Saturday, 4 November 2017

Worldbuilding

Fully Realized Planets and Fully Realized Planets II demonstrate Poul Anderson's skills as a "worldbuilder." Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is both a long future history series and a series in which not just one but many worlds are built. Does this make it unique?

I have not read every future history series and also have not kept up with more recent cosmological sf so maybe some blog readers will be able to tell me of authors who they think equal or surpass Anderson in these respects?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I think PA's Technic History is unique in some ways, it's so very REAL feeling, far more so than Asimov's FOUNDATION books. Other "future histories" which come closest to Anderson's achievement, IMO, would be Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium series (which eventually expanded to include contributions by other writers, including Anderson), and Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind stories. And some would include Frank Herbert's DUNE books (I've only read the first three books: DUNE, DUNE MESSIAH, and CHILDREN OF DUNE, so I don't feel able to judge the entire series). And I really should include in this list Larry Niven's Known Space tales. Of all these, I prefer most the works of Anderson, Pournelle, and Cordwainer Smith.

Sean