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Birthday Reviews: Poul Anderson’s “The Valor of Cappen Varra”

Birthday Reviews: Poul Anderson’s “The Valor of Cappen Varra”

Cover by Hannes Bok
Cover by Hannes Bok

Poul Anderson was born on November 25, 1926 and died on July 21, 2001.

Anderson won the Hugo Award for Short Fiction for “The Longest Voyage” and “No Truce with Kings.” He won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “The Sharing of Flesh,” “Goat Song,” and “Hunter’s Moon.” Anderson won the Hugo for Best Novella for “The Queen of Air and Darkness” and “The Saturn Game.” Both of those novellas and “Goat Song” also earned the Nebula Award. His novel Hrolf Kraki’s Saga won the British Fantasy Award and his novel Genesis won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His novel Tau Zero was recognized with a Seiun Award and A Midsummer Tempest won the Mythopoeic Award. Four of his works won the Prometheus Award: Rader to the Stars, The Star Fox, The Stars Are Also Fire, and “No Truce with Kings.” He received a Forry Award in 1968, was named a Grandmaster of Fantasy with a Gandalf Award in 1978, a Skylark Award in 1982, was named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 1998, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2000, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Prometheus Awards in 2001. He was the guest of Honor at Detention, the 17th Worldcon in Detroit in 1959. He has published under the pseudonyms Winton P. Sanders, A.A. Craig, and Michael Karageorge. He frequently collaborated with his wife, Karen, and with Gordon R. Dickson, Gergen, F.N. Waldrop, Midred Downey Broxon, and Gordon Eklund.

“The Valor of Cappen Varra” initially appeared in the January 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson. It was reprinted by L. Sprague de Camp in the anthology Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy and by Anderson in his collection Fantasy and later The Armies of Elfland. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois used the story in their anthology Bestiary! The story has been reprinted in a chapbook on its own as well as with other stories by Anderson. It has been included in the Anderson collection The Star Beast and Other Tales and in Wildside Press’s The Third Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack. It was translated into German in 1973 and into French in 1988.

I was first introduced to Cappen Varra as a character in Robert Lynn Asprin’s anthology Thieves World, not realizing that he had a history prior to that story. In fact, 22 years before Cappen Varra showed up in Sanctuary, Anderson described his adventures amongst a northern tribe in “The Valor of Cappen Varra.” With the introduction of Cappen Varra into Asprin’s world, it seems Anderson imported the world of the earlier story entirely, although it wasn’t referenced again.

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