(II) Read and reread Poul Anderson.
(III) Anderson should be filmed but it would have to be done well.
(IV) Read Blish also.
(V) Blish also should be filmed. (In fact, there were advanced plans to film his Welcome To Mars and Cities In Flight.)
(VI) SM Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson especially in alternative histories.
(VII) Remember the literary traditions that preceded Anderson:
Sagas and Eddas;
the Bible;
Shakespeare;
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein;
Olaf Stapledon's future and cosmic timescales;
Wells again, particularly The Time Machine and future wars (Wells: aircraft; Anderson: spacecraft);
earlier causality violation time travel sf (the Time Patrol addressed an already existing paradox that Wells had hinted at).
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Jules Verme,, who is too often overlooked, should also be remembered. The author of works like FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON and 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA should not be forgotten. Verne was the first modern SF writer to write stories keeping real science, as known in his time, in mind.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't see Verne as an influence on Anderson, though.
Adolph Hess in Blish's BLACK EASTER designed an all-purpose vehicle called the Hessicopter which sounds like Verne's Robur's second invention.
Kaor, Paul!
But Verne was at least the grandfather of hard science fiction, which Anderson so greatly excelled at writing. So Verne can be found in PA's literary "ancestry,"
And it was Blish who coined that bit about hard SF.
Ad astra! Sean
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