Friday 5 October 2012

Chapter Twenty

The concluding chapter of Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis (London, 1977) is four pages divided into three sections:

a futurian, a "...dark, kindly man..." speaks for a page and a half (p. 168);

Oleg, Reid and Erissa make their farewells to each other after recuperating for several weeks in the futurians' Black Sea base "...whose arches soared airy, iridescent, and indestructible as rainbows." (p. 169);

in 1970, Reid is reunited in their ship's cabin with his wife who thinks that he is back from a stroll around the deck sooner than she expected.

The futurians' base is reminiscent of the Academy in the Time Patrol series and of the Havig group's base in There will Be Time, which I compared with each other in an earlier post. Of the futurians' base, Anderson writes:

"From the terrace where they stood, a hillside dropped in forest that was sweet with summer, hoar with moonlight, to broad and quiet waters." (p. 169)

All three descriptions involve a hill, woods and water.

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