Sunday, 1 December 2024

Poul Anderson's Future Historical Writing

Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238.

My favourite single volume of future history is The Earth Book Of Stormgate. My favourite single chapter of a future historical novel is The Day Of Their Return., 3. This chapter:

introduces Chunderban Desai and Aycharaych;

presents another human-Merseian friendship, Desai with Uldwyr;

presents a detailed architectural and sociological description of Nova Roma and its surrounding terrain on Aeneas;

refers to four previous Technic History novels.

The People Of The Wind
Uldwyr: Merseia has had better relations with the Domian of Ythri than has Terra.

Ensign Flandry
Uldwyr refers to Starkad

A Circus Of Hells.
Terran Intelligence has benefitted from the joint commission on Talwin.

The Rebel Worlds
The brilliant Terran defeat of the rebels in Sector Alpha Crucis also ended the conflict at Jihannath.

Regular readers know of Dominic Flandry's involvements in Starkad, Talwin and Sector Alpha Crucis.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I wouldn't call the friendship between Uldwyr and Desai more than half friendly. Uldwyr was unrelenting in his determination to continue working for Terra's downfall. How truly friendly can you be with a person determined to bring harm to your people or state?

I know THE EARTH BOOK is your single most favorite Technic collection, but which one of the novels and shorter stories are your favorites?

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I think that MIRKHEIM is a good sf novel, a good political novel and a good novel. I especially like "How To Be Ethnic..." for its domestic life, "Lodestar" for the generation gap between van Rijn and Coya and THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND for life in the bi-species society.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good choices, I agree. For me, during the Polesotechnic League era, that would be THE MAN WHO COUNTS. But that's because I like Nicholas van Rijn!

I find it harder to make similar choices in the stories set during the Imperial era. Too many excellent stories--making it difficult to make choices. But I esp. like A CIRCUS OF HELLS and "A Message in Secret" is the funniest of the Flandry stories, where we see Anderson indulging in some good natured humor at his expense.

Ad astra! Sean