The troops are packed and ready to begin marching to the Channel when an enormous silver spacecraft lands outside the town. The timid, learned monk Brother Parvus is the book’s narrator I don’t think that’s necessary, for the movie adaptation. Other colorful English characters include the knights Red John Hameward and Brian Fitz-William. Roger’s right hand man, Sir Owain Montbelle, is the Lancelot to Roger’s Arthur - i.e., he is younger, handsomer, a brave warrior but also a smooth charmer. Roger is a tough, gruff warrior he is married to the sophisticated Lady Catherine, who loves her husband but is getting sick of the military life. Sir Roger, Baron de Tourneville, has set up shop in the English town of Ansby (in northeastern Lincolnshire), where he’s recruited and trained a military force to assist king Edward III in the Hundred Years’ War against France. Unlike, say, Cowboys & Aliens, we’re dealing here with smart but credulous, ignorant characters who believe in miracles so although they’re frightened of the alien invaders, at first, in a way they’re more quick to accept this bizarre phenomenon as a reality than we might be. This should be thought of as an exciting, knightly adventure set during the Middle Ages, where the foe happen to be aliens it’s not a science-fiction movie with knights.
Meanwhile, one of Sir Roger’s trusted knights and his own wife begin to conspire against him…. They order the one surviving Wersgor to fly them to France instead, he sends the ship hurtling to a Wersgor colony planet - where the battle of old-fashioned valor against advanced technology continues. After a thrilling battle, Sir Roger and his warriors - along with all of the village’s inhabitants - board the spaceship. The blue-skinned humanoids are scouts from a galactic empire looking for new worlds to subjugate.
In the mid-14th century, a Wersgorix spacecraft lands in a remote Lincolnshire village - where, as it happens, the doughty Sir Roger is training a military force to battle the French. This book is a beloved classic it was Anderson’s biggest seller worldwide. Like Three Hearts and Three Lions, The High Crusade (nominated for a 1961 Hugo) is an ingenious admixture of science fiction and medieval knightly adventure.
He was a terrific fantasy author, too: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953) and The Broken Sword (1954) were important influences on the game Dungeons & Dragons and Hrolf Kraki’s Saga won the 1974 British Fantasy Award. Poul Anderson’s historical/sci-fi adventure The High Crusade appears on my list of the Best Adventures of 1960.Īnderson was one of science fiction’s most highly decorated luminaries, winner of major sci-fi prizes for his stories and novelettes - particularly his Hornblower-esque Flandry of Terra series. One in a series of 10 posts suggesting novels (from Josh Glenn’s BEST ADVENTURES series) that really ought to be adapted for the big screen.
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