Wednesday, 6 February 2019

Four Senses In "Low-Level"

Poul Anderson, Shield, VIII and IX.

VIII is action as Koskinen and Vivienne escape from the Crater, under cover of a Chinese attack, into "...the labyrinth called low-level." (p. 66)

In the opening paragraph of IX, they are in a low-level alley:

gloom;
trickling light;
dust and paper on the wind;
a pneumotube;
tangled power lines;
sky-glow;
growling;
pounding;
automatic machines and traffic;
cold air;
faint sulfur smells -

- four senses.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And we various other heroes/POV characters in Anderson's works escaping into different equivalents of Low Level, such as when Flandry sought out the local slums when he escaped the HQ of Biocontrol in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS. Flandry's reasoning was that he had a greater chance of becoming "anonymous" and finding the means he needed for buying black market antitoxin pills in a high crime area.

Sean