his volume represents a small (but balanced and enticing) selection from Poul Anderson's long, productive career as a writer of science fiction, fantasy, historical and detective novels, as well as the occasional popular-science book. Grand Master Anderson, who sold his first piece in 1947 and passed away in July of 2001, managed to oversee this project to its completion, providing extensive notes which outline his whole career and introduce individual stories.
The 18 items here might be regrouped profitably into several categories. Two novels, both fantasies, earn direct excerpts: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), which tells of the transmigration of Holger Carlsen to the world of the Carolingian romances, and A Midsummer Tempest (1975), set in a universe where all of Shakespeare's canon is pure fact. Additionally, "Quest," a self-contained tale, returns to the universe of The High Crusade (1960), the account of how a band of medieval knights establish a star-spanning empire.
Next up are stories which tie into the many series spun off by Anderson's fertile genius. "Death and the Knight" recounts a rescue mission across time, and is linked to the Time Patrol series. "The Problem of Pain," relating a misunderstanding between humans and winged Ythrians concerning the proper way to greet death, hooks up to the Polesotechnic League corpus. You'll meet one of Anderson's most famous characters, the Falstaffian trader Nicholas van Rijn, in "The Master Key," wherein van Rijn solves a mystery revolving around a botched First Contact. "Windmill" is a slice from the post-apocalyptic future of Anderson's Maurai saga of a future where Polynesia is the dominant polity.
A third set of stories concerns adventures on alien planets, oftentimes separated by slower-than-light travel, resulting in many relativistic conundrums. "The Saturn Game" takes place strictly in our familiar solar system, and deals with the odd psychological deformities long-term spacefarers have developed. Due to a malfunctioning ship, the small expedition of humans in Gypsy have lost all contact with Earth and been forced to settle a welcoming world elsewhere. But a faction of dreamers still longs for the mother world. "The Horn of Time the Hunter" finds an exploratory party on a devolved colony world encountering "aliens" who are connected to them in an unanticipated way. In "Epilogue," the alien world is ancient Earth itself, given over to successors to mankind. The world of Roland in "The Queen of Air and Darkness" hosts an aboriginal race never glimpsed by the human settlers—until the natives choose to abduct the child of a tenacious woman.
Finally, strong singletons such as "Journeys End" (the sad fate of a telepath), "Sam Hall" (a dystopia overthrown by a myth), "Dead Phone" (a ghostly detective story) and "Goat Song" (the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice replayed in the far future) round out the volume.
The capstone to a half-century career
Sometimes, in the welter and onrush of newer writers and their attention-demanding novelties, it's easy to lose sight of old favorites. Certainly, for many of us longtime SF readers, Poul Anderson receded somewhat in prominence in the years prior to his untimely death. (Anderson was only 75 in 2001: no juvenile, but no Jack Williamson either.) Yet when I cast my eyes over my shelves, I note literally scores of well-thumbed Anderson books that influenced my early understanding and enjoyment of our genre. Returning to his work in this judiciously compiled sampler, I find myself astounded all over again at the breadth of his work and enchanted by his unique voice.
Anderson—among the first of the post-war generation of full-time SF writers—represented a one-of-a-kind fusion of romanticism and clear-eyed rationalism. While scrupulously hewing to accepted scientific paradigms, his SF often read like fantasy—consider the Yeatsian conceits of "The Queen of Air and Darkness" or the Orphic angst of "Goat Song." His Scandinavian heritage insured a sometimes grim, harsh and fatalistic view of the universe, a take at odds with much of the gee-whizzery in the field. And yet his innate disposition seemed optimistic and can-do, leavening his tales with rewards earned the hard way, and a sense of the limitless vistas open to humanity, despite individual sorrows.
Moreover, his understanding of psychology was acute. The tale "Journeys End," in which the seemingly lone telepath in the whole world encounters his female counterpart only to recoil in disgust, contains as much acute commentary on existential loneliness as Robert Silverberg's whole novel Dying Inside (1972). (This comment is not meant to diminish Silverberg, but to exalt Anderson.) Anderson's distinctive prose stylings—relying heavily on sensory data and poetic constructions and coinages—also marked him as his own man. And other writers, his peers and successors, surely noticed. I was struck by certain heretofore unremarked similarities to the work of Roger Zelazny here. Anderson as an unacknowledged source for the New Wave? Such a conclusion is testament to how far his influence spread.
Like Harry Harrison's 50 in 50, this landmark work should serve a dual purpose: to remind old-timers of how great its subject was and to introduce him to a new generation of readers.
