Exotic Environments

One planet, Imhotep, has three environments:

highlands, like the peak of Mt Horn, for human beings;
lowlands and sea surfaces for Tigeries;
undersea, in the Seas of Yang and Yin, for vaz-Siravo.

An orphaned child without adult control finds freedom in an alien culture and an exotic environment:

"Diana...had passed her life among Tigeries and Seafolk."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 214.

(The title is ironic because Diana Crowfeather is Dominic Flandry's illegitimate daughter.)

When Diana's mother died in an accident and the man who had been living with her wanted to put Diana in the Navy school on the neighboring planet, the girl ran away because:

"...Tigeries were hunting through hills where wind soughed in waves across forests, and surf burst under three moons upon virgin islands." (ibid.)

The authorities could not find her, then forgot. Thus, her freedom was complete. Comparable characters are:

Tabitha Falkayn brought up by Ythrians on Avalon;
Rudyard Kipling's white orphan, Kim, evading missionaries and charitable societies in order to live as he wants in "'This great and beautiful land...'" (Kim, London, 1944, p. 193) of India;
Modesty Blaise struggling for survival in post-World War II environments.

Modesty's freedom was not chosen and her surroundings were threatening, not exotic, but, like the others on this list, she had what it took to survive and succeed.

Another list of similar characters is those brought up, in legend or in fiction, by animals:

Romulus;
Mowgli;
Tarzan;
Zantar (a comic strip parody of Tarzan, brought up by lions).

I do not think that Poul Anderson has any character on this second list? 

The End Of The Month

Greetings from Lancaster (see image).

This may be the last post for January (but February begins tomorrow):

this lap top can be slow;
I have other things going on;
I think that I have squeezed the life blood out of Poul Anderson's Genesis, at least for the time being;
right now, Modesty Blaise is proving more attractive than the Virgin of Valkarion.

Thank you for all the page views: 64 so far today when I checked a few moments ago. From Lancaster, we can drive around Morecambe Bay into the Lake District hills, in the background of the image. From a village called Grange over Sands (because it is possible to walk across the sands of the Bay when the tide is out), we can sit in a cafe, look across to Lancaster and see the Castle. Maybe this weekend.

Some English History

Rereading Poul Anderson's works has slowed down because I have:

worked my way through most of the Technic History;

been reading Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise for the first time;

begun rereading Bryan Talbot's Alice In Sunderland.

Since I have met Bryan Talbot a few times and saw Poul Anderson at a couple of World SF Cons, that leaves Peter O'Donnell as the only one of these three writers with whom I have had no personal or visual contact.

Talbot's Alice... summarizes a lot of English history and thus covers some familiar Andersonian territory. Talbot mentions Romans, Vikings and Normans but, so far, has skipped over Harald Hardrada. He reminds us that it was the Venerable Bede, the father of English history, who invented the BC/AD calendar. 

Does anyone out there know which Poul Anderson book this cover illustration is for?

Other Reading

Occasionally, I mention other current reading in order to locate Poul Anderson in a wider literary and fictive context. Page viewers may reflect on their own other reading, although sometimes we will overlap.

I read Steig Larsson's trilogy, then a book about the trilogy which made a comparison with Modesty Blaise, a character of whom I had heard but never read. Googling Modesty reveals that Peter O'Donnell wrote:

a Modesty Blaise comic strip;
a screenplay based on the comic strip;
a novel based on the screen play;
ten further novels;
two short story collections, basing some stories on comic strips and vice versa.

The unsuccessful 1966 film, rewritten by others and released after O'Donnell's more successful novelization of his original screenplay, was promoted as a female James Bond, although clearly Modesty Blaise has a life of her own, with a fascinating interplay between three media, the prose fiction coming not first but last.