Free Essays - The Hounds of Tindalos :: Hounds

textual AnalysisThe Hounds of Tindalos The Hounds of Tindalos is a short scientific discipline fiction story containing umpteen and varied elements that have been long associated with the musical genre of science fiction. This essay provide identify these elements, examining their placement within this short text and also the supplant of these elements with the characteristics of other genres, more specifically, mutual exclusiveness. 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 combining 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. Longs main character is Halpin Chalmers, a self proclaimed rebel and champion of originality and lost causes. From the star t it is clear there argon 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 volition 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 cognise powerful psychodelic drug in a bid to go back in time. thither is of course the proverbial wet blanket in the shape of the narrator, known only as dog, who believes his friend Chalmers to be quite mad, but who never-the-less agrees to service 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 religious belief in the science of the present, and who consider characters like Chalmers to be eccentric and bizarre. The tantrum of The Hounds of Tindalos is in the late 1920s and the location is Central Square. Chalmers flat room is where most of the story takes place. The room is in keeping with Chalmers character as a rejector of modern science and one who is clam up entranced with the historical side of science and history preferring illuminated manuscripts to automobiles and leer stone gargoyles to radios and adding machines.