Poul Anderson Appreciation: Places Visited In The Patrician System

Thursday 4 February 2021

Places Visited In The Patrician System

According to information imparted in a recent combox, Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire is an expansion of a shorter narrative conceived as the premise of a computer game that did not come to be. The setting of the game would have been a planetary system incorporating multiple locations. In any given game, a player would have entered some but probably not all of these locations just as anyone touring through Europe enters some but probably not all of its capital cities and certainly not all of its places of interest. And what happens in the novel is precisely that the characters mention more places than they visit.

Places Visited

On Imhotep

Olga's Landing old quarter, including the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle

a single continental forest like the Land of Trees Beyond

Toborkozan

sea between the northern continent and the Larboard and Starboard Islands

Naval HQ in the Pyramid in Olga's Landing new quarter

On Daedalus

the capital city, Aurea

Ju Shao's inn perched on a cliff with an infinite view

a prosperous businessman's house in Aurea

Targovi's van parked in the outback

Olaf Magnusson's home in a terraformed tract facing primeval Daedalus

the veterans' colony at Paz de la Frontera

the Highroad River

the Cynthian community of Lulach (also here and here)

Zacharia, an island in the Phosphoric Ocean

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

Here I will do what I should have done earlier, and quote exactly what Anderson had written to me about the origins of THE GAME OF EMPIRE. From a letter dated "Summer Solstice 1985,"
Anderson wrote, replying to a letter in which I discussed GAME: "In fact, originally it was supposed to be only a novella, part of a package meant to include a role-playing game based on the Flandry stories. When that fell through, I just went ahead and let the yarn proceed however it wanted to."

I was interested to rediscover that at one time there was some interest in developing a role playing game based on the Flandry STORIES in general, not just THE GAME OF EMPIRE.

Ad astra! Sean; 4 February 2021 at 15:27
paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...: Sean,

That is very helpful information.

When Anderson was asked to contribute to a role-playing game and also to a juvenile anthology, this resulted in interesting additions to the Technic History.

Paul.; 4 February 2021 at 16:59
Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

Thanks! And I agree, these chance written stories turned out to be unexpectedly important additions to the Technic series.

One thing about THE GAME OF EMPIRE has long niggled at me, tho! Why don't we see Chives in that story? Or at least some explanation for that omission. We know from A STONE IN HEAVEN that he was aging and no longer quite as healthy as he used to be. So, did Chives die some time in the five or six years between STONE and GAME? Or even retire at last to Shalmu? I wish I had thought of asking Anderson about that in the letter he was replying to.

Ad astra! Sean; 4 February 2021 at 17:30
paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...: Sean,

I think we should infer that Chives has quietly died.

Paul.; 4 February 2021 at 18:15
Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

That is probably the simplest reason for why we see nothing about Chives in GAME. Or, if Had thought of asking Anderson, he might well have exclaimed "Why didn't I think of that?!"

Ad astra! Sean; 4 February 2021 at 19:37