In one part of SM Stirling's High Kingdom of Montival, a guest room contains The Histories (Tolkien) whereas, in another part, it would be the Book of Mormon. What foundation document would we place in a guest room? Not the Foundation Trilogy! - or even I, Robot, better though that is.
Candidate Documents
Robert Heinlein's The Past Through Tomorrow
Time Patrol
Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate
None of these works is as voluminous as Tolkien's Middle Earth History but they are hard sf equivalents, nevertheless - series set in detailed fictional worlds.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I too have seen Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms here in the US. But not that your hotel also offers Shakespeare. But that would be natural enough in STRATFORD!(Smiles)
Yes, I recall that guest room in one of the settlements of the Dunedain Rangers, where the works of Tolkien could be found. Along with commentaries by Astrid Larsson Loring!
I'm starting to read BEREN AND LUTHIEN, which Christopher Tolkien assembled from his father's papers. JRR Tolkien had great difficulty FINISHING his works--due to his obsessive perfectionism. We are lucky he published THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Because of criticisms on how he handled THE SILMARILLION material, Christopher Tolkien was careful to stress in THE CHILDREN OF HURIN how minimally he inserted material not written by his father (I think a single "bridging" paragraph). Not all will like CHILDREN, because of how fierce, grim, and even savage that book is, but I did!
I'm afraid hard science fiction like Asimov's FOUNDATION TRILOGY or Anderson's TIME PATROL and THE EARTHBOOK OF STORMGATE almost certainly would not be popular in Montival. Because they reflected a kind of technology and POV which no longer seemed PRACTICAL in the post-Change world. I remember one school child, Rudi perhaps, who found things like rockets and US presidents BORING. We do see Stirling quoting or paraphrasing the opening paragraph of THE BROKEN SWORD after Rudi and his friends reached Norrheim.
Does anybody still read hard SF anywhere in the post-Change world? Was any effort made to collect and preserve the works of Anderson, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Niven, Norton, Pournelle, and other pre-Change writers of SF?
Sean
Sean,
The Complete Shakespeare is offered on the DESERT ISLAND DISCS radio program, not in our hotel!
Paul.
Sean,
Good questions.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Oops! I misunderstood your first paragraph. Drat!
And I have wondered what post-Change readers would make of books like ENSIGN FLANDRY or THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE.
Sean
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