Line #35 Creator/PoulAnderson


1	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/poulanderson.jpg]]
2	->''"So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way..."''
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4	Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001) was an American writer of SpeculativeFiction, mainly science fiction, and occasional HistoricalFiction and Fantasy, who was also involved in the founding of the UsefulNotes/SocietyForCreativeAnachronism. Though much of his work was dramatic, he also wrote a fair amount of humor. He was known for combining the nuts-and-bolts of hard science fiction with interesting and unusual characters. His novel ''Literature/TauZero'' was one of the first to consider the extreme implications of relativity, and he was one of the first authors to create a biologically plausible WingedHumanoid alien species. On the more humorous side, he was the first to postulate a spaceship powered by beer. His penchant for [[ShownTheirWork doing the research]] also extended to his fantasy and historical works. He has been cited as a major source for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. But he was best known for his sweeping ''Literature/TechnicHistory'' space opera series, which was formed by CanonWelding his early Polysotechnic League stories with his later Dominic Flandry/Terran Empire stories.
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6	Website/{{Wikipedia}} lists [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poul_Anderson recurring themes in his work]] as (among others) "[[BigDamnHeroes larger-than-life characters]] who succeed gleefully or fail heroically," [[RockBeatsLaser the folly of underestimating "primitive" cultures]], and "[[GreyAndGrayMorality tragic conflict... with no villains at all]]." His famous essay, [[http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/ "On Thud and Blunder,"]] where he takes potshots at those who fail to use basic research, or at least common sense when writing HeroicFantasy.
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8	Oh, and it really is ''[[ViewerNameConfusion Poul]]'' Anderson, not ''Paul'' Anderson. So let's not mistake him with Creator/PaulThomasAnderson or Creator/PaulWSAnderson.
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10	!! Works of Poul Anderson having their own pages:
11	[[index]]
12	* ''Literature/AfterDoomsday''
13	* ''Literature/TheBrokenSword''
14	* [[/index]][[Literature/DangerousVisions "Eutopia"]][[index]] %% Don't index Dangerous Visions by its contributors.
15	* ''Literature/TheHighCrusade''
16	* The ''Literature/{{Hoka}}'' series (with Creator/GordonRDickson)
17	* "Literature/TheManWhoCameEarly"
18	* ''Literature/TheMermansChildren''
19	* ''Literature/AMidsummerTempest''
20	* ''Literature/OperationChaos''
21	* "Literature/SamHall"
22	* ''Literature/TauZero''
23	* The ''Literature/TechnicHistory'' series, including:
24	** The Polesotechnic League stories, mostly starring Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn, and
25	** The Terran Empire series, mostly starring Dominic Flandry.
26	* ''Literature/ThreeHeartsAndThreeLions''
27	* "Literature/TimeLag"
28	* ''Literature/TimePatrol''
29	* "Literature/AWorldCalledMaanerek"
30	[[/index]]
31	----
32	!!His other works provides examples of:
33	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * TheBeautifulElite: The aliens in ''Sargasso of Lost Starships''.
34	* BettyAndVeronica:
35	** Played up to eleven in ''Sargasso of Lost Starships'', where Helena is attractive and military, and Valduma is inhuman, possessed of great powers, superhumanly beautiful, sadistic, and completely mad.
36	** Auri and Storm in ''Corridors of Time'', the first a simple and gentle Neolithic girl, the second a time-traveler with superhuman technology, ruthlessly working to prevent her culture from losing in a temporal war.
37	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * BittersweetEnding: Lots.
38	* BlitheSpirit: Caitlín Mulryan, [[spoiler: the eponymous character]] of ''The Avatar''.
39	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * TheCaptain: Mostly in space.
40	* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: "The Sensitive Man" is revealed, in the end, to have learned how to invoke hysterical strength and other abilities normally found only in psychotics.
41	* CombatPragmatist: Poul Anderson is fond of these characters. In his Wing Alek series of short stories the main character is forbidden from ever using killing to win a conflict (luckily the villains don't know that) so he uses underhanded methods to get the villains to defeat themselves.
42	* ConstrainedWriting: [[https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/110/docs/uncleftish_beholding.html "Uncleftish Beholding"]] is a short essay Anderson wrote that provides a basic overview of atomic physics, but does so as much as possible with only words of Germanic, rather than Latin, origin.
43	* CrazyJealousGuy: In "Holmgang", Johnny's murderer. [[spoiler:Or so he poses as.]]
44	* CrushBlush: In "Virgin Planet", the hero blushes when the heroines dice to decide who gets him.
45	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * CulturedBadass: In "A Little Knowledge".
46	* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: "The Sensitive Man" concludes with the main character's observation that he's about to [[spoiler:have a nervous breakdown.]]
47	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * DearJohnLetter: In the BackStory of "The Corkscrew Of Space".
48	* DidNotGetTheGirl: Common. In "Star Fog" for instance, Laure learns that the ship's crew are no longer able to interbreed with standard humanity, and their compulsive need to have children means he can not marry the one of them he has fallen in love with. Ditto for ''Rachaela,'' where the [[StarCrossedLover titular she-demon and her human lover]] have to sadly part ways.
49	* DirtyBusiness: The aliens' view, in "No Truce with Kings".
50	* DisintegrationChamber: In the novelette "Genius", set in a far-future interstellar empire, one character considers killing another, thinking to himself that if he's caught "they might send him to the disintegration chamber for murder".
51	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * DividedStatesOfAmerica: In "No Truce With Kings".
52	* DuelToTheDeath: In "Holmgang" the plot rises to this.
53	* DumbDinos: The dinosaurs in "Wildcat" are so stupid that they are incredibly difficult to kill, staying active enough to fight even after one is literally gutted by gunfire. The carnivores also do not recognize carrion as food, only attacking live prey.
54	* ExtremophileLifeforms: "Call Me Joe", a 1957 novellete, features a paraplegic who explores [[ScienceMarchesOn the frigid surface of Jupiter]] via a remote-controlled, centaur-like artificial body that's designed to drink methane and craft tools out of water ice. He encounters hostile wildlife which evolved there, hence is also adapted to such conditions.
55	* TheFairFolk: They appear in many Anderson stories, often with some kind of twist. Examples include ''The Queen of Air and Darkness''.
56	* FeminineWomenCanCook: In "Brake", a woman, the sole surviving passenger, helps by cooking the meals while the men of the crew frantically work at saving the ship.
57	* FeudalFuture: Many.
58	** In ''Corridors of Time'', the hero realizes that the futuristic society that recruited him to fight a {{dystopia}} is rather dystopian itself when he is dropped in it and learns that the queen has high tech medical treatment while the poor woman he meets looks ancient at forty because of her lack of it.
59	** In ''Sargasso of Lost Starships'', Donovan still has local authority despite the conquest because of their feudal loyalties.
60	* FirstContact: The novelette ''The Enemy Stars'' deals with an accidental First Contact between a human and the aliens that save his life, and the sequel ''The Ways of Love'' deals with how humans handle the first alien beings on Earth (not well, in some cases).
61	* FlowerMotifs: The aliens loved this in "The Pirate".
62	* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: {{Averted}} in the short story ''The Food of the Gods''. A being or concept needs some initial worship to achieve Godhood, but after that are relatively self-sustaining. (If a bit hungry . . . )
63	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * GreyAndGrayMorality
64	* HistoricalFantasy: ''Mother of Kings'' is based on the Myth/{{Norse\|Mythology}} sagas with a low-fantastic element.
65	* HomeSweetHome: Why they stopped looking for Earth in "Gypsy".
66	* HotAsHell: The main character, an [[TheAlcoholic Alchoholic]] [[MostWritersAreWriters Writer]], falls in love with the title demon in ''Rachaela,'' who insists she's only after his soul. [[spoiler: Ultimately she falls for his charms, and they can't stay together because she refuses to allow him to sell his soul for her hand in marriage.]] The story was adapted as an audiodrama [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGa9izsOy0 here.]]
67	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * HumanoidAliens
68	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * HumanityIsAdvanced
69	* HumanPopsicle: Used in "The Burning Bridge" for interstellar colonization.
70	* IDidWhatIHadToDo: In "The Burning Bridge", the captain fakes a message to persuade them to go on.
71	* ImAHumanitarian: Central to all of a planet's cultures in "Sharing of Flesh".
72	* ImmortalProcreationClause: ''A Boat of Million Years'' has fertile immortals. Unfortunately, the children are mortal.
73	* ImprobablyHighIQ: In "Turning Point," invoked to be averted; it's meaningless to talk of how high an average IQ the planet of geniuses has, because the scale really doesn't work past 180.
74	** ''Brain Wave'', one of Anderson’s early novels, is a pulp-influenced look at a world where most humans become super-geniuses, and animals become as intelligent as humans used to be, after earth moves out of an energy-damping field it's been in since the Crustacean period.
75	* InnBetweenTheWorlds: The Old Phoenix Tavern, which appears in several works.
76	* ItWasAGift: {{Invoked}} as an excuse in "A Little Knowledge".
77	* KingInTheMountain: In ''Orion Shall Rise'', the line "Orion shall rise" is used by many citizens of a subjugated land. This trope is invoked to explain their superstition.
78	* LadyLand: An all-female LostColony is discovered in the novel ''Virgin Planet''.
79	* LonelyTogether: In "Losers' Night", the Old Phoenix, the InnBetweenTheWorlds, has a night where all the guests are failures. Unusually for the inn, this night allows people to magically understand each other -- so they can commiserate.
80	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * MasterOfYourDomain: A lot of his books, e.g. ''Boat of A Million Years''.
81	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * MatterOfLifeAndDeath: In "Marque and Reprisal".
82	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: ''The Devil's Game''.
83	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * MamasBabyPapasMaybe: In ''The Man Who Counts''.
84	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * TheMenFirst: In "Arsenal Port".
85	* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: "Journey's End".
86	-->-[[AllLowercaseLetters get out i hate your bloody guts.]]-
87	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * MindOverMatter: In ''Sargasso of Lost Starships''.
88	* MorallyBankruptBanker is parodied in passing in ''The Makeshift Rocket'':
89	-->"Oh, oh," said Herr Syrup, sympathetically, for not even the owners of the Black Sphere Line could be as ruthless as any and all Martian bankers. They positively enjoyed foreclosing. They made a ceremony of it, at which dancing clerks strewed cancelled checks while a chorus of vice presidents sang a litany. "And now business is not so good, vat?"
90	* MoreHeroThanThou: "Sunjammer" -- they argue about who will do the dangerous part, based on two of them being young but unmarried, and one being married but old.
91	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * TheMutiny: In "Brake".
92	* MyGrandsonMyself: In ''The Boat of a Million Years'' several characters do this.
93	* NiceToTheWaiter: Ganch is repulsed by this in "Inside Straight".
94	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * NonHumanSidekick: "To Build A World".
95	* NotAGame: {{Inverted}} in "The Un-Man" -- a two-year-old needs to think it's a game to avoid being traumatized.
96	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * OldRetainer: Basil's slave in ''Sargasso of Lost Starships''
97	* PortalNetwork: In ''The Enemy Stars'' (1958), mankind has maintained a program to deploy a portal network for centuries -- while civilizations rose and fell on Earth -- using STL ships to deliver portals to other solar systems. [[spoiler:Aliens have been doing the same thing.]]
98	-->... But still the ships fell upward through the night, and always there were men to stand watch upon them. Sometimes the men wore peaked caps and comets, sometimes steel helmets, sometimes decorous gray cowls, eventually blue berets with winged stars; but always they watched the ships, and more and more often as the decades passed they brought their craft to new harbors.\
99	After ten generations, the ''Southern Cross'' was not quite halfway to her own goal, though she was the farthest from Earth of any human work.
100	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * {{Privateer}}: ''The Star Fox''.
101	* SacredHospitality: Iason invokes it by name in "Eutopia."
102	* SecondLove: Proposed but not feasible in "Arsenal Port." In "Admirality" he appears to have recovered enough.
103	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * SherlockScan: In "Queen of Air and Darkness."
104	* ShroudedInMyth: In ''Virgin Planet'', a planet of women, isolated by accident, has legends of these marvelous beings, men. A real, flesh-and-blood man appears, and they initially conclude he's not marvelous enough and must be an alien.
105	* SomewhereAnEquestrianIsCrying: While his essay "On Thud and Blunder" is extremely detailed on [[ShownTheirWork how to treat horses as living creatures,]] instead of the usual AutomatonHorses in fiction, [[ScienceMarchesOn he does state the outdated pitfall]] of how stallions are dangerous around menstruating women.
106	* SpaceCossacks: In ''Literature/StarWays'', the Nomads roam the space in their starships and are divided into clans. The book's [[https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Poul-Anderson-ebook/dp/B001AV1RPA synopsis]] even states that they are kind of a merge between Vikings and Gypsies.
107	* SettleForSibling: Or for your dead husband's clone-brother.
108	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * SpaceOpera
109	* SubmersibleSpaceship: One of the short stories in ''Cold Victory'' is about a spaceship that suffers an attempted hijacking, and in the process, loses a large amount of its fuel. Lacking enough power to return to Earth, the crew instead direct the ship into a decaying orbit around Jupiter, and eventually come to rest within its atmosphere, at a depth where the gases are so dense the ship can float "like a bubble in a densitometer." They have to deal with weighing several times as much as usual, but the ship is otherwise unharmed and functional while waiting for rescue.
110	* StarfishAliens: In ''Starfarers'', one of the sentient species is an intelligent layer of star. Not the whole star, just part of its skin.
111	* StockholmSyndrome: Wanda reminds herself of this in ''Year of the Ransom''.
112	* TakingTheVeil: The end of "Kyrie", and a plot twist in "The Live Coward".
113	* TalkingInYourSleep: A danger in "The Burning Bridge" -- the man must become a HumanPopsicle so he will not reveal all.
114	* TalkingToTheDead: Evalyn in "Sharing of the Flesh" -- she fears it shows how disturbed she is.
115	* TemporalDuplication: In "There Will Be Time", Jack Havig is a natural time traveler who defends himself against a bully by getting a bunch of temporal doubles to gang up on him.
116	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * TheyCallMeMisterTibbs: In "A Little Knowledge".
117	* ThickerThanWater:
118	** In "Say It With Flowers", the main character pleads for news on the grounds that he had a relative on a ship.
119	* {{Telepathy}}: ''Sargasso of Lost Starships'' -- used for psychic attacks.
120	* TimeTravel: Lots of uses, beside the "Time Patrol" series.
121	** "My Object All Sublime" features far future people who use it for punishment.
122	** "Flight to Forever" revolves about a time machine in a universe where you can only move forward.
123	** "Literature/TheManWhoCameEarly": The titular man was sent back in time after a lightning strike.
124	* TornApartByTheMob: In ''The Big Rain'', Lucifer is a uranium mine on Venus which is used by the planet's dictatorial government as a political prison; all convicted "enemies of the state" are left in the pit to dig (without radiation gear) until the horrific working conditions kill them. When the nascent resistance movement storms the mine and liberates the prisoners, the leader attempts to have the captured [[StateSec Guardians]] running the place locked up in its holding cells, but is later awoken to learn that they were literally torn to pieces by the freed convicts guarding them. Having seen for himself [[AssholeVictim the kind of treatment they had inflicted on the convicts]], he can't bring himself to give them more than a dressing-down.
125	* TrappedInThePast: "Literature/TheManWhoCameEarly": In this novelette, an American soldier stationed in Iceland is sent back to the Viking Era after being hit by lightning.
126	* TwiceToldTale: "Goat Song" is Orpheus.
127	* UnableToSupportAWife: In "A Critique of Impure Reason", he rejects the notion of living off his wife's salary.
128	* UngovernableGalaxy: His SF stories frequently discuss how difficult it is to govern a planet, let alone more than one.
129	* VenusIsWet: In "Sister Planet", Venus is an ocean world with no landmasses. In a variation from the norm, it doesn't have a human-breathable atmosphere.
130	* WhenTreesAttack: An alien forest in ''The Star Fox''.
131	* WriteWhatYouKnow: Anderson was Danish-American and often made reference to Scandinavia in his work. His late novel ''War of the Gods'' was a modern rendition of one of the stories from the 12th century Danish work ''Gesta Danorum'' ("Deeds of the Danes").
132	%% Zero-context entry, fix before uncommenting * WouldNotHitAGirl: "To Build A World".

Context Creator / PoulAnderson