Three Traditions

As I said in a combox, we are preparing to move house so life will be chaotic and unconducive to regular blogging. Meanwhile, let's reiterate some points worth reconsidering. We can identify three literary traditions fulfilled by Poul Anderson.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus:

follows Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and is followed by Brian Aldiss' Frankenstein Unbound;

quotes John Milton's Paradise Lost which is an epic retelling of the Biblical Genesis;

is the first modern science fiction novel according to Brian Aldiss;

is pivotal between Gothic fiction and sf just as Superman is pivotal between sf and superheroes;

is a novel about science and mankind;

asks whether God was right to create Adam and whether Frankenstein was right to create the monster.

Poul Anderson's sf novel, Genesis:

asks whether post-organic intelligences will be right to re-create extinct humanity;

was published at the summit of Anderson's career;

presents technological extrapolation that will not be outmoded in the foreseeable future;

is a future history on a Stapledonian time-scale;

like Aldiss' Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, combines the Wellsian/Stapledonian and Heinleinian future history models.

The other two traditions are from HG Wells' The Time Machine to Anderson's Time Patrol and from Robert Heinlein's Future History to Anderson's Technic History.