Poul Anderson Appreciation: Credit Cards

Monday 14 January 2019

Credit Cards

"Many of the bodies behind the lines had bolts in them, rather than the bigger wounds the heads of the pikes made; the vanes that guided the bolts were mostly cut from pre-Change credit cards, though thin varnished leather was increasingly used as the plastic aged and crumbled."
-SM Stirling, The Sky-Blue Wolves (New York, 2018), CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 120.

Not only have the credit cards changed their use but now they are aging and crumbling so that one more link with the pre-Change past is being lost. This use of credit cards as vanes for bolts is like an update of Poul Anderson's heavily ironical use of an old place called BANK as a stable. And all such sf makes us ask: how long will our civilization last and how much of it will be remembered?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

Yes, I remember how often, in the Emberverse books, arrow and bolt vanes were made from pre-Change credit cards. And how arrowheads were made from the plentiful supplies found of stainless steel spoons.

I would expect post-Change museums, libraries, collections, etc., to preserve samples of pre-Change credit card, tableware, and even Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski's old steel pre-Change desk, in the museum at Mt. Angel.

Sean; 15 January 2019 at 03:44