Chekhov's Gun/Literature: Difference between revisions

** The Gravity Lance ''was'' impractical. The reason it's the only way she can destroy the Q-ship is because it's the only effective weapon she really ''has'' because of the weapon refit (which stripped her ship of most of its conventional armaments), and she can only use it by getting suicidally close to the Q-ship. It's mentioned by several characters that she could have done a ''lot'' more damage to the Q-ship right off the bat if the ship hadn't been refitted at the beginning of the book. The only reason she won was because of overconfidence on the part of the Q-ship captain.

*** Which she explained, in great and scathing detail, to the weapon's principle advocate in the Manticoran military hierarchy, Admiral Lady Sonja Hemphill, after the battle, earning the long-term hostility of Admiral Hemphill's allies. Hemphill herself had sufficient intelligence and integrity to get over it -- she and Honor work quite well together in some of the later books, as some of her other innovations, like missile pods and the gravity-based FTL communicator, turn out to be ''much'' more effective than the gravlance -- and Honor is instrumental in proving the field effectiveness of several of them.

*** Said character himself falls into this category: he first appears as an apparently minor scumbag who does manage to escape justice in the first book of the series by being smart enough to know when to get out of Dodge. ''Honor Among Enemies'' is the fourth book.

* Throughout ''[[The Sparrow]]'', the author Mary D Russell drops hints about subtle changes being introduced or taking place in the alien environment. The protagonists observe these things without understanding their significance. When they lead to catastrophic conclusions, it is quite a shock, even though each is traceable to an earlier chapter and though the story opens by telling you the mission was a disaster.

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[[Category:Chekhov's Gun]]

[[Category:Chekhovs Gun]]