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 the 1959 version of de Camp's essay "The Krishna Stories," the action of "Calories" takes place in the year 2122 AD., falling between the first part of "Finished" and Perpetual Motion, which would make it the second story set on Krishna in terms of chronology. However, internal evidence indicates that it actually falls between The Queen of Zamba and the second part of "Finished," the attempt to break the Viagens embargo on advanced technology in the former being mentioned as recent news, while the characters show no knowledge of the equally notorious assault on the ban in the latter. This would date the story between the years 2138 and 2140, presumably about 2139, making it the fourth story set on Krishna.
Read more about this topic: Calories (story)
Famous quotes containing the word setting:
“When I consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, frowning with darkness or glowing with downy light, or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, like the battlements of a city in the heavens, their grandeur appears thrown away on the meanness of my employment; the drapery is altogether too rich for such poor acting. I am hardly worthy to be a suburban dweller outside those walls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)