Duance Lynam and the Redshirt


syrakusos

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We all know that when the Good Guys rescued John Galt, Dagny shot a soldier who could not make up his mind. The other Good Guys all over-powered or just wounded their targets. So, Dagny's action stands out. We have a problem with cold-blooded killing. They had quite a little discussion about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Nothing was in the heat of passion. Daunce pressed me for my appraisal, given that I work as a security guard.

As a security guard, I found Redshirts by John Scalzi (Tom Doherty Association, 2012), at once intriguing, humorous, insightful, and disappointing. Marketed in book format, the story is a novella typeset with extra leading, and to which is appended another story in another format. The thesis is obvious from the title. If you know the Star Trek universe, then you have seen the expendable, disposable security force on the away teams. The redshirts die to tell the audience that the main characters are in danger.

Scalzi’s work is at once a parody and a tribute. Just as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a Gothic novel about a girl deluded by Gothic novels, so, too, does Redshirts incorporate all the important elements of classic Star Trek.

Redshirts: Expendable in Fiction and Fact on my blog here.

The guard should not have allowed himself to be snuck up on. He should have been alert and he should have challenged Dagny.

Guard: "Halt! Who goes there?"

Dagny: "Dagny Taggart here to rescue John Galt."

Guard; "Come forward and be recognized."

Dagny: "Stick 'em up!"

Guard " Drop your weapon."

Bang... Bang...

But I did not write the story. Someone else did. So we have to go with the universe we were given. ... Unless we can slingshot around the sun, go back in time, and alter history...

Myself, I have never carried a weapon on duty. I use Jedi Mind Tricks.

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The guard should not have allowed himself to be snuck up on. He should have been alert and he should have challenged Dagny.

Do you see any necessity to the plot of the guard's being in the book? And why were the male attackers leaving Dagny to go off to take an entrance on her own anyway?

I think that the guard serves no purpose except to be killed by Dagny in a contrived fashion while the author discourses making a point, not very well.

Ellen

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We all know that when the Good Guys rescued John Galt, Dagny shot a soldier who could not make up his mind. The other Good Guys all over-powered or just wounded their targets. So, Dagny's action stands out. We have a problem with cold-blooded killing. They had quite a little discussion about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Nothing was in the heat of passion. Daunce pressed me for my appraisal, given that I work as a security guard.

As a security guard, I found Redshirts by John Scalzi (Tom Doherty Association, 2012), at once intriguing, humorous, insightful, and disappointing. Marketed in book format, the story is a novella typeset with extra leading, and to which is appended another story in another format. The thesis is obvious from the title. If you know the Star Trek universe, then you have seen the expendable, disposable security force on the away teams. The redshirts die to tell the audience that the main characters are in danger.

Scalzi’s work is at once a parody and a tribute. Just as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a Gothic novel about a girl deluded by Gothic novels, so, too, does Redshirts incorporate all the important elements of classic Star Trek.

Redshirts: Expendable in Fiction and Fact on my blog here.

The guard should not have allowed himself to be snuck up on. He should have been alert and he should have challenged Dagny.

Guard: "Halt! Who goes there?"

Dagny: "Dagny Taggart here to rescue John Galt."

Guard; "Come forward and be recognized."

Dagny: "Stick 'em up!"

Guard " Drop your weapon."

Bang... Bang...

But I did not write the story. Someone else did. So we have to go with the universe we were given. ... Unless we can slingshot around the sun, go back in time, and alter history...

Myself, I have never carried a weapon on duty. I use Jedi Mind Tricks.

Dagny was a shitty commando. She should have sneaked up behind him and cut his throat with piano wire. That way no noise, no shouting.

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Ellen, I agree with you. Too much gratuitous violence for too little purpose. You can't kill people because they don't think as quickly as you would like. As Dauce would day, it's ... UnAmerican.

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Ayn Rand's Journal shows that in addition to actually working in an architect's office, she interviewed several architects. For Atlas Shrugged, she interviewed railroad line and staff managers. But she did not interview any Army Guys. The general public knew very little about special operations and special forces. From her point of view the State Science Institute would be guarded by dog face foot soldiers -- and indeed in 1950, it might have been... Wild Bill Donovan was known to a few hundred people and none of them was talking.

The Dirty Dozen was made in 1967. Today, every ten-dollar-an-hour security guard is told to vary the patrols, to double back, to do the unexpected because someone is watching you. We tell them: "Ever see The Dirty Dozen? The Americans knew when to ambush the German guards because it always took them 90 seconds to goose-step around the perimeter. Don't do that!"

I think it was on Bones, but it might have been Midsomer Murders.... The medical examiner explains that the killer was trained in the military because most people, when they slit your throat from behind, pull your head back, but the windpipe protects the arteries, so you want to force the head down and it leaves less blood splatter all over you.

What did Ayn Rand know about ambushing guards? It was a literary device. If he had attempted to shoot her, Dagny might only have wounded him. We will never know.

Also, just a gratuitous footnote....

I was never FAQ (Firearms Qualified) but as the dispatcher issuing firearms and ammunition was one of my duties. One time this woman showed up for her shift and said, "I'm off my meds, and I feel fine now." So I gave her a weapon and ammunition. No harm: no foul.

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Ever read The Night of January 16th? Guts Regan would not use piano wire: he'd pull a gat ... and throw the body off the balcony.

The bottom line is that except for her childhood traumas in the Russian Civil War, Ayn Rand had very little personal exposure to violence and violent people. I mean, she struck Nathaniel Branden at least twice. After the first one, Francisco d'Anconia would have punched out her lights.

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Plus, how do you even sneak up on the State Science Institute? That particular laboratory was in a remote area, granted, but, like the Project X Xylophone, apparently, you could drive right up and knock on the door.

It is possible that the Men of the Valley had an invisibility appliance or device based on John Galt's motor. The theory behind the dynamo that Dagny found also allowed Galt to create a "screen" that refracted light - but also affected the engine of her airplane; and in penetrating the field the plane knocked the screen "off key." Recall that Ragnar's ship could not be found and airpower versus sea power was common talk back then, so, Ayn Rand must have given him an invisibility screen for his ship.

Moreover, when Ragnar meets Rearden, the cops say that they found a beat-up old car "with a million-dollar motor." So, having looked under the hood, they did not understand the details of what they saw, but they appreciated the general presentation of the device as a motor qua motor.

Rand used the words motor and engine interchangeably, as we often do in common speech. However, motors are electrical. And a motor can be a generator, hence the hybrid automobile. In fact, we all experience this without thinking too much about it, but when your home refrigerator comes on, it sends a counter-EMF (electro motive force) back against the current.

So, maybe the Men of the Valley were invisible to the guards, at least up to some point.

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