Brobdingnagian

(A single word in an Andersonian text can inspire a blog post as I will now demonstrate.)

Fictions refer to earlier fictions. References accumulate. Many works are remembered although many more are forgotten. We all know Sherlock Holmes but not Cyril Saunders. (In fact, we recognize Holmes even when he appears unnamed in Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol.")

Here is a beautiful literary reference:

"The sail now nearly bisected the sky. Seven kilometers wide, the foam-filled members that stiffened it marching across the field of view like Brobdingnagian spokes with its slow rotation, that disk massed close to a hundred tons."

-Tales Of The Flying Mountains, p. 205.

I had intended to compare this passage with one by CS Lewis but find that I have already compared that Lewis passage with one by SM Stirling here. For other uses of the adjective, "Brobdingnagain," see here. (Scroll down.)

I must satisfy the inner man in two senses: first, eat; then, meditate.