Panshin And Blish On Heinlein And Anderson

Alexei Panshin, Heinlein In Dimension (Chicago, 1968). 

I was given a copy of this book by James Blish many years ago. The book is relevant to this blog because:

Robert Heinlein is relevant to Poul Anderson;

there are five references to Anderson in its index;

Panshin makes general points about sf which are relevant to Anderson.

This time, I want to draw just one parallel between Heinlein and Anderson. Panshin tells us that Heinlein's Future History short story, "The Long Watch":

"...derives from a few sentences in Space Cadet..." (III., p. 50)

Similarly, Anderson's Technic History short story, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," derives from a few sentences in his earlier Technic History story, "The Trouble Twisters."

Heinlein's second Scribner Juvenile sf novel, Space Cadet, summarizes the story of the Space Patrol hero, Dahlquist. "The Long Watch" tells that story.

"The Trouble Twisters" mentions that, when Adzel had got a scholarship to study planetology on Earth, he sang Fafnir in the San Francisco Opera and also paraded at Chinese New Year. "How To Be Ethnic..." reveals the full story of how that happened and does not tell us it in the way that we might have expected. The text begins:

"Adzel..."

We probably expect the named individual to be the viewpoint character. However, it becomes immediately apparent that, instead, there is a human first person narrator who is one of Adzel's fellow students. It is a different kind of story but equally part of the multi-narrative, multi-viewpoint Technic History.