Thursday, 25 September 2025

Extraordinary Voyages

I have begun to read an annotated 2009 translation of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. (See image.)

I usually think of Poul Anderson as a successor of Mary Shelley, HG Wells and Robert Heinlein but Verne is somewhere in there as well. Think of the directions of exploration in the nineteenth century (in fact or in fiction):

beyond certain northern and southern latitudes

through the air

into the upper atmosphere (a Conan Doyle short story)

under the Earth

under the sea

through space

through time

Unless modern authors want to go retro, which they sometimes do, they are not going to describe journeys into a non-molten Earth's core, hollow Earth etc. Poul Anderson is at the space-time end of this list, particularly in Tao Zero and "Flight to Forever."

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