"Pele" by Poul Anderson is slightly shorter than his previous Man-Kzin Wars stories, less than a hundred pages. It again features Robert Saxtorph and Peter Nordbo, now in business together.
The book also contains three stories by other authors, including the creator of the kzinti, Larry Niven. Thus, and not for the first time, Niven himself adds to this franchised sub-series.
The original Star Trek TV series wound up as just one period of a longer history - sandwiched between a prequel and several sequels in diverse media. Comparably, the fourteen volume Man-Kzin Wars can be read as a space war series in its own right or as part of a much longer history stretching from twentieth century interplanetary exploration to the Fleet of Worlds Trilogy and the Ringworld Tetralogy. But I will probably not read a lot more of Man-Kzin Wars than Anderson's three contributions.
1 comment:
Hi, Paul!
I too have a fair number of the Man/Kzin wars books (altho I would need to check to find out exactly how many). And I also understand you preferring to focus on Poul Anderson's contributions to that series. But, I do recommend S.M. Stirling's contributions as well. I would go so far as to say Stirling's works, in many ways, have an "Andersonian" feel to me.
One of the differences between the two authors is that Stirling does not compose his own poetry. Like Tolkien, Anderson was a poet and was quite able and willing to incorporate his own verses into his prose works (albeit, not as often as Tolkien did in LOTR). His "Prayer in War" being a notable example of that (to be found in ORION SHALL RISE).
Sean
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