Tuesday 2 February 2021

Maps II

What I call the two "Admiral Flandry" novels are A Stone In Heaven and The Game Of Empire. As we know, Flandry features in three of the twenty-three chapters of the latter. The two works have something else in common, at least if we consider the Ace Books edition of the former. Each contains visual aids although of different kinds.

The back cover blurb of A Stone In Heaven accurately describes it as "MASSIVELY ILLUSTRATED." Not only are the illustrations faithful to the text. They also become almost sequential in their accompaniment of the narrative.

In The Game Of Empire, the visual aids are maps of:

the Patrician System;
the planet, Imhotep;
the planet, Daedalus;
the Highroad River on Daedalus;
the island of Zacharia on Daedalus.


The first couple of times I read the novel, I wrongly ignored the maps. The opening paragraph of CHAPTER TWO  refers to the capital of Daedalus, Aurea, the Highroad River and the Phosphoric Ocean. Find them on the maps.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I appreciated the illustrations for the Ace Books edition of A STONE IN HEAVEN for two reasons: their fidelity to the text and the carefully appropriate locations for those illustrations.

if there is ever a COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON, I hope the volume containing A STONE IN HEAVEN will include at least some of the Ace Books illustrations!

Ad astra! Sean