Trappings And Texts

A book is very different when you reread it sixty years later. Case in point: Clifford Simak's City. In my teens, I focused on the sf trappings: machines, mutants, Martians etc. Now I notice that, in Chapter VI, when a man and a woman converse in Geneva, the text, transcending its trappings, reads almost like a contemporary novel.

In Poul Anderson's works, the novelistic interactions, so to call them, are more closely incorporated into the sf:

Christopher Holm joins an Ythrian choth and becomes estranged from his father even though the latter identifies with the Domain of Ythri and speaks of "deathpride" when confronting a Terran;

van Rijn and Falkayn clash over Mirkheim;

Aycharaych appeals to Flandry to help him to preserve Chereion;

Commonalty Ranger Daven Laure learns that he cannot marry a Kirkasanter...

New blog readers might not understand many of these references. However, explanations can be found by searching this blog and also by reading Poul Anderson's works which the blog urges all its readers to do.