What do you think?
Rate this book
Three Worlds to Conquer
Three worlds:
Jupiter where no human could live but where men had strange allies and stranger enemies!
Ganymede where human settlers lay helpless under the guns of a spaceship directed by a madman!
Earth freed from a planet-wide tyranny, but facing total destruction from space!
The destinies of these worlds were strangely linked and in the hands of a man sentenced to instant death!
Jupiter where no human could live but where men had strange allies and stranger enemies!
Ganymede where human settlers lay helpless under the guns of a spaceship directed by a madman!
Earth freed from a planet-wide tyranny, but facing total destruction from space!
The destinies of these worlds were strangely linked and in the hands of a man sentenced to instant death!
143 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1964
4 people are currently reading
181 people want to read
About the author
Poul Anderson
1,622 books1,105 followersPseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 23, 2018
Nope. Life's too short to slog through convoluted, unengaging, dime-a-dozen books like this. There were, I think, a few decent thoughts in there, but I don't feel like going hunting. I hereby inaugurate my DNF shelf!
January 28, 2019
Read this when serialised in IF magazine.
December 16, 2017
Een onmogelijk boek. Hoe kan iemand die op de aardse kolonie Ganymedes leeft fysiek tussenbeide komen in een oorlog op de gasreus Jupiter? Poul Anderson slaagt erin om dit niet alleen mogelijk maar zelfs heel geloofwaardig te maken. En dat in een reuzespannend boek.
De cover is misschien niet bijster geslaagd, de inhoud is dat des te meer.
Sci-fi van de bovenste plank vol actie en hoop voor de (menselijke) toekomst.
Al wat ouder maar kon gisteren geschreven zijn!
De cover is misschien niet bijster geslaagd, de inhoud is dat des te meer.
Sci-fi van de bovenste plank vol actie en hoop voor de (menselijke) toekomst.
Al wat ouder maar kon gisteren geschreven zijn!
June 21, 2021
Weer eens een ouderwets, en gedateerd ScienceFiction verhaal. Toch kon het vandaag geschreven zijn.
Ik vraag me af wat de 3e wereld was die we konden verwachten naar aanleiding van de titel. Er wordt alleen maar gesproken over Jupiter en Ganymedes.
Valt verder weinig over te zeggen
Ik vraag me af wat de 3e wereld was die we konden verwachten naar aanleiding van de titel. Er wordt alleen maar gesproken over Jupiter en Ganymedes.
Valt verder weinig over te zeggen
April 22, 2010
I read this in Park Ridge, Illinois, having obtained it used--perhaps in the Old Town neighborhood in Chicago. The cover is entirely familiar. The contents are pretty much forgotten.
March 21, 2024
Poul Anderson was one of those Golden Age sci-fi writers who, over a career spanning more than half a century, was often turning out two or three novels a year of varying quality. As such, he has a vast back catalogue, and it would be almost impossible to pick out the ones most worth reading.
So, cards on the table, my sole reason for choosing this particular one is that I happened to pick it up in a charity shop a few weeks back. Having said that, I’m rather glad I did, because while I’m not claiming this as some undiscovered classic, it is a well written, exciting, fast-paced space adventure story, and is a highly enjoyable read.
Furthermore, while it is a product of the early sixties and contains some of the attitudes of the time, and while some of the science doesn’t entirely hold up to the standards of what we know today, for the most part it doesn’t feel terribly dated. Indeed, considering it was written when the space race was still in its infancy, it does show a considerable knowledge of the mechanics of space flight.
The story is set at some unidentified time in the future. Humanity has begun colonising the outer regions of the solar system but has not moved beyond. Earth has now fallen into the hands of an authoritarian dictatorship, and many dissidents have taken refuge on these outlying colonies. Our hero Mark Fraser lives with his wife and two children on Ganymede.
The inhabitants of the Galilean moons have discovered that there is life within the dense clouds of Jupiter, intelligent but not technologically advanced. Mark has managed to make contact with one of these Jovians called Theor and, through a kind of pidgin language developed between them, they have become friends.
Now two major events have happened. On Jupiter, Theor’s community has come under attack by a large and powerful army from a displaced set of neighbours. Meanwhile on Earth, a rebellion has defeated the oppressive government, and its perpetrators are now trying to bring about the return of democracy.
On Ganymede, a giant spaceship lands, the Vega, the last remnant of the space navy of the former government. Its crew set about capturing the Ganymede colony and intend to use its resources to mount an attack on Earth and restore the dictatorship. Aware of all these events, Mark realises that he needs to warn Earth and also help his friend on Jupiter, and the only way to do that will be to free his home colony. The fate of three worlds therefore rests in his hands.
For the most part the two main stories, that of Mark on Ganymede and of Theor on Jupiter, run alongside each other, the narrative switching back and forth between the two. They only connect up at the end, and through occasional radio communications between Mark and Theor.
Of course, the Jupiter half of the story is well outside of what we know of the actual science of that planet. Anderson imagines a surface behind the thick cloud layer, with vegetation and a whole ecosystem of fauna. Nonetheless, this half of the story works well if you ignore that it is set on a planet we actually know about, and just treat it as a general fantasy tale.
Also, the friendship between Mark and Theor provides some of the nicest parts of the story, a kind of interspecies bromance with each having respect for the other while not entirely understanding their respective cultures.
There are some missteps along the way, but overall this is a decent potboiler which, while it probably won’t live very long in the memory, does provide a lot of fun, and never drags at any point.
So, cards on the table, my sole reason for choosing this particular one is that I happened to pick it up in a charity shop a few weeks back. Having said that, I’m rather glad I did, because while I’m not claiming this as some undiscovered classic, it is a well written, exciting, fast-paced space adventure story, and is a highly enjoyable read.
Furthermore, while it is a product of the early sixties and contains some of the attitudes of the time, and while some of the science doesn’t entirely hold up to the standards of what we know today, for the most part it doesn’t feel terribly dated. Indeed, considering it was written when the space race was still in its infancy, it does show a considerable knowledge of the mechanics of space flight.
The story is set at some unidentified time in the future. Humanity has begun colonising the outer regions of the solar system but has not moved beyond. Earth has now fallen into the hands of an authoritarian dictatorship, and many dissidents have taken refuge on these outlying colonies. Our hero Mark Fraser lives with his wife and two children on Ganymede.
The inhabitants of the Galilean moons have discovered that there is life within the dense clouds of Jupiter, intelligent but not technologically advanced. Mark has managed to make contact with one of these Jovians called Theor and, through a kind of pidgin language developed between them, they have become friends.
Now two major events have happened. On Jupiter, Theor’s community has come under attack by a large and powerful army from a displaced set of neighbours. Meanwhile on Earth, a rebellion has defeated the oppressive government, and its perpetrators are now trying to bring about the return of democracy.
On Ganymede, a giant spaceship lands, the Vega, the last remnant of the space navy of the former government. Its crew set about capturing the Ganymede colony and intend to use its resources to mount an attack on Earth and restore the dictatorship. Aware of all these events, Mark realises that he needs to warn Earth and also help his friend on Jupiter, and the only way to do that will be to free his home colony. The fate of three worlds therefore rests in his hands.
For the most part the two main stories, that of Mark on Ganymede and of Theor on Jupiter, run alongside each other, the narrative switching back and forth between the two. They only connect up at the end, and through occasional radio communications between Mark and Theor.
Of course, the Jupiter half of the story is well outside of what we know of the actual science of that planet. Anderson imagines a surface behind the thick cloud layer, with vegetation and a whole ecosystem of fauna. Nonetheless, this half of the story works well if you ignore that it is set on a planet we actually know about, and just treat it as a general fantasy tale.
Also, the friendship between Mark and Theor provides some of the nicest parts of the story, a kind of interspecies bromance with each having respect for the other while not entirely understanding their respective cultures.
There are some missteps along the way, but overall this is a decent potboiler which, while it probably won’t live very long in the memory, does provide a lot of fun, and never drags at any point.
September 2, 2020
7- It is said that the golden age of science fiction is ten. It has a reputation of being a genre mainly enjoyed by teenage boys. This is of course a grand oversimplification and most of modern SF has more depth and complexity than that, but well ... in my case it's true that I discovered the genre as a young teen. And the books by Poul Anderson made a big impression on me. But they are also the books that confirm the age bracket put on the genre by its detractors. Rereading stories by Harry Harrison, Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester and Theodore Sturgion, to name a few, showed them as just as brilliant as when I read them first as a teen, with an added complexity of layers that I then skimmed over looking for adventure and wild ideas. Rereading Anderson showed them as just the stories I read as a kid and nothing more. These are perfectly fine adventure stories, with a lot of action, well imagined exotic locales and a huge climactic ending. There is up to date (for the time) science in it and some well thought out extrapolation. There's not much wrong with the plot either - I could not predict it. But the characters are flat, almost caricatures. The hero Fraser is constantly moping about his age (come on, forty is not that old surely?) and wondering if he should kiss the young woman he's with or remain faithful to his wife, who with his kids is coveniently hidden away elsewhere. There's not much more to him, I must say and large parts of his story seemed juvenile to me. Luckily, there's a subplot (or is it the main plot) about Theor on Jupiter that is much more interesting. The aliens on Jupiter live on a world in perpetual darkness, where liquid water is scaling hot (vulcano's spew water instead of magma) and even a small climb will bring you to a place where you cannot breath anymore. There's war here, and a journey across the planet. The aliens are well imagined, with a truly weird society, with for example three sexes. But Anderson describes them lovingly and they seem more human at times than the humans themselves. I found myself looking forward to spending time on the surface of Jupiter instead of on Ganymede. Of course, the science in these parts is not up to date. But Anderson tries to truly describe an alien world and does it well. That part of the book is still powerful. The rest is sadly forgettable. So read this for the nostalgia, but if you are looking for good science fiction with something to say about more than just adventure, there's a lot more modern stuff to look into.
August 13, 2018
What was the third world? The only two listed are Ganymede and Jupiter. Earth is mentioned on the back cover and a sprinkling through the book but never becomes that prominent.
The cover could have been so much better. Does not convey the excitement of the story
I almost stopped reading after the first chapter. It was a HUGE information dump. This might have been acceptable in 1964; it doesn’t play well in today’s vernacular. Way too much science and characters are crammed in.
The story centers around Mark Fraser and his associate, Theor who is a Nyarr. Earth has another rebellion. The space ship Vega lands on Ganymede and its captain, Swayne declares martial law. He plans on using the scientist to mine and develop nuclear weapons so he can go back to Earth and suppress the rebellion.
Theor’s planet has been invaded by the Uulunt-Kahzul. Their planet has become a wasteland and they need another place to live.
The high point of the story is when both planets are embroiled in combat. Yet, just as it’s getting exciting and the reader is drawn in then something goes terribly awry. The author spends two chapters describing Theors struggles after his navy is pummeled. Really? Two chapters. Talk about a major derailing. That was it. It made the ending anti-climatic to say the least.
One major plus was Anderson’s describing of Jupiter and Ganymede. It does put you in the scenes. It is also one of the problems-there’s way too much of it!
And yes, there are grammatical errors spackled about. Seems to be a theme from this error of pulp fiction
Three stars
The cover could have been so much better. Does not convey the excitement of the story
I almost stopped reading after the first chapter. It was a HUGE information dump. This might have been acceptable in 1964; it doesn’t play well in today’s vernacular. Way too much science and characters are crammed in.
The story centers around Mark Fraser and his associate, Theor who is a Nyarr. Earth has another rebellion. The space ship Vega lands on Ganymede and its captain, Swayne declares martial law. He plans on using the scientist to mine and develop nuclear weapons so he can go back to Earth and suppress the rebellion.
Theor’s planet has been invaded by the Uulunt-Kahzul. Their planet has become a wasteland and they need another place to live.
The high point of the story is when both planets are embroiled in combat. Yet, just as it’s getting exciting and the reader is drawn in then something goes terribly awry. The author spends two chapters describing Theors struggles after his navy is pummeled. Really? Two chapters. Talk about a major derailing. That was it. It made the ending anti-climatic to say the least.
One major plus was Anderson’s describing of Jupiter and Ganymede. It does put you in the scenes. It is also one of the problems-there’s way too much of it!
And yes, there are grammatical errors spackled about. Seems to be a theme from this error of pulp fiction
Three stars
January 27, 2020
4/5 (Good)
Poul Anderson’s science fiction adventure tale, Three Worlds to Conquer, is a remarkably exciting and engaging quick read. Three Worlds is a “loose” sequel to Anderson’s short story, ‘Sam Hall’ published in the August 1953 edition of Astounding Science fiction. Both cover some aspect of post-WWIII [...]
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
Poul Anderson’s science fiction adventure tale, Three Worlds to Conquer, is a remarkably exciting and engaging quick read. Three Worlds is a “loose” sequel to Anderson’s short story, ‘Sam Hall’ published in the August 1953 edition of Astounding Science fiction. Both cover some aspect of post-WWIII [...]
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
April 22, 2024
I've never read any of Poul Anderson's work before and I don't think I've started with his best output here. From some quick research it seems that Three Worlds To Conquer was originally published in a serialised format in a science fiction magazine, before being assembled into this short novel and published.
Unfortunately it features poorly defined characters, a basic plot and poor writing. The only reason I pressed through is that it is very short, although it felt extremely long.
Unfortunately it features poorly defined characters, a basic plot and poor writing. The only reason I pressed through is that it is very short, although it felt extremely long.
August 17, 2024
Anderson's Kontakt mit Jupiter to me has meant as groundbreaking a spiritual experience as only one other book - which has been a work by Plato. Anderson has achieved such a feat by his characterization of an alien creature of extraterrestrial origin. The creature is depicted as deviating from what one is familiar with so decisively that it feels as if one must give up all one's used categories of thinking.
December 31, 2019
A great action story set against a beautiful setting. A little weaker characters than I'm used to for Anderson, but they serve their purpose nicely.
October 15, 2024
Pretty impossible story, even with the science of the time. Fairly interesting story line concerning the Jovians. That part was kind of cool. The human side, not so much. A 3 for the aliens.
January 15, 2017
Vivid descriptions of the fauna, flora, geology and weather of Jupiter make this one worthwhile.
January 30, 2011
Grade C+
May 28, 2014
Too much spaceships and fighting for me.
July 28, 2010
A pretty early one by Anderson but very enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews