I remember one of Anderson's novels where the heroine was a 'flame-haired' Irish beauty who spoke pure 'Blarney-stone Oirish' ("Ah to be sure, to be sure" etc., etc.). I remember flinging the book, and its execrable cliches, across the room and vowing never to read any more Anderson.

It's a pity because he was a favourite of mine during my teens and I really enjoyed some of his early stuff like 'The Broken Sword'. Unfortunately, from approximately mid-career onward he became a parody of himself and practically unreadable. Also, like many American SF writers, he became a right-wing libertarian with (for British readers, especially) a very high 'get-up-your-nose' quotient.