Only "The Problem of Pain," "Wingless," "Rescue on Avalon" and The People Of The Wind are set on Avalon but Erannath in The Day Of Their Return also presents a brief description of that planet:
"'As a youth I wandered the whole of Avalon...hai-ha, storm-dawns over seas and snowpeaks! Hunting a spathodont with spears! Wind across the plains, that smelled of sun and eternity!...'"
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February, 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 16, p. 195.
Erannath displays some talent for rhyming verse.
Hloch and Erannath, both Ythrians, impart some information about human affairs on Avalon:
"You well know how most humans on Avalon still maintain a modified form of government. However, this is of sharply limited force, both in practice and in law. It is merely their way."
-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION THE PROBLEM OF PAIN IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 103-105 AT p. 104.
Thank you for your understanding, Hloch. However, centuries later:
"'[Government]'s irrelevant to us. My fellow Avalonians who are of human stock have come to think likewise.'"
-The Day Of Their Return, 16, p. 196.
Two beings of different species can be "fellow Avalonians." "Human" or "Ythrian" is merely their stock!
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Actually, what we see here is Anderson showing his rather wishful libertarian preferences when he had Erannath saying Avalonian humans of his time coming to think gov't was irrelevant. I am not at all convinced that will ever be the case because humans are so quarrelsome, bellicose, crime prone, etc., that the State will continue to be needed simply to keep the peace.
I think Stirling commented elsewhere that by his last years Anderson came to agree with views of the kind I stated above.
Ad astra! Sean
"Two Aeneans are with Ythians on Avalon in "Wings of Victory" "
Correction: in "The Problem of Pain".
Correction accepted. That was niggling me while I was out for the evening.
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