Khroman And Corun

OK. I have started to read "Witch of the Demon Seas" in the Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook. "A novel of alien sorcery..." Does "alien" mean that the story will turn out to be set on another planet? So far, it looks like Earth in a fictitious prehistoric past.

It begins:

"Khroman the conqueror, Thalassocrat of Archaera..."

These sound like familiar names with slight changes of spelling. Remembering "Thalassocrat" from an alien planet in Anderson's Technic History, I have finally googled it and found that it means a ruler of the sea, which I had not suspected.

Khroman's men have just captured the pirate, Corun. The idea seems to be to indicate up front that this is sword and sorcery fiction by using slight variations on names of already established characters. The reader expects to enjoy a familiar kind of narrative but will probably find that there is some new slant to it if the author is AA Craig (Poul Anderson). However, I will take it slowly since I am not quickly drawn into this kind of reading! (And, of course, life goes on, even for a blogger.)

A City

"Esau."

"...he went afoot through the city to the palace.
"If they were city and palace.
"He didn't know." (p. 526)

Well, if it is a large number of buildings with intelligent beings living and/or working in them, then it is a "city" because that is all that the English word means. I read somewhere that ancient Babylon would have been totally regimented, not a place of freedom and opportunity like New York, but it was a city in the physical sense. And the Thalassocrat is in the "palace" so it is a palace.

"There were no streets in the usual sense, but aerial observation had disclosed an elaborate pattern in the layout of structures, about which the dwellers could not or would not speak." (p. 528)

There is a part of Liverpool where, instead of streets lined by buildings, there are buildings dotted about with open spaces between them. No doubt cities could take highly unfamiliar forms.

On t'Kela, they distinguish between "Kusulongo the City" and "Kusulongo the Mountain," so maybe their basic concept is of a Place which has a City-aspect and a Mountain-aspect?

Squeak And Gibber

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets

-copied from here.

 

"The Thalassocrat addressed Dalmady by voice alone, in the blue-glimmering ice cavern of his audience room. Earphones reduced the upper frequencies to some the man could hear. Nevertheless, that squeak and gibber always rather spoiled the otherwise impressive effect of flower crown and carven staff."

-"Esau," pp. 529-530.

Shakespeare, like the Bible, will accompany mankind into space.

Three Saints And A God

Reading Poul Anderson necessitates the use of a dictionary. Recently, I thought to google the title "Thalassocrat" applied to a ruler on a subjovian planet in "Esau." This is not an alien word because it ends in "-ocrat." (1)

I also suddenly wondered about St Dismas who is continually invoked by Anderson's merchant character, Nicholas van Rijn. Was Dismas, like the Jerusalem Catholic Church and the Galilean Order, a religious fiction by Anderson or was there "really" such a saint? Yes, there was. "Dismas" is a name given to the "good thief" crucified beside Jesus but pardoned by him in Luke's Gospel, thus appropriate for van Rijn.

In "Margin of Profit," van Rijn as usual invokes Dismas whereas his companion prefers:

"...St Nicholas, patron of travelers...In spite of his being your namesake." (2)

(Although, is the patron saint of travelers not St Christopher?)

Thirdly, van Rijn, catching an attacking ship on an energy beam, exclaims:

"Ha, like a fish we play him! Good St Peter the Fisherman, help us not let him get away!" (3)

Finally, having calculatingly used his ship, the Mercury, to capture the pirate, van Rijn reveals that Mercury was the Roman god of commerce, gambling and thieves. Thus, the good thief and the god of thieves meet in a van Rijn story.

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis, Riverdale, NY, 2009, p. 526.
(2) ibid., p. 159.
(3) ibid., p. 166.