Gyres

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

"The robot spun back from impact. The slugs tore through its plating. It gyred off, jets dead." (p. 110)

I have encountered "gyre" in a poem by WB Yeats:

"There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
"There all the serpent tails are bit,
"There all the gyres converge in one,
"There all the planets drop in the Sun."

This is relevant to Anderson's hard sf because it refers to planets and the Sun.

- and in a comic verse by Lewis Carroll: see here.

This is relevant to Anderson's heroic fantasy because it describes a young man killing a monster with a sword.

In Starfarers, armed spacemen resemble fantasy warriors:

"In the harsh sunlight, they shone like armored knights.The jetpacks on their backs were like the wings of the warrior angel Michael." (ibid.)

One of these shining figures shoots an attacking robot vessel which then gyres away so that "gyre" becomes a verb as in Carroll, not a noun as in Yeats.

One word in Anderson's text generates (at least) two interesting literary references. I want to post more this evening but am preoccupied with other activities, including British elections today not only for Parliament but also for Lancaster City Council. To quote Carroll again:

"The lion and the unicorn
"Were fighting for the crown..."

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.

The Alice Tradition

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane calls her native Aenean tadmouse "Frumious Bandersnatch."

Chunderban Desai called his native Ramanujan pet "Mock Turtle."

See also:

The Red Queen's Race, 13 Feb '19
The Red Queen's Race, 11 Nov '18
Gyres
Red King, White King, Last Viking

As ever, those are more links than I expected to find and someone will spot it if I have missed any.