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.

Hot on the heels of the success of the 17th century videogame Greedfall, Marvel has just announced they will add Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane to the comics line-up alongside Conan. Let’s hope he doesn’t end up joining The Avengers superhero-team and wielding a machine-gun — which is the sorry fate of Conan this month, under Marvel.

Judging by the fair-minded reviews, Greedfall is probably the closest thing to a game Lovecraft would like. Although he might tut at the authenticity of bits of it, and hope for a makeover mod that would steer it more toward the 18th century.

Probably best described as Skyrim meets Assassin’s Creed in 17th century America, via the pirate island of the excellent first Risen game + some mystical Witcher-like backwoods monsters.

Where does one start when faced with the vast output of the East Texas writer Ardath Mayhar? Even the intro to her main Megapack Kindle ebook doesn’t provide a quick overview survey and guide. According to the Women SF Writers of the 1970s pages at Tor, she doesn’t even exist. But after a bit of searching and jiggling of Wikipedia I think I now have it roughly worked out…

Audiobook: Crazy Quilt: The Best Short Stories of Ardath Mayhar. I can’t get the table-of-contents for this in any format. Also in paper, but no ebook.

Rural weird/dark: Strange Doin’s in the Pine Hills: Stories of Fantasy and Mystery in East Texas, and A World of Weirdities: Tales to Shiver. The first is in Kindle ebook and is dark rather than weird, and the latter is in collectable paper with 29 stories, “many of them never before published”.

Other starter fiction:

i) As a starting point for her fantasy, How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon (1979) seems to be the best. It was her first such book, a set of tightly linked brief and delicately-Dunsanian stories followed by culminating sections. Its world-setting appears to have later been spun off as a three-volume series under the name Lords of the Triple Moon with these being aimed at a slightly younger audience than the first book? All are in Kindle ebook.

ii) The Ardath Mayhar MegaPack in two $2 Kindle books of stories. The first seeming to have the best and lighter stories in it, the second some darker material. I’m uncertain if these two collections form ‘the complete short fiction’ or are just a partial selection from her vast output. They seem to present the stories in no particular order, and include a number of westerns.

iii) Messengers in White sounds like the most interesting and successful of her science-fiction novels to start with. It’s available in Kindle ebook.

iv) Her ‘what happens when we make intelligent monkeys?’ novels sound perhaps-fun, but is probably not the science-fiction work to start with. These are found as Monkey Station: The Macaque Cycle, Book One and Trail of the Seahawks: The Macaque Cycle, Book Two, and both are in Kindle ebook. There was talk of a videogame, but I’ve found no evidence of a book three? Difficult to tell much more about it without proper reviews. It’s very difficult to find reviews for her work that are not flippant and cynical, and one gets the feeling that — like Clifford Simak — her robust rural Texan conservatism and blending of fantasy/sci-fi didn’t sit well with the sci-fi establishment of the 1980s and 1990s. (“Conservatism” doesn’t here = evangelical or religious, and a Starlog interview reveals that she was hounded locally by deluded Christians during the bizarre moral-panics over ‘Satanism’ in the 90s. Even today I encountered one prissy Christian on Amazon reviews, squeaking over discovering that Mayhar’s regionalist East Texas novels had dared to offer a tepid view of her local Church-goers).

Regionalist: So yes, there’s also a whole bundle of East Texas local rural novels and stories. Mostly ‘young adult’ tales with feisty heroines, though there’s also what is apparently her survivalist adult-novel masterpiece The World Ends in Hickory Hollow. I had my fill of that kind of post-apocalyptic novel in the 1980s, and I’m not sure I want more even now, but it’s well regarded.

Westerns: There are a great many robust pre-PC wild-western novels which might appeal to R.E. Howard fans. I’ve no idea were one might start with these.

Advice: Through a Stone Wall: Lessons from Thirty Years of Writing. Paper only. Seems to be well-regarded.

Autobiography: Strange View from a Skewed Orbit: An Oddball Memoir. Paper only. Said to be excellent.

Most of her books appear to be quite short by modern standards, many well under 200 pages. One associates the late 1980s and 90s with over-padded door-stopper books, especially in fantasy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

So, that’s my somewhat hazy outline based on some online research scrabbling among scattered and sparse materials. Any advice or correction is welcome.