Betty Riefenstahl And Betty Sorensen

This has to be a coincidence.

In Poul Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," Jim Ching, friend of the alien student, Adzel, flies his own aircar and spends time with Betty Riefenstahl. 

In Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast, John Thomas Stuart, owner of the alien pet, Lummox, flies with a harness copter and spends time with Betty Sorensen.

Minor coincidences aside, both stories occupy the same territory - the daily life of the future: personal flight; a friend or a pet from off-planet.

Jim sits tests for the Academy, hoping to become a spaceman. John Thomas and his Betty disagree about whether he should attend Western Tech or State U. with her.

I will shortly be driven in a groundcar to a meeting in Morecambe but thought that, before departing, it was worth recording this Heinlein-Anderson textual parallel. More will come.

Adzel And Lummox

Robert Heinlein's Future History stops short of regular faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel which was due to take off right after the end of Volume IV. The concluding Volume V backtracks to the fate of the first STL interstellar spaceship. I do not accept anything after Volume V as a valid continuation of the Future History, Heinlein's name on the cover or no Heinlein's name on the cover.

Regular inter-species contact due to FTL travel begins very early in Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first collection in this future history series was entitled Trader To The Stars. The third story to be collected in his The Earth Book Of Stormgate features a giant quadrupedal Wodenite studying planetology on Earth.

Some of Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles do show routine interstellar inter-species relations, most notably perhaps The Star Beast which begins with the narrative point of view of a large intelligent extraterrestrial that is being kept as a pet in a backyard on Earth. This organism, Lummox, resembles Anderson's Wodenite, Adzel, but with more legs and eyes.

Since starting to write this post, I have checked among a few Heinlein titles on a bookshelf upstairs and have been somewhat astonished to find a copy of The Star Beast. Do I want to reread this juvenile novel after all these years to make a comparison with Poul Anderson? I am reluctant to reread any sf from that long ago. Damon Knight gave The Star Beast the highest praise of saying that it was worth rereading but added a damning comment on much sf:

"This is a novel that won't go bad on you. Many of science fiction's triumphs, even from as little as ten years ago, are unreadable today; they were shoddily put together, not meant for re-use. But Heinlein is durable."

-copied from here.

Knight continues by stating that he has read this book twice and will again for pleasure.

Which supposed triumphs rapidly became unreadable? It is the main contention of this blog that even Poul Anderson's hastily written works are worth rereading and that all of his works bear constant re-use. How durable is his predecessor, Heinlein? Let's find out.

EARTH BOOK And THE PEOPLE...

Fictitiously, the twelve introductions and single afterword in Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate are written after the events recounted in The People Of The Wind whereas the twelve Technic History instalments collected in the Earth Book are set earlier than The People Of The Wind so that, in the chronologically linear The Technic Civilization Saga, we read these twelve instalments with their Earth Book introductions before The People... whereas, in the original book publication order of the History, we read the Earth Book as a single volume after The People... The chronologically last event in this pre-Flandry period of the Technic History is Hloch flying above Mount Anrovil after he has finished editing the Earth Book. Next, in the original order, is Ensign Flandry whereas, next in the Saga, is the introduction to an account of the Founder of the Terran Empire, Manuel Argos, and The People... is the second instalment after that. There could not be a more intricate future history series.

Serendipity

"How To Be Ethnic..."

When Jim and Betty visit Adzel, their problems are almost over. John Riefenstahl calls on Adzel's holvid phone to inform his daughter that the Festival of Man board has vetoed all his most recent proposals. When Adzel moves into scanner range, Riefenstahl is startled because, as he puts it, he had been thinking of Wagner and now sees Fafner. Jim and Betty, who have just been realizing that Adzel resembles a Chinese dragon, make eye contact and yell. Everything has come together. That was the moment of realization. All that remains is the execution, which requires two and a half more pages. This is an extremely compact problem story, Heinleinian in theme? - problem-solving young protagonists aiming for the interstellar frontier. The title character of Starman Jones makes it to the stars and so does Jim Ching.

The Most Difficult Sort Of Prose To Write

Heinlein In Dimension.

I will quote Panshin quoting Heinlein, then relate this to Anderson.

Points made by Heinlein and accepted as largely true by Panshin:

sf is the most difficult kind of prose to write because it requires both a body of knowledge and an amount of directed imagination;

therefore, most sf is not good as literature and is not even entertaining;

but it is important because it addresses the future;

and, because sf deals with change, it is the only fiction that can interpret the world that we live in.

Relevance to Poul Anderson:

Anderson had a vast body of knowledge and a great deal of directed imagination;

his sf is good as literature and highly entertaining;

he addressed the future and change and interpreted social changes.

Thus, Heinlein identified the obstacles to good sf but Anderson overcame them.

Another Anderson Reference

Heinlein In Dimension.

Alexei Panshin refers to a Poul Anderson novel by its title alone without naming the author. He, Panshin, is discussing the difference between romantic and realistic fiction, which I do not want to get into here. For this post alone, let us just note that Panshin characterizes "Romance" as "life-not-as-experienced" and "Realism" as "life-as-experienced" (p. 136) and, on this basis, says that speculative fiction is romantic and only relatively realistic. He then lists three pairs of titles, saying that regular sf readers will see some difference between the two works in each pair whereas non-readers of sf will not. The pairs are:

The Dragon In The Sea and The Weapon Shops Of Isher;

"The Cold Equations" and Captain Future;

The Enemy Stars and The Dying Earth.

We on this blog recognize an Anderson title. We also recognize that, in each pair, the first item is "realistic" whereas the second is "romantic." This is a very obscure reference to Anderson and I spotted it only when looking for something else.

The Solutions And A Culmination

"How To Be Ethnic..."

Adzel:

sings Fafner for the San Francisco Opera Company around the Solar Commonwealth;

wins unlimited meals at the Silver Dragon Chinese Food and Chop Suey Palace by parading as the dragon during the newly revived Lunar New Year celebrations;

uses connections gained through his League scholarship to persuade a Master Merchant to accept Jim Ching as an apprentice.

The Earth Book presents an Adzel trilogy:

in "How To Be Ethnic...," Adzel is a student on Earth;

in "Day of Burning," he is in the trade pioneer crew with David Falkayn and Chee Lan as they spearhead the League intervention to protect Merseia from the radioactivity caused by the nearby supernova, Valenderay;

in "Lodestar," he is with the team when they are confronted by Nicholas van Rijn at Mirkheim.

In American future historical writing, a main line of development begins with Robert Heinlein's Future History time chart and culminates, in my opinion, with Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate. In passing from time chart to Earth Book, we have switched authors and future histories and have not even reached the end of Anderson's Technic History. However, I think the Earth Book embodies what Heinlein had intended in his chart, a detailed fictional future. 

A Multi-Problem Story

Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70.

p. 54 is Hloch's introduction to the story as collected in the Earth Book and therefore is an additional page of text.

Although Adzel's name is the first word to appear under the story title on p. 55, the Wodenite does not come on-stage until near the top of p. 64. Before then, on pp. 55-63, the first person narrator, James Ching:

converses by holovid phone with his principal counselor, Freeman Simon Snyder, who hands him the problem of how to devise a Chinese contribution to the Festival of Man without thereby flunking his preliminary tests for the space Academy;

calls Betty Riefenstahl, only to be told by her phone that she will not be available until the evening;

consults Library Central about the historic San Francisco Chinatown;

eats dinner with his well-meaning but insular parents;

flies to the Riefenstahl place in his own aircar, passing en route a bus carrying a Lunarian, an Alfzarian, a spacehand wearing a Brotherhood badge and a League journeyman;

sees the lights and hears the sounds of the round-the-clock replication of the Golden Gate bridge;

learns from Betty that her father, Freeman Riefenstahl, has been handed the problem of organizing a spectacular live operatic contribution to the Festival of Man;

agrees with Betty to visit Adzel who has the problem of keeping his giant body well nourished while studying on Earth.

The three problems - four if we include Jim's problem of how to get into space - will have a single solution. 

Five References To Poul Anderson

Heinlein In Dimension.

(i) Anderson's After Doomsday asks something about humanity by placing a spaceship crew in an apocalyptic context. (I., p. 2)

(ii) Anderson was one of Heinlein's successors as a future historian. (V., p. 122) (The principle successor, in my opinion.)

(iii) Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early" is a good problem story. (V., p. 131) A time-transferred modern man cannot survive in the unfamiliar context of Viking Iceland. For "context," "people" and "problem" as story elements, see Elements Of Stories.

(iv) Anderson writes multi-sensory descriptions, e.g., in the opening scene of "No Truce With Kings." (VI., pp. 141-142)

(v) Too science-based a definition of sf would eliminate Anderson's The High Crusade. (VIII., p. 180)

We do not read a book about Heinlein to learn about Anderson. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note which aspects of Anderson's works become relevant when discussing Heinlein.

Not mentioned here: Heinlein perfected the circular causality paradox story whereas Anderson perfected that and every other aspect of time travel fiction.

Senses In Scenes

Heinlein In Dimension.

Poul Anderson wrote in a private letter to Alexei Panshin that:

"'A useful device - I think it was first enunciated by Flaubert - is to invoke at least three senses in every scene...'" (VI., p. 141)

We have noted this device in Anderson's works. Panshin informs us that the opening scene of Anderson's "No Truce With Kings" presents in about six hundred words:

shouts

stamping boots

fists thumping tables

clashing cups

shadows

stirring banners

winking light

wind

rain

a loosened collar

singing

chillness

darkness

clattering feet

more

I could go back upstairs, find the story and ascertain what more there are. Do you want to?

This is one way to "...make writing real and vivid." (p. 142) Vance, Bradbury and Anderson were sensual; Heinlein was functional.