Anderson And Simak

individual flying vehicles replacing road vehicles

robots

Martians

enhanced animals

mutants

telepathy

exploration of Jupiter

an interstellar space drive

parallel worlds

I am trying to list ideas which:

have become standard in sf;

are in Poul Anderson's works;

are also in Clifford Simak's City which I am still rereading.

Anderson: enhanced seals;

Simak: enhanced dogs and ants;

Anderson: mutant time travelers and immortals;

Simak: a hyperintelligent mutant. 

There might be more. But some of Simak's ideas are impossible, even cartoonish, like an anthill with chimneys as the ants, with no increase in brain size, smelt ore.

(Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is another sf work that takes some standard ideas, like telepathy, robots and time travel, and then does something more with them.)

Simak's descriptions of wind and sunsets recall Anderson's:

"The wind talked harshly in the crouching trees and ripped the long grass in sudden gusts. The last rays of the sun struck fire from the distant peaks."

-City, II, p. 46.

"The sun sank in a lake of crimson, hushed finally to the glow of a fire burned low."

-ibid., p. 48.

"They sat for long minutes in silence broken only by the crackling of the fire, by the ghostly whisper of an autumn wind in the trees outside."

-ibid., III, p. 71.

(As in Anderson's works, natural sounds do not interrupt but underline conversational silence.)

"...in the west the green-tinged glow that marked the passing of the sun was fading into night."

-ibid., p. 81.

Somewhere in there, a couple of sounds become one with the wind. I will quote those passages if I can re-find them but right now other activities call.