Thursday, 28 January 2016

Crossovers

(Custer's Last Stand.)

As far as I can see at present, the Draka anthology, Drakas!, incorporates "crossovers," or meetings, between the Draka and five individual characters who had some, real or fictional, existence before the anthology was published:

General Custer;
Gordon of Khartoum;
Anson MacDonald/Robert Heinlein;
Anne Marie Talbott writes a story in which she meets two Draka (I think);
John Barnes' cross-time traveler, Mark Strang.

That is quite a list. There are at least two ways that Poul Anderson's characters could have encountered the Draka:

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol, finding himself in the Domination timeline, would travel pastward to delete that timeline;

Draka cross-time explorers might have found their way into the Old Phoenix but would then learn that they were allowed to recuperate there briefly but not to gain any knowledge that they could use to further their cause back in their own timeline.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I remember from years back, imagining the adolescent Eric von Shrakenberg's Circassian wench in the Old Phoenix, quietly sipping a beer, and listening to stories from other worlds and other kinds of lives, things which had been beyond her ken.

Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I dunno, while I can easily imagine Manuel Argos, Dominic Flandry, as well as Nicholas van Rijn (who we know DID visit the "Old Phoenix") going there, I can't really see any of the Draka ever being allowed to visit that multiversal inn. The persons I listed were all reasonably decent persons, not monsters like the Draka. I can see an exception being made for CONFLICTED Draka like Eric von Shrakenberg, however.

Sean