Thursday 13 January 2022

Anderson, Blish And Gaiman

This blog compares Poul Anderson and James Blish as hard sf writers and future historians and Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman as fantasy writers. The main points of comparison are:

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization and Blish's Cities In Flight;

Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn in one novel and two short stories and Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End in The Sandman

The main differences are that the Technic History is complete in seven omnibus volumes whereas Cities In Flight is complete in a single omnibus volume and that Anderson's works are prose fiction whereas The Sandman is graphic fiction.

Since both the Old Phoenix and the Worlds' End assume a multiverse, they theoretically coexist with each other and Nicholas van Rijn from the Technic History shows up in the Old Phoenix. The Technic History and Cities In Flight are successors of Robert Heinlein's Future History and Rhysling from the Future History shows up in the Old Phoenix. Thus, we have quite a lot of literary unity here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would argue for including Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium series alongside Blish's Cities in Flight books as also being worthy of comparison to Anderson's Technic stories.

Ad astra! Sean