People In Gunung Utara

"The Plague of Masters."

Two strong miners clear the way for an arrogant, brightly clad engineer;

a wizard wearing an astrological cloak makes faces at a droning, bead-counting, yellow-robed priest;

one vendor cries fruit and rice;

another calls passersby about his rugs;

a mother snatches her child from the unfenced precipice;

a squatting woman cooks over a brazier; 

another woman propositions a jungle yokel outside "...a jabbering joy cave..." (VIII, p. 70);

a smith sings as he tempers a knife in a solenoid;

a bird of prey, gold in the sunlight, soars.

Open any book by Poul Anderson and all human - and some non-human - life is there.

Black Market

"The Plague of Masters."

Despite the Biocontrol monopoly on the production and distribution of the antitoxin pills, Flandry is confident that there has to be a black market:

armed, masked men raid dispensaries;

 

shipments are hijacked;

 

hunters', sailors', prospectors' etc advance supplies are stolen or appropriated after their deaths;

 

local dispensers profiteer or are bribed or blackmailed;

 

Luang knows a young male dispenser...

 

By contacting the local underworld, Flandry gains access to the vitally necessary blue pills without the knowledge of Biocontrol who must assume his death after thirty days.

 

When Flandry has spelt out all this, Luang comments that he is "'...wise in such matters...'" (VII, p. 61) However, he has experiential knowledge of many human societies and can probably also hazard a few generalizations about non-human societies. Nicholas van Rijn survived for an indefinite period among the winged Diomedeans by understanding and manipulating their contrasting cultures and psychologies.

Predictive Social Science

A future predictive science of society is a science fiction idea that is presented more plausibly by Poul Anderson in his Psychotechnic History than by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series, in my opinion.

Sf can be set in any time or place but is usually future-oriented. The Time Traveler explored the future. Wells wrote The Shape Of Things To Come. Heinlein wrote the Future History.

Sf has addressed:

future technologies, e.g., spaceships;

a technology predicting dates of death ("Lifeline" by Heinlein);

a communications technology receiving messages from the future ("Beep" by James Blish);

time travel to or from the future.

 

Predictive social science occurs elsewhere in sf. In Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966), sociodynamicists extrapolate a trend and prove its outcome which is confirmed by subsequent events. However, these sociodynamicists neither govern nor advise governments. They are merely called in to reassure the elders on a particular planet. Earth has starport towns, educational centers, science and scholarship and a town has a civil monitor but there is no mention of any planetary or interplanetary government so do these populations with indefinitely extended lifespans manage their affairs without needing to be governed? Unfortunately, there is one passing mention of millions of governments on p. 22!

 

See also Science Of Society and its combox.

Night And Endings

"The Plague of Masters."

When Luang decides to spend the night with Flandry, the background sounds seem to comment:

"Someone laughed like a raucous bird, down in the joyhouse. But the rain was louder, filling all the night with a dark rushing." VII, (p. 62)

Indeed, Luang's attitude to Flandry is at best ambivalent. The text continues:

"Luang did not smile at Flandry. Her mouth held a bitterness he did not quite understand, and she switched off the light as if it were an enemy." (ibid.)

Inviting? No. In Flandry's interests to play along? Definitely.

Myths express cycles and endings. Odin and Thor (see the previous post) will die at the Ragnarok. Poul Anderson's works present major equivalents of Ragnarok:

Hrolf Kraki's Saga;

The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson);

Tau Zero;

the Long Night.

We value Tau Zero as a literary expression of the myth even though its cosmology is outmoded.

My Gods! Or A Sacred Seven

Various deities and their devotees feature in different works by Poul Anderson. To recapitulate:

Odin is a character in Anderson's heroic fantasies;

Thor wields his hammer in War Of The Gods and Hugh Vallland tells a bedtime story about Thor in World Without Stars;

Gratillonius converts from Mithras to Christ;

one Wodenite converts to Mahayana Buddhism and another to Jerusalem Catholicism;

etc.

While appreciating these works, Anderson fans can also reflect on the significance for them of these and other deities so here is my version of a "sacred seven," although it is in no way exclusive:

Indra releasing rain from heaven personifies the beneficent, life-sustaining aspect of nature;

Prometheus stealing fire from heaven personifies human action on nature, early control of fire and the beginning of technology;

Odin sacrificed an eye and even himself for wisdom;

Thor protects humanity by killing frost giants representing hostile elements;

Krishna taught karma yoga, nonattached action;

the Buddha, not a god but a man - but, mythologically, a teacher of gods and men -, taught meditation which I practice so this is my closest contact with the seven;

Jesus preached the kingdom (a new society and a new consciousness).

With deities like these, we have much to aspire towards.

OK. If we include Neptune for the sea and the Triple Goddess for maidenhood, motherhood and age, then we reach the also significant number of nine. And Jesus is a manifestation of the dying and rising god who also belongs on the list but we have to stop somewhere.

Science Of Society

"The Plague of Masters."

Dominic Flandry decries Psychotechnocracy:

"'When will the intellectuals learn that scientific government is a contradiction in terms? Since people don't fit into this perfect scheme - and the scheme being perfect by definition, this must be the fault of the people - Biocontrol never did find an occassion to give up its power. After a few generations, it evolved into an old-fashioned oligarchy. Such governments always do.'" (V, pp. 39-40)

When did any scientist as scientist say that his scheme was perfect and not only that but also that the scheme was perfect not by demonstration but by definition? Flandry seems to be referring to fanatics whose ideology was scientistic instead of theological. A scientist's job is to find out about people, not to decree that they are at fault because they do not fit into some perfect scheme.

Sciences differ as their subject matters differ. A social project is not an experiment in physics and experiments are impossible in astronomy! A science of society would have to acknowledge the distinctive features of societies and also to accept the limits to our understanding of them. But surely it is possible to formulate some propositions that are empirically observed and realistic rather than utopian or perfectionist?

I suggest:

(i) Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis: "Times change and we change with them." What one generation regards as insane another accepts as commonplace. Great change is possible, either for good or for bad. Do not think that change is impossible. (An important principle in sf.)

(ii) People do not fight when there is no reason to. For example, we do not fight for the air that we breathe - although we might start to fight if we were trapped inside a space station with a diminishing supply of oxygen cylinders.

(iii) Any competitive economy has a built-in boom-slump cycle. I think that this is generally accepted by economists across the board? As long as we live and work in such an economy, then we have to accept that it cannot have a permanent boom.

(iv) If a social group has both a common interest and the ability to act collectively, then it is not utopian but realistic to encourage that group to act collectively.

Needless to say, the Biocontrol approach of blackmailing government by threatening to end antitoxin production is not the way to a perfect social system.

Addendum: A concrete example of (iv). Slavery in Haiti was ended by slave rebellions, not by Parliamentary legislation. Populations can become active instead of passive.

Natural Beauty, Social Stagnation And Spiritual Squalor

"The Plague of Masters."

In animals and human beings, consciousness occurs at the intersection between the organism and its environment. Unconscious physical and mental processes interact with sensory and perceptual inputs. For example, individuals can either internalize or reject culturally presented deities and mythological figures.

The polytheism pervading Unan Besaran society remains evident. Sumu offers "'...incense to the gods at Ratu Temple!,'" (VII, p. 50) thus reminding readers of van Rijn offering candles to St Dismas, while Dominic invokes "'...the Three Headed One himself...'" (ibid.)

On a clear day, the sun is "...high and white in a pale sky...," (VI, p. 44) its radiance reflected from metal walls and canal water. However, natural beauty contrasts with human suffering. The poorest in society might not be able to afford their next antitoxin pill. We know that Biocontrol sometimes deprives condemned criminals of the antitoxin but does it also let a percentage of the population perish?

Flandry finds that there is no word for revolution in the local language, Pulaoic. However, new words are coined of necessity. (In 1984, the ultimate purpose of Newspeak was to make independent thought impossible.)

Flandry pulls a Spanish Prisoner on Sumu. The latter dispatches a chest of coins to be invested abroad. Then Flandry and Kemul mug the bearers of the chest.

Detective Fiction And SF

See previous blog discussions of Poul Anderson's three detective novels:

Murder Bound

Perish By The Sword

Murder In Black Letter

 

Detective fiction is remarkably constrained in space, time, plot and theme when contrasted with sf. Furthermore, the explanation of the detective's reasoning in the concluding chapter transforms a novel from a work of literature into something more like a crossword puzzle.

 

Maybe the explanatory passages in the three Trygve Yamamura novels (see above) are not overly obtrusive? - although rereading these works yet again is not on my current agenda.

Also, reading Poul Anderson's mysteries has not inspired me to read much other detective fiction. I was already a fan of Holmes (also here and here.) I got into Montalbano through television. Many of Asimov's Black Widowers stories are trivial. I think that I have found yet another instance of under-explanation in The Mysterious Affair At Styles.

 

I will stay with sf. (See also Getting Into Detective Fiction, Maybe...)  

The History Of Unan Besar

"The Plague of Masters."

People from Earth colonized New Djawa which later fought a "...disastrous war with Gorrazan..." (I, p. 6);

during the early Imperial period, some New Djawans colonized Unan Besar after their scientists had "'...developed an antitoxin...,'" (III, p. 22) necessary for survival on Unan Besar;

Biocontrol, the arm of the Unan Besaran government responsible for producing and distributing the antitoxin, was staffed by idealists who demanded reforms under threat of destroying the antitoxin vats;

thus, Biocontrol became "'...the whole government...'" (V, p. 39);

Biocontrol trained technicians and hired administrators;

however, when the administrators started to become the real decision-makers, one technician, Weda Tawar, again threatened to destroy the vats;

thus, the governing board remains a few elderly senior technicians;

every member of the population, fingerprinted at birth, must pay an exorbitant price for a single monthly antitoxin pill;

children work, education is poor and vast differences of wealth and poverty have become hereditary;

Biocontrol favors the rich and makes no attempt to suppress crime as long as the latter makes money to pay for the antitoxin;

modern laboratories on other planets "'...can now duplicate any organic molecule...'" (V, p. 42) and can thus make Biocontrol obsolete but first Flandry must escape from Unan Besar.

The Intersolar Commonwealth

Has anyone read any sf by Peter Hamilton? In a charity shop, I found two thick second-hand paperbacks by Hamilton. In my teens, I would probably have grabbed any such works but maybe there was less sf back then? A Poul Anderson fan notices that one of Hamilton's several series features an "Intersolar Commonwealth." We are familiar with Anderson's Solar Commonwealth. We realize that certain sf ideas, faster than light space travel, interstellar civilization, human-alien contact etc, have become commonplace and that it must be difficult for writers to coin new terminologies. More importantly, I am convinced that, of the future histories that I have read so far, Anderson's Technic History is way ahead of any of the others but what do I know of Hamilton's various series? Nothing, yet. Might they be as good or better than Anderson's or at least enjoyable enough to be worth the time invested in reading a few long volumes? My mind is of necessity open as yet and opinions from other sf fans would be welcome.

Upstairs In The Swampman's Ease

"The Plague of Masters."

Furnishings:

a decorative scroll;

screens;

white flowers and a stone in a bowl;

a blindfolded wooden idol holding a lamp;

warm breeze through a window;

canal garbage smell drowned by incense.

 

Now we see the blindfolded house god mentioned by Kemul to Flandry. Ubiquitous religious images convey the sense of divine omnipresence or of an all-pervading transcendent reality. However, unfortunately, that sense does not prevent life from being a grim struggle for survival. Flandry must persuade Luang and Kemul not to turn him over to Biocontrol.

Swampmen

"The Plague of Masters."

Kemul takes Flandry to the Tavern Called Swampman's Ease on the Canal of the Fiery Snake.

See:

In The Tavern Called Swampman's Ease

Odd POV 

Sounds In Silence

 

When summarizing the sights and sounds inside the tavern, I skipped past the many professions and criminalities of the men lounging on floor mats, an interesting cross-section of humanity:

 

freightboat crewmen

fishers

dockmen

machinists

jungle hunters and loggers

bandits

cutpurses

gamblers

less identifiable individuals

 

Having imagined a hot, wet planet ruled by a callous oligarchy, Poul Anderson now populates the slums of its capital city.

 

"Swampman" is a phrase that evokes accidental associations with other works of fiction, like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. In fact, despite his vegetable origins, Swampy toured extra-solar planets in the DC Universe just as Dominic Flandry tours extra-solar planets in the Technic History universe. See Swamp Thing And The Universe. No comparison is too bizarre or far-fetched for this blog.

Night And The Underworld

"The Plague of Masters."

The sensory assault continues. Leaving the chugging boat, Flandry swims "...through warm slimy water..." (IV, p. 26) as a distant animal hooting approaches through the thick, hot, stinking, shadowy night. He is pursued by a pack of long-necked, gleaming, reptilian swimmers followed by the fierce searchlight of a whining police boat. A metal wall booms and planks resound as heavy, splashing, whistling bodies strike the pier and a blue blaster bolt decapitates a snapping beast. A full power narrow beam pierces the boat which sinks "...like a diving whale." (IV, p. 29)

Evading the police, Flandry contacts the local criminal underworld. The battered giant, Kemul, might slit Flandry's weasand with the kris thrust into his garish batik. (I did know what a kris was but it is interesting to read more.)

Kemul refers to a blindfolded house god, confirming polytheism on Unan Besar. Recently, we saw pantheism on Altai. Pantheism (God is all) is a kind of monism (all is one). Whereas prophetic monotheists necessarily reject polytheism, monists can accommodate it because the one appears as many:

"Truth is one; sages call it by various names."

-see here.

 

In Hinduism, there are many avatars and, in the diversity of the galaxy, Axor seeks for evidence of the Universal Incarnation.

Learning Some History From Fiction

There is:

historical fiction;

sf about time travel which can be historical;

other fiction which can be about historians who discuss their work.

 

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol agents have to intervene in the Second Punic War to prevent Hannibal from sacking Rome.

 

A dinner guest of Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers is a historian who comments that:

 

Rome and Carthage were "'...nearly equally matched powers...'" -Puzzles Of The Black Widowers (London, 1991), p. 94;

Hannibal, Napoleon and Robert E. Lee were the three great generals who lost but kept their reputations.

And I did not know all of that. It is good to find some common ground between series as diverse as the Time Patrol and the Black Widowers.

Gods And Stars

"THE SPLENDOR, WONDER & TERROR OF THE STARFLUNG

"POUL ANDERSON TAKES YOU THERE!" -Philip Jose Farmer

-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), front cover.

 

Two sf premises that have become cliches:

 

routine faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel;

 

many easily colonized extra-solar planets.

Although colonizable planets have become less implausible, FTL remains theoretically impossible. However, let us consider their implications as fictional premises.

First, regular FTL travel would be a scientific achievement that would strengthen a scientific world view. Secondly, however, most extra-solar colonists would not be scientists. We must imagine entire planetary populations living and working in new environments. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, several groups leave Earth to preserve inherited ways of life. For example, Judaism is preserved on Dayan and Orthochristianity on Dennitza. However, many planets would be colonized by groups not united by any traditional monotheism. Such a group would face:

perhaps a long journey through interstellar space;

the challenges of settling into a new environment;

encounters with alien cultures.

Would some colonists respond to such alienating experiences by rediscovering or reinventing polytheism? Why do James Blish's Okies swear by "gods of all stars?" In Anderson's After Doomsday, when many spacefaring species interact, a ballad in an interstellar language includes the line:

"(A bugle: the gods defied!)"

-see here.

In the Technic History, on the colonized planet of Imhotep, Diana Crowfeather keeps her few possessions in a ruined temple and earlier, on Unan Besar, the Square of the Four Gods had a statue of a dancing, multi-armed male figure in each corner.

Sensory Experiences On Unan Besar

"The Plague of Masters."

The sound of a canal freight boat engine;

water streaming silkily around the fugitive Flandry;

smells of tar and spice;

the steersman crooning while tapping a gamelon;

red columns and gilt roofs of upper-class apartments;

low, dark warehouses, tenements and factories above water;

sheet metal, rough timber, thatched roofs;

light dim through dirty windows;

muted machine growls;

floating corpse;

a woman's scream;

darkness around a harsh blue lamp.

Does Anderson overdo the squalor? In any case, I would instantly have forgotten most of these details if I had not paused to record them.

The Problem On Unan Besar

In an otherwise terrestroid planetary ecology, a single ubiquitous bacterium enters the human bloodstream where it excretes acetylcholine which is lethal to the nervous system. Scientists on the mother planet, New Djawa, developed an antitoxin that enabled the colonization of Unan Besar but also empowered the tyrannical Biocontrol. 

Like the basic plot idea of many another sf story by Poul Anderson, this one could have generated an ideal Star Trek script but, fortunately, it instead became an installment in Anderson's much better and greater Technic History. Dominic Flandry solves the problem, which is just one of many.

Flandry's Espionage Abilities

In A Circus Of Hells

Approaching the planet Talwin, Flandry notices clues that a layman would miss. Seeing two relay satellites, he deduces that there are three in synchronous orbits but also that, if that is all that has been installed, then this is a bare bones base as is to be expected so far from Merseia. Knowing that huge icecaps form and melt each year, he deduces both a disturbed isostatic balance and rapid tectonics. Vegetation is mostly blue so the photosynthesizing chemical is not chlorophyll. The compound contains buildings that do not look naval so maybe the Merseians have other interests on Talwin and their intelligence activities are an add-on?

In "The Game of Glory"

Approaching the single City on Nyanza, Flandry notices that most ships in the docks are radically hydrodynamic sailing craft. He deduces a leisurely and esthetic but also efficient culture. Seeing sea-water processing units and bales of sea weed, he deduces that most Nyanzans farm the planetary ocean while the single large island provides metal, fuel etc.

In "The Plague of Masters"

Approaching Kompong Timur on Unan Besar, Flandry sees that the central buildings are tall and well-lit whereas outer zones are low and dark. He deduces a concentration of wealth and power surrounded by slums.

Concentration of wealth and power is typical in the Terran Empire although maybe some planets are able to organize their societies differently?

Altaian Pantheism

We wonder how the Altaian Prophet, Subotai, (scroll down) synthesized Buddhism with Islam and we also wonder about the humanistic pantheism of the Shamanate on Altai. Of course, Poul Anderson is free to use these terms without needing to explain them any further but his readers are also free to imagine some of the details.

Pantheism means that God is all. Obviously, there are familiar meanings of "God" in which God is not all. But there are also different meanings of the word, "God." (The "God" of the Yoga Sutras is not "all" but is not an extra-cosmic creator, either. He is merely a soul that has never been incarnated, thus enabling Patanjali to incorporate devotional theism as one kind of yoga within an essentially atheist philosophical system.)

If "God is all" means that the object of religious experience is identical with the universe, then this becomes a meaningful and even plausible proposition that can be restated without resorting to any ambiguous theistic terminology. My latest attempt at such a statement, in the form of "sutras," short, telegrammic propositions, is here.

Betelgeuse In The Technic History

"The Plague of Masters."

If the Unan Besarans are isolated from Technic civilization, then how have they acquired a large, modern, luxurious aircar?

"A custom job from Betelgeuse, no doubt." (III, p. 12)

The Betelgeusean system is important as:

a mysterious system cited by van Rijn in "Lodestar";

the buffer state between Terra and Merseia in "Honorable Enemies" and other installments;

trading with the isolated human colony, Altai, in "A Message in Secret";

trading with the isolated human colony, Unan Besar, in "The Plague of Masters";

a possible destination for the fugitive Flandry in Ensign Flandry.

Up To Date

"The Plague of Masters."

We have become accustomed to instant global communication. Yesterday evening, BBC TV News presented live coverage of a court verdict in the US. In Dominic Flandry's period, that remains possible on Terra but not in the Terran Empire. Although physical interstellar travel is faster then light, it is very far from being instantaneous and there is no interstellar equivalent of radio or television. The populations of extra-solar colony planets cannot watch live coverage of any events, however important, in the Solar System.

Speaking about the isolated planet, Unan Besar, an Alfzarian spaceship captain tells Dominic Flandry:

"'We sell them books, newstapes, anything to keep their ruling class up to date on what's happening in the rest of the known galaxy. Maybe the common people on Unan Besar are rusticating. But the overlords are not.'" (p. 10)

The rulers of Unan Besar are not up to date by our standards if they are reliant on infrequent recorded news. The Alfzarian had already told Flandry:

"'We don't visit them very often. Once or twice a standard year a trading craft of ours stops by.'" (p. 10)

And, despite the natural wealth of the planet, it is easy for the rulers to keep their subjects subjugated:

"'From space, you can see it's a rich world. Backward agricultural methods, odd-looking towns, but crammed with natural resources.'" (p. 10)

The rulers alone know about the rest of the known galaxy although the galaxy knows nothing about them. Flandry realizes that Unan Besar requires investigation.

Race Survival

Which two Andersonian heroes become responsible for the survival of mankind?

As we keep saying, Poul Anderson covers every angle.

In "In Memoriam," the human race becomes extinct very soon.

In "Epilogue," space travelers return to Earth to find that Terrestrial humanity has become extinct but that automatic machinery has evolved, becoming both conscious and intelligent.

In Genesis, humanity, superseded by Artificial Intelligences (AIs), becomes extinct but is re-created by a post-organic intelligence descended from AIs.

In works like the Technic History and World Without Stars, humanity has become too widely dispersed to become extinct very soon.

In After Doomsday, all life on Earth has been destroyed but several single-sex spaceship crews survive and must find each other.

In Tau Zero, a single spaceship crew survives this universe and colonizes a planet in the next universe.

In "Flight to Forever," a single time traveler survives this universe but continues around the circle of time and returns to 1973.

In the Time Patrol series, mankind evolves into the Danellians.

The answers to the opening question are Carl Donnan in After Doomsday and Charles Reymont in Tau Zero.

Yotl's Nest And The Wind

If there are intelligent beings on extra-solar planets, are they similar enough to humanity to drink in bars? Sometimes, although not always, Poul Anderson assumes so.

On Avalon, the Nest is a tavern for ornithoids.

"...the bluefaced skipper had growled to Flandry in the tavern on Orma." (Scroll down.)

-"The Plague of Masters," II, p. 8.

 

"'The day Yael Blum came back from Yotl's Nest and told v'at she had heard, a song being sung by a spaceman from another cluster...'"

-Poul Anderson, After Doomsday (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 140.

 

Anderson describes the ornithoids, the Nest and the blue-skinned Alfzarians but not the tavern on Orma or Yotl's Nest. Film-makers would have to invent. The singing space-hand in Yotl's Nest would have to be able to pronounce "Kandemir" and "Earth" correctly in order to sing the ballad, The Battle of Brandobar, the first important work of art composed in the inter-cluster language, Uru.

Yet again in a work by Anderson, the wind punctuates or comments on the dialogue. After mentioning Yotl's Nest, Sigrid Holmen refers to two special days in her life. The first was when she knew from the ballad that other human beings were alive. The second will be:

"'V'en my first-born is laid in my arms.'

"For a while only the wind blew, loud in the trees." (ibid.)

Sorgan And The Maurai Drug

See Sorgan.

In There Will Be Time, the Maurai develop chemicals such that:

 

"'Under their influence, the subject comes to believe whatever he is told. In detail. As you do in a dream, supplying every necessary bit of color or sound, happiness or fear, past or future....'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XI, p. 126.

 

Jack Havig's time travel group returns its enemies to their home periods and destroys their belief in time travel. They now believe that, while ill or demonically possessed etc, they had imagined impossible things that should never be mentioned again. Havig's group convince their main enemy, Caleb Williams, that he is still in charge of his organization, the Eyrie, whereas it is in fact now controlled by them. While dying, he possibly remembers and flings himself far into time...

 

Clever uses of a drug in different timelines. 

Distribution And Power

Poul Anderson, "The Plague of Masters" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-147.

As sometimes happens, I have googled the name of the fictional planet, Unan Besar, and all that has come up is the text of this story set on Unan Besar.

My Simplistic Summary Of Civilizations

Economics: production and distribution.

Politics: power and resistance.

History: progress or regression.

 

"Production" means production of necessities which, on Unan Besar, include an antitoxin administered in the form of a large blue pill. When Dominic Flandry arrives at the spaceport, Nias Warouw, who introduces himself as "'...director of the Guard Corps of the Planetary Biocontrol...,'" (p. 6):

shows Flandry a vial of pills;

explains that he will need one pill every thirty days while on the planet;

withdraws the vial when Flandry reaches for it;

offers to give him a single dose immediately;

explains that it is illegal to dispense more than one at a time;

adds that Biocontrol must keep careful records.

 

Of course they must! Or, to put it another way, why should they? No one records the air that we breathe. Surely the antitoxin can be produced in sufficient quantity to be distributed either cheap or free so that everyone can live safely on Unan Besar? But everyone living safely is not the purpose of the economy, is it? Control of production and distribution is power and this seems to be another case of "Resistance is useless!" (Scroll down.) So can there be any progress? Yes, because Flandry has arrived.

Meanwhile, Flandry, contemplating Warouw's careful doling out of one antitoxin pill at a time, remarks that he believes he does understand.

The Size And Age Of The Universe

By reading works like Poul Anderson's Tau Zero and Starfarers, we get some idea of modern scientific cosmology and cosmogony. We might supplement hard sf with science writing by Asimov etc and also with TV documentaries popularizing scientific discoveries. See Fifth Force. Last night, another such documentary addressed the size of the universe. However, most sf readers are not cosmologists, astrophysicists or mathematicians so our understanding remains limited and superficial and we continue to ask uninformed questions. (What else can we do? Any question presupposes lack of knowledge of the answer.)

If the universe has expanded from a single point 13.77 billion years ago, then it must now be a sphere with a radius of less than 13.77 billion light years? No. It is said to expand equally from every point and to extend infinitely in every direction. Although Poul Anderson's readers are familiar with the idea of a multiverse, evidence for cosmic collisions, which would demonstrate the existence of other universes, is still being sought. But it seems unlikely that our Big Bang was a unique event.

The Terran Empire seems spatiotemporally small.

The Captain Flandry And Chives Trilogy

In order to reread Poul Anderson's "The Plague of Masters," we reopen The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VI, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra and, while avoiding yet another discussion of the correct reading order for Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, we notice first that this volume contains only four installments and secondly that, after "The Plague of Masters," the remaining three installments:

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

"The Warriors from Nowhere"

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

 

- form a neat "Captain Flandry and Chives" trilogy as opposed to Admiral Flandry and Chives at the beginning of Volume VII.

In "Hunters...," Flandry, Chives and Kit Kittredge travel in the Hooligan to Vixen, a humanly colonized planet occupied by the Ardazhiro whereas, in A Knight..., Flandry, Chives and Kossara Vymezal travel in the Hooligan to Dennitza, a humanly colonized planet infiltrated by Merseian agents with Aycharaych orchestrating events from the background on both occasions. The trilogy incorporates Flandry's long conflict with Aycharaych with the single exception of the brief introductory story, "Honorable Enemies," which had been collected in Volume V.

Land And Sea

One of the greatest environmental contrasts in our experience is between sea and land: two realms each lethal to most of the organisms living in the other; perhaps our closest approach to visiting another planet without leaving Earth. Compare diving suits and submarines with spacesuits and spaceships.

In the first Biblical creation myth, water covers the earth whereas, in the second, the earth is dry, without rain. In some sf works, e.g., Poul Anderson's "Sister Planet," Venus is oceanic whereas, in others, e.g., Anderson's "The Big Rain," it is a hot desert.

Dominic Flandry travels from the cold, dry planet Altai to torrential rain and Swamp Town on Unan Besar and later to Nyanza, almost completely covered with water. Another oceanic planet in the Technic History, although not visited by Flandry, is Kraken.

Of course, there are also many other planets, like Jupiter and Mirkheim, that are simply not comparable to anything on Earth. Over many works, Poul Anderson shows us the universe.

Krasna

"A Message in Secret."

The name of the planet Altai means "Golden." The name of its sun, Krasna, means "Red."

Krasna is a Slavic word meaning "red" or "beautiful". (Comparable to Sanskrit Kṛṣṇa or Karṣṇa which means "black", "dark" or "handsome").

-copied from here.

 

As I thought, "Krasna" is related to "Krishna." (For Krishna on this blog, see here.) Despite his name, Krishna is represented as blue. His name is not linguistically related to the royal/religious title, "Christ," meaning "Anointed." There is a fictional planet called "Krishna" but it is in a series by L. Sprague de Camp which I have not read.

 

I think that that exhausts the topic of these planetary names.

A Moment Of Realization On Altai

"A Message in Secret."

Flandry and the Shaman confer with two of the dwarfish, white-furred and boneless but otherwise humanoid (?) Ice Folk. The problem is how to get a message off the planet undetected and unsuspected by their enemy, the Kha Khan. Experienced Poul Anderson readers know what to look out for and it arrives on schedule:

"Suddenly, and joyously, [Flandry] laughed." (p. 379)

The sound startles the Ice Dwellers and the Shaman stands in shadow - symbolizing his incomprehension? - whereas Flandry alone, standing with head raised in the moonlight, laughs like a boy.

"'By Heaven,' he shouted, 'we're going to do it!'" (ibid.)

This is another of the many Andersonian moments of realization. The hero suddenly realizes the solution to a problem but the readers must wait to see the solution in action.

Funeral

This evening, we watched a reshowing of the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral. I am interested in the ways that society finds to mark the passing of people regarded as important. This practice will continue in future even if everything else changes: who is regarded as important and how their passing is marked. The practice is represented in Poul Anderson's Technic History when Kossara Vymezal lies in state in St Clement's Cathedral in Zorkagrad on Dennitza near the end of A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. Probably every aspect of life, and death, is to be found somewhere in Anderson's works.

Christian funerals refer to a hereafter. How is it known that there is a hereafter? And, if there were one, how would any particular individual's destination be known? Skeptics attending funerals listen with respect and interest but remain skeptical. We are united by the accepted custom that everyone except a few sectarians attends weddings and funerals of friends and colleagues irrespective of denomination or tradition. When the Pope announced that it was OK for Catholics to attend family weddings etc in other churches, he merely acknowledged what anyone with any sense was already doing. Vox populi vox Dei.

Dominic Flandry effectively prays to his dead fiancee, Kossara, but does not think that he receives an answer. Mormon missionaries (scroll down) advised me to ask God for the truth about religious matters so I did. But I have to interpret whether I received an answer.

The Tebtengri

"A Message in Secret."

"...the entire tribe, male and female, must be a military as well as a social and economic unit. Everybody worked, and everybody fought, and in their system the proceeds were more evenly shared than on Terra." (p. 372)

That sounds good to me:

no uniformed police or armed forces set apart from the rest of society;

a socioeconomic unit instead of division into classes with competing interests;

everyone works and the products of their labor are distributed more evenly.

It is again mentioned that the Shamanate traffics with the Ice Dwellers - spirits? demons? - but this time the Shaman, who unites the chiefs, asks Flandry whether he dares to go with him "'...to meet the Ice Folk?'" (p. 373)

On Mars as described by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and CS Lewis, it is possible to meet intelligent beings that are not, or no longer, organic. However, although Flandry accompanies a Shaman, he is about to meet native organic intelligences.

We have recently returned from a long day out and I have started to read To Kill A Mockingbird so this might be the only post for today. I find affinities between Harper Lee and Mark Twain and thus indirectly with Poul Anderson.

What Terra Was Like

"A Message in Secret."

"He didn't want to tell them what Terra was actually like these days. (Or perhaps had always been. He suspected men are only saints and heroes in retrospect.)" (p. 369)

That last sentence is not true. Flandry is a hero in his own life-time and some people - not Flandry but maybe Axor? - are regarded as saints in their own life-times.

Flandry mentally lists what Terra is like these days:

sottish Emperors;

venal nobles;

faithless wives;

servile commons.

I am not sure what the wives have to do with it! But this list is a hint of the deeper analyses of Imperial decline presented by Chunderban Desai in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows and by Dominic Flandry in A Stone In Heaven.

 

Tomorrow will be a day trip to the Lake District so maybe little or no blogging.

All Altaians Are One, Sometimes

"A Message in Secret."

To evade the Kha Khan's men, Flandry starts a grass fire on the steppe. An enemy of the Kha Khan says that Flandry's action was evil. The Kha Khan's aircraft smother the flames with foam bombs and do not molest an enemy vessel that also carries a few foam bombs.

"'In such tasks,' said Toghrul Vavilov, Gur-Khan of the tribe, 'all Altaians are one.'" (pp. 366-367)

Are there any tasks in which all Terrestrials are one? Not many. Banks continue to fund fossil fuel industries while governments convene climate change conferences.

Civilized Nomads

On Kandemir, vast, fertile plains enabled nomads to domesticate animals, to sustain government, literacy and technology and to dominate the cities, where subject races labor in immobile industries like mining. T'sjudan space travelers arrived and began to trade. Kandemirian nomadism became an interstellar empire subordinating even T'sjuda but opposed by a coalition led by the Dragar of Vorlak, a warrior class who had displaced the Vorlakka imperium when space travelers reached Vorlak.

-copied from Civilization-Clusters.

Cold and dryness plus lack of heavy metals, fossil fuels and fissionables explain why the Altaians became nomads without losing scientific knowledge.

-copied from Ice, Steppe And Tundra.

See also:

Technological Nomads

Lakota  

Spectacular Escapes

"A Message in Secret."

Flandry and Bourtai spectacularly escape from the palace. Initially unarmed in Flandry's room, they kill two guards, take their blasters, kill more guards, take their varyaks (motor bikes), use unmanned varyaks to break through the gates and thus escape from the palace grounds but must head for the steppe because the spaceport is heavily guarded.

They are not in John Carter's league but almost. When a large number of sword-wielding yellow Martians had chased Carter and a few friends down through a long sequence of passages and stairways, Carter, the best swordsman of two worlds, suddenly wanting to retrace his steps, simply shouted, "Way for the Prince of Helium!" and ran back through the passages and up the stairways, killing every single enemy swordsman that had crowded into them. Poul Anderson managed to write slightly less implausibly than that.

GoH Speech

Poul Anderson was the Guest of Honor at the Detention, the seventeenth World Science Fiction, in 1959. In his GoH speech, Anderson advocated an approach to sf that would address and unify every aspect of life from philosophical issues to the details of daily living. 

James Blish, writing as William Atheling Jr., commented that:

this is a good prescription for science fiction because it is a good prescription for any fiction;

such a unitary approach is nowhere better exemplified than in Anderson's The Man Who Counts which Ace contemptuously re-entitled War Of The Wing Men.

We agree that The Man Who Counts is a good sf novel set on a Clementian extra-solar planet but do we also agree that it is a unitary novel in the sense described?

Altaian Night II

"A Message in Secret."

See Altaian Night.

Points missed in the earlier post:

"darkened city" is an evocative phrase (see Darkness And A City);

the camp fires stretch not to the horizon but to the lake Ozero Rurik which in turn stretches "...in blackness and multiple moonshivers, out to an unseen horizon..." (p. 354);

the two rivers are called "Zeya" and "Talyma" and resemble "...ribbons of mercury..." (ibid.);

the meteors come from the rings which raises the question: how long will the rings last?;

I noted that moons- and star-light make headlights on vehicles unnecessary so presumably that is somewhere in the text? (Later: p. 359.)

Next comes a dramatic escape sequence which we have to accept as a feature of this kind of fiction.

Bad

"...the inevitable pair of remarks which are supposed to snatch the reader's objections right out of his mouth - (a) 'I'm not making much sense, am I?' and (b) 'It sounded like a bad movie.' The responses, of course, are (a) No, and (b) Yes."

-William Atheling, Jr., The Issue At Hand (Chicago, 1967), p.24.

 

"Like a bad stereodrama, the most ludicrous cliches... "

-"A Message in Secret," IV, p. 355.

However, Poul Anderson is not preempting objections to a bad story but presenting a good story, including a colorful detail about popular entertainment in Dominic Flandry's period. Phrases like "Like a bad film/stereodrama/etc" sound like inept attempts to forestall objections by implying that the bad stuff is not just bad but has been deliberately written that way for some kind of dramatic effect. Poul Anderson does deploy recognizable cliches of action-adventure fiction and sometimes even draws attention to them but always to good effect.

Traffickers With The Ice People

"A Message in Secret."

Will Terrestrials export genocide? One of Flandry's Altaian guides informs him that the Prophet's Tower is the holiest place "'...in all the stars...'" (IV, p. 352) and that only the Tebtengri would regard it without reverence but that they are northern rebels, heathens, magicians and "'..traffickers with the Ice People...,'" (ibid.) fit only to be exterminated. Recognition of holiness leads straight to extermination! According to Rudolph Otto, (see also here) holiness synthesizes awesomeness with goodness. Recognition of the awesome, or "awful," alone has generated human sacrifice and other atrocities.

This is the second textual reference to "Ice People." So far, they could still be mythological. We gather, further, that the followers of the Prophet regard them as demonic. However, since this is sf, there are other possibilities. We read on and learn more.

From Flandry To Bond To Poirot

Poul Anderson wrote some detective fiction and a lot of sf and his sf character, Dominic Flandry, is comparable to James Bond although published earlier.

Because a rogue planet plays a major role in the climax of Anderson's sf novel, Ensign Flandry, rogue planets are introduced in the dialogue in an early chapter. Similarly, in detective fiction, any clues cited during the solution of the mystery have to have been planted earlier.

It was not Anderson's detective, Trygve Yamamura, but James Bond who drew me into reading some Agatha Christie, the connection being that both Bond and Poirot travel in the Orient Express. On rereading Dead Man's Folly after many years, I discovered that, although a character is quoted in a later chapter as having said something in an earlier chapter, I cannot confirm even by careful rereading that she did say it earlier. Can Agatha Christie have got such a detail wrong? I am willing to discuss this with any Christie fan who may be interested. It takes us away from Poul Anderson as such but stays with the question of how to write a detective novel.

Narrative Wealth

Readers of Poul Anderson's "A Message in Secret" are invited to contemplate:

a vast expanse of time, the seven hundred years since Altai was colonized;

a vast expanse of space, Altai's remoteness from Terra and its location in the immense buffer zone between Terra and Merseia;

exo-biology, the Altaian ecology with its native and imported organisms;

politics, conflicts on Altai and between Terra and Merseia as well as Betelgeusean neutrality;

religion, the Prophet's Tower but also the humanistic pantheism of the nomadic tribes;

Flandry's career - a knighted captain, perhaps half way from Ensign to Fleet Admiral.

More than just an action-adventure story. As in "Tiger By The Tail" and "The Game of Glory," the ultimate villains, the Merseians, remain off-stage but we see plenty of them elsewhere.

"By The Ice People!"

"A Message in Secret."

An Altaian exclaims, "'By the Ice People!'" (II, p. 347)

Human beings have lived on the icy planet, Altai, for over seven hundred Terran years so they are bound to have created mythologies about ice dwellers just as Norse mythology includes Frost Giants. Norse and other mythological beings can exist in modern works of fantasy by, e.g., Poul Anderson or Neil Gaiman. However, since Altai is an extra-solar planet, it can be and indeed is inhabited by "Ice Folk."

See:

Altai V

Altai VI 

 

Anderson's sf sometimes parallels his fantasy. We unreflectingly read this reference to "the Ice People," then learn that such dwarf-like beings not only exist but also communicate with human society through a Shaman who has mastered their language.

The Location Of Altai

Over seven hundred years ago, a group of Asians in a few spaceships colonized the cold desert planet, Altai, which is in the Betelgeusean region of the galaxy and a great distance from the Solar System. Since then, there has been no contact between Altai and the rest of humanity. However, through the Terran Embassy on Alfzar, the main planet in the Betelgeusean system, Terran Intelligence learns that Alfzarian traders report strange happenings on a human planet called Altai. Archives confirm the existence of this colony and Intelligence sends Flandry to investigate. He travels from Terra to Alfzar, then from there to Altai as a passenger in an Alfzarian trader ship.

The Terran Empire is no longer expanding. Its merchants avoid the Betelgeusean region because it is so far from home, because Betelgeusean traders, close to their home base, are able to compete more effectively and also because the region is too close to the hostile Merseian Roidhunate. In fact, Altai is in a vulnerable position and the Empire must make some effort to incorporate this previously independent colony. However, the Empire's only resource for this purpose is Dominic Flandry, soon to be trapped on the planet's surface.

Ice, Steppe And Tundra

"A Message in Secret."

Nearly a quarter of the surface of Altai is covered by the two polar ice caps which are inhabited by native Altaians. Between them are steppes, tundra and large lakes but no seas or oceans. A steppe is a large unforested grassland. Tundra means shrubs, sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens with few or no trees. "Steppe" and "tundra" are the kind of words that I think I understand until I check their meanings. 

Cold and dryness plus lack of heavy metals, fossil fuels and fissionables explain why the Altaians became nomads without losing scientific knowledge. According to the Khan:

"'Nomadism necessarily means tribalism, which usually means feuds and war.'" (III, p. 350)

However, he will unify Altai with imported armament.

Imagine thirty or more human generations living and dying in this environment. We know of one Altaian who escaped in the League period. However, currently:

"'...de Kha Khan has forbidden any of his zubjectz from leaving de planet, eggzept zome truzted and verry cloze-mout' perzonal reprezentatives in de Betelgeuzan Zyztem. Dis prohibition is might-be one reazon for de inzurrectionz.'" (p. 343)

The Altaian regime is ripe for overthrow.

Three Models Of Sartorial Elegance

"A Message in Secret."

How many changes of clothes is Dominic Flandry able to carry with him when he travels as a passenger in an interstellar spaceship? For his arrival on Altai, he chooses to wear:

shimmerite blouse;

green embroidered vest;

gold-striped purple trousers;

tooled-leather half boots;

crimson sash and cloak;

rakishly slanted black beret.

 

What a pity that there is no picture although maybe the attached cover for We Claim These Stars partly corresponds?

 

In Flandry's period, faces can also conform to fashion. His face is long with high cheekbones, straight nose, gray eyes and mustache but this is because he patronizes the best biosculptor. Elsewhere, we are told that he has only ever had one biosculpt.

 

He has heard that Altaians like colorful garments and is not disappointed. The portmaster wears:

 

a wide-brimmed fur hat;

an intricately lacquered leather jacket;

thick felt trousers;

fleece-lined boots;

holstered machine pistol and knife.

 

Oleg Yesukai, Kha Khan of All the Tribes, wears:

 

gold rings;

a thickly embroidered robe;

a silver-trimmed fur cap;

a gun that has been used.

I notice these details mainly because I reread in order to record them.