Poul Anderson's works, 1947-2001, cover just over fifty years of this period of just over two hundred years and fully develop the Wellsian-Stapledonian themes of space travel, time travel, alien invasion and future history as well as more recent themes that they did not know about.
(Frankenstein is the pivotal character between Gothic fiction and sf as Superman is between sf and superheroes and Anderson could easily have created a substantial sequel to either.)
I feel drawn towards rereading Anderson's The Game Of Empire, alongside other current reading, but it remains to be seen how much such rereading will generate blog-wise.
Nothing more this evening!
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Anderson was esp. good at writing hard science fiction, stories respecting either the limits of what was or going beyond them in convincingly plausible ways. And that makes Verne a predecessor of Anderson, because he wrote hard SF based on what was known to him.
Ad astra! Sean
Of coure, Poul was a better -writer- than Verne. Better at characterization, for example.
A much better writer.
Verne combined documentary with fiction. He tried to summarize what was known at the time and not go beyond that. JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH is a cop-out. It does not deliver on the promise of its title and even remains ambiguous as the whether the core of the Earth is molten.
He denigrated Cavorite as an "invention" by Wells.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Of course! We can't expect Verne/Wells to be as good writers as the best of their successors in SF. But I would still rate Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON as being equal to the best of Wells' works.
Paul: While your comments about JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH are justified, it's still worth reading as an example of travel/adventure writing. And better than some of Wells' works, such as THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.
Ad astra! Sean
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