Between Worlds discusses transitions between worlds in:
two of CS Lewis' seven Narnian books;
two fantasy novels and two short stories by Poul Anderson;
one graphic novel by Neil Gaiman.
To these we should add many other works no doubt but, in particular:
suddenly, on a basement wall -
"...a sheet of something silvery, something that rippled very slightly, like the surface of a body of water set on its side, staying there in defiance of gravity."
-SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004), Prologue, p. 5.
Needless to say, John Rolfe looks through the silver sheet into another world, specifically into an uncolonized North America,
At the end of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Volume I, a bridge of light reaches into the sky. At the beginning of Volume II, there is a "window," through which it is possible to step into another world. The window, hanging in the air, is visible only to someone standing directly in front of it and, even then, is hard to notice because the views on both sides are similar, e.g., grass and other vegetation. Thus, although the window hangs beside a busy road, it is usually unnoticed.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It is totally unlikely to ever happen, but I wonder how I would do (or what I would do) if something looking like a silvery sheet of water set on its side appeared in MY basement! Would I run with the opportunities offered as boldly as did John Rolfe? Probably not, alas!
Ad astra! Sean
That was a good cover -- though the bridge is metaphorical. It also conveys that the setting is California, and specifically the Bay area, with which the Golden Gate is closely associated -- I thought it was very clever.
Metaphorical, of course, but fitting.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Now that you mentioned it, the cover for your book CONQUISTADOR is one of the better cover illustrations I've seen. In fact, many of your books have better covers than was true of the works of earlier SF writers.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the cover for SNOWBROTHER was an abomination, even for the 1980's. I asked about it, and the publisher's rep. said that a fantasy cover had to have a generalized blue-green background, a woman with no clothes, and someone hitting someone else with a sword. And they were dead serious -- really.
Post a Comment