Poul Anderson's prose is usually clear but I am drowning in double negatives here:
"The builders were not unlike Shenna. Falkayn could not prove from his relics that they were not as close as Mongoloid is to Negroid on Earth. In their wordless language, these pictures said otherwise.
"It was not mere topological difference." (XXIII, p. 572)
There are four "not"s, one "un-" and one "otherwise" in there.
In a ruined building, Chee Lan finds murals depicting kinds and stages of intelligent life on Dathyna. Script would be unintelligible. Pictures show what the Dathynans did but not what they said. Chee learns a lot, all of it at odds with the modern Shenna, the barbarians in the ruins.
(Michael Moorcock created many evocative titles, including Breakfast In The Ruins - a beginning in an ending.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The new Shennna of Dathyna were not only "barbarians in the ruins," they were also barbarians with space ships! A deadly combination, as Earth would discover during the Time of Troubles, when the Gorzuni sacked the home world of mankind.
Sean
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