Tuesday 13 August 2013

Jamie The Red

Maybe everyone else out there already knew this but I certainly did not. When, in "The Gate of the Flying Knives" (Poul Anderson, Fantasy, New York, 1981), Anderson's character, Cappen Varra, receives help from his friend, Jamie the Red, that friend is a Thieves' World character in his own right and is even the title character of a novel by two other authors (see attachment).

Googling for images to illustrate posts reveals connections that I was unaware of. Because Anderson's "Fairy Gold," in The Unicorn Trade, referred to Cappen Varra, I set out to reread the two Varra stories in Fantasy, then realized that the second of these stories had originally been published in Thieves' World - and the interconnections proliferated from there. Googling "sikkintair" disclosed a reference to a "Jamie" so I checked to see whether this might be the same Jamie. And so on.

The more we delve into Poul Anderson's works, the more there is to be found in them. I have said this before but I continually rediscover it.

At present, I want to continue rereading Anderson's own works, not anyone else's, but I am also aware of his overlaps with Isaac's Universe, Asimov's Robot stories, Thieves' World, the Man-Kzin War period of Larry Niven's Known Space future history, the War World period of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history, the planets called Cleopatra and Murasaki and I think a couple of other sf series that he has contributed to?

In fact, I have just found online the text of a Berserker story by Anderson.

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