The Further Future

Some future history series culminate in a single shorter work set in a further future, showing how everything turned out:

in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "The Chapter Ends" (with the usual caveat as to whether this story really belongs in this series);

in Anderson's Technic History, "Starfog";

in James Blish's pantropy future history series collected as The Seedling Stars, "Watershed";

in Larry Niven's Known Space series, "Safe At Any Speed."

In each of these stories, mankind has spread through a vast volume of interstellar space and has changed biologically. "Starfog" and "Safe At Any Speed" are set far from Earth. In "Watershed," Adapted Men travel to the Solar System to recolonize the now desert planet Earth whereas, in "The Chapter Ends," mankind evacuates the galactic periphery, including Earth.

These three authors give the impression of covering every option.

Four Purposes Of Organizations In Three Timelines

(i) Economic Gain

The Home Companies

The Seven In Space

Solar Spice & Liquors

other independents

(ii) Mutual Benefits

The Polesotechnic League

The Commonalty

(iii) Preservation Of The Status Quo

The Time Patrol

The UN-Men

The Stellar Union Coordination Service

The Terran Navy Intelligence Corps

(iv) A Longer-Term, Greater Good

The Psychotechnic Institute

The Order of Planetary Engineers

In any three-dimensional cross-section of human history, the Time Patrol works towards a longer-term, greater good, the evolution of the Danellians, whereas, in history regarded as a four-dimensional totality, the Patrol preserves the status quo.

My preference is to work for an organization of type (iv). We need some longer-term, greater goods, not richer merchants or preserved status quos.

Divergences

Every work of fiction is set in an alternative timeline because fictional characters do not exist in our timeline. The divergence between timelines becomes more apparent when:

a fictional character becomes a public figure or celebrity - there are fictional US Presidents and Prime Ministers;

fictional events become headline news in their timeline - contemporary fiction can diverge into alternative history.

Poul Anderson's Trygve Yamamura novels are perhaps a "modest" alternative timeline in that the private investigator, Yamamura, does not hit the headlines or trespass into the public domain. In Susan Howatch's Church of England novels, there is hamburger chain called Burgys and Bishop Charles Ashworth replies to Bishop John Robinson's Honest To God with his A Modern History For Modern Man.

All of this suggests some interesting encounters and conversations in Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn between the universes.

Overlappping Future Histories

We might deconstruct future histories and reassemble their components in different combinations.

(i) See the previous post.

(ii) "The Chapter Ends," presented as the culmination of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, and "The Star Plunderer," a pivotal story in Anderson's Technic History, refer to Sol City and the First Empire and might constitute a short third future history.

(iii) The second Rustum History volume, New America, presents "Home" as if it were set in the Rustum timeline whereas in fact it belongs with a few other stories in a more diffuse future history. See here.

(iv) Five early Scribner Juveniles by Robert Heinlein are consistent with each other and with the The Green Hills Of Earth period of Heinlein's Future History, even referring to Rhysling, Dahlquist and the Lunar family of Stone.

(v) Films of James Blish's novels might (this is my idea) have combined the Haertel overdrive with the spindizzy. See here.

Wilson, Pete, Detective II

"The Green Thumb."

Joe falsely claims to be extra-Nerthusian.

Pete correctly deduces that Joe is a spy.

Joe hears Pete checking Joe's cover story.

Joe threatens Pete.

Pete's Uncle Gunnar threatens Joe.

Joe escapes.

Gunnar correctly deduces that Joe is Nerthusian.

(Green fur and six limbs are a giveaway.)

Thus, Gunnar completes the detection begun by Pete.

Thus also, later references to Nerthusian natives and to their being detected after colonization.

 

The Nerthusian setting and the references to an integrate civilization on Earth locate this story in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History whereas the references to Galactic civilization seem to place this and three other stories in a different future history series. Maybe Nerthus, like Earth, exists in more than one timeline?

Wilson Pete, Detective

"The Green Thumb."

Investigating Joe's background, Pete becomes less nervous as the trained cortex takes over in his psychosomatic system. The Psychotechnic Institute did some good before it was suppressed.

Joe claims to come from a planet called Astan IV. Pete takes this to mean the fourth planet out from a star called Astan. But could it instead be the fourth satellite out from a gas giant called Astan? Or, alternatively, might it not represent some alien numbering system? In "T" by Brian Aldiss, an extra-galactic race called the Koax numbers planets from the outermost inward. Thus, as counted by the Koax, Uranus is Sol III and Earth is Sol VII. The Koax, threatened by mankind, counterattack in the past. Accidentally and partially destroying what had been Sol VI, they generate the Asteroid Belt. Completely obliterating what had been Sol VII, they bring it about that Earth is now to them Sol VII, to us Sol III: an intergalactic temporal paradox - as well as an alien numbering system.

Notes On Gotterdamerung

See the combox here where Sean has asked an interesting question about an article called "Notes on Gotterdamerung" attributed to Poul Anderson. Let me highlight Sean's question by drawing attention to it here. Any information from blog readers would be appreciated.

Here and now it is not Gotterdamerung but a sunny Sunday morning so it looks as if a long walk will be in order. Back home, posting about Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History competes with rereading Susan Howatch's Church of England novels.

Onwards and upwards.

Future Education And Society

Education reflects society and prepares individuals for very different social roles. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" shows the life of a student in San Francisco Integrate in the Solar Commonwealth. I was surprised to learn from The Man Who Counts that a Solar Spice & Liquors factor had begun his working life as a warehouse apprentice at the age of twelve. See Terrestrial Society.

In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the Psychotechnic Institute aims to reeducate individuals and to remake society and temporarily succeeds. The ten-year old Wilson Pete has grown up in an integrate civilization, has been trained in self-integration and, having learned the basics of multiordinal evaluation, knows that he should look at everything twice, think it through for himself and not accept anyone else's word for anything. This training enables him to apply detective skills to the mystery of the four-armed, green-furred alien, Joe.

Some heroes of juvenile fiction are role models for their readers. I suggested to children's writer, Alan Gibbons, that one of his characters, a primary school pupil, was unusually precocious but maybe was intended as a role model but Alan assured me that he thought like that when he was a pupil!

Bode's Law

Even on a busy day with several activities and other reading, we can find something worth posting about in Poul Anderson:

"The systems of similar stars were usually very much alike - especially when it came to the spacing of planets."

-"The Green Thumb," p. 33.

In Robert Heinlein's Time For The Stars, an interstellar explorer claims that the planetary system of Tau Ceti confirms Bode's Law but do recently detected exo-planets confirm it? See here.

I thought that expecting such a law to apply to other planetary systems was a case of generalizing from a single instance. Certainly exo-systems confound expectations in other ways. That's probably all for tonight, folks.

Story Continuity

"The Acolytes" was published in Worlds Beyond, 1951. Its sequel, "The Green Thumb," was published in Science Fiction Quarterly, 1953. Despite this gap, between two different publications two years apart, the sequel begins:

"Pete felt so bad about Tobur getting killed on his account that Uncle Gunnar and Aunt Edith were afraid at first they'd have [to?] take him to a psychiatrist in Stellamont."

-Poul Anderson, "The Green Thumb" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 1018), pp. 21-41 AT p. 21.

- as if this text were a narrative continuation in the same periodical the following month. Is this how it was originally published? In any case, the two installments form a two-part story and the second part is of greater significance for the Psychotechnic History.

Good Times, Bad Times

Everyone, I hope, knows the feelings associated with remembering good times. A special sub-set of this is remembering good times followed by bad times. I will cite just three examples, ending, of course, with Poul Anderson.

(i) Alan Moore wanted a drawn "photograph" of some of his comic book characters, the "Watchmen," to convey that feeling of "Look at them all being happy together. They didn't know how it was all going to turn out."

(ii) "Looking back at that magical evening I can see us all with such painful clarity, sophisticated yet innocent, fast but not corrupt - and above all so mercifully blind to that terrible time ahead when the enchanting communitas, the group spirit, of the early 'sixties fell apart and terminated in chaos."

-Susan Howatch, Scandalous Risks (London, 1996), p. 146.

(iii) Poul Anderson's Jack Havig has a time traveler's perspective on the 1960s. Visiting the '60s from the '50s, then exploring the further future, he judges:

 

"'The war - the war - and its consequences come later...But everything follows from that witches' sabbath I saw part of in Berkeley.'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), IV, p. 42.

On Nerthus

Poul Anderson, "The Acolytes" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3, pp. 3-19.

This story contributes minimally to Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. It discloses that human beings have colonized a frontier planet called Nerthus, where they have built the city of Stellamont, but does not mention the Stellar Union and implies that human beings and their allies have access to the entire Galaxy, not just to a spatial volume this side of Sagittarius.

Wilson Pete has had "...training in self-integration...," (p. 18) a reference to the Psychotechnic Institute techniques introduced in earlier installments of this future history series.

Nerthus is said to have grass although not quite like Terrestrial grass.

"The Acolytes" was published in "A magazine of science-fantasy fiction." The nighttime Nerthusian landscape is described as:

"...a fairyland of streaming moonlight and whispering trees..." (p. 9)

Elf-like "tinklers" lure young Pete into the woods where he is nearly eaten by a tentacled, lake-dwelling monster. The narrative reads like a Ray Bradbury story intended to express and evoke strong emotions - and nothing else.

Time And Change II

See:

Announcing The End Of The World 

Time And Change

"A World Forever Lost"

 

Twentieth century fiction reflects on the successive decades of that century like, for example, the periods before and between the wars, the 1950s and the 1960s, e.g.:

 

"If I had been living in the 'sixties I might then have left home and shared a flat with cronies; I might have taken to drink or drugs (or both) and chased after pop singers, or I might have opened a boutique or become a feminist or floated off to Nepal to find a guru. But I was living in the 'fifties, that last gasp of the era which had begun in those lost years before the war, and in those days nice young girls 'just didn't do that kind of thing', as the characters in Hedda Gabler say."

-Susan Howatch, Scandalous Risks (London, 1996), PART ONE, TWO, VIII, p. 57.

 

The first three links above show how Poul Anderson used time travel fiction to reflect on those same past decades.

Two Omnibus Collections

Confusingly, "Quixote And The Windmill" is not included in Chronology of Future on pp. 217-218 of Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3. However, if we (rightly) re-include it, then there are eleven installments before and eleven after the invention of the hyperdrive in 2784. These twenty two installments could be collected as two omnibus volumes although Volume II would have to include both the longer and the shorter versions of "Virgin Planet."

These two periods subdivide further as:

four pre-Solar Union stories;

three "social" stories;

four "political" stories (see here);

 

three stories of early interstellar exploration;

seven Stellar Union stories, with two versions of one;

one Galactic civilization story -

- with the usual caveats as to whether some of these stories really do belong in this future history series.

Space Wars: Military And Militarist SF

Many works of sf describe future military conflicts, e.g.:

several works by Poul Anderson, including Mirkheim, The People Of The Wind and Ensign Flandry in his Technic History;

the Man-Kzin Wars sub-series of Larry Niven's Known Space future history series;

Jerry Pournelle's Codominium future history series and its War World sub-series;

Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers;

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War;

Pournelle's There Will Be War anthology series;

SM Stirling's Draka series.

I describe Heinlein and Pournelle although not Anderson, Niven, Haldeman or Stirling, as "militarist" and am asked, "What is militarism?" so let's clear this up. My initial response is that I see the "militarist" authors as not merely describing but also glorifying war. "Glory..." is explicit in the concluding line of Starship Troopers.

That is my initial response but there is room for discussion. In any case, an initial use of a word might be followed by its more considered use. We might sometimes consult a dictionary. The dictionary definitions (plural) of a word indicate the ways in which that word had been used in the period before the dictionary was published. People continue to use words in slightly different senses. A later edition of a dictionary will include new words and new meanings of old words and will sometimes inform us that an older meaning has become "archaic." Languages continue to change as long as they are spoken. Understanding all this prevents pointless arguments about the one true meaning of any particular word. 

My 1983 Chambers Dictionary presents several meanings of "militarism":

"an excess of the military spirit";

"domination by an army...

"...or military class...

"...or ideals";

"belief in such domination";

"a tendency to overvalue military power...

"...or to view things from the soldier's point of view."

 

A wide range of uses, some certainly applying to the authors under discussion. 

Reflection On The Pact

"The Pirate." (For the image, see here.)

"We guard the great Pact: but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand." (p. 137)

"We" turn out to be not mankind in general but the members of the Stellar Union Coordination Service. Two groups allegedly do not understand, the younger generations and the inhabitants of the "star frontier." Imagine living in a civilization with a permanent interstellar frontier. "We" becomes "I" further down the page. However, this first person narrator is not the central character, Trevelyan Micah, and indeed remains off-stage. He, the narrator, claims to be recounting the story a generation later. Thus, he reflects on the significance of the events.

Trevelyan's friend, Braganza Diane, lives in a renovated medieval house in Dordogne beside an excavated site formerly occupied by reindeer hunters and in regular sight both of transcontinental aircraft and of departing spacecraft. This reminds us of the Andersons' visit to Brittany described in "The Discovery of the Past." They saw a Neolithic dolmen and menhir and a nearby radome.

Publication Dates For Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), pp. 137-165.

Written much later than any other Psychotechnic History episode, "The Pirate" is reflective in tone as I hope to demonstrate but first I thought that it would be interesting just to list the publication dates for this future history series:

"Entity," 1949

"Quixote and the Windmill," 1950

"Gypsy," 1950

"Star Ship," 1950

"The Acolytes," 1951

"Un-Man," January 1953

"The Green Thumb," 1953

"The Chapter Ends," 1953

"The Troublemakers," September 1953

"The Sensitive Man," January 1954

"Teucan," 1954

"Symmetry," 1954

"The Big Rain," October 1954

"What Shall It Profit?," 1955

"The Snows of Ganymede," Winter 1955

Star Ways/The Peregrine, 1956

"Marius," March 1957

"Holmgang," 1957

"Cold Victory," 1957

"Brake," 1957

"Virgin Planet," 1957

"The Pirate," 1968

 

We will return to this theme shortly.

Three Culminations

In Starship (New York, 1982), the Chronology of the Psychotechnic History ends with:

"The Pirate"

The Peregrine

The Third Dark Ages (a period, not a title)

"The Chapter Ends"

 

In The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018):

 

"Entity"

"Symmetry"

 

- have been inappropriately inserted between the Third Dark Ages and "The Chapter Ends."

 

"The Chapter Ends" is a culmination of the Psychotechnic History because it describes a Galactic civilization guided by psychtechnicians. However, it has been argued that this story does not fit in the series. If that were the case, then The Peregrine, about a Coordinator joining a Nomad crew, would become the culmination. But, in another sense, "The Pirate," about the custodial role of the Coordination Service, is a culmination because it was written much later and was Anderson's final addition to the series. 

Surpassing The Future History

Poul Anderson's Technic History surpasses Robert Heinlein's Future History not only because it is over three times as long, recounting events on a vaster spatio-temporal scale, but also because it is complex enough to incorporate that incomparable future historical collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate. When the two Ythrian volumes, The People Of The Wind and the Earth Book, followed the Polesotechnic League tetralogy, Trader To The Stars, The Trouble Twisters, Satan's World and Mirkheim, the second Ythrian volume, the Earth Book, completed the story of the League and almost completed the story of human-Ythrian interactions on Ythri, in space and on the jointly explored and colonized planet, Avalon. Further, these six volumes are well under half the total Technic History.

Read Heinlein's Future History, then Anderson's Psychotechnic History, then Anderson's Technic History, and please tell me if you know of any comparable future history series. I know of some, of course, but I still regard Heinlein and Anderson as the main line of development.

Nerthus

I read somewhere that part of the plan for Robert Heinlein's Future History was that place names would link otherwise autonomous stories: Luna City on the Moon, Drywater on Mars, Venusburg on Venus etc. Poul Anderson did this with the name of the planet, Nerthus, in his Psychotechnic History.

"Diary of Yamagata Tetsuo,

"Chief of Coordination Service,

"Argus 293, Stellamont, Nerthus"

-Poul Anderson, "Virgin Planet" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (New York, 2018), pp. 43-112 AT p. 47.

"Ship Harpsong of Nerthus, out of Highsky for David's Landing, is long overdue..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, op. cit., pp. 137-165 AT p. 137.

 

"'You will go to the Sagittarian frontier of the Stellar Union,' the machine had said. 'The planet Carsten's Star III, otherwise called Nerthus, is recommended as a starting point.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine, CHAPTER IV, p. 23.

 

Since Nerthus is introduced in the linked stories, "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb," which I have read only once since they were collected in 2018, I will shortly reread them. 

2010

"...'Logic of Empire,' the story about slavery on Venus...takes place about 2010."

-Alexei Panshin, Heinlein In Dimension (Chicago, 1968), V, 2, p. 122.

 

Thus, the first two of the five volumes of Robert Heinlein's Future History are set in dates that are now past, 1951-2010.

"If the time scale is the same for future as for past developments, then the first manned Alpha Centauri expedition should leave about the year 2010....

"That's counting from R. W. Bussard's original paper on the interstellar ramjet, which appeared in 1969."

-Poul Anderson, "Our Many Roads to the Stars" IN Anderson, New America (New York, 1983), pp. 261-287 AT p. 269.

("Our Many Roads to the Stars" was first published in 1975.)

Well...

Anderson does continue:

"Chances are that a flat historical parallel is silly." (ibid.)

Too right. On the other hand:

"We think it extraordinary that just sixty-six years elapsed between the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk and the first manned landing on the moon; yet my mother was around for both of them."

-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 200.

We have lived through our own future history and are still in it. The Future History had "THE CRAZY YEARS" in the 1960s and '70s. Anderson's Technic History has the Chaos in the early twenty first century. We have...

Two Structural Similarities

We will consider two structural similarities between Robert Heinlein's Future History and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, remembering, of course, that the latter was modeled on the former:

(i) the return of a key character in a prequel;

 

(ii) place names as common background for disparate stories.

(i) In the Future History, "Requiem," (1940) in which D.D. Harriman dies on the Moon, was followed by "The Man Who Sold The Moon," (1950) in which Harriman put the first man on the Moon. In the Psychotechnic History, Star Ways/The Peregrine, (1956) in which Coordinator Trevelyan Micah joins the Nomads, was followed by "The Pirate," (1968) about an earlier case in Micah's career.

Concerning his Psychotechnic History, Anderson wrote:

"I never formally abandoned my chronicle. Indeed, as late as 1968 I added a fresh chapter to it, 'The Pirate.' However, that was after a lapse of several years, and merely because a particular character and setting would serve the purposes of this particular tale."

-Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Fall 1979, pp.7-14 AT p. 8.

(ii) To be continued.

Shifting POV And End

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XX, p. 179.

Trevelyan sees Joachim and other Nomads run toward the spaceboat. (Trevelyan's pov.)

All but Trevelyan and Joachim climb the ladder into the boat.

The Alori arrive in pursuit.

Joachim sends Trevelyan up.

Joachim climbs backwards.

He recognizes Esperero climbing after him. (Joachim's pov.)

 

The pov has changed inappropriately in mid-narrative.

 

Esperero asks to shake hands, then, when Joachim has complied, retreats: a neat touch when we expect a trick. (The Alori had other resources but their gasses and insects were useless in the gale.)

 

When the boat ascends:

 

"Skyward, outward, starward - the words were a song within [Trevelyan]." (p. 181)

"The sky darkened around them and the stars came forth." (p. 184)

As the novel ends, these sentences signify the beginning of a new journey and, by extension, the beginning of many sf stories by Anderson and others.

Trees Shout

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XX.

The Peregrines escape from their island under cover of a gale:

"...the blackness was like a rush of great waters. He heard the trees shouting; the wind snarled in their branches and they answered with a gallows groan.

"They stumbled to the beach. When they came out on the shore, the wind was a blow in the face. Briefly, the ragged clouds tore open to show a half-moon between far pale stars." (p. 172)

 

Elemental activity accompanies frenetic human activity. Darkness is compared to a rushing river. Trees shout. Wind snarls and strikes faces. Wind and branches converse. Gallows groans remind escapees that they might not survive although they hope to fly between stars.

 

We are grateful that Poul Anderson did not merely write that they ran down to the beach.

A Third Threat Averted

In The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, "Amazement of the World," near the end of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, a quantum threat to the Danellian timeline is averted when the Patrol eliminates - new time travel concept - a personal causal nexus. More significantly, the meaning of the Patrol is revealed. More than just a police force, this organization is the stabilizing element in a chaotic reality.

Climactic threat aversion is common to two of Anderson's future history series. See Vast Conflicts. We compared the inhabited galaxies of all three series in Comparing Galaxies and quoted references to "'Reality...'" in the Time Patrol series and the Psychotechnic History in Reality.

Both Nicholas van Rijn, from the Technic History, and Sherlock Holmes, who exists in the Danellian timeline, visit the Old Phoenix. It is all one multiverse.

Vast Conflicts

In The Peregrine, near the end of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the Alori threat to the Stellar Union is averted because the Peregrine escapes from Loaluani and carries a warning to the Coordination Service. In The Game Of Empire, near the end of Anderson's Technic History, the Merseian threat to the Terran Empire is averted (I think) because the Merseian Roidhunate suffers the last of a series of demoralizing defeats.

Tachwyr the Dark bravely says:

"'By adversity, the God tempers the steel of the Race.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 447.

But too much adversity demotivates the racists.

Both these conflicts are interstellar in scale and Tachwyr invokes his conception of the transcendent. I am surprised to learn that events on an even vaster scale are possible in a mainstream novel. In Susan Howatch's Glamorous Powers, a psychic senses a departing soul entering the Platonic hereafter. Since the Platonic realm transcends space and time, it is indeed vaster than interstellar empires. We accept first that many people believe in a hereafter and secondly that souls may enter hereafters in fiction although we might reclassify the fiction as fantasy. Back to Genre Overlaps. In any case, Howatch's characters' spiritual crises are as dramatic as Anderson's interstellar imperial conflicts.

The Gale Calls

The Peregrine.

Ilaloa will help some of the Peregrines to escape. They need a gale to cover their departure. Chapter XX begins:

"Two nights later a gale blew from the southeast, out of the sea and over the island and out to the water again." (p. 171)

So far, this is a physical description of weather at sea on another planet. However, since, in Poul Anderson's works, the wind often parallels, or seems to comment on, the action (see here), we expect the description to be followed by some suggestion of Pathetic Fallacy. Sure enough, the very next sentence reads:

"Trevelyan heard it whistle as if it were calling him." (ibid.)

The gale force wind almost becomes an interacting character as it has done in other works by Anderson. See here.

I quoted from the beginning of CHAPTER XX before but for a different purpose. See:

Two POVs In One Chapter

The Wind Comments, Yet Again

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XIX.

Sean agrees to ask Ilaloa to help the Peregrines to escape from Loaluani:

"'On your way, lad.'

"Sean stood up. He was shaking, ever so faintly. He turned and walked stiff-legged from the gathering. Nobody looked after him." (p. 167)

 

Soon, the gathering resumes its discussion but, before that happens, we read the following sentence:

 

"There was silence, wind and surf and the high crying of the birds." (ibid.)

 

Silence for the Nomads to reflect on the implications of Sean's new assignment while they continue to experience the peaceful but "'...dull!'" (p. 164) environment of an Alori planet. Silence from the Nomads themselves although wind, surf and birds continue to present the case for the Alori way of life.

References to the wind punctuate Anderson's texts like additional exclamation marks. Most readers are probably affected subliminally.

What Is And What Should Be

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XVIII.

"'The world is as it is,' he said. 'We've got to live with that - not with the world as we think it should be.'" (p. 162)

That has to be one of the most ambiguous statements ever made. Every other species on Earth has adapted to its existing environment whereas human beings are differentiated by the fact that they have changed their environment and themselves in the process. We inhabit artificial environments surrounded by one natural environment and, assuming that we do survive current crises, this world-transforming activity has only just begun.

Having constructed not just one but many diverse societies, men and women can legitimately ask not only how those societies are but also how they should be. Preserving any given status quo serves some sectional interests as against others.

No doubt basic laws like entropy have to be accepted but how much freedom of action do such laws allow us? For the foreseeable future, a very great deal.

Alori Culture

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XVIII.

"...Alori culture...had little use for the aggressive individual; nevertheless, each individual was fully developed, very much himself, free to choose his own endeavor within the pattern." (p. 157)

This I agree with. Individuality can and should be developed, need not and should not be aggressive. There is something wrong with our culture. In Anderson's text, denial of aggressive individuality is followed by the statement that nevertheless individuals are developed. It is as if denial of aggressive individuality had implied denial of individuality.

"...grief was part of living." (p. 158)

Agreed.

"In its own way, it was as scientific a culture as Sol's." (ibid.)

But how many "ways" are viable in science? The Alori are awkward with machines, cannot understand radio transceivers, fly captured spaceships by rule of thumb, have only a vague idea of atoms and none of nuclei and find general field theory repellent. General field theory explains certain phenomena. If the Alori can explain those same phenomena as well or better in a different "way," then fine. Otherwise, their culture cannot be described as "scientific."

Trevelyan's verdict:

"'If they don't think they can stand competition,...their own philosophy ought to tell them their way of life is unfit and should go under.'" (ibid.)

Agreed.

He adds that the Alori should be able to take competition. The Stellar Union would willingly buy some of their knowledge and, in any case, planetary systems can be made self-sufficient. But the Alori have become fanatics.

(Today was busy: one public event and two social events. Let us celebrate human cultures.)

Reality

A Danellian:

 

"'But take heart. Reality is. You are among those who guard it.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 1990 A. D., p. 435.

 

The feeling after an Alori festival:

 

"Life had been, had struggled, and died. Reality was - no man needed more."

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER XVII, p. 156.

 

A resonance across timelines. Today will be busy so blogging might be slight.

New Readers

 

We seem to be having one of our periodic increases in blog readership: 476 page views yesterday; 535 so far today. These numbers are small by some standards but big by ours. Any new blog readers are invited to use the combox to inform us of who and where they are, which works by Poul Anderson they have read, which they like or dislike and why, and also to discuss Andersonian issues like the fates of civilizations and of the universe, the best ways to manage public affairs, the need to get off Earth, questions about extraterrestrial life, artificial intelligence and Nicholas van Rijn's business practices. Or whatever else you want to raise.

On Loaluani

The Peregrine, CHAPTERs XVI-XVII.

The Alori capture Trevelyan and the Peregrines and settle them on the planet, Loaluani, where:

torch trees shine at night;

the forest is a communications network;

it is safe to sleep outdoors or in hollow trees with naturally growing windows, curtains, carpets, water supply etc;

animals are tame but will avoid an area if hunted in it.

 

Solarians have a guilt culture, Nomads have a shame culture and the Alori have a modified fear culture. I suppose that the Erulani have an unmodified fear culture? The three cultures sound like stages: shame is socialized fear and guilt is internalized shame? The ultimate culture would be free from fear, shame or guilt: a spontaneous goodness culture?

It's True

In Sorgan, I asked about a Poul Anderson story featuring a way to make another person believe whatever he is told. That story was "I Tell You, It's True." See here. I found it while looking for something else. The title was a giveaway.

Please read the two linked posts. A longer post now is unnecessary! I will return to a second mug of coffee and some other reading. Back here later.

Common Humanity

I suppose that what is common to nearly all fiction and literature is humanity: human beings interacting with each other or their environment. I have to write "nearly" because it is always possible to think of exceptions. Poul Anderson's "In Memoriam" begins with the death of the last man on Earth, then recounts the subsequent course of natural events. Anderson's "Earthman, Beware!" is narrated from the point of view of an alien stranded on Earth and his "Terminal Quest" is narrated from the point of view of a native of a human-colonized extra-solar planet. Sometimes in Anderson's Technic History, we read an Ythrian or Merseian point of view. However, since all such beings are self-conscious rational animals, they are clearly based on humanity despite Anderson's skill in imagining alien perspectives. The opening passage of his Mirkheim describes an ancient supernova but only because of its later consequences for interstellar civilization.

Summarizing the plots of widely dissimilar fictional works, we recognize their common humanity:

in Anderson's The Peregrine, the alien Alori attempt to subvert human nature;

in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, a rogue Section of Swedish Security commits murder;

in Susan Howatch's Glamorous Powers, an Anglican Abbot recounts his mystical visions to the Head of his Order.

Yhtrians And Alori

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XVI.

Ythrians are a post-mammalian evolutionary stage (see here), at home in their natural environment (see here). The Alori have molded themselves and their environment to each other. Other organisms have been taught to grow to serve Alori purposes, like milk-filled, goblet-shaped nuts. The Alori themselves go unclothed, can sleep outdoors and regard rain as clean.

The Alori spokesman, Esperero, says:

"'There is no fear on this planet - no poison, no hungry beasts, no hidden death of germs. Here is the end of all strife.'" (p. 147)

Human beings need an end of violence but not of effort or dynamism. I feel that the novel presents a false dichotomy.

I have wondered whether a future evolutionary stage could be intelligent organisms using technology but needing neither shelter nor protection from their natural environment.

Genre Overlaps

As we know, and there is no need to list every example yet again, Poul Anderson wrote:

science fiction, including space opera, speculative fiction, future history, alternative history etc

historical fiction

historical science fiction

fantasy

historical fantasy

heroic fantasy

historical fiction with an element of fantasy

a contemporary novel with one element of fantasy (or just of psychology?)

detective fiction

 

- so genres can overlap.

 

How much is permissible in a contemporary novel before it tips over from mainstream into genre fiction? Psychic abilities and apparitions are attested, although not yet scientifically explained, so does the following dialogue belong in a contemporary novel?

"'Do you ever see the future?'

"'Yes, but there are many futures and not all of them come true.'"

-Susan Howatch, Glittering Images (London, 1996), PART TWO, ELEVEN, VIII, p. 424.

- as well as a visible "ghost" in a later volume?

My friend, Fran Cobden, claimed to be able to see the future in this way. The proposition that there are many futures not all of which come true does not surprise us in sf but pushes a boundary in contemporary fiction. See SM Stirling's character, Yasmini. Poul Anderson also presents a single, unalterable future in There Will Be Time.

Mainstream And Genres

Since we enjoy alternative history fiction by Poul Anderson and SM Stirling, let us consider the following passage:

 

"On the wall hung several bad prints set in heavy gold frames, of the famous Constable paintings of Starbridge Cathedral..."

-Susan Howatch, Glittering Images (London, 1996), PART TWO, NINE, IV, p. 370.

 

In our timeline, the city of Starbridge and its famous Cathedral do not exist. Thus, any narrative references to Starbridge could count as alternative history. However, Glittering Images is classified as a contemporary novel. A novel is a long prose fiction. Fictional settings include Starbridge, based on Salisbury.

Like Poul and Karen Anderson's Ys, Starbridge is a city that we know although it does not exist. I agree with Howatch's narrator:

"So I came at last to Starbridge, radiant ravishing Starbridge..."

-op. cit., PART ONE, ONE, IX, p. 22.

Notionally, all the events of the twentieth century are accessible to the Time Patrol and are in the past of the Technic History. Patrol agents might coexist with the rogue Section of Swedish Security in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and Starbridge might still exist in the Duchy of Britain in the Terran Empire.

Interstellar Inter-Species Relations

The Peregrine.

The Erulani noble, Mountain Man Thorkild, describes the customers who buy spaceships on Erulan:

"'They're a strange sort. Talk Basic with the weirdest accent, don't wear clothes, don't - I don't know. They have the ways of natives, but they're human, I'll swear.'" (CHAPTER IX, PP. 83-84)

I thought that this meant that he was mistaking Alori for human beings. However, the Alori, Espereo, tells Trevelyan:

"'Other races have joined with us and taken on our life. Among them have been crews, and descendants of crews, from those spaceships we took.'" (CHAPTER XVI, p. 146)

So those were Alorianized human beings that bought the ships on Erulan. Some members of other races willingly join the Alori just as some human Avalonians join Ythrian choths in the Technic History. However, other human beings, the Peregrine crew and Trevelyan, are unwilling to join the Alori and, unfortunately, the latter attempt to detain them.

Different Evolutions

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XVI.

One of the Alori tells Trevelyan:

"'The Alori are a unified culture. They evolved as one, whereas your kind did not. That is again a reflection of the gulf between us.'" (p. 143)

He has already stated that the two civilizations are so different that one must destroy the other. I suspect an over-simplistic dichotomy here. First, the universe is big enough that incompatible civilizations can at least try to divide it between them as happens later in this future history with the Hulduvians. Secondly, two very different civilizations can learn from each other. It might help human beings to learn how the Alori evolved as one. The Stellar Union tries to coordinate interstellar affairs to avoid conflict. The Alori have traveled between planetary systems by appropriating Tiunran and Nomad spaceships but they should be able to trade their holistic biologically-based sciences for the space technology that enables them to spread their kind of life to some other planets.

Conflict between incompatible cultures is an obvious sf plot premise but there could also be a narrative about communication, cooperation and conflict-avoidance.

Systems And Theories

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XVI.

Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service thinks:

"Every time you thought you had reality expressed in a system you stumbled against a new facet. The sane man must be always distrustful of his own beliefs." (p. 142)

All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green. 

Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Studierzimmer’

-copied from here.

 

In a parable by Jiddu Krisnamurti, the Devil told his friend, "That man has just picked up a piece of the truth but it doesn't matter. He is only going to organize and systematize it."

 

I think that a Theory of Everything, if such were possible, would be a mathematical formula that would describe the most fundamental properties of the most fundamental entities, whatever those are, would unify the forces of nature and would explain the laws of physics although not the course of history. However, an alternative view is that all theories are partial and provisional because there is no fundamental nature of reality.

In Indian philosophy, there are three unorthodox systems and three pairs of orthodox systems but yoga and meditation can be practiced without reference to systems.

An installment of a future history series is part of a big debate.

Death

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XV.

Nomads threaten to shoot Alori:

"'You do not understand,' Ilaloa stepped in front of the humans. 'Your kind is sundered from life, and bears within it the fear of death and the longing for death. We have neither. Throw down your guns." (p. 137)

The Alori do not fear death. Since death is part of life and is also inevitable, it makes sense to end or transcend the fear of it. Preservation of life for a practicable length of time, yes. Postponement of inevitable death for as long as possible, not necessarily.

In Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time, an alien visits the far future Earth with the message that the entire universe will soon end. He anticipates alarm. However, since the title characters have mastered their emotions, they are unconcerned and regard the alien's message as an anticlimax.

Sf gives us different perspectives.

A Parallel With Heinlein II

D.D. Harriman is the title character of "The Man Who Sold The Moon," thus also of The Man Who Sold The Moon, the opening volume of Robert Heinlein's Future History. Nicholas van Rijn is the title character of Trader To The Stars, the first collection in Poul Anderson's Technic History, and also of The Man Who Counts, the first novel in the Technic History. Both Harriman and van Rijn are entrepreneurs. Harriman gets mankind into space and van Rijn, in his different timeline, exploits some of the possibilities when mankind is in space.

Jetman Rhysling is not a title character but is connected to a title. He writes and sings the song, "The Green Hills of Earth." That song's title became the title of the short story about Rhysling and thus also became the title of the second collection in the Future History. Rhysling himself became the Blind Singer of the Spaceways, thus a prominent successor of Harriman albeit in a completely different walk of life. A future history series has to display every aspect of  future societies.

Harriman, van Rijn and Rhysling remain important sf characters despite the passage of decades since their stories were first published. Poul Anderson beautifully brought together the Future History and the Technic History with other fictional universes when van Rijn, Rhysling and many others were seen in his Old Phoenix, the inn between the universes.

My mind, if no one else's, returns to comparisons between the classic future history series whenever current rereading reveals a particular parallel, in this case one that I had not noticed before.

A Parallel With Heinlein

The Peregrine.

Alori science is based in biology, not in physics. The Alori have adapted organisms in ways that are impossible for the human beings of the Stellar Union. A crew of Nomads and one Coordinator decline the invitation to spend the rest of their lives on an Alori planet. This reminds us of an incident in Methuselah's Children, which is really the culminating novel of Robert Heinlein's Future History as, arguably, The Peregrine is of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

In Methuselah's Children, the Howard Families try to settle on two different inhabited extra-solar planets. On the second planet, the natives somehow alter a human baby between its conception and its birth. This decides a majority of the Howards that they should return to Earth. I do not remember the details and might reread the relevant chapters of Methuselah's Children.

Although Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories are three distinct future history series, they nevertheless form a conceptual triad.  

Weather And The Strange Ship

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XIII.

In James Blish's Earthman, Come Home, when the Okie city of New York has landed on a planet, thunder is heard. Okies must remember that planets have a phenomenon called "weather." Poul Anderson's Nomads have weather inside one of their ships:

"Lightning sheeted through the room and thunder banged in its wake. By its glare Sean saw an uprooted tree falling, and rolled to escape it." (p. 111)

"A lightning ball swooped past, like a small sun." (p. 112)

"Another globe of ball lightning hovered by." (ibid.)

Sean must fight a deranged Nomad who attacks Ilaloa, thinking that she is a witch:

"Sean stabbed him.

"The lightning ball exploded, thunder and fury and a rain of fire. Its glare was livid over the trembling, staggering walls. Sean crouched with Ilaloa, holding her close and waiting." (p. 113)

 

This internal weather furnishes some very dramatic Pathetic fallacies. A stabbing is immediately followed by an explosion, thunder, fury, fire, a vivid glare and staggering walls! - an appropriate setting as Sean awaits further developments.

 

CHAPTER XIV

In a Star Trek episode, the Enterprise encountered spaceships of Klingon design in Romulan space because the Romulans had bought some ships from the Klingons. The strange ship encountered by the Peregrine is of Tiunran design because X has hijacked it. I suppose that starfaring races will interact in such ways.

 

"'...when a technology has advanced to the point of interstellar drive, it doesn't need an empire.'" (p. 124)

 

Tell that to the Terrans and Merseians in the other timeline. 

Alarms In Two Future Histories

In a Naval ship in the Technic History:

"'Now hear this. Now hear this. Captain to all officers and men. The New Brazil reports two hyperdrives activated as she approached destination. She is returning to us and the bogies are in pursuit. We shall proceed. Stand by for hyperdrive. Stand by for combat. Glory to the Emperor.'"

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, p. 172.

 

In a Nomad ship in the Psychotechnic History:

 

"'Hoo-oo-oo...hoo-hoo...hoo-oo-oo...hoo-oo-oo...hoo-hoo-hoo - Stand by! All hands stand by battle stations! Strange spaceship detected where no spaceship has any business being!'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER XIII, p.120.

 

These are parallel but contrasting passages. The Nomads are less formal than the Terran Navy. Are such encounters occurring out there right now? I suspect that whatever is happening is very different from anything that we can imagine.

Other reading: two British women authors. I have started to read Val McDermid's detective novels and to reread Susan Howatch's Church of England novels. (Sf exists in a broader literary context.)

Some Reflections In The Peregrine

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XII.

In the library of the Peregrine, Trevelyan Micah reflects on the Nomads:

"Cut adrift, they could last indefinitely. But it was easier and more rewarding to exploit the planets.

"It was not all trade - sometimes they might work a mine or other industry for a while; and robbery, though frowned on, was not unknown." (p. 94)

 

Very like James Blish's Okies who are seemingly self-sufficient but nevertheless seek work on colonized planets and sometimes turn "bindlestiff."

 

When Trevelyan and Nicki go to the bridge of the Peregrine, the passage is narrated from his point of view:

 

"...he could see how tension bent [Ilaloa's] form into a bow." (p. 97)

 

- but there is a momentary shift to Nicki's pov:

 

"Looking on the warmth of [Trevelyan's] face, Nicki wondered how much of it was acting." (p. 99)

 

This blog is still a pov cop.