CS Lewis wrote that only the first visit to another world is of interest to an imaginative reader. This section describes the first experience of space travel in Poul Anderson's Maurai History:
acceleration is heavy and violent;
free fall is like a half-awake dream by an open window in an early spring morning;
Earth gleams pure in blue and white;
Northern lowlands are green;
mountains seem sculptured;
rivers and lakes are quicksilver;
weather flows;
there is a red-gold sunset every ninety minutes;
stars crowd out darkness;
the Milky Way frostily lights Ronica's face;
so far, radio silence from Earth;
they set out to circumnavigate the Moon.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't agree with what C.S. Lewis said (of which yesterday was the anniversary of his death in 1963) said about visiting other worlds. I would have loved to have visited Dennitza, Aeneas, Hermes, Merseia, and many other planets in the Technic series more than once!
Very nice, the description of how Iern and Ronica experienced space, altho it would have been a nice touch to mention how some would feel NAUSEATED by their first experience of free fall.
Ad astra! Sean
Lewis is wrong; the first visit is interesting -in a specific way-. Subsequent visits are interesting, in -different- ways. Traveling across the Atlantic did not become uninteresting after Columbus, just different.
It's sort of like saying sex becomes uninteresting after the loss of virginity.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, you clarified more precisely why Lewis was wrong. And similar things can be said about the REREADING of interesting books. And I have!
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment