-Poul Anderon, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 177.
"...the Pacific Ocean. Sheening and billowing under a full Luna, those waters gave a sense of ancient forces still within this planet that man had so oedipally made his own, still biding their time."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 50.
…6The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech." 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.…
-copied from here.
"'Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis.' They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away."
-CS Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), p. 718.
And one of SM Stirling's characters compares the Change to the Curse of Babel.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember the bit you quoted from Chapter 17 of ENSIGN FLANDRY. The Tigery Dragoika was troubled because it seemed as tho human beings could reach thru time into the past itself. And I like Flandry's reply: "I often wonder if that may not be so, Dragoika. But what can we do? Our course was set for us ages agone, before ever we left our home world, and there is no turning back." A reply which Dragoika accepted, saying: "Then...you fare bravely." She straightened in her armor. "I may do no less."
Some of the annotations I found for Genesis 11.6-8 declare the story of the Tower of Babel and the confusing of languages stemmed from the post Flood peoples refusing to go forth, multiply, and found new nations.
And these quotations reminded me of what I read in Chapter XIV of A CIRCUS OF HELLS as Djana was being remolded by Ydwyr the Seeker into a potential Merseian agent: "For that they have sinned beyond redemption, the sin that may not be forgiven, which is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, no more are they My people. Behold, I cast them from Me: and I will raise against them a new people under a new sun; and their name shall be Strength. Open now the book of the seven thunders."
Plainly, Ydwyr studied carefully the Scriptures of the religion most prevalent among human beings, to use ideas and metaphors Djana would be familiar with as a Christian. The idea of the book of the seven thunders was taken from Revelation 10.1-11.
Sean
Post a Comment