[Dragaera] The Red Badge of Courage

[Erzsébet of Catspirit Wood]

Mark Mandel wrote:
On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Jerry Friedman
<jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote:

>> Cracks in the Orb!  I didn't mention an obvious reference to
>> Pern.  Two quotations from /The White Dragon/ (1978):
>>
>> "'Great Shells and Shards!'  Robinton slapped his
>> forehead."  (p. 603, /The Dragonriders of Pern/ omnibus).
>>
>> "'Shards, but I can't go another step for a while!'"
>> (p. 696, that's Piemur)
> 
> 
> Uhhh.... No. That would be a reference FROM Pern TO Dragaera. That
> would go into the "External references to Brust" at
> http://cracksandshards.com/asstd-shards.html#external if we had
> Timeriders; but _The White Dragon_ was published five years before
> _Jhereg_. Nice try, and it looks connected, but the connection would
> have to go the other way. Are there a lot of such lines in Pern, that
> SKZB might have picked up his interjections from?

I very nearly think so. "Shells," "shards," etc., as references to 
dragon eggs, are extremely common as parts of oaths in Pernese speech, 
and have been since the first book, I believe. Which is what I thought 
Jerry was referring to, not the other way around. I have no idea if SKZB 
was influenced by these things, however. (I don't know if he's even read 
the Pern books.)

-- 
ErzésŽbet of Catspirit Wood
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