Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read online

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION: MY FRIEND POUL by Greg Bear

  OUTMODED THINGS by Nancy Kress

  THE MAN WHO CAME LATE by Harry Turtledove

  A SLIP IN TIME by S. M. Stirling

  LIVING AND WORKING WITH POUL ANDERSON by Karen Anderson

  DANCING ON THE EDGE OF THE DARK by C.J. Cherryh

  THE LINGERING JOY by Stephen Baxter

  OPERATION XIBALBA by Eric Flint

  TALES TOLD by Astrid Anderson Bear

  THE FEY OF CLOUDMOOR by Terry Brooks

  CHRISTMAS IN GONDWANALAND by Robert Silverberg

  LATECOMERS by David Brin

  AN APPRECIATION OF POUL ANDERSON by Jerry Pournelle

  A CANDLEb y Raymond E. Feist

  THE FAR END by Larry Niven

  BLOODPRIDE by Gregory Benford

  THREE LILIES AND THREE LEOPARDS by Tad Williams

  Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson

  Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois

  Poul Anderson was one of the seminal figures of 20th century science fiction. Named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 1997, he produced an enormous body of stand-alone novels (Brain Wave, Tau Zero) and series fiction (Time Patrol, the Dominic Flandry books) and was equally at home in the fields of heroic fantasy and hard SF. He was a meticulous craftsman and a gifted storyteller, and the impact of his finest work continues, undiminished, to this day.

  Here is a rousing, all-original anthology that stands both as a significant achievement in its own right and a heartfelt tribute to a remarkable writerand equally remarkable man. A nicely balanced mixture of fiction and reminiscence, this volume contains thirteen stories and novellas by some of today's finest writers, along with moving reflections by, among others, Anderson's wife, Karen, his daughter, Astrid Anderson Bear, and his son-in-law, novelist and co-editor Greg Bear. (Bear's introduction, "My Friend Poul," is particularly illuminating and insightful.)

  The fictional contributions comprise a kaleidoscopic array of imaginative responses to Anderson's many and varied fictional worlds. A few of the highlights include Nancy Kress's "Outmoded Things" and Terry Brooks' "The Fey of Cloudmoor," stories inspired by the Hugo Award-winning "The Queen of Air and Darkness"; a pair of truly wonderful Time Patrol stories ("A Slip in Time" by S. M. Stirling and "Christmas in Gondwanaland" by Robert Silverberg); Raymond E. Feist's Dominic Flandry adventure, "A Candle"; and a pair of very different homages to the classic fantasy novel, Three Hearts and Three Lions: "The Man Who Came Late" by Harry Turtledove and "Three Lilies and Three Leopards (And a Participation Ribbon in Science)" by Tad Williams. These stories, together with singular contributions by such significant figures as Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, and Eric Flint, add up to a memorable, highly personal anthology that lives up to the standards set by the late—and indisputably great—Poul Anderson.

  BAEN BOOKS BY POUL ANDERSON

  The Technic Civilization Saga

  The Van Rijn Method

  David Falkayn: Star Trader

  Ride of the Terran Empire

  Young Flandry

  Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire

  Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra

  Flandry’s Legacy

  To Outlive Eternity and Other Stories

  Time Patrol

  The High Crusade

  Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson’s Worlds

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

  are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson’s Worlds Copyright © 2014 by Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois. All rights reserved.

  “Introduction: My Friend Poul” Copyright © 2014 by Greg Bear.

  “Outmoded Things” Copyright © 2014 by Nancy Kress.

  “The Man Who Came Late” Copyright © 2014 by Harry Turtledove.

  “A Slip in Time” Copyright © 2014 by S. M. Stirling.

  “Living and Working With Poul Anderson” Copyright © 2014 by Karen Anderson.

  “Dancing on the Edge of the Dark” Copyright © 2014 by C.J. Cherryh.

  “The Lingering Joy” Copyright © 2014 by Stephen Baxter.

  “Operation Xibalba” Copyright © 2014 by Eric Flint.

  “Tales Told” Copyright © 2014 by Astrid Anderson Bear.

  “The Fey of Cloudmoor” Copyright © 2014 by Terry Brooks.

  “Christmas in Gondwanaland” Copyright © 2014 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Latecomers” Copyright © 2014 by David Brin.

  “An Appreciation of Poul Anderson” Copyright © 2014 by Jerry Pournelle.

  “A Candle” Copyright © 2014 by Raymond E. Feist.

  “The Far End” Copyright © 2014 by Larry Niven.

  “Bloodpride” Copyright © 2014 by Gregory Benford.

  “Three Lilies and Three Leopards (And A Participation Ribbon in Science)” Copyright © 2014 by Beale-Williams Enterprise.

  Cover and interior illustrations Copyright © 2014 by Bob Eggleton. All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-8059-7

  First Baen printing, June 2015

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-394-2

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  INTRODUCTION: MY FRIEND POUL

  by Greg Bear

  Poul Anderson and I first met around 1968, became friends in the seventies, traded correspondence on an irregular basis—and then I intruded on Poul’s life by marrying his daughter!

  Strangely, he didn’t object.

  I never knew Poul Anderson to pull rank or lord it over anyone, not even his headstrong son-in-law. He was polite reason incarnate, difficult to rile, and a sweet, sweet man. Not that he didn’t have grit. There was a hard and flinty conviction in Poul, sometimes expressed, but usually made obvious through accumulated experience. Family discussions over long evenings could get boisterous, sometimes about politics—on which we had more than a few disagreements—but more often about science.

  My first debate with Poul about science happened way back in 1973 or ’74. Somehow or other, in our correspondence, Poul had questioned the viability of icy rocks in the rings of Saturn. He thought that even way out there the ice would eventually sublimate in the vacuum. We politely went back and forth on this until I plunged deep into my copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (one of the essential bibles of hard sf writers in that day) and dug up obscure tables on ice sublimation. At the temperature of Saturn’s rings, sublimation is nearly zero. Ice behaves like rock out there. Poul graciously acknowledged this result, and I breathed an immense sigh of relief!

  And somehow, I think I rose in his estimation. Later, when queried by his daughter (before we were married) about the physics of an artificial world in my first novel, Hegira, he said, “He does his homework.”

  After the appearance of my first cover story in Analog, “A Martian Ricorso,” at a science fiction convention in 1976, Poul gave me a thumb’s up across a crowded hotel lobby. I glanced around and behind me, wondering to whom he was really gesturing to.

  Delightful affirmation! Science fiction writers have always been remarkably supportive and tolerant. Poul was exceptionally so, certainly for me.

  On another occasion, in the late seventies, we spent a fine hour around a table in a convention hotel bar discussing black holes and singu
larities with other writers—over beer, of course. Beer makes an excellent lubricant for scientific discussions. It also helps eliminate tritium from one’s body after an unfortunate laboratory accident—or so we learned from physicist John Cramer. I’m sure Poul would have approved of that prescription.

  After I married Astrid, Poul and Karen provided technical assistance on several of my novels. For both Eon and The Forge of God, Poul helped me design the right orbits for astronomical objects. Karen supplied me with tips on history and various Greek usages and words.

  Ten years later, Poul, Karen, and Poul’s geologist brother John spent a memorable evening going back and forth with me about the ideas on genetics and evolution I was using in Darwin’s Radio. Wonderful discussions! And pointed enough to make me sweat. Honing one’s arguments in such company was essential to making that novel work.

  Poul and I served in Jerry Pournelle’s and Larry Niven’s Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy. That continued through the late nineties. Astrid and I attended Contact conferences with Poul and Karen, served on many convention panels together, frequently discussed writing and publishing—

  And yet Poul and I never collaborated on a story. He certainly enjoyed collaborating with other writers, and likely would have gladly done so with me—but somehow, it never happened. During the time it could have happened, Poul was producing some of his finest and most ambitious novels, and so perhaps it would have been impolite to interrupt that streak. Still, it would have been fun.

  If there had been a few more years . . .

  Yet in many ways, Poul did collaborate with me—at a fundamental level. The influence of his novels and stories has been immense since I was a young teenager. The Broken Sword strongly influenced my vision of the Sidhe in Songs of Earth and Power. Tau Zero was, in my estimation, one of the finest science fiction novels of the last half of the twentieth century.

  And his personal influence—gently guiding but never admonishing, informative about both business and science, about science fiction, history, and the history of science fiction—was incalculable.

  Many writers find writing an arduous task. They’d rather do anything else—except work for a living. But Poul genuinely enjoyed writing, sitting alone in his small office, meeting his characters once again—old friends—and continuing their stories. He also greatly enjoyed being with friends and family. He was proud of his wife and daughter and his grandchildren.

  I wish Poul had been with us longer, of course—his death moved me deeply. I miss him to this day. He would have been immensely pleased that his granddaughter Alex attended the Clarion West writer’s workshop, a prestigious six-week boot camp for writers. He would have been equally pleased that his grandson Erik is now writing scripts for comics—and making more money on his first contracts than I did!

  And Poul would have been very proud indeed that Astrid has sold a mystery story (to San Diego Noir, edited by Maryelizabeth Hart) and is currently working on a novel with her collaborator, Diane Clark.

  For more than twenty years, I had pretty steady access to Poul Anderson. We still get together frequently with Karen, who lives down in the Los Angeles area now, and help manage the estate. Poul’s legacy rolls along in so many ways. And so it is with great joy that I have read the stories in this collection.

  This book is something of a miracle: tribute and collaboration, festival and continuity, an amazing gathering of many of the finest science fiction and fantasy writers of our time—brave writers all—attempting the very difficult if not the impossible job of writing a tale set in one of Poul Anderson’s many worlds—and succeeding!

  Huzzahs and beer are definitely in order, with or without tritium!

  OUTMODED THINGS

  by Nancy Kress

  Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the mid-seventies, and has since become a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, SCI FICTION, and elsewhere. Her books include the novel version of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning story, Beggars in Spain, and a sequel, Beggars and Choosers, as well as The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, Oaths & Miracles, Stinger, Maximum Light, Crossfire, Nothing Human, The Flowers of Aulit Prison, Crucible, Dogs, and the Space Opera trilogy Probability Moon, Probability Sun, and Probability Space. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and Other Stories, The Aliens of Earth, Beaker’s Dozen, and Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories. Her most recent book is the YA novel, Flash Point. In addition to the awards for Beggars in Spain, she has also won Nebula Awards for her stories “Out Of All Them Bright Stars,” “The Flowers of Aulit Prison,” and “Fountain of Age,” and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2003 for her novel Probability Space, and another Hugo in 2009 for “The Erdmann Nexus.” She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead.

  Here she takes us back to the frontier planet Roland, the setting for one of Poul Anderson’s most famous stories, “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” to examine the question of what happens to changelings stolen by the “fairies” when they return to human society. And are faced with a difficult choice of worlds.

  “People had moved starward in the hopes of preserving such outmoded things as their mother tongues or constitutional government or rational-technological civilization.”

  —Poul Anderson, “The Queen of Air and Darkness”

  It was difficult to hear over the barking. All the dogs—and there were so many dogs—seemed to have started howling all at once. The patient turned her head toward the window, which Luke had opaqued before the session began. He leaned toward the girl.

  “Anne?”

  “Something’s happening.”

  “Those dogs bark all the time.” He hadn’t yet told anyone how much he disliked dogs; a therapist was not supposed to have such silly weaknesses. And here at Christmas Landing, the animals were necessary. Maybe. Luke preferred to put his faith in the mind-shields.

  “That barking is different.” She rose, a pale, doughy, difficult girl that he was coming to like very much, even though she took time away from what was supposed to be his main duty here. “I want to go see.”

  The session was almost over. Luke said, “I’ll come with you,” and stood. For a moment, dizziness took him and he put a hand on the edge of the ugly, utilitarian table to steady himself, but Anne didn’t notice. That alone was a measure of her distraction; this was a girl who usually noticed everything, reacted intensely to everything, embroidered everything with the colors of her own over-romantic soul, all beneath a stolid exterior that misled nearly everyone about who she actually was.

  Anyway, very few sixteen-year-olds would notice the symptoms of an old man’s hidden disease.

  Anne moved lightly to the door—for such a big girl, she could move with surprising grace—and pulled it open. Luke followed her through the corridor, as ugly and utilitarian as his borrowed desk in his borrowed office.

  Most of Christmas Landing looked ugly to him. The entire planet had only hosted human settlements for a hundred years, and half of Roland’s scant million people were crowded into Portolondon. This pioneer outpost at the edge of civilization had not had much time to beautify itself, being too occupied with, first, survival. Next, with its business as a market town for the farmers and fur trappers and miners who labored in the open country to the east and west. And then, in the last months, with Project Recovery. Accustomed to the greater age and comfort of Portolondon, it had taken something special for Dr. Luke Silverstein to uproot himself in his present condition and come here.

  The something special ran past them.

  “Oh!” Anne gasped. “Shadow-of-a-Dream!” And Anne went after her, all grace gone in comparison with the other girl, who once again had shed, or forgotten to put on, her clothes. Luke followed more slowly, apprehension shifting in his chest like some emotional tectonic plates. The dogs’ barking grew hysterical.
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  In the Arctic circle’s brief summer, hot and feverish, entire corridor walls were rolled open. Luke’s borrowed office, at the edge of the town farthest from the bars and brothels and clamorous equipment that received grain and ore and furs, gave onto a wide strip of bare dirt that, supposedly, would one day be planted as a park. Beyond the strip of dirt, the shield shimmered faintly, jamming all electromagnetic signals not aimed at the high tower rising above Christmas Landing. Beyond that shimmer, wending its way among the shiverleaf bushes and vivid sprays of firethorn, a figure moved. The dogs, kept inside by the restraints on their collars, dashed forward to throw themselves against the unseen barrier.

  Luke, like the two girls, watched the alien approach—but what did one of them see?

  When Luke had first arrived at Christmas Landing, Police Chief Halford had driven him from the spaceport to the city. “The port is shielded,” had been almost her first words to Luke, “and so is the entire perimeter of Christmas Landing. But this rover and the area in between is not. You probably won’t see anything, but just in case you do, be aware that the illusion is not real. Most of the Rollies can’t project farther than three or four feet, but a few can. The talented ones, if you call that talent.” She had snorted derisively and made a gesture considered filthy in Portolondon. That, plus the dismissive “Rollies,” made him dislike her. However, he kept an open mind. For one thing, the outlying settlements had been losing their children to the natives for nearly twenty years, and anger was to be expected. For another, he was paid to keep an open mind.