Four Anti-Space Cultures

Poul Anderson, New America, "To Promote the General Welfare."

Dan Coffin tells a younger man born on Rustum:

"'The Earth government...were phasing out space travel when your ancestors left. Too costly, given a bloated population pressing on resources worn thin. Not quite in their world-view, either. The culture was turning more and more from science and technology to mysticism and ceremony.'" (pp.137-138)

I think that we need science, technology, mysticism and ceremony but, by "mysticism," I mean meditation, not mystification.

This passage reminded me of a sentence in James Blish's Cities In Flight which I compared here to Brann's dialogue in Anderson's The Corridors Of Time and here to the Ai Chun in Anderson's World Without Stars.

Also relevant is this paragraph in Cities In Flight:

"The ban on thinking about space flight extended even to the speculations of physicists. The omnipresent thought police were instructed in the formulae of ballistics and other disciplines of astronautics, and could detect such work - Unearthly Activities, it was called - long before it might have reached the proving-stand stage."
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT PROLOGUE, p. 238.

Blish's world dictatorship, nuclear-powered and Bureaucratic, is inadervertently overthrown by pure mathematicians rediscovering anti-gravity whereas Anderson's Earth government, cynically promoting mysticism and ceremonial, is obliged to resume a space program when messages from Rustum inspire other dissenters.

Anderson has the colonized plateau of High America in a collection called New America whereas Blish has the colonized planet of New Earth first visited in a collection called Earthman, Come Home.

The Milky Way On Rustum

Poul Anderson, New America, "To Promote The General Welfare."

Dan Coffin lives in the Rustumite lowlands which are usually cloud-covered. Visiting the plateau of High America, he sees the night sky:

"Stars crowded the dark, sparks of frozen fire which melted into the Milky Way; tonight the great torrent gleamed like sea-glow." (p. 136)

He also sees the Hercules Mountains, the frozen Emperor River, the two moons and three sister planets which are copper, silver and amber.

The place names are poignant for the reader because we have read them in previous stories but will not read them again (except by rereading) since this is the last Rustum story.

Dilemma

See The Future Of Rustum.

George Stein tells Dan Coffin:

"'On the one hand, then, you don't want a government to take hold of things; on the other hand, you don't dare let things drift...What do you propose, then?'" (p. 132)

I would propose self-government: fully participative democracy made possible by education and communications technology. Then "government" is no longer an armed force standing above, and alienated from, society.

Coffin has no "'...neat solution...'" (p. 133) but suggests:

incentives for employers to treat employees as individual human beings;

conditions favoring smaller rather than bigger businesses;

"'...a strict hard-money rule...'" (ibid.);

voluntary agreements for economic activities enabling everyone to get ahead.

But, like any true Poul Anderson hero, he has something else up his sleeve.

The Future Of Rustum

Poul Anderson, New America, "To Promote The General Welfare."

In each of the four Rustum stories in New America, Dan Coffin solves a problem but the problems are of different kinds.

High Americans are:

independent farmers
technical experts
entrepreneurs
laborers
clerks
servants
routine maintenance workers
etc

All but the first three groups, Coffin rightly classifies as "proletariat" and says that they sink socioeconomically when their jobs are automated. Five thousand more are en route from Earth. Coffin thinks that the result will be a repetition of Terrestrial history:

poverty-stricken masses;
concentration of wealth and power;
growing collectivism;
demagogues preaching revolution;
the uprooted well-off applauding them;
upheavals leading to tyranny.

Coffin will offer a solution. My response is: if these processes are understood in advance, then why is not possible to replace upheavals leading to tyranny with discussions leading to greater democracy?

Obscure But Accurate Historical References

In SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, Luz and Ciara see a picture of St Benno holding a fish with a key in its mouth. See image.

Horst's orderly reads a journal produced by Lanz von Liebenfels. If you want to see how interesting ideas can go wrong, then read the Wiki article and the links from it.

Luz and Horst are in a divergent timeline but most of their history is also ours. The two enemies approach each other. The reader is in suspense. The showdown will be spectacular.

Trumpet And Banners

In Money II, I concentrated on the economic argument. If de Smet had tried to mine his land, then he would have found that it had been "salted" but he did not want to mine it and probably did want to be persuaded to help Coffin. Thus, psychological factors were also important.

Of course, the story ends with a perfect Pathetic Fallacy:

"The wind outside had strengthened, a trumpet voice beneath heaven, and every autumn leaf was a banner flying in challenge." (p. 115)

In the following story, Dan Coffin is old, widowed and participating in the Constitutional Convention. Politics must catch up with growing population and expanding economy. His oldest granddaughter, married to a Svoboda, and her family come to live with Coffin in the big, old, otherwise empty house.

"...these days time went like the wind...." (p. 123)

Time is a hunter blowing a horn and a bridge burning behind us and it goes like the wind. Poul Anderson's sf is about human life.

Money II

See Money.

High Americans own mines, power stations and transport lines in the lowlands and employ lowlanders to work in them. I am impressed. All this has happened in Dan Coffin's lifetime.

The currency is tied to gold whose supply grows slowly. Most transactions are in cash. Borrowing is rare. Fertile soil causes surpluses and falling prices whereas machinery and labor are in short supply, therefore expensive. Selling labor-saving machinery to the lowlanders is insufficiently profitable for High Americans. The lowlanders are not starving so there is no need for charity.

By "salting the mine," Coffin finds gold on de Smet's land. A gold rush would ruin the land and wreck the economy. However, in exchange for Coffin's silence, de Smet sells him machinery that will enable the lowlanders to develop their land for themselves.

Problem solved?

Money

Poul Anderson, New America, "A Fair Exchange."

Dan Coffin and Thomas de Smet begin to talk about money. In fact, de Smet lectures Coffin. I will analyze what they say but it is getting late here so let me just introduce the subject first.

Five Stages
Production.
Barter.
Money.
Banks to store money.
Banks to lend money at interest.

A bank:

lends money that is not its;
lends more than is in its possession;
charges interest;
thus, makes money from (speculative) money.

That is a truly simplistic summary but already I feel that a process that started with material production has become entirely immaterial. Next, I will read de Smet's exposition. (Weather permitting, we might visit the Lake District tomorrow and I have a meeting in the evening.)

After Thirty-Five Years

Poul Anderson, New America, "A Fair Exchange."

We read a beautiful account of autumnal colors and a busy street in Anchor, then learn that:

Dan and Eva have lived by Lake Moondance in the lowlands for thirty-five years (twenty Terrestrial) and have the largest lowland plantation;

they have had three children that can live in the lowlands although their fourth, just born in Anchor, will have to be fostered in High America;

their son, Joshua, is old enough to have had a "...first love..." (p. 92);

Rustumites no longer try to maintain traditions like Christmas;

Dan, speaking for the lowland settlers in High America, now fixes political instead of just technical problems;

we will learn more about the politics as the story proceeds.

The four Rustum stories in New America, published in just two years, race through the life of Daniel Coffin. Maybe this is how the gods see our lives - or would if they existed.

Cleansing Rain

Poul Anderson, New America, "Passing The Love Of Woman."

Mary cannot live in the Rustumite lowlands, except in a pressurized house or helmet, whereas Dan, who can live there comfortably, wants to spend most of his life there. They cannot marry. When they have realized this:

"...a rising wind roared in treetops; and over the lake came striding the blue-black wall of a rainstorm that would cleanse and cool." (p. 83)

When Dan realizes that he should instead marry Eva, wind skirls, thunder cannonades, stinging rain smites his face and Eva challenges him "...to make a new beginning." (p. 84)

The rain symbolically cleanses Dan and the story ends with the word, "...beginning."

Dan Coffin has come a long way from the small boy lost in the lowlands and still has a long way to go to become a respected elder statesman and great-grandfather. That is life and the rest is future history.

1916

(When I googled for images of "1916," what came up, of course, was images of the Dublin Rising in that year. So I googled instead for "1916 trenches" and chose the one that you see.)

OK. I must respond to this challenge. In SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, our amiable villain, Horst, asks whether, at the end of his 1916 - which we call 1916 (B) but both versions involve a Great War - anyone still believes in international working class solidarity. According to Horst, the war has proved that what matters is blood shared and shed together.

War proves many things to many men. At least a minority did continue to believe in international solidarity and, if a majority had practiced it, then there would have been no war so let's try to do better next time or the time after that. Although I would like to argue with Horst over his black bread, pungent sausage, liver paste and schnapps, I would prefer to argue with Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn over his idea of a modest snack - and Van Rijn would agree with me that war is bad for (his kind of) business and also for the soul.

Wolfe Hall And Roland

In The Conquest Of The Rustimite Lowlands, we numbered the installments of the Rustum History, 1-9. We can now trace another development through these installments:

in 1, set on Earth, Theron Wolfe is a merchant and a leader of the Constitutionalist movement;

in 4, set on Rustum, Wolfe is Mayor in the town of Anchor on the plateau of High America;

in 6, set on Rustum, dances are held in Wolfe Hall;

in 9, set on Roland, Rustum is referred to as another colonized planet.

This is the warp and woof of future history. The name of a character in earlier installments becomes the name of a place or a building in a later installment, just as Harriman, "The Man who Sold The Moon," is referred to later in Heinlein's Future History.

Poul Anderson's particular achievement was not only to write good future histories but also to write so many of them, creating both quality and quantity.

Perspectives

Poul Anderson, New America, "Passing The Love Of Woman."

"Earth took one-point-seven years to complete a circuit around Sol, but spun on its axis in a mere twenty-four hours." (p. 61)

What is this? One year is the period of Earth's circuit around Sol. Twenty-four hours is the period of Earth's spin on its axis.

However, our viewpoint character is Dan Coffin who has lived all his life on Rustum in another planetary system. There are many differences:

"The sun was smaller in Earth's sky though somewhat more intense, its light more yellowish than orangy... There was a single moon, gigantic but sufficiently far off that it showed half the disc that Raksh did and took about eleven days (about thirty Earth-days) for a cycle of phases. Dan Coffin, who weighed a hundred kilos here, would weigh eighty on Earth. The basic biologies of the two worlds were similar but not identical, for instance, leaves yonder were pure green, no blue tinge in their color, and never brown or yellow except when dying..." (ibid.)

Pure green leaves! That "...single moon..." is the heavenly body that we call "the Moon."

In the previous installment, Dan had wondered why people could not:

"...learn to stay active for forty hours, then sleep for twenty." (p. 31)

Living on another planet will change people physically, psychologically and unpredictably. In the concluding installment of Anderson's Technic History, remote descendants of human beings are no longer human.

Some Basic Issues

Sf addresses at least three basic issues:

(i) the role of mankind in the universe;
(ii) the role of intelligence, whether human, alien or artificial, in the universe;
(iii) the effects of technology on society.

This post refers, only briefly, to the works of just three successive sf authors:

Robert Heinlein;
Poul Anderson;
SM Stirling.

(i) Anderson's Tau Zero.

(ii) Alien intelligences: Anderson's Technic History, After Doomsday and many other works.

Artificial intelligence: Anderson's Genesis.

(iii) The opening stories of Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic History. (Issues include nuclear power and technological unemployment.)

(i), (ii) and (iii) Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy.

In order to address (iii), it is not necessary to write futuristic sf or even sf. Stirling's Theater Of Spies, set in 1916 (B), describes an early twentieth century city expanding to include new, large, electrically lit factories and smoking chimneys. Stirling conveys the excitement and danger of industrial technology transforming civilization.

Timelines And Titles

I want to write something about the relationship between alternative history fiction and "real history" fiction but find that I have already done so. See Fictional Timelines.

A title serves the useful purpose of labeling a literary work. They might just have been numbered, e.g., "Poul Anderson's Novels, No. 1" etc. An earlier convention was just to name a work after its opening phrase which thus became a title.

Do we think about the meaning of a title?

Does Plato's Republic describe a republic?
Is Dante's Comedy a comedy?
Who is CS Lewis' The Great Divorce between? (Heaven and Hell.)
The orbit in Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited is a mere twenty light years.
Why A Circus Of Hells?
Why Theater Of Spies?
Should a future translation of the Rubaiyat be entitled Quatrains?
Stieg Larsson's Man Som Hatar Kvinnor ("Men Who Hate Women") was translated as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Usually we just use the title to refer to the book and do not think about what it means.

Rustumite Lowland Species

Poul Anderson, New America, "Passing The Love Of Women."

The Rustumite lowlands have ceretheres, terasaurs and giant versions of spearfowl and other species that are familiar on the colonized plateau called High America. There are place names like Lake Moondance, Ahriman and Ironwood. (Scroll down.)

Dan and Eva discuss a group of friends that are missing. Eva speaks but breaks off as Dan stiffens. She has said something that gives him a clue as to where the friends might have gone - in search of a herd of terasaurs. Moments of realization punctuate Anderson's narrative like his Pathetic Fallacies and descriptive passages appealing to at least three of the senses.

I can guarantee to find something to post about just by rereading a page or two of an Anderson text.

What To Look Out For

When you read SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, after it has been published on May 7, look out for:

languages, including Latin;
a Biblical quotation;
an exotic travelogue;
not only heroic deeds during a war but also the effects of war;
a returning villain;
a meeting of a German military committee;
patient Empire-building;
no doubt much more because I am less than half way through the book.

We always enjoy reading the deliberations of the other side in a fictional conflict. Poul Anderson gives us the Roidhun's Grand Council on Merseia. Ian Fleming gives us:

Russian intelligence heads (GRU, RUMID, MGB, SMERSH);
Goldfinger's Hoods' Congress, which includes the Mafia;
SPECTRE, chaired by Blofeld;
SPECTRE, chaired by Largo;
The Man With The Golden Gun's Group, which includes the Mafia and the KGB.

(I think that Fleming outdoes his competitors in this department.)

Possible Fates Of A Continuing Villain
killed at the end of the series
lives to fight another day
changes sides (very rare)

I am giving nothing away here because I have no idea what will happen to the Black Chamber's German antagonist.

Compare And Contrast Orbit Unlimited And Guardians Of Time

Maybe the single-volume tetralogy is an sf form?

Earthman, Come Home and The Seedling Stars by James Blish

Guardians Of Time (original edition), Orbit Unlimited and Twilight World by Poul Anderson

Whereas a trilogy comprises a beginning, a middle and an end, a tetralogy presents two intermediate stages between introduction and culmination, allowing slightly more time for change and development.

Orbit...
Space travel.
The opening story introduces the Constitutionalists and launches them toward Rustum.
In the second and third installments, obstacles to colonization are overcome.
The culmination is that colonists will be able to spread across the entire surface of Rustum.
The series was extended.

Guardians...
Time travel.
The opening story introduces Manse Everard and the Time Patrol to us and to each other and describes Everard's recruitment, training, first case and promotion to Unattached status.
In the second and third installments, Everard alters events.
The culmination is that time criminals have changed history but Everard changes it back.
The series was extended. 

The Conquest Of The Rustumite Lowlands

Poul Anderson's Rustum History comprises nine stories, including "The Queen of Air and Darkness," which is set on a different planet but in the same timeline. Like many other series by Anderson, this future history could have been extended indefinitely but then he would have written less of something else.

Numbering the nine stories, 1-9, we find the conquest of the Rustumite lowlands in three stages in 4-6:

in 4, two men rescue a child, Daniel Coffin, who has wandered down into the lowlands;

in 5, two men, including the teenage Daniel Coffin, salvage equipment from an aircraft that has crashed in the lowlands;

in 6, the adult Daniel Coffin lives in a lowlands station with pastures and grainfields and must marry someone who, like him, can live comfortably in the higher air pressure of the lowlands.

Thus, Anderson presents a systematic narrative. Environmental details originating in earlier stories provide background in 6, e.g.:

the large moon, Raksh;
the small visibly moving moon, Sohrab;
Sol, seen as a star, not as the local sun.

Other planets cast glades on the lake.

1972-'75

See Significant Dates.

In 1972:

The Dancer From Atlantis
The Day The Sun Stood Still
the first of the Technic History installments to feature Ythrians 

In 1973:

There Will Be Time
"The Season of Forgiveness"
"Windmill"
Hrolf Kraki's Saga
the remaining six Technic History installments featuring Ythrians

In 1974:

Fire Time
A Midsummer Tempest
a story and a novel in the Technic History
the first three of the four Rustum stories collected in New America

In 1975:

The Winter Of The World
Homeward And Beyond
Star Prince Charlie
the fourth Rustum story in New America 

Superhuman creativity. 

Theater Of Spies: Some Questions

SM Stirling, Theater Of Spies.

Look out for Poul Anderson's names in unusual circumstances.

If a characters is last seen in circumstances that should inevitably lead to his death, is it safe later to assume that he is indeed dead or might there be some ingenious explanation as to why he is still alive? In one kind of popular fiction, this happens all the time: eleven times in a twelve-part cinema serial. (Clone technology helps.)

Are airships less dangerous in alternative timelines - two by Stirling and one by Moorcock - or have people in those timelines just not realized the danger yet?

"My Own, My Native Land"

"My Own, My Native Land," the first story in Poul Anderson's New America, is a technical problem story with a technical solution. How can two men push a heavy load when one of them has broken his arm? Answer: Danny builds from local materials a windjammer that can carry the load over water that would have been too dangerous for an aircar or motorboat.

Inevitably, the solution comes to him in a moment of realization:

"Uphill?
"Danny yelled...
"O'Malley started..." (p. 44)

But the story also holds a human problem and its solution. Danny had feared the lowlands since childhood. However, when O'Malley remarks that it is a shame that they cannot take the windjammer with them back to their home plateau of High America, Danny replies:

"'That's all right. We'll be back - here.'" (p. 50)

Bible Round-Up

Poul Anderson, New America. 

Danny Coffin quotes his foster-father, Joshua Coffin, quoting:

"'The laborer is worthy of his hire...'" (p. 38) See here.

Now that we have started, we might as well make a note of every Biblical quotation in Poul Anderson's works. See Sean's article here and I have also searched this blog for "Biblical quotation" (see here; scroll down) but the search has not found every example. Searching for "Joshua Coffin" (scroll down) should bring up his quotations as well as other information. There are other key words and phrases, e.g., we had a few posts on What Is Truth?

Any further Biblical quotations from Coffin or anyone else can and probably will be addendumed to this round-up. In fact, see:

New America: Conclusion

Forebodings

 "'Poor devils!...It is just as well - let them enjoy life while they may. I envy them their ignorance.'"
-Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Moon Maid (Ace Books, New York, undated), PROLOGUE, p. 8.

"'Oh, God, the young, the poor young!'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), Foreword, p. 6.

I thought that these passages were similar. ERB's character, Julian, pre-remembers future incarnations whereas Anderson's character, Robert Anderson, has spoken to a time traveler.

I also thought that there was some similarity between a passage in Anderson's "House Rule" and the opening chapter of ERB's The Moon Men (see here) but that connection is more diffuse.

The Rustumite Lowlands

Poul Anderson, High America, p. 29.

"Grass" and trees. See Rustumite Plants.

Insectoids.

Huge winged creatures very different from those on the High America plateau.

Hot, heavy windless air. (Usually the wind is a powerful presence in Andersonian narratives.)

Pungent, sweet, rank or bitter odors, none familiar to a plateau-dweller.

Trills, whispers, buzzes, rustles, footfalls and "purling water" but no speech - until now.

Four senses. The explorers do not eat anything.

Parallel Problems In Fictional Futures

Human beings and Ythrians (see image) have colonized different islands on Avalon but must now share the Coronan continent. However, Jack Birnam resents the Ythrians and is allergic to them.

Human beings have colonized a plateau on Rustum but must now spread to the lowlands where the air pressure is many times higher than at Terrestrial sea-level. Dan Coffin, with an above average tolerance of high air pressure, can live comfortably in the lowlands but is terrified of that environment because of a bad childhood experience there.

A problem and its resolution generate a short story. Each of these stories adds to and enriches a different future history series.

Rustumite Plants

There was a reference to grass on Rustum in Orbit Unlimited. Poul Anderson usually describes equivalents of grass on terrestroid planets, e.g., see "Yet Another Grass Equivalent" here and "Ancestral Grass" here. Sure enough, on Rustum:

"Tall, finely fronded blue-green stalks - plants of that varied and ubiquituous family which the colonists misnamed 'grass'..."
-Poul Anderson, "My Own, My Native Land" IN Anderson, New America (New York, 1982), pp. 9-50 AT p. 29.

Anderson also lists Rustumite trees:

goldwood
soartop
fakepine
gnome

Exercise: compare these with Avalonian trees whose names and descriptions can be sought here.

Meals And POVs

I am currently rereading Poul Anderson's second Rustum volume, which takes us forwards in time, and reading SM Stirling's second Black Chamber volume, which takes us backwards and sideways in time. (Also other works but let's stay focused.)

In Theater Of Spies, look out for more lovingly described meals (of course). I will not (yet) reproduce the menus here although I have frequently done so before.

Regular readers might remember that I am a pov cop. Pov is narrative point of view. A pov cop is sensitive to any changes in pov or to any apparent breaches of the usually accepted conventions for controlling and presenting povs. We are familiar with first person pov, second person pov and omniscient narrator. The culminating story in Brian Aldiss' single-volume future history has a second person pov:

"You never knew..."
-Brian Aldiss, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand (London, 1979), NINE, THE ULTIMATE MILLENNIA, p. 157.

- and I attempted a narrative with a second person pov on a smaller scale here.

The omniscient narrator might be appropriate to describe an event like a supernova that had happened long before there were any observers. However, in the opening passage of Mirkheim, Poul Anderson writes:

"There may have been lesser worlds and moons; we cannot now say. We simply know that the giant stars rarely have attendants..."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Prologue, Y minus 500,000, p. 1.

Thus, this narrator not only acknowledges that he is not omniscient but also identifies himself as one scientifically informed member of Technic civilization addressing fellow members.

The shortest unit of continuous narrative is a section either of a short story or of a chapter in a novel, e.g., Y minus 500,000 is the opening section of Prologue. The second section, Y minus 28, beginning on p. 2, is a third person narrative with Benoni Strang as its pov character.

The usual convention is that each section has a single pov. In Theater Of Spies, look out for a chapter that is narrated from Luz's third person pov but that ends with the omniscient narrator describing a third party observing both Luz and Ciara. We are not given the third party's pov but we are told that he is watching without Luz's knowledge.

For CS Lewis' extraordinary stunts with povs, see The Ransom Trilogy.

New America

I should have said that SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies includes oblique allusions to at least two other Stirling alternative histories.

The contents of Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited originally appeared in Astounding and Fantastic whereas the four Rustum stories in the sequel volume appeared in Continuum I-IV, edited by Roger Elwood, a name we have met before. In the first story, Dan Coffin, now a teenager, must come to terms with his fear of the Rustumite lowlands and thus joins the ranks of Andersonian juvenile heroes on another colonized planet, Avalon.

Roosevelt And The Morlocks

(Dig that cover.)

Here is another obscure sequence of literary allusions:

Poul Anderson mentions Theodore Roosevelt in the Foreword to There Will Be Time;

in that novel, one mutant time traveler gives the time travel idea to a young English writer (unnamed, like the private investigator in "Time Patrol") and another gives the idea of the Maurai Federation to Robert Anderson who passes it to Poul Anderson;

HG Wells' Time Traveler finds Morlocks and Eloi in 802,701 AD;

a trade unionist in a contemporary novel be Wells calls British workers "...the Morlocks. Coming up." (see here);

SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies describes English refugees from the London slums as "...proto-Morlocks..." and features Theodore Roosevelt.

(You didn't think I'd get back to Roosevelt but I did.)

Like Bond

Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry has some characteristics in common with Ian Fleming's James Bond but was published first. More recently, if a character resembles Bond, it is because the author means him to.

Neither Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise nor SM Stirling's Luz O'Malley is meant to be a female counterpart of Bond. However, Luz's second volume, Theater Of Spies, introduces a male supporting character who not only reminds us of Bond but who also turns out to have more in common with Fleming's character than we probably expect. For now, I say no more. I encourage blog readers to buy Theater Of Spies when it is published.

Alternative World Wars

HG Wells wrote The War In The Air before World War I.

In SM Stirling's Black Chamber Trilogy, President Theodore Roosevelt fights World War I.

In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, alien invasion interrupts World War II.

In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, World War II is fought with magic against the Caliphate.

In James Blish's Black Easter, black magic initiates World War III as part of Armageddon.

Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins immediately after World War III.

Anderson's Shield begins after World War IV.

Stirling's Draka fight in the Great War, the Eurasian War and the Final War.

Now imagine that these eight timelines coalesce and combine.

ARC Letter

Back from Manchester. By popular request - well, by Sean M. Brook's request - I will quote in its entirety the text of the covering letter that accompanied the Advanced Reading Copy of SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies. Such promotional literature is enjoyable to read and imparts some information about the work in question. The letter legitimately compares the novel to Wonder Woman, to The Man In The High Castle and to James Bond, thus to three works that are widely known through their screen adaptations. Sf readers more naturally think of Poul Anderson's sf spy series about Dominic Flandry and also about Anderson's alternative history novels.

See also Interview With S.M. Stirling about Black Chamber.

The Letter
Dear Colleague,

With last year's Black Chamber, New York Times bestselling author S.M. Stirling set the stage for a new Roosevelt mythos and kicked off a series that had history buffs, sci-fi fans, and thriller readers all talking. In this alternate history series, Teddy Roosevelt is serving his third term as president right before WWI breaks out, and he's not afraid to use the Black Chamber, a secret spy network determined to keep America safe. THEATER OF SPIES (Ace Trade Paperback Original; $16.00; On-sale May 7, 2019), is the second installment, and it drops right back into the action with the badass agent Luz O'Malley and budding technical genius Ciara Whelan.

After foiling a German plot to devastate America's coastal cities from Boston to Galvestan, Luz and Ciara have earned a break. But before they can kick back in California, they discover a diabolical new weapon that could give the German Imperial Navy far too much control. Forced to go deep undercover and travel across a world at war, Luz and Ciara find themselves in Berlin attempting to ferret out the project's secrets. German agents are close on their trail, eager to get revenge - and Luz and Ciara's false identities can't hold up forever. From knife-and-pistol duels on airships, to the horrors of the poison-gas factories, to harrowing battles in the North Sea, the fight continues - with the world as the prize.

Wonder Woman meets The Man In The High Castle with a splash of James Bond in this thrilling series - besides the fascinating time period, it boasts stunning exotic locales, death-defying feats and battles, dangerous-yet-sexy agents of foreign powers, and the highest of stakes.

Please enjoy this copy of THEATER OF SPIES. I hope you will consider it for review/feature attention and summer reading roundups. S.M. Stirling is also available for interviews. We're happy to provide a copy of Black Chamber if you haven't read it. Thanks so much for your attention and happy reading!

Best,
Alexis Nixon, Assistant Director of Publicity    Lauren Horvath, Publicity

ABOUT S.M. STIRLING
S. M. Stirling is the author of many science fiction and fantasy novels. A former lawyer and an amateur historian, he lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Jan. Find out more about Stirling online at smstirling.com.

Well, after copying out all that, I am even more enthusiastic to continue reading the book.

20th Century Villains
WWI and II: Germans
Cold War: Russians
James Bond: SMERSH, then SPECTRE, also former Nazis and North American gangsters
Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner: ambiguous
Stirling's retro-sf: back to WWI!

Three Details

I will shortly depart for Manchester, to return this evening.

Reading a book, SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, not published yet, I might not so much tell you what is there as tell you what to look out for. In ONE and TWO:

a fresh new one-line description of the Milky Way that will join our Milky Way Thread;

the moon making a long glittering path over the sea - we have had such descriptions of light on water before;

three (presumably) delicious ways to eat steak that will join our Food Thread.

Of course, there is also an enemy plot and a daring mission but you don't need me to tell you that.

Back here this evening, I hope.

The Br'ers And Odysseus

Recently, we quoted references to the Br'ers in works by Poul Anderson.

Now Br'er Fox is mentioned in SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies.

And, in Clifford Simak's Out Of Their Minds, fantasy characters, including the Br'ers, somehow come to life. See here.

Yet again, fiction converses with fiction (see here) and I find it difficult to avoid the impression that all of literature is one long series. I have read the suggestion that the Time Traveler's journey in 802,701 AD parallels the Odyssey but I am not going to look for it at this time of night. (For relevant literary references to Odysseus, see Wandering Odysseus, Odysseus and The Ship Of Odysseus.)

Point Of Departure

People who spend their entire lives within a single timeline and who do not even suspect that any other timelines exist have no need to differentiate their particular timeline as A, B, alpha, beta etc. In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time, Time Patrol agents do travel into two divergent timelines which they identify as alpha and beta. (They use the Greek letters which are not on my keyboard.)

The Prologue of SM Stirling's Black Chamber is dated:

"May 25th, 1912-1912 (B)
"Point of Departure plus 4 Hours"
-SM Stirling, Black Chamber (New York, 2018), p. 1.

This style of dating continues throughout this volume and into the sequel. Why, in this instance, is "1912" repeated? The fictional alternative history has departed/diverged from our real history on May 25th, 1912, but who calls the divergent timeline "B"? The characters do not call it that because they do not know that there is more than one timeline. The author informs us, the readers, that there has been a "point of departure" in May, 1912.

Is there a third perspective? Are there off-stage fictional characters who do know that there are at least two timelines? Is "(B)" merely information communicated directly from the author to his readers or, alternatively, does the presence of this terminology in the text imply the existence a second set of characters who are aware of timelines A and B and of the relationship between them? Am I alone in the world in formulating such an abstruse question?

Orbit Unlimited: Endgame III

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four.

Before moving on, I want to make sure that I have not missed anything worth posting about in the concluding section of Orbit Unlimited.

If Dan Coffin imagined monsters beyond the clouds (see here), then he was right because he was attacked by two giant spearfowl when he descended the plateau.

Joshua Coffin's language is Biblical - he says that the spearfowl are "'...like a monster out of Revelation....'" (5, p. 131) - but how much of it is quotations?

"Thy will be done." (7, p. 137)

"...it repented the Lord that He had made man..." (7, p. 141)

"'Strengthen me, God...'" (5, p. 123)

Any more?

Orbit Unlimited: Endgame II

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four.

Coffin's rambling thoughts take him from future windmills to the mills of the gods to the mills of change to Rustum as a millstone grinding the seed of man for the Lord. He correctly reflects that change is not always gradual or imperceptible. Climate altered too rapidly for the dinosaurs and world population exploded faster than the civilizing effects of science and technology. Again I must ask why this was allowed to happen. One cycle is poverty and population growth but another is prosperity and population reduction.

We wind up liking and caring for the characters, even the uptight Coffin. Manipulative Mayor Wolfe has blackmailed Svoboda into becoming a popular hero because that is what the colony needs. Wolfe consoles Svoboda by reminding him that at least he knows that he is rotten and they both laugh.

Descendants of Dan Coffin will be able to descend from High America and spread across Rustum because they will inherit his above average tolerance of high air pressures while, at the same time, there is:

"'...none of this mutant superman nonsense.'" (9, p. 154)

It is as if Wolfe comments on Anderson's Twilight World.

"'Danny's the first real Rustumite.'" (9, p. 155)

At the end of the novel, the Rustumites' story is just beginning. Svoboda:

"...lay for a while, gazing out the window, toward the horizon where the snowpeaks of Hercules upheld the sky." (9, p. 158)

Hercules is humanity.

Theater Of Spies: Prologue

OK. A couple of observations from the Prologue won't reveal any plot developments.

Authors can use alternative history to comment on real history. Thus:

Stirling's President Theodore Roosevelt entertains the "...horrible thought..." that "...if Taft had lived Woodrow Woodenhead Wilson might be president now..."!;

in Poul Anderson's "Eutopia," a cross-time traveler contrasts his North American civilization of Eutopia with "America the Dreadful";

Alan Moore's vigilante, the Comedian, thinks that, if the Americans had lost in Vietnam, they would have gone mad as a nation...

Roosevelt also reflects that HG Wells' The War In The Air "...was starting to look horribly prophetic..." It was prophetic and has been cited on this blog as such. See here. With this reference, Stirling connects his current alternative history novel back to the Homer of sf.

The good folk at Penguin Random House sure know how to write promotional prose. In the covering letter for the Advance Reading Copy:

"Wonder Woman meets The Man in The High Castle with a splash of James Bond in this thrilling series..."

Since the 2017 Wonder Woman film is set during WWI and features General Ludendorff, this comparison is more valid than it might seem.

Orbit Unlimited: Endgame

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, THE MILLS OF THE GODS.

As I have said before, interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom in American sf. The attached cover image expresses that.

We learn the significance of the title of part four when Joshua Coffin thinks:

"The forest roared with wind. Its velocity was not great, but the pressure made it a near gale.
"Windpower would be valuable when men were finally able to move down off the plateaus. When would that be? Not for many generations, surely. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. Not always slowly, though. The mills of change had ground faster than the dinosaurs could adapt to an altering climate, faster than science and technology could evolve to keep Earth's exploding population civilized. All Rustum was a millstone, turning and turning among the stars, and the seed of man was ground to powder, for it repented the Lord that He had made man...." (7, pp. 140-141)

The wind is often a presence in Poul Anderson's works. Inheriting words and ideas from different sources, Coffin refers to "the gods" and to "the Lord." His rambling thoughts reflect his physical exhaustion and debilitation.

(I began this post but was interrupted by the arrival of Theater Of Spies. There will be more about "Orbit Unlimited: Endgame.")

Theater Of Spies: ARC

In July 2018, I received a review copy of Black Chamber by SM Stirling. Today, I received an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of the sequel, Theater Of Spies. The cover is as shown except that the words:

              ADVANCE
        READING COPY
             MAY 2019

- are enclosed within a circle on the right between NG and ER.

The back cover has blurb, excerpts from favorable Wall Street Journal and "The Maine Edge" reviews of Black Chamber, two web addresses (smstirling.com and penguinrandomhouse.com) and publishing information which includes:

                                     UNCORRECTED PROOFS
                                              NOT FOR SALE

                                     Publication Date: May 7, 2019
                                                     Pages: 464

If any material is to be quoted, it must be checked against the finished book.

I will not quote any material.

Earlier posts either about or referring to Black Chamber were:

The Advent Of Black Chamber
Roosevelt And The Timelines
Future Historical References
Alternative Historical References
Black Chamber
Real And Fictional Politics
Common Ancestry
Betrayal
Coincidences
Alternative Lives
Actual To Alternative
People In Different Timelines
Grapple Guns
Across The Atlantic
What Next For The Black Chamber?
Three Fictional Secret Agents

SM Stirling commented on some of these posts. I may refer to Theater Of Spies again but will avoid discussing its contents until after the publication date.

The publisher, Donald A. Wollheim, once said to me, with reference to a new novel by British sf author, Bob Shaw, "My advice is: buy the book. The publishers need the money...," then, seeing Bob Shaw nearby, added, "...and the author does too."

With reference to Theater Of Spies, my advice is: buy the book. It is Volume II of a Trilogy and Volume I was good.

Solitude

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 5.

We demonstrate the richness of Poul Anderson's texts by posting about so many diverse points arising from a single chapter.

Joshua Coffin says:

"'I can tell you for certain that freedom requires elbow room. How can a man even be an individual, if there's no place he can go to be alone with his God?'" (pp.125-126)

This is one of the many times when it is idle to reply, "But I don't believe in God!" Coffin is right. How can a person be an individual if there is nowhere that s/he can go to be alone period? As it happens, I want to be able to be alone to meditate, read and blog although I also want to socialize and meditate in a group. I also want people like Coffin to be able to be alone with their God.

In my idea of an optimal society, everyone would at any time have access to:

"family," those we grew up with, however that is organized;
solitude;
places to go purely for the purpose of meeting new people;
places to meet people with common interests;
fulfilling work;
sabbaticals from work, giving the opportunity to travel and to see what everyone else is doing;
change of career direction;
personal guidance/mentoring;
public places - parks, restaurants etc;
participation in social decision-making - far more than just the illiterate exercise of writing "X" beside a name every few years.

Some sociable souls would never want to be alone but they should always have access to solitude. A few hermits would disappear and never be seen again but they should always be able to return to society.

The Value Of Fiction

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 5.

Joshua Coffin discouraged his young son from fantasizing about what was behind the clouds on Rustum! And Coffin expects Jan Svoboda, philosophically a "Constitutionalist," to agree with him on the ground that fantasy is untruthful. Theron Wolfe, also a Constitutionalist, had, in part one, 2, described his world-view as:

"'...an ideal of seeing the world as it is and behaving accordingly.'" (p. 19)

- adding:

"'I prefer to inhabit the objective universe.'" (ibid.)

However, Svoboda quite correctly replies to Coffin that:

"'Anker never said fun and fantasy were untruthful...'" (p. 122)

Not only did the philosopher, Torvald Anker, have more sense than to say that fantasy should be discouraged but also, more importantly, if he had said it, then he would have been wrong. Does Coffin prevent his son from hearing stories or reading fiction?

Intelligent beings whose libraries contained only history and science with no myths, fairy stories or fiction might even be impossible and certainly would not be human. Every positive proposition, e.g., "The sky is blue," entails many negative propositions, e.g., "The sky is not red, green etc," which imply questions like: "Why not?" and "What if it were?" People had to tell stories, e.g., about gods throwing thunderbolts, as the earliest attempt to account for aspects of their environment and experiences. Coffin reads the Bible and must surely realize that the creation stories are myths while the books of Ruth, Job and Jonah are historical fictions addressing moral questions.

A childish story that monsters lurk behind the Rustumite clouds would express the truthful warning that it is dangerous to wander out of sight of the colonized area. A child with a high IQ, like Dan Coffin, would begin by making stories but would soon learn to differentiate fact from fiction.

Elvenveil And Emperor

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 5.

I want to share an appreciation of Poul Anderson's descriptive passages but also to avoid lengthy quotations. Blog readers are encouraged to read Anderson's texts. However, sometimes, a longer quotation is unavoidable. The following passage is notable both for its exotic colors and for its evocative place names. Svoboda and Coffin climb down the side of the colonized plateau called High America:

"At the bottom of vision were the clouds.
"He had ignored them when he first gazed over the Cleft. They were nothing but a whiteness far below his feet. But now they lay ahead. The first semicircle of e Eridani was visible, blinding in the east above a billowing snow-like plain. Blue shadows crawled toward him, kilometers in length. Mist began to pour up the canyon, filling it from side to side, a gray wall whose top faded to gold smoke. Svoboda caught his breath. He hadn't watched sunrise over the Cleft for years. It brought back to him how much else was beautiful here, the summer forests, Elvenveil Falls, Lake Royal turquoise in the morning and amethyst in the evening, a double moonglade shivering on the Emperor River...in spite of everything, he was glad he had come to Rustum." (p. 121)

This gives us two lists:

snow-like clouds
blue shadows
gray wall
gold smoke
morning turquoise
evening amethyst
shivering moonlight

Elvenveil Falls
Lake Royal
Emperor River

Although the colonists belong neither to a kingdom nor to an empire, they use the words, "Royal" and "Emperor." "Elvenveil" recalls Elven Gardens in Ys. 

Spearfowl

See Hawks and compare:

"A spearfowl, big as an Earthly condor, hovered out there. Its feathers were like shining steel."
-Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 5, p.120.

Yet another passage that resonates with passages already read. If I remember correctly, a spearfowl will play a more active role as the narrative proceeds.

There are Terrestrial hawks, Merseian fangryfs and Rustumite spearfowl. The fictional fangryf obviously borrows part of its name from the mythological gryphon.

Living In The Future

Read a contemporary novel about the activities of journalists, lawyers, police officers, security consultants, politicians etc who live and work in a modern capital city. Then consider that a similar novel about the activities of comparable professionals could be set, e.g., in the Solar Commonwealth or the Archopolis of Poul Anderson's Technic History. In the Commonwealth period, the protagonists who would not be space traveling employees of the Solar Spice & Liquors company would nevertheless buy SSL products and view news about deals or scandals in the Polesotechnic League.

The short story, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," is one very short step in this direction. Stieg Larsson's novels read in translation have what is, for many readers, the exotic setting of Stockholm. This slightly distances them from narratives set in an English-speaking capital like London. At a further distance would be works of fiction set in a future period that has been partly realized by the imagination of Poul Anderson. Heinlein's Future History was commended for giving the future a daily life but I think that more could be done in this direction.

Infodump And Echo Of Heinlein

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 4.

Distraught because his adopted exogene son, Daniel, is missing, Joshua Coffin unnecessarily lectures Judith Svoboda on the importance of exogenes. Three thousand colonists provide too small a gene pool, especially since rapid adaptation to a new environment is essential. The exogenes will total a million new colonists.

Judith knew that but did the readers? Several times, Dominic Flandry, conversing with colleagues, summarizes known information ostensibly to ensure that they do not overlook any implications but really to update the readers.

Because of the small chance of success and also the considerable danger, Jan Svoboda refuses to help Coffin search for Daniel. However, the manipulative mayor, Wolfe, is able to blackmail Svoboda because he knows about the latter and Helga Dahlquist. That surname is an echo of Heinlein's Future History. The attached image is a clue.

See also Echoes Of Heinlein II.

Wolfe Approves

Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 4.

See Coffin Disapproves.

"Wolfe stretched out an arm to the nearest bookshelf, chose a volume, and lit a fresh cigar. 'I don't imagine I'll ever understand Dylan Thomas,' he said, 'but I like the words and anyhow I doubt if he intended to be understood.'
"Coffin sat straight and looked at the wall." (p. 115)

Literature is one. One reference to Dylan Thomas takes us to Thomas' works and elsewhere. I prefer the attitude to death in "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" (see here) as against that in "Do not go gentle into that good night..." (see here)

James Blish's They Shall Have Stars begins by quoting the opening five lines of "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," thus ending with:

"They shall have stars at elbow and foot..."

A clever sestina ends:

"Rage, rage, against the dying of delight!"
-Lawrence Schimel, "Endless Sestina" IN Neil Gaiman and Ed Kramer, Editors, The Sandman: Book Of Dreams (London, 1996), pp. 169-171 AT p. 171.

That line names two of the seven Endless: Death and Delight who became Delirium.