Hiram And Eborix

Here are more colorful details that I swear I miss completely when merely reading through a prose text. Something instantly forgotten might as well not have been encountered in the first place. The Time Patrol needs to be both filmed and drawn. Everard as "Eborix" gains a private audience with King Hiram of Tyre. Anderson not only recounts their conversation but carefully describes its setting:

a spacious room opening on a garden with a fish pond;
a dyed, patterned, straw carpet;
plaster walls fantastically frescoed by a Babylonian artist;
wine glasses, fruit, bread, cheese and sweets on a low, ebony, mother-of-pearl-inlaid table;
a comely, diaphonously gowned young woman playing the lyre;
two waiting manservants;
an opportunity for "Eborix" to spin his cover story.

All this needs to be seen as well as read. Some readers may be able to visualize such a scene while reading and to remember their visualization afterwards but I cannot. Only the opportunity to appreciate the text in short blog posts makes me reread it with sufficient care to notice not only what is said but also what we are told about where it is said. It is like looking at a large painting with a dramatic event like a battle or a confrontation in the foreground but also many well realized details around the edges and behind the main figures.