Thursday 22 March 2018

Cosmic Context

The cosmic context makes sense not only in hard sf but also in contemporary fiction. Even if a novel is set entirely in London or New York in 2018, its author, readers and characters know that they are on a planet in the Solar System in the Milky Way and the text can express such knowledge. Poul Anderson does this in his Trygve Yamamura novels. Contemporary characters could also refer to Mars and to current ideas about its colonization without trespassing into another genre

In other works, Anderson's time travelers or immortals move among us and therefore could cameo in a contemporary novel.
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1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It would have been interesting indeed if PA had thought of cameoing one of his Time Patrol characters in some of his few "contemporary" works. Such as the Trygve Yamamura stories or THE DEVIL'S GAME, all of whom, by now, were pub. quite a long time ago. Or possibly in the "contemporary" parts of THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS.

And Manse Everard would have been a worthy guest at the Old Phoenix Inn, where he might have met Nicholas van Rijn!

Sean

22 March 2018 at 14:07

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