What The Author Says

It is a truism that the views of a character are not necessarily those of the author. To my surprise, Mikael Blomkvist rarely even votes whereas Stieg Larsson was active in a Fourth International (orthodox Trotskyist) organization.

However, there are times when we know enough about an author to recognize his views in those of some of his characters. Again, approaching the question from the opposite direction, when an author clearly approves of a character, it is at least plausible, although by no means certain, that their views are similar.

Anderson wrote in the SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, that income tax undermines liberty and privacy. Shalten addresses Everard on the assumption that the latter dislikes/disagrees with/disapproves of taxation.

In his Afterword to The Psychotechnic League, Anderson writes that he used to be "a flaming liberal" and that this is probably obvious in "Un-Man." It was not obvious to me but then I did not read the story on the assumption that it expressed its author's politics!

Accusing Janne Floris of guilt tripping, Everard asks her in disgust whether she is:

"'...some kind of a liberal or something?'"
-"Star of the Sea," 15, p. 597.

I found that a bit strong. Here is the familiar American conservative disdain for that protean enemy, "liberalism." In the light of everything else, I interpreted Everard's attitude as expressing the author's perspective, here presented a bit more strongly than usual.

The last word on this subject has to be: Poul Anderson, like CS Lewis and Alan Moore, was able to present every kind of character with every kind of belief. He understood people that he strongly disagreed with - which we need to do.