All One Universe

By Poul Anderson

Book Overview

A big collection of fiction and nonfiction that shows one of the greatest living masters of sci-fi at his best. The great canvas of interstellar space comes alive under his hand as it does under no other.--Gordon R. Dickson.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312858736
• ISBN13: 9780312858735
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

"Impressive" writer - yes indeed, but maybe that's a slight problem

Well, he casts a wide net. The stories and essays reveal a deep background in reading and thinking. The only problem is that sometimes it almost seems the story is mainly a vehicle to display that knowledge. For instance, "Loser's Night" is about an inn that stands outside time, where at any moment the patrons in the bar may include a medieval French poet and Winston Churchill...and they all talk to each other (the language thing is taken care of without any fuss, they just understand each other). The "imaginary conversations" genre is a nice way to let ideas rub up against each other and see what emerges. And yes, I'm impressed that he has knows his Francois Villon, throws in a casual reference to that masterpiece the Ballade of the Hanged Men, and has Villon writing verse in the ballade form that he did use. A ballade's verses all end with the same line - the refrain - and Anderson has a quite authentically neck-tingling refrain, with the perfect ballade rhythm: "Even the dead have much to lose." So I liked the story...but yet... In the same way, there's a pure verbal-and-mental-exercise piece, "Uncleftish Beholding." This is an account of physics written as it might have been if there had never been a Norman Conquest: in other words, he finds or invents an Anglo-Saxon word for everything: not a single word of Roman or Greek origin is allowed. For instance, here's the definition of elements: "The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs ..." Atoms are "unclefts", molecules are "bulkbits", and my favorite is the wonderful term for radioactive decay, "lightrotting"(!) The invented terms are italicized in the story, BTW. Now, we're all told that Anglo-Saxon words make for stronger writing, and verbs, especially active ones, are better than nouns and adjectives, and this piece is quite a tour de force, and a lot of fun - and perhaps partly a tribute to his Nordic heritage. But then I read a story like "The Forest" and notice the "vines that clambered up boles and over boughs" and "the branches came together, often altogether hiding the sky, yet snaring its light in their leaves..." Snaring? Yes, it's a "different" word compared to the "catching" you might expect...but does it give you any extra value to compensate for the brief out-of-story moment where we're made to notice "oh, a clever word." Sometimes he forgets that "the art is to conceal the art." My favorite story is "The House of Sorrows," a deeply-imagined tale of a late-medieval Middle East in a somewhat altered universe. The human story against the background of ethnic or commercial or political power struggles resonates especially today! Anyway, read it and see what you think - you'll certainly find it stimulating!

Atoms and Unclefts

The reason I purchased this book was for the essay called "Uncleftish Beholding", an essay attempting to describe subatomic physics without using any scientific words. A friend of mine described it as using Anglo-Saxon words, and, indeed, much of the text relies on the short and to-the-point language characterizing Anglo-Saxons. In saying so much with so little, Poul Anderson crafted a shrewd, beautiful and unorthodox look at the science of the smallest of the small. My friend told me that if science were explained to her as in "Uncleftish Beholding," she would have stuck with the sciences. Poul Anderson's other works are a collection of his paleoanthropological "what-ifs" and his view of the historical times of space science he witnessed. The science-fiction stories are insightful and sometimes brutal. They portray characteristics of sentient beings that we can relate to, as we still pursue some of the same things his characters have pursued, and for many of the same reasons. The historical stories bring you right up close to the Apollo launches and all the events that surrounded it.

Quality short fiction and good essays

_All One Universe_ is a fine collection of (very) short stories and non-fiction essays, the personal choices of Poul Anderson himself. Many of the short stories are excellent (although some of them offer such a tantalizing taste of Anderson's inner fantasy world that you want to cry out for longer pieces); some are based on his existing work, and some are completely new.The non-fiction pieces provide an interesting break, although they are not as entertaining -- most of them involve Anderson trying to sell the reader on a particular author or concept; I guess you can't blame a man late in his life for that indulgence.

Good work from the Grand Master

Poul Anderson is one of the great writers of science fiction. This book contains a good number of his good short stories, plus some of his thoughts about science fiction. It includes his memories and thoughts about John W. Campbell, Jr. - who was, if you can credit one person with SF, the founder of modern science fiction. For the little change you would spend on this book, it is a good value.

Here is a generous taste of hard SF's best author!

Poul Anderson always brings thoughtful provocative pros to the readers of his fine works. As a follower of most of Anderson's offerings over the years I find that All One Universe gives the reader a chance to look into Anderson's own thinking in the selection of the short stories and editorials on some of the great contributors in Literature. In fact, it is the celebration of man's accomplishments throughout history and in literature that Anderson treats us here in this collection as he has done so well in other books. I dare say that this book as much as any I can remember in recent memory shouts at us to get out and read: science, hard science fiction, and the wealth of literature that is available - and that's inspirational!