Friday 12 May 2017

The Fife And Drum Tavern

SM Stirling, The Sunrise Lands (New York, 2008), Chapter Nineteen, pp. 458-461.

The Fife and Drum tavern in the city of Boise:

orderly;
law-abiding;
not attended by police, officers or civilians;
loud;
raucous;
sawdust floor;
smells of gaslights, cooking and beer;
used weapons and shields on the walls;
booths;
scarred middle-aged men, smoking or chewing tobacco;
corn on the cob;
spareribs in hot sauce;
grilled pork chops;
sage and onion stuffing;
mounds of fried potatoes;
steamed cabbage and carrots;
brown bread and butter;
beer;
apple pie with chocolate and walnut ice cream;
everyone says varieties of grace.

See The Food Thread.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

A tavern worthy of the inns seen in the works of Anderson and Tolkien! Altho I don't recall any taverns in their works catering entirely to military persons.

And the bit about all these soldiers saying varying forms of grace reminded me of how the Change seems to have killed off belief in atheism with most people (aside from some, such as Lady Sandra).

Sean

David Birr said...

Sean:
The fact that the Change violated — or rewrote — the laws of physics should be proof enough for anyone that there IS Someone Out There ... and he/she/it is malevolent! Unfortunately, in the Changed world, there's no possibility that we'd ever be able to develop a way of retaliating (and we must say goodbye to dreams of going out to the stars).

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, DAVID!

I agree! Whatever or Whoever perpetrated the Change was no friend of mankind! The sheer MALEVOLENCE of such a Being would make most people more inclined than not to believe in God, or even the absurd pagan gods. And, yes, no way of striking back at whoever perpetrated the Change.

And, assuming ** I **, as does NOT seem likely, survived into a post-Change world, I would also feel fury and frustration at how this would destroy whatever hope I had for mankind getting off this rock in the foreseeable future!

I remember kinda wishing some of the characters in the Change books had taken an interest in the hard SF of Poul Anderson, even if it seemed hopelessly irrelevant to a Changed world. I would wonder what they would think of Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry and speculations about FTL travel and intelligent life on other planets.

Sean