Monday 18 December 2017

After Or Between

See A Midsummer Tempest X.

Rereading Neil Gaiman's Worlds' End, I again compare Gaiman's Inn at the End of All Worlds with Anderson's inn between the worlds. For some comparisons, see the above link. (Douglas Adams has a Restaurant at the End of the Universe but that is a different kind of place.)

Anderson's Taverners have a charter once granted by some power unknown whereas Gaiman's Indian landlady came to her inn from another journey that still awaits her when she tires of working in the inn. She allows one guest, Charlene Mooney, to stay and work there with the result that, when Charlene's traveling companion returns home, he finds that there is no record of there ever having been a Charlene Mooney. He has returned to a world like the one he left. Maybe Charlene will eventually replace the current landlady.

When the current landlady raises her right arm, the shadow of a left arm appears on the wall behind her. She is, appropriately, the four-armed Kali, Goddess of Destruction. There is devotion to Hindu deities in SM Stirling's Angrezi Raj. See Religious Diversity II and Krishna.

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