Quotes / Army of The Ages

The guards looked silly in those costumes. I knew some of them. Nazi swastikas and American GI's. Coldstream Guards and Cameroon Highlanders. Blue and gray of the Civil War. World War I helmets. Redcoats and the blue-and-buff of Washington's Continentals. Fuzzy-wuzzies and Chinese Gordon's Tommies, and more: Roman legion, Greek hoplite, vaguely Asiatic uniforms, long gowns and wicker shields, spears with golden apples on the hilts; and more still, yellow men in animal fur, red and black men in little besides war paint, blue men stark naked. Blue? Britons in their woad, marching besides legionnaries, followed by men and women in coveralls carrying tiny machine guns of a variety I'd never seen.

—Inferno (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)

---