Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Autumn Leaves

"Aircraft that had landed for final checks of the site flew away like autumn leaves."
-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 60.

Can aircraft fly like leaves being blown by the wind in autumn? This simile caught my attention and also reminded me of Leaf And Stars. Writing about spaceships, Anderson makes us think about the seasons. This is science fiction and also literature.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would argue that all READABLE science fiction has to be at least competently written if it's going to be read more than once by a reader. Yes, Anderson not only wrote SF, he also wrote LITERATURE. Because his stories are also ENGAGING.

Yet again I thought of Isaac Asimov as an example of the kind of writer who, while writing competent SF, I have strong doubts his fictional works will be considered literature.

Sean