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Textual Analysis The Hounds of Tindalos The Hounds of Tindalos is a short
science fiction story containing many and varied elements that have been long
associated with the genre of science fiction. This essay will identify these
elements, examining their placement within this short text and also the
interchange of these elements with the characteristics of other genres, more
specifically, horror. Belknap Long, the author, was clearly intent of
incorporating the elements of horror within the genre of science fiction and
this amalgamation of these two genres was a popular combination employed by
future horror and SF writers. Perhaps the inclusion of horror within the SF
genre is a comment in itself about perceptions of SF held by writers, the
elements of horror being a cautionary warning to those in the science world.
Long’s main character is Halpin Chalmers, a self proclaimed “rebel and champion
of originality and lost causes”. From the start it is clear there are present
within this text some elements of the SF genre that seem to be in just about
every SF story, beginning with the main character. Many writers have as their
main characters people who are non-conformists, who wish to boldly go where no
one has gone before and who are willing to take seemingly illogical and
irrational risks in the hope of furthering makinds’ scientific discoveries.
Chalmers is no exception in this as he willingly partakes in an ancient Chinese
drug that is a known powerful hallucinogen in a bid to go back in time. There is
of course the proverbial “wet blanket” in the shape of the narrator, known only
as Frank, who believes his friend Chalmers to be quite mad, but who
never-the-less agrees to aid his friend in his bizarre experiment despite the
risks he is taking. Frank represents all those characters in SF stories who are
the skeptics, the non believers, who have a solid faith in the science of the
present, and who consider characters like Chalmers to be eccentric and bizarre.
The setting of The Hounds of Tindalos is in the late 1920’s and the location is
Central Square. Chalmer’s apartment room is where most of the story takes place.
The room is in keeping with Chalmer’s character as a rejector of modern science
and one who is still entranced with the historical side of science and history
preferring “illuminated manuscripts to automobiles and leering stone gargoyles
to radios and adding machines”.
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