Poul Anderson's Technic History Reading-Order Flowchart

[Mike J Nagle]

Hello.

Here is a reading-order flowchart that covers Poul Anderson's Technic History (Polesotechnic League) stories (Van Rijn, Flandry, etc.).

This flowchart is primarily based on the excellent Technic History timeline created by Sandra Miesel.

I hope you all like it.

Of course, comments, questions, corrections, and criticism are always welcome.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[BAYLOR]

I was wondering when you'd get around to doing Poul Anderson

The first story I ever read by him was The Star Plunderer. That and Lord of a Thousand Sons got me interested in reading him

I came across those stories in the two volume anthology Galactic Empires edited by Brian Aldiss .

 

[BAYLOR]

I would love to see a film or movie se Flandy film . Maybe someone James Gunn could do the film?

 

[Mike J Nagle]

The only Poul Anderson novel I ever saw made into a movie was The High Crusade. Instead of the hard-science-fiction story told in the novel, it turned out to be a Monty-Python-ish parody of the book.

Alas, I fear that turning any of the Flandry novels into a movie would likely produce a similar product.

Mike

 

[BAYLOR]

The only Poul Anderson novel I ever saw made into a movie was The High Crusade. Instead of the hard-science-fiction story told in the novel, it turned out to be a Monty-Python-ish parody of the book.

Alas, I fear that turning any of the Flandry novels into a movie would likely produce a similar product.

Mike

I didn't know they did a High Crusade film and Im rather disappointed that to know it was made into a parody . I hate it when film producers , directors and writers take something good and ruin it by making it something else. I was really particularly happy with Paul Verhoeven's take on Starship Troopers .

 

[Mike J Nagle]

Baylor,

Are you saying that you liked the 1997 Starship Troopers movie? For me it was quite the opposite.

The only things that carried over from the novel to the movie were the characters' names. The acts, motivations, and roles of the characters were radically different in the movie. On top of that, the "Bugs", rather than being intelligent insectoids specialized for a few specific roles, were instead chimeras with bred-in weapons from projectiles to nuclear bombs. On top of that, rather than bombing Earth with nuclear weapons launched from raiding Bug ships in the near vicinity of the Earth, as happened in the novel, in the movie, the Bugs projected asteroid-sized rock bodies ballistically at the Earth, and the bodies traversed across light-years' of distance through relativistic space in mere days or weeks!

And the most heinous deviation—there were no Man Amplification Suits in the movie! The human soldiers fought wearing plain cloth uniforms.

As well, the novel's message of prospective citizens' volunteering to fight due to a sense of personal responsibility to their society was perverted into those persons' being motivated to fight solely by jingoist slogans spouted by a quasi-fascist regime.

The Starship Troopers movie resembled the movie Robocop quite a bit, but it did not resemble Heinlein's novel at all. I thought it was a travesty when I saw it, although I do admit that, if I forced myself to forget everything I read in the original novel, the movie wouldn't seem so bad if only considered as a trashy action film.

By comparison, the 1994 movie, The Puppet Masters movie was actually somewhat true to Heinlein's original novel. However, I'm sure they could have done a more adequate job, if they had really tried.

Just my opinion...

Mike

 

[BAYLOR]

Baylor,

Are you saying that you liked the 1997 Starship Troopers movie? For me it was quite the opposite.

The only things that carried over from the novel to the movie were the characters' names. The acts, motivations, and roles of the characters were radically different in the movie. On top of that, the "Bugs", rather than being intelligent insectoids specialized for a few specific roles, were instead chimeras with bred-in weapons from projectiles to nuclear bombs. On top of that, rather than bombing Earth with nuclear weapons launched from raiding Bug ships in the near vicinity of the Earth, as happened in the novel, in the movie, the Bugs projected asteroid-sized rock bodies ballistically at the Earth, and the bodies traversed across light-years' of distance through relativistic space in mere days or weeks!

And the most heinous deviation—there were no Man Amplification Suits in the movie! The human soldiers fought wearing plain cloth uniforms.

As well, the novel's message of prospective citizens' volunteering to fight due to a sense of personal responsibility to their society was perverted into those persons' being motivated to fight solely by jingoist slogans spouted by a quasi-fascist regime.

The Starship Troopers movie resembled the movie Robocop quite a bit, but it did not resemble Heinlein's novel at all. I thought it was a travesty when I saw it, although I do admit that, if I forced myself to forget everything I read in the original novel, the movie wouldn't seem so bad if only considered as a trashy action film.

By comparison, the 1994 movie, The Puppet Masters movie was actually somewhat true to Heinlein's original novel. However, I'm sure they could have done a more adequate job, if they had really tried.

Just my opinion...

Mike

On Starship Troopers , that was typo on my part . I hate the Verhoeven film with a passion . I wanted Starship Troopers the book not this parody we ended up with. As to it resembling Robocop , no small wonder given that Ed Neumeier who wrote Robocop also wrote the script for Starship Troopers. Verhoeven was more interested in doing a satire.

 

[Mike J Nagle]

On Starship Troopers , that was typo on my part . I hate the Verhoeven film with a passion . I wanted Starship Troopers the book not this parody we ended up with. As to it resembling Robocop , no small wonder given that Ed Neumeier who wrote Robocop also write wrote the script for Starship Troopers. Verhoeven was more interested in doing a satire.

Understood.

Please forgive my going off on you like that, but I've always been a little bit touchy about the Starship Troopers movie. <wink>

Mike

 

[BAYLOR]

Understood.

Please forgive my going off on you like that, but I've always been a little bit touchy about the Starship Troopers movie. <wink>

Mike

No worries Mike.

Im hoping that one day , they'll do a remake of this film more in line with the book.

 

[J-Sun]

I've always been a little bit touchy about the Starship Troopers movie. <wink>

I think the Heinlein novel is a really good one, so I should hate the movie but it's just funny to me. I like them both, but obviously in completely different ways. But, yeah, as an actual adaptation or a serious movie, it'd be hard to be more horrible.

Now Asimov's "Nightfall" - there's a great story turned into a movie I can't stand.

To get back to the hero of the thread, I didn't know Anderson had had anything adapted. I can see how it be tempting to parody because it's such an off-the-wall concept but it's a shame they didn't do it as straight as they could. Anderson did a really good job of making the unusual premise work.

 

[hitmouse]

On Starship Troopers , that was typo on my part . I hate the Verhoeven film with a passion . I wanted Starship Troopers the book not this parody we ended up with. As to it resembling Robocop , no small wonder given that Ed Neumeier who wrote Robocop also wrote the script for Starship Troopers. Verhoeven was more interested in doing a satire.

I will stick my head above the parapit to say that I really enjoyed the film. It took the bones of a rather po-faced novel and turned it into an amusing satire of fascistic militarism. Voerhoven really had no intention of staying true to the novel. I can understand why Heinlein fans might object.