Large Objects

Regular blog readers know my philosophy. Fully to appreciate Poul Anderson, we compare or contrast him with many diverse authors, including other cosmically-themed hard sf writers. Anderson, Larry Niven and Gregory Benford have all written major sf series and have interacted in different ways. For a comment by Gregory Benford on one of my posts about his Anderson-related short story, see here. For comments on Anderson's contributions to Niven's Man-Kzin Wars subseries, see here.

Benford's and Niven's Bowl Of Heaven (TOR, New York, 2013) is like getting Niven's Ringworld back. I mean an artifact bigger than planets. Ringworld initiated a tetralogy and a co-written trilogy which, like the Man-Kzin Wars, are subseries of Niven's Known Space future history. Bowl... launches a new series. The authors think big and their alien characters build big.

On the title page of Part II, the authors quote Lord Dunsany:

"Man is a small thing, and the night is large and full of wonder." (p. 79)

I think that I can improve that:

"Man is small; night is wide and wondrous."

(Scottish English gives us "Man is wee..." but that sounds twee.)

We can also compare all these series with Star Trek:

"They left a skeleton crew aboard SunSeeker, with [Captain] Redwing plainly sorry that proper ship command protocols demanded that he stay aboard." (p. 81)

Captain Kirk, take note.