I am looking at another Ace Double (New York, 1962), both sides written by Poul Anderson.
One side is Un-Man and other novellas: three works, each an installment of a different series. "Margin of Profit" is a Nicholas van Rijn story but this is the unrevised version that does not fit into the Technic Civilization History and therefore should be preserved in a subsidiary volume of that series, like an Apocrypha.
The other side of the Ace Double is The Makeshift Rocket, collected elsewhere as "A Bicycle Built for Brew." The cover calls it a "Complete Novel" but, since it is only 93 pages in length, it is just short of a novel in my opinion - whereas two of the seven shorter Dominic Flandry stories are long enough to count as short novels.
The Makeshift Rocket is made to look like a novel by its division into 13 untitled chapters and it is also long enough to have been serialized on its original publication in 1958. This work counts as humor so it is appropriate to reread it after reading the Hoka stories for the first time. (I resisted them for years but have finally found them fascinating.)
However, I need a short break from reading prose so will probably reread some of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and will get back to you about The Makeshift Rocket in a while.
Showing posts with label Un-Man and other novellas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Un-Man and other novellas. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 December 2013
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Ace Double
A few more details that may be of interest about Poul Anderson's Ace Double comprising The Makeshift Rocket ("A Bicycle Built For Brew") and Un-Man and other novellas, the "others" being "Margin of Profit" and "The Live Coward." Anyone familiar with Anderson's works recognizes that "Un-Man" and "Margin of Profit" each belong to a different future history series but closer investigation reveals that "The Live Coward" also belongs to a series. It is one of three stories about Wing Alar of the Galactic League Patrol: neither the Polesotechnic League nor the Time Patrol but the League Patrol. These stories, of which two are in Kinship With The Stars, should form a single volume.
Rocket presents a fifth fictitious Martian race. (We had four before.) I think this fifth race is also in "Captive of the Centaurianess" but will confirm by rereading. Rocket also has gyro-gravitic asteroid colonization, familiar from The Flying Mountains.
Rocket presents a fifth fictitious Martian race. (We had four before.) I think this fifth race is also in "Captive of the Centaurianess" but will confirm by rereading. Rocket also has gyro-gravitic asteroid colonization, familiar from The Flying Mountains.
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