Wednesday 7 June 2023

Two Great SF Collections

My two favourite kinds of sf are time travel and future histories. Poul Anderson excels at both and made multiple contributions to each.

Time Patrol collects all of Anderson's Time Patrol series except the long novel, The Shield of Time, which has to remain a separate volume. The Earth Book of Stormgate collects eight of the sixteen Polesotechnic League instalments and four Ythrian short stories with new fictional introductions and afterword. The Earth Book completes the League history, almost completes the Ythrian history and refers to the Terran Empire although not to Dominic Flandry. Thus, it is a pivotal volume of the Technic History.

Before Time Patrol, read Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, HG Wells' The Time Machine, L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, Ward Moore's Bring The Jubilee and Anderson's Past Times which should be revised to include "The Man Who Came Early." Before the Technic History, read Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

2 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE was pivotal, with me stressing that "was." It has since been supplanted by Hank Davis' collecting of the entire Technic series in the seven volumes of THE SAGA OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION by Baen Books.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

But, as you know, I still like the Technic History the way it was.

Paul.