"Anderson, Poul - Broken Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

THE BROKEN SWORD

Poul Anderson



[07 apr 2002-scanned by majecki]

[11 apr 2002-proofed by wizwav]



A CHANGELING IN ELFLAND

When Orm of Jutland heard the witch prophesy that his firstborn son would be reared in the Halfworld of the Elves, he did not believe there was truth in the curse. But Imric, the cold, clever, heartless elf-earl, for cryptic reasons of his own saw to it that the curse came true. Fathering a son on a female troll held captive in his dungeons, Imric exchanged the nonhuman babe for the true son of Orm the Jutlander.

Thus, while Valgard the Changeling was raised as Orm's son in the Lands of Men, the true son of the Jutlander, Skafloc, was reared to manhood in the twilight fields and whispering woods of timeless and shadowy Faerie ...

The author of this extraordinarily imaginative fantasy novel, Poul Anderson, is a tall, curly-headed, owlishly bespectacled and very youthful-looking man in his middle forties.

Anderson was born in 1926 in Bristol, Pennsylvania, of Danish parentage, which explains his unusual first name. Poul himself pronounces it to sound about halfway between "pole" and "powl"-but I have never met anyone except Poul himself who can quite pronounce it.

His father was an engineer, and as engineers go wherever they are needed, Poul was raised literally all over the place: in Bristol first, then in Port Arthur, Texas, as well as in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen, Denmark, and on a farm in Minnesota. He now lives in Orinda, California, with his wife, Karen and their teenage daughter, Astrid.

Anderson began writing while he was a student at the University of Minnesota, and he sold his first stories while still an undergraduate. This early success may have suggested that instead of becoming a scientist he was actually meant to be one of those very rare people, a born writer. Anyway, as Poul himself tells the story:

"At the University of Minnesota, I majored in physics, graduating with honors in 1948. But apart from a little assisting here and there, I have not worked in the field. What happened was that writing, which had been a hobby for a long time, began to pay off while I was in college with some sales to Astounding Science Fiction. I decided to take a year off, living by the typewriter ... "

That "year off" has been going on now for twenty-two years; for, although he returned to college to follow up his B.S. in physics with some graduate work in mathematics and philosophy, Poul Anderson has been a writer first, last, and (let's hope) always.

His first book, an admirable science fiction novel titled Brain Wave, was published by Ballantine Books in May, 1954. It's a measure of the high esteem his friends in the science fiction world hold for Poul Anderson and his books that only five years after this first book was published, Anderson was hailed as Guest of Honour at the fifth World Science Fiction Convention, held at Detroit in 1959.

To a very large degree, most of Andersen's work has been in science fiction. In the last sixteen years he has published something like thirty-eight books in the field, by my count. He has won recognition for his swashbuckling and imaginative novels-such as The High Crusade (favourably reviewed for the Book-of-the-Month Club)-and for his intelligent and carefully-plotted short stories, three of which have won him Hugo Awards as the best story of the year.

But Anderson refuses to be typed as "a science fiction writer." He has turned to other fields and won considerable respect in them. In historical fiction, an area rather neglected in recent years, Anderson has published two adventure novels-The Golden Slave and Rogue Sword-and has written a third, a vast epic of heroic action in the age of the Vikings, which has yet to find a publisher.

He has also written children's books (such as The Fox, the Dog, and the Griffin, retold from an old Danish fairy tale), and book-length nonfiction (for example, Is There Life on Other Worlds?). He is also the author of three mystery novels: Murder in Black Letter, Murder Bound, and Perish by the Sword, which won him Macmillan's first annual Cock Robin Award in 1959,

But, even taking all his versatility into account, I believe it honestly could be said that Poul Anderson's real love is the romantic adventure fantasy laid in the ancient world. He is one of the early members of the Hyborian Legion, a loosely organized but devout club of enthusiasts of the famous Conan stories of the late Robert E. Howard; Anderson's translations of saga verse from the Old Norse have appeared in the Legion's fascinating magazine, Amra, almost from its founding.

He also belongs to one of the smallest and most exclusive writer's clubs on earth today-S.A.G.A., otherwise known as The Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, Ltd.-whose membership is strictly limited to the authors of the Sword and Sorcery genre of fantasy. (So exclusive is S.A.G.A., by the way, that it has only eight members: Poul Anderson, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, John Jakes, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, and Jack Vance).

Anderson, his wife and daughter also belong to a most unusual organization called The Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., a rather enormous group of people interested in Medievalism who regularly hold tournaments and revels in antique costume. The Society began first on the West Coast, but interest has since spread all across the country. The original group organized "The Kingdom of the West," and has since issued charters to a group of interested co-Medievalists in the New York/New Jersey area (known as "The East Kingdom"); and a new kingdom, called most appropriately "The Middle Kingdom" has since begun functioning in the Midwest, centering around Chicago.

These tournaments, by the way, are serious and very beautiful. Of course, the contestants do not fight with weapons of edged steel, but their wooden weapons are strong, heavy and most carefully made, and can lay the unwary or unskilled flat-and very often do; therefore, those who wish to fight in a Society tourney must sign a waiver of liabilities in case of injury. While Society members may adopt various titles of nobility (within certain limits) knighthood itself must be earned in combat on the field of honour. And in the Kingdom of the West, Poul Anderson is known as Sir Bdla of Eastmarch. Members may also register coats-of-arms with Society heralds: Sir Bela, for instance, bears the arms azure, two suns or in pale, with saltier argent.

Despite his deep and sincere enthusiasm for the genre, Poul Anderson has not written very extensively in the adult fantasy field. This is probably due to the fact that magazine editors and publishing houses have come to think of him by now as primarily a science fiction writer, as much as it is due to the even more unfortunate fact that until very, very recently there was little chance if any of getting an original fantasy novel into print in this country. The astounding success of Professor Tolkien's The Lard of the Rings, and the more recent establishment of Ballantine's Adult Fantasy Series may correct this long-standing prejudice against the genre.

But Anderson has produced two brilliant, delightfully swashbuckling fantasy novels-the earliest being the book you presently hold in your hands. The Broken Sword was first published in 1954, the same year as Andersen's first science fiction novel, Brain Wave. His only other book-length venture into the imaginary world of fantasy-an excellent novel called Three Hearts and Three Lions-was serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953; issued in hardcover form by Doubleday in 1961; and done in paperback by Avon Books in the same year. It has recently been reprinted, and thus it is readily available in one or another of these editions.