Across The Universes

A novel by Poul Anderson is like a mountain-top launching pad that not only presents a panoramic view but also propels the reader across space, time or myth. The title of this post is borrowed from an Alan Moore collection: Across The Universe.

Anderson's narratives traverse multiple dimensions that sometimes converge:

a ship sails from Midgard to Jotunheim just as spaceships fly from Earth to everywhere else;

"Odin" is a god in heroic fantasy, a man in historical fiction and a time traveler in science fiction;

both Tir-nan-Og and Tau Zero involve time dilation;

the Roman Empire falls in historical fiction and the Terran Empire falls in a future history;

Merseians are like civilized trolls;

far future Artificial Intelligences are indistinguishable from gods to newly created human beings.

In case the Merseian-troll comparison is regarded as fanciful or inappropriate:

"...after his human guests had left, Ruethen and his staff had rolled out huge barrels of bitter ale and caroused like trolls for many hours..."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 193.