Monday 22 June 2015

Space Time Fiction

In Poul Anderson's and Gordon R. Dickson's "The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound," the quadrupedal criminal indeed turns out to have been masquerading as the Hound of the Baskervilles. No surprises there.

If anyone were to read the fourth NESFA collection of Anderson's short works from cover to cover, then they would encounter the third Gunnar Heim story, the fourth Hoka story, the fourth Time Patrol story, two independent stories and a pivotal David Falkayn story one after the other. Some readers might even prefer these unexpected reappearances of familiar characters. To this extent, the collections recapture something of the unpredictability of the original magazine publication of the author's works.

I remarked recently that Captain Heim of Fox II might recall Captain Kirk of the Enterprise. However, I feel that a worthier comparison can be drawn between Anderson's interstellar fiction and some comic strip sf written for example by Alan Moore. See here.

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