Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 22 Sept 2014.
In Ensign Flandry, there are Irumclagians and, at the beginning of the following volume, A Circus Of Hells, Flandry is on Irumclaw.
Any
sf writer can tell us that an interstellar empire is declining and
withdrawing from its periphery but Poul Anderson is also able to present
imperial decline in social terms with a hint of the pathetic fallacy to
back it up.
First, the pathetic fallacy - Flandry leaves the naval compound:
"Soon after the red-orange sun had set..."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 203.
Anderson
gets his readers to imagine sunset colors - not only has the sun just
set but it was red-colored to begin with - immediately before he
discusses declining empire. I have used the accompanying color
illustration, although we have had it recently, because of its
appropriate background coloring.
Next, as Flandry walks
between the homes and private parks of the wealthy, he reflects that
"...they epitomized man's trajectory." (p. 204) When the settlement had
been large, prosperous and well inside the Imperial boundaries, it had
attracted both mercantile commerce and aristocratic culture but now the
mansions are either empty or owned only by those who prey on the
declining numbers of spacemen and Navy personnel while, outside the
treaty port boundaries, the natives revert to barbarism.
"Tonight Irumclaw lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire." (ibid.)
Here
again is the pathetic fallacy. Irumclaw is not in decline only at
night! However, it is appropriate that Flandry's somber reflections
occur just after night fall. They prefigure the Long Night of Empire
that haunts Flandry's life.
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