"Avalon rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds..."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT p. 452.
I appreciated this withdrawal of perspectives. The characters have taken to the air. Now the omniscient narrator takes us into space to contemplate a rotating planet. Two sentences later, still within the opening paragraph of Chapter II, the perspective changes yet again. We are now within the mind of Daniel Holm as he wonders about the effects on his organism of that rapid planetary rotation.
Up, out and within: Anderson effortlessly takes us to every part of his imagined world.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Even if the Holms and other humans had lived for centuries on Avalon, that still might not be enough time to wholly adapt to a planet with a far shorter rotation period than Terra's. Homo sapiens had evolved and lived for millions of years HERE, on Earth, not on other planets.
Sean
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