Monday 23 February 2015

Fire Time, Chapter III

Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977).

I spotted a familiar phrase, "...time travelers..." (p. 49), but it was a false alarm:

"...by that time travelers who had gone elsewhere were bringing a flood of exotic tales..." (pp. 49-50).

A familiar name appears:

"A scholarly dilettante, Winston P. Saunders, proposed the Babylonian names..." (p. 49)

Saunders is both an early pen-name of Poul Anderson and a writer character in Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

A native Ishtarian thinks:

"Get more than a few Terrestrials together, and it was incredible what time they'd dribble away in laborious jabber." (p. 42)

More Swiftian satire. We might also remember Anderson's Ythrians who made a decision about war or peace very quickly by global participative democracy. No one spoke who did not have something new and relevant to say.

"...an aerodynamically designed heraklite roof..." (p. 41)

I cannot find "heraklite." A fictitious future building material?

"...a few of the seleks therein leaped out from among the leaves, then scurried back down to the proper business of such small entomoids, keeping it free of vermin and dead matter." (p. 44)

"...selek..." is Ishtarian but "entomoid" is English!

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