I left out Coya. Held defensively by Falkayn, she begs van Rijn to befriend Supermetals. Van Rijn watches his chief trade pioneer/troubletwister and his granddaughter standing together while the eyes of Chee Lan, Adzel and Hirharouk are on him. After a pregnant pause, he agrees. It is this coming together of these six characters in this way that seals the deal. We already knew the four merchants. We already knew Ythrians if not Hirharouk personally. Coya alone is new. A future history series grows by building on earlier instalments while also introducing new information in subsequent instalments. Coya will join the trader team between volumes and will play the important role of the mother of Juanita and Nicholas Falkayn in Mirkheim and unfortunately these are her only two appearances in the Technic History. Each character's significance is immensely greater than the handful of appearances that even the most prominent of them makes in this future history series.
Tomorrow will be New Year's Eve and a rest from posting although not from commenting.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And some characters are mentioned, but never, to my regret, seen. Such as Emperor Georgios, centuries later.
Happy New Year! Sean
Happy New Year, Paul, and thanks for keeping the bar open.
Happy New Year. No problem.
Paul - Hey, here's something you might want to read over and then review, as you do. ;)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TechnicHistory
Given the amount of Hollywood money chasing the "next big SF-verse," (Trek, Wars, Dune, Foundation, Barsoom, Potter, Tolkien, etc.) seems like rights to the Technic stories would be of interest ... lots of existing English-language IP, novels and stories with plenty of spectacle, flawed heroes (most definitely!), etc. ...
Presume the tv/film/video rights are held by the Anderson estate?
Granted, Hollywood can't even manage Rendezvous with Rama, which is about a cinematic as a Clarke novel gets, but still ...
Thank you.
Kaor, Dave!
And I wish Anderson's estate was more proactive about keeping his works in print!
It is baffling this lack of interest by film directors/producers in making accurate cinematic versions of Anderson's stories. See my article "Textual Crawl For Flandry Movies."
Peter Jackson's botching of Tolkien's great works still outrages me!!!
Happy New Year! Sean
Paul - Sure. Figure you or Sandra Miesel are best placed to do so. ;)
Sean - Well, yeah. I don't know if Greg and Astrid Anderson's children hold any of the rights or not, but seems like it's a pitch meeting waiting to be scheduled. John Scalzi, given his interest in taking a run at "classic" rewrites, could be the go-between, but he has plenty of irons on the fire as it is; speaking of which, Piper's "Fuzzy" stories and the TFH are just sitting there as well, for someone to pick up. ;)
Of course, so are With the Marines at Tarawa:
https://archive.org/details/WiththeMarinesatTarawa
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1999/april/marines-tarawa
and in the public domain...
I think Jackson's version of the LOTR trilogy, given the realities of the entertainment industry, was solid. The Hobbit trilogy was "spreading butter too thinly" and from what I've seen, the current mini-series is pretty much what it appears to be ... a financial instrument, nothing more, nothing less.
Kaor, Dave!
I certainly hope Mrs. Bear and her two children will take an active interest in managing Anderson's literary estate!
I agree some "telescoping" of a long story like that of LOTR was necessary, such as the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil chapters being omitted from the films. But Jackson intruded so much non-canonical new material that it made his LOTR films a disappointment. And his HOBBIT movies are too ghastly for words. I agree in dismissing the "Rings of Power" stuff.
Happy New Year! Sean
Same to you, Sean.
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