The Empty quarter
by St John Philby · first published 1933
4mentions
1recommended by
2HN commenters
2024–2025first – last mentioned
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I love Declare, that's why I read The Empty Quarter (and Kim).
on “A giant meteorite has been lost in the desert since 1916” ↗I just finished reading The Empty Quarter by St John Philby, which has bit about trying to find the lost city of Wabar, now associated with the Wabar meteor crater. The Bedouin guides talk about a chunk of iron the size of a camel, which some…
on “A giant meteorite has been lost in the desert since 1916” ↗There's another comment in this thread that mentions the book Declare by Tim Powers. St John Philby is an important (offscreen) character in that book, and certain details from The Empty Quarter are cast in a different light by the plot of the Powers book. I also just love reading travel narratives, so it wasn't too much of a stretch.
on “A giant meteorite has been lost in the desert since 1916” ↗On Star Wars and derivations... Bertram Thomas' Arabia Felix, about his crossing of the Empty Quarter, listed some names of stars, transliterated from the arabic. The north star, was written as Al Jedi... the Jedi. It goes a step further, in that it's arabic which translates as the kid (as in a goat,…
on “Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)” ↗