Sunday 5 March 2017

Cosmic And Historical Fictions

Here we connected:

Poul Anderson's time travel fiction to Arthur Conan Doyle's detective fiction;

SM Stirling's alternative history fiction both to Doyle's historical fiction and to Anderson's fantasy alternative history.

We also summarized the military history of the Loring family.

Here we discussed the implications of works of cosmic sf by Anderson, Stirling and others.

Thus, we compared four genres:

sf (time travel, alternative history, cosmic);
detective fiction;
historical fiction;
fantasy.

Far out.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I have a very high regard for Anderson's late phase works: THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS, the HARVEST OF STARS books, and GENESIS. Anderson surpassed his earlier efforts in what I would call "cosmic science fiction": BRAIN WAVE and TAU ZERO.

I grant that some readers, used to more straightforward action and adventure oriented SF, might find these philosophical works of Anderson difficult or even boring reading. I would disagree while also conceding these books will not be to everyone's taste. I even admit that I found the ideas and concepts in PA's late period works so difficult that I needed to reread them before I could truly appreciate them.

Sean