Friday 29 May 2015

Literary Lineages

This blog locates Poul Anderson within certain literary lineages:

The Bible
Homer
Virgil
The Eddas
The Sagas
William Shakespeare
Mary Shelley
Mark Twain
Rudyard Kipling
HG Wells
Olaf Stapledon
Arthur Conan Doyle
L Sprague de Camp
John W Campbell
Robert Heinlein

This is not the long list of every writer with whom Anderson can be compared but the shorter list of those whom he clearly quotes, refers to or comes after. Anderson is more than a Campbellian sf writer. His roots are in the far past. The second part of the lineage is his successors:

Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
SM Stirling
etc

I apologize for my ignorance of current sf. Contributions on other post-Anderson sf writers would be welcome. Since this blog has recognized SM Stirling as a worthy successor, there have been posts on his two works set in the Angrezi Raj and on the first of the three works in the Lords of Creation series. I hope soon to acquire the remaining two installments of this series. Meanwhile, there is another Anderson work to reread.

(I said that I might end May with the round number of 100 posts and have now carried on to 110 with two days still to go. I might end this month here.)

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And as one of the successors of Poul Anderson I would include John Wright. That author has more than once not merely expresssed admiration and respect for PA, but has explicitly cited him as a source or inspiration for at least some of his own works. E.g., Wright's GOLDEN AGE trilogy: THE GOLDEN AGE, THE PHOENIX EXULTANT, and THE GOLDEN TRANSCENDENCE.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
This sounds like potentially another article?
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I dunno, Mr. Wright himself wrote at some length both on where he would agree with and disagree with PA in his essay "Transhumanism and Subhumanism." Which I'll be s sending to you.

Sean