The aliens had expected a simple mission of shock & awe. Too bad they ran into free Englishmen...
Wow. What a way to start the list. I knew getting into this that pretty much none of what I would be reading could be considered high literature, but this caught me off guard. Medieval knights conquering a race of aliens? Well, lets check our preconceptions at the door and dive right in.
The High Crusade begins as a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, as an unnamed space captain reads through an English friar's account of an encounter that happened over 1,000 years ago. The friar, Brother Parvus, tells of the small town of Ansby, year of our lord 1345, after a strange metal craft descends from the skies. A local baron, Sir Roger de Tourneville, on his way to fight the French, investigates the ship. After a brief encounter with the inhabitants (a blue-skinned, stout people named the Wersgorix) in which Sir Roger is victorious, the one remaining alien is brought back to the abbey for questioning.
After some trial and error they find a way of communicating with the creature, named Branithar. Discovering that the Wersgorix are a conquering race, and that their ship is outfitted for war, Sir Roger decides that Branithar's ship can be of use against those damn Franks. After piling everyone in town into the ship, however, Branithar's treachery comes to a head as he activates the autopilot to return to his home. How will our heroes fare against the awesome technological might of this mysterious civilization from beyond the stars?
As it turns out, remarkably well. Over the next 200 pages -- this story starts very quickly, and never lets up -- the noble Englishmen conquer several military establishments, then the world they landed on, and finally form a confederation of outsider alien races to take the battle to the Wersgorix themselves. Anderson spares no expense in describing the various combat scenes, and I thought them all both captivating and believable. The inter-species politics, likewise, are well-written, and I found myself on more than one instance secretly wondering how Sir Roger was going to talk his way out of his latest situation. And make no mistake: Sir Roger is a bullshit artist of the highest pedigree. His entire plan hinges on convincing several alien races that the Earth (which he simply calls "England") is a powerful, spacefaring collection of warlords. Which, now that I think about it, isn't too far from the truth, but had I been GM'ing these encounters I'd have set a pretty high DC on that check.
All together, this book and its corresponding short story ("Quest," easily found online) succeed at something that comparatively few things do: telling an original, entertaining story without overstaying their welcome. It helps that Anderson is a legitimately funny man, and manages to weave humor and action effortlessly in each scene. The High Crusade got some real chuckles out of me, owing mostly to the fish-out-of-water nature of the characters and narration.
So, story aside, the question then becomes: what, if anything, led Gygax to recommend this book to readers, and what can players and GM's learn from it? To be honest, I can't seem to find any real parallels between the story and the game, although the module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (in which the adventurers explore the remains of a downed spaceship) could have been influenced by it. On the player side, some people have said that the paladin class, a character driven by religious fervor and determined to smite evil, doesn't jive with the "pulp fantasy" feel that D&D encompasses. While I'm led to believe that the paladin was more heavily influenced by the main character in Poul Anderson's other book, Three Hearts and Three Lions (the next on my list), there are many characters in this book who call upon God and the saints for courage in battle. I've no small love for the paladin class myself, so maybe my next character will start every charge with a deafening shout of "For God and King Edward!" as Sir Roger so valiantly does.
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