Wednesday 13 July 2016

Author's Note And Prologue


In her Historical Notes to The Demon Of Scattery, Mildred Downey Broxon writes:

"Our thanks to Jerry Pournelle for help with one technical point." (p. 198)

In his Author's Note to The Merman's Children (London, 1981), Poul Anderson writes:

"I am grateful to Karen Anderson, Mildred Downey Broxon, Dorothy Heydt, and Jerry Pournelle." (p. ix)

Might we suggest that some small part of Poul Anderson's multiverse is Jerry-built (with apologies to haters of puns)?

The Merman's Children
Prologue
Book One: Kraken
Book Two: Selkie
Book Three: Tupilak
Book Four: Vilja
Epilogue

The Prologue is pp. 1-5; p. 1 is information-packed:

Dalmatia
Shibenik village and abbey
the river Krka
the Angevin Charles Robert, boy-king of Croats and Magyars
the river Chikola
Skadin village
the lord of the village, the zhupan
Leshy
vodianoi
vilja
the great Ban, Pavle Subitj, the kingmaker
the ports of Zadar and Split.

That is all that there is time for tonight.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'll certainly be looking some of the links you included in this blog piece. My chief is on the picture of the mermaid (or siren?). This eerie and ominous image would be nearly perfect as a picture of Dahut, after she became a siren in THE KING OF YS.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
It is a cover of a translated edition of THE MERMAN'S CHILDREN. I will shortly publish the cover with title.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Understood! But the ominous and menacing look of this mermaid reminds me far more of Dahut than of the mer-people we see in THE MERMAN'S CHILDREN.

Sean