Saturday, 19 April 2025

Real Places

Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind makes Livewell Street in Centauri on Avalon seem like a real place. The Bishop's Arms pub on Bellmansgatan in Stockholm is a real place. Googling reveals that Stieg Larsson regularly visited this pub which explains why he mentioned it in his The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

It is that time of the evening when I do non-blog-related reading but find connections anyway. Novelists must make places seem real whether the places are fictional or real. Sometimes we don't know which but googling helps.

I did not expect to publish a picture of the Bishop's Arms or to advertise the pub here but any friend of Stieg Larsson deserves our support. I have become a big fan of Sweden.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

We would have to search thru stories set by Anderson in the 20th century to find similar real world locations. Such as his Yamamura mysteries or THE DEVIL'S GAME. And we see Manse Everard meeting Wanda Tamberly at a somewhat faded but still elegant San Francisco hotel in "The Year of the Ransom."

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Poul was good at making places seem real: one way he did it was by invoking all the senses, plus memory.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Memory?

S.M. Stirling said...

Mental comparisons of other places by the character.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

OK.