Talk:The Boat of a Million Years

john wanderer
i have been using the names the immortals use at the end of the book as there real names I believed this was the most accurate way to tell them apart. Anyone have any thoughts about this? The Isiah (talk) 19:43, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice work on the timeline...
I've wanted to contribute to this article for a while, but just don't have the details in my head and have been too lazy to go back to the book. Keep up the great work! TJSwoboda (talk) 21:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, it's a good timeline. I just wanted to point out that two incidents from the book are not listed.  First, the sacking of Svoboda's monastery during the Mongol Invasion of Russia.  Secondly, when Aliyat meets another immortal in the 1930s, thus finding a refuge and being able to abandon prostitution. 50.180.19.238 (talk) 01:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Made a short addition to the Physiology section
Hope you don't mind. This is one of the few books I still have in my collection after forty years of reading sci-fi. This one is a classic. I only added the following lines:

"They are not impervious to mortal wounds. They able to recover completely from serious, and even life threatening injuries, but are not capable of recovering from (for example) a stab to the heart, or decapitation. It is possible to break bones, and sustain other serious injuries, however they do recover from them, healing completely. No explanation is offered by the author for these seemingly miraculous abilities."

Thought it was pertinent. If you think it was too wordy, feel free to edit.

Change re Nornagest
"Old Stone Age" is ridiculous--that period ended about 12000 B.C. Nornagest said he was born before the use of metal (probably copper) came to Scandinavia, thus around 2000 B.C., give or take a century. The "Stone Age" is divided into sub-periods depending on how advanced the workmanship on the stones was. Nornagest's birth time was not the OLD Stone Age. Jakob37 (talk) 07:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. I think the book made it clear that he was tens of thousands of years old, but I can't cite specifics at the moment. I'll break out the book and see if I can cite what I remember. TJSwoboda (talk) 16:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The summary says Nornagest willed himself to die. Actually he took advantage of a prophecy that he would die when he certain candle burnt down, by protecting the candle for hundreds of years and then voluntarily burning it.  (This may have part of the legend Anderson was dramatizing.  It's a Norse version of the Greek legend of Meleager, he died when a certain log was burned. Or faith in the prophecy was enough to kill Nornagest )  50.180.19.238 (talk) 01:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I think the current "~2000 BC" is probably a bit too recent. The text, of course, does not say directly. The things stated are that he was born before metal was known in the area that would be Denmark or southern Sweden, that his people used stone tools, and that the dolmens in that area were built by his people. Nordic megalith architecture puts the dates for dolmen construction as predominantly between 3500 and 2800 BC, and attributes the construction primarily to the Funnelbeaker culture which did use stone tools. Further, 2000 BC seems like it would have been after copper-using cultures replaced/absorbed the Funnelbeaker culture. Anomie⚔ 14:47, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Massalia, not Greece
re "Hanno meets with him and agrees to head the expedition from Greece to the north seas." I don't have the book by my side, but I'm pretty sure they were in, and left from, Massalia, any early Greek colony in the western Mediterranean, so I changed it. Jakob37 (talk) 07:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Starkadh
re "but Starkadh is more interested in plunder", well, he was actually more obsessed with honor, glory, etc. Jakob37 (talk) 07:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:GOCE
Page Size

File size: 38 kB

Prose size (including all HTML code): 2457 B

References (including all HTML code): 2093 B

Prose size (text only): 1651 B (286 words) "readable prose size"

References (text only): 290 B

Images: 23 kB

Buggie111 (talk) 13:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Immortal Physiology
I removed the unreferenced section bar from §Immortal Physiology. I'm familiar with the book, and everything here is explicit in the only possible source, the book's own text. --Thnidu (talk) 05:56, 8 January 2014 (UTC)