Where to Start with the Fantasy Fiction of Poul Anderson by Bill Ward Poul Anderson (1926-2001) is one of those authors whose prolific output – over one hundred novels and at least as many short stories – is as impressive as it is potentially intimidating. A great many of our contemporary authors tend to stick with one kind of story or book for branding purposes, often adopting new pseudonyms if they dare deviate from the brand, but this was most definitely not the case for the old school genre giants of the mid-twentieth century. For this group, science fiction and fantasy were all under one very big umbrella, specialist short fiction markets were still a viable way to achieve name recognition with readers, and audiences generally seemed to understand that writers weren’t locked into writing one sort of thing. And Anderson most definitely did not limit himself to any one sort of thing. From hard science fiction to space opera, Norse-inflected historical fantasy to straight sword-and-sorcery, time travel, alternate history, mystery, and genre-crunching combinations perhaps best labeled as ‘all of the above,’ Anderson was a writer of many interests, and for many markets. After a lifetime spent creating his numerous series and standalone novels, Anderson was justly crowned one of science fiction’s Grand Masters, winning just about every other genre award to boot. None of this, though, makes his body of work any easier to approach from the outside. Though Anderson was primarily a writer of science fiction, he...