Street Life

Poul Anderson shows us street life in Centauri on Avalon in the Domain of Ythri during the period of the early Terran Empire. Among many other details, a gaunt man shouts of some obscure salvation. Later in the Technic History, Anderson describes the towers of Archopolis, capital city of the Terran Empire, and Dominic Flandry's upper level apartment but not any of that city's street life. But we need to read more of every aspect of a real or fictional city's life. An interstellar, multi-species civilization will be multivarious but we can get a hint of that on Earth now.

Today, a group of Muslim men had come all the way from Birmingham to hand out free Korans on a street in Lancaster! They happened to stand right next to a group of left-wing newspaper sellers with whom they exchanged friendly greetings and literature.

Meanwhile, we reread Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates which presents nineteenth century London street life, involving both aristocrats and beggars although principally the latter.

All human life is here as it should be in all fiction and literature.

Take to the streets!