Poul Anderson

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Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001) was an American science fiction author of the genre's Golden Age; some of his short stories were first published using the pseudonyms "A. A. Craig", "Michael Karageorge", and "Winston P. Sanders". Poul Anderson also wrote fantasy such as the King of Ys series.

He was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania.

He received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married the former Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to the science fiction author Greg Bear.

He was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972.

He was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies.


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Survey

Anderson is probably best known for adventure stories in which larger-than-life characters succeed gleefully or fail heroically. He also wrote some quieter works, generally of shorter length, which appeared more during the latter part of his career. However, Anderson was seldom interested in psychological analysis.

Much of his science fiction is thoroughly grounded in science (with the addition of dubious but standard speculations such as faster-than-light travel). A specialty was imagining scientifically plausible non-Earthlike planets. Perhaps the best-known was the planet of The Man Who Counts — Anderson adjusted its size and composition so that humans could live in the open air but flying intelligent aliens could evolve, and he explored consequences of these adjustments. His stories often depicted a shipwrecked or stranded hero's struggle to survive in the hostile physical environment of an alien world through ingenuity and sheer drive.

In many stories, Anderson commented on society and politics. One of his early stories, Un-man, is a kind of future thriller where the Good Guys are agents of the UN Secretary General working to establish a world government while the Bad Guys are various nationalists (including and especially American ones) who seek to preserve their respective nations' sovereignty at all costs. (The title has a double meaning — the hero is both literally a UN man and has superhuman abilities which make his enemies fear him as an "un-man").

In later years Anderson completely repudiated this idea (a half-humorous remnant is the beginning of Tau Zero — a future where the nations of the world entrusted Sweden with overseeing disarmament and found themselves living under the rule of the Swedish Empire). In Star Fox, his unfavorable depiction of a future peace group called "World Militants for Peace" indicates quite clearly where he stood with regard to the Vietnam War, raging when the book was published. A more explicit expression of the same appears in the later The Shield of Time where a time-travelling young American woman from the 1990s pays a brief visit to a university campus of the 1960s and is not precisely enthusiastic about what she sees there.

Anderson often returned to libertarianism (which accounts for his Prometheus Awards) and to the business leader as hero, most notably his character Nicholas van Rijn. Van Rijn is, however, far from the modern type of business executive or CEO, and is in fact depicted as a kind of throwback to the merchant venturer of the Dutch Golden Age of the Seventeenth Century - if he spends any time in boardrooms or plotting corporate takeovers, the reader remains ignorant of it - since virtually all his apperances are in the wild space frontier.

Beginning in the 1970s, his historically grounded works were influenced by the theories of the historian John K. Hord, who argued that all empires follow the same broad cyclical pattern — in which the Terran Empire of the Dominic Flandry spy stories fit neatly.

The writer Sandra Miesel (1978) has argued that Anderson's overarching theme is the struggle against entropy and the heat death of the universe, a condition of perfect uniformity where nothing can happen.

In the numerous books and stories depicting conflict in science-fictional or fantasy settings, Anderson takes trouble to make both sides' points of view comprehensible. Even where there can be no doubt on whose side the author is, the protagonists on the opposing side are usually not depicted as black villains but as honourable characters on their own terms. The reader is given access to their thoughts, feelings and motivations, and they have often a tragic dignity in defeat. Typical examples are the books The Winter of the World, and The People of the Wind.

In Star Fox, a relationship of grudging respect is built up between the hero, space privateer Gunnar Heim, and his enemy Cynbe — an exceptionally gifted member of Alerione trained from a young age to understand his species' human enemies, to the point of being alienated from his own kind. In the final scene, Cynbe challenges Heim to a space battle which only one of them would survive and Heim accepts, whereupon Cynbe says "I thank you, my brother".

He set much of his work in the past, often with the addition of magic, or in alternate or future worlds that resemble past eras. A specialty was his ancestral Scandinavia. Frequently he presented such worlds as superior to the dull, over-civilized present. Notable depictions of this superiority are the prehistoric world of "The Long Remembering", the medieval society of The High Crusade, the quasi-medieval one of "No Truce with Kings", and the untamed, Jupiter of "Call me Joe" and Three Worlds to Conquer. He handled the lure and power of atavism satirically in "Pact", critically in "The Queen of Air and Darkness" and The Night Face, and tragically in "Goat Song". He also did a modern retelling of the legend of Hrólf Kraki.

A recurring theme in Anderson's writing are situations where the representative of a technologically-advanced society underestimates "primitives" and invariably pays a high price for it. In The High Crusade, aliens who land in Medieval England in the expectation of an easy conquest find the hard way that they are not immune to swords and arrows. In "The Only Game in Town", a Mongol warrior, while not knowing that the two "magicians" he meets are time travellers from the future, correctly guesses their intentions in his time — and captures them with the help of the "magic" electric flashlight they had given him in an attempt to impress him. In another time-travel tale, The Shield of Time, a "time policeman" from the Twentieth Century, fully equipped with information and technologies from much further in the future, is outwitted by a Medieval knight and barely escapes with his life.

The same story is also an example of a tragic conflict, another common theme in Anderson's writing. The knight is a positive and likeable character in all ways, sincerely trying to to do his best in terms of his own society and time. It is entirely not his fault that his actions might change the future for the worse, in ways he has no way of knowing, and cause a very horrible Twentieth Century (even more horrible than the one we know) to become a reality. Therefore, the Time Patrol protagonists, who like the young knight and wish him well (the female protagonist comes close to falling in love with him) have no choice but to fight and ultimately kill him.

In "The Pirate", Trevelian Micah of the Cordys (interstellar Coordination Service) is duty-bound to deny a band of people from societies blighted by poverty and squalor the chance for a new start on a new planet — because their settling the planet would forever eradicate the remnants of the highly artistic and articulate beings who lived there before and were destroyed by a supernova. A similar theme but with much higher stakes appears in "Sister Planet" where scientists figure out a way to terraform Venus and provide new hope to starving people on the overcrowded Earth. But terraforming Venus would utterly exterminate its just-discovered aquatic intelligent race — and the hero finds that the only way to avert genocide is to murder his best friends.

In "Delenda Est" the stakes are the highest imaginable: billions of lives balanced against other billions of lives, for one man to decide. Due to the interference of time-travelling outlaws, Carthago won the Second Punic War and destroyed Rome. As a result, there is a completely different Twentieth Century — "not better or worse, just completely different". The hero can go back, fight the outlaws and change history back, restoring his (and our) familiar history — but only at the price of totally destroying the world which has taken its place, and which is equally deserving of existence. "Risking your neck to in order to negate a world full of people like yourself" is how the hero, Manse Everard, describes what he eventually undertakes.

Fitting Anderson's love for olden years, Ander-Saxon, a kind of learnèd writing with Germanic-rooted words only, is named after him.

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Awards

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Partial Bibliography (book-length works only)

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Series

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King of Ys

  • Roma Mater (1986) with Karen Anderson
  • Gallicenae (1987) with Karen Anderson
  • Dahut (1987) with Karen Anderson
  • The Dog and the Wolf (1988) with Karen Anderson
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Tomorrow's Children

  • Tomorrow's Children (1947) with F. N. Waldrop
  • Chain of Logic (1947)
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Psychotechnic League

  • Planet of No Return (also known as Question and Answer) (1954)
  • Star Ways (1956)
  • The Snows of Ganymede (1958)
  • Virgin Planet (1959)
  • The Psychotechnic League (1981)
  • Cold Victory (1982)
  • Starship (1982)
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Hoka

  • Earthman's Burden (1957) with Gordon R. Dickson
  • Star Prince Charlie (1975) with Gordon R. Dickson
  • Hoka! (1983) with Gordon R. Dickson

Reissued by Baen as:

  • Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! in 1998
  • Hokas Pokas in 2000
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Technic History

Polesotechnic League period of Nicholas van Rijn (by internal chronology):

  • War of the Wing-Men (original book publication heavily edited; author's preferred text [and title] later issued as The Man Who Counts) (1958)
  • Trader to the Stars (1964) (Prometheus Award), collects:
    • "Hiding Place" (1961)
    • "Territory" (1961)
    • "The Master Key" (1971)
  • The Trouble Twisters (features David Falkayn, not Van Rijn) (1966), collects:
    • "The Three-Cornered Wheel" (1963)
    • "A Sun Invisible" (1966)
    • "The Trouble Twisters" (also known as "Trader Team") (1965)
  • Satan's World (1969)
  • The Earth Book of Stormgate (many stories do not feature Van Rijn) (1978). It collects:
    • "Wings of Victory" (1972)
    • "The Problem of Pain" (1973)
    • "How to be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson" (1974)
    • "Margin of Profit" (1956)
    • "Esau" (also known as "Birthright") (1970)
    • "The Season of Forgiveness" (1973)
    • The Man Who Counts (first appearance of the unedited version of War of the Wing-Men) (1958)
    • "A Little Knowledge" (1971)
    • "Day of Burning" (also known as "Supernova") (1967)
    • "Lodestar" (1973)
    • "Wingless" (also known as "Wingless on Avalon") (1973)
    • "Rescue on Avalon" (1973)
  • Mirkheim (1977)
  • The People of the Wind (does not feature Falkayn or Van Rijn) (1973)

Terran Empire period of Dominic Flandry, a secret agent trying to hold off the inevitable collapse of a decadent galactic empire (by internal chronology):

  • Ensign Flandry (1966)
  • A Circus of Hells (1970)
  • The Rebel Worlds (1969)
  • The Day of Their Return (does not feature Flandry) (1973)
  • Agent of the Terran Empire (1965), collects:
    • "Tiger by the Tail" (1951)
    • "The Warriors From Nowhere (1954)
    • "Honorable Enemies" (1951)
    • "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (also known as "A Handful of Stars" and We Claim These Stars) (1959)
  • Flandry of Terra (1965), collects:
    • "The Game of Glory" (1958)
    • "A Message in Secret" (also known as Mayday Orbit) (1959)
    • "The Plague of Masters" (also known as "A Plague of Masters" and Earthman, Go Home!) (1960)
  • A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (1974)
  • A Stone in Heaven (1979)
  • The Game of Empire (features a daughter of Flandry) (1985)
  • The Long Night (features a dark age after Flandry's era) (1983), collects:
    • "The Star Plunderer" (1952)
    • "Outpost of Empire" (1967)
    • "A Tragedy of Errors" (1967)
    • "The Sharing of Flesh" (1968) (Hugo, Nebula)
    • "Starfog" (1967)
  • Let the Spacemen Beware (also known as The Night Face, does not feature Flandry) (1963)
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Time Patrol

  • Guardians of Time (1960)
  • Time Patrolman (1983)
  • The Year of the Ransom (1988)
  • The Shield of Time (1990)
  • The Time Patrol (1991)
  • Omnibus mass-market paperback The Time Patrol (2006)
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History of Rustum

  • Orbit Unlimited (1961)
  • New America (1982)
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Operation Otherworld

  • Operation Chaos (1971)
  • Operation Luna (1999)
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The Last Viking

  • The Golden Horn (1980) with Karen Anderson
  • The Road of the Sea Horse (1980) with Karen Anderson
  • The Sign of the Raven (1980) with Karen Anderson
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Maurai

  • Maurai and Kith (1982), collects:
    • "Ghetto" (1954)
    • "The Sky People" (1959)
    • "Progress" (1961)
    • "The Horn of Time the Hunter" (also known as "Homo Aquaticus", 1963)
    • "Windmill" (1973)
  • Orion Shall Rise (1983)
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Harvest of Stars

  • Harvest of Stars (1993)
  • The Stars Are Also Fire (1994) (Prometheus Award)
  • Harvest the Fire (1995)
  • The Fleet of Stars (1997)
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Non-series Novels

  • Vault of the Ages (1952)
  • Brain Wave (1954)
  • The Broken Sword (1954)
  • No World of Their Own (1955)
  • Perish by the Sword (1959)
  • War of Two Worlds (1959)
  • The Enemy Stars (also known as "'We have fed our sea—'") (1959)
  • The High Crusade (1960)
  • Murder in Black Letter (1960)
  • Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961)
  • Twilight World (1961)
  • After Doomsday (1962)
  • The Makeshift Rocket (1962) (expansion of "A Bicycle Built for Brew")
  • Murder Bound (1962)
  • Shield (1963)
  • Three Worlds to Conquer (1964)
  • The Corridors of Time (1965)
  • The Fox, the Dog and the Griffin: A Folk Tale Adapted from the Danish of C. Molbeck (1966)
  • World Without Stars (1966)
  • Tau Zero (1970) (expansion of "To Outlive Eternity")
  • The Byworlder (1971)
  • The Dancer from Atlantis (1971)
  • There Will Be Time (1972)
  • Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973)
  • Fire Time (1974)
  • Inheritors of Earth (1974) with Gordon Eklund
  • A Midsummer Tempest (1974)
  • The Winter of the World (1975)
  • The Avatar (1978)
  • The Demon of Scattery (1979) with Mildred Downey Broxon
  • Conan the Rebel (1980)
  • The Devil's Game (1980)
  • The Boat of a Million Years (1989)
  • The Saturn Game (1989)
  • The Longest Voyage (1991)
  • War of the Gods (1997)
  • Starfarers (1998)
  • Genesis (2000) (John W. Campbell Memorial Award)
  • Mother of Kings (2001)
  • For Love and Glory (2003)
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Fixups

  • The Star Fox (1965) (Prometheus Award)
  • Operation Chaos (1971)
  • The Merman's Children (1979)
  • For Love and Glory (2003)
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Collections

  • Orbit Unlimited (1961)
  • Strangers from Earth (1961)
  • Twilight World (1961)
  • Un-Man and Other Novellas (1962)
  • Time and Stars (1964)
  • The Fox, the Dog, and the Griffin (1966)
  • The Horn of Time (1968)
  • Beyond the Beyond (1969)
  • Seven Conquests (1969)
  • Tales of the Flying Mountains (1970)
  • The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories (1973)
  • The Many Worlds of Poul Anderson (also known as The Book of Poul Anderson) (1974) — Edited by Roger Elwood
  • Homeward and Beyond (1975)
  • The Best of Poul Anderson (1976)
  • Homebrew (1976)
  • The Night Face & Other Stories (1979)
  • The Dark Between the Stars (1981)
  • Explorations (1981)
  • Fantasy (1981)
  • The Guardians of Time (1981)
  • Winners (1981) (a collection of Anderson's Hugo-winners)
  • Cold Victory (1982)
  • The Gods Laughed (1982)
  • New America (1982)
  • Starship (1982)
  • The Winter of the World / The Queen of Air and Darkness (1982)
  • Conflict (1983)
  • The Long Night (1983)
  • Past Times (1984)
  • The Unicorn Trade (1984) with Karen Anderson
  • Dialogue With Darkness (1985)
  • Space Folk (1989)
  • The Shield of Time (1990)
  • Alight in the Void (1991)
  • The Armies of Elfland (1991)
  • Inconstant Star (1991) — Stories set in Larry Niven's Man-Kzin universe.
  • Kinship with the Stars (1991)
  • All One Universe (1996)
  • Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! (1998) with Gordon R. Dickson
  • Going for Infinity
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Omnibus

  • The Worlds of Poul Anderson (1974)
  • Operation Otherworld (1999)
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Anthologies

  • 4 Nebula Award Stories 4 (1969)
  • The Day the Sun Stood Still (1972) with Gordon R. Dickson and Robert Silverberg
  • A World Named Cleopatra (1977)
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Non-Genre

  • The Golden Slave (1960) - Historical novel
  • Rogue Sword (1960) - Historical novel
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Reference

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External links

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