Wednesday 9 July 2014

Multiverse: Operation Xibalba, Introduction

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014).

Sorry to flake out, folks, but I cannot do justice to "Operation Xibalba" by Eric Flint right now. Today, I have:

read and posted about "Bloodpride" by Gregory Benford;

prepared some Latin texts;

attended the last Latin class of this academic year, where we started to read Caesar on the Druids;

attended a campaign organizing meeting in Lancaster Friends' Meeting House (Latin there earlier, Zen last night);

engaged in a facebook discussion;

watched and posted about two episodes of Smallville;

started to read "Operation Xibalba."

"If you've read Steven Matuchek's account of the expedition he and his wife Virginia undertook into the hell universe to rescue their infant daughter, you'll remember his depictions of their terrain there. Those depictions are about as accurate as everything in his book." (p. 162)

If a previous text is regarded as a previous text not only by the readers but also by the first person narrator, then that narrator is free to present his own more "accurate" account. On the other hand, the author writes in an afterword:

"...the world of Operation Chaos...that story was one I could write completely and fully in Poul Anderson's own spirit.
"Such was my intent at any rate. You've now just read the story, so you can decide for yourself if I have succeeded or not." (p. 182)

Well, I have not yet read the story in its entirety because I skip ahead to check out interesting items like introductions and afterwords. However, so far, this is an excellent and authentic continuation of Anderson's Operation... series.

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