Saturday 13 May 2017

Market Places

I have mentioned Lancaster Market Square here (see image). Today I strolled through and bought some samosas. We like reading about markets in exotic locations. In the market square of Olga's Landing on the planet Imhotep, booths sell:

hinterland fruits and grains;
ironware from local smithies;
velvyl fabric and miniature computers of the inner Empire;
jewels, skins and carvings from a hundred other planets;
sleazy Terran vidplays;
recordings of a vaz-Siravo dance beneath the Seas of Yang and Yin;
chemical rifles;
military stunners;
illegal blasters from a wrecked Merseian spaceship;
hot savory food.

And there is music in a couple of taverns. All of this makes Sanah's samosas in Lancaster seem very tame and parochial.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, I too would enjoy rereading that part of Chapter 1 describing the market square of the old quarter of Olga's Landing.

It seems to me that before the Empire resettled the surviving Tigeries and Sea People on Imhotep, that planet had only a very modest human colony--because of the higher gravity and due to only the uplands having an atmosphere humans could breathe. Resettling of the Starkadians necessarily led to a major expansion of the human colony in the uplands, due to the administrators, technicians, scientists, etc., who came to assist in them settling the lowlands and seas.

Sean