry's Legacy.")
But how appropriate. In his opening volume, Ensign Flandry, Dominic Flandry met the Tigery, Dragoika, on Starkad. Now, in Flandry's concluding volume, The Game Of Empire, Dragoika's son, Targovi, born on Imhotep and currently operating on Daedalus, has followed his mother's friend's footsteps into Intelligence and is working with Flandry's illegitimate daughter, Diana Crowfeather. This new beginning is a fitting ending to the Flandry period of the Technic History although we would have preferred more.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Ha! I was reminded of Stirling's amusing comments on how there were popular thriller novels about real world historical persons like Kit Carson or Wild Bill Hickock during their lifetimes. Maybe there were similar thrillers very notionally based on Flandry's achievements by the time of THE GAME OF EMPIRE.
We also see mention in Chapter 15 of ENSIGN FLANDRY of two pop novels: OUTLAW BLASTMAN and PLANET OF SIN.
Ad astra! Sean
People create legends, and then the legends try to live up to the creation...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And sometimes they actually do, as Polesotechnarch van Rijn and Manuel Argos did (despite his "Collar of Iron"), in the Technic series.
Can't think of anybody in the past century who might deserve to be remember in legends and folktales. Ours is a drab, dreary, antiheroic age enviously hostile to great men.
Which, btw, helps explain why I enjoy the Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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