Poul Anderson. (Letters).

SIR: Hal Colebatch's piece on Poul Anderson (June 2001) is excellent as far as it goes, but it doesn't do Anderson full justice. Colebatch is sound on Anderson's narrative power, versatility, sense of humour, romantic spirit and devotion to civilised values. But he gives short weight on Anderson's standing as a master of the scientific sort of science fiction.

Anderson has said he doesn't pretend to bat in Hal Clement's league. Maybe he's a bit too modest there. Anyhow, he certainly plays the same game by the same rules. Next to Clement, he's the field's finest designer of weird but plausible alien races and alien worlds.

For instance, it's not enough to say Tau Zero "turns on the theory of relativity". It's a masterly big-concept, biggest-concept, hard science fiction tale, one of the landmarks in the field. Anderson takes a runaway starship and its crew from some time in the medium-term future all the way through to the end of time and space in this universe, the universe's contraction and collapse, and then on past the next Big Bang to the beginning of the next universe.

He's as sound on astronomy as he is on physics. In his 1988 short novel Iron he sets most of the action in the carefully realised solar system of an ancient red dwarf star. He's even worked in an interesting nod to Bode's Law, one of astronomy's ...