A Narrative Technique

I have finished rereading Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars and find that I have discussed its sequel in two previous posts:

The Ways Of Love
The Ways Of Love II

However, this is a story that I have read only once five years ago and therefore will reread soon.

I have continued to post on the companion blog, James Blish Appreciation, and have listed the posts for this month here. The most recent post, Old And New, highlights a narrative technique used by earlier sf writers, including Wells, and revived by Blish in Midsummer Century. How many of Poul Anderson's works follow that earlier pattern by beginning their narratives in the here and now before launching their protagonists into fabulous realms? Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn and Dominic Flandry begin their adventures already living in our future whereas we first encounter Manse Everard in the "here and now" of New York, 1955 - although Everard is not abruptly precipitated into the far past. He joins an organization for which time travel is routine. A more appropriate example might be Holger Carlsen in Three Hearts And Three Lions although he disappears from a beach in World War II, not from the narrator's here and now.

At the end of "Old And New," there is an unexpected comparison of a passage in Wells' "A Story of the Days to Come" with already-compared passages in The Time Machine and in Anderson's There Will Be Time. Both Anderson and Blish are Wellsian. In some works, like these, the connection is clear.