Sunday 23 December 2018

What Next?

Poul Anderson, The High Crusade, CHAPTER VIII.

Many Wersgor ships approach and hover above. How will Sir Roger prevail this time? I will find out but not tonight.

Brother Parvus assures Red John that, if the enemy have magic, then he need not fear:

"'...for the black arts do not prevail against good Christian men.'" (p. 51)

But, in James Blish's Black Easter, the black arts do prevail and what happens then? Blish was obliging enough to write a sequel, The Day After Judgment.

Very often, a single phrase in one work encapsulates or implies the theme of another work. For example, one of the Time Traveler's dinner guests mentions the danger of using time travel to verify accounts of a historical battle, the essential point of Ward Moore's later Bring The Jubilee, and how to counteract that danger is the essential point of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

The line of thought in this post connects:

The High Crusade (Anderson)
Black Easter
The Day After Judgment
The Time Machine
Bring The Jubilee
Time Patrol (Anderson)

My advice to blog readers: in the New Year, read or reread all these works.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good advice! Even if I have already read, some more than once, all of the works you listed.

Sean