Poul Anderson

In many stories, Anderson commented on society and politics. Whatever other vicissitudes his views went through, he firmly retained his belief in the direct and inextricable connection between human liberty and expansion into space, for which reason he strongly cried out against any idea of space exploration being "a waste of money" or "unnecessary luxury".

The connection between space flight and freedom is clearly (as is stated explicitly in some of the stories) an extension of the 19th-century American concept of the Frontier, where malcontents can advance further and claim some new land, and pioneers either bring life to barren asteroids (as in Tales of the Flying Mountains) or settle on Earth-like planets teeming with life, but not intelligent forms (such as New Europe in Star Fox).

As he repeatedly expressed in his nonfiction essays, Anderson firmly held that going into space was not an unnecessary luxury but an existential need, and that abandoning space would doom humanity to "a society of brigands ruling over peasants."

That is graphically expressed in the chilling short story "Welcome". In it, humanity has abandoned space and is left with an overcrowded Earth where a small elite not only treats all the rest as chattel slaves, but also regularly practices cannibalism, their chefs preparing "roast suckling coolie" for their banquets.

Conversely, in the bleak Orwellian world of "The High Ones" where the Soviets have won the Third World War and gained control of the whole of Earth, the dissidents still have some hope, precisely because space flight has not been abandoned. By the end of the story, rebels have established themselves at another stellar system—where their descendants, the reader is told, would eventually build a liberating fleet and set out back to Earth.

While horrified by the prospect of the Soviets winning complete rule over the Earth, Anderson was not enthusiastic about having Americans in that role either. Several stories and books describing the aftermath of a total US victory in another world war, such as "Sam Hall" and its loose sequel "Three Worlds to Conquer" as well as "Shield", are scarcely less bleak than the above-mentioned depictions of a Soviet victory. Like Heinlein in "Solution Unsatisfactory", Anderson assumed that the imposition of US military rule over the rest of the world would necessarily entail the destruction of the USA's democracy and the imposition of a harsh tyrannical rule over its own citizens.

Both Anderson's depiction of a Soviet-dominated world and that of a US-dominated one mention a rebellion breaking out in Brazil in the early 21st century, which is in both cases brutally put down by the dominant world power—the Brazilian rebels being characterized as "counter-revolutionaries" in the one case and as "communists" in the other.

In the early years of the Cold War—when he had been, as described by his later, more conservative self, a "flaming liberal"—Anderson pinned his hopes on the United Nations developing into a true world government. This is especially manifest in "Un-man", a future thriller where the 'Good Guys' are agents of the UN Secretary General working to establish a world government while the 'Bad Guys' are nationalists (especially American nationalists) who seek to preserve their respective nations' sovereignty at all costs. (The title has a double meaning: the hero is literally an UN man and has superhuman abilities which make his enemies fear him as an "un-man").

Anderson and his wife were among those who in 1968 signed a pro-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction.[13] By then, Anderson had repudiated world government; a half-humorous remnant is the beginning of Tau Zero: a future in which the nations of the world entrusted Sweden with overseeing disarmament and found themselves living under the rule of the Swedish Empire. In The Star Fox, he unfavorably depicts a future peace group called "World Militants for Peace". A more explicit expression of the same appears in the later The Shield of Time where a time-traveling young American woman from the 1990s pays a brief visit to a university campus of the 1960s and is not enthusiastic about what she sees there.

Anderson often returned to right-libertarianism and to the business leader as hero, most notably his character Nicholas van Rijn. Van Rijn is different from the archetype of a modern type of business executive, being more reflective of a Dutch Golden Age merchant of the 17th century. If he spends any time in boardrooms or plotting corporate takeovers, the reader remains ignorant of it since nearly all his appearances are in the wilds of a space frontier.

Beginning in the 1970s, Anderson's historically grounded works were influenced by the theories of the historian John K. Hord, who argued that all empires follow the same broad cyclical pattern, into which the Terran Empire of the Dominic Flandry spy stories fit neatly.

The writer Sandra Miesel (1978) has argued that Anderson's overarching theme is the struggle against entropy and the heat death of the universe, a condition of perfect uniformity in which nothing can happen.

In his numerous books and stories depicting conflict in science fiction or fantasy settings, Anderson takes trouble to make both sides' points of view comprehensible. Even if the author's point of view is obvious, the antagonists are usually depicted not as villains but as honorable on their own terms. The reader is given access to antagonists' thoughts and feelings, and they often have a tragic dignity in defeat. Typical examples are The Winter of the World and The People of the Wind.

A common theme in Anderson's works, with obvious origins in the Northern European legends, is that doing the "right" (wisest) thing often involves performing actions that at face value seem dishonorable, illegal, destructive, or downright evil. The Man who Counts, Nicholas van Rijn is "The Man" because he is prepared to be tyrannical and callously manipulative so that he and his companions can survive. In "High Treason", the protagonist disobeys orders and betrays his subordinates to prevent a war crime that would bring severe retribution upon humanity. In A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Dominic Flandry first (effectively) lobotomizes his own son and then bombards the home planet of the Chereionite race to do his duty and prop up the Terran Empire. Such actions affect their characters in different ways, and dealing with the repercussions of having done the "right" (but unpleasant) thing is often the major focus of his short stories. The general lesson seems to be that guilt is the penalty for action.

In The Star Fox, a relationship of grudging respect is built up between the hero, space privateer Gunnar Heim, and his enemy Cynbe, an exceptionally gifted Alerione trained from a young age to understand his species' human enemies to the point of being alienated from his own kind. In the final scene, Cynbe challenges Heim to a space battle which only one of them would survive. Heim accepts, whereupon Cynbe says, "I thank you, my brother."

Anderson set much of his work in the past, often with the addition of magic or in alternate or future worlds that resemble past eras. A specialty was his ancestral Scandinavia, as in his novel versions of the legends of Hrólf Kraki (Hrolf Kraki's Saga) and Haddingus (The War of the Gods). Frequently he presented such worlds as superior to the dull, over-civilized present. Notable depictions of this superiority are the prehistoric world of The Long Remembering, the quasi-medieval society of "No Truce with Kings", and the untamed Jupiter of "Call Me Joe" and Three Worlds to Conquer. He handled the lure and power of atavism satirically in Pact, critically in "The Queen of Air and Darkness" and The Night Face, and tragically in "Goat Song".

His 1965 novel The Corridors of Time alternates between the European Stone Age and a repressive future. In this vision of tomorrow, almost everyone is either an agricultural serf or an industrial slave, but the rulers genuinely believe they are creating a better world. Set largely in Denmark, it treats the Neolithic society with knowledge and respect but does not hide its faults. The protagonist, having access to literally all periods of the past and future, finally decides to settle down in that era and finds a happy and satisfying life.

In many stories, a representative of a technologically advanced society underestimates "primitives" and pays a high price for it. In The High Crusade, aliens who land in medieval England in the expectation of an easy conquest find that they are not immune to swords and arrows. In "The Only Game in Town", a Mongol warrior, while not knowing that the two "magicians" he meets are time travelers from the future, correctly guesses their intentions—and captures them with the help of the "magic" flashlight they had given him in an attempt to impress him. In another time-travel tale, The Shield of Time, a "time policeman" from the 20th century, equipped with information and technologies from much further in the future, is outwitted by a medieval knight and barely escapes with his life. Yet another story, "The Man Who Came Early", features a 20th-century US Army soldier stationed in Iceland who is transported to the 10th century. Although he is full of ideas, his lack of practical knowledge of how to implement them and his total unfamiliarity with the technology and customs of the period leads to his downfall.

Anderson wrote the short essay "Uncleftish Beholding", an introduction to atomic theory, using only Germanic-rooted words. Fitting his love for olden years, that kind of learned writing has been named Ander-Saxon after him.

The story told in The Shield of Time is also an example of a tragic conflict, another common theme in Anderson's writing. The knight tries to do his best in terms of his own society and time, but his actions might bring about a horrible 20th century (even more horrible than that actually occurred). Therefore, the Time Patrol protagonists, who like the young knight and wish him well (the female protagonist comes close to falling in love with him), have no choice but to fight and ultimately kill him.

In The Sorrow of Odin the Goth, a time-travelling anthropologist is assigned to study the culture of an ancient Gothic tribe by regular visits every few decades. Gradually, he is drawn into close involvement and feels protective towards the Goths (many of them are his own descendants because of a brief and poignant liaison with a Gothic girl who dies in childbirth). The Goths identify him as the god Odin/Wodan. He finds that he must cruelly betray his beloved Goths since a ballad says that Odin did so; failure to fulfill his prescribed role might change history and bring the whole of the actual 20th century crashing down. In the final scene, he cries out in anguish: "Not even the gods can defy the Norns!", giving a new twist to that central aspect of the Norse religion.

In "The Pirate", the hero is duty-bound to deny a band of people from societies blighted by poverty the chance for a new start on a new planet since their settling the planet would eradicate the remnants of the artistic and articulate beings who lived there earlier. A similar theme but with much higher stakes appears in "Sister Planet": although terraforming Venus would provide new hope to starving people on the overcrowded Earth, it would exterminate Venus's just-discovered intelligent race, and the hero can avert that genocide only by murdering his best friends.

In "Delenda Est" the stakes are the highest imaginable. Time-travelling outlaws have created a new 20th century that is "not better or worse, just completely different". The hero can fight the outlaws and restore his (and our) familiar history but only at the price of totally destroying the vast world that has taken its place. "Risking your neck in order to negate a world full of people like yourself" is how the hero describes what he eventually undertakes.