Poul Anderson Appreciation: Search results for The Milky Way Thread

"Iron."

"...the thronging stars and the cold rush of the Milky Way." (15, p. 103)

As usual, I have linked the phrase, "Milky Way," to the "The Milky Way Thread" post. However, nowadays, I have to check whether this description has already been linked to the Thread. This time, when I searched the blog for the phrase, "the cold rush of the Milky Way," I found, after the Thread (see here, scroll down):

"frosty rush of Milky Way"
"the great curdled rush of the Milky Way"
the Milky Way as "a rush of cold silver"

- but I seem not to have logged "cold rush" before. Some day I might have found every Andersonian description of the Milky Way, at least in the texts to which I have access.

Sunday, 20 July 2025

River And Circle

Brain Wave, 14.

"The Milky Way flowed as a river of radiance..." (p. 121)

"The huge circle of the Milky Way...glimmered..." (p. 126)

Here are two phrases to describe the Milky Way. I must have posted about both phrases before, so I thought. However, I cannot find either phrase by searching the blog.

The search for "river of radiance" had only one result:

Poul Anderson Appreciation: A Beautiful Paragraph

This post contains the words "radiance" and "river" but not the phrase, "river of radiance."

The search for "The huge circle of the Milky Way..." had no result.

This post, "River And Circle," will now be added to The Milky Way Thread which must surely be approaching completion.

In Brain Wave, humanity stands at the threshold of a galactic civilization but it is one that we would not be able to understand. In Poul Anderson's Technic History and many other such works, human beings as we know them go out into the galaxy.

Brain Wave has many covers but we have nearly exhausted the supply.

Monday, 4 March 2019

Ghost Road

Poul Anderson, New America, "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

The Milky Way as seen by a human child brought up by Rolandic natives:

"...the stars...crowded heaven, and Ghost Road shone among them as if it, like the leafage beneath, were paved with dew." (p. 186)

And the Milky Way has been called the Ghost Bridge before. See The Milky Way, which was the first part of our lengthy Milky Way Thread.

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Milky Way, Steak And Revolutionaries

In Three Details, I mentioned a description of the Milky Way and three ways to eat steak. OK. Here they are:

"The Milky Way reared in an arch of white diamond dust above them."

Steak and eggs for breakfast;
steak and potato au gratin for lunch;
steak au poivre with frites, zinfandel and green salad, followed by peach Melba, for dinner.

This post enriches both our Milky Way Thread and our Food Thread.

Continuing to read SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, we find that yet another well-known revolutionary comes to an untimely, although some would say appropriate, end. Oh, well. This is an alternative history, after all.

Are all revolutionarires robbers and rogues? See the differing accounts of Barabbas in the Gospels.

Monday, 29 March 2021

"The Milky Way Soared Overhead."

"The Milky Way soared overhead."

We have often read similar phrases. See The Milky Way Thread. However, this sentence was written not by Poul Anderson but by Ian Fleming:

-Ian Fleming, Dr No (London, 1989), VII, p. 63.

James Bond sees "...a dense bright carpet..." of stars and counts over a hundred in "...a finger's length..." (ibid.)

This passage highlights a difference between genres:

the sf cliche of FTL, faster than light interstellar travel;

more generally, any speculative fiction about future space travel technologies, preferably avoiding cliches;

most fiction and literature, simply reflecting the perennial human experience of stars as lights in the sky.

As we always say, Poul Anderson wrote all three. We have also noted that, in his detective novels, realms like the night sky and the ocean depths are described with the sensibilities of an sf writer.

James Bond will find that Dr. No is sabotaging American rockets but not that he is secretly developing an FTL drive. That can happen in sf but not in spy fiction!

Wednesday, 29 July 2020

Lists Of Posts

The Milky Way Thread
Across The Milky Way
The Food Thread
Great Cities
Literary Comparisons
The Bible On The Blog

I think that's all for now.

Tuesday, 18 August 2026

Some Familiar Ingredients

I am realizing that Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains is an elaborately constructed future history series which I have not appreciated in sufficient detail until now.

Recently on this blog, we contemplated fictional accounts of Jupiter in Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" and in James Blish's "Bridge," then hypothetical discoveries of antigravity in "Bridge" and in Anderson's ...Flying Mountains, mentioning other works en route. Soon we will again see Jupiter, in ...Flying Mountains.

We have just read past yet another Andersonian moment of realization. Don Bell says:

"'...it's difficult to see how we could -'" (p. 139)

- then drops his cigarette, stares and says:

"'Or could we?'" (ibid.)

We know the signs but as usual will have to wait to be told the answer.

The Milky Way is still with us together with other heavenly bodies:

"...uncountably many frost-cold stars, the curdled ice of the galaxy, and Jupiter." (p. 153)

("Curdled" appears a few times in The Milky Way Thread.)

I must eat and run across town to the Gregson.

Tuesday, 26 March 2019

Stars Seen From Space

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 2.

Stars throng space. They show their colors: Vega blue; Capella golden; Betelgeuse red. We remember Vegans in James Blish's Cities In Flight and Betelgeuseans in Anderson's Technic History. Stars invisible from Earth hide the constellations from untrained eyes.

"The night was wild with suns." (p. 18)

We remember Anderson's phrase, "A wilderness of suns...," see here.

The Milky way belts heaven but we have already quoted this. See The Milky Way Thread. The Magellanic Clouds glow and the Andromeda galaxy gleams. In the Technic History, other galaxies are mere background but Tau Zero will go intergalactic.

Tuesday, 13 February 2018

Mirkheim, Chapter XIX

(i) The captain and officers of the Hermetian flagship, Chronos, see Nicholas van Rijn, the living legend, in the flesh. We have read the stories that made him a legend.

(ii) Sandra Tamarin sees that he is old as Coya Conyon had done eighteen years previously.

(iii) However, he is old but energetic, refusing to be pitiable.

(iv) From the wardroom (see also here), we are given another view of the "...billionfold Milky Way..." (Chapter XIX, p. 255) (For full reference, see here.) See also The Milky Way Thread.

(v) There will probably be more from this chapter but not tonight. Poul Anderson's texts are an inexhaustible well.

Tuesday, 26 January 2016

The Food Thread

A Bar With Food
Bradshaw
An Indian Meal
Good Food
Morning
Food For Thought
Harvesters' Lunch
Harvest Supper
Evening Picnic

Descriptive Passages
Curry And Naan
Lunch At Sea
Dinner At The Winged Cross And in An Airship
Van Rijn
Open Sandwiches
Bhang Lassi
The Peshawar Club

Dinner At His Desk
Another Meal And Another Adventure
Barfi And Samosas
Dinner At The French Embassy
Festival Food
This Month
Food In Khartoum
China
Draka Food

A Buffet Lunch
Burritos
A Chinese With Weak Coffee
Beautiful Scenery And Good Food
"The Best Hamburger He'd Ever Tasted"
Some Vivid Descriptive Passages
Not only Times But Also Places

Spartan Food
Faith, Food And Freedom
More Food
Yrsa's Upbringing
Yule Eve In Leidhra
The Twilight Of The Elves
A Bird Made Of Fog
"Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

A Bronze Age Feast
Welcome Home Feast
Another Meal
Venison
Harvesters' Lunch II
Clambake
Christmas Dinner 1250 B.C.
Initiation Feast
Another World
A Civic Harvest Festival Meal

Hospitality To Odysseus
Ivanhoe: Miscellania
Delfinburg
In The Saturn Room Of The Hotel Universe, Lunograd
In The Phoenix House
Fanciful Comparisons: Ythrians And Japanese
Palatial Privacy, Lack Of
Four Senses And Good Food
A Nasty Shock
An SF Villain

Can't Resist It!
Bread And Venison
A Camp Meal
Yule Feast
Dinner In A Barn
Dinner In The Aylward Household
Hash Browns And Conversations
Harvest Supper
An Understated British Resurrection? (And Another Meal)

Engineering And Tea
Preserving Civilization
Eating And Killing (Or Vice Versa)
A Welcoming Feast
Breakfast
Dinner At The Sheaf And Sickle
Dinner In A Hunting Lodge
Caviar And Toast
The Fife And Drum Tavern
A Paxton

Meal Before Battle
Vegetarian Food In A Buddhist Monastery
Grill And Bar Food
Camp Breakfast
An Iowan Dinner
A Banquet
Feast
Winter Meal

Feast Before Seidh
Ironrede
Two Meals
Another Camp Meal
The State Banquet
A Sheriff's Hospitality
A Cold Collation
A Conference Dinner
A Dunedain Feast
A Meal In A Tent In A Desert
Paces II

Another Sea Battle And Another Meal
The Fifth Sense
A Meal On The Ceram Sea
Outsystem Food
From The Lavishly Stocked Terran Embassy Larder
An Altaian Banquet
Rich Texts, Drink And Food
Modjo Fruit
Two Rijstaffels

Breakfast At Biocontrol Central
Captain's Dinner
An Evening And A Morning On Vixen...
In The Hooligan
High Living In The Future
Luxury
Dinner In A League Outpost
Warped Reality
Another Meal
Life In 209 B.C.
Fiction Set In The 21st Century
L'Etoile de Diana
Pleasures

Some Parallels
A Meal In Hiding
The Meal Before The Metapsychic Rebellion
A Meal On The Moon
Christmas Food
Satan And Food
The British Raj
Cross-Temporal Cheese Cake

Restaurants
Furniture And Food
Future Facts Of Food
Follow-Up On Food
One Breakfast And Three Alternative Histories
Milky Way, Steak And Revolutionaries
Hail And Good Night
Sacrifice And Feast
Warmth And Light In Two Timelines

Full Marks To Eric Wace
New Lemurian Food
Some Notes To Recent Posts
A Meal In The Command Tent
Like Chicken
Avocati
Many Descriptive Details And One Old Friend
Time And Place: Eating In San Francisco
Time And Place: Steam Beer
Bowls Of New Potatoes
Time And Place: Chinatown And Pub Crawling

Russian Eggs And More About Films
A Meal And Four Senses
An Ad Libitum Breakfast
The Devil's Game: Interval Three
Breakfast
Five Senses And A Meal
Forests In Minds And A Fight At A Meal?
Shadows Of Annihilation, Chapter Four

Shadows Of Annihilation, Chapter Five, And Food
Pancakes And Cars
A Few Details
Some Observations Near The End Of A Novel
In The Nest
A Few Words
A Few More Words
Sensations And Anticipations
To Ear Or Not To Eat
Warmth And Light
Breakfast In The Hooligan

Some Details In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

A Meeting With Snacks

Operation Luna: Miscellaneous V

Gerard, Demons And Coffee

Breakfasts

Breakfast In The Air

An Omelet And Fresh-Baked Bread

Saturday, 23 February 2019

Three Details

I will shortly depart for Manchester, to return this evening.

Reading a book, SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, not published yet, I might not so much tell you what is there as tell you what to look out for. In ONE and TWO:

a fresh new one-line description of the Milky Way that will join our Milky Way Thread;

the moon making a long glittering path over the sea - we have had such descriptions of light on water before;

three (presumably) delicious ways to eat steak that will join our Food Thread.

Of course, there is also an enemy plot and a daring mission but you don't need me to tell you that.

Back here this evening, I hope.

Thursday, 27 September 2018

Across The Sky

This is another post for the Milky Way thread although the galaxy is not named in the relevant passage. The Arvelans, visiting aliens, are on Taiwan at night. They see:

a mountain rising to the right and plunging to the left;

downward, yellow windows and a twinkling seashore village;

"...the ocean, like living obsidian, bridged by a moonglade." (p. 133) (In this linked Wiktionary article, notice the quotation from Mirkheim);

"Across the sky glimmered the galaxy." (ibid.);

there are many individual stars.

We have encountered this use of the word "glade" three times before:

Rain And Words
Glades And The Dead
Four Senses On St. Li In Oronesia

Thursday, 4 October 2018

Furniture And Stars

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 7-8.

"The living couch received them and responded to them." (7, p. 108)

More Futuristic Furniture.

"Night on Lunar Farside is a glory of stars." (8, p. 108)

Another Glory Of Stars. (See also here.)

Six thousand or more stars visible in blue, gold, amber or red, the galactic belt not milky but icy:

"...a winter river banked and islanded with night." (ibid.) (See The Milky Way Thread and The Sea Of Space.)

There are planets, nebulae, the Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda galaxy and possibly even one or two further galaxies. The observer is one with the universe.

Friday, 23 February 2024

What Val Nira Said

"The Longest Voyage."

"'No nation on this world could even reach my people unaided - let alone fight them - but why should you think of fighting? I've told you a thousand times, Isklip, the dwellers in the Milky Way are dangerous to none, helpful to all. They have so much wealth, they're hard put to it to find a use for most of it. Gladly would they spend large amounts to help all the peoples on this world become civilized again.'" (p. 120)

"Ah, greater marvels than the poets have imagined for Elf Land! Entire cities built in a single tower half a mile high. The sky made to glow so that there is no true darkness after sunset. Food not grown in the earth, but manufactured in alchemical laboratories. The lowest peasant owning a score of machines which serve him more subtly and humbly than might a thousand slaves - owning an aerial carriage which can fly him around his world in less than a day - owning a crystal window on which theatrical images appear, to beguile his abundant leisure. Argosies between suns, stuffed with the wealth of a thousand planets; yet every ship unarmed and unescorted, for their are no pirates and this realm has long ago come to such good terms with the other starfaring nations that war has also ceased.'" (pp. 126-127)

"In this happy land there is little crime. When it does occur, the criminal is soon captured by the arts of the provost corps; yet he is not hanged, nor even transported overseas. Instead, his mind is cured of the wish to violate any law. He returns home to live as an especially honored citizen, since all know he is now completely trustworthy. As for the government - but here I lost the thread of discourse. I believe it is in form a republic, but in practice a devoted fellowship of men, chosen by examination, who see to the welfare of everyone else.

"Surely, I thought this was Paradise!" (p. 127)

(Platonic-Wellsian government.)

Usually, I write list summaries rather than quote at such length but, in this case, the text is already sufficiently condensed.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Diana Crowfeather asks why anyone fights when there is already a technology that could make every individual being rich. Her idea has been implemented in the interstellar civilization of "The Longest Voyage."

Saturday, 15 December 2018

"Gorgeous Flow" (Julian May)

Here is a passage to add to our Milky Way Thread although it is from Julian May, not from Poul Anderson:

"Outside the window glimmered facsimile star patterns of Earth's northern-hemisphere winter: Orion, Canis Major and Minor, the gorgeous flow of the Milky Way."
-Julian May, Magnificat (London, 1996), Chapter Seventeen, p. 295.

Good night.

Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Via Lactea

Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, 4.

"...crowding constellations and the icy Via Lactea." (p. 307)

Yet another description of you know what. See The Milky Way Thread.

The women stand by the megaliths. Meanwhile, in other reading, John Constantine is driven past Stonehenge. Iern's foster-mother, Rosenn, reflects that:

"...the planet spun toward Northern winter and soon Orion would rise." (p. 308)

This passage parallels an earlier passage set in North America. See Wind And Waves. However, ironically, Rosenn knows Orion only as a constellation, not as a top secret Northwestern project. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN will at last disclose the nature of that project.