Thursday, 1 October 2026

Reintroducing "Flight to Forever"

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 161-240.

To introduce this story, I cannot do better than I did in 2020. Almost everything that I would have wanted to say now is there although with one exception.

The characters are:

Martin Saunders
Eve Lang
Sam Hull
"Doc" MacPherson

We do not recognize any of them. They are all created de novo for this story. None of the names resonate except - "Eve" can obviously be symbolic and "Lang" is familiar as the name of a heroine in Superman/Superboy comics although that is probably irrelevant!

Must go. Laterz.

2 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

It's a grand concept -- going through the end of time and back to the beginning. Poul's execution wasn't quite up to it yet, though.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!

Paul: But "Martin" resonates with me! We see St. Martin of Tours as an important secondary character in the Andersons four volume novel THE KING OF YS.

And historically aware Catholics should think of St. Martin I, who was Pope from 649-53. A confessor of Christ who was tortured and exiled by the Eastern Emperor Constans II for resisting the Monothelite heresy.

Mr. Stirling: I agree, while "Flight to Forever" is very much worth reading, it is rather a bit roughly written. As should not be surprising, considering this was of Anderson's earlier stories.

TAU ZERO touches on a similar concept, traveling thru time to the end of this universe into the creation of the next universe. And is much more technically smoothly written. But I have read Anderson was not satisfied with TAU, believing it needed to be rewritten. But publishing/deadline pressure forced him to turn in a text he was not happy with.

I think of STARFARERS as being in some ways much closer in some ways to what Anderson wanted TAU ZERO to be.

Ad astra! Sean