Collection titles remain confusing. Conquests and Seven Conquests are the same collection but different from Conflict although both contain "Kings Who Die" and "Details."
Seven Conquests has an explanatory Foreword whereas Conflict does not. This Foreword states:
art, including sf, must entertain;
entertainment involves telling stories but also examining reality;
reality is more than the little that we have experienced;
there are billions of years and light-years and infinite possibilities;
speculation illuminates past and present;
Seven Conquests is "...a one-author one-theme one-genre collection." (p. 9);
the theme is "...institutionalized violence." (ibid.)
I am not fully in accord with the way that Anderson discusses the issue. Should peace parades be decried for being "noisy"? Is United Nations Day "mealy-mouthed"? Sure, opposing Nazism was necessary but let's talk about how to prevent Nazis from coming to power again.
"...we don't understand the phenomenon [of war]. He who claims to have final answers to the question of why men fight and how to stop them from fighting, is merely showing his own ignorance." (p. 10)
No one should claim to have final answers to anything! But I think that we can understand the phenomenon readily enough without being able to stop it so easily.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
One thing I recall about "Details" is the glimpse we get of the monstrous Lenin in that notorious train as the Germans injected him like a plague bacillus into an unlucky Russia.
And I agree with Anderson's contempt for those "noisy" demonstrations. A thing as corrupt, failed, and useless as the UN deserves only the utmost possible scorn.
We already have plenty of people like the Nazis! The Maoists in China, the grotesque Kim regime in N Korea, the Castroites in Cuba, and that ex-KGB thug Putin, the brutal theocracy in Iran, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Scorn for demonstrations against destructive attacks on other countries?
I do no defend the UN! But the solution is not "might is right."
Paul.
Sorry, it was contempt for the demonstrations and scorn for the UN. Let's have less of both.
Kaor, Paul!
I cannot agree because some institutions/people arouse only contempt in me for them--and deservedly so! I have no respect for most of those "noisy" demonstrations I've seen for decades, mostly by people who, whether they knew it or not, were defending tyrants and enemies of the US/West.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We do not defend tyrants or take sides and yes we make noise. One million or two million (depending on which sources you read) marched through London against the attack on Iraq before it happened. I was there. Uniquely, six coaches, including one double decker, went from Lancaster. A Religious Education Teacher that I knew greeted me with "Hello, Mr. Shackley," when he and I alighted from different coaches. Birmingham Central Mosque sent over 100 coaches. A Bishop travelled on a coach sent by a mosque. That movement nearly succeeded. Tony Blair told his family that he might lose his job over it. I am full of admiration for all the people that went (excluding myself, of course).
The airplane hijacking and the destruction of the Twin Towers were criminal acts. The correct response would have been not to wage war on a country but to locate, arrest and charge any surviving organizers of the atrocity.
I did not want to go through all this but it comes up anyway from addressing issues raised by Poul Anderson.
Paul.
Post a Comment