Too Dangerous

Mirkheim, XIX.

After the war, the Hermetian government must control Mirkheim and issue licenses for supermetals mining rights. Van Rijn comments that the Commonwealth government would not accept the independent companies or the League as a whole as agents for Mirkheim because:

"'Something besides another government having the right to decide things? Much too dangerous. Might get folks at home wondering if they do need politicians and bureaucrats on top of themselves.'" (pp. 278-279)

But, if we do not need politicians or bureaucrats, then someone will see through this deception eventually especially with thousands of colonized planets in Technic civilization. We need to read more sf about future anarchism. We are told that human beings on Avalon eventually give up the habit of government but are not shown Avalon in that period, unfortunately.

This is the last post for 2021.

A United Campaign

Mirkheim, XIX.

Christa Broderik's followers attack the mercenaries in the streets of Starfall while the guerilla army led by Adzel and Chee Lan enters the city and moves to take Pilgrim Hill. It can be a rewarding experience when groups usually opposed unite for a common purpose. When Nazi-inspired parties stand for election, some of us stop campaigning for a particular candidate and instead distribute leaflets with the messages: (i) if you weren't going to vote, do; (ii) if you were going to vote BNP/NF etc, don't. I have distributed such leaflets together with members of the Labour, Conservative etc Parties and would presumably fight alongside them if Britain were invaded although let's not have that experience. (There is a program on TV right now about the Norman Conquest.)

The trader team is almost reunited because Adzel and Chee Lan are joined by Colonel John Falkayn, unkempt, grimy, gaunt, roughly clad, his insigne of rank sewn to a blue arm band, the only time we see this character, just as his and David's mother, Athena, appears only once, in this novel.

Civil War

Mirkheim, XX.

The Polesotechnic League civil war is a catalogue of colonized planets:

the Free Hermetian Navy destroys the Abdallah Enterprises centrum on Hopewell;

Hermetians hijack supermetals carried from Mirkheim by Interstar Transport for the Stellar Metals Corporation, thus causing staggering losses to Timebinders Insurance;

Hermetians destroy equipment and data stores of XT Systems in Maharajah on Ramanujan;

bribed union leaders call a strike of technicians working for Sanchez Engineering on the metal-rich St. Jacques, sister planet of Esperance;

independent League companies, Sinbad Prospecting and the Society of Venturers, attack and loot the Galactic Developments entrepot on a Germanian moon;

on Hermes, the patriot army storms Starfall.

"Government by terror does not work on people used to liberty, if they have hope of deliverance." (p. 273)

Hope makes a difference. A population endlessly ground down does not necessarily Rise in its Wrath.

Two Futures

In the 1960s, I was aware of two kinds of sf futures:

most sf, spaceships;

a minority of works, nuclear war aftermath.

Poul Anderson, as ever, wrote both kinds and spaceships were built even after nuclear devastation. Where are we at now? The idea of nuclear winter ruled out surviving a nuclear war. We can discuss how plausible Robert Heinlein's Future History or Anderson's Technic History might be and Anderson imagined a very different kind of future in Genesis but what we mainly have to worry about right now is the aftermath of an ecological collapse and that has become extremely urgent.

3000 A.D.

Imagine that someone in 3000 A.D. writes a contemporary novel set in that year but does not publish it then. Instead, he time travels to 2000 A.D. and publishes it in that year as a futuristic sf novel. Readers find that this novel, let's call it 3000 A.D., contains no sf cliches like hyperspace etc: no immortal telepathic robots building galactic empires in faster-than-light spaceships. They also find that much of the text is incomprehensible because it refers to historical or contemporary events that would be familiar to readers in 3000 A.D. but not to readers now, just as we refer to "the war," knowing in context that we mean the Second World War. They expect further elucidation in a prequel or sequel but never receive it. A thousand years later, 3000 A.D. is long out of print and forgotten. Most probably, its publication would make no difference. But, and this finally is the point in a Poul Anderson context, the Time Patrol might investigate.

Living In The Future

We do not expect futuristic sf to predict or prophesy but we do ask how plausible it might be. Without a chronoscope, an sf writer cannot tell us any details of the future but I suggest that neither is he able to anticipate the extent of technological transformation of everyday life. Poul Anderson's major future history series, the History of Technic Civilization, published 1951-1985, comprises forty three installments covering several future centuries, then several further millennia.

Consider the recent innovations in information and communication technology that we in 2021 take for granted:

PCs

laptops

hand-held computers

mobile phones with internet access

texts

google

email

Amazon

Facebook

social media

apps

zoom

on-line editions of newspapers

many people able to work from home during a lockdown

 

Fax has come and gone. 3D printing is somewhere around. Contemporary novels present higher tech than future histories. People a thousand years in the future in twentieth century sf do not live very differently from people living at the time when the sf was written. The major change to everyday life is flying cars. Heinlein's daily life of the future is mainly people living on the Moon instead of on Earth.

The Enemy

In Doctor Who, the Doctor's time traveling companions were English but, in one story-line, they visited a time and place where the Scottish were fighting the English so that suddenly the latter were the enemy. Juvenile fiction is a good place to present ambiguities. Cavaliers were usually good guys and Roundheads bad guys but I found one series where it was the other way around. I was sent from England to a boarding school in the Republic of Ireland and learned an entirely different attitude to "the English."

Real history is ambiguous, therefore so is Poul Anderson's Technic History. The Terran Empire is resisted successfully on Avalon and Freehold but unsuccessfully on Ansa, Aeneas and Brae. Ivar Frederiksen leads an ambush of Terran marines on Aeneas whereas Dominic Flandry works alongside the marines on Brae. Although Merseians were introduced as stereotypical space opera villains, complete with green, scaled skin, the members of their species who live on the human colony planet, Dennitza, are friendly and loyal to the Emperor, not to the Roidhun. Are rich merchants good or bad? We see both kinds. And so on.

A Roman Policier

 

Mirkheim, XIX.

Once or twice, I have compared Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn in some, not all, respects to Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Van Rijn makes this comparison almost explicit:

"'We ought to put on a scene like from a roman policier, where I dump a kilo of clues on the rug and we fit them together in the shape of the villain, us having a guilting bee...'" (p. 256)

I am all too familiar with such scenes because while I read or blog and Sheila knits, at the far end of the room she usually has the TV on with a Drama Channel that endlessly reshows detective series, including Poirot. In fact, a prolonged scene of this sort was showing while I was typing this post. So is Poirot among the romans policiers seen by van Rijn?

Power

Mirkheim, XIX.

David Falkayn explains to Lady Sandra that, on Earth, politicians do not wield much power:

"'They put on a show, but most of the real decisions are made by owners, managers, bureaucrats, union chiefs, people who aren't conspicuous enough to need all that protection or all that secretarial prearrangement of their days... Of course, the politicians think they lead.'" (p. 252)

Some of the politicians will be canny enough to know what is really going down. But who does Falkayn say really does wield power?

owners

managers

bureaucrats

union chiefs

 

The first three, yes. As long as there are owners, managers and bureaucrats, they will wield power. But union chiefs? Maybe in the Solar Commonwealth. But in Britain in my lifetime the Trade Union Congress and the major trade unions have been disempowered. Is this good or bad? Personally, I want to see workers' self-organization, not union chiefs wielding power alongside owners, managers and bureaucrats.

A Grand Era

Mirkheim, XX.

Read as Volume IV of the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy, Mirkheim indeed recounts the end of an era. Before he destroys the splendid towers of the Abdallah Enterprises centrum on Hopewell with a torpedo, David Falkayn thinks:

"This was a grand era in its way. I too will miss it." (p. 266)

However, in The Technic Civilization Saga, Mirkheim is not an end but a beginning. The first Technic History installment to be collected in Volume III, Rise  Of The Terran Empire, Mirkheim is followed by a new beginning for human beings and Ythrians on Avalon even before the Imperial Era opens. Founding the colony on Avalon is what Falkayn does after destroying Seven In Space installations on Hopewell and elsewhere. History continues. I think that we can fully appreciate the Technic History only if we continually remember its original reading order. Maybe the series should even be republished in two formats with alternative reading orders but also with new introductions explaining this idiosyncratic procedure?

David And Coya

Mirkheim, XIX.

David Falkayn has gone to Babur, then to Hermes, and now must again return to space. He cannot leave Adzel and Chee Lan fighting on his planet. Coya says, "'But you can leave us -,'" (p. 262) but then apologizes.

"What is a woman that you forsake her,

"And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

"To go with the old grey Widow-maker?"

-see here.

 

David says that afterwards he will be content to settle on Earth but Coya replies that they will go elsewhere. Indeed.

Their dialogue is complete on p. 262. However, at the top of p. 263, there are just two lines:

"The wind whistled cold. Chill also, and bitter, was spindrift cast off the the booming waters." (p. 263)

When we turn the page, Chapter XX recounts the first civil war in the Polesotechnic League. In Poul Anderson's texts, the commentary of the wind is always appropriate.

War And Grace

Mirkheim, XIX.

"'I am not sure anybody will grasp why mortals make war,' van Rijn answered somberly. 'Maybe someday we will find a sophont species what is not fallen from grace, and they can tell us.'" (p. 258)

What? All rational species in a densely populated galaxy were created in a state of grace and all without exception, exercising their free will, fell from grace? Absurd. That has got to be an outmoded belief. The behavior of species can be explained entirely in terms of their natural biological evolution and social development - and might well encompass a wider range than Poul Anderson allows for. Also, van Rijn mystifies the causes of war. Such causes are comprehensible and we have an obligation to do something about them.

For a fictional universe in which only Earth and the near side of the Moon are fallen, see CS Lewis's The Cosmic Trilogy.

Before And After

When we have read about a character in the active phase of his career, we want to know about his younger days and also what happened to him later. We do not always find out but are beautifully provided for by Poul Anderson with a Captain Flandry series, a Young Flandry Trilogy and two novels featuring Flandry as an Admiral. In the second of these two later novels, Admiral Flandry starts to hand over to his daughter although only in this one volume.

Anderson's The Trouble Twisters is a single-volume Young Falkayn Trilogy. David Falkayn begins as a apprentice just as Dominic Flandry begins as an Ensign. Falkayn's career, and aging process, continue in two novels and The Earth Book Of Stormgate. Ideally, a series about a character becomes a fictional biography.

It is not always so. Ian Fleming's James Bond novels were always set when they were written with some inconsistent background details about Bond's earlier life. John Grisham's Theodore Boone remains aged thirteen for at least the first five of his (so far) seven novels but Grisham is in complete control of the chronology. Everything so far has happened within a twelve month period. Whether Theo will ever make it into adulthood remains to be seen. We would like to read this much detail about Flandry's early life but you can't have everything.

From Coya Falkayn To Dominic Flandry

Part of the reason for getting back into Mirkheim this time was to see what happened next with the members of the trade pioneer crew, including Coya who is back on stage at the end of Chapter XVIII bearing Nicholas Falkayn and conversing with Nicholas van Rijn. This is where the future historical narrative accelerates:

in Mirkheim, Coya bears Nicholas Falkayn;

in "Wingless," Nicholas Falkayn has a son, Nathaniel (Nat), during the colonization of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon;

in "Rescue on Avalon," Ivar Holm works in Andromeda Rescue Station Four during the colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon;

in "The Star Plunderer," Manuel Argos leads a slave revolt and proclaims the Terran Empire;

in "Sargasso of Lost Starships," the Terran Empire annexes the colonized planet, Ansa;

in The People Of The Wind, Christopher Holm and Tabitha Falkayn marry when they and others have prevented Imperial annexation of Avalon;

from the Young Flandry Trilogy to Flandry's Legacy, Dominic Flandry defends the Terran Empire which is succeeded by later human interstellar civilizations.

That briefly summarizes the contents of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes III-VII.

Interstellar Industry

Conditions on the rogue planet, Satan, during its bypass of Alpha Crucis, provide an industrial base for the transmutation of elements. Rhenium and scandium are urgently needed for certain alloys and semiconductors. Hafnium is necessary for polyergic units to make spaceship computers.

On the surface of Mirkheim, large quantities of supermetals can be directly mined.

Wayland, a massive moon of a super-Jovoid planet, is rich in easily mineable heavy metals: uranium, thorium, neptunium, plutonium, osmium, platinum etc.

"'...palladium is essential to protonic control systems, which are essential to any military machine.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT III, p. 39.

 

My point here is that Poul Anderson shows us the industrial side of an interstellar economy which I think is lacking from most future histories, particularly Asimov's.   

Consciousness

I am still pondering a philosophical question that underlies any discussion of, or fiction about, conscious artificial intelligence or extraterrestrial intelligence. How did consciousness originate?

An inanimate object is hot.

A plant responds to heat.

An animal feels hot.

An animal with more neural connections perceives a hot object.

A human being thinks about heat.

Pre-conscious Stages

inorganic

organic

 

Conscious Stages

sensation

perception

conceptualization

 

An organism whose response to heat involves feeling hot has made the transition from unconsciousness to consciousness. Consciousness is a property of an organism caused by, but not identical with, its neuronic interactions. I still can't help looking at an organism and wondering where its sensations, perceptions and conceptualizations are located.

Snow

Mirkheim, XVII.

Winter approached. Snow arrives and decks the land. The country, blue-shadowed white and hushed, rolls westward to the Arcadian Hills. The sky is blue. Breath smokes. Footfalls ring. Lady Sandra's space yacht, Castle Catherine, rises on negagrav like a snowflake in a breeze.

Sandra is accompanied by her children, Lorna Stanton and her men, including Falkayn. (Lorna Stanton?) (Addendum: Lorna is Eric's fiancee.)

Sandra goes into exile. Falkayn carries important intelligence to van Rijn. A quiet but portentous scene. The plot thickens.

Two Historical Cycles

 

Twice during Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, civilization collapses but is rebuilt.

In the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of the 43 installments

"The Star Plunderer": The Solar Commonwealth has collapsed but Manuel Argos proclaims the Terran Empire.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships": The Empire annexes inhabited planets.

The People Of The Wind: The Empire clashes with the Domain of Ythri and fails to annex Avalon.

Next comes the Flandry period.

In the 40th, 41st and 42nd installments

"A Tragedy of Errors": The Empire has fallen but Roan Tom builds interstellar alliances.

"The Night Face": An interstellar alliance contacts an isolated planet.

"The Sharing of Flesh": The Allied Planets recivilize isolated planets.

Next comes the Commonalty period.

Out Of The Storm

Mirkheim, XVII.

Outside Lady Sandra's unlit conference chamber, rain strikes, lightning flares, thunder rolls, murk returns, wind whoops, rain rushes and thunder goes as winter approaches. Sandra receives "Martin Schuster." Those who have read the David Falkayn series from its opening installment understand that this must be an alias for David Falkayn. When she recognizes him, Sandra perceives Falkayn as a larger-than-life figure:

"She wasn't sure how to respond to this man, home-born but far-faring, famous but a stranger, who had come to her out of the storm." (p. 237)

The storm is both literal and figurative, of course.

"When at last he stopped and regarded her, it was strangely right that he stood beneath the ax." (p. 238)

The ax from Diomedes where Sandra had been with Nicholas van Rijn: very right.

Freedom

Recent blog discussions have caused me to focus on a concept of freedom that has previously been alien to me. Does the Polesotechnic League uphold freedom? As long as whoever runs the government in a particular country, or on a particular planet, does not interfere with, and in particular does not tax, an entrepreneur or his would-be employees, then that entrepreneur and those employees are free in the only sense that means anything to them. They do not have to vote. Their freedom does not have to include participation in any collective decision-making process for society as a whole. 

My concept of freedom is both individual and collective. A society is free if it is collectively self-determining - which requires a lot of control over would-be representatives. In a society without democracy, I would want to campaign for the right to vote and would not consider myself free if I were economically obliged to seek employment by an unregulated entrepreneur.

Nevertheless, I think that I have gained a clearer understanding of the merchant princes' concept of freedom. The League transcends and ignores planetary governments - and eventually causes so much chaos that an interstellar government is imposed by force.

Social Revolutions On Hermes And Earth

Mirkheim, XVI.

Henry Kittredge informs Adzel and Chee Lan that the Baburites:

"'...intend to mount a revolution on Hermes - from the top, though doubtless they expect to get support from the bottom. The whole scheme of law and property is to be revised, the aristocracy abolished, a "participatory republic" established, whatever that means.'" (pp. 224-225)

"Participatory republic" means a lot although what it can mean in these circumstances, under threat of Baburite missiles, is a very good question.

I thought that the phrase, "social revolution," had appeared somewhere in the text but now cannot find it. In any case, this is a proposed social revolution, changing not just the governing group but social relationships. The American Civil War was a social revolution because it transformed slaves into free workers. Slavery could be abolished by legislation although that would not happen if there were not more general moral revulsion against it.

In Miracleman, Alan Moore describes a global social revolution that is successful because it is implemented by overwhelming extraterrestrial superhuman power and because it is welcomed by massive active popular support. A Warpsmith, with the power of teleportation, informs the UN that all nuclear and bacteriological weapons are completely disorganized. When asked for clarification, she explains that the weapons are disorganized not on a political level but on a molecular level because they have just been teleported into the sun. Other super-powered beings rebuild the environment and abolish money, providing basic necessities for everyone on Earth. More than enough volunteers come forward to administer and support the new system while deposed dictators receive counseling.

I was reminded of the successful Miracleman revolution when rereading Henry Kittredge's account of the proposed Baburite revolution. Anything can happen in fiction but meanwhile, on Earth Real, we must solve global problems without any superhuman or extraterrestrial help.

Coming Home

Mirkheim, XV.

Newly arrived back on his home planet, Hermes, David Falkayn experiences late afternoon light in a forest where:

"Ornithoids flitted among bare twigs and buzzbugs danced in the sunbeams like dustmotes." (p. 210)

His response:

"A sudden powerful sense of - not homecoming - longing gripped Falkayn. Was this his country yet, or had he roamed from it for overly many years?" (pp. 210-211)

Before this novel, we have only seen Falkayn roaming and we would not have read this description of Hermes if Poul Anderson had, as originally expected, ended the trader team sub-series with "Lodestar."

Falkayn's concern that the Hermetian forest might no longer be "his country" reminded me of a passage in Mary Lutyens' biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Google enables us to link to that very passage:

"'Adyar is not the same. The beauty of moonlit nights, the palm leaf shadows and the stillness of the evenings, but something has gone out of Adyar.' It was he who had gone out of Adyar."

-see here.

In A Wood On Hermes

Mirkheim, XV.

Ornithoids and buzzbugs, the latter dancing like dustmotes in Maian sunbeams, fly between trees that are mainly stonebark and rainroof, my point being that, if this scene were to be filmed in a Terrestrial forest, then CGI would be necessary to simulate the Hermetian environment. Evading pursuit, Falkayn uses old skills to part resistant shrubs and withes with economical arm and shin movements, Adzel moves with longer strides but cautiously to avoid leaving a trail and Chee Lan leaps between branches. Her home planet, Cynthia, is organized into treetop trade routes, not nation-states. On Hermes, all three beings, including the Hermetian Falkayn, need supplemental rations because native life lacks some vitamins and trace minerals. The forest is on the lower slopes of the Thunderheads. Across the mountain on its eastern side are the Apollo Valley, the Arcadian Hills, the coastal plain, Starfall and the Auroral Ocean. In Chapter II, we read an account of Maia rising out of Daybreak Bay and shining up the Palomino River into Starfall so we have come to feel very familiar with Hermes.

Psychohistory Or Psychotechnics

(This is another of those posts that begin somewhere else, then work their way back around to the subject-matter of this blog. The title and the image indicate the destination.)

What matters is what happens within and between people. If you are dissatisfied, then there is a problem within you although its cause(s) might be external. If you and I are in conflict, then there is a problem between us although its cause(s) might be internal.

Some say, "Change individuals, thus their relationships, therefore society," whereas others say, "Change society, thus its members." I used to argue for the first position against the second whereas now it seems obvious to me that both approaches are necessary. What is the best that can be said about changing the self? What is the best that can be said about changing society? How do they connect? Don't start in one places. Start in two places, then bring them together.

To understand society, we study history and economics - and reach diametrically opposed conclusions. However, these disagreements are just part of the problem to be addressed. There is no way to avoid continuing conflicts before hopefully approaching a resolution or at least progressing beyond the current multiple crises. We approach understanding of the self through modern scientific (?) psychology and/or long-established meditation practices. Specifically, we understand Zen by practicing it, not by studying it. There is no mechanical parallel between addressing social problems and addressing psychological problems. Sciences differ as their subject-matters differ. A science of psychology and/or society cannot be as mathematically precise as physics. The observer effect becomes all when the observer is the observed.

This finally brings us to Isaac Asimov's psychohistory and Poul Anderson' s psychotechnics. The psychohistorians apply mathematics to society but also develop a mental power that seems to be a powerful form of hypnosis. Asimov merely internalizes social power relationships. A well concealed elite secretly manipulates a galactic population.

Anderson's psychotechnics, synthesizing several already existing disciplines, is less implausible as also is the fact that his Psychotechnic Institute tries to cope with social crises but is overwhelmed and even outlawed although the science of psychotechnics comes to be firmly established many millennia later.

Histories

 

Fictional histories are past, alternative or future. Reading even a small amount of real history demonstrates - which should already be obvious - that a fictional historian would have to devote an entire long career to a single series to even begin to reflect the detail and complexity of reality. Maybe the only serious contender in this respect is Tolkien.

When I finished school in 1967, I knew of only three American future historians, Heinlein, Asimov and Blish, although I rated them in the order: Blish; Heinlein; Asimov. I knew of Anderson as an sf writer but did not yet realize that van Rijn and Flandry would combine into a future history series, still less that I would come to regard that Technic History as the pinnacle of American future historiography.

Heinlein and Blish are too different to be fully comparable. Blish is better at providing background information in Wellsian historical passages: three introductions and excerpts from two educational lectures.

Both Stapledon and Blish chronicle the last days of mankind:

"...we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man."

-Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men IN Stapledon, Last And First Men/Last Men In London (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), pp. 5-327 AT XVI, 3. Epilogue, p. 327.

 

"...we must note, with more than a little awe, the sudden and critical reappearance of Earthmen in this timeless moment of chaos and creation, and the drastic and fruitful exeunt which they wrote for themselves into the universal drama."

-Acreff-Monales: The Milky Way; Five Cultural Portraits IN James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT Prologue, p. 471.

 

But Poul Anderson wrote in another work:

 

"The last man on Earth knew not that he was."

-Poul Anderson, "In Memoriam" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 57-67 AT p. 59.

 

Multiple futures, good, bad and indifferent.

Grievances

Mirkheim, XIII.

Peter Asmundsen:

"'I don't think democracy, or aristocracy, or any other political arrangement should be an end in itself. Such things are simply means to an end, not? All right, then ask yourselves if what we've got isn't at least serving the end of keeping Hermes a pleasant place to live.'" (p. 190)

But any other Anderson hero would say that a planet that is merely "a pleasant place to live" is just a prison yard with its walls out of sight below the horizon. Self-determination is an end in itself and surely democracy is a necessary part of that?

Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen:

"'I've lost more time out of my own life than I like to reckon up, listening to the self-pity of the Liberation Front.'" (p. 193)

Self-pity or legitimate grievances?

Benoni Strang:

Travers children are crowded into public schools whereas Kindred children receive individual tuition from the best Hermetian teachers;

all the best land and resources and key businesses belong to the domains which resist change;

Follower parents stopped an engagement "'...because a Traver son-in-law would hurt their social standing, would keep them from using her to make a fat alliance...'" (ibid.)

Legitimate grievances.

New Data And Insights

"AUTHOR'S NOTE.

"Those who remember other tales from the world of the Maurai will perhaps notice what appear to be inconsistencies with them in this book. However, consistency is not an either-or matter. New data and insights often cause us to revise our ideas about the past and even the present. Surely the future is not exempt."

-Poul Anderson, Orion Shall Rise (London, 1988), p. vii.

 

Consistency is an either-or matter but later installments of a series might embody new data or insights.

 

The future is even less exempt. There are inconsistencies within a single future history series and multiple alternative future history series. There are also:

 

many fictional alternative pasts and presents;

 

many mutually incompatible interpretations and understandings of the single real past and present.

 

Enoch Powell claimed that the existence of the British Empire was a myth, deception and invention. If the Empire never existed, then it never did any wrong and Britain did not decline by losing an Empire. This is a fiction presented as an understanding.

Sathnam Sanghera, a son of Punjabi immigrants to Britain, learns about the Amritsar massacre. We imagine later generations of Shalmuans and Braeans learning about Terran atrocities on their planets in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

New Books

 

There will now be an intermission while I read some books received as presents.

Although Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is rarely referenced in Poul Anderson's works, this blog has had several occasions to refer to him. The following quotation is more generally relevant to all imaginative fiction:

"This collection is respectfully dedicated to the wonderfully restless shade of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was the first, in my encounters, to put great and ponderous wooden fighting ships in the sky. His were held aloft by the mysterious Eighth Ray of Barsoom, while ours are lifted by artful carpets, but it's the same primal force at work in both cases.

"Thank you, old ghost, for a lifetime of inspiration."

-Bill Willingham IN Bill Willingham and others, Fables: War and Pieces (New York, 2008), p. 4.

Also received:

Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain (Penguin Books, 2021).

It has. Anderson's Terran Empire harks back to Rome, not to Britain, and will be left with no time to reflect on how its imperialism has shaped it. Anderson commented elsewhere:

"We might glance at Great Britain, too, whose chief patrimony was merely coal, and at how it became affluent but now seems on the way back to genteel poverty."

-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 195.

(Not always genteel.)

Also:

"...the Irish remember Oliver Cromwell in much the same way that the Jews remember Hitler, and for much the same reason..."

-Anderson, op. cit., p. 201.

 

An Irish fellow student observed that there is a difference between the kind of old men encountered in Irish bars and those encountered in English bars and he thought that the latter country's imperial past explained the difference. An old man in an Irish bar told me, "The only good thing England did for Ireland was that, if it hadn't been in the way, we'd've had the French or the Spanish over and they'd've been worse!"

Treason On Hermes

 

Happy Christmas and everything. We are having a slow start to the day but there will not be much time for posting later.

See Treason.

By treason to mankind, I meant something more basic than treason to any political institution. What do we think of Benoni Strang's motivation? He is primarily loyal to his socioeconomic class on Hermes, the Travers. This motivation is admirable. Equal voting rights for Travers would be equal voting rights for all Hermetians. However, the way to bring this about would be by campaigning among Hermetians on Hermes, not by bringing in an alien invasion force. We are explicitly told that Strang is fanatical. This is plausible although others could have the same motivation without becoming fanatical. Anderson shows Strang in a sympathetic light as he is dying.

The governance of Hermes is a little more complicated than the Dukedom and the presidencies of the domains. Lady Sandra deliberates with her cabinet and there is also a world legislature. However, the domains with their restricted voting rights are the basis of the state.

Laters.

The Earth Book Introduction

Hloch's Introduction to The Earth Book Of Stormgate is written on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother on the planet Avalon and refers to still-current wreckage caused by the recent Terran War so this Introduction is composed in the immediate aftermath of the events of The People Of The Wind although the twelve works collected in the Earth Book are all set earlier than that novel, covering a historical period from before the founding of the Polesotechnic League to shortly before its dissolution but stopping short of the founding of the Terran Empire which had attempted to annex Avalon in The People Of The Wind.

Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, republishes Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization in chronological order of fictitious events and therefore places the first Earth Book story, "Wings of Victory," near the beginning of Volume I but The People Of The Wind at the end of Volume III. At the same time, however, the Saga preserves Hloch's Introduction to the Earth Book, Introductions to subsequent stories and Afterword. Thus, the Introduction to the Earth Book, now presented just as an Introduction to "Wings of Victory," appears two volumes in advance of the Terran Empire and the Terran War to which it refers.

"None Dare Call It..."

Mirkheim, XIII.

The commander of the occupation forces provides all the right language to welcome collaborators into his fold. The population is being "protected" and won't get it for nothing. They must produce supplies, food etc. Hermetians attacking the invaders were "subversives"! If so many naval personnel acted like that, then civilians too might commit sabotage or espionage or help the enemy!

There are two relevant situations in the later Imperial period:

Dominic Flandry organizes resistance to the Ardazhiro occupation of the human planet, Vixen;

Flandry directs the Intelligence operation during the occupation of Brae - search, inquiry, interrogation, exile of irreconcilables and incorporation of collaborators into a new governmental framework.

Nice work, Flandry.

Treason

Mirkheim, XIII.

Irwin Milner, commander of planet-based Baburite occupation forces on Hermes, speaks Anglic with a North American accent and is naturalized on the remote neutral human colony planet, Germania, therefore not guilty of any treason - he claims. I suggest that:

any human being who serves either the Baburite Autarky or the Merseian Rodhunate is a traitor to his species;

human Avalonians who fight against the Terran Empire in order to remain in the Domain of Ythri are not traitors to their species;

zmayi, Dennitzans of Merseian species, who want to remain in the Empire and to keep out of the Roidhunate are not traitors to their species;

Aycharaych was loyal to the Chereionite heritage, not to the Roidhunate, but committed crimes against all rational beings when he served the Roidhunate albeit for his own ends.

Four Major Future Histories

The British Wells-Stapledon future history model is a future historical text book whereas the American Heinlein-Anderson model is a series of stories and novels set in successive periods of a consistent chronology.

Wells described space travel, time travel and a Martian invasion of Earth and recounted two hundred years of future history in four discrete volumes whereas Stapledon recounted the entire future history of mankind, including space travel, time travel and Martian invasions of Earth, in a single volume. His fictional future historian discusses Martian invasions the way past historians discuss the Norman Conquest. Stapledon ups Wells as Anderson ups Heinlein.

A Heinlein-model future history presupposes a Wells-type history somewhere in its background. Heinlein had his Time Chart and stated in his Preface to Future History, Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, that this fictional future history was at least as real to him as Plymouth Rock.

Poul Anderson wrote in SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, that, for his Technic History, he "...wrote out the entire historical scheme explicitly..." (p. 10) Five pages of the turning point novel, Mirkheim, summarize the history of the Council of Hiawatha. In the single biggest turning point of the Technic History, at the mid-point of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, Hloch concludes The Earth Book Of Stormgate and is immediately followed by Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society, who introduces the chapter of the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy, that deals with Reeves' encounter with Manuel Argos, Founder of the Terran Empire.

We are well served with future historians.

A Minor Space Battle

Mirkheim, X.

As the massively superior Baburite fleet approaches, the Hermetian flotilla under Admiral Michael Falkayn in the battleship, Alpha Cygni, flees from the Maian System. Eric Tamarin overhauls the flotilla in his personal spaceship. Falkayn assigns him to the destroyer North Atlantis. (Heir apparent and Admiral should not be in the same ship.) Some Baburite craft intercept the Hermetians while they are still too deep in the gravity well to go hyper. Falkayn orders his men to hold course and to fire at will. A missile from Caduceus stops a Baburite missile. The two groups pass through each other, exchanging fire. Most explosions are remote from North Atlantis. The Baburites concentrate their fire on Alpha Cygni. Obeying orders, the captain of North Atlantis does not go to assist but maintains his course. A warhead destroys Alpha Cygni's screens and interceptors and the Baburites pound what is left. Eric Tamarin becomes the new commander. The Hermetians go hyper and are not pursued. Attacking the battleship, the Baburites took losses and are now an inferior force with the rest of their armada too far away to catch up. Fighting FTL involves drawing alongside and trying to match phase, too much trouble to be worth trying with Hermes still to be conquered.

First Name Terms

Mirkheim.

Sandra receives a telephone message:

"'We have received word from Admiral Michael'- Michael Falkayn, her second in command of the little Hermetian navy." ( X, p. 146)

Kindred are referred to by their first names. It is Sandra who reflects that "Admiral Michael" is Michael Falkayn. (She does this mainly to inform the readers.)

"Admiral Falkayn did not summon him aboard Alpha Cygni..." (p. 154)

The omniscient narrator of this passage does not observe the Hermetian custom but refers to the Admiral more normally by his surname.

When Eric Tamarin meets David Falkayn, he reflects:

"...I'd better think of him as 'Falkayn.' Most Earthlings seem to use their surnames with comparative strangers, like Travers, not the first name like Kindred and he's been long off Hermes." (XII, p. 176)

In this country, an earlier generation of men used to address close friends by their surnames, Holmes and Watson etc. If you are high enough up the social tree, then you are known by a first name preceded by a title, Prince Charles, Sir Ian etc. I have said before that, in my childhood, an elderly neighbor surprised me by referring to her gardener as "Smith," not Mr. Smith," but that had been appropriate during her earlier life.

A lecturer at Trinity College Dublin described one of his students as living in a clockwork universe to which he alone had the key and also as giving the impression of being on first name terms with authors that were long dead. (Nowadays, discussing someone's exam answers like that would count as breaking confidentiality.)

The Flight To Starfall

Mirkheim, X.

Despite having problems with a social structure, we can always appreciate its natural environment. Returning from a hunt to Starfall, Sandra flies above:

the shining Palomino River;

a lowland Runeberg agrarian property;

autumn touching green pastures;

majestic herds;

opulent grainfields;

orchards;

groves;

red-tiled Follower houses with their gardens;

the Runeberg mansion in the distance.

 

And Sandra's memories of that mansion:

 

gracious rooms;

ancestral portraits;

immense tradition;

children's laughter.

 

Adding this to the information about Starfall, Hermes becomes a real place.  

Kindred, Followers And Travers

Mirkheim, X.

On Hermes, the Kindred are the thousand families whose ancestors were the first passengers from Earth. Those ancestors founded corporations and their descendants head the domains. However, one family of first arrivals, the Tamarins, worked as professional freelancers instead of founding a corporation. The constitution of independent Hermes specifies that the presidents of the domains elect the Grand Duke or Duchess from among the Tamarins who, however, must remain without a domain. It seems to follow that Grand Duchess Sandra is not of the Kindred. If she had not become Duchess, then her options would have been:

to earn a living, differing from a Traver only in having a vote;

to marry into either the Kindred or the Followers.

Travers are latecomers, either employees or business people, whereas Followers hold entailed shares and therefore are junior partners in domains. Members of the Kindred have ten votes in domain affairs whereas Followers have only one. (XIII, p. 185) Finally, certain courtesies are necessary to higher-ranking people. Sandra, brought up among the Kindred, would have found such courtesies embarrassing if she had become a Follower. In fact, however, she married Peter Runeberg of the Kindred.

Not only is this slightly more complicated than I had realized (I have had to correct an earlier post) but it also seems to be designed to maximize dissatisfaction among later generations, as if a demon had drafted the constitution.

More Details In MIRKHEIM

See Van Rijn And Age.

If Satan's World had succeeded in making its point, then it would have been a different book and "Lodestar," then Mirkheim, would have been unnecessary. However, we enjoy the unfolding of the series. These three works constitute the van Rijn-trader team series as opposed to either the van Rijn series of six installments or the trader team series of two installments.

Since "Lodestar" did not fully make its point, Anderson could either have lengthened/novelized it or written a longer sequel. Fortunately, he took the latter course. In "Lodestar," Falkayn refers to monopolists and Coya refers to laissez-faire capitalism whereas Mirkheim goes into detail about:

The Council of Hiawatha

The Home Companies

The Seven in Space

 

See also Some Important Organizations and The Economy Of The Solar Commonwealth.

 

Much of this information is only in Mirkheim as also are details of the planet Hermes and of David Falkayn's Hermetian family. Van Rijn as the largest independent gains an unwanted leadership role. The single volume, Mirkheim, is a massive contribution to the Technic History.

Supermetals And The Baldic League

Mirkheim, VII.

On Mirkheim, Sandra Tamarin meets a gang of Supermetals workers comprising Ikranankans, Cynthians, a Gorzuni, an Ivanhoan and human colonials, all led by the Vixenite, Henry Kittredge. So some Gorzuni, taking a break from working as mercenaries, have joined Supermetal although this does not prevent members of their species from later sacking Earth and enslaving human beings during the Time of Troubles. They do this as part of the Baldic League which also includes renegade human colonials. "The Star Plunderer" was published twenty five years before Mirkheim. But longer term benefits of Supermetals include the weather stations on Vixen and that planet later founds a colony, New Vixen. A New Vixenite becomes a Ranger of the Commonalty and contacts descendants of Aenean rebels exiled by Dominic Flandry and that really does bring us to the end of the Technic History.

A Troll's Face

Mirkheim, VII.

As Muddlin' Through approaches Mirkheim, the planet is not white with frozen atmosphere but gleaming in metal:

"Mountains and chasms made rough shadows. Regions of dark iron sketched a troll's face." (p. 120)

Human babies are genetically programmed to respond to human faces. Only a very few random dots or markings suffice to suggest two eyes above a mouth. There is a man in the Moon and it is appropriate that a troll should guard the wealth of Mirkheim. This single reference to a face on Mirkheim is fully appropriate. We find such details in Poul Anderson's texts when we search for them and they affect us subliminally on a casual reading.

The Tiger

Mirkheim, V.

Approaching the planet Babur, Falkayn sees a tawny globe veiled partly by night and partly by swirling white clouds tinged gold, brown or pale red:

"The majesty of the sight gave Falkayn to understand why its human discoverer had named it for a conqueror who went down in the memory of India as the Tiger. He didn't know how well he chose, he thought." (p. 81)

But Poul Anderson did know how well he chose. Here he invokes the history of the Mughal Empire, incorporating its connotations into his History of Technic Civilization. For a moment, we think of tigers, India, Kipling etc. Then we read on but the Tiger remains in the background.

Reason And A Puddle

 

Lord Hauksberg wants to cooperate with the reasonable elements in the Merseian government. Max Abrams replies:

"'Trouble is...the whole bunch of them are reasonable. But they don't reason on the same basis as us.'"

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER NINE, p. 84.

 

Bayard Story says that Babur is:

 

"'...the home of a species as reasonable by their lights as we are by ours.'"

-Mirkheim, III, p. 72.

 

Van Rijn replies:

 

"'God help reason, if we and they is the best it can do.'"

-ibid.

 

If a race believes that it is superior, then it is reasonable for it to subordinate all others. Bigots have reasoned from Biblical premises, e.g., that the Rapture would occur in 1988. CS Lewis, converting to Theism, believed that God was Reason but wondered whether He was also "reasonable," i.e., not too demanding.

 

Van Rijn claims to have collected data:

 

"'...till I got a full jigsaw puddle.'"

-Mirkheim, III, p. 73.

 

Jigsaw pieces fit together because they are rigid whereas a puddle is fluid so "...jigsaw puddle..." has to be an ultimate contradiction.

Earth Seen From The Moon

Mirkheim, III.

In the Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn sees:

"...Earth's heart-snaring loveliness hung blue and white in the south." (p. 65)

And a century and a half earlier in the Time Patrol timeline, Carl Farness sees:

"...heaven black but reigned over by an Earth nearly full. I lost myself in the sight of that glorious white-swirled blueness. Jorith had lost herself there, two thousand years ago."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 2319, p. 375.

 

Time travelers have a different perspective.

 

There is artificial gravity in Lunar facilities in both timelines. Farness sees only mountains and craters but van Rijn looks out on trees growing high under a forcefield.

 

Apart from this, it is the same Earth and Moon in our timeline and in the two fictional timelines.

Links And A Foundation

We have known of the planet Hermes since "Wings of Victory" and that David Falkayn was an aristocrat of that planet since "The Three-Cornered Wheel" but the first time that we see Hermes is in Mirkheim. The second and last time is in A Stone In Heaven.

 In Mirkheim:

Sandra and Eric Tamarin are a strong link back to The Man Who Counts;

the Baburites are a strong link back to "Esau";

not only Mirkheim but also Commodre Nadi of the Supermetals Company is a strong link back to "Lodestar";

Sandra's reference to David Falkayn as the hero of the Shenna affair is a strong link back to Satan's World;

Nadi's explanation that Falkayn also discovered Mirkheim and founded Supermetals is another strong link to "Lodestar";

references to Ikrananka, Ivanhoe and Vanessa are links to "The Trouble Twisters," "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "A Sun Invisible," respectively.

Nadi summarizes for Sandra's benefit the events of "Lodestar," how van Rijn found his way to Mirkheim but David and Coya persuaded him to keep quiet. Nadi adds that van Rijn pro-actively helped to keep the secret by advising Supermetals agents on how to keep confusing the issue.

However, Mirkheim is much more than just an exhaustive list of references to earlier works. On the firm foundation provided by previous installments, Anderson builds what I have previously described as a good novel, a good science fiction novel and a good political novel.

A Solid Society

Mirkheim.

Hermetian society as described by Poul Anderson is solid from Sandra's long, darkly wood-paneled conference room, its windows open onto a lawn guarded by a mastiff, to the complex hierarchical social structure. Peter Asmundsen cannot avoid giving preferential promotions to Followers but can try to compensate the strike-threatening Travers, maybe with extra vacations. Grand Duchess Sandra is worried by a large Liberation Front rally with intemperate orators and a large, enthusiastic Travers crowd. The society is complex enough for readers to adopt different positions towards it. I think that it sounds over-ripe for reform - which does happen in the novel. I empathize with Travers, not with Kindred or Followers. What the Grand Duchess regards as intemperate, I might regard as moderate. The fact that readers can disagree on these issues shows that Anderson has created a plausible society. 

Life-Fiction Parallels

We find parallels between an author's (auto)biography and his fiction. Both CS Lewis and his character, Elwin Ransom, have the same experience of nearly drowning.

"...I held a primitive hand ax, a piece of flint chipped into shape in the Middle Acheulean period, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago, by a hunter - Homo erectus, not yet Neanderthal - and saw a tiny fossil embedded in it, left by a mollusc in a sea that drained and dried away perhaps a hundred million years ago."

-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), I, p. 17.

 

"On a shelf in my home lies a relic of the Paleolithic, a so-called hand ax, a heavy piece of flint chipped into a sort of pear shape but once rimmed with sharp edges... It is Middle Acheulean, made perhaps a hundred thousand years ago by a hunter whose folk were not yet quite at the Neanderthal stage of evolution. Embbed in the flint is a fossil, a sea shell laid down perhaps a hundred million years ago...."

-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 184.

 

A hundred thousand years and a hundred million years. That hunter had no conception either of the fossil in his ax or of Poul Anderson later holding and possessing the ax. Is there a wider perspective of which we have no conception?

 

Sandra Tamarin:

 

"...found her eye falling on a battle-ax from Diomedes."

-Mirkheim, II, p. 56.

 

Sandra looking at the Diomedean ax reminded me of Anderson looking at the Acheulean ax although the difference is that Sandra had acquired her ax in a society where it was still in use.

 

Also on Poul Anderson's shelves was:

 

"...a fine statuette of a Diomedean, inhabitant of an imaginary planet of mine which was visited by human beings in the twenty-fifth century...."

-"The Discovery of the Past," pp. 185-186.