-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xii, p. 102.
"The feathered demons - or were they pagan gods? - who ate hearts and drank blood made her shiver in spite of herself."
-Harry Turtledove, "The Man Who Came Late" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Eds., Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 33-60 AT p. 47.
In Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, Holger smokes a pipe (and steals a trick from Mark Twain). In "The Man Who Came Late," he has stopped smoking because doctors, in a world where doctors know what they are talking about, say that it shortens life.
Holger says:
"'I spent all those years wandering from one world to the next, or else in some of the places between them all.'"
-Turtledove, op. cit., p. 53.
Later, he confirms that the places between the worlds include the Old Phoenix but we would like to see some more such places.
When Holger is asked whether his stories are truth or yarns, he replies:
"'Truth... Oh, sometimes neatened up a bit for the sake of the story, and maybe the way I remember it now isn't exactly the way it happened then...'" (p. 47)
When Cluracan is asked whether the story that he has told in the Inn of the Worlds' End is the truth, he replies:
"All of it except the sword-fight with the palace guard, which I threw in to add verisimilitude, excitement, and local color to an otherwise bald and insipid narrative.
"And, ohh, I suppose there might have been a few other details and incidents I added or omitted, as seemed necessary to ensure the tale flowed properly."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 66, panels 2-3.
Holger says of the Old Phoenix:
"'It's one of those places between the worlds that I was talking about. It doesn't belong to any of them...'" (p. 58)
The Landlady says of the Worlds' End:
"This is a free house. It is no part of any kingdom or empire." (p. 141, panel 1)
We have seen one place between the worlds and another at their ends. The Worlds' End tavern:
"...is being continually created; after all, worlds are ending all the time." (p. 146, panel 2)
We have passed from Anderson through Turtledove to Gaiman but it is all one multiverse.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I will concede that Turtledove's "The Man Who Came Late" is one of the better stories written in honor of Poul Anderson for MULTIVERSE. But I like even better Stirling's "A Slip In Time." And I hope a second MULTIVERSE will be compiled.
And we see mention of the grim, hideous gods of the Aztecs in Stirling's CONQUISTADOR. To say nothing of works of Anderson showing human sacrifices in HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA. And religious explanations for the cannibalism seen on Lokon in "The Sharing of Flesh" were discussed in that story.
Ad astra! Sean
Ceremonial cannibalism was also fairly common in Mesoamerica, and may have been nutritionally important in Tenochtitlán/Mexico City.
When the Pyramid of the Left-Handed Hummingbird (the Templo Mayor) was dedicated a generation before Cortez arrived, about 20,000 sacrifices were made in the course of about a month.
Imagine the logistics of getting rid of that many bodies. According to the chronicles, the great lake the city was built on turned brown and stank for the rest of the following year.
(The giant image of the war-god Huitzilopochtli was made of amaranth seeds glued together with a mixture of honey and human blood, and was ceremonially broken apart and eaten by the populace once a year. Nice people.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
NOT nice people, these Aztecs! And, yes, it made a kind of grisly sense to eat the bodies of the people sacrificed to the Aztec gods. Quickest way of disposing of the corpses!
Ad astra! Sean
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