Shield II

(Shield is, of course, also very different from The Shield Of Time.)

Rereading Poul Anderson's Shield (New York, 1970) as far as p. 41, we find some more familiar science fiction background material:

the megalopolis includes low level slums for the large numbers made unemployed by the advent of machines;
welfare services cannot keep pace with population growth;
police rarely intervene in gang-ruled areas;
entertainment is provided by three-dimensional television (although here it is called 3D, not the usual 3-V);
our hero, on the run both from the authorities and from their enemies, is passed from pillar to post in the, to him, unfamiliar environment of various low dives where he is at the mercy of the local criminal underworld;
he is in possession of a potential weapon wanted by governments and gang bosses alike but his immediate aim has to be his own survival.

Anderson deploys these familiar plot elements well and can be expected to do more with them and also to say something about his basic underlying themes before the end of the novel.