This year marks the 50th 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 7th, 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.
My love for Poul Anderson’s work goes back to the mid-fifties, when I found a copy of a grimly evocative Viking story, The Broken Sword, in the Santa Monica Public Library and read it cover to cover standing by the New Acquisitions bin, then ran home without writing down the title or author. Thus, when I picked up The High Crusade a few years later, I had no idea that this delightful book, with its accurate albeit intentionally skewed view of the Middle Ages, was by the same author.
