"cellar door"

[Mark Mandel]

Quite incidentally, there's an apparent allusion to "cellar door" in sf as
the city of "Selerdor". I couldn't remember the author and source, but
quickly found them in one of Grant's "many thousands more online", at the
very bottom of
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00BLG2:

Just a small curiousity that will probably shed no light: I'm rereading "A
> World Out of Time" by Larry Niven; a very cool book, copyright 1976. It's
> about a guy who travels through time, eventually going several million years
> into the future. At one point in his journey he awakes into a society where
> he is virtually a slave, not allowed to learn anything about the world as it
> is then. The name of the city, Selerdor, is mentioned one time by his captor
> and twice more later inthe book. So I'm thinking, time travel novel written
> in 1976, Selerdor, "cellar door", Donnie Darko. I google it and nothing, but
> give me a break! Our protagonist's destination (in the book) after time
> travel is the mysterious city Selerdor, about which he knows nothing. After
> leaving Selerdor, he rebels and deviates from the destiny planned for him by
> the denizens of that place and time travels some more. Coincidence? Maybe.
> Either way it's a very good (and short) book which I highly recommend. Wish
> I could find some sort of connection.
>
> -- Anonymous, February 01, 2005
>

m a m

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