In the opening chapter of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, both the viewpoint character, Diana Crowfeather, and the setting, an entire planetary system with two colonized planets, are new but we soon realize which history we are in. Diana sees Tigeries, a Donarrian, Irumclagians and Shalmuans, overhears a Navy man and a marine discussing "Merseian bastards" and meets her first Wodenite.
She, and we, know of this last species if only because of a historical figure, Adzel the Wayfarer. We soon learn that this new Wodenite is researching the Ancients of whom also we have heard much before. Thus, here is an authentic history.
(I have returned from a few days in Scotland. While there, I read part of a time travel novel that compares unfavorably with Anderson's works on this theme.)
3 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Welcome back from Scotland! Hope the weather wasn't too cold and wet and that you had a good time there.
I agree with you in finding the history and background of the Technic History ever richer and varied as the series progressed. Compared to Anderson's work, Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series is disappointingly flat, colorless, unconvincing, and in many places, alas, boring.
Of currently living SF writers I find the works of S.M. Stirling most like those of PA in the attention and care the former takes in describing character and background (altho the lesbian sub plots in some of his stories gets tiresome). And it's plain Stirling was directly influenced by Anderson in many ways--I've seen metaphors and turns of phrase which came originally from Anderson (such as "young lion eyes") in various of Stirling's stories.
I'm taking a break from reading Taylor Anderson and David Wingrove to begin rereading THE TIME PATROL, which collects all but one of the shorter Time Patrol stories. Even the first and earliest of those stories, "Time Patrol," is suprisingly sophisticated and carefully thougt out. Then I'll probably read THE SHIELD OF TIME and "Death and the Knight."
Have you guys in the UK heard of the kerfuffle in the US about how some SF writers such as John Wright have resigned from the SFWA to protest the unprofessional and even bullying behavior extreme leftist types?
Sean
Sean,
I have not heard of the kerfuffle or "brouhaha" (as some here would say). My general advice to any W of SF would be to stay in the A and continue to argue within it but, of course, I do not know the particular circumstances. You could maybe write an account which would be published on my Science Fiction blog, with a link from PAA?
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Even better, I'll send you the account John Wright wrote of why he has left the SFWA. He wrote very clearly and vigorously of his objections to the direction the SFWA has been taking the last ten years or so.
Sean
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