In Ensign Flandry, when Dominic Flandry is nineteen, Miriam is the youngest of Max Abrams' three children. Abrams has not seen her for over a year and is told that she is changing out of recognition. The oldest of the three children has started to see a certain young man a lot. So how old does that make Miriam? I take her to be only a few years old.
In The Game Of Empire (IN Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012), which is set "'...forty-odd years...'" later, Miriam, approaching fifty, is married to Flandry, approaching seventy (pp. 212, 318). If we take forty years as a round number, then that would take him to sixty nine and her to her forties which is about right (Later: I miscounted here. See Comments).
There are other details to notice in The Game Of Empire. In Chapter One, Diana sees Axor approaching:
"Around the corner of a Winged Smoke House..." (p. 199)
What is that? In Chapter Two, A Cynthian innkeeper offers the Tigery Targovi "'...ryushka...'" (p. 223)
- to which he replies:
"'I thank you, but the Winged Smoke is only for when I can take my ease...'" (p. 223)
- so it is a drug that is smoked and I do not remember noticing it before.
At the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle, another of the many hospitable inns in Anderson's works, Diana sees:
"...men, outback miners to judge by their rough appearance...," drinking with joygirls and a Tigery (p. 204).
Why do I quote this? Because I really enjoy Anderson's vivid imagining of guys leading ordinary working lives, indeed their entire lifespans, on a colonized extra-solar planet inhabited by other rational species a thousand years hence.
7 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Nice note, really! Except I would date THE GAME OF EMPIRE as occurring 47 or 48 years after ENSIGN FLANDRY.
And I agree with you about the skill Anderson makes it seem very ORDINARY for everyday human workers like miners having drinks or meals on an extra solar colonized planet alongside non human rational beings. To say nothing of deeper "strangenesses" like Axor not only being a draco-centauroid non human but also a Christian and Catholic priest. I touched on that last point, non humans converting to Christianity (or becoming Buddhists) in my essay "God and Alien in Anderson's Technic Civilization."
Sean
I have miscounted again somehow. A mere 40 years would only get Flandry to 59 so the "forty-odd" has to be closer to 50.
That "forty-odd" years is an instance of an author shortening time to keep his hero's adventures within a single lifetime. Ian Fleming cut 10 years from James Bond's life with such devices.
Hi,Paul!
Yes, but that "forty-odd" years would be interpreted by me to mean "forty and MORE" years. So, the 48 years I put between ENSIGN FLANDRY and THE GAME OF EMPIRE in my proposed revision of Sandra Miesel's chronology (see my essay dated April 26, 2012) is more accurate.
Sean
I agree that "forty-odd" means "forty plus", though not as much as 48! But 48 or 49 is necessary to get Flandry up to "approaching 70."
Hi, Paul!
And I don't think Poul Anderson himself would object to placing THE GAME OF EMPIRE 48 years after ENSIGN FLANDRY. "Forty-odd" should be understood merely as speaking in broad or general terms.
Sean
Hi, Paul!
I checked, and here's another indication about the ages of Flandry and his wife Miriam. Chapter VI of A STONE IN HEAVEN mentions how Miriam was 17 years younger than Flandry. So, that would make her 2 years old in ENSIGN FLANDRY, where she was first mentioned in the stories.
Sean
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