Wednesday 16 January 2013

Multiverse: An Invitation

Fellow Earthlings, I perceive an opportunity to broaden the base of this blog!

Anyone who is interested in the works of Poul Anderson must be eagerly awaiting this new anthology of articles about Anderson and of new fictions based on or derived from his. A discussion of Multiverse will not be like my usual posts about works published years or decades ago. It will be something new for all of us. We will all be reading it for the first time and some of us will have access to it before others.

In fact, it is likely that American readers of the blog will read this new Anderson-themed volume before I do. Indeed, I might experience considerable delay in acquiring a copy.

Therefore, I invite anyone and everyone to email me their comments and observations on the new book as soon as they have read it (paulshackley@gmail.com). I see no reason why such emailed remarks however brief or long should not be reproduced as posts on the blog. I know that one American correspondent in particular will be keen to share any views that he has on Multiverse but there have got to be some others out there?

In particular, and I cannot emphasize this enough, disagreements with any views that I have expressed or will express on Anderson's works, views and general outlook are welcome. Anderson's corpus of works is vast enough to appeal to many sections of the reading public and they should all be represented, if they want to be, in a celebration of "Anderson's Worlds."

I suppose that, if anyone manages to be outrageously offensive, then I could exercise an editorial option of not publishing but the only way that I can think of that anyone could do that would be to present a text full of swear words and I do not expect that from Anderson fans. There might also be some technical problems in transferring a text from email to blog but my Information Technology Adviser should be able to cope.

I look forward to hearing from the first blog reader who has managed to read Multiverse but the second and third should then follow. A character in the Aeneid said, "The first place is the gift of the gods. Men must strive for second place!" This is an invitation to you, you and especially YOU so please feel free to respond.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I agree MULTIVERSE would be something new in the Andersonian field. And what would also be "new" is an editor hunting down and republishing the 60 or so stories by Anderson which has never yet been anthologized (which would probably need about three volumes). A single volume would almost certainly suffice for collecting Anderson's essays. And a COLLECTED LETTERS OF POUL ANDERSON would also be good!

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

I think, after TECHNIC HISTORY SAGA and MULTIVERSE, the publishers must be thinking of doing more.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

And NESFA Press has pub. to date four volumes of THE COLLECTED SHORT WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON. But most of the stories in these volumes had already been anthologized. One or two volumes collecting stories which has never yet been republished since their original magazine publication would be welcomed by me.

I was appalled to learn from Greg Bear that it was not his father in law's practice to either make copies of his letters or keep those sent to him after he replied to those letters. Which means a COLLECTED LETTERS OF POUL ANDERSON might be hard to compile.

Sean