Stone Mountain And Stephen Decatur

 

"The Pugilist."

I had not heard of Stone Mountain. The regime destroys the monument as a:

"...symbol of oppression..." (p. 94)

History should be preserved. In Britain, a crowd pulled down a statue of a slave trader and threw it into Bristol Harbour. The statue was rightly recovered and is now exhibited in a museum in its graffitied state. A jury found four people who had pulled it down not guilty of criminal damage. A new plaque on the now empty plinth tells the story. We live history and make it.

The narrator was a member of the Stephen Decatur Society. Here, more than ever, Poul Anderson's knowledge of history informs his futuristic sf. Remember the short story called "Marius." Another almost forgotten short story that I had approached with misgivings yields far more than expected.