Saturday 21 March 2020

Masters Of The Imagination II

(Hrolf Kraki's Saga is not science fiction.)

There is always more:

Philip Pullman is not just post- but anti-Lewis;

both Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman have retold Norse myths and transformed Woden into a fictional character;

Gaiman, Stirling, Pullman and Carey (see below) are still writing so this is an on-going story unless we are about to make our own Ragnarok;

Blish takes us beyond Armageddon;

Gaiman's The Sandman is followed by Mike Carey's Lucifer, whose title character is Nietzchean but not malevolent, therefore unlike either Lewis' demons or the Adversary in Anderson's Operation Chaos.

Anderson spans both strands of imaginative fiction, fantasy and sf.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

As a Catholic I don't believe Satan is mesrely ambiguous, but is implacably and eternally hostile and malevolent. So, the Adversary in Anderson's OPERATION books strike me as true.

Ad astra! Sean