Five Interesting Features In "Cold Victory"

(i) "...competent chess..." (see here)

(ii) "The vessel on which they had zeroed came into plain view, a long black shark swimming against the Milky Way."
-Poul Anderson, "Cold Victory" IN Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), pp. 165-194 AT p. 178.

(iii) I asked here if the word "less" might be missing at a crucial point in the dialogue but that word is still not there in The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2.

(iv) The phrase, "future history," appears in a future history:

"It was a heartless load to put on a man. The dice of future history..." (p. 189)

(v) Br'er Rabbit, apprehended by Br'er Fox, asks not to be thrown into the brier patch, knowing that he therefore will be thrown into the brier patch which he knows how to get out of. In "Cold Victory," Robert Crane, captured by his brother Ben who is on the opposite, Humanist, side in a civil war, has heard the story of Br'er Rabbit and knows that Ben has not so Robert tells Ben that the Humanists will win if they maintain their position, knowing that Ben will think that he is lying...

Also:

"Br'er Rabbit and the brier patch! Koskinen thought in a leap of excitement. 'Please do not brick me in,' he spelled on his fingers. If they do, I can expand the field and break down any  masonry they can erect - and maybe escape!"
-Poul Anderson, Shield (New York, 1970), V, p. 40.

Educational Blogging

Your friendly neighborhood blogger:

read a reference to Br'er Rabbit and the brier patch in Poul Anderson's Shield;

remembered a similar reference in Anderson's "Cold Victory";

googled Br'er Rabbit;

read the Wiki account;

reread and compared the two Anderson accounts;

eventually got the point;

in the process, found four other interesting features in "Cold Victory";

posted here.

Basically, blogging is interactive reading. Without it, I would have been condemned to a retirement of continued passive reading.

The Tramp

"Cold Victory."

Robert remembers an old tramp in his den under the trees by the Mississippi: unemployable but unembittered, drawing citizen's allowance, tramping the planet and telling forgotten stories about Br'er Rabbit. But I could spend a retirement like that if it came to it! We certainly deserve that "citizen's allowance" from a high tech global economy if it does not need our labor.

I read of an Italian veteran with a small pension and an unlimited free pass on Italian trains so he slept in sleeper cars and spent his days in cafes and parks wherever the train had deposited him each morning. What a life!

Cold Victory

"Quixote And The Windmill" informs us that, in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, high technology causes mass unemployment. This fact then becomes part of the background of subsequent stories. Thus, in "Cold Victory," Robert Crane remembers a childhood encounter with an old tramp who drew his citizen's allowance, traveled around the world and told forgotten stories about Br'er Rabbit.

Robert and his brother are on opposite sides in a civil war, a perennial theme. The Humanist revolutionary government has withdrawn Earth and Luna from the Solar Union so Mars and Venus assemble a fleet to restore the Union. Mercenaries are promised booty from the treasure vaults of the Terrestrial dictator and a Venus clan member "...bought a dozen new reclamation units with his share of the loot..." (Cold Victory, New York, 1982, p. 191) But is booty a feasible concept in technological warfare?

Crane argues that chance rules history. By chance, Robert was captured but, by chance, he was interrogated by his brother whom he knew how to mislead, crucially influencing the outcome of the battle. The Martian professor replies that a battle does not deflect a historical movement:

"'...no solution has yet been found to the problems which brought forth the Humanists. They will come again; under one name or another they will return. The war was merely a ripple.'" (p. 193)

And the Humanists do come again as anti-technological Kali-worshipers, leading to the Second Dark Ages.

At the start of the argument, the Engineer remarks:

"'If [the dictator] and his cohorts had been doctrinaire, the government of Earth might still be Humanist!'" (p. 166)

- to which the professor replies:

"'But being born of a time of trouble, Humanism was inevitably fanatical...'" (ibid.)

Is the word "...less..." missing before "...doctrinaire..."?