photo, above,
circa 1986.
by RWF

Robert Wilfred Franson's home corner of Paradise

Some details —

The home consists of a front section, facing the street to the north; to the south, after a short distance of mildly down-slanting lawn, is this back section, facing the canyon. Hence the nicknames up-front and out-back. (Readers of Sphinx Daybreak may recall these names applied to, respectively, Half-Meadow House's sunlight-facing aerial courtyard; and on the other side beyond its central interspatial gate, its Meadow-facing egress.)

This view is of the southwest corner of the den, with an open beam ceiling and wood paneling throughout. The room may seem a little dark because the camera is trying to balance the interior with the bright windows; but with windows on three walls the room is quite well-lit with natural light. The den is the largest room in the home, and my favorite.
  

Atop the oak table to the left is my Apple Macintosh, bought April 1984 and somewhat upgraded internally. The screen is black and white, 9 inches diagonal: very sharp and clear. Its disk drive holds 400k removable disks; there is no hard drive. To the right of the keyboard is a Kensington trackball which I used for a time in lieu of a mouse.

In front of the table is an oak captain's chair, attractive but unfortunately with only four wheels rather than the safer modern style with five wheels.
  

Outside the second-floor south-facing windows in the left wall can be seen purple blooms of a jacaranda tree I planted as a sapling.
  

The old wingback armchair belonged to my maternal grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. George E. Howe. My grandmother reupholstered it in the1930s; my mother Vera Howe Franson in the 1950s; and myself in the 1980s. Very comfortable for reading, but rather too easily allowing accidental napping.

The multi-globe floor lamp belonged to my paternal grandmother, Edith Rose Franson.

The blue painting on the left wall near the corner is by science-fiction artist Morris Scott Dollens, purchased from the artist at a West Coast convention about 1964 (at his then-standard price of $4).
  

The bookcase under the pair of windows is built in. (Its twin is on the other side of the fireplace.) These neatly-installed bookcases have fixed-height shelves, two smallish and two slightly larger in each bookcase; the shelves aren't very deep.

Atop the bookcase is a toy electric locomotive, dark blue, O-gauge. (Very like the full-size locomotive pictured at the bottom of the Troynovant Contents page.)

On the wall above is a small framed copy of Maxfield Parrish’s "Cadmus Sowing The Dragon’s Teeth" (1908).
  

On the right is a large brick fireplace. The hearth also is of bricks. Only a rather large fire fits well in this fireplace, and because of its open design, any fire needs frequent tending. On occasion, home-grown eucalyptus wood provides a distinctive and enjoyable suffusion for the air.

Atop the mantel next to the small wall lamp is a framed book jacket of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Above the mantel is a map, "Central London in Super Scale", bought in 1982 on a trip with old school friend William R. Pond.

Beyond the fireplace to the right (outside the photograph) is the other built-in bookcase. On the wall above that bookcase is a front-and-back cover of the Del Rey edition of The Shadow of the Ship (1983): David Mattingly's unique cover painting, backed with the publisher's capsule description of the novel.

Moving around the northwest corner (outside the photograph), on the north wall is a multi-pane picture window facing the mildly up-slanting lawn.

© 2024 Robert Wilfred Franson