In Archopolis

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWELVE.

Rereading a passage set in Dominic and Miriam Flandry's Archopolis apartment, we find that we have discussed this passage in no less than three previous posts:

Four Senses In Archopolis

Cities And Stars IV

Terra In THE GAME OF EMPIRE

There cannot be much more to be said - except that I turn out to have disagreed with myself about how many senses the passage appeals to.

I like the parallels between Flandry's Archopolis, van Rijn's Chicago Integrate and Everard's New York. Hectic cities are a major part of human experience.

That slightly delayed Sunday walk (see previous post) will be to a band in a park beside Morecambe Bay.

We still live.

On The Highroad River

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TEN.

The Waterblossom proceeds, slowly because it is "...ponderous and heavily laden..." (p. 297), from Paz de la Frontera towards the Cynthian town of Lulach. At first, there are teeming rowboats and hydrofoils but later only barges and a towed timber raft. The brown, sheening, murmurous river is two kilometres wide with forested banks. Fliers dart and skim. It is quiet and cool. On horizonless Daedalus, Diana sees the river valley receding as if to infinity, toylike snowpeaks, a far away gleam that is the ocean and sunlight spreading into a ring instead of disappearing. Day becomes dusk, not night. She sees Imhotep and Icarus - another planet and a moon - but no stars except a few scattered points. Axor praises the Creator.

And now, in Lancaster, a Sunday walk, possibly along the river or the canal or towards the Bay.

On The Waterfront

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER NINE. 

The waterfront at Paz de la Frontera has warehouses, wharfs, watercraft, bustling human and nonhuman beings and scurrying machines and:

"Beyond, the stream flowed broad and brown." (p. 294)

"...broad and brown..." is familiar. See no less than seven other rivers described in works by Poul Anderson that are quoted in posts linked here.

The description of the scene from the wharf continues:

"The opposite shore was dimmed by a thickening rain." (ibid.)

Next come the reactions of two of the characters:

"Shan U registered a feline dislike of the wet, but Diana welcomed its warm sluicing. She felt cleansed." (ibid.)

Diana needs cleansing because she has just had to fight off four human males with a Tigery knife.

Shan U is a Cynthian and this species is squirrel-like although here his response to the rain is described as "feline" and one of Diana's assailants had described him as a "'...monkey-cat.'" (p. 292)

No single comparison will be quite accurate. The attached cover image shows Diana not with a Cynthian but with a Tigery disguised as a performing animal.

Down The Stream

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER NINE.

And now for another change of pace. Diana Crowfeather thinks:

"How good it'll be, floatin' quietly down the river with Axor..." (p. 294)

This is almost entirely a personal association but that is part of the experience of reading a rich text. I recently committed to memory one of the best short poems in English:

(Image copied from here.)

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky

By Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —

Lingering in the golden gleam —

Life, what is it but a dream?

-copied from here.

Alice Pleasance Liddell drifts; Diana Crowfeather floats:

"...under skies

"Never seen by waking eyes."

We thank Lewis Carroll and Poul Anderson.

Parallels

In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, CHAPTER FOUR.

An alternative history comments on our history:

"'...that's a stereotype. Like the unemotional half-Martian Science Officer on the Federation Starship New Frontier...'" (p. 105)

"'If the ancients hadn't given us an interesting couple of planets to explore and squabble over -'

"'And the ancients themselves to worry about,' he put in.

"'- and that, odds are we'd have destroyed Earth by now.'" (p. 107)

This dialogue is set in 2000 AD. We have not destroyed Earth yet - by 2026 - but it is not for want of trying!

CHAPTER FIVE reveals that the 1970s films about an archaeologist with a bullwhip were set on Venus.

See also:

Eutopia, Westfall And America

Oblique Commentaries

Imagine individuals living in and accepting each of these alternative histories.