Despite his massive output, Poul Anderson never wrote that potential sequel to his first fantasy novel,
The Broken Sword. See
Unwritten Books. On the one hand, the sequel does not exist. On the other hand, it does make sense to wonder what it would have been like. Some fiction writers reflect on the nature of fiction in their fiction, none more than Neil Gaiman in
The Sandman. After the unpleasant fairy tale mentioned
here, comes the following dialogue -
Magda: I always wondered what happened to the
children, after they flew away...
Helena: They're just
made-up people. They didn't really exist.
Magda: That doesn't mean they don't have
stories.
-Neil Gaiman,
The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (New York, 1996), 6, p. 18, panel 1.
Every character that is still alive at the end of a story has more stories even if we do not read them. There are many in Poul Anderson's works.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And of course S.M. Stirling has said he deliberately leaves open in many of his stories the possibility of there being sequels. THE PESHAWAR LANCERS being a rare exception to that custom of Stirling. Altho I'm sure he could write another story set in the timeline of the Angrezi Raj if the inspiration and wish ever strikes him.
Sean
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