Friday, 14 August 2015

Rudyard Kipling And The Time Patrol

How often does Poul Anderson mention Rudyard Kipling? Maybe twice in the Harvest of Stars tetralogy?
At least twice in the Time Patrol series. Both Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly think of Kipling.

Everard in "Time Patrol":

"At this moment his mother had not been born, his grandparents were young couples just getting settled to harness, Grover Cleveland was President of the United States and Victoria was Queen of England, Kipling was still writing and the last Indian uprisings in America still to come... It was like a blow on the head." (Time Patrol, p. 24)

Wanda, narrating in the Galapagos in "The Year Of The Ransom":

"'Excellent loneliness.' Yes, Kipling could say it. I remember how those words of his rolled up and down my spine when I first heard them, Uncle Steve reading aloud to me." (p. 641)

The mere mention of an author's name evokes all of his works, with their similarities to and differences from Anderson's.

"The Year Of The Ransom" was first published not as a new Time Patrol story in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction but as a short, illustrated, juvenile novel. We start not with Manse Everard but with the niece of a Time Patrolman although we do not know that yet. But before even the reference to "Uncle Steve" comes an appropriate two word quotation from Kipling.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I like Rudyard Kipling's works myself, even if not with the fannish intensity of Poul Anderson. I really need to get back to reading Kipling's poems and novels of his like KIM and THE LIGHT THAT FAILED are in the back of my mind as needing to be reread.

Sean