(When you start an OBIT thread, please post an obituary notice so people will have an opportunity to remember the work and accomplishments of the person that has passed away)

From the New York Times:

August 3, 2001

Poul Anderson, Science Fiction Novelist, Dies at 74

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

oul Anderson, who combined his education as a physicist with his passion for Nordic mythology to become a prolific and sometimes poetic author of science fiction, died on Tuesday at his home in Orinda, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Karen.

Though he was known as a writer of hard science fiction, meaning science fiction with a scrupulously accurate scientific basis, Mr. Anderson thought of his books as magical realism, a phrase he adapted from the fantastical style of some Latin American novelists. In book after book, he returned to an amazingly detailed imaginary future.

Some of his better-known works are "Tau Zero" (Doubleday, 1970), which plays with the theory of relativity; "The Boat of a Million Years" (Tor Books, 1989), which addresses human immortality; and "A Midsummer Tempest" (Doubleday, 1974), in which all the works of Shakespeare are literally true.

In "Three Hearts and Three Lions" (Doubleday, 1961), he wrote of a modern-day engineer caught in a world of dragons and witches.

Last month his novel "Genesis" (Tor Books, 2000) won the John W. Campbell Award, one of three major prizes for science fiction.

Michael W. McClintock, in a 1981 entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, called Mr. Anderson "one of the five or six most important writers to appear during the science-fiction publishing boom of the decade following the end of World War II."

Mr. Anderson's wife, Karen, said she did not know how many books he wrote. "We lost count after 100," she said.

Mr. Anderson would regularly consult with scientists at universities. In "Tau Zero" his meticulousness at explaining how time becomes foreshortened through the workings of Einstein's theory of relativity packs a literary wallop.

Writes Sandra Miesel in "Against Time's Arrow: The High Crusade of Poul Anderson" (Borgo, 1978): "To convey the numbing immensities of the time and distance traversed, Anderson begins slowly, letting a few hours elapse at the normal rate in the first chapter. Thereafter the tempo quickens at an exponential rate until eons fleet by in heartbeats and the reader unquestionably accepts all the marvels described."

Poul William Anderson was born on Nov. 25, 1926, in Bristol, Pa., to Anton and Astrid Anderson. His father had Anglicized the spelling of the family name, originally Andersen. He told his wife she could name their first child, and she chose Poul (pronounced PO-ull).

"That first name is a version of Paul and I might have Anglicized that too, except that in grade school the teachers kept telling me I wasn't spelling my own name right, and I got my back up about it," Mr. Anderson wrote in an autobiographical essay in Contemporary Authors.

The family moved to Port Arthur, Tex., where his friends included a boy with a pet alligator. His father died in a car crash when Poul was 11. His mother took Poul and his brother first to Denmark, then to Maryland, and finally to a 40-acre farm in southern Minnesota.

Poul soon found himself spending all of his tiny allowance on subscriptions to science fiction magazines. He went to the University of Minnesota to major in physics, but after graduating realized that he would never be more than a second-rate scientist.

He found a congenial psychic home in the Minneapolis Fantasy Society. He sold stories to magazines, particularly Astounding, now called Analog. In 1952, at a world science fiction convention in Chicago, he met Karen Kruse, who had founded a Sherlock Holmes Society while still in high school. "There is considerable overlap between followers of science fiction and of the great detective," Mr. Anderson observed in his essay.

They moved to San Francisco and were married in 1953. They and their daughter, Astrid, who now lives in Lynnwood, Wash., founded the Society for Creative Anachronism, which goes in for medieval role-playing and combat in full costume and has spread nationwide.

Mr. Anderson is also survived by his brother, John, of New Harmony, Utah, and two grandchildren.

A former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he won numerous awards, including three Nebula and seven Hugo awards. In 1997 the association named him a Grandmaster and last year he was inducted into the Science Fiction Fantasy Hall of Fame.

A recurring theme in Mr. Anderson's writing is the importance of individual liberty and free will. Charles Platt, in "Dream Makers, Volume 2: The Uncommon Men and Women Who Write Science Fiction" (Berkley Publishing, 1983), said this focus earned him a reputation in science fiction circles "as being fairly far to the right."

When asked about this comment, Mr. Anderson once said he championed the "radically bold concepts" of the founding fathers, "from which we've been retreating ever since.

"And I don't believe it's necessarily reactionary to say so," he said.

He attributed much of his success to assiduous research, calling his writing "fantasy with rivets," explaining that if he mentioned Roman armor he would report precisely how it was made.

"We headed for museums instead of nightclubs," said Mrs. Anderson, who worked closely with her husband on developing ideas. "It was more fun that way."