Search Results for: Poul Anderson

Tor Double #14: Poul Anderson’s The Saturn Game and Gregory Benford and Paul A. Carter’s Iceborn

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The Saturn Game was originally published in Analog in February, 1981. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, winning the latter. The Saturn Game is the second of three Anderson stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series after No Truce with Kings. In 1978, Andre Norton published the novel Quag Keep, widely considered to be the first representation of role playing games in fiction. Norton’s story had a role player fall into Gary Gygax’s…

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A Stellar Lineup: Harlan Ellison, James Tiptree, Jr, Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, and more in The Alien Critic 7, edited by Richard E. Geis

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  The Alien Critic Number Seven, November 1973. Published and edited by Richard E. Geis. I subscribed to TAC the following year after reading Geis’s column in IF. Geis really had the juice back then — this issue includes Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Damon Knight, Poul Anderson, Robert Bloch, Miriam Allen de Ford, Ross Rocklynne, “James Tiptree, Jr.,” and others — including a letter from Harlan Ellison that lists the then-current contents of The Last Dangerous Visions. Seriously.

Tor Doubles #5: Poul Anderson’s No Truce with Kings and Fritz Leiber’s Ship of Shadows

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  Both Poul Anderson’s No Truce for Kings and Fritz Leiber’s Ship of Shadows originally appeared in issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Not only did their initial publication occur in the same periodical, but both of those original issues sported covers painted by Ed Emshwiller. No Truce for Kings was originally published in F&SF in June, 1963. It won the Hugo Award and received a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 2010. No Truce for Kings…

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The Beating Heart of Science Fiction: Poul Anderson and Tau Zero

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Science fiction — what is it, really? What elements place a story firmly in the genre? For any requirement that you can think of, there is probably a great sf story that violates it, and rather than cobble together some dictionary-ready definition, it’s easier to just think of particular books that you would hand to someone unacquainted with the genre with the words, “Here — read this; this is science fiction!” Everyone would have their own choices for such a…

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Vintage Treasures: Fire Time by Poul Anderson

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Fire Time by Poul Anderson (Ballantine Books, November, 1975). Cover by Darrell Sweet Poul Anderson was a terrifically prolific and popular science fiction writer, in a way I don’t think it’s possible to be today. I mean that in the sense that, yes, he wrote a lot of books — a ridiculous number of books, really. He published hundreds of novels and short stories in his lifetime. (How many, exactly? I have no idea. No one knows. Modern counting methods…

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Vintage Treasures: Maurai & Kith by Poul Anderson

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Maurai & Kith (Tor Books, 1982). Cover art by Thomas Kidd Uber-editor Jason M. Waltz kindly invited me to write the introduction to his new anthology The Lost Empire of Sol: A Shared World Anthology of Sword & Planet Tales, co-edited by Black Gate blogger Fletcher Vredenburgh, a terrific new shared-world volume that contains new stories by Howard Andrew Jones, E.E. Knight, Mark Finn, Keith Taylor, Joe Bonadonna and David C. Smith, and many more. As I was putting it…

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The Art of Author Branding: The Berkley Poul Anderson

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The first six of what would eventually be fourteen Berkley Poul Anderson paperbacks with this design, including the first three books of the Polesotechnic League. Covers by Rick Sternbach (Satan’s World) and Richard Powers (all others). July 1976 – December 1977 Back in May, inspired by Mark R. Kelly’s review of one of the very first science fiction novels I ever read, the 1977 Ace paperback edition of Robert Silverberg’s Collision Course, I took an extended look at Silverberg’s mid-70s career…

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Humanity Uplifted: Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave

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Brain Wave by Poul Anderson; First Edition: Ballantine Books, 1954 Cover art by Richard Powers Brain Wave by Poul Anderson Ballantine Books (164 pages, $0.35, paperback, June 1954) Cover by Richard Powers Poul Anderson was a prolific writer of both science fiction and fantasy from the late 1940s to his death in 2001. He was especially known for a couple space opera series, one about the Psychotechnic League and others about Dominic Flandry and Nicholas Van Rijn (I have not…

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Vintage Treasures: Beyond the Beyond by Poul Anderson

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Beyond the Beyond paperback original (Signet first edition, August 1969). Cover artist unknown. When I pick up an old paperback these days, it tends to be an anthology or collection. There aren’t very many published nowadays, and I miss them. So naturally I’m reading many of the old paperbacks I missed out on in my youth. One of my recent favorites is Beyond the Beyond, a thick collection of six stories by Poul Anderson. Anderson was one of the most…

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There Will Never Be an End to Wonder: James Davis Nicoll on Poul Anderson

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Brain Wave by Poul Anderson (Ballantine Books, 1954). Cover by Richard Powers. Poul Anderson was one of my favorite science fiction writers when I first discovered the genre. That interest didn’t survive into adulthood. While I still read Vance, Zelazny, Delany, I probably haven’t picked up a Poul Anderson novel in 30 years. It’s mostly neglect, rather than any conscious choice. It’s simply been too long since a Poul Anderson book survived the cut in my to-be-read pile. I finally read James…

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