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The Long Night
Short stories describe the rise of the interplanetary Terran Empire and the rebellion of the Freeholders against its tyrannical rule
317 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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205 people want to read
About the author
Poul Anderson
1,621 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
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 23, 2018
Hmm … I confess I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. I know Anderson mostly by reputation. I’ve undoubtedly read at least a few of his short stories over the years, having read countless SF anthologies. But nothing specific comes to mind. I was aware of some of his well-known characters like Nicholas Van Rijn and Dominic Flandry, though I can't recall just how I came by this knowledge--just the osmosis of fandom, I guess. Since both characters are mentioned on this book's cover, I assumed they were in it, but they aren't. Some of my ambivalence may stem from disappointment over that fact.
So what this is is a collection of stories--novellas, mainly--set in various eras of Anderson’s future timeline. There's a chart at the back of the book that dubs it “Technic Civilization” and it runs from the 21st century (no exact date given) to 7100, with all of Anderson’s books and stories listed where they fall on the time line. Empires rise and fall along the way. It's pretty epic.
The Long Night itself is listed as occurring “mid-4th millennium” according to the chart, but none of the stories in this book are set during that period. Rather they bracket it, from about a thousand years prior (“The Star Plunderer”) to almost four thousand years after (“Starfog”). There's some material in between the stories sketching in some of the history, but it's pretty thin. Of course, covering five thousand years of history in a 300+ page paperback, it would have to be.
I’d describe the writing as “old school science fiction.” The stories are about the ideas more than they are the characters or the plots. A good friend of mine who's quite knowledgeable about SF described Anderson’s writing as something along the lines of hard science fiction combined with Conan the barbarian and an obsession with history. Seems accurate enough based on this one book. There's a definite feeling of the savage beneath the surface to his characters. They enjoy and appreciate the benefits of civilization, but if it were to collapse, they’d be perfectly able to do whatever they must to survive.
His characters do tend to lecture a bit on the science details. They acknowledge their tendency to do so, which mitigates it somewhat, but the sciencing does get a bit thick. It's one of the pitfalls of hard SF, and, sadly, Anderson doesn't seem to be as deft at sugarcoating his exposition as others I’ve read.
I found these stories all to be a little tough to get into at first, but, once I did, I found them reasonably compelling. Of the five stories in this book, I enjoyed the middle three (“Outpost of Empire”, “A Tragedy of Errors”, “The Sharing of Flesh”) the most. Although I'm kind of meh about the book as a whole, I wouldn't be averse to giving Anderson another chance to impress me. If you’ve never read him before, though, this probably isn't the best book to start with.
So what this is is a collection of stories--novellas, mainly--set in various eras of Anderson’s future timeline. There's a chart at the back of the book that dubs it “Technic Civilization” and it runs from the 21st century (no exact date given) to 7100, with all of Anderson’s books and stories listed where they fall on the time line. Empires rise and fall along the way. It's pretty epic.
The Long Night itself is listed as occurring “mid-4th millennium” according to the chart, but none of the stories in this book are set during that period. Rather they bracket it, from about a thousand years prior (“The Star Plunderer”) to almost four thousand years after (“Starfog”). There's some material in between the stories sketching in some of the history, but it's pretty thin. Of course, covering five thousand years of history in a 300+ page paperback, it would have to be.
I’d describe the writing as “old school science fiction.” The stories are about the ideas more than they are the characters or the plots. A good friend of mine who's quite knowledgeable about SF described Anderson’s writing as something along the lines of hard science fiction combined with Conan the barbarian and an obsession with history. Seems accurate enough based on this one book. There's a definite feeling of the savage beneath the surface to his characters. They enjoy and appreciate the benefits of civilization, but if it were to collapse, they’d be perfectly able to do whatever they must to survive.
His characters do tend to lecture a bit on the science details. They acknowledge their tendency to do so, which mitigates it somewhat, but the sciencing does get a bit thick. It's one of the pitfalls of hard SF, and, sadly, Anderson doesn't seem to be as deft at sugarcoating his exposition as others I’ve read.
I found these stories all to be a little tough to get into at first, but, once I did, I found them reasonably compelling. Of the five stories in this book, I enjoyed the middle three (“Outpost of Empire”, “A Tragedy of Errors”, “The Sharing of Flesh”) the most. Although I'm kind of meh about the book as a whole, I wouldn't be averse to giving Anderson another chance to impress me. If you’ve never read him before, though, this probably isn't the best book to start with.
June 9, 2011
"The Long Night", by Poul Anderson, is set several centuries in the future. Sometime before the book begins, humans have explored and settled millions of planets, but then star-faring civilization fell. The settled planets became isolated from each other. Some sank into barbarism, some managed to retain technological civilization, but there is little interstellar travel.
The bulk of the book is about about a time when people are beginning to build a new interstellar society, re-establishing contact with previously lost planets. It is divided into five stories that are essentially unconnected except that they are set in this same hypothetical future. They don't share any common characters or any other connection other than being set in this same universe. (By the way, the stories were originally published separately in several different magazines over a period of 16 years.)
Basically, these are tightly plotted stories. That is, each story presents the heroes with a puzzle to solve. I'll avoid giving any spoilers here, but for example: In the story "Sharing of Flesh", the characters have to figure out why an isolated planet descended into cannibalism and how to end the practice. In "Starfog", they have to figure out how to find the home planet of a lost expedition that comes from a region of the galaxy where the stars are packed so closely together and the space is so full of cosmic dust that normal navigation methods don't work. Etc.
The best things about this book:
1. The grand view of (fictional) history. The author has clearly plotted out a future history of the galaxy spanning thousands of years, and written stories that fit into this framework. (Other Anderson stories fit in to this same history at other places. For example is Flandry books are set when the empire is falling.) It's fun to see how it all fits together. The history seems plausible to me: the pieces all do fit.
2. The individual puzzles are interesting to follow through. While this might seem like an off-the-wall analogy, I think lovers of murder mysterious might also like these stories. It's the same idea: clues are sprinkled through the story, events that might seem unimportant turn out to be crucial clues, etc. When you finally get to the ending, it all follows logically from what came before.
On the minus side:
1. Maybe this is a trivial point, but to me, Anderson has one really annoying writing technique: In any fiction story, you need a certain amount of exposition. In science fiction stories, the writer often needs to explain a lot of things that the characters all know but the reader doesn't, like the culture and history of this fictional future. Anderson routinely does such exposition by having the characters give each other long lectures on these subjects. But why would the characters tell each other on what they already know? In Anderson's books, he constantly adds tacit admissions that the speech is pointless: A character will say how annoying it is that this other person is lecturing him on what he already knows, or he'll make some comment about going on and on because he's nervous or upset, or some such. It's bad enough to have the pointless speech. Having the writer tell us that it's pointless makes it worse, not better.
2. The stories are filled with references to stellar and biological evolution, and several of the stories are pretty much all about the writer's theories about how this particular planet or whatever evolved. As a creationist, I find these totally implausible. I guess if you're an evolutionist they'll make perfect sense to you, but to a creationist it's like reading a story where the plot hinges on the "fact" that putting leaches on a sick person will cure the disease, or the assumption that black people are inherently lazy and criminal.
The bulk of the book is about about a time when people are beginning to build a new interstellar society, re-establishing contact with previously lost planets. It is divided into five stories that are essentially unconnected except that they are set in this same hypothetical future. They don't share any common characters or any other connection other than being set in this same universe. (By the way, the stories were originally published separately in several different magazines over a period of 16 years.)
Basically, these are tightly plotted stories. That is, each story presents the heroes with a puzzle to solve. I'll avoid giving any spoilers here, but for example: In the story "Sharing of Flesh", the characters have to figure out why an isolated planet descended into cannibalism and how to end the practice. In "Starfog", they have to figure out how to find the home planet of a lost expedition that comes from a region of the galaxy where the stars are packed so closely together and the space is so full of cosmic dust that normal navigation methods don't work. Etc.
The best things about this book:
1. The grand view of (fictional) history. The author has clearly plotted out a future history of the galaxy spanning thousands of years, and written stories that fit into this framework. (Other Anderson stories fit in to this same history at other places. For example is Flandry books are set when the empire is falling.) It's fun to see how it all fits together. The history seems plausible to me: the pieces all do fit.
2. The individual puzzles are interesting to follow through. While this might seem like an off-the-wall analogy, I think lovers of murder mysterious might also like these stories. It's the same idea: clues are sprinkled through the story, events that might seem unimportant turn out to be crucial clues, etc. When you finally get to the ending, it all follows logically from what came before.
On the minus side:
1. Maybe this is a trivial point, but to me, Anderson has one really annoying writing technique: In any fiction story, you need a certain amount of exposition. In science fiction stories, the writer often needs to explain a lot of things that the characters all know but the reader doesn't, like the culture and history of this fictional future. Anderson routinely does such exposition by having the characters give each other long lectures on these subjects. But why would the characters tell each other on what they already know? In Anderson's books, he constantly adds tacit admissions that the speech is pointless: A character will say how annoying it is that this other person is lecturing him on what he already knows, or he'll make some comment about going on and on because he's nervous or upset, or some such. It's bad enough to have the pointless speech. Having the writer tell us that it's pointless makes it worse, not better.
2. The stories are filled with references to stellar and biological evolution, and several of the stories are pretty much all about the writer's theories about how this particular planet or whatever evolved. As a creationist, I find these totally implausible. I guess if you're an evolutionist they'll make perfect sense to you, but to a creationist it's like reading a story where the plot hinges on the "fact" that putting leaches on a sick person will cure the disease, or the assumption that black people are inherently lazy and criminal.
June 24, 2022
Well, that was better than I expected. This is a collection of short works, in the years after Flandry's lifetime. I don't think there was even one story that went the way I would've preferred, but I liked them in spite of that. That's a sign of a good writer. I'm also not as much a fan of shorter work as I used to be, but again, these are well-done. It helps if you've read the Flandry stories, but it's not mandatory.
July 22, 2019
Another anthology of stories, most found in other books already read.
The Star Plunderer came before Flandry - Manuel Argos goes from slave to emperor. Outpost of Empire is the only previously unread novella, also before Flandry. The settlers of Freehold, a outpost planet that had three sets of settlers at odds and Mersia decided to take advantage, Terra comes to defend and settle. In the end, there is a winner. What I found particularly interesting was the musings of the professor, who negotiated the final settlement with the Navy, on what would happen to the agreement as it wound its way through the bureaucracy of Terra before returning signed and official. "This must pass up through a dozen layers of bureaucrats and politicians, each of whom must assert his own immortal importance by some altogether needless and exasperating change." "The news media will make inane inflammatory statements." Politicians will use it to jockey for more power. In a nutshell it is what I see every day in our current set of politicians and policy makers and power brokers as they bandy about the lives of the actual citizens like counters on a board for their own aggrandizement and amusement. The third story A Tragedy of Errors comes after Flandry during the Long Night when Star Rovers plundered Roan Tom is one. Forced to land for repairs on a planet ..a confusion of language gets them captured for slaves and they escape. Once the language barrier is solved, one of Roan's wives solves a major problem for the planet and Roan leaves his wife as hostage while he returns to his planet Kraken for help for the planet Nike.
The Sharing of Flesh is a novelette about cannibalism and innocent death and revenge. All is changed by the discovery that the cannibalism is absolutely necessary for the survival of the species and that the humans can provide medicine which will remove that necessity. Shows the human horror of the act and how justice and revenge combine. The story Starfog is about a one man ranger with his semi-sentient ship sent to help when a strange ship lands on New Vixen. The ship comes from outside with descendants of MaCormack's exiled traitors who fled the Empire in Flandry's time. They have been changed over the course of the thousands of years and are no longer totally human but the ranger finds a way to help them find a way to return home, even if it will take a while.
The Star Plunderer came before Flandry - Manuel Argos goes from slave to emperor. Outpost of Empire is the only previously unread novella, also before Flandry. The settlers of Freehold, a outpost planet that had three sets of settlers at odds and Mersia decided to take advantage, Terra comes to defend and settle. In the end, there is a winner. What I found particularly interesting was the musings of the professor, who negotiated the final settlement with the Navy, on what would happen to the agreement as it wound its way through the bureaucracy of Terra before returning signed and official. "This must pass up through a dozen layers of bureaucrats and politicians, each of whom must assert his own immortal importance by some altogether needless and exasperating change." "The news media will make inane inflammatory statements." Politicians will use it to jockey for more power. In a nutshell it is what I see every day in our current set of politicians and policy makers and power brokers as they bandy about the lives of the actual citizens like counters on a board for their own aggrandizement and amusement. The third story A Tragedy of Errors comes after Flandry during the Long Night when Star Rovers plundered Roan Tom is one. Forced to land for repairs on a planet ..a confusion of language gets them captured for slaves and they escape. Once the language barrier is solved, one of Roan's wives solves a major problem for the planet and Roan leaves his wife as hostage while he returns to his planet Kraken for help for the planet Nike.
The Sharing of Flesh is a novelette about cannibalism and innocent death and revenge. All is changed by the discovery that the cannibalism is absolutely necessary for the survival of the species and that the humans can provide medicine which will remove that necessity. Shows the human horror of the act and how justice and revenge combine. The story Starfog is about a one man ranger with his semi-sentient ship sent to help when a strange ship lands on New Vixen. The ship comes from outside with descendants of MaCormack's exiled traitors who fled the Empire in Flandry's time. They have been changed over the course of the thousands of years and are no longer totally human but the ranger finds a way to help them find a way to return home, even if it will take a while.
June 6, 2018
The first two stories are entirely skippable, and in fact probably should be skipped (the first one particularly is mediocre at best), but the last three are very good – they actually engage with questions of ethics and Empire in interesting ways, and have some passages of very beautiful prose.
November 5, 2017
Some pretty heavy slogging through these short stories. It gave me a chance to practise my rusty speed reading. I wasn't about to devote all the time to read everything at 'regular' speed.
January 6, 2019
Tales of the far-flung human race after the fall of the Empire.
December 24, 2021
-Gregory Kerkman
April 5, 2012
Good adventure stories about the collapse of an interstellar civilization. Also deserves a special mention for the cover: The female is wearing armor that covers more of her than her male counterpart's does, and she's in a pose that conceals her breasts. The contrast to typical genre cover art is dramatic.
January 23, 2016
An interesting collection of novellas telling assorted tales in the wake of the fall of the Terran Empire. The parallels to Rome are blindingly obvious, but it's still an entertaining bit of brain candy.
June 18, 2007
These are stories from Anderson’s Plesotechnic League/Terran Empire future history after the collapse of the Terran Empire. It contains the excellent story “The Sharing of Flesh.”
May 11, 2012
Flandry - should re-read these
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews