Poul Anderson's
War Of The Gods and "Star of the Sea" are linked by mythological writing and by Northern European deities: Njord/Niaerdh. We knew from the outset that "Star of the Sea" was a Time Patrol story because it was first published in the omnibus collection,
The Time Patrol. However, the Patrol (science fiction) does not come on stage until the beginning of section
2 which is preceded by section
I, mythological writing, and by section
1, historical fiction. (Both Roman and Arabic numerals are used.)
The Time Patrol, later Time Patrol, and The Earth Book Of Stormgate have in common that each presents new material: "Star of the Sea" and Hloch's introductions, respectively. "Star of the Sea" is a novel although it might not be recognized as such because it is embedded in Time Patrol and, unlike The Man Who Counts, in the Earth Book, has not been published as a separate volume.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Also, unlike THE MAN WHO COUNTS, I don't think "Star of the Sea" is quite long enough to be satisfactorily called a novel, being less than a hundred pages in length.
And mention of "Arabic" numerals again made me wonder which unknown and forgotten genius in India invented the numbers we use? It's hard for me to envision a really practical and workable alternative system. But I know that is what intelligent races on other planets must have done!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Star of the Sea" is 106 pages in THE TIME PATROL and 174 in TIME PATROL but the real criterion of novel length is word count.
Paul.
60K words used to be (back in the 60's) fairly common as a SF 'novel' -- in the Ace Doubles, for example. Few were over 100K. That was back when serial publication in magazines was the standard way to do the first publication.
"practical and workable alternative system."
Any such system needs a 'zero' symbol.
Here is a system that is in some ways better than the one we use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals
Kaor, Paul et al!
Paul: I checked my hard back copy of THE TIME PATROL, and the text of "Star of the Sea" begins on page 293 and ends on page 398. So you are right, and my memory was defective. A story 105 pages longs almost certainly meets what Stirling said was often the case in the 1960's, SF novels were about 60K words long.
Jim: I looked up Mayan numbers at the link you gave, and I agree it certainly seems workable. But I don't know if it would have caught on globally. The system of using shells (for zero) and dots and bars seems just cumbersome enough to make me doubt universal adoption was likely.
Ad astra! Sean
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