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Poul William Anderson was born on November 25, 1926, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, to a Scandinavian family. Interest in his family's heritage, stimulated in part by a brief stay in Denmark before the outbreak of World War II, resulted in a lifelong appreciation of Scandinavian culture and literature evident in much of his writing. His interest in science led him to enroll in the physics program at the University of Minnesota and to read and try writing science fiction. |
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Encouraged by his roommate and fellow science fiction writer Gordon R. Dickson, Anderson sold his first science fiction story, a collaboration with F. N. Waldrop entitled "Tomorrow's Children," to Astounding Science Fiction in 1947, a little more than a year before he took his undergraduate degree. Anderson joined the Minnesota Fantasy Society and dabbled in science fiction for several years until 1950, when poor job prospects in the physics field spurred him to try writing full time. |
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Anderson married his occasional collaborator, Karen, in 1952. That same year, his first novel, Vault of the Ages, a science fiction juvenile set in a post-apocalyptic future, was published. His second novel, Brain Wave (1954), describes what happens when the earth emerges from an intergalactic cloud that has inhibited human thought since the dawn of time and human beings are suddenly forced to cope with newly acquired genius in a world not built to accommodate it. The novel was praised for the meticulous detail with which Anderson showed how such an event would permeate all levels of civilization. |
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In the prolific burst of novels and stories that followed and has continued ever since, Anderson has distinguished himself as a student of the old-fashioned science fiction schools of space opera and extrapolated hard science, one who can condense historical, anthropological, and scientific concepts into vivid narratives filled with fully realized characters. His ambitious Technics Civilization saga, which comprises nearly a dozen novels and numerous short stories, chronicles five thousand years of humanity's |
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