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by Christopher Anvil |
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QueenSidhe: hi guys Virigar: Hail to the Queen! KWM01: hi vickie QueenSidhe: :D KWM01: lol QueenSidhe: I'm still at work, so if I go quiet all of a sudden, I probably got called away. KWM01: ok Virigar: (Why are they having that man beheaded? All he said was "Hail to the king"! Ahh. That's the Royal Weatherman.) Virigar: IC Virigar: So how did everyone like Pandora's Legions? KWM01: It was good but felt dated. QueenSidhe: I liked it, but from the very beginning, one question kept bugging me. Virigar: It is old -- I read parts of it about, oh, 30 years ago. Virigar: And that question was...? QueenSidhe: Why are the centran's out conquering other worlds? Virigar: It's an interesting civilization philosophy. They conquer the planets in order to create a unified civilization of humanoids. Virigar: The idea is that you prevent countless tiny splinter empires fromshowing up by sucking the primitive planets into your empire first, thengiving them equality and pushing their development forward in high gear. QueenSidhe: And if they ever ran into a species that wasn't humanoid? Virigar: It's a naive approach, but quite innovative for the era that it was done in. QueenSidhe: True. KWM01: yup Virigar: That wasn't specified. There were vague indications that such raceseither didn't interact with them significantly, or were inherently actively hostile. Virigar: Anvil KWM01: hammer? QueenSidhe: lol Virigar: sorry, Anvil's work in this showed a LOT of innovation, even if some of the ideas were only outlined. QueenSidhe: His theory about Qs and Ls was kind of interesting. KWM01: brb Virigar: The book I'd read when I was in 5th grade -- Pandora's Planet -- consisted ONLY of the components featuring Horsip. Virigar: The added sections with John Towers really added some more depth to the Centran approach and different views of their people. Virigar: Yes, the idea that it wasn't pure INTELLIGENCE, but the generationof ideas and the drive to put them into proactive practice that differentiated the two species was quite interesting. QueenSidhe: Did Eric integrate the stories or are the stories only containing Horsip in one chapter and then Towers in another chapter? QueenSidhe: I've never read Pandora's Planet, so don't know how much of a difference it is. Virigar: There was very little editing done on this re-issue. Basically allthat was done was to combine the two sets of stories into one long book,alternating between Horsip's viewpoint and John Towers', which John Campbellwanted to do. QueenSidhe: Ahh. Virigar: The original just had the Horsip sections, so you only heard about what Towers was doing in side references, secondhand. Virigar: This really diminished your ability to understand what Towers waslike and why you could expect him to pull off near-miracles in the end section,where he's being used to stave off disaster. QueenSidhe: More info makes it better. :-) Virigar: Of course, one of the most bizarrely original ideas in the wholebook was the concept of a race for whom "sin" is an actual biological FACTrather than a fuzzy moral concept. QueenSidhe: Hmm. I don't think I've gotten to that part yet. Virigar: Where are you in the book? QueenSidhe: About 2/3 of the way through chapter 3. Virigar: Ah, that explains perhaps why you didn't see what the Centran Empire is up to. QueenSidhe: Yup. Virigar: It gets clearer after you read all the Towers sections. Virigar: I have to say, the High Council of Centra is actually very, very clever indeed. QueenSidhe: I wonder if the leaders on earth realize the potential power they've given to Towers since if he succeeds, he's going to be on that military council. Virigar: It's an interesting story -- it takes the standard Campbellian "humanity uber alles" and then stands it on its head. Virigar: At that point in the story,they don't care. They actually didn't appreciate Towers' capabilities, sothe Centrans took him on and gave him rank and authority commensurate withthose capacities. KWM01: back QueenSidhe: wb QueenSidhe: true. he was an insubordinate pain in the ass they just wanted to get rid of. Virigar: The Centrans are much more DIRECT than human beings are. Virigar: This may be partly due to the slightly lower average intelligence, but it's also their phlegmatic temperament. Virigar: The Centrans DO have certainadvantages, and the largest two are (1) their Empire is VERY large indeed,and (2) they've been doing this for a very, very long time. Virigar: When this book was reissued,I was actually almost afraid to pick it up because I was worried I'd be disappointed;after all, I'd read it in 5th grade. QueenSidhe: It's surprising they don't have more contention within the system and other corrupting elements. Virigar: I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was just as good as I remembered. Virigar: I think that's part ofthe point of the book and the Centran-human conflicts (or, to use their terminology,the human-Earthman conflicts). QueenSidhe: True. I've had that feeling before. Enjoyed a book I read years ago and then was vastly disappointed when I reread it. KWM01: same QueenSidhe: Is there any hints as to when Centralis II was first brought in? Virigar: The Centrans, by their general nature, are cooperative. The Earthmen, competitive. Virigar: I believe it was about 100 years before the Earth was encountered. QueenSidhe: Yeah, but what about all the other humanoids they integrated. I wouldn't think they'd all be cooperative. Virigar: Apparently they were all either more cooperative than humans, or at least more easily integrated into the Integral Union. QueenSidhe: Hmm. If Centralis II was 100 years before Earth, then that shows some people aren't as cooperative. Virigar: This is one of those situations where the idea has to be taken as a given. QueenSidhe: Spend 100 years pretending and then try to overthrow. Virigar: Yes, and you recall that Centralis II was the ONLY planet compared with Earth in terms of difficulty of pacification. QueenSidhe: Yup. Virigar: Now, if one was trying to make sense out of that sequence of events (say for an RPG) it implies some interesting possibilities. KWM01: like.... Virigar: The most obvious beingthat for some reason the competitive species had been removed from the areathe Centrans had conquered up until now. Virigar: I.e., someone or something was assisting the growth of the Centran Integral union. Virigar: Now the Integral Unionis big enough, experienced enough, and smart enough to deal with such species,and so they're running into them -- three in a hundred years. Virigar: (Centralis II, Earth, and another you hear about later) Virigar: ( since you haven't finishhed yet) Virigar: In a way, the IntegralUnion's council reminds me rather strongly of the Federation's central agencyin James Schmitz' Hub stories. QueenSidhe: The Telzey universe? Virigar: Yes. QueenSidhe: I read the first Baen reissue of that book, but not the rest. Virigar: You see the Hub government'soperations/attitude some there, but more strongly in the Trigger Argee storiesand in The Demon Breed. Virigar: The Telzey stories are fun, but not quite Schmitz' best. Virigar: Of the Hub stories, probablyThe Demon Breed (AKA "The Tuvela") is the best, with his very best novelalmost universally acknowledged to be "The Witches of Karres". Virigar: Anyway, both governmentsplay "King Log" whenever possible, prefer to let problems solve themselves,and use very, very sneaky tactics to arrange the self-destruction of problemsthat won't solve themselves. KWM01: Which did you perfer, Demon breed or WoK? KWM01: brb QueenSidhe: Is Demon Breed the last story in the first Telzey book? Virigar: I like them both in slightly different ways. The Demon Breed was actually one of many inspirations for Jason Wood. Virigar: No, the Demon Breed takes place in the same universe, but no relationship between any characters in the two. QueenSidhe: Oh, okay. Then I haven't read it. Virigar: No, but I highly recommend it. QueenSidhe: I'll try looking it up. Virigar: Schmitz doesn't date quite as badly as Anvil does. Virigar: I love Pandora's Legions, but it is, clearly, a product of the 50s. QueenSidhe: When I was reading the first Telzey book via webscriptions, I got tired of the last story, which was also cut off half way through, and never went back. KWM01: back QueenSidhe: Clearly for you. :-) I never read classic sf. Virigar: Telzey is Schmitz' supergirl. His other characters, even the highlycompetent ones, aren't quite as scarily powerful as Telzey, which can makethem more appealing. Virigar: Well, I grew up on classic SF -- from Doc Smith and John W. Campbell up through RAH, Asimov, Clarke, Schmitz, Bester, and so on. Virigar: My dad had quite a collection which I read when I was a kid. QueenSidhe: Back to Pandora's Legions, I wonder how the Centrans spread. If we assumed humans on different worlds were kind of like how similar parallel worlds are, that could possibly explain why they were finding competative people now. QueenSidhe: I tried reading Smith's Lensmen but the I couldn't get into it. KWM01: I recognize all the names but the only ones I've really read are Asimov and RAH. QueenSidhe: The prologue for the first book sounded good (when the guy whose name starts with K) graduated from the academy. Virigar: The question would be why the humanoids they're encountering NOW aresuddenly competitive but none of the prior ones were (over thousands of years). Virigar: Kimball Kinnison. QueenSidhe: Then I got turned of by the first chapter. Virigar: THERE you have dated material. KWM01: yeah, same here. QueenSidhe: Yeah, I'm told that his character was the standard of that period. Virigar: Though it sometimes helps to realize that whenever you hit a clichein Doc Smith, it is almost certainly *HIS* cliche (i.e., he invented that) QueenSidhe: Neat. Virigar: Doc was the first to write a story that took place outside the boundsof the solar system. He was the first to write an FTL travel story explicitly. Virigar: I could go on for about six pages with his "firsts". Virigar: Of course, you need the ability to flip a switch in your head and set your reading for "purple prose, 1930s",. Virigar: Schmitz was heavily influenced by Smith -- which you can see traces of in Schmitz' early work. Virigar: Even Anvil was influenced by him, although he was using later tropes in order to branch out. QueenSidhe: I didn't have that switch. :-( Virigar: The combination of Doc Smith and JWC are roughly equivalent, in theirimportance and influence on the SF field, to JRR Tolkien in the field offantasy. QueenSidhe: I think maybe if I had read Smith when I was younger, it might have been okay. Virigar: You are not alone in lacking that switch. Virigar: Modern writers HEAVILY influenced by Doc include David Weber and Vernor Vinge. Virigar: (and me, but I'm not a major threat... er, influence myself yet) KWM01: that switch doesn't come in models after 1970. :-) QueenSidhe: Really? How is Weber influenced by Smith? (I've actually read Weber. :-)) Virigar: The Armageddon Inheritance is a Smithian Space Opera slightly modernized. It's almost high enough power to compete. QueenSidhe: Is that the Dahak series? Virigar: The Honor Harrington series is less influenced directly (after all,it started as a Horatio Hornblower export) but you'll still see references. Virigar: Yes, Dahak. QueenSidhe: brb KWM01: how does Smithian Space Opera differ? Virigar: More bombastic prose, of course -- you can't WRITE like that any more, they won't let you, and if they did, few would read you. KWM01: true Virigar: Speedier tech progression. Virigar: In Doc's day, it was still physically possible for one man to inventnew gadgets in his basement -- new, in the sense of "holy crap, the militarycan't do that!" gadgets. KWM01: lol Virigar: Thus, those kind of things get done in the books quickly and efficiently. Virigar: Generally less shades of gray -- though anyone who thinks there's nothingbut black and white in a Smith book hasn't read them carefully, any morethan the people who accuse Honor Harrington of being perfect. Virigar: Modern space operas use different technology approaches, try to keepmore within stuff we know, and usually have at least some more nods to thegrayscale of morality. Virigar: (Doc's technology, written in the 30s before transistors were a gleamin Ma Bell's eye, uses tubes and huge relay switches where we'd have a dinkylittle solid state gadget) KWM01: I don't know. I normally only notice the body count.:-) Virigar: Higher power and higher body count in Doc's work. Though often much less explicitly gory. QueenSidhe: back. QueenSidhe: Was he like Ringo and Weber, get you to like a character and then kill him off? Virigar: Pandora's Legions is still a space opera, but it's actually a relatively small scale space opera compared to the others. Virigar: Weber doesn't kill off main characters often, actually. Virigar: But in general he didn't kill what we Feng Shui gamers call Name characters, just Mooks. Virigar: And Villains eventually got theirs, of course. Except for DuQuesne, but he's unique. KWM01: Feng Shui gamers? KWM01: I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that one Virigar: The Feng Shui game system -- made for playing funky hong-kong action wuxia Big Trouble In Little China adventures. KWM01: ahhh, read that wrong Virigar: As I'm sure the game designers MEANT you to. Virigar: They like messing with people's minds. KWM01: I read it as that furnature arrangeing gaming system Virigar: The point of my comment being that if Doc went to great trouble to build up a good guy, the good guy stuck around. Virigar: Killing good guys only started happening later... when people realizedthat there was no more tension because they EXPECTED the good guys to win. Virigar: But that wasn't the case when Doc started writing. Virigar: (tragic stories were very common in the 20s-30s pulps) QueenSidhe: So it's a cycle, heros die, heros live, heros die.... Virigar: (Feng Shui's connection with the "arranging" concept is that they takeit to the ultimate; by controlling or changing certain geographical areas/features,you control the fate of the world) Virigar: Seems that way. Virigar: You have a big spate of loud heroic shows, then all of a sudden you get Dark And Gritty, and then another upswing. Virigar: It's like people eat too much candy,, so then they drink some lemonadeor eat salty stuff, and then they're back to the sweets again. Virigar: (I tend to stay on the heroic side all the time; I even play heroic characters in Shadowrun) Virigar: What I liked about Pandora's Legions was that BOTH sides had heroes,both sides had problems, and the problems had to be worked out in a mannerthat involved both conflict and cooperation. KWM01: Now that you mention it, Pandora's Legion reminds me of Course of Empire QueenSidhe: It's more difficult when there are people on the enemy side that you like. Like Belesarius' enemy. Virigar: (Anvil also does some very apropos (at the time) social commentary at various points in the book) Virigar: Or like Tom Theisman in the Harrington series. KWM01: yeah Virigar: Although I think my favorite Havenite is Lester Tourville. I'd loveto voice-act him if they do an animated HH series, like they're doing ananimated Dahak/Mutineer's Moon. QueenSidhe: Was it Theisman who let Honor land on Hell or was it some other commander? Virigar: I *think* that was Tourville. Theisman was iin charge of the big defense at... argh, I'[m blanking on the name of the system. Virigar: Then he ended up whacking St.Just. KWM01: I've got to go to dinner. Later you two. KWM01 has left the room. Virigar: Later. I should probably go myself -- I, alas, must work tomorrow. Virigar: :-( QueenSidhe: Night Virigar: Night all Virigar has left the room. |