Harvest of Stars
This is a recommendation to anyone who likes my far future science fiction, so that I might direct you toward an author you will like better.
Let me very strongly recommend HARVEST OF STARS and STARS ARE ALSO FIRE by Poul Anderson. He is one of the only stock John W. Campbell Junior authors who never achieved the kind of fame that, for example, as Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert or Clarke did, fame that made him “too big” to be edited.
Consequently, unlike most famous authors, his later books still had the energy and imagination of his earlier books. He never wrote self-indulgent self-referencing crap like NUMBER OF THE BEAST or endless sequels to FOUNDATION or DUNE or RAMA that bigger therefore lazier authors did.
In HARVEST OF STARS, Anderson successfully writes the book that all the cyberpunk authors should have written, but didn’t, or couldn’t.
The author depicts a world on the brink of the “singularity” of post-human existence, complete with artificial intelligence and human personality downloads, uplifted races, biological modification, virtual reality, the works — but unlike the punk authors, it is a real and realistic world, with as many heroes as villains, and amusingly enough the villains are transhumanists called ‘The Adventists.’ But the plot concerns an old-fashioned rough and ready Campbellian SF hero, like Heinlein’s D. D. Harriman or Jubal Hershaw, a crusty old curmudgeon who also happens to be an engineer, and a capitalist, and dead, trying to get mankind off the rock of Earth and into space.
Unlike Heinlein, who only had basically one personality type for all his characters, Poul Anderson portrays all his characters with vivid personalities, and he subverts more than one common trope.
I must also mention that Poul Anderson draws on all his skill he honed writing fantasy novels to portray his “Lunarians” who are, without doubt, the best elves ever portrayed outside of Tolkien, or, since Anderson cleaves more closely to original Norse models than Tolkien did, better.
The book reminded me strongly of the melancholy of LORD OF THE RINGS, since the central concern is the failing and falling away of merely human civilization into something more cybernetic, less human — the tale is about the end of the age.
The action moves from the scattered enclaves of traditional, unassimilated humanity, to futuristic Hawaii, to an exotic Lunar colony, to a dying world circling Alpha Centauri – the only place where the spark of old-fashioned pioneer spirit still lives, as Mother Earth is drawn further and further into an over-comfortable post-human post-history that has no concern for that spirit.
All this wrapped up in police procedural thriller, chases and escapes and meditations on the eternal questions of life (and post-life), not to mention a duel between a ghost and his own evil doppelganger, science fiction speculation, and pure quill sense of wonder — I truly consider HARVEST OF STARS to be Poul Anderson’s best work, one which combines all his strengths and shows a long lifetime of effort, manifested in many good books, flowering into something great. That his book did not win every award SFF fandom has to offer is an offense against Urania, the muse of sci-fi.
And, obviously, this book was the “inspiration” for my own THE GOLDEN AGE. And by “inspiration,” I mean I copied as much as I dared.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
