"When you, Grandfather, asked me to use in secret -
"- the data banks and computers at Luna Astrocenter, where she worked, he had given a typically cryptic reason." (p. 652)
This single sentence is interrupted by:
two dashes;
a change of paragraph;
a change from italics to standard script;
a change from first to third person;
a change from Coya's thoughts to a flashback that becomes an infodump.
Two pages later, reversing this process, the text returns from flashback/infodump to Coya's thoughts:
"Out of habit rather than logic, Coya called for this information and -
"- I found out that ten years earlier, David wanted to know what you, Grandfather, now did." (p. 654)
Van Rijn seeks a "'...dissolution to the riddle.'" (p. 651) He means a solution but maybe to solve a riddle is also to dissolve it?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Mention of those italics reminded me of how I like how Anderson used them to indicate the interior, unspoken thoughts of his characters. It helps to keep things sorted out and telling us what is what. Not all writers used italics like that, tho, which has sometimes led me to confusing interior thoughts with spoken dialogue.
I am glad Stirling also uses italics like this.
Ad astra! Sean
van Rijn's mutilations of Anglic are strategic!
Sean: that's who I learned it from.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, Old Nick's butchering of what was not yet the Emperor's Anglic had to be sometimes pre-calculated.
Re your use of italics, the disciple learned from the master! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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