Larry Niven's second, shorter, untitled future history which features the Smoke Ring, a breathable atmosphere in a gas torus around a neutron star;
ERB's Moon Trilogy which covers several generations and is a sequel to his Mars series as is Beyond The Farthest Star, set in a planetary system where several planets share an orbit and are linked by a breathable atmosphere so that an interplanetary crossing can be made by aircraft.
My challenge to Anderson if he were still alive - or maybe to Niven? - would be: rationalize ERB's absurd celestial mechanics. If the Smoke Ring is possible, can ERB's Poloda be made somehow plausible? Maybe celestial engineering was involved as in SM Stirling's Lords of Creation series where a habitable Mars and Venus are discovered but only because of ancient terraforming?
Although Poul Anderson's output was enormous, there are still works that we would like to see, like:
an indefinitely extended Time Patrol series and Technic History;
a continuation of his contributions to other sf series like maybe to ERB's.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Except for the three contributions he made to Larry Niven's Man/Kzin wars series, Poul Anderson was not much inclined to contributing to many other writers speculative worlds. I can think of one contribution to Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium series and one novel featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. And that's about it.
But I do wish Anderson could have extended his Time Patrol and Technic Civilization series by at least one or two more stories.
And I have wondered how Anderson would have handled the Draka had he contributed one or two stories to the Domination timeline. After all, we do know he read Stirling's Draka books (Anderson contributed a blurb for UNDER THE YOKE).
Sean
Correction, Poul Anderson contributed a story set in Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series.
Sean
Sean,
Also a US Robots story and a Medea story.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Drat! I forgot about those!
Sean
"set in a planetary system where several planets share an orbit and are linked by a breathable atmosphere so that an interplanetary crossing can be made by aircraft."
The closest to that which is plausible in terms of celestial mechanics would be two close to equal mass planets orbiting each other very closely so they share an atmosphere. For an example in SF see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward#Rocheworld_series
Kaor, Jim!
I like that idea! The closest parallel I can think of in Anderson's works would be "Among Thieves," where two planets, altho their atmospheres don't interpenetrate, orbit each other very closely.
Ad astra! Sean
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