Friday 10 March 2017

Starkad

Starkad is:

a legendary Norse hero (see here);
a planet visited by Dominic Flandry (see here);
a character in Hrolk Kraki's Saga (see the above link);
an immortal in The Boat Of A Million Years (see here);
mentioned on p. 284 of SM Stirling's The Protector's War (New York, 2006), Chapter Ten.

Thus, this single name links:

several sagas;
a future history by Poul Anderson;
Anderson's retelling of a saga;
a historical science fiction novel by Anderson;
an alternative history novel by Stirling.

Starkad might be one of our travelers through the megamultiverse.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

What interested me was this bit from the PILOT'S MANUAL AND EPHEMERIS, CIS-BETELGEUSEAN ORIONIS SECTOR, seen at the beginning of ENSIGN FLANDRY: "Though 254 light years from Sol, the system was discovered early, in the course of the first Grand Survey. Thus the contemporary practice of bestowing literary-mythological names on humanly interesting objects was followed." I think it does make sense to think human explorers and settlers will take many names for their new planets from "literary-mythological" sources. The planet Aeneas being another example.

Sean