Friday, 27 April 2018

Reflections On The War On Diomedes Nicholas van Rijn is a fat parasite and an old pig, according to Eric Wace. Readers might wonder why our hero is being painted in such an unflattering light but all this is building towards Wace's grand finale realization of van Rijn's importance.

Van Rijn calls his flagship the Rijstaffel and I expect that he will eat several of them when he has escaped from Diomedes where he and his colleagues are slowly starving.

When van Rijn comments that, in certain circumstances, most of the Diomedean young will die:

"'They are replaceable,' said Trolwen, with a degree of casualness that showed he was, after all, not just a man winged and tailed."
-Poul Anderson, The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 337-515 AT IX, p. 401.

Thus, the text itself comments on the inappropriateness of the publisher's title, War Of The Wing Men.

Wace is not fanged, winged or caudate but is heavier than Diomedeans.

Fighting without flying is as disgusting to Diomedeans as fighting with teeth alone would be to a human being. The Lannachska have been introduced to the idea whereas the Drak'honai run from it like rats.
Posted by Paul Shackley at 17:47 Poul Anderson was a fair writer, he left readers PLENTY of clues as to why Old Nick was not just a fat pig and parasite. A careful reader should have come to a proper understanding of Nicholas van Rijn's role long before Wace did. Frantically busy as he was designing and building the new technology Old Nick was persuading the Lannascha to accept, it was unsurprising that Eric needed so long to understand as well.

27 April 2018 at 17:55 Trolwen certainly seemed callous when he said that children of his race who died young are replaceable. I would suggest that the hard lives most Diomedeans had to endure, esp. during the annual migrations, made a certain hardness of heart understandable. To have a deep emotional investment in children who died young would make their lives even harder.

I'm inclined to think the Drak'honai warriors did the RIGHT thing, fleeing from a kind of war they had no knowledge or experience with. They and their officers would need to learn the new tactics used by the Lannachska before it would make sense to fight them again.

28 April 2018 at 07:28
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