Monday, 13 July 2020

Only The Phoenix Arises...

A Poul Anderson fan reading Neil Gaiman must be reminded of Anderson.

"Only the phoenix arises and does not descend..." (see here) recalls the Old Phoenix.

Although Gaiman's The Sandman and Anderson's Time Patrol series do not apply the same concept of time, there are similarities in the way that time is described:

"Time at the edge of the dreaming is softer than elsewhere, and here in the soft places (scroll down) it loops and whorls on itself. In the soft places where the border between dreams and reality is eroded, or has not yet formed...
"Time. It's like throwing a stone into a pool. It casts ripples."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables & Reflections (New York, I cannot find a publication date), p. 141, panels 1-2.

"'An incipient causal loop is always dangerous, you know. It can set up a resonance, and the changes of history that that produces can multiply catastrophically.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 449.

"...it was all one swirl on a river that swept from the peaceful prehuman landscape where he had been to the unimaginable Danellian future."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Time Patrol, pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.

"History. The stream of events, great and small, running from cavemen to the Danellians. But what about the eddies, the bubbles, the insignificant little individuals and happenings that are also soon forgotten, whose being or nonbeing makes no difference to the course of the stream?"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART ONE, 1902 A. D., p. 120.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But I don't recall any PARTICULAR stress placed on the name of the Old Phoenix Inn in either of the two Old Phoenix stories or the interludes featuring that nultiversal inn
in A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST.

Ad astra! Sean