Thursday, 27 August 2026

Anderson And Simak

individual flying vehicles replacing road vehicles
robots
Martians
enhanced animals
mutants
telepathy
exploration of Jupiter
an interstellar space drive
parallel worlds
suspended animation

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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I love the idea of flying cars, which I first came across in the 1965 Chilton Books edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE. Just type in where you want to go and take off! I think if flying cars became common, they would have to be regulated by a Traffic Control Authority, which would take over control of the air car, after we selected a destination and one of the speed limits. Only the police, air ambulances, and the military would be authorized to fly air cars at will. Because we would get a horrendous number of air car accidents.

I agree with your skepticism about the fantastic notion of enhanced ants. But I was reminded of this bit from Anderson's story "The High Ones" (THE HORN OF TIME, Gregg Press (1978), page 66): "Even a simple one-loop homeostatic circuit is amazingly flexible and adaptive. Think of ants or bees or termites on Earth. In their own ways, they have societies as intricate as anything known to us. They actually have a sort of stylized language, as do our neighbors here. In fact, I suspect the average ant faces more variety and problems in his life than the average Zolotoyan. Remember, they have no natural enemies anymore; and for tens of thousands of years, every job on that highly automated planet has been stereotyped."

Ad astra! Sean

Anonymous said...

Correction, last sentence of first paragraph: "Because we would otherwise..."

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

In CITY, they fly in helicopters.

Paul.

S.M. Stirling said...

A lot of drones fly by pivoting enclosed propellors.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!

Paul: I knew of personal helicopters, but they don't fit my idea of what air cars should be like: too complicated, big, awkward, etc. To say nothing of helicopter pilots being required to get licenses of the kind needed for planes. Ideally, a basic aircar should be no larger than my 2018 Honda FIT (and as streamlined).

That comes closer to what aircars should be like!

Ad astra! Sean