A is for Ambivalent Anderson: Repost from First A-Z List Updated

For the first A-Z List, I read fictional authors I'd never read before. 

These reposts are the original posts plus updated reading, either from the same author or an author within that letter. 

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Everybody's doing it! Everybody's reading stuff—the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Bible, the Guinness Book of World Records, 100 books in one year—and then reporting on their experiences. So I'm going to do it too!

I'm going to try to read a book from each letter of the alphabet by an author that I have never read before.

The first book I tried to read was The Day of Their Return (1974) by Poul Anderson.

My Science-Fiction Encyclopedia (ed. John Clute) includes Poul Anderson under its 1950s time period. It states "no other SF author...has produced as much high-quality work, with such variety, and with such continued verve, for anything approaching the half century of constant endeavor that Anderson can boast" and "Anderson has written one or two bad books in his time, but then, he can afford to."

I guess I tried to read one of the bad ones.

Now, when it comes to fantasy and science-fiction, there is a debate between how much exposition one should give the reader upfront. Should one just dump the reader into the story or should one provide the reader with massive upfront exposition?

The problem isn't the cover.

I like the cover!

In The Day of Their Return, Poul Anderson opts for the "here's the deep end, have fun!" approach. And I respect that. But I didn't get so much as a life preserver for four chapters, and I really can't tread water for that long. In terms of pure incomprehensibility (who ARE these people?), The Day of Their Return makes War & Peace look like a "Dick and Jane" book.

I will grant that I'm not much for world fantasy or science-fiction, but I react quite differently to my usual go-to writer for world sci-fi, C.J. Cherryh, specifically regarding her Foreigner series. 

Cherryh also throws readers into the deep end, but she then tows you, subtly, with enormous expertise, through fascinating circumstances towards a fascinating denouement: clear and lucid. 

Cherryh also utilizes intense third-person limited point of view, which I suggest accounts for the lucidity. Since we only know what the thinking/speaking character knows, and the thinking/speaking character is equally limited, surprises occur to both reader and character at the same time. There isn't a sense that the reader must keep guessing. 

Update in 2023:

Out of fairness, I decided to read another Poul Anderson (or try): The High Crusade. 

An alien spaceship lands in fourteenth century England. It is overtaken by Sir Roger de Tourneville, who moves his entire village on-board. His original intent is to take the ship to France and then to the Holy Land. It ends up in an alien, Wersgorix, empire. Eventually, Sir Roger conquers the empire. The history of that event is being read thousands of years later by a human captain who has chanced upon the descendants of these medieval spacefarers.

The novella is good!

For one, it has a single narrator, Brother Parvus, who is diffident, kindly, hardworking, occasionally blunt, and loyal to Sir Roger. Consequently, all the action is filtered through his understanding--since he is meeting events first-hand, he is able to explain them to his reader. 

For another, the attitude and behavior of Sir Roger is not reduced to "war-mongering Christian," which I greatly appreciated. Sir Roger uses Christian terminology when it suits him; he is also fully aware of the economic problem (the cattle have to eat), the diplomatic problem (new allies can only be told so much), and his personal problems (he has a doubtful wife and possible traitor at his back). Sir Roger is rough, shrewd, ruthless, yet also big-hearted and able to imagine long-term consequences. He is a kind of Charlemagne character--and Brother Parvus a kind of Alcuin. 

Moreover, the entire issue is not so simple as "bad invaders" and "advanced aliens." The "advanced" aliens are unprepared for hand-to-hand combat. The other aliens they have conquered detest them. And they cannot be trusted with the coordinates of Earth since they would bomb it from space. 

One of the more interesting outcomes is that Sir Roger replaces the fallen Rome-like Wersgorix Empire with feudalism, not out of evil socio-political wiles but because the prior empire hadn't shored up its local communities. When it falls, anarchy leaves a vacuum. Sir Roger replaces it with what he knows but also with what he knows will keep local communities potentially loyal. 

The use of feudalism as a stop-gap is a debatable point--but a valid one. 

Anderson is not fully accurate about medieval attitudes--for one, nobody believed the Earth was flat. Nobody. However, Anderson does capture Brother Parvus's willingness to parse what he sees and understands into terms he can translate, to others and to himself. 

The underlying reality: People adjust. Even medieval people in space.