Basil Donovan is drunk in the Golden Planet - yet another colorful inn visited by a Poul Anderson character.
Donovan is an earl on the planet Ansa.
"In Mirkheim, we learn that Nicholas van Rijn likes onion soup a la Ansa, in "Sargasso of Lost Starships," we see the planet Ansa just after it had been forcibly annexed by the recently founded Terran Empire and, in The People Of The Wind, we learn that an Imperial cruiser is called Ansa."
-copied from Faces Of War.
He sees a well-dressed Terran bossing Ansan workmen clearing wreckage after a space bombardment - a clear sign that Ansa has just been incorporated by the Terran Empire. See also here.
The customers of the inn include some Shalmuans - neighbors as interstellar distances go.
Donovan's companion, Wocha, is a Donarrian.
I hope to demonstrate that this early story is well integrated into Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.
The Ansa were gods.
1 comment:
Hi, Paul!
Ha! This wonderfully lurid and colorful cover was used for the PLANET STORIES printing of "Sargasso of Lost Starships," where it first appeared. The story is set about a century after the Empire was founded, during the reign of Manuel II, who might well be the Manuel the Wise mentioned by Aycharaych in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
And the mention of Shalmuans again shows the tendency of members of that race to go wandering from their home world as ordinary space hands.
Sean
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