Most Popular Books by Poul Anderson

This is a Cock Robin Mystery introducing Trygve Yamamura--judo expert, Samurai sword connoisseur and private detective--triple threat to San Francisco crime. These combined skills enable him to keep his own head attached while finding out who removed someone else's with honorable Japaneses weapon. This is a good old-fashioned detective story, a genuine whodunit, with a good deal of suspense thrown in. (Goodreads)

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero is an outstanding work of science fiction, in part because it combines two qualities that are often at odds in this genre: an interest in the emotional lives of its characters and a fascination with all things technological and scientific. In Tau Zero these components are not merely fused; they work together with a remarkable synergy that makes the novel much more than just a deep space adventure story. The novel centers on a ten-year interstellar voyage aboard the spaceship Leonora Christine, and it opens with members of the crew preparing for their departure from earth. It is an especially moving departure because they know that while they are aboard the ship and traveling close to the speed of light, time will be passing much more quickly back home. As a result, by the time they return everyone they know will have long since died. From practically the very first page, therefore, Tau Zero sets the scientific realities of space travel in dramatic tension with the no-less-real emotional and psychological states of the travelers. This is a dynamic Anderson explores with great success over the course of the novel as fifty crewmembers settle in for the long journey together. They are a highly-trained team of scientists and researchers, but they are also a community of individuals, each trying to make a life for him or herself in space. This is the background within which the action of the novel takes place. Anderson carefully depicts the network of relationships linking these people before the real plot begins to unfold. The voyage soon takes an unexpected and disastrous turn for the worse. The ship passes through a small, uncharted, cloudlike nebula that makes it impossible for the crew to decelerate the ship. The only hope, in fact, is for the ship to speed up.

A time traveler stumbles upon a horrific plot to alter the future in this adventure from "one of science fiction's most revered writers" ( USA Today). Born with a strange genetic mutation, Jack Havig can travel backward and forward in time at will. His unique gift enables him to visit ancient Rome, the Byzantine Empire, and the Wild West. He's even seen the far future, when the ecology-minded Maurai Federation dominates a world nearly obliterated by nuclear war. Jack undertakes these voyages with one objective in mind: to find others who share his remarkable abilities. In the shadow of the Crucifixion, Jack finally achieves his goal. But a terrible darkness clouds his admission into the secretive, time-traveling organization called Eyrie when the group's true intentions become clear. For Eyrie's plans include an unthinkable genocide designed to irrevocably alter the destiny of humankind—and Jack is the only one who can stop it. But he won't be able to do it alone. The prolific and remarkable Poul Anderson dazzles once again with a humanistic science fiction adventure that races across the boundaries of time. Lightning-paced and marvelously inventive, There Will Be Time is an unforgettable journey through the ages from one of the greats of twentieth-century science fiction. This ebook includes the bonus stories "Progress" and "Windmill."

From the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author: "A panoramic story of what happens to a world gone super intelligent" ( Astounding Science Fiction). With "wonderfully logical detail . . . exciting storytelling and moving characterization" (Anthony Boucher), science fiction master Poul Anderson explores what happens when the next stage of evolution is thrust upon humanity and animals. As Earth passes out of a magnetic field that has suppressed intelligence for eons, the mental capacity for all mammals increases exponentially, radically changing the structures of society. A mentally impaired farm worker finds himself capable of more delicate and intelligent thoughts than he ever dreamed. A young boy on holiday manages to discern the foundations of calculus before breakfast. Animals that were seen as livestock and pets can now communicate clearly with their owners and one another. And an already brilliant physics researcher now uses his boundless intellect to bring humankind to the stars—even as his wife plunges into an existential crisis. For all of them, the world will never be the same . . .

On a post-nuclear Earth, visionaries who dream of reaching for the stars attempt to revive the forbidden technology that destroyed their world. "One of science fiction's most influential and prolific writers." — The Daily Telegraph Centuries ago, humankind was nearly destroyed in a nuclear apocalypse. Many generations have passed since that terrible time, and the remnants of civilization have re-formed into separate, vastly different societies. The dominant culture of a widely diminished Earth, the ecologically sensitive Maurai hold fast to their belief that "non-green" science is an unacceptable evil. But the reborn dream of space flight harbored by a forward-thinking few could herald the revival of the nuclear technology that once ravaged the planet and its people—and the powerful Maurai Federation will take every step necessary, no matter how drastic, to prevent doomsday from dawning again. An enthralling work of speculative fiction from a winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards, Orion Shall Rise is a feat of world-building and a sobering view of tomorrow by one of the twentieth century's most revered science fiction masters. Poul Anderson's monumental tale combines science, anthropology, philosophy, and global politics with breathtaking action and adventure, offering an ingeniously unique and provocative vision of humankind's all-too-possible destiny. This ebook includes the bonus story "The Sky People." Praise for Poul Anderson "Anderson has produced more milestones in contemporary science fiction and fantasy than any one man is entitled to." —Stephen Donaldson "Anderson, far more than many newer science fiction writers, takes the trouble to envision a genuinely strange, complex future for mankind." — The Washington Post

In a war waged against Black Magic, the fact that Steve is a werewolf and his wife is a highly skilled witch is not unusual. But their adventures prove very unusual, even for their world, when they are given the task of neutralizing an enemy's ultimate weapon--the world's most powerful demon.

A fascinating 'what if novel, Brainwave is an exploration into the ways human society is organized and the assumptions that are made about how life is valued. It is also a novel about equality and what happens when the hierarchical structures by which we arrange our daily lives disappear.

When the Baburites, an alien race, claim the phenomenally metal-rich core of the blasted planet, Mirkheim, a union of interplanetary governments joins with the Terran empire's Polesotechnic League in clamoring for war against the interlopers.

A young man from the twentieth century is recruited to fight in a war that rages throughout time in this classic science fiction adventure from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master. College student, ex-marine, and martial artist Malcolm Lockridge is in prison awaiting his trial for murder when he receives an unexpected visit from an extraordinarily beautiful woman named Storm. Claiming to be a representative of the Wardens, a political faction from two thousand years in the future, Storm offers the astonished young man a proposition: freedom in return for his assistance in recovering an unspecified lost treasure. But it is not long before Malcolm realizes that, in truth, he's been recruited as a soldier in the Wardens' ongoing war against their rivals, the Rangers. And this war is different from any that has ever been fought, because the battlefield is not a place but time itself. Traveling backward and forward through corridors connecting historical epochs separated by thousands of years, Malcolm is soon embroiled in a furious conflict between the forces of good and minions of evil. But the deeper he is pulled into this devastating time war, the clearer Malcolm's ultimate role in humankind's destiny becomes, causing the troubled young soldier from the twentieth century to question whether he's been chosen to fight on the side of good or evil . . . and if such a distinction even exists.

In this classic science fiction adventure, a fiery doomsday threatens an alien world—and the human colonists who have made it their home. Firetime is coming to Ishtar. This once-in-a-millennium event occurs when one of the planet's three suns encroaches on Ishtar's surface, to disastrous effect. The nightmare rapidly approaching, barbaric tribes have declared war on their more civilized brethren in hopes of avoiding a natural extermination. Standing between the opposing forces are the colonists who settled on Ishtar after abandoning their home planet, Earth. But in this time of chaos and destruction, there is little the humans can do to aid their Ishtarian allies in the desperate fight for survival. The Terran powers, engaged in their own terrible conflict with a hostile alien race, will offer no help to the endangered planet. With a fiery doomsday on the way, the humans can do nothing but watch and wait—and pray for a miracle that will forestall the inevitable apocalypse. A stunning work of speculative invention from one of the all-time masters of science fiction and fantasy, Poul Anderson's classic Fire Time is a richly imagined tale of war, alien contact, and environmental catastrophe that brilliantly questions the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, and heroism and villainy.

Nebula and World Fantasy Award Finalist: A fantastic tale of intrigue, love, war, magic, and swashbuckling adventure set in an alternate universe where fairies mingle freely with Englishmen and all of Shakespeare's fictional characters are real Welcome to an alternate civil-war-torn seventeenth-century England—a world where Hamlet once brooded and Othello jealously raged. Here faeries and sprites gambol in English woods, railroads race across the landscape while manned balloons float above the countryside, and the most respected historian of all is one William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. The year is 1644, and the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. When Rupert, nephew of King Charles I, is taken captive by Cromwell's troops and imprisoned in a Puritan home, he is immediately smitten with the beautiful Jennifer Alayne, his captor's niece. Escaping with the help of his newfound beloved and the loyal trooper Will Fairweather, Rupert leads Jennifer deep into the forest, where the faerie folk who dwell there have a vested interest in the outcome of the great and bloody conflict. Though the lovers must soon part—with the prince undertaking a dangerous mission for his magical benefactors that could turn the tide of war—Rupert and his lady love will be forever joined by the rings presented to them by King Oberon and Queen Titania. And despite the strange, twisting pathways and turbulent seas they are destined to encounter, they will always be able to find each other again . . . as long as their love remains true. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award and winner of the Mythopoeic Award, Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest is a titanic achievement—a delightful alternate-history fantasy that brings the fictional worlds of Shakespeare's plays to breathtaking life with style, wit, and unparalleled imagination.

The sword Tyrfing has been broken to prevent it striking at the roots of Yggdrasil, the great tree that binds earth, heaven and hell together...but now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves, who are heavily involved in their war against the trolls and only Scafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade the mighty ice-giant, Bolverk, to make the sword Thor broke whole again.But things are never easy and along the way Scafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling, who took his place in the world of men.A superb dark fantasy of the highest and most Norse order, THE BROKEN SWORD is a fantasy masterpiece.

Now in trade paperback, the landmark epic by one of the greatest SF writers of the century

Werewolf Steve Matuchek and witch Ginny Graylock defend America in this fantasy duology from the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author. Operation Chaos: In a world where magic is real, werewolf Steve Matuchek and powerful witch Virginia Graylock are paired together in the war to stop the invading Caliphate forces from taking over America. Their mission: stop the enemy from unleashing their superweapon—a genie in a bottle. And that is only the beginning of an adventure that will take them quite literally to Hell and back . . . " Operation Chaos was one of the truly fine fantasies of the 1970s, a fantasy whose magic was so splendidly engineered that you felt it was as logical—and as likely—as our real technology." —Harry Turtledove "A great read, from a master writer at the top of his game." —GirlsWithGuns.org Operation Luna: Now married with three rambunctious children, Steve and Ginny once again find themselves fighting for their country as they try to stop a plot to sabotage America's first manned mission to the moon (in an alternate history timeline, that is). But they will need help from a loyal cadre of magical allies if they hope to avert a catastrophe . . . "An enjoyable tale by a veteran writer who knows exactly what he's doing." — Publishers Weekly

Having utilized the "gate" to colonize the Phoebus star system, man-kind now embarks on a desperate search for the great alien race known as The Others.