I’m currently (re)reading Sheri S. Tepper’s Plague of Angels (and blessing the fact that I have zero memory for book plots, because I remember absolutely nothing of it from my first reading 20 years ago, so it’s like one of my favorite authors wrote a new book).
It’s set in a postapoclyptic America, specifically the Rockies. There are different civilizations, etc. One group is descended from the scientists and technocrats of our era. There are four major families within this group – the Mittys, the Berklis, the Ellels, and the Anders. Clearly the first two came from MIT and Berkeley – but I’m not coming up with anything for the other two.
I’m afraid I can’t answer your question, I just thought this post was funny because I was at the public library the other day and happened to see Plague of Angels (which I read about 15 years ago) on the shelf, considered checking it out, then thought “Nah, I remember everything that happens in it, and I’m more in the mood to read something new.”
Then I read this:
and thought “I do not remember that at all!” Well, I remember that there is a science-y civilization in the later part of the book, but that’s about it. I feel like I remember the basic plot fairly well, although maybe not!
Well, there are several interlocking plots going on at the same time, and what’s going on with these families is just one of them. I actually decided to reread it because I just finished her most recent book, The Waters Rising, which is set elsewhere in the same world and involves one of the same characters.
That actually makes more sense – Yalies aren’t necessarily known for being power-mad, the whole Bush/Skull and Bones thing to the contrary.
I Googled a bit and found an old, brief thread on another message board asking basically the same question. The posters there thought the Ellels’s were possibly derived from Yale but more likely Lawrence Livermore…and were apparently stumped on the Anders.
Just as a guess I checked for schools named “Anderson”, and while there are two Anderson Universities in the US (both private, Christian schools) and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA none seem like obvious matches for the description of the Anders. The Anderson School of Management is a top ranked business program and I guess big shot business executives could be caricatured as preferring to cozy up to people with (political) power than to hold such positions themselves, but the “aesthetics” bit doesn’t make sense to me in that context. The description of the Anders sounds more to me like a caricature of artists who want to be supported by powerful patrons.
Hm, thanks, Lamia – didn’t occur to me to check elsewhere for a discussion.
The one thing that occurred to me for Anders was that it might be from “androgynous” – the male members of the clan we’ve seen seem to favor embroidered robes, etc. (We haven’t seen descriptions of any female members yet.) Tepper’s feminist credentials are in pretty good order, though, so I don’t necessarily want to argue strongly for that interpretation.
This is actually a darned good theory. Let me keep it in mind as I continue reading (I’m about halfway through the book – there should be plenty more Anders action to come).
