meier%ISL@Sumex-Aim@sri-unix.UUCP (03/21/84)
The story requested by Liz Scheller-Lee was "The Saturn Game" by Poul Anderson and is included in one of his collections which is currently being borrowed, so I can't quote the title of the anthology. The actual plot is that a team of about 100 scientists aboard a mobile habitat has gone to investigate the Saturnian system. At Saturn, they broke up into smaller research teams to investigate the various moons. The four protagonists of the sytem were sent to Iapetus(?). During the outbound trip, several D & D games were started among the crew and three of the protagonists were involved in a game. Unconsciously, these D & D games centered around fantasy environments that resembled the moons that the respective parties would be exploring. When placed in the actual satellite environments, the explorers acted as if they were in the fantasy environment, with deadly consequences. (Fighting dragons is always perilous even if the dragons are imagined.) Poul Anderson gives a detailed and credulous account of a potential problem that exists when people are subject to a closed community for a long time. His account shows how the psychological defenses built up against the closed environment can become lethal when the person is suddenly exposed to the right situation. This would be a serious problem for real space exploration except that the solution is obvious. (I'll not spoil the story by revealing it here.) His framing of the problem is both enjoyable and thought-provoking. I would highly recommend this story and the anthology that contains it. Bob (isl!meier@shasta)