When
I was a teenager in the 1960's, I wanted to read everything by Isaac
Asimov, James Blish, Robert Heinlein and Clifford Simak. (Heinlein had
not yet completely degenerated.) I caught up with Simak, read his, at
that time, most recent publication and then forgot about him although he
continued churning out novels, probably as many again after that. I
thought that he had become repetitive and self-parodying. James Blish,
whom I continued to revere, disliked Simak's three instances of talking
dogs.
Poul Anderson was not then among my Must Reads. I
read some of his works but not others. Now, of the writers mentioned so
far, only Blish and Anderson are Must Reads and Anderson, because of
his volume and range, is the only one about whom I can blog
indefinitely.
After the 1960's, he wrote a lot more and
my respect for what he had written increased. Once, when I browsed a
novel of his, the blurb described an interstellar spaceship crew
returning to Earth to discover that a Social Welfare Party had gained
office in their absence. To me at the time, this did not sound
sufficiently new so I returned it to the bookshop shelf. Let me end with
a question: can any reader of this blog identify that novel from the
description given here? Or maybe I am mistaken and it was not an
Anderson novel?
No comments:
Post a Comment