his son;
the Emperor;
Chunderban Desai -
- and maybe some others.
Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization has got to be more intricate and complicated than any other future history series? - although I welcome arguments to the contrary.
Sunday 20 August 2017
The Dennitzan Crisis
his son;
the Emperor;
Chunderban Desai -
- and maybe some others.
Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization has got to be more intricate and complicated than any other future history series? - although I welcome arguments to the contrary.
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3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Considering my multiple re-readings of the Flandry stories, I did more or less understand the background of the Dennitzan crisis. But, I agree many other blog readers are not likely to have that background knowledge.
Yes, Anderson's Technic Civilization series IS more intricate and complex than similar efforts by many other SF writers. Far more so than either Heinlein's Future History and Asimov's FOUNDATION series (to say nothing of being far better written than Asimov's efforts). I think Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven's CoDominium series is one of its few rivals (albeit it's not as FLESHED out as the Technic series). And the CoDominium timeline includes contributions by S.M. Stirling as a co-author.
Larry Niven's Known Space stories, including the Man/Kzin wars series (with contributions by many authors, including Anderson and Stirling) is also a "future history" I consider worthy of comparison to Anderson's work.
In sheer depth of detail and background "historicism" only Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos can be arguably said to surpass Anderson's Technic series. But Tolkien's case is a very peculiar and unusual example. To say nothing of being a fantasy rather than hard science fiction.
David Birr has argued for H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History as being worth of comparison to Anderson's work. But, alas, I've read too few of Piper's works to either agree or disagree with that.
Sean
Kaor, Sean!
I have read more of Piper; he had an autodidact's knowledge of history, he had a few clever ideas, and he could write different kinds of stories, which could be set at different ages within the Terro-Human Future History, so his work is by no means contemptible (and includes the Paratime stories as well the the T-H F H), but I still think that Anderson had depths which Piper lacked.
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
Many thanks for your comments about H. Beam Piper. It seems Piper's work is very much worth reading. And one of those "depths" Anderson had which I think many other SF writers lacked was being able to write convincingly about NON-HUMANS.
Sean
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