Some Of Poul Anderson's Many Characters

In Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings, I am impressed by Queen Gunnhild's ability to offer honest, unrepentant prayers to the new Powers, Christ and Mary. Despite her "sins" (Christian terminology) or "crimes" (secular terminology), she is clearly working towards an honest accounting between herself and the truth, whoever or whatever that turns out to be. Unfortunately, a single lifetime is nowhere near long enough to settle the issue - but humanity collectively now knows a lot more than it did a thousand years ago.

I had thought that there might be something in common between Gunnhild's footling, Kispin, and Pummairam, the Tyrian youth recruited to the Time Patrol in Anderson's "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks." Both of lowly status, both are intelligent, observant, quick-witted and able to make themselves useful to the powerful. However, the characters differ. Pum seizes every opportunity to learn and to improve his condition whereas Kisping remains petty and grasping and falls on his own deeds. But, despite his unsavouriness, Kisping remains one of the hundreds of characters brought vividly to life in Anderson's fiction.

I would have welcomed an extra element to this fiction, something like a historical novel featuring as one of its characters a Tyrian merchant called Pummairam. There would be no hint of science fiction in this novel except that readers of the Time Patrol series would know that Pum is a Patrol agent operating covertly in his home era. A historical series and a future historical series could have been subtly linked by a time travel series. Anderson does come near this when his time traveling character Jack Havig visits both the Constantinople that was sacked by Crusaders and the Maurai Federation that features in one of his several future histories.

Passing from Gunnhild to Havig via Kisping and Pum certainly demonstrates the diversity of Anderson's fictional characters.