In The High Crusade (1960), Poul dropped a marauding spaceship filled with brutal, cocksure aliens into medieval England. Using his knowledge of both science and history to reverse all our expectations, he created a masterpiece of comic adventure. On his office wall hung an authentic-looking replica of a long sword. Lifting that sword was like reliving history, and brought deep respect for the men who lived and died with such weapons in hand.
He wrote of the Time Patrol; space merchant Nicholas van Rijn; Dominic Flandry of the Polesotechnic League, the furry, mimicking Teddy bears known as Hokas (with good friend Gordon Dickson), and more; all series highly favored by connoisseurs.
Poul made many friends and (to my knowledge) few or no enemies. As a father and grandfather, he projected respect and humor. For Astrid he wrote and illustrated tales of a purple submarine, and for grandchildren Erik and Alexandra, handmade booklets, stories and poems/songs of zoos and sailors. He had a quiet and insightful wit, and a kindly tolerance for his headstrong son-in-law.
He loved to gather with friends and family to listen and talk. Among those friends was French anthropologist Francois Bordes, who wrote French science fiction under the pen name of Francis Carsac. Bordes was fond of teaching folks how to knap flints the old-fashioned way. Poul’s friendship with Jack Vance led to the building of a famous houseboat (Frank Herbert was also an early participant in this project). Jerry Pournelle, another long-time friend, invited Poul to help him sail a boat down the coast from Puget Sound to Los Angeles; they never completed the journey, but were inspected by spyglassing orcas one morning.
Through the mid-1970s, as I was publishing more and more short fiction and writing my first novels, Poul and I corresponded. We swapped science and story ideas. I remember a good debate over whether or not ice would evaporate without ever becoming liquid, in the deep cold of Saturn’s rings. Here I was, contending with a true master, so with sweat on my brow, wild-eyed, I pored over reference books and science texts, and finally quoted figures from tables in the CRC Handbook. Poul kindly conceded I had a point. Later, he told Astrid, when she asked about the science in my novels, that I could be relied upon to know my stuff. No higher praise!
In the early 1980s, Jerry Pournelle helped assemble the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Poul attended these meetings, and in 1983, I was invited to join this amazing group of writers, generals, scientists, astronauts, and politicians. To this day, the CACNSP meetings are the subject of legend and history. They taught me much of what I know about politics and Washington D.C., and were crucial to the writing of my novel, Eon.
In the 1980s, Poul helped me devise orbits for both Eon and The Forge of God. Karen helped with my history and Greek. Poul and Karen together provided expertise and imagination for many aspects of my work over the decades. I remember a lengthy discussion with Poul and his brother John about the science behind Darwin’s Radio. They helped me hone my facts and arguments, invaluable when exploring deep and controversial topics.
There are so many tales of camping, hiking, visits to Denmark (and especially to Tivoli). Twenty years! Amazing for a true fan of Poul Anderson.
But in 2000, a cloud loomed. Poul was diagnosed with cancer. Despite strong hopes for a reversal, by early 2001, it was obvious he would not survive. Poul and Karen visited our home in Washington state and we held a farewell party, attended by many friends. Shortly after, I visited Poul and Karen in Orinda and shared a lovely summer lunch in the shade on the front lawn. The Orinda house was the scene of so many parties, visits, discussions, debates. This was the childhood home of my wife; Poul and Karen were still here. How could things change? It was impossible to believe that Poul wouldn’t continue to travel and visit and write. But it was not to be. He went into Alta Bates hospital. I last spoke with him by phone. The diagnosis was final.
Astrid flew to Orinda.
In late July of 2001 we alerted people by email that Poul was fading fast. The result was amazing. Within a few hours, a thousand messages poured in from around the world, expressing how much Poul meant to readers and friends everywhere. During his last afternoon, Karen and Astrid read these messages to him as he sat up in bed, drinking a Carlsberg and having a small glass of Jubilaeum akvavit. Poul listened and smiled; it was confirmation of what we already knew. Amazing, and wonderful, this tribute.
And now, for his friends and his readers, for all who love him or will come to love him, NESFA Press is collecting his finest works. If you have yet to read Poul Anderson, you have many adventures and treats in store, with or without long swords, slide rules, or beer.
Skol!
CALL ME JOE
The wind came whooping out of eastern darkness, driving a lash of ammonia dust before it. In minutes, Edward Anglesey was blinded.
He clawed all four feet into the broken shards which were soil, hunched down and groped for his little smelter. The wind was an idiot bassoon in his skull. Something whipped across his back, drawing blood, a tree yanked up by the roots and spat a hundred miles. Lightning cracked, immensely far overhead where clouds boiled with night.
As if to reply, thunder toned in the ice mountains and a red gout of flame jumped and a hillside came booming down, spilling itself across the valley. The earth shivered.
Sodium explosion, thought Anglesey in the drumbeat noise. The fire and the lightning gave him enough illumination to find his apparatus. He picked up tools in muscular hands, his tail gripped the trough, and he battered his way to the tunnel and thus to his dugout.
It had walls and roof of water, frozen by sun-remoteness and compressed by tons of atmosphere jammed onto every square inch. Ventilated by a tiny smoke hole, a lamp of tree oil burning in hydrogen made a dull light for the single room.
Anglesey sprawled his slate-blue form on the floor, panting. It was no use to swear at the storm. These ammonia gales often came at sunset, and there was nothing to do but wait them out. He was tired, anyway.
It would be morning in five hours or so. He had hoped to cast an axhead, his first, this evening, but maybe it was better to do the job by daylight.
He pulled a dekapod body off a shelf and ate the meat raw, pausing for long gulps of liquid methane from a jug. Things would improve once he had proper tools; so far, everything had been painfully grubbed and hacked to shape with teeth, claws, chance icicles, and what detestably weak and crumbling fragments remained of the spaceship. Give him a few years and he’d be living as a man should.
He sighed, stretched, and lay down to sleep.
Somewhat more than one hundred and twelve thousand miles away, Edward Anglesey took off his helmet.
He looked around, blinking. After the Jovian surface, it was always a little unreal to find himself here again, in the clean, quiet orderliness of the control room.
His muscles ached. They shouldn’t. He had not really been fighting a gale of several hundred miles an hour, under three gravities and a temperature of 140 absolute. He had been here, in the almost nonexistent pull of Jupiter V, breathing oxynitrogen. It was Joe who lived down there and filled his lungs with hydrogen and helium at a pressure which could still only be estimated, because it broke aneroids and deranged piezoelectrics.