Tuesday, 12 January 2021

Some More Parallels

Poul Anderson often quotes or refers to the Bible. Isaac Asimov discusses Biblical passages in his first Robot novel, his eighth Black Widowers story and his Guide to the Bible.

Shakespeare time travels in Asimov's "The Immortal Bard" and is the Great Historian in an alternative timeline in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest.

Robert Anderson relays Jack Havig's accounts of time travel to Poul Anderson and a Black Widower claims to be a friend of Isaac Asimov, who could therefore have been a dinner guest.

A Black Widower begins to retell each chapter of Homer as a limerick but discontinues this habit. Anderson's Adzel might describe the discontinuation as a blessing in disguise.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Considering how LONG poems like the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY are, it was just as well that Black Widower discontinued those limericks parodying Homer!

Not that we can't have that kind of sardonic humor in poetry, as Juvenal's SATIRES demonstrates.

Ad astra! Sean