Gods Stories

Recently, I discussed "Dead Phone" by Poul and Karen Anderson as a detective story, a ghost story, part of Poul Anderson's fantasy canon and a link between his fantasies and his mysteries. Fantasy includes not only ghost stories but also what we might call "gods stories," e.g.:

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson;

"A Feast for the Gods" by Poul and Karen Anderson;

The Sandman, American Gods and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman;

Lucifer by Mikey Carey (a brilliant sequel to the also brilliant although in a different way The Sandman);

the "Godz Bar" scenes in Top Ten by Alan Moore.

(For Gaiman, Carey and Moore, see here.)

The basic premise of gods fiction is that every god that has ever been imagined literally exists. Thus:

there can be, sometimes humorous, interactions between members of various pantheons;

characters can visit diverse supernatural realms like Olympus or Asgard.

(In the Godz Bar, when a blue-skinned super-powered cop pursues Hodr, suspect in the murder of Balder, into the male rest room, an Aztec god asks, "Friend of yours, Krish?" Krishna replies, "You think all us blue guys know each other?" In the background, a certain solitary god exclaims, "Holy Me!")

Another common premise of gods fiction is that the gods have come into existence only because they have been imagined:

"'We too are real...As real as any other mortal deed or dream.'" says Hermes in "A Feast for the Gods." (The Unicorn Trade, New York, 1984, p. 222)

Gods fiction alternates between flippancy and insight. The Andersons' Hermes says that the Olympians learned from their predecessor, the Triple Goddess, and that, in the Renaissance, Europeans who had accepted only one god realized how much of civilization was borne by the Olympians.

Often, worship strengthens gods and they retire, decline or fade away when they are no longer worshiped. Innovations like Media or Internet become new gods in all but name. The Andersons' story, published in 1971, anticipates the Internet. However, there is no single consistent theology here! Pagan worldviews do not need a Pope.

Among Pagans, the question, "Who are the gods of this land?" meant equally: "What gods are believed in and worshiped here?" and: "What gods exist here?" A secularist might ask the first question though not the second but there was a time before they had been differentiated. Gods fiction imaginatively revives that earlier period.

I suggest that the Poul Anderson fantasy collection should end with gods and a ghost, "A Feast for the Gods" followed by "Dead Phone."

"A Feast for the Gods," like The Broken Sword, ends with a story that is yet to be told.

Fantasy And Mystery

I said before that "Dead Phone" by Poul and Karen Anderson is both a detective story and a ghost story. I will now add that I think that it is primarily a ghost story.

The action of the story starts with a phone call from a dead man, although only the reader recognizes the nature of the call. The story climaxes with the realization that the murdered man's phone was dead at the time when the detective had received the call from him. The murder mystery element of the story is rushed and occurs between these two supernatural elements.

The detective, Yamamura, and certain police officers refer to their previous contacts. I take this to refer to at least one of the three detective novels featuring Yamamura. Normally, I would suggest that the story be republished as an epilogue to one of the novels, whichever seemed appropriate. However, the story's supernatural element puts it into a different category.

Anderson wrote many volumes set in the past and many more set in the future. Between Past and Future, I suggest that there is space for two "Present" boxed sets of Anderson volumes:

Fantasy
(i) the contemporary fantasy novel, The Devil's Game;
(ii) a collection of alternative reality and contemporary fantasy short stories, culminating with "Dead Phone."

Mystery
(i)-(iii) the three Yamamura novels.

Thus, the detective would cross over from the Mystery volumes to one of the Fantasy volumes. Mystery and Fantasy, in turn, would come between the many volumes of heroic fantasy/historical fantasy/historical fiction/historical science fiction and the many more volumes of futuristic science fiction. Yamamura strangely provides a degree of unity or continuity between four of the intermediate volumes.