The Hostage of Zir - Setting

Setting

The planet Krishna is de Camp's premier creation in the Sword and Planet genre, representing both a tribute to the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and an attempt to "get it right", reconstructing the concept logically, without what he regarded as Burroughs' biological and technological absurdities. De Camp intended the stories as "pure entertainment in the form of light, humorous, swashbuckling, interplanetary adventure-romances - a sort of sophisticated Burroughs-type story, more carefully thought out than their prototypes."

As dated in James Cambias's GURPS Planet Krishna (a 1997 gaming guide to the Viagens series authorized by de Camp), the action of The Hostage of Zir takes place in the year 2145 AD., falling between The Hand of Zei and The Prisoner of Zhamanak, and making it the seventh story set on Krishna in terms of chronology. Cambias's dating may be too early, however, as internal evidence in Zhamanak indicates that it occurs shortly after Hostage, while internal evidence in The Bones of Zora indicates that it occurs shortly after Zhamanak, with the events of "The Virgin of Zesh" happening between. As "Virgin" is securely dated to 2150, this could shift the dating of Hostage and Zhamanak as late as 2148 and 2149, respectively.

Read more about this topic:  The Hostage Of Zir

Famous quotes containing the word setting:

    High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
    Hung o’er the deep, such as amazing frowns
    On utmost Kilda’s shore, whose lonely race
    Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
    The royal eagle draws his vigorous young
    James Thomson (1700–1748)

    “Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
    As reckless as the best of them tonight,
    By setting fire to all the brush we piled
    With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow....”
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Only in the problem play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between Man’s will and his environment: in a word, of problem.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)