As a teenager and science fiction enthusiast, I visited Mr. Anderson in the 1970s. He told me of a medieval recreation sword jousting group he’d meet with.
Poul Anderson is my favorire author from science fiction's "golden age." A great many people list Heinlein as the number one, but I've always preferred Anderson (though I do love Heinlein, and "Starship Troopers" is one of my all time favorite books). But Heinlein, especially in his later work, was really hit and miss. His female characters all seem to have been based on his wife Virginia (while it would haven fine to base one or two chracters on her, doing almost ALL of them that way means his female characters mostly don't talk or act like any women most of us have ever known), and Heinlein's characters ALL tend to talk in snappy, jocular, teasing banter ALL the time, and real people don't talk like that. And in during the last two decades of his career, Heinlein could be rather self-indulgent in exploring some of his more out of the mainstream ideas (e.g. polyamory, nudism, incest, etc). I think Anderson, whose outlook was broadly similar to Heinlein's in a number of respects (like Heinlein, he made the journey from left-liberal in his youth, to right-leaning conservative as an older man), could create heroes who were similar -- intelligent, reasonably competent in a wide range of fields (including languages and science or technology), and who experience growth and character development during the story -- and write adventures for them that were just as thrilling, with a lot better dialogue and better, more varied female characters. His stories, whether full-length novels or short stories, were very often highly thought provoking. He could write hard science fiction and high fantasy with equal facility, which is rare (though he mostly wrote sci fi). I love Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, and his novels "The Broken Sword," "There Will Be Time," and "Tau Zero" are masterpieces, IMHO.
In the excerpt of Heinlein's essay that is shown during the video, you can see him credit L. Ron Hubbard for helping him develop his "Three Plots" theory. Oh how the times have changed.
Ron Hubbard himself has written excellent fiction stories. He was also a wellspring of stories. What he does with that grit and creativity, outside of stories... well, you can be the judge.
Wisdom, distilled. Threw Conan some shade though. The Tower of the Elephant, is a great short story to read if anyone thinks it all just brawn and action.
As Americans, we were far more intellectually savvy during that time. Hence the scripted writing analysis. I wish I could have heard him in general discussion. For lovers of epic fantasy (no, not the Witcher), he is as important as Tolkien.
