Corridors Of Power II

In the following volume of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, Dominic Flandry rides a grav repulsor from his hovering space yacht to the fortieth flange of the Intelligence tower. It seems that Vice Admiral Fenross' office is on this level. Later, Flandry looks through the clear wall of his own office at the "...slim faerie spires..." (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 189) of Admiralty Center and reflects on the millions of specialists who live and work there, making the Center a city.

Flandry expects barbarians to howl among smashed buildings, burning books and dead men when the Empire falls (p. 190). In the previous volume, he had anticipated:

"...when the Empire goes under and the howling peoples camp in its ruins." (Young Flandry, p. 381)

Why howl? A mere barbarian assault might have this effect. However, when the Empire does go under, I would expect a lot of people on Earth to set about building something better out of the ruins.

Coincidentally, I read these lines today:

Robert Huntoon to John Constantine: "SHE WAS A NICE GIRL! FROM A GOOD FAMILY AND I WAS GOING TO MARRY HER, UNTIL YOU GOT HER MIXED UP IN ALL THAT SEX AND MAGIC CRAP YOU WERE INTO...YOU RUINED MY WHOLE LIFE..."
-Rick Veitch, Swamp Thing: Regenesis (New York, 2004), p. 46, panel 4.

Flandry thinking about Fenross: How the devil did this feud get started? Is it only that I took that girl...what was her name, anyway? Marjorie? Margaret?...was it only that I once took her from him when we were cadets together? (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 167)

However, this is all that Constantine and Flandry have in common.

Following Lines Of Thought

(I just did watch that Sin City dvd mentioned earlier. See here.)

We have had more posts on this blog today than I expected. One thought leads to another. Discussion of one Martian novel led to a discussion of Martian fiction in general which then led to brief posts on Venus, Jupiter and Mercury, sometimes interrupted by (I hope interesting) reports on local Lancastrian life.

I never know what is coming next. There has to be an angle but, as soon as there is an angle, there is always plenty to say or draw attention to. After a long stretch of reading prose, I like to escape into graphic fiction because the latter is visual as well as verbal. That means temporarily leaving Poul Anderson or SM Stirling for, e.g., Alan Moore, hence a recent link.

The present dilemma is whether to stay with Swamp Thing or return to ...Crimson Kings tonight. Either way, I will finish ...Crimson Kings soon and will receive the remaining "Lords of Creation" installment in September. Waterstones Bookshop tell me that they will get the Old Mars anthology merely because GRR Martin's name is on the cover...

An Unexpected Crossover

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur Pendragon of Britain conquered Ireland. According to Irish mythology, the hero Fionn MacCuhaill defeated an invasion by Arthur, son of Britt. Thus, Arthur "crosses over" from British to Irish mythology, like Superman appearing in a Captain Marvel comic. Alan Moore colourfully explains the concept of comic book crossovers:

"For those more familiar with conventional literature, try to imagine Dr Frankenstein kidnapping one of the protagonists of Little Women for his medical experiments, only to find himself subject to the scrutiny of a team-up between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot." (1)

Moore himself wrote a comic book script in which Jules Vernes' Nautilus fights HG Wells' Martians in the Thames.

Poul Anderson, faithfully following his sources for Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973), presents us with a mythological crossover before we have realised that it is happening. When he has got us used to the idea that the brothers Hroar and Helgi jointly ruled as kings in Denmark, he tells us that Hroar erected a hall of which "...men said no goodlier home had been in the North since Odin dwelt on earth." (p. 64) Because of "...mighty antlers..." on its beam-ends, the hall was called Hart, which meant nothing to me when I read it. (p. 64)

Next, however, a monster hight Grendel terrorises the hall until stopped by "...Bjovulf of Gotaland, the man that in England they call Beowulf." (p. 65) Then we realise that, with a change of vowels, "Hart" becomes "Heorot." Google confirms that Hroogar (who must be Hroar) was lord in Heorot which means "Hall of the Hart." The google article even begins, "It has been suggested that Beowulf and Hrolf Kraki be merged into this article or section. Discuss."

Suddenly, Hrolf Kraki, of whom I had not heard except in this book by Anderson, assumes a greater significance. The story of Beowulf is summarized on pages 65 and 66 of the Saga.

(1) Moore Alan, Introduction IN Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, Saga Of The Swamp Thing, New York, 1987, pp. v-ix AT p. vii.

Episodic Adventures

In the "American Gothic" story line of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (1985-'86), the title character plant elemental successively encounters several major horror fiction themes:

vampires;
a werewolf;
zombies;
a serial killer, "the bogeyman";
ghosts.

So far, unoriginal but there is a double point to this sequence:

first, the author creatively re-imagines each of these familiar ideas;

secondly, they build up to a horror beyond them all, in this case the conjuring of the Original Darkness that was before the Creation.

Poul Anderson had used the same technique thirty two years earlier in Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977; first published, 1953). The hero of this novel successively fights:

an animated suit of armour;
a dragon;
a giant;
a werewolf;
what else? (I am still rereading.)

And these episodic battles build up to a major attack by Chaos on the Law of which our hero is the Defender.

(In Swamp Thing, the Darkness rises out of the Chaos beyond Hell and advances against the Light, even fomenting civil war between demons preferring the Devil they know and those welcoming ultimate darkness.)

I mentioned the dragon and the giant in the previous post. Anderson continues his scientific approach with the werewolf:

"...lycanthropy was probably inherited as a set of recessive genes." (p. 83)

Someone with a full set of genes will be killed as a wolf in the cradle.

"With an incomplete inheritance, the tendency to change was weaker." (p. 84)

A woods dwarf can follow the scent of a werebeast in its animal form:

"Holger wondered if glandular secretions were responsible." (pp. 86-87)

And, when the suspects have been reduced to four, Holger applies detective techniques to identify the shape-changer.

(By contrast, Alan Moore uses his werewolf story to raise some feminist issues.)