Wednesday 14 July 2021

Gale-Blown Leaves

Starfarers, 36.

When the Tahirian whom the Envoy crew call "Colin" has explained about plasmoids:

"However academic the statement, Colin's body shivered in ens seat, the fur stood stiff, the mane tossed like gale-blown leaves, a brimstone reek gusted out.
"Kilbirnie nodded, her neck as stiff as her mouth. 'Simple bad luck. And the unknown, which we can't ever provide against.'" (p. 333)
 
We notice:
 
that "en" is not a Tahirian word but a new English pronoun for Tahirians coined by the crew;
 
alien body language;
 
the evocation of several of the senses;
 
the wind ("gale..."), this time not as a pathetic fallacy but as an analogy;
 
the connotations of "brimstone" (Brent has already described the black hole as a "'...hole into hell...'" (34, p. 320));
 
the acknowledgment of the unknown and of the impossibility of providing against it.

All of Anderson is here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And that use of "en" as a pronoun suitable for Tahirians reminded me of Anderson doing the same for the tri-bodied Didonians we see in THE REBEL WORLDS, coining terms like "heesh."

Ad astra! Sean