Sunday 24 February 2019

Roosevelt And The Morlocks

(Dig that cover.)

Here is another obscure sequence of literary allusions:

Poul Anderson mentions Theodore Roosevelt in the Foreword to There Will Be Time;

in that novel, one mutant time traveler gives the time travel idea to a young English writer (unnamed, like the private investigator in "Time Patrol") and another gives the idea of the Maurai Federation to Robert Anderson who passes it to Poul Anderson;

HG Wells' Time Traveler finds Morlocks and Eloi in 802,701 AD;

a trade unionist in a contemporary novel be Wells calls British workers "...the Morlocks. Coming up." (see here);

SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies describes English refugees from the London slums as "...proto-Morlocks..." and features Theodore Roosevelt.

(You didn't think I'd get back to Roosevelt but I did.)

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It was ingenious, the way you managed to work in Theodore Roosevelt. I would like TR better if hadn't gotten so many bad ideas buzzing in his mind like bees. Nationalizing and making membership compulsory in the Boy/Girl Scouts???? Bleah!

And I still remember how UNEASY Anderson's "introduction" to THERE WILL BE TIME made me. For YEARS I kept an eye open to see if events in the real would become more and more like what THERE WILL BE TIME said history would become. Was I being too naive and gullible? I hope not!

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: that's a mark of really good writing -- it haunts the mind beyond the book.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

THERE WILL BE TIME and its blasted Introduction sure did, with MY mind! And really good writing does haunts the mind, I agree.

Many passages in others of Anderson's works "haunted" me in less uneasy ways, such as the opening paragraphs of A CIRCUS OF HELLS and WE CLAIM THESE STARS. And the description of Admiralty Center in Chapter VI of the latter work.

Sean