Wednesday 9 November 2016

Invisibility Etc

I asked about invisibility because I had re-watched a Smallville episode with an invisible character, then forgot that that was why I had asked the question. A series like Smallville or Star Trek can systematically address each sf theme in turn. Ray Bradbury addressed several such concepts in his episodic The Martian Chronicles. The X-Files went further because any particular episode could be sf, fantasy or a mainstream thriller.

A writer of sf short stories can recycle a wide range of unoriginal concepts provided that he invents an original approach to each. So here is an Andersonian exercise:

list every fsf concept from AI to zombies;
beside each concept, write the name of a non-series Poul Anderson short story addressing this concept;
then add other Anderson stories addressing the same themes in different ways;
then add series and novels;
thus, identify any concepts that Anderson does not address.

But I am not going to do it.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The closest I see Poul Anderson using a zombie in one of his works was the dead giant animated by the demon lord Adolf Hitler against Steve and Virginia Matuchek when they raided Hell to rescue their daughter in OPERATION CHAOS.

Sean