Monday 26 September 2016

Three Displacements

Space
James Blish's Okie city of New York is displaced from Earth to space, ultimately to New Earth in the Greater Magellanic Cloud. The Mayor of the City becomes the Mayor of the Cloud.

Time
SM Stirling's Island of Nantucket, displaced from AD to BC, becomes a world power AE.

Legend
Poul and Karen Anderson's city-state of Ys is displaced from history to legend. The Ysan Gods not only destroy Their city but also draw a Veil over its memory. Thus, lacking either ruins or records, we know of Ys only through legend and fiction.

New York goes to another galaxy;
Nantucket goes to another timeline;
Ys goes into The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson;
we are privileged to read Blish's tetralogy, Stirling's trilogy and the Andersons' tetralogy.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Of the works you discussed here, I enjoyed the Andersons tetraology and Stirling's books more than I did Blish's Okie books. When I reread the first two Flying Cities books I couldn't help but think they were not as satisfactory to me as were the Andersons/Stirling books.

Sean