Fifties-Never-Ended Land

SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004).

(From a window of his oval office, John Rolfe, Founder of the Commonwealth of New Virginia, can see Mount Saint Helena.)

Through the viewpoint character, Tom Christiansen, Stirling very effectively shows his readers how we might respond if we found ourselves in a place like New Virginia.

Tom stares open-mouthed at San Francisco Bay without San Francisco (here).

"Napa town ended with the abruptness Tom had become used to in this weird through-the-looking-glass place..." (p. 343)

Alice found that what could be seen in the looking glass, like the back of the clock on the mantelpiece, was the same as in her world but that everything else was wildly different - the clock in Looking Glass House has a smiling face.

"Meeting the father of someone you'd been dating was always a bit fraught, and probably more so here in fifties-never-ended land." (p. 365)

That phrase,"fifties-never-ended," is a good expression for the time warp feeling that Tom has experienced more than once.

We feel that we become very familiar both with this New Virginia and with the Angrezi Raj of another parallel Earth. And which would we prefer to live in?

Alice References

Alice (Wonderland or Looking Glass) references permeate popular culture and we do not need to be told what they are. Thus:

White Rabbit
Mad Hatter
Red Queen
White King
etc

For this blog, see search results for:

Alice In Wonderland (scroll down)
gyres (scroll down)
Alice Through The Looking Glass (scroll down) 

For Comics Appreciation, see here.

Thus, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling do not need to explain when they tell us that:

"A small girl in antique dress slept in an armchair before a mirror; a white-haired figure with a pipe and smoking jacket was seated beside her, only the figure was an anthropomorphic rabbit..."
-"The Asteroid Queen," Chapter VII, p. 130.

- or when:

"The rabbit touched the young girl on the shoulder; she stretched, yawned, and stepped through a large and ornately framed mirror on the study wall, vanishing without trace."
-op. cit, p. 131.

Thus, both Alice books are referenced.

Cultural References

The Winds Of Fate.

A senator thinks that his client has a:

"Lean and hungry look..."

-CHAPTER SIX, p. 100 -

- anticipating Shakespeare.

A farmer who finds it hard to adjust to the urgency of saving and investing in new equipment says:

"'...all the Gods damn it, you have to run fast these days just to stay in the same place!'"

-CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 158 -

- anticipating the Red Queen's Race in Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Realistically, Artorius has to face an angry crowd of people displaced by the nova res ("new things") but is able to offer them alternatives: land grants with financial help or new employment with good wages. At this early stage, the economy is still expanding in such a way that the displaced can be not replaced but relocated. (I just thought of that way of putting it now.) This is in CHAPTER TEN on pp. 138-139.

Jeremy thinks:

"'Lay on, MacDuff..."

-CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 107 -

- more Shakespeare, but, in this case, Jeremy remembers it.

Artorius corrects Jeremy's "'The game is afoot, Batman!'" with "'The game is afoot, Watson...'" in CHAPTER ELEVEN on p. 166.

The Batman is a great detective and there are stories in which they meet.

After tracking down those references, your friendly neighbourhood blogger needs a food and drink break.

Ythrian Attitudes

"Wingless."

Growing up in Chartertown on one of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon, Nat Falkayn learns Planha at school. Rippling Ythrian feathers express "...signs and symbols, often more meaningful than words..." (p. 412) Thus, Thuriak expresses "You are troubled...," (ibid.) non-verbally. 

"Nat had learned some of the conventional attitudes as part of his Planha lessons..." (ibid.)

- but feels like a deaf-mute when he spends Freedom Week with the extended household of the Weathermaker Choth. (Choths differ; many are larger than a single household.)

The word, "attitude," has more meanings than I had thought. In Alice Through The Looking Glass, Haigha and Hatta, the Anglo-Saxon messengers, express their Anglo-Saxon attitudes by elaborate bodily postures and contortions as they come and go so maybe they would have been able to adapt Planha for human use?

Van Gogh

Sometimes I blog while there is a TV on in the same room. Reality becomes multi-layered:

the room
the computer screen
the TV screen
a mirror (Alice's "Looking Glass House")
through the window
the page of a book
thoughts
conversation
interruptions for meals

This evening, while I was posting about time travel, there was a TV program about art history detective work as to why van Gogh severed his ear. Would anyone in the future of the Time Patrol timeline be interested in this? Maybe not but, if so, then they would be able to research it by visiting the period but would have to avoid:

drawing attention to themselves;
causing any of the events that they were there to observe.

We know the sorts of things that can happen but the most interesting question is: would they be able to solve the mystery? On the question of comparisons with British TV programs, I have already mentioned "Time Team."