10th Century York

Alternative Yorks:

Poul Anderson's Operation Luna describes contemporary York albeit on a parallel Earth;

Anderson's Genesis describes an alternative York in a post-human AI emulation;

his Mother Of Kings (New York, 2033) describes 10th century York -

"A wind from the north went astray in the twisting lanes of York, milled about between walls and hissed under eaves. Most stenches scattered before its sharpness. Thatch, turf, and shakes blocked sight of the morning sun, but light spilled down from the wan blue. Wild geese were on the wing. Their honking blew faint through hoofbeat, footfall, creak, clang, mumble, all the manifold racket below." (p. 219)

- a characteristically evocative descriptive passage, ending with a list of sounds. Some Andersonian street scenes include even longer lists of smells.

Eirik Blood Ax, having lost Norway, has become King in York so the action of the novel has moved to the North East of England. As Queen Gunnhild rides forth with the King:

"It was no mean town through whose streets she passed. For all the war and woe that had gone by, it had grown strongly under the Danes. Even this late in the year ships crowded its wharfs, come up the River Ouse - on whose west side newer buildings now also clustered thick - from the Humber and the North Sea with goods to stuff the warehouses." (p. 219)

The rich description continues, becoming rather too long to quote in full except to say that it presents yet another list:

"...workmen, chapmen, sailors, fishers, farmers, herders, wives, children, hawkers, priests, thralls, beggar, now and then a whore or maybe a wandering ragged singer, surely thieves, and who could say what else?" (p. 220)

This is the birth of the Yorks described in Operation Luna and Genesis.