Going Medieval
Although this is science fiction set in the future, there are also dragons to be found here as well as a medieval castle and king. That castle provides an example of more traditional imagery than marks the bulk of the volume as the descriptions of the setting could almost be moved fully intact into a story taking place millennia ago:
“King Krool awaited them in an enormous hall the shape of a skull, a vast and vaulted cave of beaten silver. There was a gaping pit in the floor, the skull’s foramen magnum, and beyond it stood the throne, over which two streams of light crossed like swords—they came from high windows fixed in the skull’s eye sockets and with panes specially tinted to give everything a harsh and infernal aspect.”
Dragons of the Future
As mentioned, dragons also appear in the text. But the imagery describing them is not one easily translated to a medieval tale. This is an example of imagery more consistent with the overall designed of the text. It is one in which dragons are clearly situated as entities within a futuristic society:
“Suppose, for example, one organizes a hunt for such a dragon, surrounds it, closes in, beating the brush...sportsmen, their weapons cocked and ready, finds only a burnt patch of earth and an unmistakable smell: the dragon, seeing itself cornered, has slipped from real to configurational space…ignorant and backward persons will occasionally demand that you show them this configurational space of yours, apparently unaware that electrons, whose existence no one in his right mind would question, also move exclusively in configurational space."
Religious Allegory
The rise of the robots, according to the text, will demand an explanation for their existence just like humankind. Of course, being of a different “race” they will obviously not be content merely to be an adjunct to the creation of man. An allegorical reorganizing of the creation myth thus becomes satirical imagery:
“There are legends, as you know, that speak of a race of paleface, who concocted robotkind out of a test tube, though anyone with a grain of sense knows this to be a foul lie…For in the Beginning there was naught but Formless Darkness, and in the Darkness, Magneticity, which moved the atoms, and whirling atom struck atom, and Current was thus created, and the First Light.”
Descriptive Imagery
The more traditional uses of imagery to enhance the descriptive prose of setting is also to be found occasionally in the stories. While not as imaginative or wildly creative as some of the more satirical uses, these prosaic examples reveal a writer well-versed in the conventions of literature outside his own genre:
“An hour passed, the sun hung lower in the heavens, and Klapaucius still walked through fields of gravel and scree, through craggy passes, till he found himself in a place of narrow canyons and ravines full of chill and darkness. The red pointer crept to nine-tenths, gave a shudder, and froze.”
