In the Beginning:

“Close to noon, the Father Sun baked pungencies out of turf and turned the forest that walled the northern horizon into a wind-whispery surf of leaves and shadow. Closer by, a field of hsakh stood golden. Kdatlyno slaves were hand-cultivating it in the ancient way, growing fibre that would be handwoven into cloaks for the mighty to wear at Midwinter Bloodfest and then burn. Scattered elsewhere were the dwellings of Heroes attendant upon his household. Though stately enough, they were dwalfed by the manor looming ahead of Ghrul-Captain.”

From: Pele by Poul Anderson in Man-Kzin Wars IX created by Larry Niven

In The Beginning:

“Some years ago, after writing a book, The Celtic World, I received a letter from an American. He was, he said, an alcoholic and it had worried him but having read of the Celtic love of wine – a story told by the Classical writer Athenaeus of the Gauls – he was much reassured. His grandparents had been Celts from Scotland and his behaviour was thus explained: it was part of his Celticness and he would henceforth be proud of it. Many reading this might find it an innocuous story, and might indeed gain some reassurance for their own occasional overindulgences, but others might become apoplectic seeing in it yet further evidence of the insidious Celtic myth perpetuated by popular books. One academic member of this camp has even gone so far as to suggest that some authors deliberately use the word ‘Celtic’ in book titles to boost sales."

From: The Celts – A Very Short Introduction by Barry Cunliffe

In The Beginning:

“My good sir, I wonder if I might venture to offer you some help? Otherwise, I’m afraid you may not be able to make yourself understood by the worthy gorilla who presides over the comings and goings of this establishment: he only speaks Dutch. Unless you allow me to plead your case, he won’t guess that you want some gin. There: I dare to hope that he has got the message. That nod of the head should mean that my argument has won his ear. He’s off, look: making haste slowly, the clever chap. You’re lucky: he didn’t complain. When he refuses to serve you, he just grunts. No one argues with that. It’s the privilege of these big beasts to be moody when they like. I’m off, Monsieur, and glad to have been of service. Thank you; I’d accept if I were sure that I should not be imposing on you. You’re too kind. I’ll put my glass here, then, at your table.”

From: The Fall by Albert Camus.

In The Beginning

“Almost three centuries have passed since a curious rash of hysterical vampire epidemics at the fringes of the Habsburg Empire first brought this type of oral folklore from the mysterious Balkans and the Transylvanian region into Western consciousness. Although there had previously been no precisely equivalent folklore about the ambulatory dead in the Roman Catholic and Protestant countries of Western Europe, the Inquisition’s prosecutions of people denounced as witches were still fresh in the public memory. In fact it was the possible recrudescence of such intolerable social injustice that prompted Empress Maria Theresa to send a noted scientist to a Slavic region on the north-eastern frontier to learn what these epidemics were all about and then to advise her on how to prevent a new round of witch hunts from emerging.”

From: Slayers and their Vampires – A Cultural History of Killing the Dead by Bruce A McClelland

In The Beginning:

“Heinrich Gimpel glanced at the report on his desk to make sure how many Reichsmarks the United States was being assessed for the Wehrmacht bases by New York, Chicago, and St Louis. As he thought, the numbers were up from those of 2009. Well, the Americans might grumble, but they’d cough up what they owed – and in hard currency, too; none of their own inflated dollars. If they didn’t, the panzer divisions might rollout of those bases and take what was owed the Germanic Empire this year. And if they collected some blood along with their pound of flesh, the USA might complain, but it was hardly in a position to fight back.”

From: In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove.