The Red Queen's Race

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part one, 1.

Svoboda (and see here) had never found time to get a prosthetic foot because:

"You had to run pretty fast just to stay where you were." (p. 8)

See the Red Queen's race, to which Anderson obviously refers. (Indeed, reading on, we find that he explicitly refers to "Alice" in the very next sentence.)

"The Red Queen's Race," a time travel story by Isaac Asimov (see here), is much more coherent than his time travel novel, The End Of Eternity, and is discussed here.

I do not expect, when turning the page, to find a single sentence that generates references to both Lewis Carroll and Isaac Asimov but this is one good reason to read Poul Anderson.

The Alice Tradition

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane calls her native Aenean tadmouse "Frumious Bandersnatch."

Chunderban Desai called his native Ramanujan pet "Mock Turtle."

See also:

The Red Queen's Race, 13 Feb '19
The Red Queen's Race, 11 Nov '18
Gyres
Red King, White King, Last Viking

As ever, those are more links than I expected to find and someone will spot it if I have missed any.

The Red Queen's Race

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 40.

On L-5, human beings have taken grass, trees and birds into space to satisfy ancestral needs.

"'I think the life force is not, in its innermost being, progressive. It is profoundly conservative. It does what it must to keep what is.'" (p. 390)

"'It is the same for our societies...To save what it is, life perforce adapts, evolves; and so it changes what it is. But the course of that evolution was set by the wish to abide.'" (ibid.)

To stay the same, we change. What could be more paradoxical or dialectical? The Red Queen runs as fast as she can to stay where she is, like walking up a down escalator, and evolution has progressed from a single self-replicating molecule to self-consciousness. Society changes around Fireball and those who most dislike the change try to preserve their idea of freedom by going to a place that will make different demands in any case.

"'...who knows?'" the space pilot asked the wind." (ibid.)

In Poul Anderson's works, the wind sometimes comments but here the answer remains to be learned.

Cultural References

The Winds Of Fate.

A senator thinks that his client has a:

"Lean and hungry look..."

-CHAPTER SIX, p. 100 -

- anticipating Shakespeare.

A farmer who finds it hard to adjust to the urgency of saving and investing in new equipment says:

"'...all the Gods damn it, you have to run fast these days just to stay in the same place!'"

-CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 158 -

- anticipating the Red Queen's Race in Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Realistically, Artorius has to face an angry crowd of people displaced by the nova res ("new things") but is able to offer them alternatives: land grants with financial help or new employment with good wages. At this early stage, the economy is still expanding in such a way that the displaced can be not replaced but relocated. (I just thought of that way of putting it now.) This is in CHAPTER TEN on pp. 138-139.

Jeremy thinks:

"'Lay on, MacDuff..."

-CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 107 -

- more Shakespeare, but, in this case, Jeremy remembers it.

Artorius corrects Jeremy's "'The game is afoot, Batman!'" with "'The game is afoot, Watson...'" in CHAPTER ELEVEN on p. 166.

The Batman is a great detective and there are stories in which they meet.

After tracking down those references, your friendly neighbourhood blogger needs a food and drink break.