Monday 15 December 2014

Some Past And Future Posts

Posts from Paul on Poul will peter around Yule. Maybe another ten, including this one, in December. On the Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook, I have yet to finish reading "Lord of a Thousand Suns," then to read:

"Witch of the Demon Seas"
"The Virgin of Valkarion"
"Out of the Iron Womb!"

I have no idea what these last three stories are about. What I will find to post about them is unpredictable. In the case of "Swordsman of Lost Terra," Earth was neither lost nor referred to as "Terra" anywhere in the text so I thought that the title was misleading. However:

the use of the word "tyr" inspired a link to a post about an appearance by the Norse god, Tyr, in a heroic fantasy novel by Anderson;

the use of the word "hest" led to an interesting (to me) link to a place name near where I live. (See here. This is a different link but to information about the same place.)

Anderson's descriptive passages and rich vocabulary sometimes generate discussions that are far removed from the thud and blunder content of the early pulp short stories.

Before the ebook, I spent a long time in Anderson's Technic History and agree with Larry Niven that, "Poul Anderson immerses you in the future...puts you into a whole new world." (quoted on the cover of Baen Books' Sir Dominic Flandry.) I became very impressed with the coherence of the early History:

light sail ships explore the Solar System;
the Grand Survey explores extrasolar systems;
important inhabited planets are discovered;
many uninhabited planets are colonized;
Ythri gains the hyperdrive;
Dido is studied;
Aeneas is colonized;
the Aenean University of Nova Roma (more Latin) is founded and attracts non-human students;
Ythrians, employing human beings, explore Avalon;
the Polesotechnic League is founded;
"The world's great age begins anew...";
merchant princes, including Nicholas van Rijn, become unbelievably rich;
many human and non-human students on Earth compete for very few jobs in space...

We all know what happens next (or should know...) but what a superb beginning!

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