Gods And Wars

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9.

I have summarized Andersonian battle scenes on land, at sea or in space before. We have just read through and past Anderson's description of the battle between the Dalesmen and the Lann. Military sf is a distinct sub-genre. Some readers appreciate this aspect of works by Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling. Such readers might even include military experts or veterans, which I am not. My expertise is philosophy, which explains why I focus on textual references to "gods" rather than on accounts of combat. However, Anderson addresses every aspect of human experience so this blog welcomes comments from readers who focus on other aspects - and also from those who read something other than sf! which is what I should spend the rest of this evening doing. 

Only one more full day before I am in London Thursday to Sunday.

Just A Story

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9.

Carl wonders whether the gods are not just a story. Tom thinks that:

"'Someone must have made the world...'" (p. 96)

Why? Someone making things is part of a world. The universe has not been made by anyone but has developed from the simplest of elements by natural processes. I was brought up on arguments for the existence of God. People tried to rationalize a received belief in every way that they could think of. CS Lewis reasoned his way to theism but I disagree with his reasoning. Essentially: if rational mental processes are effects of non-rational material processes, then there is no basis for their rationality. But reasoning is a valid process. Therefore, reason has always existed, in God before He imparted it to men. (This is my summary of an argument that I used to accept because I wanted to. Anyone who would like to discuss it further can read Lewis' Surprised By Joy and Miracles and get back to me.) Lewis' linear causality is an inadequate explanatory framework. Organisms interacting with their environments became conscious and manipulative. Reason emerged as a way to think about and act on the environment. Sometimes it works. People learned how to make and control fire. But reason remains surrounded by irrationalities as we realize as soon as we start to argue about anything important!

Carl says that he could believe in the great God of the time vault but not in the small, childish gods of the stories. I question whether a centuries-old monotheism would recede before primitive polytheism even in post-nuclear war conditions. However, when Carl gets as far as believing in his "great God," philosophical discussion can begin.

Giving Thanks

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 8.

In battle:

"The Dalesmen were holding - the Dalesmen stood firm - oh, thank all gods!" (p. 84)

There are times when I feel grateful but to whom or to what? Expressing thanks for the course of events is part of animizing nature. We have been selected to interact with other persons, therefore sometimes to thank them, so we interact in the same way with impersonal forces and thus the gods are born. But I still want to feel, if not grateful, then at least appropriately appreciative of aspects of actuality. 

But is it appropriate to thank "all gods" during a battle? Surely some of the gods will be on the other side, whether literally or metaphorically? If I were asked to pray in public, then the only honest prayer that I would be able to offer would be as follows:

"All gods, we ask your help. But, if not, we'll do it ourselves."

That might sound disrespectful but, in fact, it is as respectful as I can make it: 

first, by acknowledging that it is possible that I am mistaken to believe that no superhuman beings exist;

secondly, by affirming that we should not just pray (if we believe in praying) but should both pray and act. 

The gods expect action. Krishna speaks the Bhagavad Gita on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra and urges his friend, Arjuna, to act in the world, not to withdraw from it. Theists and non-theists can agree on the necessity of action.

Twilight

We posted once yesterday but on another blog, here. The Jade Emperor is the supreme deity in the Taoist pantheon.

In Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages, four of the twenty chapter headings refer to gods:

10 Vengeance of the Gods

11 The Gods Are Angry

16 Defiance of the Gods

20 Twilight of the Gods

In addition, Chapter 19 is entitled "The Last Battle," an apocalyptic phrase. We do not expect literal gods to come on-stage but will there be a change in human attitudes to these "...great shadowy powers..."? I think that Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods" means the beginning of an Age of Men, as Valhalla burns in the background.

In The Near Future

Let us look ahead, not for the next five hundred years, just for the next two weeks. Tomorrow will be 30 June and I will probably end this month with a round number of posts, thus with this one. The coming Thursday through Sunday will be spent in London (including travel time), therefore away from this computer. The following Tuesday, I will hopefully visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. A day trip to another town is planned for the following Friday. What will happen globally during this fortnight or so? I confidently predict that something unexpected will occur.

In "day after tomorrow" sf, the recognizably familiar contemporary world is the setting for a revolutionary invention or discovery. James Blish refers to a dying breed of attic inventors. His readers remember Frankenstein, the Time Traveller, Cavor, the Invisible Man, Doctor Moreau, Robur etc. Blish's Adolph Haertel discovers anti-gravity and flies a tree hut to Mars. In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, scientists keep a guillotined head alive although the intelligence that speaks through the "Head" is demonic, not human. In Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, the discovery is that animal and human intelligence is increasing because Earth has moved out of an inhibiting radiation field. In all these cases, the point is that mankind interacts with the cosmos - with gravity, Mars, hyper-somatic intelligences, cosmic radiation - not just with itself. The universe waits while governments fight over parts of the Earth. (I was not leading towards that conclusion but now it seems inevitable.)

CS Lewis wrote somewhere that only the first visit to another world is of interest to a reader with imagination. We see what he meant without necessarily agreeing in detail. When a Lunar or Martian base has become an everyday environment for colonists and space travellers, then it has lost its newness. However, Anderson maintains the planet Avalon as an intriguing environment through three short stories and one novel.

Ad astra.

What Should The Lann Do?

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 7.

Lenard, captured son of the Chief of the Lann invaders, explains that his people - hunters, herders and small farmers in a harsh and barren country - have always fought cold, rain, blight and each other for diminishing resources while their numbers steadily grow. Brothers fight like wild dogs. Now they have come together to attack possessors of better lands. Dalesmen will be displaced or become servants. The Lann do not vote but follow their Chief. They will not accept an offer of empty forest tracts and, in any case, Lenard does not think that there is enough room for both tribes.

If I were the Lann Chief, then I would accept any offer of empty tracts while also sending scouts or leading groups further south in the hope of finding empty lands to colonize. But, if I were a Lann, then I would not become Chief. I would leave home and trek south alone or with a small group to live by hunting or by finding employment among other tribes.

An individual solution should be possible even if a social solution is not. 

See you in Sky-Home. (I don't think so but it is a good story.)

Shadowy Powers

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 7.

"...the gods..." have been mentioned since p. 21 but that becomes just a phrase, a part of the spoken language. At last, we get some sense of what is meant:

"...those great shadowy powers of sky and earth, fire and water, growth and death and destiny, before which men quailed." (p. 72)

Powers to be feared and propitiated? Elsewhere, Poul Anderson shows us "the gods" developing beyond that earliest and most primitive of roles. See Gods And Men.

A Unitarian that I knew in Dublin read the Roman philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, and told me, "He talks about 'the gods,' you know, but you could easily replace that with 'God' and the rest would remain the same." 

I am happy to have "the gods," including the monotheist versions, angels and saints etc, in speech and literature, provided only that we have moved beyond that earliest stage of fearing them as if they were ghosts.

The universe is haunted by an awesome presence.

The Old Enemy

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 5.

After driving off a tiger with arrows, Carl mentally lists and reviews the enemies of men:

tiger

bear

snake

dog packs

demons

ghosts

gods

night 

storm

flood

fire

drought

winter

man

That last enemy, remorseless, deadly, old, strong and crafty, wrecked civilization and has returned as taboos and barbarians.

Exactly the same phrase:

"...that enemy was old and strong and crafty." (p. 58)

- occurs both here and in Anderson's first future history series.

See previous posts on the "protean enemy."

Vault... is pre-future history.

Servants

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 5.

"'The Chief,' Ralph had said, 'is the first servant of the tribe.'" (p. 54)

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave

-copied from here. 

Comments

An unusually good Biblical passage.

Says same as Ralph.

Poul Anderson could have inserted this passage from Matthew. However, few books have survived the Doom and few people have learned to read. Ralph's remark is an example of inherited wisdom.

I might chose this passage if I were asked to read at the funeral of a trade union steward or campaigner.

Leaders are not rulers.

POV Cop

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 4.

Six Lann pursue three Dalesmen at night, both parties on horseback. This passage is definitely narrated from the point of view (pov) of the leading Dalesman, Carl. A metal object is:

"...cold in his hand..." (p. 46)

When he has used an ancient, hand-cranked flashlight to make the superstitious Lann flee:

"Carl sat for a minute, not daring to believe..." (p. 47)

However, during the pursuit, we are informed that:

"Owl's horse stumbled on a root and went rolling." (p. 46)

This information about the cause of the stumble is directly imparted by the omniscient narrator to his readers. Carl cannot have seen the horse's hoof hit a root. At most, he sees or hears the stumble and infers its cause. So a narrative entirely confined to Carl's pov might have included the sentence:

"Owl's horse stumbled, maybe on a root, and went rolling."

Most readers perhaps neither notice nor care whether a narrative steps outside its pov but I have been sensitized to such issues by years of reading and rereading a writer as careful and methodical as Poul Anderson whose texts always repay close analysis.