Julian May's capital city of the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu bears comparison with Poul Anderson's Admiralty Center and Archopolis.
May's Concord (Diamond Mask, 7):
is beside Old Concord, New Hampshire;
spreads across the Merrimack River valley;
holds many new offices in its enormous underground "Ant's Nest," carved out of the rock;
is served by officials and workers commuting through "...a maze of high-speed subways..." (p. 118) from villages in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine;
houses its high level bureaucrats, including the First Magnate, in its parklands.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
My first reaction was to think Concord, capital of the small state of New Hampshire, quite implausible as the capital of the Human Polity of Earth in the Galactic Milieu. But mention of the massive expanding of the city plus the underground "Ant's Nest" allayed my skepticism. And the Ant's Nest reminded me as well of the caverns and chambers excavated under Admiralty Center in Anderson's Terran Empire stories. As we know Admiralty Center was a great city in its own right due to the bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, etc., needed for running the Imperial Navy.
Sean
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