Monday 18 January 2021

High Heaven And Harty Or Hardy

The Man Who Counts, XVII.

"Dark purplish waters curled in white feathers, beneath a high heaven where clouds ran like playful mountains, tinted rosy by the sun." (p. 252)

We appreciate this sentence because:

its concrete visual details convey the sense of a real place on a planet in the Technic History;

"...high heaven..." reminds us of "High is heaven and holy." (See here.)

Wace refers to an old American folk song called "...John Harty...'" (p. 255) whereas googling discloses a song called "John Hardy."

Meanwhile, the Flock fleet proceeds against the Fleet.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I checked this part of THE MAN WHO COUNTS, using the Gregg Press copy of the edition I have, and it too has "Harty," not "Hardy." Either this was a mistake by Anderson, or a printer's error.

This part of Chapter XVII is curious, here we see Wace and Old Nick pausing to have a discussion about folk songs and music. E.g., van Rijn says: "Folk songs is all right if you should want to play you are Folk in great big capitals," snorted van Rijn. "I stick with Mozart, by damn." And in the next paragraph he goes on to wistfully say he had hoped to understand Johan Sebastian Bach before he died.

Not many SF writers would have their characters pausing in the middle of a desperate battle for that kind of cultured discussion!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Before that, they discuss which saint to invoke during a battle.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I remember you talking about that. Because it apparently struck you as something odd to do in the middle of combat.

Ad astra! Sean