Thursday 23 July 2020

Diverse Narratives And The Danube

(Danube Street, Liverpool.)

Today, in different four-dimensional spaces within my N-dimensional imaginarium:

The Saxtorphs must rescue Peter Nordbo from an accelerating STL spaceship;

Red Riding Hood or a spy disguised as her has arrived in Fabletown;

Henrik Vanger is persuading Mikael Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of Harriet Vanger;

bizarre events occur in Liverpool in Chase The Morning.

This fictional Liverpool has both a Tampere Street and a Danube Street. For the Danube in Poul Anderson's works, see here. (Scroll down.) Chase The Morning addresses a familiar Andersonian theme:

"It came crazily into my head how for the ancient Romans the Danube was a barrier of civilization, holding barbarism at bay; but it was not a comforting thought, for at the end that barbarism had come rolling across the Danube in an overwhelming wave."
-CHAPTER ONE, p. 20.

2 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Nice how echoes reverberate through historically-informed fiction, isn't it?

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!

And I've been trying to remember if Anderson ever mentioned how Marcus Aurelius campaigned along the Danube before he died at Vindobona/Vienna. Anderson did mention one of the characters in "Wildcat" reading a Latin translation of that Emperor's MEDITATIONS. A work your Draka would hate!

Ad astra! Sean