Alexei Panshin refers to a Poul Anderson novel by its title alone without naming the author. He, Panshin, is discussing the difference between romantic and realistic fiction, which I do not want to get into here. For this post alone, let us just note that Panshin characterizes "Romance" as "life-not-as-experienced" and "Realism" as "life-as-experienced" (p. 136) and, on this basis, says that speculative fiction is romantic and only relatively realistic. He then lists three pairs of titles, saying that regular sf readers will see some difference between the two works in each pair whereas non-readers of sf will not. The pairs are:
The Dragon In The Sea and The Weapon Shops Of Isher;
"The Cold Equations" and Captain Future;
The Enemy Stars and The Dying Earth.
We on this blog recognize an Anderson title. We also recognize that, in each pair, the first item is "realistic" whereas the second is "romantic." This is a very obscure reference to Anderson and I spotted it only when looking for something else.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I've read "The Weapon Shops of Isher," "The Cold Equations," and THE ENEMY STARS. But not THE DYING EARTH. I recall there was a fierce debate about the premise used in "Equations."
Merry Christmas! Sean
I had to check the link to "Dragon in the Sea" to confirm it was the story I thought (by Frank Herbert, Western subs 'stealing' oil from the Eastern powers deposits). I don't recall reading 'Captain Future' or 'The Dying Earth'. The other 3 I remember quite well.
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