This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the publication of Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade in the pages of Astounding magazine (later to be known as Analog that very year). In celebration, Baen Books is releasing an anniversary paperback edition on Tuesday, September 7^th, with appreciations from some of science fiction’s greatest names.

Tor.com will be posting these appreciations throughout Monday and Tuesday of this week, courtesy of Baen Books. These appreciations originally appeared at WebScription, where you can also sample the first few chapters of The High Crusade.

I bought the Astounding (it was in the process of changing its name to Analog, so both names are on the cover) with the first installment of The High Crusade on the newsstand. I didn’t have a subscription to the magazine; I’d read a couple issues, but nothing in them had really blown me away.

I was a working-class fourteen-year-old. I loved SF, but cost was a real factor in my decisions.

The cover of a knight standing in front of a forest of spaceships got my initial fifty cents. I read the installment and immediately subscribed to the magazine. I didn’t care whether it was called Astounding or Analog: if it occasionally ran stories like The High Crusade, it was worth my money.

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In my previous post I discussed what the literature of ancient Greece and Rome meant to my writing generally. Here I’ll show you how the classics have specifically affected my latest novel, The Legions of Fire.

This has two parts: first, the texts and incidents that I’ve taken from classical literature for Legions; and second, the cultural ambiance of the world which I’m describing. I’m going to start with the details.

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A bookstore owner told me a few years ago that a customer had asked her, “Where do you keep the classics? You know—like Jacqueline Susann.”

What I mean by ‘the classics’ is the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Throughout my adult life, much of my pleasure reading has been in classical literature.

My Latin is good enough that I translate Ovid’s poetry for fun. I put the results up on my website just to keep myself honest, but to my amazement, a fair number of people do read them. My Greek only equips me to annotate other people’s translations, though that can be surprisingly useful.

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