Tribute to Poul Anderson (1926 - 2001) In a sign of the hammer
Article written August 15, 2001, on the occasion of the death of Poul Anderson, writer I particularly appreciated and loved.
Friends, Poul and also left us.
Pardon the outburst, but who knows me knows how much they meant to me his books. I am not too good account of how deep was his influence on my education, my ideas and my choices. Looking inside me, the interests that I have cultivated since adolescence, I find its mark almost everywhere. It is no exaggeration to define Poul Anderson, one of my spiritual fathers, as it was without doubt for thousands other readers and writers.
In December 2000, I could send him a letter of admiration and gratitude, and Poul was kind enough to answer me. It could be the beginning of a beautiful match, but alas, Poul has died July 31, 2001 at his home in Orinda, California. I had mentioned to some health problem, but I never imagined that it was cancer. So there I was really bad when the other week, I received almost by accident the announcement of his death. I was left with the sorrow of not having been able to know better, or maybe (secret hope) in person.
American of Danish origin, Poul Anderson was definitely one of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy, of course one of the most loved. Since the late 40's to today has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, all of excellent quality. A scroll with the memory can not remember a title that has disappointed me. This is a good thing, because over time many other SF writers, including Poul Anderson's most popular, have not been able to avoid becoming sterile followers themselves. Not Poul. The passage of time has failed to diminish the quality of his work: its literature over the years has matured and his ability to extrapolation has been shown to know how to keep pace with the times. And always keeping the style and personality that made him unique. Poul has never "sold out". You can not say the same, unfortunately, many other "sacred cows" of science fiction.
I read the cycles of the League Polesotecnica Flandry Dominic and I do not know how often: funny and sparkling surface, forlorn and longing within. But all of Anderson's novels were as follows: solid and deep, rich with meaning, with many levels of interpretation, perfectly able to withstand repeated readings. It is impossible to list them all, and no one is quite obvious that they can be discarded without regret. The galleries of time , 1000 Quotient, They destroyed the Earth , Nomads infinity, The Amazons, The people of wind , Time will , The Vagabond spaces , time of the fire, Road to Atlantis , Midsummer Storm, Operation Chaos , Guardians of time , Knight of ghosts and shadows , World hot, Myrkheim , Chronicles League Polesotecnica , Orion will rise again ...
re-evaluates them I wanted to pay homage Tau Zero (1970), perfect example of how Poul Anderson managed from premises in order to develop scientifically impeccable textures, daring depths. And here's the Leonore Christine, a starship's perfectly possible, of what today we usually see on television documentaries. Equipped with a Bussard collector, collecting in the course of the voyage of hydrogen particles in space and use as reaction mass, speeding up to a good percentage of the speed of light. But the genius of Poul is to start with this assumption and drag down to its most extreme consequences. Why, for a breakdown, Leonore Christine can not help but speed up even more, bringing the its speed to values \u200b\u200bcloser to c . So, what should be a trip to a nearby star, turns into a ride through intergalactic distances, and as time and space expand exponentially, the characters are drawn (and with them the reader) into unimaginable depths. The vision of reality was that Anderson had essentially the same as that could have a physicist or a cosmologist, but most contain the flash of poetry. In the desolate abyss of matter that is the universe, it is for human eyes could see the spark of transcendence.
But Anderson could get good results in short fiction. You can not not to mention stories like Air and Queen of the Night , where men and ships blend beautifully with the mists of an enchanted land, and where research by the son of a woman kidnapped by fairies echoes the themes of an old ballad Ages. Or Epilogue (1962), a description of the distant future Earth transformed into a forest of glittering metal, where hovering robots have become man's inheritance. Or the yearning of the flesh Communion, perhaps the finest anthropological science fiction story ever written, the revenge of a woman for the murder of her husband who stops in front of the understanding of a people condemned to cannibalism to survive.
And I could go on and on, recalling story after story, novel after novel in a series of plots and unforgettable characters. The stories of Anderson, for one reason or another, all deserve to be remembered, even when it is (at least apparently) of the novels of pure escapism. His stories are less successful a goal unattainable for many other authors!
Why Poul Anderson's books are fascinating mixture of science, technology, poetry, philosophy, adventure, love and passion, and the style is more lyrical and vibrant. If Anderson was often toghether to the masters of hard science fiction like Isaac Asimov or Arthur Clarke, however, had more love for detail and the stretch of a scenic Jack Vance. I have never seen the accuracy of scientific data to merge instances humanities as in Poul. The worlds emerged from its pages tangible and perfect: the astronomical parameters to movement of the leaves, the composition of the perfume of flowers, Anderson delighted in presenting us the details, colors, aromas and nuances that helped to create panoramas extraordinarily vivid and real. When asked what the "secret" of his prose, Poul replied with his usual humility, who used to make calls in any description of at least three sensory perceptions. But this was only the technical part. The truth is that Poul knew how to melt the substrate science with a genuine lyrical inspiration. In the short essay A world called Cleopatra , Poul explains in detail to aspiring fiction writers how to build a world: the orbital parameters, physical details, gravity, atmospheric composition. But all this he joined a unique ability to integrate all the physical data and transform them into beautiful landscapes and scenery, and this was a gift that could not be taught. In addition
Poul Anderson had a rare ability to portray the feelings and the depths of the human soul.
heroes with the glittering uniform of the Navy Terrestrial lie beneath their garish facade psychologies very human. Dominic Flandry is not only the brave secret agent who moves to the borders of the empire to oppose the plans of severe Merseiani, but also a man torn between the demands of duty and their passions. And while the ship Tau Zero flies through time and space ever wider, its occupants are analyzed in all their meanness and pettiness. But the examination, but rather than diminish, make them stand out powerfully in their humanity against the backdrop of a huge universe and inconceivable.
Unlike many other science fiction writers, for better or worse that were copied with each other, Anderson drew on the great literature, epic, myth, of which was a great lover. Who asked him one day what was the fiction that he preferred, he replied:
I wish there were more science fiction to technological level of Hal Clement and Gregory Benford, simply because I like it. However, there are many other things to read than fiction. Good God, after all I have not read all the works of Aristotle!
was above this shared passion for mythology to make it my favorite author. It had been pointed out, citing those ideas that seemed most obvious, and the response of Poul had filled me with pride:
today is not very common for a writer, find someone who loves and understands his work, and therefore such a meeting is always welcome.
Poul Anderson was in fact imbued with the legends of his native country, Denmark. In his novels, under the guise of spaceships and aliens, you could see Viking ships and frozen elves. Anderson is disguised as science fiction writer, but he thought in terms eddici. He describes himself, with apparent modesty, "an old-fashioned storytelling." In reality it was a true bard.
As you know, a small portion of its production was fantasy. We suspect that if the market had allowed him, Poul would have written more novels than fantasy fiction. Unlike many other fantasy authors, Poul Anderson did not just plagiarized Tolkien, but go back directly to Scandinavian sagas and myths. His sword broken (1954), written at the same time Lord of the Rings , is a masterpiece in no uncertain terms: a network of powerful Norse mythology and Elizabethan drama, with an open Jungian symbolism. The next Three hearts and three lions (1961), which is also a cornerstone of modern fantasy novel, is diametrically opposed to the first: bubbly, sweet, charming, made me get acquainted with what has become my favorite hero Charlemagne, Holger Danske, or Ogier the Dane. Later I found myself, along with two crazy friends, exploring the dungeons of Kronborg Castle, in Helsingborg, in search of the statue of the hero. Now the picture of Danish is framed on a wall of my study.
But if fantasy novels in the game "mythological" Poul was discovered in the science fiction he acted in a more subtle. How many unsuspecting readers are immersed in five hundred pages convinced Orion will rise again to read an epic post-atomic, when they were reading an ingenious rewriting of ' Edda of Snorri? All the characters in the novel have a precise counterpart of the Nordic gods: their stories match point by point with those of Norse myth, and how they meet and clash, love and kill themselves, is the precise elaboration of the actions that lead to the gods of Asgard Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods. Of all the characters in the novel, only the bard Pliko seems aware of what is happening. It has the same function as the Fool of King Lear . At one point Pliko makes a speech and concludes sadly: "We are turning into archetypes." It was the literary program of Poul Anderson: Pliko was just a mask behind which the author himself was the metaletteratura, speaking of his work.
And how many novels and short stories Poul did the same game, blending science fiction mythology, the medieval to the future? Air and Queen of the Night and, later, the sons of newt (reprinted with the horrible title The last song of the sirens ), are the reworkings of two medieval Danish ballads. Knight of ghosts and shadows cites the Song of Igor's Campaign '. Orpheus is a second version of the famous symbolist Greek legend, as well as the stars Chess is a rewrite of Alice through the mirror. Dominic Flandry has much in common with the Carolingian hero William of Orange and the merchant of the stars Nicholas Van Rijn Falstaff is a version of the Hanseatic League. The war of the gods in the form of novel reworks the story of the hero in Hadingus Gesta Danorum Sassone Grammatico (but with a definite interpretation duméziliana). The Saga of Rolf Kraki draws on Saxon, built for the occasion with other Norse materials to create a unified story. Midsummer Tempest mixes with ease to the theme of Shakespeare ucronie. Star of the Sea (splendido!) rewrites in the form of a story Germany Tacitus, giving voice to one of the most mysterious characters of antiquity: Veled, the priestess who tried to unite the Germanic tribes against the Romans.
One could go on much longer!
historical or science fiction, realistic or fantasy that they were, however, the novels of Anderson held the man at the center, in his full humanity made of courage and weakness, greatness and pettiness. The favorite themes of Poul, disguised as genre fiction, were the usual universal themes: love and death, duty and passion, sacrifice and betrayal. Maybe that's what the critics have not never forgiven. The century just ended appreciated above all for existential despair, and many critics must surely have looked a bit 'arrogance of an author who had the courage to deal with people who were heroic, yes, but only as human beings, and otherwise had little in common to the various anti-heroes without qualities that have characterized much of the literature "cultured" of the twentieth century.
Because Anderson's hero is tragic. No half measures. But the kind of tragedy andersoniana goes beyond the traditional one. He noted at the time James Blish:
The tragedy for Anderson not about ordinary things like old age, death of the beloved, assassinations and war. As a physicist, Poul knows that the gradient of entropy is inexorably in one direction and he wastes no time in useless complaints.
entropy, the thermodynamic quantity that measures the disorder of a closed system, not diminish, but increase. This means that the total energy of the universe can not be created or destroyed, but only degraded forms are no longer usable. Inevitable consequence of this law is that the universe becomes more disordered as the entropy increases. There is no way to counter this approach thermodynamic equilibrium: one can only spend effort, resources and energy to reverse it locally and temporarily.
's the point. Civilization is, according to Anderson, the result of work done against the laws of thermodynamics. Chaos is the norm, while the order is the result of a focused effort of men and women. Unfortunately, an effort doomed from the start, because sooner or later entropy will return to take its natural course and then succumb to the man, his works will crumble, empires turn to dust, and where was the civilization will return to barbarism.
At the end of the Hunter God affects every creature and everything has been made by the creatures.
So decreed the ythriani Stella in mining and The people of the wind.
The concept of history and Spengler for Anderson: the rise and development of a social order continues until the pressure is directed outward, where the dynamism of the company ceases and closes by itself, begins its decline. The same Anderson warns in the introduction to The Broken Sword :
Certainly the civilization of the twentieth century is far from the grace of Humanism, but still has a long way to go to touch that fund, which, God forbid, could also become the norm in history.
Dominic Flandry, the hero of perhaps the most typical Anderson, and a secret agent of the decadent empire earth, who rules over a sphere of two hundred light-years. The years in which Flandy lives are those who see the transition between the phase of the principality and one of domination: the empire is losing its legitimacy, the order is turning toward tyranny. Flandry knows that the empire is doomed: one day soon it will collapse and no one can prevent it, and together the empire will fall civilization and barbarism of the Long Night. This awareness is reflected in the character of Flandry in a remarkable leniency towards the pleasures of decay. But under the mask of cynicism, Flandry is an idealist. He did not fight to save the empire but to preserve civilization as long as possible. In the various stories of the cycle, Flandry acts, seduces, betrays and kills, making the worst crimes for the noblest of ideals: delay the inevitable collapse of civilization and away the Darkness Falls. But all he has to deal with his conscience, selling his soul piece by piece.
As you know, Anderson recently wrote a petition with the U.S. to prosecute the war in Vietnam until all the military targets were not achieved. This stance too questionable, but understandable in light of what we said about idealism Anderson. He himself, gentle and reserved person, he never defended the charge (if charged they are) to sympathize with his right hand: all that replied was going to see what was the reality against which contended. In fact, as a good "conservative libertarian" (the definition was his own), Anderson rejected a bit 'all ideologies as such, because they saw in crystallized patterns of thought and incapable of true for this evolution.
In the story The last heroes , Anderson takes us to a village in Ohio since the end of American civilization. Here the quiet life spent in a subsistence economy and the people seem interested only in the little world in which they live. At one point, the serenity of the village is turned upside down by two old fools: Uncle Jim, "Republican", nostalgic of the old America of capitalism and private enterprise, always ready to talk about production and profit, and Miller, the "buddy" from the collectivist and revolutionary ideas. The village is struggling to understand the ideas of the old people, who come into conflict with each other and end up canceling each other out. It is clear that Anderson rejects both ideologies, because models of gangrene and dogmatic ways of living that are no longer applicable in the new world.
Dominic Flandry despises the Empire, tired and decadent, but not for this reason, he ceases to fight to preserve it, because the alternative is the end of civilization. The history of the future of Anderson is a ruthless analysis of the mechanisms that, little by little, jamming the process of evolution of a civilization and the forfeiture sanction. The decline began when the leaders lose office ideal and things continue to inertia, de-legitimized. The ideologies that were once good, over time become sclerotic, and the countries become enlightened in the ancient ideal tyranny.
In some stories, Anderson traces the history of the future of civilization Maurai the first to rise again after a devastating nuclear war. Descendants of the Polynesians, the Maurai create a technology in perfect harmony with the environment, an economy based on recycling of materials and natural resources, and soon bring civilization to the barbaric lands of North America. Anderson, a great lover of ships, delights (and we delight) in describing the sailors maurai cross oceans on their very efficient vessels of wood and bamboo, men and women who work in full equality, with a free and open sexual morality, and there describes the strange trinity which forms the basis of their religion: Tangaroa the creator, the preserver Lesu Kristi, Nan shark teeth from the destroyer. However, over the centuries, trample against the peoples of the earth the way of life that Maurai have come to impose a dogma, in effect preventing any further development.
In a little-known novel, time will come, the main character Jack Havig has the gift of time travel. And moving back and forth, from the most ancient past to the more distant future, is the perfect witness to the relentless operation of the mechanisms of history. The long conversations with an eleventh-century Byzantine merchant or a great philosopher maurai of the distant future, reinforce these concepts. Ideologies that do well in an era can not fit in another, and must have the courage to adapt, to change, to change his skin. So Carel Keajimu analyze their future civilization
Maurai We have become arrogant. Even worse, hypocritical. What was once well we turned into an idol, and so we let the good left rot. With the pretext of preserving cultural diversity we have tried to freeze whole races in ways that were at best bizarre, at worst, dangerous and grotesque anachronisms. With the pretext of preserving the ecology, we tried to inhibit any activity that could pave the way for the stars.
The novel Orion rise is after this stage, and describes the resistance of the peoples of Europe and America against the domination of the world Maurai. At the end of the novel, the protagonist launches an urgent appeal:
Men and women of all nations, all races and conditions, we will leave a long handle? When you finally go and tell your leaders enough? When you go to finally claim the right to run your lives?
The empire is certainly preferable to a long night, but Anderson has never suggested that the ideal of something to cling to the exclusion of the change. In fact, in the end, when things become unbearable, you should gather your courage and move on. The Long Night of wipe out the Earth Empire, but after five thousand years of barbarism will open a new historical cycle: the Commonalty that Anderson touched only in passing in one beautiful story, Mist Stars.
As he added in Carel Keajimu Time will :
Yes, we tend Maurai to an end. Dying is painful. However, our predecessors were wise in their limits, to be coequal to Nan Lesu. One thing that last forever would be unbearable. The death opens a way.
also the star of Orpheus Second, in a different context, announces an important change that will end the old system useless. And when they ask the chaos that would inevitably produced, he replied:
Even that is necessary. We would not be men without the freedom to know the suffering. And freedom is the lighting. So we go beyond ourselves, beyond the Earth and stars, space and time, up to the mystery.
Violence, for Anderson, or the war, if you will, is never fair, and never has the preferable choice, but it may be necessary. In recent Wonder of the world, the hero has the courage to Manse Everard say
know what's obscene in the violence you see in movies and on television these days? The producers know the true meaning. Maybe I'm too stupid, maybe do not have to imagine liver. But every murder is a life, a mind, a world of knowledge and awareness that is blown away, forever.
But after Everard said:
Despite this, I had already killed before, and I probably will again.
the perfect contrast to the many television films in which we happen to attend, with muted indifference, a rain of dead killed, Anderson is able to move us to the fate of the individual soldier. time of the fire is a novel set on a distant planet, ravaged by a terrible drought hordes of barbarians from the north descend, and the legionaries are called to reject them in order to protect civilization. The author is with equal participation point of view and that of defenders of the barbarians. The final battle is described with devastating realism: the head of the barbarian weeping for sons fallen on the field, while the general legionnaires fell pierced by an arrow and the reality merges with his dream of death: the fallen soldiers of both armies get up , come together and march together, singing, to the realm of the dead.
un'epicità Here is desired, clearly Viking-style (the idea of \u200b\u200btraveling to the Valhöll). But Anderson is capable of saying the same things with much less emphasis. In the story The scourge of the owners, it happens that one of the men of Flandry you face off in a hangar knocking down a guard, and without that it is necessary to the plot, in fact, interrupting the narrative for a moment, Anderson describes Flandry launch passing glance to the guy and think how they killed innocent people always suffer. The scene is fast moving. Flandry then resumed the flight and the story continues.
Virtue Anderson and the bravery of the hero to sacrifice for their ideals. The price may be life, but even more, his soul. In the story brother Planet (1959), a spacecraft down on Venus, where a race of beings like dolphins raised a civilization reaching out to the art and contemplation. But Venus also has unusual resources ready to be exploited, and the hero realizes that sooner or later people will come en masse on the young planet and the plundering of its wealth to steal. So does fail shipping killing his comrades, after which bombards the beautiful capital of Venusians to instill in people what kind of man's eternal suspicion. The last words of the protagonist, before committing suicide, are:
Please, God, exist: create a hell for me.
Anderson has never believed in otherworldly reward or punishment: for him the damn hell is ethical, having to face the consciousness of their choices. The end justifies the means but not by relieving them of responsibility taken.
The theme of betrayal is settled in Poul, often accomplished by shared ideals, as in Planet brother, but sometimes unconsciously or lightness, as Sir Rupert who abandons his young Kathrin Storm in midsummer . In the case of Flandry, his many betrayals will have huge repercussions on the future of the empire. In its first undertaking espionage, he foils the plan of Merseiani to destroy the entire space marine land (and incidentally also promising Starkad civilization on the planet), then seducing and betraying a young courtesan, Persis of Io, whose feelings are trampled by Flandry with youthful ease.
His first victory would cost, however, many years later, all his chances of being happy. The son by Persis betrays itself in Knight of ghosts and shadows . Flandry Kossara is duped by the young woman in whom he had pinned its last hopes of a life full and intact. Kossara dies unwitting pawn in a game much bigger than her, and Flandry is forced to kill his son for the salvation of the empire.
In the beautiful The people of the wind, the joint effort of civilization on the planet Avalon to escape annexation by the Empire, takes place simultaneously on the military front, as in that of souls. His characters, human or otherwise, soldiers and scientists, spies imperial women, especially the winged ythriani that rise between the winds of heaven, are intertwined in a choral fresco of extraordinary beauty. This novel is a continuous succession of betrayals, so that at some point the author feels compelled to unite ...
Betrayal, and obviously sacrifices.
The theme of sacrifice is of particular intensity, especially in female characters. In a genre that for many decades has been rather male, Anderson outlined a gallery of unforgettable female characters. Strong women, fair, sweet, that entrusted Poul instances of rebellion and redemption, especially through the ennobling power of suffering or a love capable of charging any burden. Barbro Cullen entering the enchanted realm to recover the child that the fairies have kidnapped ( Queen of the night air and ), the sweet slave Marin twice cheating unconsciously, the man whose love is (Return of the Explorer ), the beautiful and cultured Deirdre, whose love for Sandoval brings the total annulment of his world and then to perpetual exile in the land of her incomprehensible ( Delenda est ) Erissa, the Cretan priestess, whose love affair with Duncan hides the wounds of violence by Theseus and gave her the strength to survive the sack of Knossos ( Road to Atlantis ) Xenia Manasses , the maiden of Byzantium, destined to be overwhelmed by the atrocities of history, but whose astonishment in the face of lost works of Euripides is wonderfully agreeable ( Time will ); Djana the prostitute, whose search for a cosmic mysticism is actually a diabolical plan by which merseiani leverage the wounds of his soul to make her once again to betray the empire (between the stars Checkerboard) Kathrin McCormac, that leaves Flandry, she is in love, to follow her husband in his exile far ( Worlds rebels), and especially Eloise Waggoner, whose sacrifice is to share the agony of his beloved for eternity ( Kyrie ). And all the women he loved and hurt Flandry (Persis, Djana, Kathrin, Kossara ...), that somehow influence their choices and, through him, the course of history. Who said to their ideals we should only fight by force of arms?
I happened once to a conference, speaking of Anderson with some gentlemen of the Tolkien Society. They agreed with me that Anderson had been placed in open criticism of the modern society because they can not pass on the treasures of tradition, but Anderson claimed by a total rejection of science and progress. It sort rather than a discussion on, and someone advised me, not very politely, to reread andarmi Poul. I did, and I still do, and I continue to disagree. Tolkien looked back to a rural society like the bourgeoisie of the countryside early 900, exemplified in his novels from the simple and cheerful Shire of the Hobbits. But Anderson has always looked forward: progress requires the courage to sacrifice themselves and especially the guts to take responsibility.
especially thinking back to the story Pioneers (1972), I discovered by chance in an anthology forgotten. The idea was to bring the stars recorded the minds of a man and a woman so they chose the most promising planets to be colonized. For the ones, Joel and Koren, two scientists are a bit 'on in years, each with its own life and family behind, and are a bit' embarrassed the idea that Their minds will be duplicated for thousands of years to travel between the stars. Echoes, immediately after the homily of a priest, a symbol of a tradition entrenched in its old certainties, that, quoting Dante's Ulysses, thunders against the ' human hubris, that pride because of all that is blasphemous of all the evils and sufferings, and wonders why we should spend millions of dollars in an undertaking of this arrogance, while on Earth millions of people suffer from hunger?
But then, centuries later, we again find Joel and Koren limestone soils of a world light years away: they have young bodies, consider this planet suitable to be colonized, make plans for the future, love with kindness and passion. It could be a beautiful and right end for most of the writers, but Anderson does not give us anything so easy. He wants to tap deeper into the issue that is important to us. So, that's all of a sudden something is wrong. Develops a strange illness, and Joel and Koren discovered an important protein that is absent in the biochemistry of the planet. There is nothing to do, and Joel and Koren know they will die. Despair prevails a hope: the ship will start again, to reach other worlds, and new Joel and Koren fall to colonize. Both born and yet unborn, to infinite worlds, and each time they return to live and to love, suffer and die, without a sacrifice in order that the man will open the way for the stars.
travel through the light-years and centuries, one life after another, one death after another. [...]. Two spaces, two and two on the world, we remain only to remember those who lived and those who died.
existence for Anderson, in the words of Sandra Miesel,
... a scheme without any transcendent goal, a candle in the dark, doomed but beautiful.
The only correct answer, before the inevitable triumph of entropy, is to fight as best as possible and with more courage. You the same attitude of the Nordic gods before the Ragnarök : they know that that day will fall fighting against the giants, and that day the world will end, but can not resist. The only thing they can do is to face their destiny with courage and head held high.
not want to die so quickly that not realizing I want to make sure that that stupid thing lots for every inch of my skin.
Thus saith the Flandry Beast of the stars. But more slowly, at the end of a long conversation about the mechanisms that decree the relentless decline of civilization, Carel Keajimu flatters the thoughtful Havig:
But you, poor wanderer, you have to think beyond the next century. Up to this evening trying to find peace. Look at the stars that advance, sucks the incense, hear the bird that sings, be one with the world.
Poul Anderson remained conscious and lucid until the end, listening to the messages that his fellow writers, his admirers and thousands of readers sent him through the network. He's dead, so far as knowing appreciated and loved.
Ten years ago I finished this article with a pathetic "Farewell, Poul. Today I can afford to be more lenient:
in Goodbye your books, Poul ... or at the Tavern of the Phoenix.
And thanks!
Poul Anderson's photography is by Roberto Quaglia (1999).
