Thursday 13 April 2017

A Framework

Poul Anderson's canon is so vast and diverse that it can provide a framework for discussing works by other authors. Thus, in the previous post, we mentioned:

SM Stirling's Draka History as extending an alternative timeline into the future;
Anderson's first two future histories as presenting alternative versions of Mars;
original versions of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) and CS Lewis;
composite versions of Mars by Alan Moore and Larry Niven;
Lewis' Ransom Trilogy and alternative Earth;
Anderson's Old Phoenix -

- and concluded by suggesting a synthesis of the Old Phoenix with various fictional versions of Mars, mentioning specifically ERB's green Martians and the colonists of Mars in Anderson's second future history.

Moore composites Wells, ERB, Arnold, Lewis and Moorcock whereas Niven composites ERB, Bradbury, Lewis, Wells and Weinbaum. Thus, we have referred to more than we realized.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

We know that in Anderson's Technic Civilization stories that Venus was terraformed, even if it was not quite satisfactorily completed. See as well Anderson's story "The Big Rain" (in the Psychotechnic series) for how that might be done. And Jerry Pournelled wrote a non fictional article of the same name advocating how he would terraform Venus.

All this made me wonder if the Mars of the Technic Civilization series was also terraformed. After all, we see the elderly Duke of Mars talking to Flandry in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS on the possibility of him retiring to his ancestral estates on that planet. So, was Mars terraformed?

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
But, as far back as van Rijn's time, ir had been colonized by extra-solars for whom it was a habitable planet.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But that was about 600 years before Flandry's meeting the Duke of Mars and I would expect HUMANS to also have colonized Mars as time passed. Situated as it was in the Solar System I would expect humans to have become the majority by the time the Empire arose. So, I think SOMETHING might have been to terraform Mars.

Sean