Saturday 13 August 2016

Time, Tyre And Fire

With one colorful metaphor, Poul Anderson effortlessly links his alternative universe fantasy volume, Operation Chaos, to his historical science fiction series about the Time Patrol.

"While Solomon was in all his glory and the Temple was a-building, Manse Everard came to Tyre of the purple."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 229)

"He blinked when Ginny and Svartalf came in, and turned a beautiful Tyrian purple as I followed..."
-Poul Anderson, Operation Chaos (New York, 1995), p. 81.

There is not and cannot be any direct connection between the timeline guarded by the Time Patrol and the multiverse with access to the Old Phoenix Inn but Anderson can nevertheless remind us of one while writing about the other.

Fans of Poul Anderson should read The Anubis Gates (London, 1986) by Tim Powers who:

refers to "The Boat of Millions of Years..." on the opening page of his text;
writes "hard fantasy";
creates excellent circular causality paradoxes in historical settings;
imagines the speech of fire elementals on pp. 259-264.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, there cannot and SHOULD NOT be any direct connection of the Old Phoenix multiverse with the Time Patrol series. But it would have been so TEMPTING to have Manse Everard visiting the Old Phoenix!

I have read five or six of Tim POwers' books, including THE ANUBIS GATES. You are rightly reminding me of how many books I need to reread!

Sean