Memory (Anderson)
Memory (English Memory , original title A World Called Maanerek , i.e. a world called Maanerek ) is a story by Poul Anderson from 1957.
action
In the distant future, humans have spread over a large number of planets and, through the vastness of space, have often lost contact with the civilization of the earth. To this z. B. only a fuzzy memory on a distant ring planet. The more complex technical achievements get lost in the local world called Maanerek . However, certain simpler technical means such as glider pilots and bows and arrows are preserved.
The hero Torrek has been sent on a multi-year mission to meet the people of Maanerek for the purpose of neurological research. You have erased your previous life in “civilized” humanity from your brain and now you watch how it adapts to its new environment. He has been received by the naturals as a gifted stranger.
One day he jumps out of a glider onto a primeval giant bird with a wingspan of nine meters to kill it and land with it in the sea. Thereby he wins the recognition of the people of Maanerek and he becomes worthy of marrying Sonna , a girl of their people.
People who have more technical skills than those of the 20th and 21st centuries kidnap Torrek and Sonna with one of their spaceships. In doing so, they use a kind of restraint that cannot be seen and that can only be felt through the forces that they exert in space.
The kidnappers belong to the military unit that Torrek originally came from. In the spaceship, one now erases the new consciousness from his brain, which has gradually formed in him in the harsh and hostile environment of the ring planet.
The soldier suddenly feels like Korul Wanen again and without transition begins to make conversation with his comrades and to blaspheme with them in their chauvinistic way about the supposed primitiveness of the people of Maanerek. He even accuses his superiors of sending him on the mission because he could have died in the process.
He is taken to Sonna to show her the new circumstances. One hopes to receive information from her that will make it easier for one to exterminate her friends on the ring planet, because one wants to develop it into a safe and quiet base because of its strategic importance. But Wanen feels drawn to Sonna. In order to bring him back to the line, he is asked to rape and kill her.
Wanen finds allies and frees Sonna in battle. He occupies a spaceship and flees the sphere of influence of his former commanders, who go up in a ball of fire behind him.
expenditure
Memory first appeared in the science fiction magazine Galaxy . The tale appeared in 1969 in the Beyond the Beyond collection, along with six other shorter science fiction stories by Anderson . This collection was published in German in 1970 under the title Beyond Infinity .
Individual evidence
- ^ Poul (William) Anderson . SciFiArchive.Com, accessed December 31, 2009