For Love and Glory (Anderson, Poul) [Hardcover]

The story opens with Lissa Windholm and an alien partner coming across a mysterious artifact, evidently left by the long gone Forerunners, on the planet Jonna. But they are not the first to discover this artifact -- a man named Torben Hebo, one of the oldest humans still alive, and his alien partner have got their first. And their interest is profit, as opposed to Lissa's purely scientific motivation. Torben also rather crudely expresses an interest of a different sort in Lissa herself. But disaster strikes, and Lissa and her friend rescue Torben, leading to a reasonable compromise.

That episode serves mainly as a rather clumsy prologue, having little function but to introduce Lissa and Torben. They spend the next while mooning a bit over each other, while Lissa mounts an expedition to view the scientifically fascinating collision of two black holes, and while Torben goes back to Earth to get his memory scrubbed and to show the reader details of Earth's advanced linked human mind. Lissa's expedition involves the humans in a conflict between factions of the Susaian race. The stories come together again in the following episode, in which a neighboring planet to Lissa's home is colonized by a faction of aliens, and in which Torben gets involved in an attempt to industrialize this new planet, resisted by Lissa and her alien friends, who favor a "greener" approach. The final episode, then, features a further conflict with a bad alien faction, and an opportunity to learn something dramatic about the Forerunners.

As my summary might imply, the novel is rather episodic, and the joins between the new episodes and the pre-existing stories show, sometimes uneasily. Still, it's a decent and enjoyable novel, with some nice science-fictional ideas, and some pleasant and interesting main characters. The action is well-handled, and a sense of mystery and wonder at the secrets of the universe, so often central to Anderson's work, is nicely conveyed. This book is by no means Anderson at the top of his form, but he was ever a writer who would occasionally throttle back and produce supremely competent entertainment -- and I think that's what For Love and Glory ends up being. Not an enduring classic, but a book I'm happy to have read.

Thereafter, Torben and Dzesi go off to sell their information and then they part company, both returning to their homelands: Dzesi to Ghazu on Rikha and Torben to Earth. After 900 years of life, Torben is beginning to have memory problems and other symptoms of information overload. He needs to have his memories edited and Earth has the best technology of that sort in the known galaxy. Not only can the memories be removed, but the Earth technology can store the deleted memories for subsequent perusal.

When the survey of Jonna is terminated, Jonna and Karl also part, with Karl returning to Garguantua and Lissa to Asborg. There she rests for a while and then becomes involved in a speculative voyage to unclaimed space to investigate a report of long-term, large-scale and secret scientific examination of seemingly empty space by the Great Confederacy, the largest Susaian government.

When Torben leaves Earth, he travels to Asborg with intentions of visiting Lissa, learns of her investigative voyage, but finds that she has returned and left once more for a five year study of Jonna. Nevertheless, he stays in the Sunniva system and finds investors to bankroll a commercial development on Freydis, the sunward planet from Asborg. Moreover, he has a long-range plan for further investigation of the forerunners.

This story is most clearly an Anderson tale. It has the characteristic courage, brashness and technology, yet also the optimism and wonder of such stories. In one respect, however, this novel is not typical: the main character, Lissa, is very naive about the wickedness of mankind. Most of Anderson's characters are rather cynical in addition to the previously mentioned attributes. Such cynicism comes from experience and Lissa, despite her own beliefs, has been protected very thoroughly by her family and society. Thus, she has several rude shocks within this story, but is strong enough to carry on anyway.

This new approach to a female character, and her father, very probably reflects the author's own experience raising his daughter. Having been in the same situation, I can attest that such experience causes a man to see women from an entirely different viewpoint, which goes very much beyond the stereotypical overprotective father archetype. Somehow, I think this is a last message of love from the author to his daughter.

Recommended for Anderson fans and anyone who still enjoys a sense of wonder and adventure in a SF setting.

Poul Anderson is one of the great SF writers of the 1950s and 1960s. FOR LOVE AND GLORY is a postumous work and lacks some of the attention to detail that Anderson would certainly have given it had he survived. Still, in many ways this novel is a throwback to an earlier era of SF--an era of fabulous adventures, where a man, a woman, and a spaceship (perhaps along with sidekick aliens) could defy evil empires, make huge new scientific discoveries, and achieve a degree of personal happiness as well.

FOR LOVE AND GLORY contains some thoughtful concepts and speculations. Among these--what will happen to marriage and other human relationships if people can live indefinitely, renewing their youth whenever it starts to fade? Is there a next step in human evolution that will take us beyond being individual beings and allow us to plug into some sort of universal consciousness (perhaps using computer technology to link human brains)? Can an economic system be set up that rewards discovery without the need to have the discoverers actually exploit the knowledge that they find. These are the sorts of questions that define Anderson's brilliant earlier works and it is a pleasant flashback to see theim peaking through in this work created at the end of his life.