Friday 11 July 2014

Multiverse: The Fictional Contents

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editirs, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI,2014).

I now have a better grasp of the fictional contents of Multiverse.

Andersonian Continuations
3 "Time Patrol" stories
2 Technic History stories
2 Three Hearts And Three Lions sequels
2 "The Queen of Air and Darkness" sequels
1 "The Long Remembering" sequel
1 Operation... story

Others
1 Gregory Benford galactic future incorporating Anderson's Ythrians
1 David Brin story rewritten after advice from Anderson

Benford and Brin each ask how to convey information to later species on an interstellar scale. Niven, in the afterword to his "Time Patrol" story, presents another "The Queen of Air and Darkness" sequel idea.

An idea in some works of fantasy is a bureaucracy managing natural phenomena. The British children's character, Rupert Bear, meets Imps of Spring, Elves of Autumn and a Clerk of the Weather. Tad Williams extends bureaucracy to literary phenomena. The Department of Fictional Universes has a Crossover division with a Poul Anderson subdivision where a sub-sub-manager maintains the Ariosto section of Anderson's Matter of France.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Yes, I too appreciated the humor in Tad Williams story. I'll simpy stress it's my belief that Williams was stressing how often bureaucracies tend to blunder and bungle matters and how its denizens are often more interested in covering their rear ends than in actually doing their jobs.

Sean