It is not enough for [Anderson] to merely state the problem of mortal man in a finite universe. His concern lies with the effects of the problem: how should mortal man in a finite universe act? Rejecting passivity, he asserts that free action is both possible and necessary…. Mortals must resist entropy in both its guises, tyrannical stasis or anarchic chaos. The fight is all the more valiant for its utter hopelessness. (p. 6)

[There] is a basic attitude, I suppose, which underlies my writing—namely, that this is a wonderful universe in which to live, that it's great to be alive, and that all it takes is the willingness to give ourselves a chance to experience what life has to offer. If I preach at all, it's probably in the direction of individual liberty, which is a theme that looms large in my work…. [But my main job is to entertain the reader and] to hold his interest as best I can. I do this, prima...

For the science-fiction or fantasy writer, the rules governing the genre serve as a reminder of the importance of discipline; without discipline, imaginative literature tends toward a hermetic expression more akin to madness than to art. And finally, without labels like science fiction and fantasy, we could not have the salutary experience of seeing our expectations confounded by writers who know that, in the long run, it is the business of the imagination to break all rules. Poul Anderson's "...

Poul Anderson's future [in The Enemy Stars] bears no resemblance to anything. This could be a less than admirable example of his work, for he is renowned among sci-fi addicts. Although written with basic simplicity I found it very hard to understand. One is blinded by pseudo-science, then treated to rather eager statements about Man and God and the Universe. Essentially it is the old, old story of four contrasting men trapped together in an unpromising situation…. Danger lurks, escape is essen...

Poul Anderson's beefy, beery, big-brained van Rijn, merchant adventurer extraordinary, stars in three long novelettes [in Trader to the Stars]—good ones—and proves for all time that when science fiction's sachem of swashbuckle sets out to write a story, he thinks first. He thinks clear across the spectrum … on micro- and macro-cosmic terms. Add many a bloody fight and flight, a clear and sometimes edged view of human societies and motivations, and you have what's gi...

"It was a brutal age," says Anderson defensively in his afterword about the 9th-century setting [of his novel The Demon of Scattery]. Then why write about it except as protest … or nightmare warning …? Demon does it for fun. There is much casual brutality and stiffly antiquarian detail, and one good sea-serpent which should have devoured the entire project, especially whoever thought up charging readers five times what the wordage would cost elsewhere. Caveat emptor. ...