Wednesday 8 June 2016

Quotations

Hawaii
The Quotable Time Patrol 
The Quotable Time Patrol II
The Quotable Time Patrol III
Weather And Seasons
Light

The first four of these links refer to the idea of a large format, illustrated collection of quotations from Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. The fifth and sixth could be the starting point for a similar collection of passages from Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys Tetralogy. The Tetralogy could be retold not as a story of human beings and their Gods but simply as an account of natural beauty, weather and seasons, e.g.:

"Clouds had risen on the rim of Ocean and a vast sunset filled the west, layered flame and molten gold, smoky purple slowly spreading as night moved out of the east. The moon lifted enormous above trees as black as the battlements close by. Heaven overhead preserved for a while a greenish clarity. Across it winged a flight of cormorants, homeward bound to the skerries outside Ys. Waves and the river went hush-hush-hush. Wind had laid down to rest in the cool."
-Chapter XXIII, section 5, p. 463.

"Sunset smouldered among the ragged dark clouds. For a while it reddened wave-crests, to bridge the waste between worldedge and Brennilis, but Ocean kept shattering the work. Then it died out and the west deepened from ice-green towards purple and thence black. Eastward the waves took a sheen more pale, also broken and fugitive..."
-Chapter XXIV, section 4, p. 479.

I could continue to quote. I advise Anderson fans to reread works like The King Of Ys in order to savor such passages rather than skip past them to get to the action.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree with you in urging readers to slow down, take the time time to APPRECIATE how Poul Anderson describes backgrounds and natural scenes. Alas, we live in an impatient age intolerant of such leisurely appreciating of how a writer works. I've seen readers complaining of how Tolkien and Anderson spent too much time on the backgrounds of their works. Darn!!!

Sean