"-She dozed. 'Mond spoke to her. She could not understand the words, but he smiled." (p. 428)
The potential for fantasy is never far away. Anderson could have described a dreamed dialogue between Dagny Beynac and her dead husband, Edmond. The status of the dream might have remained ambiguous - or, alternatively, the chapter containing the dialogue could have changed genre and become fantasy, assuming survival after death, while the rest of the novel remained hard sf. A skillful writer can handle multiple approaches within a single narrative. CS Lewis walks a line between fantasy and sf. For more potential fantasy in a work by Anderson, see here.
Ironically, within the hard sf of The Stars Are Also Fire, conversation with the long dead does become possible but by technological means. Dagny meets her downloaded grandfather and she herself will be downloaded, to speak to a later generation.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
As you know, I've started rereading THE LAST VIKING and have finished its first volume, THE GOLDEN HORN. And I have found a few traces giving us a hint of what the book might have been like if PA had written it as heroic fantasy, rather than as a historical novel. E.g., some of the characters, such as Olaf the Stout (St. Olaf to be), Maria Skleraina, Magnus the Good, and Harald Hardrede himself get prophetic dreams. And Poul Anderson skillfully integrated these dreams into the story so that they did not look out of place in a historical novel.
Sean
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