Diversity

The immediately preceding post was composed in haste just before rushing out to a meeting. I tried yet again to convey the range of Poul Anderson's scientifically informed imagination, this time by summarizing his account of a fictitious life form flourishing on asteroids, meteors and, when they arrive, spaceships.

In recent blog posts:

Sean M Brooks has listed many uncollected fictional and nonfictional works by Poul Anderson and has discussed the complex chronology of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization;

I have discussed theology, sociology, artificial intelligence and hypothetical space-dwelling organisms.

We owe this diversity of subject-matters to Anderson. Serious scientific and philosophical discussions are generated by ideas that he presents as entertaining fiction. Some of his readers appreciate both the fiction and the discussion.

The asteroidal "barnacles" are a far cry from theological or historical debates but are akin to Anderson's speculations about material processes in the planetary system of a wandering red dwarf star and in another system where a super-Jovian planet is falling into its sun. (These were two of his Man-Kzin Wars stories that I discussed recently.)

I have one more story to read and discuss in The Collected Short Works, Volume 1. Then I had better set about acquiring the remaining Volumes.