Poul Anderson And Bryan Talbot

I am currently rereading two works that could not be more dissimilar:

Fire Time, written by Poul Anderson, prose sf set in fictional locations, mainly an extrasolar planet, in the future;

The Tale of One Bad Rat, written and drawn by Bryan Talbot, contemporary mainstream graphic fiction set in recognizably real places (London, the Lake District, the Motorway Services outside Lancaster) with fictional characters modelled on photographed real people, including an acquaintance from nearby Preston. 

All fiction reflects life. Fire Time addresses the issue of personal loyalties in time of war. One Bad Rat addresses the issue of child sexual abuse. 

I like to turn to graphic fiction in the evening after reading prose, and doing other things, earlier in the day. Tomorrow morning, we will set off early to walk by the canal from Lancaster to Carnforth (toward the Lake District but not as far) so there will be no breakfast blog posts.

High is heaven and holy.

Meanwhile, In Other Reading

For each of us, Poul Anderson (or any other writer) exists in the context of (different) other reading.

For me, right now:

Anderson's Fire Time, Chapter IX; 

the Dune series seems to be falling off my reading list;

I reread Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy the way some people reread JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy;

I have read the first five of the twenty-five chapters in GK Chesterton's The Flying Inn but am not sure how much more I will read (the flying inn is like flying pickets - it does not fly);

appreciation of the visuals in Bryan Talbot's The Tale of One Bad Rat has led to rereading it several times in quick succession, an entirely different experience from prose-only fiction.

Next, we might consider an inn in Fire Time, another of Anderson's many inns.

Transience And Women Protagonists

Fire Time, VII.

On that part of Ishtar where civilization possibly originated, an airborne mould consumes and destroys dead meat almost immediately. Many predators have to eat their prey alive because the meat, once dead, would become inedible too quickly. This area is the source of:

"'...a great many myths, religions, rituals, concepts of life and death alike...'" (p. 82)

So that explains the bizarre belief that a spirit is trapped in its dead body until the flesh is eaten. 

Jill's aunt comments:

"'The transience of the flesh may be as basic, as widespread on Ishtar, as the dying god is on Earth.'

"'Huh?' grunted Larreka. 'Well, if you say so, lady.'" (pp. 82-83)

Larreka takes for granted the transience of the flesh but does not comprehend this comparison with an alien concept.

I am rereading fiction with women protagonists:

Jill Conway in Fire Time;

Helen in Bryan Talbot's The Tale of One Bad Rat;

Lisbeth in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy;

Alan Moore's Halo Jones.

Rats

In Poul Anderson's "In Memoriam," in the long post-human future of Earth, rats variously evolve into grass-eaters, predators, winged raptors and flippered water-dwellers. Some climb into trees, develop hands, return to the ground and grow bigger bodies and brains but never use fire or complex tools.

I used to think that human beings evolved because some quadrupeds evaded predators by climbing into trees where they were safe and free to chatter and grasped branches, thus developing opposable thumbs. Then, their descendants descended to the plains walking upright in groups with forelimbs freed to manipulate their environment. This account at least had the merit of plausibility.

The Time Patrol Academy is:

"...in the Oligocene period, a warm age of forests and grass-lands when man's ratty ancestors scuttled away from the tread of giant mammals." (Time Patrol, pp. 5-6)

Those "...ratty ancestors..." would have been the pre-arboreal quadrupeds. Bryan Talbot's The Tale Of One Bad Rat (see here) also states that human beings are descended from something like rats. And this may be the case. However, I am now told that what evidence there is indicates that bipedalism preceded opposable thumbs.