Tuesday, 13 January 2026

"Get Thee Behind Me..."

I thought that I had read the phrase, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" in Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn story, "Territory," or maybe early in the next story, "The Master Key," but now cannot find that phrase in either of these stories. I mention this because it is a common reading experience. I have been doing other reading so maybe the phrase was somewhere in a work by, e.g., Conan Doyle. But the blog can be a collective effort. Can any blog reader either locate this phrase in one of these van Rijn stories or alternatively confirm that it is not there?

I wanted to quote the phrase because it would have been yet another Biblical quotation. Searching the blog, we find that we have previously quoted "Get thee behind me, Satan," but from a Psychotechnic History story, "The Big Rain," not from a Technic History story. See "A Missed Biblical Reference" etc here. (Scroll down.)

The Bible on the blog.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm a slow reader but I will try to remember looking out for that "Get thee behind me..." as I reread some of the van Rijn stories.\

Ad astra! Sean