Tolkien has an initially flat Earth, Elves, Dwarfs, gods and a heaven to the West whereas Stapledon has galaxies, Martians, Venerians and extrasolar civilizations;
Tolkien reworks ancient mythologies whereas Stapledon constructs a modern myth out of the scientific world view.
Tolkien's friend and colleague, CS Lewis, had to acknowledge the existence of the Solar System but theologized it as "the field of Arbol," ruled by planetary angels. James Blish, a hard sf writer, followed Lewis by writing about sinless aliens but placed them in the astronomical universe and a secular milieu.
What has this to do with Poul Anderson? Quite a lot. He alone (I think) wrote with equal facility both about Norse mythology and about scientific cosmology. He is equally familiar both with Odin and with supernovae. One of his characters visits the roots of the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, whereas others accelerate at relativistic speeds between galaxies and into the next universe. In The Avatar, human characters travel to different galaxies and cosmic periods and eventually encounter the superior civilization that had constructed the space-time gates as it intervenes in the creation of a new universe. This is more than Wellsian; it is Stapledonian.
Moreover, Anderson's time traveling characters move between ancient myths and future cosmologies. Readers of Stapledon and of Tolkien need to know about Anderson.
1 comment:
Hi, Paul!
Fans of Olaf Stapledon and J.R.R. Tolkien need to know of the works of Poul Anderson? I agree, for the reasons you have given above.
Tolkien tried his hand at writing science fiction in THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS, which can be found in THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE EARTH. Alas, it was a failure as a book, which was why he eventually abandoned it. Some writers, I fear, are unable to switch from one genre to another. Heroic fantasy, not SF, was apparently Tolkien's natural form of writing.
Which is not to say Tolkien did not enjoy reading SF! In THE LETTERS OF JRR TOLKIEN, we find occasional mention of him reading and enjoying science fiction (Tolkien explicitly mentioned reading Asimov). And I came across, online, a paperback SF short story collection which had been owned by him. AND the point I'm stressing was that collection included one of Anderson's stories. So we can hope Tolkien read some of the works of Poul Anderson, altho LETTERS does not mention as being the case.
Sean
Post a Comment