Friday 9 October 2020

"Flight to Forever": Contents

"Flight to Forever," pp. 207-288.

81 pages but divided into six numbered chapters:

No Return (pp. 207-217)
Belgotai of Syrtis (pp. 218-236)
Trapped in the Time-Stream (pp. 236-246)
End of Empire (pp. 246-262)
Attack of the Anvardi (pp. 263-271)
Flight Without End (pp. 272-288)

Maybe pulp magazines made novellas seem more substantial by dividing them into chapters with titles? "Flight to Forever" presents many of the standard ingredients:

dramatic opening and closing chapter titles;
a Martian place name;
the time-stream;
in fact, a dramatic problem for some travelers in the time-stream;
the end of an empire;
an alien attack.

What more do we want?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

As Anderson said many times, the first duty of a fiction writer is to entertain his readers. If he fails to do that they will stop buying his stories. Altho he improved as a writer as time passed, Anderson did write an entertaining story in "Flight."

Anderson was far more and better than just a "hack," of course. He could write entertaining stories which also examined serious ideas.

Ad astra! Sean