Monday 9 June 2014

Andersonian Parallels

When I told my daughter that I had posted about parallels between works by Poul Anderson and Peter Cakebread, she asked, "But can't you parallel Poul Anderson to anything?"

Well, Poul Anderson covered a lot of ground so there is much scope for comparison with authors who touched on similar themes. My main contentions so far are that:

there are several distinct parallels with Neil Gaiman;
there are definite parallels between A Midsummer Tempest and Cakebread's The Alchemist's Revenge;
Anderson is a major successor of Wells, Stapledon and Heinlein;
he parallels Tolkien in basing fiction on Norse myths;
he does what Asimov, Herbert, Niven, Star Trek and Star Wars do but does it better.

So there are a lot of comparisons to make. 

No comments: