Diversity And Entropy

Continuing to reread Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, we find that this novel is mostly neither sf in general nor time travel in particular but fantasy. Gods exist. Magic works. To become the nineteenth century poet, William Ashbless, whose photograph he has seen, Brendan Doyle must not only time travel but also switch bodies by means of a magic potion. Of course, Powers' fantasy, like his time travel, parallels works by Poul Anderson although a completely different set of works by Anderson. The latter writer's distinguishing features include his vast output, his consistent combination of quality with quantity and his comprehensiveness. Whereas many other authors specialize in hard sf, alternative histories, fantasy, historical fiction or detective fiction, Anderson wrote all of these although some more than others.

It is unthinkable that time travel would intrude in a heroic fantasy like The Broken Sword or that magic would work in the Time Patrol series although characters from the different kinds of universes can meet in the Old Phoenix Inn between universes. How much might the real universe (or multiverse) encompass? A lot, although mothing like what has been imagined. Scientists have had to discover the laws of motion, the electromagnetic spectrum, biological evolution, sub-atomic particles, the strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum mechanics, mass-energy equivalence, relativity including the light speed limit, other galaxies, cosmic expansion, curvature of space, black holes, dark matter and dark energy in a universe where consciousness is not (like gravity etc) a fundamental force of nature but instead is a by-product of natural selection within temporary, local, negative entropy. This real universe is the setting of Poul Anderson's hard sf, including his Technic History where civilizations are entropic. In Norse mythology, which Anderson celebrated, the conflicting but interacting forces of heat and cold are basic whereas consciousness, including deity, is emergent. The entropic and Norse universes come together when an explorer of a globular cluster at the far edge of another spiral arm remembers the myth of fire and ice. See:

Cloud Universe And Ginnungagap.

Gap

Although I have both editions of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, I have not been reading them in parallel. However, I wanted to check whether that anachronistic term, "dimensions," had been in the original text so here goes:

"Skafloc thought that the lands of the ice giants, like those of gods and demons, must not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions reached only by spells, out near the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 2014), 22, p. 167.

"...strange dimensions..." is there but the rest of the sentence has changed. 

"...the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos..." became "..the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen."

"...primal chaos..." (my emphasis) must be the chaos which preceded creation, thus by implication the chaos from which "creation," an ordered cosmos, arose. In the revised text, creation arose from a (capitalized) "Gap." A gap between what? Anderson refers to the Ginnungagap of Norse mythology which was a gap between extremes of heat and cold. Somewhere in that Gap, ice melted and moistened and life began. Of course, in a mythological narrative, the first life was not single cells but giants and gods! Nevertheless, this is a materialist account. Consciousness is not primary but emergent. The creation of a world with earth, sky and sea came later when gods killed a giant and made the world from his body - 

flesh: earth; 

skull: sky; 

brain: clouds;

hair: trees;

bones: mountains;

eyebrows: Midgard;

blood: sea; 

teeth: stones;

eyes: sun and moon;

maggots: dwarves.

Norse-Technic Interfaces

Van Rijn arranges weregild for the families of Gorzuni mercenaries.

He quotes, "Bare is brotherless back.'" (Satan's World, X, p. 99)

Burning with fury, David Falkayn:

"...might have been reliving ancient incarnations as he swung a Viking ax..." (XI, p. 101)

The changes on Satan as it approaches Beta Crucis are compared to Ragnarok.

Dominic Flandry sees time as the snake gnawing the root of Yggdrasil.

Ginnungagap is referenced both in "The Saturn Game" and in "Starfog."

Those are seven examples. Anderson readers can turn back to Hrolf Kraki's Saga etc.

Scientific Principles: Conduction And Sublimation

"The Saturn Game," III.

On the Saturnian moon, Iapetus, three explorers are engaged in role playing dialogue - Broberg as Ricia, Garcilaso as Alvaran and Scobie as Kendrick - when the ridge beneath their feet cracks and falls, precipitating an avalanche. The omniscient narrator informs readers that crystals are flung high and glitter in the sunlight before falling slowly.

After a double space between paragraphs, the text presents Scobie's pov (point of view). Regaining consciousness, he is buried, immobilized and breathing painfully, probably with one or more broken ribs. His radio, built into his suit, should still work but is blocked by the mass surrounding him which also extracts heat by conduction. He cannot reach the spare heating unit included in the equipment carried on his back. However, his escaping heat melts and sublimes the surrounding mass, enabling him to crawl upward by grasping hold of some still solid matter.

Meanwhile, inwardly, he continues the game. The Elf King wrecks his towers. Blocks that had been quarried from the ice of Ginnungagap should kill Kendrick and Ricia. However, Sir Kendrick fights clear as Scobie reaches the surface where he must stand if he is not to melt his way back into the debris.

Cloud Universe And Ginnungagap

"Starfog."

When Jaccavrie enters the Cloud Universe, she tells Daven Laure:

"'You need to be drawn out of your fantasizing...Though you recognize your daydreams for what they are, you can't afford them. Not now.'" (p. 758)

This harks back to the very first Technic History instalment, "The Saturn Game," which is also about space exploration.

Laure had been remembering:

"...the old, old myth of the Yawning Gap, where fire and ice arose and out of them the Nine Worlds, which were doomed in the end to return to fire and ice..." (p. 756)

This also harks back:

"...blocks quarried from the cold side of Ginnungagap..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 1-73 AT III, p. 39.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the cosmic collision is called the Ginnungagap because it generates new universes.

The Norse creation myth is the most scientific: opposite but interacting forces generate life and consciousness in a void. Norse mythology and hard sf go well together. Poul Anderson wrote both.

Beginnings

The World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, is like a changeless Absolute despite the dragon Nidhogg gnawing at its deepest roots. The Tree survives the Ragnarok although it is not mentioned in the stories of the Ginnungagap. Mythology is neither logic nor science. (Thor sleeps in one finger of a giant's glove but later wrestles with a giant.) The Tree comes to an end in Wagner's Ring operas but that is a different version of the story.

Although most accounts of Norse myths begin with the Ginnungagap, Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods begins with:

"...the nine worlds in the Tree." (I, p. 9)

- although it also mentions the slaying of Ymir.

The text lists Asgard, Vanaheim, men, elves, dwarves and jotuns/thursirs: six, not nine. The Eddas present no definitive list. See Norse Cosmology: Nine Worlds. 

In just over six pages, pp. 9-15, Chapter I of War Of The Gods summarizes several Norse myths as a build-up to an innovative action by Odin. In the just under three pages, pp. 295-298, of the concluding Chapter XXXV, that action, an intervention in human history, has been completed. These chapters book-end Anderson's retelling of the story of Hadding.

Revelation And Ginnungagap

Orbit Unlimited.

In the clouds, Svoboda and Coffin are attacked by two giant spearfowl but kill them with their pistols:

"Two huge forms trailed blood down through the clouds." (p. 130)

Never short of a Biblical phrase, Coffin comments:

"'Oh, God...it was like a monster out of Revelation....'" (p. 131)

Before that, Svoboda had made a comparison from another set of "scriptures":

"Ahead of him the drenched, rock-littered ground came to an end, nothing but mist to be seen, as if he stood on the edge of Ginnungagap." (p. 128)

Ginnungagap features in Poul Anderson's works and on this blog. It is mentioned in the first Technic History installment, "The Saturn Game," and is the name given to a cosmic collision in James Blish's Cities In Flight.

The Implications Of The Saracen

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Holger meets the Saracen who has been looking for him and who is an old albeit forgotten friend.

Is this Carolingian universe one where the Christian God exists and Allah does not or where both exist? GK Chesterton's militaristic poem, Lepanto, describes the Prophet marshaling giants and genii against the Crusaders. Alternatively, is there a Muslim universe where Allah is the Creator and Jesus is a prophet of Islam?

Presumably, the Norse universe, which is visited in Operation Luna, is complete with gods and giants arising in Ginnungagap, Odin and his brothers killing the giant Ymir and making the world from his body, dead warriors fighting and feasting in Valhalla and fighting for the last time at Ragnarok etc? The multiverse gets complicated if it incorporates every possibility.

I am still doing some other reading that might impact on the blog but later. Meanwhile, rereading Three Hearts continues...

Valkyries

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER FIVE.

Alianora's swan dress, which empowers her to metamorphose into a swan, is said to have:

"'...once belonged to the Valkyries.'" (p. 37)

What are the cosmological implications of this? Are the Norse pantheons a part of the Carolingian universe where they would have to belong to the Middle World, serving Chaos together with the Giants? But the Carolingian universe would not be able to incorporate Ginnungagap, Yggdrasil, Nine Worlds, Ragnarok etc. So has there been inter-cosmic contact?

Virginia Matuchek travels from her native goetic universe to the hell universe where she summons Thor as an enemy of Chaos;

later, Virginia travels to Mimir's Well below Yggdrasil in yet another universe;

Virginia's daughter meets Holger in the Old Phoenix.

Thus, we might infer from all this that the Valkyries to whom Alianora refers inhabit not the Carolingian but the Nordic universe.

"Starfog": Some General Observations II

"Starfog."

Myths are retold in different versions, e.g.:

"A crackling noise beat out of that roiling formlessness, like flames. Energies pulsed through his marrow. He remembered the old, old myth of the Yawning Gap, where fire and ice arose and out of them the Nine Worlds, which were doomed in the end to return to fire and ice; and he shivered." (p. 756)

Well, no. In the Norse myths as they have come to us, the narrative ends not with the return of fire and ice but with a new heaven and earth, as in the Bible. But there must have been versions where the end was just fire and ice. This summary by Anderson in the imagination of his character, Daven Laure, is a valid and appropriate retelling.

The Ginnungagap is a dialectical materialist origin story. Life and consciousness are generated by the interactions between opposed material forces. See Voluspa.

"'You need to be drawn out of your fantasizing,' Jaccavrie said. 'Though you recognize your daydreams for what they are, you can't afford them. Not now.'" (p. 758)

This echoes the theme of the opening Technic History story, "The Saturn Game."

Laure wonders about the symbolism of the silver mask on the Kirkasanter captain, Demring's, door. (p. 762) Then he thinks of an explanation:

"He's afraid to let down his mask - is that why their art uses the motif so much?..." (pp. 763-764)

Maybe, but Laure has switched to a metaphorical meaning of the word, "mask." The Kirkasanters may or may not associate literal masks with their culturally inculcated personal reserve. (The culture and language of the Makt crew are "Hobrokan" (p. 740) although, of course, there are others on Kirkasant.)

In Inter-Clan Space

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 16.

There is no cosmic interference on the radio. Acceleration has ended so there is no weight. Astronauts who have gone EVA are completely invisible to each other except for the dull light from their lamps. Space had always been a black background to stars but this is the absence of background.

Federoff says that they are dead:

"'...the final cutting off...No sun, no stars, no sound, no weight, no shadow -'" (p. 139)

That sounds like the Eddaic account of the Ginnungagap, yawning gap, which was before gods, sky and earth. In this dead realm, the EVA gang finally repairs the decelerator.

Chapter 17 begins with glimmering lights ahead: bright points which are not stars but clans, groups of groups of galaxies. What will happen next?

Earliest Events

We think that the earliest event known to us was the earliest event but could there have been an earliest event?

If a vacuum full of virtual particles generated our monobloc (see here), could that vacuum also have generated other monoblocs or indeed other unknown phenomena?

What did the Spirit do before it moved on the waters and what happened in the waters before the Spirit moved on them?

Why was Surtr waiting with flaming sword even before any giants or gods had been born in Ginnungagap?

In any cosmology, we see a part and think that it is the whole.

Retellings III

Although Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods begins after the Ginnungagap and ends before the Ragnarok, it nevertheless condenses much Norse mythology. Retold stories and background information include:

the two divine races
the Tree
nine worlds
men, elves, dwarves and jotuns
the Norns
runes
Heimdall/Rig begetting the first thralls, yeomen and highborn
Kon, the first king
the first war
Mimir's well and Odin's eye
the carving of the first man and woman from logs of ash and elm
Njord, Freyr and Freyja
the building of the wall around Asgard
Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse
Mimir's treacherously severed but magically reanimated head
the giant Hymir
the origin of Loki
Odin's self-sacrifice
Odin's brothers
the story of Hadding

For longer retellings of some of these stories and also of others, we can read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology.

The Milky Way And Ginnungagap

Our old friend, the Milky Way, returns three times in the first half of Poul Anderson's The Avatar:

"...the Milky Way, the nebulae, the galaxies beyond our galaxy...." (XVI, p. 140);

"...the Milky Way gleamed around its lanes of darkness..." (XVIII, p. 160);

"The Milky Way rivered in silver, nebulae glowed where new suns and planets were being born, a sister galaxy flung her faint gleam across Ginnungagap." (XXIII, p. 201)

Poul Anderson compares intergalactic space to the Ginnungagap of the Norse creation myth. I think that this myth comes closest to scientific cosmogony (see here):

void;
within the void, opposed material forces, heat and cold;
interaction between the opposed forces;
emergence of life and consciousness from the interaction;
thus, no conscious creator in the beginning;
eventual destruction of the worlds by fire;
renewal;
a cosmic cycle.

Entering The Cloud Universe

Entering the Cloud Universe while standing on the bridge of Jaccavrie, Dave Laure sees:

not dark but shining space;
nimbus;
thunderheads;
cliffs;
eddies;
streams;
every color;
mother-of-pearl;
shadows;
grottoes;
dull red reflecting nearby suns;
myriads of stars, ruby, ember, yellow, candent, green or blue;
some stars clear, a few tiny discs, most fuzzy glows;
mist engulfing dimming shimmers;
roiling formlessness.

He hears crackling noise, feels pulsing energies and remembers the Ginnungagap.

The Milky Way Thread

OK. I am gathering together the posts quoting Poul Anderson's descriptions of the Milky Way. So far, they are:

The Milky Way
Mirkheim Miscellany
The Milky Way From The Dronning Margrete
Finishing Ensign Flandry Again
Mimir And The Milky Way
Descriptions, Including The Milky Way
Three Senses On Aeneas And The Milky Way
 
Any relevant new links will be added below:

Windhome And The Milky Way
Night Sky On Aeneas
The Milky Way As An Icefall
The End Of A Novel II 
Curdled Silver
Supernova Ships And The Milky Way
Across The Milky Way
Bellatrix And The Milky Way
Cairncross And The Milky Way
Icy Sweep And Blue Jewel 
The Milky Way In A Stone In Heaven
Radiant Road
Battle Sun And The Milky Way
The Frosty Glitter Of The Milky Way
Argent Flood Of The Milky Way
Sebastian Tombs And The Milky Way Etc
The Milky Way From Van Rijn's Yacht
Gandarian Street And The Milky Way
Life On Nerthus
The Milky Way And Ginnungagap
Starting The Jumps
Shadow And Milky Way
Constellations And Conscience
The Winter Of The World: Some Details
Concluding Details, Josserek And Van Rijn
The Sigman's Spaceship
Anderson And Blish
Columbus' Egg And The Milky Way
The Sea
Across The Sky
Furniture And Stars
On An Asteroid
Death And Aftermath II
Nebulae And Night
Latin, Poetry And The Milky Way
Olympus Mons And The Milky Way
Guthrie On Demeter And The Milky Way
Home Brew And The Milky Way
Moon And Milky Way
Milky Way And Magellanic Clouds
The Winter Road 
Catastrophe At Hades
A Freakishly Huge Moon
The Farthest Star
Arrival
Mars And The Milky Way
On Mars 
Fenn And Guthrie
The Fleet Of Stars: Concluding Observations From The Current Rereading
The Milky Way And A Moment
Ghostliness And The Milky Way
"Gorgeous Flow" (Julian May)
Some Anderson-May Parallels
An Infinitely Cold Cataract
Orbit Unlimited: A Few Details
Rustum Orbit
The Milky Way On Rustum
Ghost Road
Milky Way, Steak And Revolutionaries  (SM Stirling)
"Home"
The Unexpected And The Cosmic Setting
The Unexpected II
Three Senses In Space
Frosty Cataract
One Frozen Waterfall
Cold, Curdled Milky Way
The Permanent Frontier
The Milky Way Spilled
Mirkheim, Chapter XIX
Mirkheim, The Last Chapter, Continued
Curdled Silver II
Rochefort And The Milky Way
Frostiness And Warmth
Galactic Vastness And The Milky Way
Cosmic Summary
Orichalc And The Ocean Of Stars
A River Of Silver
The Heaven
The Milky Way Cascaded
Several Details In The Devil's Game
The Milky Way; Falkayn's Family
A Beautiful Paragraph
Crowd And Torrent
The Milky Way In An Ebon Mirror
Lost To Sight

A Death-Horse And The Milky Way  

Bo Jonsson, The Milky Way And The Great Bear  

Another Moving Moon And The Milky Way  

Navigating  

Dayspring And Milky Way  

Pale Bridge  

Great Curdled Rush  

A Bit Of The Milky Way  

Steve Matuchek And The Milky Way  

A Tremendous, Upholding Arch And An Ice-Clear Galaxy  

Prayers And The Milky Way  

Valeria Matuchek And The Milky Way  

Escape Velocity At Night  

The Milky Way From The Mesa   

The Galactic Belt And The Moon   

Look At The Milky Way  

Cold Rush  

Undeclared War: Phase 2  

The Ice River And A Cannibal Star  

The Milky Way In The First Century

Kipple, Spirit Trail And Wind 

Lohannaso And The Milky Way

The Galactic Bridge 

Via Lactea

Wild Terai, Then The Milky Way 

Return From Space

"The Milky Way Soared Overhead."

Night On Aerie 

The Galactic Belt And Yet Another Mirkheim! 

Starfarers, Prologue

Nansen's Philosophy

NGC 5460

The Milky Way And A Tree

Pulsar, Bible And Milky Way

Frozen Fire And Glowing Maelstrom

Epiphany And Dread 

Galactic River

The Sea Of Space 

On A Comet 

Angels And Aurigeans

A Silver Band And More Weather

Pale River And Talking Wind

Ghosts, Gods, Time And The Milky Way

The Milky Way From Mercury

Milky Way, Andromeda And Sirius

Some Descriptive Details

Milky Way And Mach Drive

Armies Of Stars

River And Circle

Eagle And Silvery Cataract

North American Union And Diamond Dust

The Temple Of Earth And The Ghostly Glory Of The Milky Way

"Inside Earth"

Wanderer And Night-Bridge

Precosmic Chaos II

Three observations on the previous post. First-

Creation Hymn

Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
-copied from here.

Rig Veda echoes Genesis.

Second -

I asked whether void or chaos preceded cosmos but maybe both did? See here: virtual particles constantly beginning and mutually annihilating (chaos) in vacuum (void).

Third -

A single creator before the creation would be a self without other which is like a square without sides. Thus, I would rewrite Genesis, deleting the words in brackets:

"In the beginning (God created the heaven and the earth and) the earth was without form..."

I suggest that the bracketed words be understood as a myth, like the gods emerging in the Ginnungagap.

Elves And The Sea

Why do we post about elves and also about the sea? What connects mythical and magical Alfheim with the factual and formidable North Sea? People. The same people who live by and travel across the sea also populate their environment with imaginary beings - and sometimes see them. My Northern Irish aunt-in-law saw horses and riders in the waves of the North Sea. I have no reason either to doubt that she had that visual experience or to believe that a film of the waves would have shown them taking the forms of horses and riders. Brains process sensory impressions in diverse ways.

Why does offering to Freyr lift the elven spell from Hadding? The elves were afflicting Hadding with bad weather and:

"...Frey...became lord of the weather..."
-Roger Lancelyn Green, The Saga Of Asgard (Penguin/Puffin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex), p. 40.

Presumably a god can overrule elves? Later, warlocks and the Wanderer waged war with winds and weather. (pp. 196-197) Later still, Rupert Bear helped Elves of Autumn to apprehend one Imp of Spring who refused to hibernate and instead created pockets of spring in the Nutwood Autumn.

Freyr is a Van but where did the Vanir originate? The Aesir, like the jotuns, originated in Ginnungagap but the Vanir are a different pantheon and would originally have had their own distinctive mythological cosmology. I suspect that Green invents some details to tie his narrative together but, wherever he got it from, his account of the Vanir is as follows:

"The Vanir were the shining ones who had been born out of the upper air and dwelt first in Uhland, above the high top of Yggdrasil. They never came to Asgard nor Midgard, nor ever even set foot upon firm ground..." (p. 35)

If they "...dwelt first in Uhland...," then maybe they later moved to Vanaheim which Anderson describes as:

"West of Asgard..." (War Of The Gods, p. 9)

In one mythological passage of "Star of the Sea":

"Out of the east, the morning behind them, rode the Anses into the world." (Time Patrol, p. 557)

The Vedic sky gods who became Anses/Aesir came west with the Aryans.

A Master Of Physics And Politics

As an sf writer, Poul Anderson is a master of both physics and politics. He describes a television interview about practical applications of quantum mechanics being recorded during a military coup:

"'...if you hit a speck of dust, wouldn't that be like a nuclear warhead exploding?'
"A jet snarled low above the roof. Thunder boomed through the building. Cameras shivered in men's hands. Fleury tensed. The noise passed, and she found herself wondering whether to edit this moment out of the tapes."
-Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), pp. 7-8.

Do not edit it! This is a moment in the history of physics and in the history of the United States. Natural and human events interpenetrate in Anderson's prose. A collision at near light speed is compared to a nuclear explosion while the sound and effects of a low-flying jet fighter are compared to thunder and cold. The coup leader becomes permanent Chief Advisor to any President of the United States while the television crew records an account of the dramatic origin of the universe:

"'...the universe originated as a quantum fluctuation in the seething sea of the vacuum, a random concentration of energy so great that it expanded explosively. Out of this condensed the first particles, and from them evolved atoms, stars, planets, and living creatures.'" (p. 9)

So the sequence was:

virtual particles constantly beginning and ceasing to exist;
a random concentration of energy;
explosive expansion;
condensation of real particles;
evolution of atoms (originally thought to be the smallest particles and most basic realities) etc.

I think that, of the creation myths, the Ginnungagap (see also here), with its dialectical interaction between opposed unconscious forces, is the closest to this scientific model.

The City Of Ice

If a short story about Kendrick, Ricia and Alvarlan in the City of Ice were to be published in a fantasy anthology, then it would be accepted as a fantasy short story. However, if exactly the same story, without any textual alterations, were to be published in a volume of Poul Anderson's hard sf Technic History series, then in that different context, it could be read as a "play within the play," as part of the psychodrama played by several explorers of the Saturnian system.

Readers of fantasy and sf easily imagine parallel universes with "The City of Ice" occurring in one and "The Saturn Game" in another. Anderson excellently presents this kind of scenario in another of his series, where Shakespeare, the great dramatist in some universes, is the Great Historian in the world of A Midsummer Tempest. However, we could, more subtly, read "The City of Ice," if such a story were to be written, simply as what is being imagined by the protagonists of "The Saturn Game" - as a fiction within the fiction.

As it happens, Anderson opted not to write "The City of Ice" as a separate story or even as discrete passages within "The Saturn Game." The psychodrama comes on stage only briefly in dialogue and in italicized passages that are clearly the characters' imaginings. However, these characters encounter alien landscapes that encourage their imaginings. Buried by a landslide on a Iapetean glacier, Scobie imagines that he is in the wreck of the Elf King's Dance Hall which is "...built of mist and starshine..." and "...blocks quarried from the cold side of Ginnungagap..." (The Van Rijn Method, p. 39). That is quite a thought. Meanwhile, Garcilaso, concussed, mumbles that the King has cast his soul into a cold Hell.

Before that, there was a straight description of a scene that could well encourage astronauts to fantasize. They have climbed so high that the curvature of the moon has become evident and the stars now seem to be not above but around them...