Re: Two stories containing search for thumb on scales

On 11/06/2025 08:58, Charles Packer wrote:

A recent thread mentioned the "Foundation" character Arkady Darell.
That brought to mind Jean Morrel in A.C. Clarke's "Childhood's
End." Both women are instrumental in locating the home bases of
totalitarian powers that orchestrate events. (Their names even
have a similar ring: Darell/Morrel.) This raises the question:
Is there anyplace else in SF literature besides Asimov and
Clarke that feature remote, vaguely-defined powerful entities the
sussing out of which are a preoccupation of some of the characters?
I guess this could be considered a subset of stories that
feature any type of decoding of mysteries.

That happens a lot!  In the "Star Wars" prequels
there are The Sith, and in "Star Trek" there's
"The Preservers", aliens who amused themselves
by transplanting people and cultures from Earth
onto other planets - which is why, as I'm told
one British viewer pointed out, the Starship
Enterprise goes "where no man has gone before"
but finds some other people are already there.
And of course there are science fiction heroes
who are working for the secret world-controlling
organisation.
I think I read something perhaps rather grubby
which involved a couple of women whose plan was
to identify the society of men secretly in charge
of the world and become their lovers, I think
not to overthrow them but just see how the other
half lives,and which went badly enough in some
way that they ended up in custody in the secret
organisation's polar scientific base (?)
At which point, one of the women is pursuing
a theory that the higher status scientists
and jailers are the ones with the most pens in
their chest pockets and it's worth trying again,
and the other thinks that this got them into
enough trouble already.
And something odd is going on in the world in
Colin Kapp's _Manalone_ (1977).  Including
censorship of history.  All of which gets
the hero, whose name happens to be Manalone,
into the attention of the society of men
secretly in charge.  Maybe also women, I don't
remember and it was 1977 but in the U.K.
so a bit old fashioned.