Clouds

Poul Anderson has Cloud People passing through Beringia in 13,212 BC in the Time Patrol timeline whereas SM Stirling has Cloud Mountain People on Venus in 1988 AD of an alternative timeline. There is probably no direct connection. I had to check to find that one People has a Cloud Mountain whereas the other just has a Cloud.

In Stirling's The Sky People (New York, 2006), a priest inciting a riot against Terrans photographing in a temple screeches:

"'Look!...It is true what the other one said! The imiAmerican steal away the image of your God!'" (p. 98)

Neither then nor later (at least as far as p. 129) do Marc or his companions question the use of the phrase, "...the other one...," although this is a clear clue to treachery by a fellow Terran. However, I might not have spotted the clue had the reader not already received privileged information about the presence of a spy in the Allied ranks.

This post addresses clouds both literal and metaphorical.

At present, I am following three fictional narratives:

SM Stirling's The Lords of Creation series;
the Smallville TV series, where the characters have just celebrated Thanksgiving;
Stieg Larsson's Trilogy, where we have just had an almost literal resurrection by the title character.

As I remarked in a recent post, an embarrassment of riches. I might read some of Larsson's Volume III this evening and watch more Smallville later but I trust that readers of this blog are being kept supplied with sufficiently interesting observations on Anderson's, and now Stirling's, works - and also, I hope, reading or rereading the works in question.