Saturday, 13 June 2020

Conversations

In Introducing The Old Phoenix, I said that I would leave it to blog readers to google the authors listed by Poul Anderson. However, I had already googled them in Influences.

My next project is to identify not only the authors but also their relevant works. Thus:

John Kendrick Bangs, Associated Shades;

Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Heavenly Discourse;

Hendrik Willem van Loon, Van Loon's Lives (featuring the island of Walcheren);

Lord Dunsany, Joseph Jorkens;

Edmond Hamilton, don't know.

Anderson says of the Old Phoenix:

"...to the best of my knowledge, nothing else is quite like this place, where you may meet anybody whatsoever."
-"House Rule," p. 64 (see either of the first two links above).

Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End is exactly like it but was written later.

Sherlock Holmes appears both in Bangs' House Boat and in Anderson's Old Phoenix.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Your listing of Lord Dunsany's stories about Joseph Jorkens' reminded me of works written by other authors in roughly the same kind of setting, a club or bar. Two examples I've thought of being tales narrated by Sterling Lanier's Brigadier Ffellowes and L. Sprague de Camp's and Fletcher Pratt's stories at Gavagan's Bar. I regret saying I don't think I read more than one or two of Dunsany's Jorkens stories.

If Poul Anderson had written even one or two more stories set in the Old Phoenix, then we could include those stories with the other series I listed above.

Ad astra! Sean