"A Merseian base here, in the buffer region, outflanking us at Catawrayannis...."
-Poul Anderson, "A Message in Secret" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 341-397 AT p. 344.
Well, no. The Catawrayannis that we know is a city on the planet, Llynathawyr, in Sector Alpha Crucis on the opposite side of the Terran Empire. Poul Anderson's galactographical references are usually consistent.
Later, Flandry says that the commandant at Catawrayannis Base will have to send a task force to Altai. But naval HQ in Sector Alpha Crucis is at Ifri whereas Llynathawyr is the seat of civil government.
However, there can be more than one place with the same name. Cynthians discovered Llynathawyr, named it and the city that they built, then sold them to the Terran Empire. Another Cynthian crew must have gone out towards Betelgeuse and founded a Catawrayannis out that way.
"Difficult things have simple explanations. Discuss," as a school English teacher once told me.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That does rationalizes a possibly worrisome contradiction in "A Message in Secret." I was reminded of how the English colonists who settled the 13 original colonies in America repeated over and over many of the same names for cities and locations originally in England. MA alone has an Essex county and another Boston, copied from England!
Ad astra! Sean
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