Poul Anderson books

A Midsummer Tempest (1984)

Some websites list this book as the second book in the Holger Danske (main character in Three Hearts and Three Lions) series, however, as he appears only in one short chapter in the middle of the book, it is perhaps a bit of a stretch.This book is similar in that it deals with an Earth history in...

Three Hearts and Three Lions (2003)

Three Hearts and Three Lions is considered one of the classics of modern fantasy fiction. It contains all of the fundamental archetypes of the fantasy genre, and while it may seem cliché by today’s standards, it was original enough in 1953. Also, this novel is credited among the sources that infl...

Fire Time (1975)

Despite the corny cover art, this book was surprisingly good.The Foreword brings the main characters, who are on trial on Earth, into the chamber of a just judge, who asks them to tell their story.Then, most of the action takes place on Ishtar. It has three suns, one a red giant with an eccentric...

Tau Zero (2006)

Live girlfleshLet me start by saying that I liked this book. With my 'internal' rating system, I'd give it four stars, but GoodReads informs me that this means I "really liked" a book and I think I just "liked" it, so I'm downgrading to three... Regardless, a VERY pleasurable read, a real page tu...

Brain Wave (1985)

Prolific Grand Master Poul Anderson earned his place of honor within the hallowed halls of science fiction’s best and brightest. His work may not be as engagingly readable as Asimov, or as accessibly impactful as Clarke. He was never as politically-minded as Heinlein and his prose is not as slick...

Conan the Rebel (1980)

Not the best Conan pastiche, but not the worst. Poul Anderson is a successful and prolific sci fi and fantasy author. He's a good writer and the result is a pretty well told story about everybody's favorite barbarian. However, not everything is roses in Hyboria.The most hilarious part of Conan...

The Stars are Also Fire (1995)

Larry Niven called Harvest of Stars "a masterpiece."Now Poul Anderson returns to the same brilliantly conceived future to tell a story of revolution and liberation on the Moon.

Time Patrol (2006)

Originally published on my blog here in May 2006.The Time Patrol stories of Poul Anderson are classics of the science fiction genre, dealing with the efforts of the eponymous group to maintain the status quo of history against the accidental or deliberate manipulations of other time travellers. T...

The Shield of Time (1991)

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/p...is three novellas plus connecting materials (http://www.locusmag.com/index/t271.htm) as six strangely titled parts jumping time. Excerpt has dated Sections. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISB... The Time Patrol travels time to set up outposts for study a...

Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973)

I find Poul Anderson pretty uneven. I tend to either really like his books, or be left cold by them. I also tend to enjoy his fantasy much more than his science fiction (for which he is probably better known). This book is obviously in the former camp. For my money it's probably his best book (ev...

Guardians of Time (1977)

Given that the first story in the book Guardians of Time by SF grand master Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" was published in 1955, and taking into account the technology of the period, that story and all the others in the Guardians of Time were an extremely impressive achievement, as well as a thoro...

The Road of the Sea Horse (1980)

Roma Mater: The King of Ys 1 (1986)

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.This review is for all four books in this series:The King of Ys is a historical fantasy -- it is set in our world just before the fall of the Roman Empire and it mixes in the legend of the mythical city of Ys which was built below sea level on the coast of ...

The Avatar (1986)

I'd read a few Poul Anderson Novellas in Hugo / Nebula Collections during my freshman year in College and found his blend of Social Commentary with Hard Science rather nice.That said, this book, his first "Large" book that I've read is a bit of a disappointment - not because of a lack of Sci Fi,...

Harvest of Stars (1994)

If I wanted to read a philosophical diatribe about the nature of the human condition and the benefits of self-centered free market economics, I'd go read an Ayn Rand novel. As terribly boring and unconcerned with narrative structure as I have found Rand's fiction, I must say that Anderson combine...

The Devil's Game (1985)

It's a classic premise: someone of wealth gathers together a number of people who need money, and puts them through hell to get it. This book managed to bring a few new tricks to the idea. Simply reading the cover blurb and the first couple of chapters, one might think that the seven people ar...

The Sign of the Raven (1980)

The saga of Harald Harrede. Poul Anderson's mighty historical epic of the last and greatest Viking King - Harald Harrede - the real-life CONAN. Drunk with battle, Harald hardly saw the men he killed. There seemed to be wings beating over him as his blade rose and fell, smashing down whatever sto...

The King of Ys: Book 2 - Gallicenae (1987)

Vault of the Ages (1983)

Five hundred years from now, rival groups battle for the contents of a vault containing remnants of 20th century civilization which could guide their society out of its primitive state.

Tales of the Flying Mountains (1984)

In a thrilling collection of hard science fiction stories, a master of speculative fiction envisions a volatile future when Earth’s colonies throughout the galaxy attempt to break free from home-world rule On a spaceship rocketing toward the stars, an official council meets to discuss how to cens...

Starfarers (1999)

Starfarers was one of Poul Anderson's last works, published in 1998 three years before the science-fiction author's death at the age of 74. It also looks back decades to his early career, incorporating the short story "Ghetto" that was published back in the 1950s. Its plot praises the human ambit...

The Merman's Children (1980)

I've loved discovering Poul Anderson's work. The Merman's Children is my least favourite of his work so far, but it's still compelling: easy to read, and you get through chunks of it without realising you have. It does have the occasional example of Poul Anderson's devotion to rendering accents p...

Orion Shall Rise (1984)

Epic in scope, human in detail, Orion Shall Rise is a saga of humanity struggling back from near-ruin after a planet-wide nuclear war. The survivors face a life-threatening limitation of resources as they strive to rise once again. Orion Shall Rise has a cast of countries: The Domain, dominated b...

Rogue Sword (1980)

IN SAVAGE FURY From the golden city of Venice to bloody Gallipoli, from the barbaric stretches of northern Europe to the smoldering earth of Byzantium, plundering hordes of every description hacked and tore at the once-mighty Roman Empire. The giant of the world was faltering, bleeding from a tho...

Swordsman of Lost Terra

How Red Bram fought the Ganasthi from the lands of darkness, and Kery son of Rhiach was angered, and the pipe of the gods spoke once more. Now it must be told of those who fared forth south under Bram the Red. This was the smallest of the parties that left Killorn, being from three clans only—Bro...

The Star Fox (2011)

The trees that surrounded it were taller yet. At the top of red-brown trunks, they fountained in branches whose leaves overarched and hid the pavilion under cool sun-flecked shadows. Their foliage was that greenish gold hue the native ‘grasses’ shared, to give the Garance country its name. Wind r...

The Dancer from Atlantis (2011)

They had been days of total fascination for Reid, a torrent of sights, sounds, smells, songs, stories, sudden explosive realizations of what this myth or that line of poetry really signified. And the nights – by tacit agreement, he and Erissa put no word about their fate into their whisperings at...

The Golden Slave (1959)

said the Roman when they sat behind a closed door. He stretched himself across one of the mattresses, boylike on his belly, and reached for a leather bottle of good wine. His grin leaped at the others. “Thus far, my friends, well done. Shall we pledge our mutual success?”     ...

Captive of the Centaurianess

Yet he seizes the world as he finds it and reshapes it as he will; and he remains eternally an enigma to his contemporaries and to the future.Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the famous but ever strange story of the three whose discoveries and achievements, late in the twenty-third cent...

The Dog and the Wolf (2011)

The air was soft, odors of greening and blossoming not yet cooled out of it. A moon close to fullness had cleared Mons Ferruginus. It looked like old silver afloat in an ever deeper blue sea. The earliest stars trembled forth. Sunset’s ghost still lightened the western sky. After the tumult of da...

TLV - 02 - The Road of the Sea Horse

"No need to swear, my lord," he said. "I took the money. I am a poor man, and this Gudhbrand seemed rich, to judge from his well-lined belly; so I thought for once in my life I'd enjoy some honest eating and drinking.""Then know that a thief is hanged," said Harald.Thorolf whitened. "A man's life...

TLV - 03 - The Sign of the Raven

"King Steinkell will make us welcome, he has no love for our lord. And we'll still be near home."She watched him for a while. "So you mean to come back?""Aye. There's no freedom for our folk while Harald lives." Haakon shook his banner, furled around its staff. "This belonged to your father, Ragn...

The Corridors of Time (2011)

The feast was not less wild and merry for being a funeral of the slain as well as a triumph. The strangers whose metal weapons had driven out the Yuthoaz were welcomed into the frolic. They had no comprehensible language, but what did that matter? A roasting pig spoke to them with its savor, a ma...

No World of Their Own

Then he swung around to Langley. “I’ll have this warren searched, of course,” he said. “But I don’t imagine the kidnappers are still in it. The robots aren’t set to notice who goes out in what condition, so that’s no help. Nor do I expect to find the employee of this place who helped fix matters ...

The Broken Sword

Freda did not weep, but she felt the unshed tears thick in her throat. “You think this is dawn for us,” she said once, the second day. “I tell you it is night.”     He looked at her, puzzled. “What mean you?”     “The sword is full of wickedness. The deed w...

World without Stars (2011)

What Valland had radioed—good thing our gear included some portables!—suggested that attack by certain rivals of the Azkashi was not unthinkable. He hadn’t learned much about them yet, except that they belonged to quite a different culture and must have sent those canoes we’d spied at sunset. &nb...

Roma Mater (2011)

Or not so strangely, he thought. When he arrived the evening before, joy was too tumultuous for him to pay close heed to his surroundings. Notified in advance, Marcus had had a feast prepared for his soldier son. The food was local, fish and meat and dried garden truck, but seasoned with such thi...

Lord of a Thousand Suns

"There are so damned many millions of planets, and such a fantastic variety of surface conditions and of life evolving to meet them, and of intelligence and civilization appearing in that life. Why, I've been on worlds with fire-breathing dragons, and on worlds where dwarfs fought things that cou...

Gallicenae (2011)

Sunbeams and cloud shadows pursued each other, with rainsqualls and rainbows, till the wind lay down to rest and whiteness brooded huge in the blue. Lambs, calves, foals explored meadows, amazed by brilliance. Wives reopened their homes to air while they scrubbed away winter’s grime; farmers hitc...

TLV - 01 - The Golden Horn

A man ahead of him groaned and fell to his knees. An arrow stood in his eye. He pawed at it, rolled over, and Harald slipped in the blood that ran from his brain.     Suddenly the enemy front was before him. He saw a face over a shield: thick yellow brows, big nose, coarse por...

New America

Or, have they? his mind asked, and answered: Unlikely. I gave strict orders I be told whenever word came, whatever it was.     So Mary’s voice has not reached us since dusk. She’s lost, in danger. He forced himself to add: Or she’s dead.     Forever stilled...

The Makeshift Rocket (2011)

‘Ve better not accelerate any more,’ he said. ‘Not yust now. Ve vill need a little reserve to maneuver later on.’ ‘Vot later on?’ asked Herr von Himmelschmidt sourly. ‘I don’t know vy der ship shot on past us, but soon it comes back und den ve iss maneuvered into chail’ ‘Veil, meanvile shall ve p...