A Strange Universe

Planet Stories printed "Strange Adventures On Other Worlds."

Poul Anderson's "Witch of the Demon Seas" and "The Virgin of Valkarion" suggest a very strange universe indeed:

there are habitable planets in orbit around different stars - the planet in "Witch..." has a large red sun whereas the planet in "The Virgin..." has two moons;

these planets are inhabited by human beings and possibly also by other intelligent species, e.g., the amphibians in "Witch...";

on each of these planets, there is a kind of animal that has the same name as a mythical being on Earth - erinyes in "Witch..." and garms in "The Virgin...";

these planets seem never to have an industrial revolution - Valkarion is a city on a dying planet where there was an Empire hundreds of thousands of years ago;

everyone fights with swords;

this strange universe is quite different from those in which human and other beings invent technology that enables them to traverse space faster than light and thus to build interstellar empires.

Mental Magic

In "Witch of the Demon Seas" by AA Craig/Poul Anderson, Corun discovers that magic is not a gift of the gods or demons but two mental powers, geas and illusion. The evil sorcerer intends, in league with the amphibious reptilian race, to impose mental control on human populations in order to harness their innate mental powers, thus making himself and his allies even more powerful and even immortal. The interior of the reptiles' black castle, lit by luminous fungi, reads like a vivid nightmare.

Knowing that the sorcerer's apparent transformation into a much larger monster is in fact a hypnotically induced optical illusion, Corun continues striking with his sword until he has killed the sorcerer and thus ended the illusion. The sorcerer's evil daughter had been under his geas, thus not really evil, so she winds up as the story's heroine, not its villainess, after all.

In accordance with Anderson's realistic grasp of politics, Corun will enlist under Khoram the conqueror, thus winning a fairer deal for his own conquered people and helping to build a united peaceful kingdom. That is as much as I can say about "Witch of the Demon Seas."

Witch Of The Demon Seas

"Witch of the Demon Seas" begins with the viewpoint of Khroman the conqueror as he watches his enemy, Corun, brought to him in chains. Nevertheless, Corun, not Khroman, turns out to be our hero.

Magic works so this is fantasy but the setting is sfnal - not Earth but a clouded planet where the large red Heaven-Fire is rarely seen and accurate navigation is not possible. There are human beings but also an amphibious race and some blue-skinned men who worship not the Heaven-Fire but gods that live below the clouds.

The characters have embarked on a voyage which, it seems, will have global repercussions but so far both Corun and the reader are in the dark and I am about to go to bed. I thought that I had three new stories to read in the ebook but, of course, "Out of the Iron Womb!" is "Holmgang," which is in the Psychotechnic History, so it is just "...Demon Seas" and something about a "Virgin..."

Khroman And Corun

OK. I have started to read "Witch of the Demon Seas" in the Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook. "A novel of alien sorcery..." Does "alien" mean that the story will turn out to be set on another planet? So far, it looks like Earth in a fictitious prehistoric past.

It begins:

"Khroman the conqueror, Thalassocrat of Archaera..."

These sound like familiar names with slight changes of spelling. Remembering "Thalassocrat" from an alien planet in Anderson's Technic History, I have finally googled it and found that it means a ruler of the sea, which I had not suspected.

Khroman's men have just captured the pirate, Corun. The idea seems to be to indicate up front that this is sword and sorcery fiction by using slight variations on names of already established characters. The reader expects to enjoy a familiar kind of narrative but will probably find that there is some new slant to it if the author is AA Craig (Poul Anderson). However, I will take it slowly since I am not quickly drawn into this kind of reading! (And, of course, life goes on, even for a blogger.)