Other Works Online

OK. We think that we have answered the questions raised at the end of the previous post.

"The Innocent at Large" by Poul and Karen Anderson was published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1958, and was collected under the title, "The Innocent Arrival," in Poul and Karen Anderson, The Unicorn Trade (New York, April 1984), pp. 56-85.

Its sequel, "The Moonrakers," was published in If Worlds of Science Fiction (January 1966) and was collected in Poul Anderson, Beyond The Beyond (London, 1973), pp. 133-166.

Having reread earlier posts, I find that I am rediscovering facts that I had discovered before and am still unsure whether the "Great Swindle" occurred in the first story or between stories but am not about to pursue that now.

"Witch of the Demon Seas" is online but we have previously discussed it here.

"The Virgin of Valkarion" is online but we have previously discussed it here.

"The Valor of Cappen Varra" is online but we have previously discussed it here.

I have checked and confirmed that "Security" refers to a "Hemispheric War" as well as featuring those owl-like Martians. Some background information is common to several early stories. 

I think that we have exhausted online stuff for the time being.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

In Poul Anderson's "The Virgin of Valkarion," it had been prophesied that, when the Thirty Ninth Dynasty ends at an eclipse of the Two Moons, a heathen will arrive, overthrow both church and state, Temple and Imperium, and found the glorious Fortieth Dynasty.

Thus, when the old Emperor is dying without an heir and as the eclipse is approaching, Temple priests order their slaves to kill a barbarian approaching the city and the young Empress orders a captain of the guard at the city gate to direct an approaching barbarian to a particular inn where she will await him.

Sure enough, a barbarian seeking employment arrives, has to defend himself against the Temple slaves and then has no choice but to lead the fight to prevent a Temple theocracy after the death of the Emperor. Then, with both Emperor and High Priest dead and with both Temple and Palace destroyed, the barbarian becomes the new ruler, marrying the widowed Empress. But, if no prophecy had been made, then no Temple slaves would have tried to kill him, the Empress would have made no preparations to receive him and he would either have found employment in the city or continued his wanderings.

So did the prophetess know that her prophecy would cause the prophesied events?

Virgin?

Interrupted by other (welcome and necessary) activities, I have yet to finish reading Poul Anderson's "The Virgin of Valkarion." However, if our heroine is also our title character, then she is not a virgin! The young wife of the old, dying, heirless Emperor, she has sex with the barbarian usurper as soon as he arrives, even before he knows of his own prophesied role.

And here is another feature of the strange universe:

apparently supernatural feats are mental accomplishments;
"magic" is hypnosis;
"prophecy" is precognition;
gods are invoked but do not intervene;
a sibyl wrote a "future history" by space-time projection, not by divine inspiration.

It follows that these stories are not fantasies. And, in fact, their being set on other planets entails that they are science fiction, as is also implied by the title Planet Stories, but of a rather strange kind that merely provides extraterrestrial settings for swords and sandals action-adventure fiction. The old Empire had "machines" and spatiotemporal physics so there had after all, to my surprise, been some progress before the (inevitable) decline and regression.

Our hero, Alfric, shows how religion can be reformed instead of rejected. Fighting the priests of the Two Moons, he thinks, "All honor to the Moons, but not to tyrants and murderers in their name." That is the point. Let's not fight about whether the gods exist, just about whether priests should rule. Freedom of religious assembly and worship but church-state separation! And I did not expect to end this post with a political slogan!

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.

The End Of The Month

Greetings from Lancaster (see image).

This may be the last post for January (but February begins tomorrow):

this lap top can be slow;
I have other things going on;
I think that I have squeezed the life blood out of Poul Anderson's Genesis, at least for the time being;
right now, Modesty Blaise is proving more attractive than the Virgin of Valkarion.

Thank you for all the page views: 64 so far today when I checked a few moments ago. From Lancaster, we can drive around Morecambe Bay into the Lake District hills, in the background of the image. From a village called Grange over Sands (because it is possible to walk across the sands of the Bay when the tide is out), we can sit in a cafe, look across to Lancaster and see the Castle. Maybe this weekend.

The Virgin Of Valkarion

Poul Anderson's "The Virgin of Valkarion" is yet another mixed genre pulp short story. Human beings fight with swords but on another planet where there are two moons and the hero rides not a horse but a beaked "hengist." A long gone Empire has left an Imperial Way and a Temple of the Two Moons although the northern barbarians worship wind and stars and the nameless powers of winter and death.

There are not only temples ruined for thousands of years but also the sand and salt of dead sea-bottoms so that the feeling of being on an old and dying planet that has never had an industrial civilization is palpable. I have not read far into the story yet but, when I do finish it, I will have exhausted the ebook and will have to await the arrival of the second NESFA collection. There is no suggestion as yet either that magic works or that the gods intervene in human affairs although the Temple priesthood is clearly powerful and dangerous so read on but not tonight.

Some Past And Future Posts

Posts from Paul on Poul will peter around Yule. Maybe another ten, including this one, in December. On the Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook, I have yet to finish reading "Lord of a Thousand Suns," then to read:

"Witch of the Demon Seas"
"The Virgin of Valkarion"
"Out of the Iron Womb!"

I have no idea what these last three stories are about. What I will find to post about them is unpredictable. In the case of "Swordsman of Lost Terra," Earth was neither lost nor referred to as "Terra" anywhere in the text so I thought that the title was misleading. However:

the use of the word "tyr" inspired a link to a post about an appearance by the Norse god, Tyr, in a heroic fantasy novel by Anderson;

the use of the word "hest" led to an interesting (to me) link to a place name near where I live. (See here. This is a different link but to information about the same place.)

Anderson's descriptive passages and rich vocabulary sometimes generate discussions that are far removed from the thud and blunder content of the early pulp short stories.

Before the ebook, I spent a long time in Anderson's Technic History and agree with Larry Niven that, "Poul Anderson immerses you in the future...puts you into a whole new world." (quoted on the cover of Baen Books' Sir Dominic Flandry.) I became very impressed with the coherence of the early History:

light sail ships explore the Solar System;
the Grand Survey explores extrasolar systems;
important inhabited planets are discovered;
many uninhabited planets are colonized;
Ythri gains the hyperdrive;
Dido is studied;
Aeneas is colonized;
the Aenean University of Nova Roma (more Latin) is founded and attracts non-human students;
Ythrians, employing human beings, explore Avalon;
the Polesotechnic League is founded;
"The world's great age begins anew...";
merchant princes, including Nicholas van Rijn, become unbelievably rich;
many human and non-human students on Earth compete for very few jobs in space...

We all know what happens next (or should know...) but what a superb beginning!

The Uncollected Works of Poul Anderson, by Sean M. Brooks

It would be easy for a zealous fan of the works of Poul Anderson, such as myself, to boast of how complete a collection I have.  I could brag of how many hard cover first editions I have, including rarities.  BUT, when I compiled this list of works by Anderson which I DON'T have or have not read, then I see how little right I have for boasting.  Because, as anyone can see from reviewing this list, FAR too many of Poul Anderson's  essays and stories has not yet been republished or collected.  This list strengthens my conviction that we need a COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON if interested readers are going to be able to access even the most obscure of his essays and stories.

For this list I leaned heavily on the bibliography of the works of Poul Anderson compiled by Jean-Daniel Breque and included by him as an appendix to his French translation of a collection of Anderson's Time Patrol stories.  I own M. Breque many thanks for giving me a copy of his translation of those stories.  I have also found the listing of Anderson's works in the special Poul Anderson issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION for April 1971 to be very helpful.  I have not included (aside from a very few exceptions) in this compilation stories which has been collected in anthologies which I either have or can be easily found elsewhere.

One point which concerns me is how many of the stories I listed below were first published in now obscure and little known magazines which has long since ceased being printed.  Because I think it is possible all of the issues of some of these forgotten magazines might disappear--meaning that the Anderson stories they printed will be at risk of being permanently lost.

I drew upon the listing of Anderson's articles and essays found in the April 1971 issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION for Section I of the list below.  However, that list is only good up till that year. Poul Anderson wrote other non fiction essays after that time as well, some of which, such as "Thud and Blunder," are important and can be found in collections like FANTASY.  In addition, it's possible Anderson wrote essays for magazines or newspapers later than the items listed in the April 1971 issue of F&SF which I have no knowledge of.

Moreover, the publication credits for the 1963 edition of Anderson's IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? states that part of Chapter 7 of that book was originally "Science and Superman, an Inquiry," which can be found listed in Section I below.  And part of Chapter 8 of the same book was originally "How Social is Science?," also listed below in Section I.  My point being that Poul Anderson sometimes revised or incorporated stories and essays for inclusion in other works.

While working on this article I was amazed yet again at how creative and prolific an author Poul Anderson was.  All by themselves, the 90 plus essays and stories I listed here would be considered a very respectable lifetime achievement for many writers.  Never mind the far larger number of better known stories and novels written by Anderson!  Of course, the reason for that is simple: Anderson had to sell as many stories, essays, and novels as possible if he was to make a living as a free lance writer.

It was maddening and frustrating to list so many unknown essays and stories written by Poul Anderson. For instance, what did Anderson write about in the article "Those Hairy Ancestors?  The Neanderthals or some other branch of the hominid family? And the very title of "Ashtaru the Terrible" is tantalizing!  And was "The Corpse in a Suit of Armor" another Trygve Yamamura mystery story?

To sum up, with a few exceptions (e.g., some of Anderson's stories for THE FLEET books) the tales I listed below are works I have not read.  It is humbling to see, despite my ardor in collecting the works of Poul Anderson, how MANY of these articles and stories I have not yet managed to find.  In addition, one reason I have compiled this list is to highlight for future editors striving to collect the works of Poul Anderson which of his lesser known articles and stories they should take pains in tracking down.  Other readers, of course, may well compile somewhat different lists.

I. Articles, Essays, Reviews
"The Einstein Rocket," DSF, Dec. 1952
"Those Hairy Ancestors," ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION (hereafter cited as ASF), Nov. 1954
"Plausibility in SF," WRITERS' YEARBOOK, 1956
"Nice Girls on Mars," THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION (hereafter cited as F&SF), May 1956
"The Troublesome Dimensions," ASF, Nov 1956
"How Social Is Science?," SATURDAY REVIEW, 27 April 1957
"Science and Superman, an Inquiry," AMAZING, Nov. 1959
"The Velocity of Gravitation," JOURNAL OF THE INTERPLANETARY EXPLORATION SOCIETY, Dec, 1960
"The Helpful Friend of Mohammed Abdullah" [The Library Murder], in THE QUALITY OF MURDER, ed. Anthony Boucher, Dutton 1962
"Poetry, Science, and Fiction," AMAZING, Feb. 1965
"Life in Space," in ASTRONAUTICS FOR SCIENCE TEACHERS, ed. John Meiner, Wiley, 1965
Untitled Reply to Soviet Critics, F&SF, Oct. 1965
"In One More Generation," NATIONAL REVIEW, 30 Jan. 1968
Untitled book reviews, F&SF, April 1968
"Limiting Factor," IF, May 1968
Untitled memorial to Anthony Boucher, F&SF, August 1968
"Search for the Hunter," in ADVENTURES IN DISCOVERY, ed. Tom Purdom, Doubleday, 1969
"The Past That Never Was," NATIONAL REVIEW, 24 Feb. 1970
Introduction to FIRST STEP OUTWARD, ed. Robert Hoskins, Dell 2549, 1969
"Commentary" in MEN ON THE MOON, ed. Donald Wollheim, Ace 52470, 1969
"Editorial," ASF, Jan, 1972
"Science and Creation," ASF, Sept, 1973

II. Science Fiction and Fantasy

"A Matter of Relativity," ASF, September 1944
"Genius," ASF, December 1948
"Prophecy," ASF, May 1949
"Entity," in collaboration with John Gregen, ASF, June 1949
"The Perfect Weapon," ASF, February 1950
"Trespass," in collaboration with Gordon R. Dickson, FANTASTIC SERIES QUARTERLY, 1950
"The Long Return," FUTURE COMBINED WITH SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, Sep./Oct. 1950
"Witch of the Demon Seas," PLANET STORIES (hereafter cited as PS), January 1951
"The Acolytes," WORLDS BEYOND, February 1951
"World of the Mad," IMAGINATION, February 1951
"Incomplete Superman," FUTURE COMBINED WITH SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, March 1951
"Inside Earth," GALAXY, April 1951
"The Missionaries," OTHER WORLDS, June/July 1951
"The Virgin of Valkarion," PS, July 1951
"Swordsman of Lost Terra," PS, November 1951
"War-Maid of Mars," PS, May 1952
"Garden in the Void," GALAXY, May 1952
"Sentiment, Inc.", SPACE SCIENCE FICTION, February 1953
"The Green Thumb," SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY, February 1953
"Security," SPACE SCIENCE FICTION, February 1953
"Ashtaru the Terrible," FANTASY MAGAZINE, March 1953
"Courier of Chaos," FUTURE SCIENCE FICTION, March 1953
"Three Wishes," FANTASTIC, March/April 1953
"Rachaela," FANTASY FICTION, June 1953
"The Temple of Earth," ROCKET STORIES, July 1953
"Butch," in TIME TO COME, anthology ed. by August Derleth, 1954
"Contact Point," collaboration with Theodore Cogswell, IF, August 1954
"Elliptic Orbit," IF, December 1954
"Snowball," IF, May 1955
"Catalysis," IF, February 1956
"Security Risk," ASF, January 1957
"Survival Technique," collaboration with Kenneth Gray, F&SF, March 1957
"Life Cycle," F&SF, July 1957
"Mister Tiglath, TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED, August 1957
"The Peacemongers," F&SF, December 1957
"The Apprentice Wobbler," STAR SCIENCE FICTION, January 1958
"The Barrier Moment," ASF, renamed ANALOG, March 1960
"The Covenant,"  FANTASTIC, July 1960
"Goodbye, Atlantis," FANTASTIC, August 1961
"The Enemy," TORONTO STAR WEEKLY, October 28, 1961
"Third Stage," AMAZING, February 1962
"In the Island of Uffa," WEST BY ONE AND BY ONE, anthology pub. 1965
"High Treason," IMPULSE, March 1965
"A Gift From Centauri," BOY'S LIFE, December 1967
"The Inevitable Weapon," ANALOG, March 1968
"The Galloping Hessian," BOY'S LIFE, October 1969
"I Tell You, It's True," NOVA 2, ed. Harry Harrison (1972), and in CONFLICT (1983)
"Strength," collaboration with Mildred D. Downey, in THE MAGIC MAY RETURN (ed. Larry Niven,1982)
"Letter from Tomorrow," ANALOG, August 1987
"The Deserter," NEW DESTINIES 4, ed. Jim Baen (1988)
"The Only Bed to Lie In," THE FLEET, ed. David Drake & Bill Fawcett (1988)
"The Death Wish, THE MICROVERSE, anthology ed. Byron Preiss (1989)
"Origin," NEW DESTINIES 4, anthology ed. Jim Baen (1989)
"Statesmen," NEW DESTINIES 8, anthology ed. Jim Baen (1989)
"Dereliction," THE FLEET 4: SWORN ALLIES, ed. David Drake & Bill Fawcett (1990)
"Kinetic Kill," THE FLEET: CRISIS, ed. David Drake & Bill Fawcett (1991)
"Unnatural Enemy," THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR, anthology ed. Byron Preiss & Robert Silverberg (1992)
"Scarecrow," NEW LEGENDS, anthology ed. Greg Bear & Martin H. Greenberg (1995)
"Renascence," ANALOG, March 1995
"Inside Passage," THE WILLIAMSON EFFECT, anthology ed. Roger Zelazny (1996)
"Tyranny," FREE SPACE, anthology ed. Brad Linaweaver & Edward E. Kramer (1997)
"Consequences," NATURE, vol. 405, no. 6784, May 18, 2000
"The Bog Sword," THE FIRST HEROES, anthology ed. Harry Harrison & Noreen Doyle (2004)

III. Mysteries and Adventures

"The Corpse in a Suit of Armor," THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, November 1956
"The Trader and the Viking," JACK LONDON'S ADVENTURE MAGAZINE, October 1958
"Pythagorean Romaji," THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, December 1959
"Stab in the Back," THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, March 1960
"The Gentle Way," THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, August 1960

Anderson's PLANET STORIES Tales by Sean M. Brooks

When Poul Anderson was a young writer who was still, in may ways, learning how to write, he contributed a dozen or so stories to PLANET STORIES.  Here I both list those yarns and offer some comments about those PLANET STORIES tales by both Anderson and me.

"Star Ship," PLANET STORIES, Fall 1950
"Witch of the Demon Seas," PS, January 1951
"Tiger by the Tail," PS, January 1951
"Duel on Syrtis," PS, March 1951
"The Virgin of Valkarion," PS, July 1951
"Lord of a Thousand Suns," PS, September 1951
"Swordsman of Lost Terra," PS, November 1951
"Sargasso of Lost Starships," PS, January 1952
"Captive of the Centaurianess," PS, March 1952
"War Maid of Mars," PS, May 1952
"The Star Plunderer," PS, September 1952
"The Ambassadors of Flesh," PS, Summer 1954
"Out of the Iron Womb," PS, Summer 1955

Most of these stories have been republished in collections including works by other authors or as one author (Anderson) anthologies.  But I have not yet managed to read "Witch of the Demon Seas," "The Virgin of Valkarion," or "War Maid of Mars."

Although best known for his excellent hard SF and fantasies, Poul Anderson also wrote some of the finest and purest quill pen pulp SF to be found.  Two examples being "Lord of a Thousand Suns" and "Swordsman of Lost Terra."  But I wish to let Anderson himself comment on the tales he wrote for PLANET STORIES.  The text quoted below came from his essay "Concerning Future Histories" (BULLETIN OF THE SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA, Fall 1979), quoting from page 8.

   Way back when, I was for a short time a mainstay of PLANET STORIES.  That magazine is today of fond memory, but at the time it was considered trash by many fans because it frankly went in for straight adventure with a science fictional back-ground.  Myself, I saw nothing wrong with that.  The action story has been a legitimate form since Homer, if not before. (It might be remarked, too, that PLANET occasionally ran stuff by such people as Ray Bradbury, Margaret St. Clair, and William Tenn which nobody else dared touch.  And even in the swashbucklers, characters were permitted to have sex lives.)  I was young and poor and wanted money to travel on, I could write derring-do very fast; why not?  Therefore I churned out a total of about a dozen.  That was all.  They caused persons who think in categories to dismiss me as nothing but a blood-and-thunderer, and those folk took a long time to change their minds.  Some never had.  No matter, I don't feel the least apologetic for having thus earned the means to widen my horizons.  Those tales were in no way memorable, but they weren't pretentious either, and if they gave a little diversion to most of their readers, they served their purpose.

It's my view that here Anderson was being too modest about the quality of the tales he wrote for PLANET STORIES.  As I've already said, I believe he wrote some of the finest pulp SF to be found.  Also, the additional text quoted below from "Concerning Future Histories" (also from page 8 of the above mentioned BULLETIN) explains why I believe his PS tales to be much better than average.

   Nevertheless, I quickly grew tired of certain cliches in the genre.  The uniformly noble and Nordic heroes,   the incredibly complete resolutions of all problems. Why not do something a bit more believable?  This was the origin of "Tiger by the Tail," the first story about Dominic Flandry.  In name and temperament, he was Gallic; a Frenchman has actually congratulated me on the characterization.  He was an intelligence officer in the service of a Terran Empire far gone in decay, losing the very will to defend its frontiers, while alien enemies pressed ever harder inward.  He recognized the corruption of his society in his own spirit.  But somebody had to try keep things hanging together somehow, at any rate through his lifetime.  After all, civilization was much more enjoyable than barbarism, or death.  Besides, the work itself was the most interesting activity in sight, in between bouts of sensualism, and he did keep a few fugitive ideals and loyalties.

I agree with what Anderson said about those "cliches in the genre."  What I read in the stories he wrote for PS makes it plain he transcended those shop worn tropes.  I thought of "Captive of the Centaurianess" as one example because of how he used sardonic humor to turn inside out those cliches.  And the same was true of "Tiger by the Tail," with its theme of how noble, honorable barbarians versus a "corrupt" civilized man was shown to be false and the civilized man was wiser and more decent than the barbarians he opposed. A writer who was merely a hack would probably have taken the opposite tack.

What kind of magazine was PLANET STORIES?  To answer that question I'll quote a bit from Malcolm J. Edwards entry for PS on page 937 of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (1993, ed. by John Clute and Peter Nicholls): "Subtitled in its early years "Strange Adventures on Other Worlds--The Universe of Future Centuries," PS was the epitome of pulp SF.  Its covers were garish in the extreme, and its story titles promised extravagantly melodramatic interplanetary adventures (which the stories themselves frequently provided)."  And Poul Anderson wrote tales for PS which fit this description (and the wonderfully lurid covers) while also improving on or even transcending those cliches he came to dislike.