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colonization of the universe and recapitulates the European Age of Exploration through the exploits of two major characters: twenty-third-century merchant Nicholas van Rijn, hero of War of the Wing-Men (1958), and twenty-ninth-century naval intelligence agent Nicholas Flandry, whose adventures extend from Ensign Flandry (1966) to The Game of Empire (1985). Both characters are recognized as mouthpieces for Anderson's conservative politics and his guarded optimism regarding human progress. |
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Anderson's many other series include the comic Hoka stories, written in collaboration with Gordon R. Dickson and set on a planet whose inhabitants interpret all language literally, and the alternate world tales that comprise his Time Patrol sequence. Among his highly regarded nonseries novels are The High Crusade (1960), a blend of fantasy and science fiction that tells of an extraterrestrial visit to Earth during the Dark Ages; Tau Zero (1970), in which a space ship forced to travel at near-light speed witnesses the birth of a new universe following a second "big bang"; and The Boat of a Million Years (1989), which tracks the experiences of a group of immortals over several millennia of Earth history. Anderson has also written detective fiction and straight fantasy novels, many derived from Scandinavian lore. |
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Anderson has won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula twice for his short fiction. He has one daughter and lives with his wife in San Francisco. |
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The one brightly gleaming experience this month is Poul Anderson's supremely effective Brain Wave. Here the author, one of America's newest young talents, takes an intriguing conceptthe sudden releasing of the brake on neural responses in all Earthly animal life (including man) caused by our planet moving out of a blanketing force field which has affected it for millions of years. I.Q.s jump to a norm of 500, and while former morons become intelligent by previous standards, the lower forms of animal life start climbing the bottom rungs of human intelligence. On this premise, Poul Anderson weaves a powerful and entertaining story. To do the theme full justice the scope of the novel should have been enlarged four-fold and built into a more emotional climax in perhaps surer hands |
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