Friday 2 January 2015

A Reading And Viewing List

Because of Christmas and birthday presents, my reading and rereading of Poul Anderson's works now competes with:

Sebastian Faulk's James Bond novel;
a new illustrated story by Neil Gaiman;
Tolkien's Beowulf (see also here);
the two Sin City films;
the films of the three Stieg Larsson novels;
the third and fourth Modesty Blaise novels;
a Modesty Blaise film;
the fourth and fifth Smallville seasons;
The Mammoth Book Of Time Travel SF.

This last item contains no Anderson! But it does feature Gregory Benford and Robert Silverberg who were mentioned on this blog because they had contributed to Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds, edited by Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois.

I will read the time travel anthology and comment either here or on the Logic of Time Travel blog or both. I expect, of course, to make comparisons with Anderson's major time travel canon to which I had thought of returning in any case.

Meanwhile, each installment of Anderson's major future history is like a window onto Technic Civilization. Any background detail of a particular story may be relevant to the History as a whole. For example, the fact that, in the very first Nicholas van Rijn story, the Borthudians had been armed by unscrupulous Technic traders showed that this aspect of the decline of the Polesotechnic League had already been evident at this early date and this in turn made me realize that the Rise of the League had occurred in a still earlier period that is not in fact covered by any of the stories in the series.

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