Thursday, 15 April 2021

GoH Speech

Poul Anderson was the Guest of Honor at the Detention, the seventeenth World Science Fiction, in 1959. In his GoH speech, Anderson advocated an approach to sf that would address and unify every aspect of life from philosophical issues to the details of daily living. 

James Blish, writing as William Atheling Jr., commented that:

this is a good prescription for science fiction because it is a good prescription for any fiction;

such a unitary approach is nowhere better exemplified than in Anderson's The Man Who Counts which Ace contemptuously re-entitled War Of The Wing Men.

We agree that The Man Who Counts is a good sf novel set on a Clementian extra-solar planet but do we also agree that it is a unitary novel in the sense described?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

While we see a lot about Old Nick's tastes in food and even women in THE MAN WHO COUNTS, I would not say it completely fits the "unitary" approach as defined by Anderson. As with most writers, you usually need to consider a large number of their of their works before arriving at such a view.

I think Anderson's four HARVEST OF STARS meets his definition of unifying science fiction. And I can think of others from his works.

Ad astra! Sean