Wednesday 18 February 2015

On Staurn

A Staurnian:

is about three meters long;
has no legs;
sits on the double coil of his one and a half meter long rudder-tipped tail;
has a prow-like keel bone, sharp muzzle, wolfish fangs, small round ears, dark-banded eyes, nostrils under the chin and seven-meter chiropteran wings;
is covered with a gray growth intermediate between hair and feathers;
wears only pouched belts.

A human xenological expedition to Staurn comprises, apart from xenologists, a semanticist, a glossanalyist, a biologist and graduate students. I have found Gloss Analyists but not glossanalyists on the internet and still do not know what the former do.

Gunner Heim says, "'The common man often shows more common sense than the intellectual elite.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (London, 1968), p. 79.

Does he? I distrust such generalizations and dichotomies. Common men and intellectuals alike are capable of considerable unexamined prejudices.

The novel has been narrated exclusively from Heim's point of view until p. 86 when, at the beginning of Part Two, Chapter Three, we switch to his friend, Endre's, pov. At the bottom of p. 87, it switches back. Endre whistles:

"'Malbrouk se va-t-en guerre -'
"-And aboard the Quest, Heim looked at a bulkhead clock..." (p. 87)

On p. 88, Jocelyn "...stopped before a full-length optex beside her dresser." (p. 88)

Heim was "...the least self-analytical of men. He shoved his questions aside for later examination and, with them, most of the associated emotions." (p. 89)

Good if you can do it. Heim is an Andersonian man of action who will not be incapacitated by self-involved thoughts. Earlier, contemplating the beauty of a planet, its moons and the stars seen from space, he wondered why people "'...waste time hating and killing...'" (p. 80) Good question.

I took the book to read in a waiting room and made notes which led to this post.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Well, I'm sure, if Gunnar Heim was asked point blank, he would agree that BOTH ordinary people and intellectuals can be foolish and prejudiced. I do lean to the view that a great deal of harm has been done by "intellectuals" in positions of power.

And I think "optex" is a neologism coined by Anderson to mean what we call mirrors or looking glasses. To show us how languages changes as time passes.

Waiting room? About your wife, maybe? I hope she is healing well from her surgery!

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Sheila is healing fine, thank you. It was our son-in-law this time.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Good! I'm glad to know Mrs. Shackley is healing well. And sorry about Ketlan's continuing troubles.

One point I forgot to add in my previous note was that I think Dominic Flandry could be "self-analytical." We do see quite a fair amount of his own thoughts about himself and his times.

Sean