After explaining the Solar Commonwealth, Hloch introduces a story set on Earth during the Commonwealth period and even gives his Avalonian Ythrian readers a few rare glimpses of Terrestrial domestic life in the Ching and Riefenstahl households as well as in Adzel's student lodgings. That Hloch's anticipated audience is not readers of Poul Anderson's books in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but rather is his fellow Avalonians in the immediate aftermath of the Terran War is made clear when he writes that a glossary of obscure terms is to be found in Library Central 254-0691. Hloch's text looks back from a further future at a less remote future.
Hloch introduces:
Maeve Downey's account of Aram Turekian's discovery on Ythri;
an unnamed narrator's account of Peter Berg's experience on Gray/Avalon;
Jim Ching's account of Adzel's student days on Earth -
- and more than I can summarize in a single lunch break.
3 comments:
I found Adzel's making pin-money by playing a dragon in a Chinese New Year celebration particularly amusing.
I was just as amused by how he came to play the part of Fafnir in 'Siegfried'.
I would love to see *that* version of the opera.
Kaor, to Both!
Two very different conceptions of dragons. In Chinese folklore were benign and benevolent creatures, associated with the Emperors. A deceased Emperor was said to have ascended to Heaven dragon borne. In Western Germanic mythology dragoons were terrifying, evil beings hostile to mankind. Which is what we see in Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos.
Ad astra! Sean
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