An Un-Man receiving Synthesis training, when asked to record important information, grins because:
"He was still young enough to find this a glorious cloak-and-dagger adventure. Well, he'd learn, and the learning would be a little death within him." (p. 73)
My point exactly in A Century Of Adventure. The image shows a cover of The Adventure Annual which was one of the publications that I read many years ago. The characters' names on this cover look like combinations of other familiar names, e.g., "Roy Carson" = Roy Rogers + Kit Carson. Dollman was a miniaturized superhero with a costume based on Superman's.
Poul Anderson gives us action-adventure fiction combined with discussion of the issues that his characters fight about as well as descriptions of the future or extraterrestrial environments in
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I like VIRGIN PLANET and "The Snows of Ganymede" best of all the Psychotechnic stories. Probably BECAUSE of them being action
and adventure oriented. I think what bothered me most about the others was how I don't think they always had both serious ideas and issues and the action adventure elements satisfactorily integrated. Considering how these stories belongs mostly to Anderson's early years as a writer, that is no real surprise. He would still be learning HOW to write in that early phase of his writing career.
Ad astra! Sean
I have a simple approach: "good" and "bad" are sort of emotional equivalents of "me/us" and "him/them"... 8-).
Sean,
I prefer THE PEREGRINE.
Mr Stirling,
In my earliest childhood, I "knew" that Germans and germs were bad and confused the two and also "knew" that Russians were bad. In a war comic that must have been set not during WWII but during the Korean War, the bad guys were called "Reds." Not knowing what that meant, I asked and was told "Communists." My informants might as well have said "Satanists." I did not know that the Russians had been Allies during WWII. I learned that the opposite of Communism was "Capitalism" and deduced that this must be "good" while also realizing that I did not know what it meant. My next question is: how many people go right through life with that level of understanding?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I can see why, because THE PEREGRINE is a more "cerebral" novel than VIRGIN PLANET. But I don't think Anderson integrated action and adventure with serious ideas in PEREGRINE as satisfactorily as he did in later books, even as relatively early as, say, THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS and ENSIGN FLANDRY.
Mr. Stirling: I wish it was always that easy to determine which side in a conflict was better or worse. And I know quite well from your own books how capable you are at thinking about and making such nuances! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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