Most learned sirs and ladies, I, your humble servant, have finally returned, and shall now, in the year of our Lord 2018, begin to recount the tale of The High Crusade, from the pen of esteemed storyteller Poul Anderson.
So buckle up, and get ready for our first trip into SF, 100% spoiler-free.
Year of Grace 1345, Ansby. The Hundred Years' War. A mysterious flying ship lands during the war preparations against France, causing a huge panic among a crowd of sheep herders and the hardened knights of Sir Roger Baron, vassal to Edward III. Witness to the event is Brother Parvus, a simple monk of the Franciscan order, and our narrator.
An excerpt from the novel:
[...] Lo! It was as a miracle! Down through the sky, seeming to swell monstrously with the speed of its descent, came a ship all of metal. So bright was the sunlight off its polished sides that I could not see its form clearly. A huge cylinder, I thought, easily two thousand feet long. Save for the whistle of wind, it moved noiseless.
Someone screamed. A woman knelt in a puddle and began to rattle off prayers. A man cried that his sins had found him out, and joined her. Worthy though these actions were, I realized that in such a mass of people, folk would be trampled to death if panic smote. That was surely not what God, if He had sent this visitant, intended.
Hardly knowing what I did, I sprang up on a great iron bombard whose wagon was sunk to the axles in our street. “Hold fast!” I cried. “Be not afraid! Have faith and hold fast!”
My feeble pipings went unheard. Then Red John Hameward, the captain of the longbowmen, leaped up beside me. A merry giant, with hair like spun copper and fierce blue eyes, he had been my friend since he arrived here.
“I know not what yon thing is,” he bellowed. His voice rolled over the general babble, which died away.
“Mayhap some French trick. Or it may be friendly, which would make our fear look all the sillier. Follow me, every soldier, to meet it when it lands!”
The dilemma the situation raises is clear: what would a honest and pious Englishman do, once assisted to such a miraculous- or perhaps blasphemous- event? Take advantage of this sign of God’s favour and use it to fight the French, of course! Just as well, nothing will go as anticipated.
Very far from others of Anderson's works (very famous, and far more dramatic, is Tau Zero) , The High Crusade it's a surprising gem of satirical SF. Published in the '60s, it was nominated for the Hugo Award, and even got a motion picture adaptation which, apparently, can be easily dug out if someone has a mind to it and a forgiving attitude towards low res (but I didn't tell you).
The novel structure is very straightforward, written in a tongue-in-cheek, clean prose that goes well with the fast pacing of the plot. Our leads are fleshed out enough that their reactions come off as believable, their priorities in line with what one might expect from the life of in a medieval town, but you won’t find the a deep psychological study of the characters’ intentions and fear.
The High Crusade is satirical, light-hearted fun, characterization and realism are secondary to the humour, and the good, old lesson: Humanity never changes.