"...Cyrus the Great King rode past with his chief courtiers Kobold, Croesus, and Harpagus, and the pride and pomp and priesthood of Persia followed."
-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 55-112 AT p. 110.
"......the pride and pomp and power of the Mughals was the wonder of the world..."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Ten, p. 168.
A phrase in ...Lancers rang a bell although it turns out not to be identical.
Dare I say that I prefer Stirling's description of multi-ethnic Indian street life in ...Lancers to Kipling's in Kim? For page after page, Athelstane King and his companions ride through the outskirts and into the center of Old Delhi where Chandi Chowk, the Square of Silver Moonlight:
"...was a shoving, chattering mass of folk on foot, riders or rickshaws, oxcarts..." (ibid.)
Anderson's description of a multi-species market on an extra-solar planet in The Game Of Empire is comparable.
When Stirling refers to "...the First Men and the Tree of Life...," (p. 164) I think that that is a homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Gods Of Mars?
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I remember that bit from page 164 of the paperback edition of THE PESHAWAR LANCERS: "...a man from one of the weird theocratic city states on the west coast of America earnestly talking about the First Men and the Tree of Life to a Jain,..." I remember thinking how it reminded me of Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom stories. And it puzzled me! Did Stirling want us to think of Burroughs and to speculate he survived the Fall to found a new religion which became prevalent among the city states of what was once the west coast of the US?
Sean
Sean,
Who can tell? Your imagination is running ahead of mine on this occasion, though!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Ha! I rather hope Stirling does write another book set in THE PESHAWAR LANCERS timeline, despite me reading somewhere he said that every thing he wanted to say about that alternate universe had been said.
Sean
Sorry I didn't catch that at the time. Explanation: It's Burroughs, but also Theosophy, by which Burroughs was influenced (or from which at least he took some tropes).
Sorry I didn't catch that at the time. Explanation: It's Burroughs, but also Theosophy, by which Burroughs was influenced (or from which at least he took some tropes).
Mr Stirling,
Thank you.
Paul.
(I deleted a reply because of a miss-spelling.)
Dear Mr. Stirling,
So I was right to think of Edgar Rice Burroughs! But I missed the Theosophy bit.
And I'm looking forward to reading your soon to be published PRINCE OF OUTCASTS.
Sean M. Brooks
Post a Comment