The Broken Sword’s chilly portrait of the relationships between elves and men was published just as the long reign of Tolkien began in the United States, though no doubt Poul and Karen had already read The Hobbit. Poul derived his material from the same sources as Tolkien—the Northern myths, and of course Wagner. But his take was Nordic. The woods are deeper in the far north—darker and colder.

In The High Crusade (1960), Poul dropped a marauding spaceship filled with brutal, cocksure aliens into medieval England. Using his knowledge of both science and history to reverse all our expectations, he created a masterpiece of comic adventure. On his office wall hung an authentic-looking replica of a long sword. Lifting that sword was like reliving history, and brought deep respect for the men who lived and died with such weapons in hand.

He wrote of the Time Patrol; space merchant Nicholas van Rijn; Dominic Flandry of the Polesotechnic League, the furry, mimicking Teddy bears known as Hokas (with good friend Gordon Dickson), and more; all series highly favored by connoisseurs.

Poul made many friends and (to my knowledge) few or no enemies. As a father and grandfather, he projected respect and humor. For Astrid he wrote and illustrated tales of a purple submarine, and for grandchildren Erik and Alexandra, handmade booklets, stories and poems/songs of zoos and sailors. He had a quiet and insightful wit, and a kindly tolerance for his headstrong son-in-law.

He loved to gather with friends and family to listen and talk. Among those friends was French anthropologist Francois Bordes, who wrote French science fiction under the pen name of Francis Carsac. Bordes was fond of teaching folks how to knap flints the old-fashioned way. Poul’s friendship with Jack Vance led to the building of a famous houseboat (Frank Herbert was also an early participant in this project). Jerry Pournelle, another long-time friend, invited Poul to help him sail a boat down the coast from Puget Sound to Los Angeles; they never completed the journey, but were inspected by spyglassing orcas one morning.

Through the mid-1970s, as I was publishing more and more short fiction and writing my first novels, Poul and I corresponded. We swapped science and story ideas. I remember a good debate over whether or not ice would evaporate without ever becoming liquid, in the deep cold of Saturn’s rings. Here I was, contending with a true master, so with sweat on my brow, wild-eyed, I pored over reference books and science texts, and finally quoted figures from tables in the CRC Handbook. Poul kindly conceded I had a point. Later, he told Astrid, when she asked about the science in my novels, that I could be relied upon to know my stuff. No higher praise!

In the early 1980s, Jerry Pournelle helped assemble the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy. Poul attended these meetings, and in 1983, I was invited to join this amazing group of writers, generals, scientists, astronauts, and politicians. To this day, the CACNSP meetings are the subject of legend and history. They taught me much of what I know about politics and Washington D.C., and were crucial to the writing of my novel, Eon.