Physical Environments

Poul Anderson gives us politics, philosophy and vividly described physical environments. The University of Nova Roma, like an enclosed town covering a hill in the center of the city, predates the Empire, bearing scars of the Troubles, and incorporates an iridescent wall that predates mankind.

Desai, visiting Thane, passes through a main gateway, then a maze of courts, lanes, stairs, trees, gardens, memorial plaques, statues and buildings with Gothic arches and Russko spires that are different in the lower gravity. Chimes from a belfry sound martial, not academic, but that reflects Aenean history.

He goes "...past Rybnikov Laboratories, behind Pickens Library, across Adzel Square to Borglund Hall..."
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 121.

We recognize at least some of these names.

From Tatiana's kitchenette, above stone dragons, they have:

"...an unparalleled view across quads, halls, towers, battlements, down and onto Nova Roma, the River Flone and its belt of green, the ocherous wilderness beyond." (p. 127)