Friday, 1 March 2013

Quotations

Apart from Chapter Thirteen: The Battle of Brandobar, Annotated English version, every chapter in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday (St Albans, Herts, 1975) starts with an italicized quotation. Some are memorable.

One: "For man also knoweth not his time..." etc, Ecclesiastes, ix, 12.
Two: "It is the business of the future to be dangerous." Whitehead.
Three: "The horror of the human condition - any human condition - is that one soon grows used to it." Sanders.
Seven: "Then endure for a while, and live for a happier day." Virgil.
Ten: "A nation, to be successful, must change its tactics every ten years." Napoleon.
Eleven: "Kine die, kinfolk die..." etc. Elder Edda.
Fourteen: "Then I saw there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of Heaven." Bunyan.

Does anyone out there know whether the Sanders of Chapter Three is a real person? Or is he Poul Anderson using his occasional pen name of Winston P Sanders?

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