A Few Coincidences

I am reading SM Stirling's Emberverse series in which many people, including the present Queen of England, have died and Prince Charles has become King Charles III. By coincidence, I recently heard part of a radio drama by Val McDermid in which many people are dying and the Queen is too ill to perform state functions so the Prime Minister asks Prince Charles to dissolve Parliament.

By another coincidence, I am rereading Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in which Mikael Blomkvist reads Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing. The phrase "...mermaids singing..." is part of a poem by John Donne which Neil Gaiman quotes at the beginning of his novel, Stardust.

The Poul Anderson Appreciation blog has found many connections between SM Stirling, Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman. We have also discussed Stieg Larsson in relation to Poul Anderson, e.g., see here.

Multi-Blogging

My mission today, which I chose to accept, was not to post on Poul Anderson Appreciation but instead to post on six other blogs. However, these posts should be of interest to readers of PAA and will be copied to that blog tomorrow:

Versions
Not Fanfic But
Swedish Comics
Temporal Intelligence
Logic And Timelines
Magic And Entropy

Versions

See Versions.

Generally, book publication presents a single version of a character whereas periodical publication and screen adaptations present multiple versions. However, there is a long history of different versions of a story. Hesiod and Homer present alternative birth stories of Aphrodite; Plato rationalizes them.

The Smallville and Arrow TV series present different versions of Oliver Queen played by different actors. Smallville is a prequel to a version of Superman but not a version that we have ever seen before. Everything important is happening before Clark dons the costume or flies, even Lois Lane knowing of his powers and agreeing to marry him.

There are two versions of Poul Anderson's Kith History (see here) and a few stories in his Technic History exist both in an original version and in a version that has been revised to make it consistent with the History, e.g., "Margin of Profit" (see here) and "The White King's War" (see here).