Later This Month

This month:

I am to receive volumes containing works by Poul Anderson that I have not yet read;

Multiverse, the long-awaited memorial anthology, will be published.

Meanwhile, I am rereading Mike Carey's eleven Lucifer graphic novels (see previous post). In Poul Anderson's fantasy novels, supernatural beings like Odin and Satan are real in some parallel universes but mythological in others. This common premise underlies several interconnected graphic fantasies by Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, Mike Carey etc.

I will post about the previously unread Anderson stories when I have received them but will not have immediate access to Multiverse. I am sure that it will be appropriate not only to review the book as a whole but also to discuss individual stories and articles. One reader of this blog has over time emailed several articles about Anderson's works that have been published on the blog. I welcome any such reviews or discussions of the contents of Multiverse.

Lucifer: Evensong

The purpose of this blog is to appreciate Poul Anderson. This involves urging others to read or reread his works. A lesser purpose is to say, "If you like Anderson, then you might like -." Having drawn parallels betwen Anderson and Neil Gaiman, I should also mention Mike Carey, another British fantasy writer both of prose novels and of American comic books.

Lucifer Morningstar resigns as Lord of Hell in Gaiman's The Sandman and pursues an independent career in Carey's Lucifer. I have tried to convey the richness of Carey's imagination in the following summary, copied from Comics Appreciation (see here).

Some readers might share my own original reservations about reading fiction in which the central character is the Devil. Remember that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. Also, this is not Satan. The Vertigo imprint had to differentiate Lucifer from Satan because both these versions of the Adversary were simultaneously involved in parallel storylines. Lucifer is Nietzschean, not malicious.

A rebel angel hiding among the decaying alternative hereafters resists the new God, Elaine Belloc;

Elaine moves on the face of the deeps, ploughs Hell under, leaving only a small corner intact for the demoness, Lys, makes a place for her formerly dead brother in the new creation and has a farewell drink with friends before sinking into everything;

Lucifer leaves;

beautifully drawn art by Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly illustrates Lucifer's reminiscences about the War in Heaven and about his retirement from Hell on the occasion of Morpheus' second incursion and also his last meeting with the previous God in the Void;

art by Jon J Muth shows Lucifer in a Japanese Buddhist milieu.

Hail and farewell, Lucifer Morningstar, Prince of the East!