Introducing Hugh McCormac

Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 367-520, CHAPTER ONE.

A Circus of Hells ends with Dominic Flandry's point of view (pov). The Rebel Worlds begins with an unentitled prologue narrated from a composite Didonian pov which the reader does not understand yet. CHAPTER ONE is Admiral Hugh McCormac's pov. Flandry will return in TWO.

McCormac is imprisoned in an artificial satellite orbiting a planet called Llynathawr where there is a city called Catawrayannis. If we have read The Technic Civilization Saga consecutively, then we might remember that Catawrayannis was where Jim Ching wound up.

McCormac remembers a conversation with a quadrupedal Wodenite and is rescued by a mostly human band that also includes a quadrupedal Donarrian. Again, if we have read the Saga in order, then we have encountered both species before. In fact, our first Wodenite, Adzel, was a friend of Jim Ching.

One of McCormac's human rescuers:

"...had not lost the hit of Aeneas." (p. 377)

"...hit..." was obviously an error but I needed to check what the original would have been:

"He had not lost the lilt of Aeneas."

-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds (London, 1973), I, p. 12.

Before speaking, this guy had "...trod forth." (ibid.) "Tread" is a favourite verb of Anderson's.

Before his rescue, McCormac had reminisced about Aeneas:

rusty, tawny;

towers of Windhome;

banners;

coloured crags and cliffs;

Ilian Shelf;

Antonine Seabed;

Wildfoss cataracts;

Kathryn...

We might remember that Peter Berg in "The Problem of Pain" was from Aeneas. If we remember just some of these details, then we appreciate a future historical background.