Sunday 27 August 2017

Poul Anderson's Big Four

I suggested here that Poul Anderson's big four series characters were:

Nicholas van Rijn;
David Falkayn;
Dominic Flandry;
Manson Everard.

This list gives us:

two timelines;
two periods in one of the timelines;
two characters in one of the periods -

- although Everard also visits many historical periods and a few alternative timelines.

In his Introduction to The Night Face, Anderson cites Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Christopher Holm and Dominic Flandry as characters in his Technic History. Arinnian of Stormgate Choth, whose human name is Christopher Holm, just about makes it into series character status because he is a major player in The People Of The Wind and is cited as the author or co-author of a couple of stories in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

Other major characters are Anson Guthrie, Gratillonius, Harald Hardrada and two Matucheks.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree with what you said about Anderson's four major series characters you listed at the beginning of this piece. And the other major characters mentioned at the end.

But I would not consider Christopher Holm a series character because we only see him once as an active character in only one book: THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND. To have him being attributed as the "author" of one or two of the stories in THE EARTHBOOK OF STORMGATE is not enough to make him a series character. That was only part of the framing device used by Anderson in that collection.

Holger Carlsen is more of a series character because we see him speaking and acting in A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST (however briefly) as well as THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS.

Sean