17 Feb, 2026
Homeward By Starlight
Poul Anderson’s 1956 short story, The Man Who Came Early, is a Morganade.
Other Icelanders might rebuke, drive away or even kill a visiting Christian missionary. Ospak Ulfsson of Hillstead has a more open mind. After all, Ospak has an idea how the next thousand years will play out.
20 Jan, 2026
Homeward By Starlight
Poul Anderson’s 1978 On Thud and Blunder is a non-fiction essay, first published in Andy Offutt’s swords & sorcery anthology, Swords Against Darkness III. It is a blast of trumpets against poorly thought-out sword & sorcery settings.
15 Jun, 2025
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1975 Homeward and Beyond collects nine science fiction stories.
This book was at one time one of my favourite Anderson collections. Alas, what motivates me to review this today are not those fond memories, but pure spite… spite not directed at Anderson.
8 Dec, 2024
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1965 Agent of the Terran Empire is a collection of Dominic Flandry stories. Agent can be designated the first Flandry collection1. That is at least open to question and might well be wrong.
Dominic Flandry! A man as skilled with a blaster as he is with subterfuge, a man as profoundly depressed at the state of the decadent Terran Empire as he is unable to imagine better alternatives. A man who can therefore be depended upon to do the necessary thing, even when it is the wrong thing, because the only other options are worse.
5 May, 2024
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1980 The Devil’s Game is a stand-alone speculative fiction thriller.
Elderly Sunderland Haverner owes his fantastic wealth in small part to good luck in choosing ancestors, but in far greater proportion to the infallible advice of his unseen and seemingly immaterial advisor, Samael.
Sunderland gained wealth and status. Samael gained the means by which the entity could affect Sunderland’s material world. The partnership has served Sunderland well. The old man will not hesitate to carry out Samael’s latest task: a curious psychological experiment.
3 Dec, 2023
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1971 The Byworlder is a stand-alone near-future science fiction novel.
Earth is inching toward global peace and prosperity. Military-industrial complexes are hobbled by governmental fears of thermonuclear doom. Automation accelerates production of necessities and luxuries. These conditions are sufficient to allow the formation of what might have, in another decade, been called a counter-culture. So-called Byworlders are rejecting buttoned-down social conformity (which they dub Ortho) in favor of less conventional lifestyles.
Enter a visitor from Sigma Draconis.
15 Jan, 2023
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1974 A Midsummer Tempest is an alternate-history fantasy novel.
Lights up on a familiar scene. The Royalists are trounced by the Roundheads at the Battle of Marston Moor. Royalist commander Prince Rupert flees the debacle but is captured by Shelgrave’s forces. While capture does set-up a meet-cute between Rupert and his captor’s niece Jennifer Alayne, it seems the end of Rupert’s career is at hand.
Despite similarities, there is a crucial difference between this Battle of Marston Moor and the one we know. In this world, William Shakespeare is not the great playwright. He is the Great Historian, whose works record events that actually happened.
1 May, 2022
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1958 The Man Who Counts is a science fiction novel. It’s one of the Nicolas van Rijn novels, which are set in Anderson’s Polesotechnic League timeline, which itself is part of the much larger Technic setting.
Master star-trader Nicolas van Rijn is one part Falstaff, one part merciless trader, entirely Dutch Indonesian. Not everyone likes the merciless trader part. One such enemy must have planted the bomb on van Rjin’s starship. While the bomb failed to kill van Rijn, it did maroon van Rijn, Lady Sandra Tamarin, and engineer Eric Wace on the giant world Diomedes. If they stay there, they will die slowly. A quick death due to bomb might have been preferable.
13 Dec, 2020
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
1974’s Fire Time is the second book in Poul Anderson’s Gunnar Heim sequence. Be it noted that Heim makes an extremely brief appearance in this novel.
Three hundred parsecs from Sol, the Anubelea multiple star system offers humans a fascinating illustration of the impact of stellar evolution on planetary ecosystems. For the inhabitants of Ishtar, the peculiarities of their home system doom them to endless cycles of rise, fall, and recovery.
But first! A lecture on stellar evolution.
7 Mar, 2020
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Poul Anderson’s 1966 The Trouble Twisters is a collection of three stories, all set in Anderson’s Polesotechnic League, all featuring young David Falkayn.