Seasonal Changes

We have noticed seasonal changes in Poul Anderson's historical fiction. Ian Fleming wrote short contemporary action thrillers without much reference to the seasons. However, Bond spends a year or so on a Japanese island:

"And so the days ran into weeks...

"Winter came and the Ama had to stay ashore and turn their hands to mending nets and boats and working on the smallholdings on the mountain side...

"Winter slid into spring and fishing began again..."
-Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (London, 1966), pp. 185, 189.

Paragraphs beginning with seasonal changes remind us of "Star of the Sea" and The King Of Ys.

Blogging allows complete freedom to approach our subject matter from any angle, however idiosyncratic - like an extended comparison of Poul Anderson with Ian Fleming. Books that we read in our formative years are part of us. For me, this includes Guardians Of Time, "The Game of Glory" and Fleming's James Bond books. Bond and SMERSH parallel Everard and the Neldorians and Flandry and the Merseians.

Here is another parallel:

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Brief Lives (New York, 1994) ends:

"It is going to be a beautiful day."

- and, on the last page of You Only Live Twice:

"...so far as James Bond was concerned, it was a beautiful day just like all the other days had been - without a cloud in the sky." (p. 190)

However, Neil Gaiman was born in November 1960 so I did not read him in my formative years!