Tuesday, 11 August 2026

Anglesey And Helmuth

"The wind came whooping out of eastern darkness, driving a lash of ammonia dust before it. In minutes, Edward Anglesey was blinded.
"He clawed all four feet into the broken shards which were soil..."
-Poul Anderson, "Call Me Joe" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, Volume 1, Call Me Joe (NESFA Press, Framingham, MA, 2009), pp. 11-36 AT p. 11.

Anglesey stands on a ground composed of some kind of soil and, a few sentences later, is hit by an uprooted tree.

"A screeching tornado was rocking the Bridge when the alarm sounded; the whole structure shuddered and swayed. That was normal, and Robert Helmuth on Jupiter V barely noticed it. There was always a tornado shaking the Bridge. The whole planet was enswathed in tornadoes and worse."
-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CHAPTER TWO, pp. 28-29.

We soon learn that these texts are set on very different versions of Jupiter. Helmuth's Jupiter has neither trees nor even a single fixed surface. We notice that Anglesey is physically present in the wind and dust whereas Helmuth watches from a Jovian moon. However, we are soon to learn that both men are on Jupiter V, each with his heads enclosed in a remote control helmet.

The comparison continues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

Truthfully, I believe Anderson was a better writer than Blish (who did write some interesting things).

Ad astra! Sean