Singing Villains (Not Quite)

 

"[Aycharaych] spoke perfect Anglic, save for a touch of accent that added a kind of harsh music to it."

-Poul Anderson, "Honorable Enemies" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 277-302 AT p. 278.

"[Aycharaych's] voice was low, sheer beauty to hear."

-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT II, p. 160.

"[Aycharaych's] voice sang and purred onward, soft as the cognac they shared, in Anglic whose accent sounded less foreign than archaic."

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Sir Dominic Flandry..., pp. 339-606 AT IX, p. 459.

Merau Varagan

"'A lovely vista,' [Varagan] said in American English, which his voice turned into music."

-The Shield Of Time, 976 B. C., p. 43.

Villains are either menacing or charming...

Musical adaptations of the Technic History and the Time Patrol? (No.) When I visited the Albert Dock tourist attraction in Liverpool, a shop assistant almost sang to me in her Liverpool accent. If I had been Andrew Lloyd Webber, that would have been the inspiration for a musical. 

Liverpool Docks

While rereading Poul Anderson's three Man-Kzin Wars stories, I am, for comparison with Anderson, reading for the first time Chase The Morning by Michael Scott Rohan. So far, the latter work has generated two surprises. First, having entered a parallel world, the protagonist soon returns to his mundane world - but weirdness follows him there. Secondly, a reference to Lime Street discloses that his mundane domain is Liverpool, thus that the docks to which he refers are the old Liverpool docks. See image. After visiting Albert Dock with family, I drove along the old dock road as part of a picturesque return route to Lancaster.

Different Reading Experiences

Part of the experience of reading a book is where and when we first read it, which is different for each of us. I started to read Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959) in the cafe of the Tate Gallery at Albert Dock, Liverpool, formerly a dock, now a memorabilia, museum and tourist area, on 30 September, 2013. Two members of my family attended the Chagall Exhibition but I preferred to drink coffee and read Anderson.

Later, I sat on a bench overlooking the Dock beside the Maritime Museum. Liverpool has history and I have history

with Liverpool. The teenage girl who served us in a confectionery shop spoke in a singsong Liverpudlian accent which brought back the ten years when I worked in Merseyside. On this occasion, I did not have time to meditate in the Anglican Cathedral, eat in an upstairs vegetarian restaurant or visit either of the sf and comics shops, Worlds Apart or Forbidden Planet.

I started to read this novel for the first time in the future, forty four years after its publication. Our twenty first century has cyberspace but not yet hyperspace and Global Warming instead of Cold War. Our future, forty four years hence, in 2057, remains as unknown to us as our 2013 was to Anderson and his fellow sf writers. Moreover, I would be 108 then but nevertheless hope to live long enough to see most of what transpires between now and then.