Sunday 1 September 2013

Deathwomb

Immediately after "Hunter's Moon" in Poul Anderson's collection, Space Folk (New York, 1989), is his paradoxically entitled short story, "Deathwomb," which turns out to be his contribution to Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series. Yet again, I have had this story on a shelf for years without, as far as I can remember, ever having read it.

Thus, to reiterate some points made earlier, of the twelve items in Space Folk:

"Pride" is a prequel to Anderson's novel, Tau Zero;
"Quest" is a sequel to his The High Crusade;
"Hunter's Moon" is part of Harlan Ellison's Medea series;
"Deathwomb" is part of Saberhagen's Berserker series;
"Symmetry" has the background of Anderson's Psychotechnic future history although it is not part of that series;
"Commentary" is non-fiction.

I think that the remaining six stories are independent although at least two of them are what I call "proto-series":

"Horse Traders" could easily be the first installment of a "horse traders" series;

the very Heinleinian story, "Escape The Morning," written for the Boy Scouts of America, is about young people living, and effecting a rescue, on the Moon and could very easily initiate a series of such stories, similar to the Moon period of Heinlein's Future History.

Anderson contributed to so many other authors' series or shared universes that an entire volume of his Complete Works would be able to hold his Medea story, his Berserker story, his Robots story, his Man-Kzin Wars stories, his Isaac's Universe stories etc;
"Pride" and "Quest" should be published with their respective novels;
"Commentary" belongs in a non-fiction collection;
"Symmetry" could fit in an Appendix of the collected Psychotechnic History;
thus, Space Folk would be halved to six stories which, in turn, could be incorporated into a longer volume about space exploration.

Having said all that, I ought to get on with reading "Deathwomb."

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

And altho SPACE FOLK does not contain it, "The Ways of Love" (which can be found in EXPLORATIONS) is a short story sequel to THE ENEMY STARS.

It's my opinion that the non fiction piece in SPACE FOLK, "Commentary," is an excellent short defense of why we need a REAL and determined space program. It does contain one or two points I disagree with, or quibble at, but not to the extent of detracting from the major items Anderson stressed in it.

Sean

Sean