Friday 24 May 2013

Planet Stories III

Two posts ago, my American correspondent, Sean M Brooks, listed thirteen PLANET STORIES stories by Poul Anderson. We know six, just under half, of them. First, there is:

An Early Terran Empire Tetralogy
"The Star Plunderer"
"Sargasso Of Lost Starships"
"Tiger By The Tail"
"The Ambassadors Of Flesh"

Of course, it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we link the two "Solar Empire" stories (the first and second) to the two Dominic Flandry stories (the third and fourth) and re-arrange them into this order. We are impressed and grateful that such a large oak tree of future history grew from the small acorn that was these pulp stories.

"Star Ship" belongs to Anderson's earlier, Psychotechnic, future history and "Captive of the Centaurianess," I think, has the same background as "A Bicycle Built For Brew," although I have yet to reread "Captive..." to confirm this.

Thus, as with James Blish's "Sunken Universe," some early pulp fiction was preserved by incorporation into later, more significant, series.

2 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi,Paul!

It's been a long time since I read both "Captive" and "Bicycle," but I am sure they don't share the same background. The first seems to use some means of FTL while the second is limited to the Solar System. Also, I think "Bicyle" to be in some ways more sophisticated in its writing than "Captive." It was written later, after all.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Maybe so. But I thought at least they shared the same Martian race. But I will have to reread them. But I am getting into a lot of detail with van Rijn right now.