Times And Places

 

Starfarers.

(Posting delayed by a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. Watching superhero TV series. Robin, operating independently, stomps drug dealers and says "F--- Batman!" Outstanding.)

Chicago

Starfarers presents no year dates so we cite only chapter numbers. In 44, in Tenoya Lowtown, people occupy excavated remnants of Arakoum and, before that, Cago. In 48, Elya is built above layers of cities:

 

"...the whole way down to Chicago." (p. 454)

 

Tenoya:

 

to the west, a dusty, desolate plain;

 

to the east, a cultivated former lake bottom with pipes, processors and robots;

in the city, large buildings (former office blocks?) now filled with tenants, smaller dwellings made from wreckage, bulbous temple spires, a fortified garrison, dust and smoke.

Elya:

to the west, grassy plains, trees and large, wild, genetically engineered grazers;

to the east and north, a cultivated bottomland with robots tending biosynthetic plantations;

on the height between these two landscapes, one hundred thousand people in widely spread houses with gardens and groves, various places of business, Sanctuary and shrines surrounded by natural stone, plants and branching towers, other buildings mostly underground.