The First Uru Work Of Art

After Doomsday, 13.

"The Battle of Brandobar," is an Uru ballad translated, with notes, into English. The Brandobar Cluster is between Vorlak and Mayast. The two sides in the battle were:

an alliance of Vorlak, Monwaing and lesser races;

the Kandemirian Grand Fleet, comprising clan units and non-Kandemirian subjects recruited as auxiliaries. (Numerically stronger than the alliance.)

Uru, one of the interstellar lingua francas, had previously been used for records, scientific treatises and translations from planetary languages but not for original literature.

Will the survivors of Earth be able to preserve the Bible and Shakespeare for translation into Uru? I understand that many people would be able to reproduce these works from memory alone but, in After Doomsday, the human population has been drastically reduced! However, one of the surviving ships will contain at least one Bible.

What can we say about "Brandobar" that we have not said before? Maybe not much but we should certainly reread it. Because the ballad comes immediately after Chapter 12, we understand very clearly what is meant by its second stanza:

"And the proudest king, the Vorlak lord,

"(The stormwinds clamor their grief)

"Had been made the servant in all but name

"Of a planetless wanderer chief." (p. 103)

And, of course, in an Andersonian work, the wind must make itself heard.