What I like and approve of:
the Cosmic religion in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History
Cosmenosis in Anderson's Technic History
the Dao Kai/Sea Way in his The Fleet Of Stars, 8, which is -
more a philosophy than a religion (this has become a cliche although not a bad one);
a way of thinking, feeling and living;
behaviours rather than precepts;
organic;
founded on wholeness of life in oneness with the universe -
- and involves meditating under stars and under water.
OK. I could acknowledge the Sea Way while continuing to practice zazen.
On the floating platform:
In response to an invitation received from Iokepa Hakawau of the mid-Pacific Ocean polity called the Lahui Kuikawa at the very end of Chapter 6, Fenn travels from Luna to Kamehameha Spaceport in Hawaii from where he proceeds by air to a large, crowded, floating platform:
"As he stepped from the volant onto the airfield, into a wind lulling mild across three thousand kilometers of equatorial ocean, a brown girl gave Fenn a white smile and laid a garland around his neck." (p. 102)
A mild wind and a white smile belong together! Andersonian winds growl, roar, sigh, lull, caress, whisper etc as appropriate.
Three thousand kilometers of equatorial ocean set the scene for this section of the narrative. So far, Anderson's text has transported its readers from the colonized fourth planet of Beta Hydri via Alpha Centauri and the Kuiper Belt to the orbiting Habitat, Lunar passageways and both country and city on the colonized solar planet, Mars.
A boy, not a machine, carries Fenn's bag. This greeting is not an artificial observance, as elsewhere on Earth and Luna, but a ritual "...as natural as breathing." (p. 103)
We find all these details in the opening three paragraphs of Chapter 8 and the in first sentence of the fourth paragraph. It pays to read carefully and to take notes. One kind of sf is the futuristic travelogue. See also Anderson's The Game Of Empire.
To make linkage, Chuan:
The Prefect of the Synesis denigrates reports of immortality on extra-solar colony planets. He begins by stating that cerebral data-storage capacity is finite, an issue addressed in other Andersonian works. But does a brain retain - or need to retain - every experience?
However, even if retention were infinite, a more fundamental problem would remain. The longer you lived, the less often you would be able to remember any given earlier experience. Thus, how long would you retain any sense of identity or continuity with your younger self? Surely eventually you would effectively become a different person which is what happens naturally in any case when some people die and others are born? Maybe nature has got this issue right in the first place?
In any case, I fully agree with Fenn's response to the Prefect's speech:
"'...I don't think I'd mind a run of several thousand years, myself. And after that - who knows?'" (p. 82)
Exactly. Not caution, courage.
Kinna, wondering why Chuan has invited her, asks:
"'...why not cultivate somebody studying, oh, psychotechnics, with an idea of going into the Coordination Service?'" (p. 92)
Deja vu. Psychotechnics and a Coordination Service are major features of the Psychotechnic History, which was Poul Anderson's first future history whereas Harvest Of Stars is his seventh and second last. The distance between them approaches the infinite.
Chuan is a synnoiont who has been trained from childhood to commune with the cybercosm. We must learn what this means as we read about it.
The Synesis is the name of the social setup where human beings hold public office but the conscious AI "cybercosm" wields real power because it controls all the technology.
Fenn asks his mother whether the Synesis is:
"'...so marvelous?'" (p. 88)
Her reply is threefold:
"'It's what we have.'" (ibid.)
True of any social system while it exists.
Secondly:
"'It means peace, health, well-being, long life, and, yes, freedom to do and be the best we can.'" (ibid.)
She is an artist.
Thirdly, the Synesis contrasts favourably with earlier history:
"'How free were men when governments squeezed half their earnings from them and sent them off to die in wars anytime it chose?'" (ibid.)
Peace, health, well-being, long life and freedom for individuals like artists to create and to fulfill themselves. However, human beings are both individual and social and their control of their social destiny has been lost. Human beings are in a much better state without governments taxing and conscripting them and waging wars. However, they, the whole human race, needs to exercise the kind of control over its own circumstances that governments had previously exercised for it. Information and communication technology and automatic production can be used to enhance this kind of control instead of to stifle it.
Lack of fulfillment generates discontent. Fenn's mother says that quiet revolutions with unguessable outcomes are happening. He himself realizes that overt discontent may be just "froth" whereas a deeper change might also be happening and this is suddenly exhilarating.
He has yet to meet Guthrie.
This is good writing, it must be acknowledged:
"[Fenn's] education to date included the chronicle of wretchedness which was history until five or six centuries ago - a bare half-dozen lifetimes. He hadn't learned only about famine, disease, poverty, toil, environmental destruction, the ills that piece by piece technology had lifted off mankind. He'd learned about the unnecessary horrors, slavery, private abuse, rampant crime, inherited hatreds, sexual distortion and oppression, superstitious dreads, and institutionalized atrocities of government, war, regimentation, extortion, torture.... Humankind today was liberated. Wasn't it?" (pp. 49-50)
No. Not if Fenn has to ask that question! The text continues:
"If it had pulled back into a warm, little Earth-womb, that was only because it was cowardly and stupid. No?" (p. 50)
No. A cowardly and stupid species would not have been able to create the technology that has ended famine, disease, poverty, toil etc. Not everyone but enough people would have been courageous and intelligent enough to resist any pressure to retreat into a metaphorical womb.
The news tells of unrest. Yes. And unrest can, not necessarily will, find an outlet: either remake society in the Solar System or go elsewhere and live otherwise as some have already done.
There is more good stuff to quote but we are going to have to take this in stages. Life beyond the computer calls.
Glory to the Emperor? Not in this timeline.
Read:
