The Blue Theta

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars (London, 1994), 1.

Kyra Davis is in Erie-Ontario Integrate, a form of urbanization common to Anderson's Technic History:

scores of tricycles, including hers, weave between hundreds of pedestrians beneath a monorail and overhead flitters;

she wears a hapi coat;

pedestrians include a manual worker brotherhood member and green-clad Renewal believers;

she approaches the Blue Theta building which has azure and white walls, piers, arches, roofs, towers and a central spire crowned by the Greek letter;

within, there are mosaic pavements, fountains, genetically engineered gardens, a holo of a low-weight ballet, ten stories of arcades and a transparent roof showing sun, clouds and the Moon where, Kyra knows, Lunarians live;

outside is low-tech Low World whereas inside is high-tech High World.

As always in the opening pages of a futuristic sf novel, we are being introduced to a society which the author has had to conceptualize in detail before typing the first word of the text.