In The Shield Of Time, 1990 A. D., pp. 176-186, Everard and Wanda meet in:
"'The bookshop...'" (p. 178)
- more specifically a high quality second hand bookshop in San Francisco whose proprietor is also a Time Patrol agent.
We have remarked before that anachronistic surroundings, whether old hotels or this particular bookshop, are appropriate settings for time travellers. Most visitors to the bookshop know nothing of time travel. This might best be brought home to readers by a contemporary novel whose characters interact with the bookshop proprietor, Nick, this to be followed by a Time Patrol novel, like indeed The Shield Of Time, showing Nick to be a Patrol agent. Different genres coexist in Poul Anderson's multiverse and their coexistence could be realized more concretely. Aliens, immortals, deities and time travellers walk among us on parallel Earths which means that we also walk among them - so let's see some of Manse Everard's New York neighbours, for example.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
You seem to have done your share of browsing in the Old Pier book shop. One work which regrettably no longer seems to be pub. is John Lingard's HISTORY OF ENGLAND, in the first half of the 19th century. Lingard cared very much about using only accurate/reliable sources. No forgeries for him, unlike Backhouse's stuff!
I also recall how the proprietor of that Patrol front managed the bookstore as a real business, buying and selling old/used books.
Ad astra! Sean
That looks like a bookstore you could spend hours in...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! I was reminded of how dissatisfied I became with Thomas Costain's books of English history. Far too often he kept reading back into the past ideas and beliefs which did not exist in, say, Edward I's reign. Which I came to find very irritating. Hume's HISTORY OF ENGLAND pleased me better, but I read of how that too was criticized for errors and inaccuracies. So, what I read about Fr. Lingard's HISTORY, with the stress he placed on using primary sources and the strictest possible accuracy appealed to me.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: history started out as a branch of literature...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, and the historical books of the OT, such as the books of Samuel and Kings, along with the somewhat later HISTORIES of Herodotus, were among the earliest examples of that kind of literature. These works were advances on simply lists of kings or brief annalistic notes.
One early post-Roman example i greatly enjoyed was St. Gregory of Tours' HISTORY OF THE FRANKS. He knew how to tell a story and report on events as accurately as it was possible for him to do, given the means available to him in early Merovingian Gaul.
I hope Fr. Lingard's HISTORY OF ENGLAND is someday republished. Everything I read about him and his work makes it plain he was the inaugurator of the line of great classical modern "scientific" historians exemplified in the works of WH Prescott and JB Bury.
Ad astra! Sean
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