Wednesday 10 February 2016

Adrienne Rolfe's Library

SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004), Chapter Thirteen, p. 356.

One shelf:

Into the Alternate Universe
A World Unknown
The Gates of Creation
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
The Complete Paratime
Three Hearts and Three Lions
A Midsummer Tempest
Chase the Morning
The Key to Irunium
Worlds of If
Sideways in Time
Lest Darkness Fall
Guns of the South 

We are pleased to recognize two, highly appropriate, titles by Poul Anderson.
The most evocative of these titles, and covers, is Chase the Morning, a quotation from James Elroy Flecker's Hassan:

"Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea..."

Hassan is also in Adrienne's library.
Stirling concludes his The Peshawar Lancers by quoting this same line from Hassan.
The title of Anderson's The Fleet of Stars is a quotation from another poem by Flecker.
Flecker is quite a poet. (See also here.)

8 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Very nice, the bits you quoted from James Elroy Flecker's poems. And it's good to know Anderson, Stirling, and Turtledove were familiar with his works.

As for Adrienne Rolfe's library, I think I may have read LORD KALVAN OF OTHERWHEN many years ago. And I certainly have read THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS and A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST. Plus I have read LEST DARKNESS FALL and GUNS OF THE SOUTH. The others, alas, I have not read.

Sean

David Birr said...

Paul and Sean:
David Falkayn, too, quoted Flecker's "...chase the morning..." line in "A Sun Invisible." Then he followed up with a bit of Anderson's own poetry (attributed to "Sanders") about being intrepid merchants:
"Their topmasts gilt by sunset, though their sails be whipped to rags,
Who raced the wind around the world go reeling home again,
With ivory, apes, and peacocks loaded, memories and brags,
To sell for this high profit: knowing fully they are Men!"

The young lady to whom he quoted that was VERY favorably impressed....

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, David!

I reread the ending of "A Sun Invisible" to read again what you quoted. Very nice! And "...ivory, apes, and peacocks" is not only taken from the Book of Kings in the Bible but also the title of one of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories.

I took a quick look, but did not find the "Sanders" lines in the only collection Anderson published of his own poems: STAVES (Jwindz:1993). The lines you quoted looks as tho they should be part of a longer poem.

STAVES is seriously incomplete because three lone poems written by Anderson were not included: "Mary O'Meara," "The Battle of Brandobar," and "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

This is irritating! I wrote "lone" in my previous comment when I meant "long".

Sean

David Birr said...

Sean:
Yes, they LOOK as if they should be part of a larger poem, but I haven't found any such.

When I first tried tracking the origin of that verse down, I came upon a site -- I don't recall its address -- on which Greg Bear, PA's son-in-law and a writer of SF himself, told someone that his wife believed the poem to be her father's work. Bear also explained that PA sometimes used "Winston P. Sanders" as a pen name; he didn't say WHY he did so.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, David!

Interesting, what you said about the "Sanders" lines in "A Sun Invisible." It comes down to PA writing lines from a FICTIONAL poem. It may be, alas, the "Sanders" lines we see in that story are the only bits of that poem we will get.

I have read that sometimes an author will use a pseudonym to mask how a magazine may be publishing more than one work by the same writer in the same issue.

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

I'm pretty sure the "Tales of the Flying Mountains" stories were first published under the 'Winston P. Saunders' penname.

The stories I've read:
Lord Kalvan
Complete Paratime
Three Hearts & Three Lions
Midsummer Tempest
Sideways in TIme
Lest Darkness Fall
Guns of the South

I thought "Worlds of If" was something I had read, but actually it was "Wheels of If" by L. Sprague De Camp, which also fits the theme.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

Yes, the FLYING MOUNTAINS stories were originally pub. by Anderson using the Sanders pseudonym.

Ad astra! Sean