Monday 3 December 2012

Many Times

As I have said before, Poul Anderson wrote several bodies of work set in distinct periods:

three novels set BC;

four volumes, with Karen Anderson, set during the Fall of the Roman Empire;

five heroic or historical fantasy novels set during the Viking period;

a historical fiction trilogy, The Last Viking;

three novels set in the fourteenth century;

three contemporary detective novels;

four novels and several short stories set in alternative histories;

many volumes set in fictitious futures.

It seems that nothing has been left out. Additionally, a number of volumes have subject matters that cover several or even many periods, not just one: a collection, a series and two further novels about time travel and one long novel following a group of immortals from Before Christ through many periods to the present and into an indefinite future. A novel can cover several periods because its characters either travel to or endure through those periods. Scattered among Anderson's existing, overlapping, collections are several short stories set in widely separated periods that could provide the contents for an additional Many Times collection. I will try to dig them out.

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