As Chee Lan flies by night from the landed spaceship to the city of Ardaig on Merseia, we appreciate similarities and dissimilarities to Earth:
campfires and songs of the troopers guarding the ship;
a large passing hovercraft;
snow-covered wilderness of hills and woods;
cultivated land with villages around towering castles - feudalism combined with industrialization?;
Ardaig on the coast, neither gleaming nor brawling;
yellow windows like fireflies amid phosphorescent paving;
a double, then triple, moonglade on the bay of the River Oiss;
she enters the Old Quarter where ice covers the turfed streets, a Merseian rides a horned gwydh and street signs bear "...colorful heraldic emblems...," (p. 332) instead of words.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I do recall mention of how, in "Day of Burning," the barons of the Wilwidh Ocean culture were able to handle the problems attending the rise of industrialism on Merseia sufficiently well that they did not lose power. That might seem odd to some, but not to me, because I would expect different people at different times to handle their problems wither more or less wisely.
And here we see, yet again, Anderson's puzzling and idiosyncratic use of "glade"!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But Mr Stirling recently explained "glade" as of Norse origin.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I am not satisfied that an Old Norse connection can truly be traced back to anything tied to Old or Middle English. I don't think even the Oxford English Dictionary claims that. All varieties of English seem to insist "glade" means ONLY an open space in a wooded area.
Ad astra! Sean
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