Feb 23
Ryan Comments: Hey, Poul, I bet you can’t write a SciFi novel that references Shakespeare and contains D’Artagnan, the Ring Cycle, steam-powered locomotives, Classical Greek architecture, and bearded monks!
Published 1975
Ryan Comments: Hey, Poul, I bet you can’t write a SciFi novel that references Shakespeare and contains D’Artagnan, the Ring Cycle, steam-powered locomotives, Classical Greek architecture, and bearded monks!
Published 1975
February 23rd, 2021 at 10:56 am
I’m getting more of a ‘Loves Labours of Macbeth and the Shrew’ vibe from the cover.
February 23rd, 2021 at 11:27 am
I call it… “Indecision”.
February 23rd, 2021 at 11:44 am
Just an average day for your average time-cop on the beat in the Naked Universe. Mind you,getting the anti-grav device off those Neo-Wagnerians was a bit of a pain given all the pointy things they were carrying. (You try explaining that you were stabbed with a shield.)
February 23rd, 2021 at 1:40 pm
Ryan Comments: “Hey, Poul, I bet you can’t write a SciFi novel that references Shakespeare and contains D’Artagnan, the Ring Cycle, steam-powered locomotives, Classical Greek architecture, and bearded monks!”
Poul Anderson: “Hold my beer.”
February 23rd, 2021 at 2:22 pm
A Midsummer Tempest About Nothing
February 23rd, 2021 at 3:14 pm
Did Poul Anderson do something to upset an art editor at a publishing house in the ’50s and they’ve all born a grudge against him ever since? His books seem unusually well represented on this site, to put it mildly.
February 23rd, 2021 at 5:53 pm
D’Artagnan: (Bangs on ceiling) Oi, keep it down up there. Yer loud enough for Ragnarok.
February 23rd, 2021 at 6:39 pm
@fred—I was thinking more “King Richard the Hamlet.”
February 23rd, 2021 at 7:40 pm
I’ve heard of gentlemen of a certain age getting hairy ears, but this is ridiculous.
February 23rd, 2021 at 8:19 pm
The Cavaliers lost when Cromwell made Cthulhu manifest itself in their standard-lamps. That’s why Milton went blind, you know.
February 23rd, 2021 at 11:32 pm
@Ryan: And yet he did, and it is a swell book. It’s good even if you don’t get all the references, and even more fun if you do.
@Adzel: Poul would have held his own beer while writing this. Having had a beer with him a time or three, I can attest to this (I miss him).
@Max: His stuff was reprinted so often that the luck of the draw meant he often got crap covers. The price of success.
@Tat: GSS! I narrowly avoided a spit-take.
February 24th, 2021 at 5:27 am
A typical Bohemian seacoast scene.
@GSS ex-noob: you got to hang with Poul Anderson? Lucky!
February 24th, 2021 at 12:58 pm
@GSS: Thanks. I’d honestly not thought of that, but it makes sense. Anderson has done a lot better at staying in print over the years than most writers who started off in the ’40s and kept publishing for half a century, so it follows he’s going to have amassed a lot more unfortunate covers than some.
February 25th, 2021 at 12:30 am
@Bruce: We live(d) in the same general area, so I saw him at cons. He was a true gentleman, always polite and jovial and had no attitude about being a big deal author, even though of course he was. And not fussed when people said his first name wrong.
He was a big guy, worthy of his Viking ancestors, so at room parties he enjoyed a drink — though I personally never saw him impaired in the least. I recall chatting with him (with beers in hand) after the dire movie version of “Battlefield Earth” came out and flopped. “It’s true about Ron saying you’d start a religion to make real money… I was there.”
February 25th, 2021 at 7:30 pm
@GSS ex-noob: Thank you for these recollections. It made my day!
February 26th, 2021 at 1:33 am
@Adzel: you are most welcome. He was a great guy. His memorial service (not actual funeral) was open to the public, because we all needed to grieve and support.
“We shall not see his like again” is a cliche, but it applies to him.
March 6th, 2021 at 9:37 pm
Thanks for the anecdotes!
🙂
March 6th, 2021 at 11:56 pm
No prob!
Decades of con-going has left me with a million of ’em.
Well, at least a hundred.