Friday 18 May 2018

Cities


"Adrian detested cities, as a general rule; the sheer crowding grated on his nerves, the smells were bad, and the necessity for pulling in his senses made him feel muffled and thick and half-blind. [San Francisco] was...less bad than most."
-SM Stirling, A Taint In The Blood (New York, 2011), CHAPTER SIX, p. 94.

This homo sapiens nocturnus response to cities reminded me of an Elf's response to New York in Poul Anderson's "Interloper." See City And Field.

Meanwhile, I am eating breakfast in the city of Lancaster where I have places to go and things to do.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And when Adrian had to travel by plane he preferred to rent a private jet because he simply would not be able to ENDURE the crowding in an ordinary passenger plane.

Also, a Shadowspawn raised to be a psychopath and trained to regard ordinary humans as mere prey animals would ENJOY the intoxicating "odors" of all those prey beasts to be found in cities.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Not necessarily. The crowding would still get on their nerves eventually, and the associated smells would be a trial.

Shadowspawn are simply less gregarious than human beings; as alpha-alpha predators, they evolved needing enormous territories and having smaller "instinctive" social units than we do.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

Thanks for correcting me. I was going by how Adrienne Breze and her hencespawn, Tokairin Michiko, didn't seem to mind cities.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

They don't mind -visiting- them, but note that their homes give them a lot of space. Even the Breze apartment in San Francisco is huge and at the top of a very tall building.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

I recall how COMMODIOUS were the residences of the Shadowspawn. And of how truly HUGE the Breze "apartment" in San Francisco was.

Sean