Search Results for: poul anderson

Sex and Violence in Poul Anderson’s Rogue Sword

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As in The Golden Slave (and to lesser degrees in Three Hearts and Three Lions and in Virgin Planet) the major textures of Poul Anderson’s Rogue Sword sketch a love triangle. But at first our hero Lucas Greco’s love is not confined to only two women. No, he is a philanderer, a gallant, and the prologue establishes this as Lucas escapes the rage of Gasparo Reni, a jealous husband. This also shows Anderson’s impressive ability to construct symmetrical plots, for…

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Two Great Books by Poul Anderson: The High Crusade and The Golden Slave

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If Three Hearts and Three Lions owes something to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, then so does The High Crusade. But The High Crusade inverts Mark Twain’s concept. This book isn’t written by a modern who time traveled to Arthur’s court, but rather is written by a medieval scribe who witnessed Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville and his knights and court invade an alien spaceship and end up using it to conquer a major portion of interstellar Space….

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Representations of the Amazon in Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet and in DC’s Wonder Woman

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But first, I’d like to ask readers a very important question: Do Tolkien’s Elves have pointy ears? This came up after my last post, in which I wondered why Anderson and Tolkien (and many other fantasy writers) agree that elves are tall and have pointy ears. After reading this, Frederic S. Durbin contacted me to say, Does Tolkien ever say that the elves have pointed ears? To my knowledge, he never does. Please correct me if I’m wrong! This is…

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Northern Matter in Poul Anderson’s “Middle Ages” of The Broken Sword and in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

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Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword originally was published in a different form in 1954, which is why I’m discussing it at this time and not later. It is important to note that in Anderson’s introduction to the 1971 edition, he refers to his earlier self, the writer of the 1954 version, as if that person were not himself but in fact a different writer with the very same name. Anderson’s 1971 introduction also specifically takes into account J.R.R. Tolkien and…

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Chaotic and Lawful Alignments in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions

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I’m willing to bet that Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions published in 1953 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (and Anderson’s close friend and frequent collaborator Gordon R. Dickson’s St. Dragon and the George, published likewise in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at about the same time – later republished as The Dragon and the George) owes quite a bit to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. And Anderson doesn’t disguise…

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From Poul Anderson’s Vault of the Ages to the End of All Things

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Even though this survey seeks to showcase, specifically, Anderson’s fantasy works, I want to begin with what may be argued to be his first novel: Vault of the Ages.  It moreover wouldn’t be all that hard to argue that this work is fantasy, anyway. Perhaps it’s historical fantasy – a kind that anachronistically depicts a medieval northern tribal culture in the future. It’s undeniably post-apocalyptic, and many of these works are not only fantasy but escapist fantasy at that. Who…

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Poul Anderson and the Northern Mythic Tradition: An Introduction

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I first met Poul Anderson in the little, northern-Iowa town of Decorah, which is fitting, because Decorah has a very large Scandinavian population and takes evident pride in its Scandinavian heritage. Only in a figurative sense, alas, do I say that I met Poul Anderson. Though, in the time in which I first read War of the Gods, there had been the slightest possibility that I might have met him, for Wikipedia reports that Anderson passed away on July 31,…

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The Whole Northern Thing: Hrolf Kraki’s Saga by Poul Anderson

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Doom: Old English dom “law, judgment, condemnation,” from Proto-Germanic *domaz (cf. Old Saxon and Old Frisian dom, Old Norse domr For a crime committed by King Frodhi the Peace-Good against the giantesses Fenja and Menja, a great doom is laid on the royal family of Denmark, the Skjöldungs. How that doom works its murderous effects on the Skjöldungs is the core of Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (1973), Poul Anderson’s gripping retelling of the sagas (read the original here) of the ancient Danish king, Hrolf. The book brings together…

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Vintage Treasures: Poul Anderson’s After Doomsday

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I’m putting away all the paperbacks that arrived with my two Philip K. Dick lots, and I stumbled across the fabulous artifact at right. After Doomsday was published by Ballantine Books in 1962, two years before I was born. It was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine (as The Day after Doomsday) between December 1961 and February 1962. What truly makes it fabulous isn’t just the great cover art by Ralph Brillhart, with a bug-eyed alien stumbling on some guy surveying…

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Letters to Black Gate: Poul Anderson, Digital Publishing, and The Dying Earth

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Michael Fierce writes: I just wanted to say that I really love Ryan Harvey’s article on Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword. I’ve read the revised version many times and have always wanted to read the original, and now, after reading his article, am even more enthused to do so. Really excellent breakdown and the format was very reader-friendly with some visually pleasing colors that really grabbed me. I know many things about many great books but he definitely takes the cake…

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