Thursday 9 May 2019

A Hunter Beast Screamed

"The Master Key," see here.

When the Earthmen set off to pursue the escaped Lugals:

"Somewhere a hunter beast screamed." (p. 311)

- appropriately.

That reminded me of a similar sentence in Starfarers so I searched the blog for "a carnivore screamed" and found two posts. See here.

Very occasionally, a phrase in one Anderson work echoes a phrase in another. When this happens, it is instructive to locate the previous phrase and to compare the contexts. A screaming carnivore in the background is mentioned only if it is in some way significant to events in the foreground.

Sometimes we summarize millennia of history while at other times we focus on a single phrase but we will not run out of things to say about Poul Anderson's works.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I looked up the example you cite of the screaming hunter beast and its context in STARFARERS. Yes, it was a neat, deft way by Anderson to indicate not all was well in the Seladorian Earth of ten thousand years from now.

Sean