Monday, 19 November 2018

Connecticut

Let us close today with sfnal references to Connecticut.

(i) Connecticut is in Poul Anderson's The Byworlder. See here.

(ii) We have referred to A Connecticut Yankee... as a precursor of Anderson's Time Patrol. See here.

(iii) Robert Heinlein's time travel novel, The Door Into Summer, opens:

"One winter shortly before the Six Weeks War, my tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, and I lived in an old farmhouse in Connecticut."
-Robert Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (London, 1970), One, p. 7.

(iv) Julian May's mega-series of time travel and Metapsychic Rebellion includes this passage:

"...a region of ancient pine trees and other evergreens called Pine Park. Until the Metapsychic Rebellion, the place was also one of my favorite walks, an undisturbed fragment of New England forest growing along the bank of the great Connecticut River."
-Julian May, Jack The Bodiless (London, 1992), 36, pp.423-424.

I think that some such references are homages to Mark Twain.

6 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I can't be absolutely sure, but I'm pretty sure the text you quoted was not set in the STATE of Connecticut, rather we see locations in New Hampshire. The Connecticut River forms the boundary between the states of New Hampshire (on the east bank) and Vermont (the west bank) for about 250 miles, north to south.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
I still find the reference relevant, though.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Well, OK. I was perhaps too literal minded! (Smiles)

Sean

Nicholas D. Rosen said...

Kaor, Paul!

If I recall correctly, the Anderson story “In the House of Sorrows” has a reference to Connecticut, or the Connecticut River, perhaps witha different spelling. The narrator, who identifies as a Marklander (Markland was a term used by the Greenland Norse to describe the more southerly area of the part of the North American continent that they explored) is a mercenary in Europe and the Near East, in a timeline where the Jews were wiped out and Christianity didn’t happen.

Best Regards,
Nicholas

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Nicholas,
The Jews did not return from Babylon, an entirely plausible historical speculation, also alluded to in "Brave To Be A King."
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And that extinction/disappearance/absorbtion of the Jews into their pagan neighbors had many bad consequences, as Poul Anderson made clear in both "The House of Sorrows" and "Delenda Est." One being the suggestion that meant the human race would never develop a true science or break out of an endlessly cyclical rise and fall of civilizations and empires. E.g., people would still believe in sorcery and building ziggurats now and into the future.

Sean