Wednesday 9 January 2019

Blish On Heinlein And Anderson

(For something completely different, not prose fiction but graphic documentary, and an interesting epistemological problem, see here.)

See James Blish And Poul Anderson IV.


In More Issues...
On pp. 56-57, Blish writes that:

Robert Heinlein's Have Spacesuit - Will Travel preaches its author's "...doctrine that man is a highly dangerous wild animal..."; (p. 57)

Poul Anderson pointed out, in S-F Forum No. 1, that this idea is entirely romantic;

Anderson's view that man was the first domesticated animal is more plausible.

Anderson addresses this question through his character, van Rijn: see here and here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Anderson speculates about a truly "undomesticated" species of hominids branching off from Homo sapiens in THE WINTER OF THE WORLD. Altho I have my doubts about how VIABLE such a species could be if the Rogaviki were genetically hardwired to be unable to permanently live anywhere else except in the plains alongside the Jugular River. Also, S.M. Stirling believed 8000 or 10,000 years too short a time for a new hominid species to arise.

Sean