Generally considered the three most prominent figures in science fiction are Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. One can readily find their books on bookstore shelves today, and even people who do not read science fiction often know their names. However, there is another titan of the genre far less well known today, but who in my opinion surpasses them all: Poul Anderson.
Poul Anderson’s career spanned more than half a century, from the publication of his first short story in 1947 to his death in 2001. In that time, he was an enormously prolific author. His career embraced hard science fiction, space opera, fantasy, and historical fiction. His subjects vary from the colonization of the solar system and worlds beyond (Tales of the Flying Mountains, New America), the struggle for liberty (Shield, Harvest of Stars) to time travel (Time Patrol, The Shield of Time) to alien cultures (Three Worlds to Conquer, Fire Time) to the rebirth of civilization after a nuclear holocaust (Orion Shall Rise), and many more. His tone and mood varies from story to story- some are adventurous and intense, some are light-hearted, and some are quite somber.
Anderson had a background in physics, which he put to excellent use, and aside from occasional plot devices like faster-than-light travel he generally held close to realistic science, and incorporates it into his story. For instance, Tau Zero tells the story of a Bussard-ramjet powered spacecraft that is unable to stop accelerating and draws ever-closer to the speed of light, causing relativistic time dilation to propel the hapless crew ever-farther into the future. Anderson was especially known for his skill in creating unusual but scientifically possible alien worlds, such as the central planet of The Man Who Counts, which has just the right size and composition to support flying creatures large enough to have human-sized brains without also having an atmosphere that humans would suffocate in.
Anderson also had an intense interest in history, which appears in his Time Patrol stories and in novels like The High Crusade, which tells the story of a 14th-century English village’s fateful encounter with an alien reconnaissance force. Anderson’s interest in his Danish ancestors comes through in many stories, and many of his works subtly or explicitly draw on Norse mythology and sagas, and have the same heroic but grimly fatalistic tone.
Anderson’s work was often darker than that of his contemporaries. Though Anderson does not portray a hopeless or meaningless universe, and though there is much adventure and excitement in many of stories, there is often a strong sense of sadness and tragedy in Anderson’s work. A number of his stories have a very strong feeling of melancholy about the universe, life, and the course of history. Examples of this include his novel The Night Face and short stories such as “The Sorrow of Odin the Goth,” “Windmill,” and the horrific “The Problem of Pain.” This is amplified by the fact that in many of Anderson’s works, such as his novels Orion Shall Rise, Fire Time, and The Byworlder, the main characters on both sides are sympathetic or even admirable, but find themselves in situations where conflict is unavoidable, often with tragic results.
|
Anderson displays both his lighter and darker sides in his single largest collection of related stories. Called the Technic History, it is a future history spanning a period of several thousand years, spanning human civilization’s triumphant expansion through space (Trader to the Stars, the Trouble Twisters, Satan’s World, The Earth Book of Stormgate), shift from mercantile to imperial power (Mirkheim, The People of the Wind), degeneration (Ensign Flandry, A Circus of hells, The Rebel World, The Day of Their Return, Agent of the Terran Empire, Flandry of Terra, A Night of Ghosts and Shadows, A Stone in Heaven, The Game of Empire), collapse, and eventual rebirth (The Long Night, The Night Face). This sequence show both sides of Anderson, heroic adventure and stoic fatalism, and includes some of his most memorable characters, especially Nicholas van Rijn, a freewheeling merchant-explorer living at the height of humanity’s heroic era, when mankind is expanding and anything seems possible, and Dominic Flandry, a secret agent working in the waning days of the increasingly corrupt and ultimately doomed Terran Empire.
Though fantasy was not Anderson’s primary focus, Anderson had an enormous impact in that field. His fantasy novels Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword, in addition to being classics in their own right, are also among the most influential fantasy books of the past 50 years, with effects rippling out to people who have likely never heard of Anderson. Most importantly, Three Hearts and Three Lions portrays a struggle between cosmic forces of Law and Chaos. This idea was taken up by a young Michael Moorcock, now one of the undisputed giants of fantasy. Expanding on the idea and making it his own, he made his own take on the concept central to his acclaimed and enormously influential Eternal Champion stories, which encompasses such classic characters as Hawkmoon, Corum, and Elric of Melnibone. Moorcock in turn influenced numerous younger writers, as well as the creators of the original Dungeons and Dragons game. Additionally, the portrayal of holy knights or paladins in roleplaying games and fantasy fiction owes a huge amount to Anderson, as do many other things. Without Anderson, the landscape of modern fantasy may have been quite different.
Sadly, much of Anderson’s work has been out of print for many years; my own collection of his books includes a great many volumes printed before I was born. Fans have had to seek out used copies of his books, and the rarity of his books in major chain stores means that many readers are unlikely to ever stumble upon him. However, that may be changing. Baen Books has released two collections of Anderson’s stories, Time Patrol and To Outlive Eternity, and has plans to begin bringing the Technic history back into print, starting with a collection called The Van Rijn Method scheduled for release in September. I can only hope that this helps bring Anderson back into prominence, because there is no one in science fiction more deserving.
Previous Reviews:
