Thursday 10 May 2018

Jim Ching's Aircar

Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 49-67.

"At night, out above the ocean in my car, I'd look upward and be ripped apart by longing." (p. 51)

Flying to visit Betty Riefenstahl, Jim looks in the canopy of a bus and sees passengers from all over Earth and beyond. (pp. 56-57)

"What I had in mind was a flit over the ocean..." (p. 59)

He wants maybe to swim off Baja, then eat outsystem food.

"I set my car down on the strip before [Adzel's] hut." (p. 60)

In the Solar Commonwealth, a teenager owns an aircar and can fly anywhere on Earth. We wish we were there.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would certainly like to live in either Nicholas van Rijn's time or the lifetime of Dominic Flandry!

I recall how Clemens von Metternich once said he should have been born in the 20th century. So such notions can be found at different times with different persons.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Yup, that would be interesting.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

And what role might Metternich have played in the 20th century if he had been born around, say, 1914?

Sean