I don’t think I ever got far into the work of Poul Anderson, and in 2019 I vaguely associate the name with 1960s space-opera science-fiction. Perhaps I encountered some of his short stories as “best sci-fi stories of…” collections, and I might have read a few of his galaxy-spanning novels in the early 1980s. But I rather suspect he was another of those libertarian science-fiction authors whose I was shoo-ed away from, in the early 1980s, by left-leaning gatekeepers.

But now I discover he also did historical fantasy / sword and sorcery novels. Some of these are even set in my native England and one has a nicely earth-mysteries dark-faerie twist, even. The mostly interesting one is partly set in the English West Midlands. Who knew? Not me, and I’m fairly well versed on such work if set in the Midlands.

I became aware of his work again thanks to some useful new survey blog posts on this side of his work. These being Poul Anderson’s “Northern Cycle”: Part One and Part Two. Part Three is still to come, but in the meanwhile the same blog has dug up two old articles from the defunct Crom Records heavy metal music website, surveying the relevant works in relation to their possible influence on metal bands… one and two.

His 1950s novel set in England under the Viking Danelaw looks somewhat interesting, The Broken Sword. Apparently best read in its rare first edition form, which launched into that curious dead-zone for public interest in fantasy (circa 1950-1964) and promptly vanished. It was hailed as a lost classic when re-discovered in the late 1960s, but even so I think it may have been one of the few to have escaped me in its 1980s paperback reprint form.

But looking most interesting to me is his A Midsummer Tempest (1974), an alternative history fantasy set in an England in which Shakespeare’s Fairy Folk are real and the English Civil Wars are partly an early-steampunk affair with airships. Super. I may have read it in the early 1980s along with the similar Keith Roberts, et al. But if I did, then I don’t recall it now. Sadly there appears to be no audiobook version, but at just 200 pages it’s not too daunting to tackle in paper or get through the letterbox — not one of those 1990s-style over-padded door-stopper fantasy slabs of 500 pages. It also skips briskly between short scenes, some with chapter headings indicating they’re set in the northern Midlands and thus near to me. It’s also said to take in another setting in which I used to live, at the other end of the West Midlands.

So, a quality pre-PC West Midlands fantasy novel that I had no idea existed. Great stuff. I’ve no idea if the author ever set foot in the English West Midlands, but it’s a nice find all the same. The formatting on the ebook is bad, so I’ve bagged a first-edition hardback for much the same price at just £4 inc. postage. It has a horribly ugly cover, compared to the painted Bob Fowke cover of the Orbit paperback and the UK popular hardback reprint by Severn, but dustjackets can be removed…

“…a titanic achievement — a delightful alternate-history fantasy that brings the fictional worlds of Shakespeare’s plays to breathtaking life with style, wit, and unparalleled imagination.” (blurb from one of the reprints).

Nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and it won the Mythopoeic Award — and that was back in the 1970s when such awards meant something and hadn’t become political vehicles.

There’s a linked story of The Old Phoenix in Fantasy & Science Fiction (May 1979), which should be read alongside the book.

Unfortunately in terms of his other works he’s another one of those 1950s-1980s writers with a vast and sprawling output, and this is often loosely interconnected in confusing ways. The one reader’s guide (Poul Anderson: Myth-Master and Wonder-Weaver: A Working Bibliography) which puzzled it all out is very firmly out-of-print and unobtainable. Apparently it went to five editions. Meaning that it’s difficult to know where to begin if one were to even sample him, though there have been various reprints in-series. Still, the blog articles linked above give a starter on the more R.E. Howard-like books. I see he also did one Conan book, Conan the Rebel (1980). The plot is said to be rather too convoluted, but looking at the writing it seems a good brisk pastiche in terms of the style. There appears to be no audiobook version for it.