Poul Anderson's Fictions

(I want to end July with 89 posts in order to form a round number with June, which accidentally ended with 101 instead of 100, because I find round numbers easier to deal with. (Addendum, 30 Nov 2015: Later, two posts were moved from 2013 to 2014. One of these posts must have been from June 2013 because that month now has 100 posts.) This might mean a few posts drafted tomorrow and Wednesday but not posted till Thursday. Meanwhile, I hope that there are enough here for anyone who is interested!)

It really is extraordinary how one reader's attention can move around between Poul Anderson's multifarious works of fiction. When I was posting about Anderson's diverse works set in the past, I did not want to return to his futuristic sf.

More recently, for over two months, I focused entirely on a single futuristic series, the Technic Civilization History, because I thought, and still think, that this series warrants that much attention and more. However, I began to wonder how long I would be able to sustain a commentary on one series - it can always be returned to later. Meanwhile, I remembered that there was one historical fiction short story that I had not yet read and had intended to return to.

Identifying this story as "Son of the Sword," in the collection Alight In The Void, I read and posted not only about it but also about the remaining four stories in this collection. Although I prefer novels to short stories and trilogies, tetralogies or series to single novels, I currently feel that the future of Poul Anderson Appreciation blogging lies in the short stories so I will be reading or rereading some other collections that have gathered on a bookshelf upstairs.

Earlier, a particular theme took me entirely outside the Anderson canon. Anderson's several works set on Jupiter include "Call Me Joe" which has strong parallels to James Blish's "Bridge." Rereading the Anderson story led to rereading the Blish story which led to rereading and blogging about several other Blish works, on James Blish Appreciation. However, Anderson's output is much bigger than Blish's so that, after about a month, I was back with Anderson. It is unpredictable where this process will lead to next.

The Past

Could I possibly have read Poul Anderson's "Son of the Sword" just once years ago and completely forgotten about it? On the one hand, the ending did seem vaguely familiar when I got to it. On the other hand, I think it is unlikely that I would have forgotten a story to that extent.

But, in any case, having now either reread or read it, I think it would fit perfectly at the midpoint of an Anderson "Many Times" collection where it could be preceded by two works of prehistorical fiction and followed by two stories set in the Roman and Viking periods, respectively. These are all periods about which Anderson wrote at greater length elsewhere.

The five stories represent Anderson's three main genres. "The Long Remembering" is science fiction about mental time travel to prehistory. "The Tale of Hauk" is a fantasy about the unrestful dead. "The Peat Bog" and "Son of the Sword" are historical fiction. "The Forest" is prehistorical but without any fantasy or sf - so maybe this is a fourth genre?

This would be a good companion volume to Past Times (revised edition), a collection of stories entirely about physical time travel to prehistory, the Viking period or the future. Also, two novels, The Corridors Of Time and The Boat of A Million Years, cover "many times" rather than a single period. In the former, characters travel to several periods of the past and future. In the latter, a small group of immortals survives through many historical periods through the "present," the time when the novel was written, and into a remote future. Yet again, it seems that Anderson imagines and addresses every possibility.

Finally, "Son of the Sword" includes the phrase, "'...mother of kings...,'" which became the title of a later Anderson novel. (Alight In The Void, New York, 1993, p. 151)

Son Of The Sword Spoilers

Another, to me, unfamiliar word in Poul Anderson's "Son of the Sword": "...stridulent..." (Alight In The Void, New York, 1993, p. 141).

I thought that there was yet another but now can't find it. (Maybe that was it.)

Why do people talk about cities dreaming? Either Oxford or Cambridge has "dreaming towers" and:

"The city appeared over the horizon and they went past. Very white and fair was Akhetaton, dreaming between stony cliffs on the banks of father Nile." (p. 138)

The idea that cities dream is deployed to fantastic effect by both Neil Gaiman and China Mieville.

In one interpretation of philosophy, "idealists" believe that consciousness determines being whereas "materialists" believe that being determines consciousness. These are highly abstract terms, particularly "being," which here means how people physically exist and earn their living, the materialist view being that these economic questions precede and underlie "consciousness," how people think and perceive the world. Thoas, the hero of "Son of the Sword," expresses the materialist view but in a very concrete way. He thinks that "soul," collective, not individual, comes from landscape because the latter forms bones, flesh and thoughts. Thus, mountains and sea make the Cretan soul wild and light whereas deserts and river make the Egyptian soul strong but narrow:

"...marching down an endless road that ran to eternity..." (p. 150)

"Son of the Sword" climaxes with the invention of the battering ram, the derivation of the verb "to ram" from the noun "ram" and, despite the earlier condemnation of Akhnaton's pacifism, an affirmation of the loving god, Aton.

Later: I found the other unfamiliar word, "...luffed..." (p. 153)