To And Fro

And the LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Satan answered the LORD and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.”

-Job 2:2.

 

"Once in his drifting to and fro across Earth, Jesse Nicol found a quivira left over from olden times."

-Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire (New York, 1997), PROLOGUE, p. 9.

 

Venator:

 

"Trouble is loose, and again there is need for me to go to and fro in the world."

-ibid. CHAPTER 1, p. 33.

 

 Anderson echoes Biblical language, affecting his readers subliminally.

 

Satan's toing and froing is inquisitive, even inquisatorial;

Nicol's seems to be aimless - "drifting";

Venator's will be purposive, so that he can return without delay to cybernetic Oneness.

 

Harvest The Fire is profusely illustrated with appropriate space scenes, making it a different kind of reading experience.

Fictions Within Fictions

In Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men, one of the Last Men on Neptune downloads (so to say) the history of the future into the mind of a twentieth century author who thinks that he is writing fiction and indeed that author's brain distorts its Neptunian inspiration to such an extent that most of what he writes is in fact fiction.

In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, the time traveler, Jack Havig, informs Robert Anderson of a future civilization which Robert's relative, Poul, fictionalizes as "the Maurai Federation," making mistakes as often as not when using his imagination to fill in the gaps.

In Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, Jesse Nicol summarizes the future history of Anderson's Harvest Of Stars and The Stars Are Also Fire for the benefit of a virtual reality reconstruction of Jorge Borges who compares the summarized history to a work by Tolkien. Nicol, presenting his account as fiction, reflects that it almost is because it falls so far short of reality.

Kenri Shaun And The Wind

The wind intervenes twice more in Starfarers, 21.

"Through rising winds, Kenri heard Oms:..." (p. 203)

Oms is a Terrestrial aristocrat who boasts of exploiting Kenri's people, the Kith.

When Kenri has withdrawn from his proposed marriage into the Terrestrial aristocracy:

"The time felt long before he was back in Kith Town. There he walked in empty streets, breathing the cold night wind of Earth." (p. 205)

And that is the end of this rich chapter of Starfarers.

The Dominancy sounds on the rocks. Its treasury is low and its response is not to curtail its own extravagance but to increase taxes intolerably. Starfarers will return to an Earth without a Dominancy.

Five Senses In The Tirian Desert On Maia

Starfarers, 21.

Stone and sand are flamboyantly colored and the sky is royal blue.

Thornbush smells slightly like pepper and fish cooked over a fire smells savory.

A native creature is heard to wail.

The air is cool but Kenri and Nivala are warmly clad.

Kenri serves the meal so I think that we can count taste as a fifth sense.

Even the Kith have a history. When ships were smaller, an aquarium would have been a wasteful use of garden space so eating fish became taboo even when offship but now ships are larger and the taboo is fading.

Space travelers had to be intelligent and stable, although able to react quickly, and preferably physically smaller although also tough. Dark skin protects against soft radiation. Time dilation and cultural gap prevent intermarriage and new recruitment. Thus, the Kith become a distinct racial type, eventually despised by the genetically engineered Dominancy aristocracy.

The Special-X

As a re-reader, I leapfrog across Poul Anderson's future histories. Thus, the "Special-X" character in Anderson's Starfarers reminds us of genetically engineered human beings in his Harvest The Fire, which I will probably reread next. Then maybe a post on the pivotal role of "Lodestar" in the Technic History, but not yet.

The X has strange eyes and tentacles instead of fingers. Created for some particular purpose, then released, he lives in a slum and was not accepted as a spaceman. Although he survives comfortably, he reflects:

"'As for whether it's worth the trouble, staying alive -' He shrugged. 'I'm not, anyway. A man's only alive when he has something bigger than himself to live or die for.'" (21, p. 189)

Philosophical reflection in a sleazy bar.

A man is alive as long as he appreciates life.

Fictional Places In Contemporary Settings

Authors

Poul Anderson

John Grisham

Susan Howatch

Dornford Yates

Stieg Larsson

Alan Moore

 

Places

Senlac

Ford County and the City

Starbridge

Reichtenburg

Hedestad

Hampton (really Northampton)

These are six that I am familiar with. I particularly appreciate Senlac and Morgan's Wood. Grisham's Rogue Lawyer is set in an American city that is so corrupt that it is probably wise not to specify its location and to refer to it simply as "the City." Such civic anonymity detaches the City from the hero and now and makes it more akin to a future city in an sf novel.

Dominancy Castes

Starfarers.

Star-Free, unspecialized geniuses;

Star-A;

Norm-A;

Normal-B;

Normal-C;

Normal-D;

Standard-D;

loose-genes; 

Special-X, created for a particular job, for study or just for amusement.

 

These types are mentioned. Others may be inferred. Kenri meets a Special-X in one of Poul Anderson's familiar underworld bars:

 

a lightsign bottle winking above a doorway;

gloom;

sour smells;

slumped, sullen men;

an obscene mobile mural;

a raddled Standard-D girl who turns away from a Kithman;

a barman who refuses to serve a "tumy" (Kith);

a hairless, dead-white (see here) Special-X, doubtless a criminal, even an assassin, who pays for Kenri's double vodzan.

 

(These bars can be grotesquely sleazy.)

Kith Town

Starfarers.

"The town began as a district in a small city." (10, p. 77)

The district became a community which:

"...abided, while change swept to and fro around it like seas around a rock." (ibid.)

When Michael Shaughnessy visits, Kith Town is surrounded by trees and grass. However, by the time of Kenri Shaun, another city has grown around it:

"...before the city was, Kith Town stood alone." (21, p. 187)

Centuries earlier, when Kenri's grandparents were alive, the city bustled with commerce. His parents had known a bourgeois district. Kenri remembers "...a peaceful lower-class neighborhood..." (21, p. 186) which has now gone bad. Kith Town is changeless but dwindling. It has known wars, riots and, during recent Terrestrial lifetimes, swaggering officers enforcing new proclamations.

"Kenri shivered in the autumn wind and walked fast." (ibid.)

The autumn wind exactly matches Terrestrial treatment of the Kith.

The Radiant Of Jupiter Etc

I am still rereading Starfarers, Chapter 21/"Ghetto," and finding a lot more condensed information to post about. For example, there is a "Radiant of Jupiter," (p. 187) who must be one of the "Outerfolk" mentioned here. There is information about Dominancy castes and also about changes in the neighborhood surrounding Kith Town during three generations of Kenri Shaun's family, which are equivalent to several centuries of Terrestrial history. However, I now defer any further posts till tomorrow. It requires more effort, later in the evening, to reread Anderson's text, extract relevant fictional facts and summarize them accurately. Meanwhile, it becomes almost a relief to read novels by another author, in this case John Grisham, without (usually) wanting to post about him. (I got into Grisham by reading The Firm after seeing the film. How many more people would get into reading Poul Anderson if they first saw good film adaptations of the Technic History?)

Is Reality Finite? III

We can compare the future of science in Poul Anderson's Starfarers and The Fleet Of Stars with its future in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time where Thor Wald, a successor of Adolph Haertel, states that:

in the twentieth century, physics was presupposed to be limitless;

however, Haertel proved that there is only one fundamental particle; 

now, physics is defined and self-limited, not endless;

the ultimate particles have a geometry of points, not of lines;

no further refinement is possible; 

the Unified Field Theory negates quantum mechanics.

However, a successor of Wald states that:

Dirac messages from the future present not only evidence contradicting the current scientific paradigm but also many mutually incompatible future paradigms;

fortunately, Wald devised a metalanguage which shows that science cannot be used to decide between paradigms because the structure of science is one of those paradigms.

(I thought that scientific method incorporated the successive paradigms but what do I know?)

Is Reality Finite II?

"Conventional wisdom held that science had reached its end point generations ago. The great equation from which every law of physics could be derived was in existence. Its solutions described the origin and ultimate fate of all that was, all that ever could be."

-Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1998), 19, p. 235.

 

"Admittedly, more often than not, calculation was impossible. The principles of chaos and complexity took over. One could always find surprises in every field from archaeology to practical astronomy. Most humans had come to regard them as trivial, unworthy of a deep thinker."

-ibid., p. 236.

 

"...things went on around the great black hole - monstrous forces, convulsions in space-time - which the scientists at Proserpina could not account for or even give a name to."

-ibid., 31, p. 396.

 

Guthrie: "'It'll get worse once we learn what's really going on at the core of the galaxy.'"

Chuan: "'I don't know what it is. I cannot comprehend. But the great equation, the ultimate summation, is clearly incomplete. I suspect that the new knowledge, the new physics, can lead to - a power to transform the universe.' He shuddered."

-ibid., p. 397.

 

It seems intuitively wrong that reality should be limited. Even if material objects did not exist, possibilities would still exist and possibilities can be actualized. Physicists tell us that virtual particles begin and cease to exist according to the uncertainty principle and therefore that the vacuum is full of energy.

Is Reality Finite?

Starfarers.

Kenri Shaun reads Murinn's General Cosmology. (21, p. 183) There has been no fundamental change since Olivares and his colleagues formulated the Grand Equation that unified physics.

Earthlings argue that:

the universe is finite;

therefore, science is;

new empirical discoveries are details;

only complexity prevents a quantitative explanation of every phenomenon.

Kith, seeing more of the cosmos, suspect otherwise.

When Envoy returns, Terrestrial science has become a mere body of knowledge with scientists interpreting natural law like rabbis interpreting the Torah but never questioning the foundations. (48, p. 449)

Next we will consider the future of science in Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars and James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time.

Haertel And Olivares

 

Starfarers, Prologue.

Some future histories feature future successors of Einstein: James Blish's Adolph Haertel and Poul Anderson's Edward Olivares. Whereas the Haertel overdrive is FTL, Olivares' theories lead to the sub-light-speed zero-zero drive:

a Bose-Einstein condensate can be used to generate a laserlike effect that brings all the atoms in two parallel super-conducting plates into the same quantum state;

the nonlinear consequences create a singularity;

energy flowing from the cosmic substrate through the singularity is distributed evenly so that the resultant acceleration is not felt;

the quantum field collapses, returning the energy to the substrate;

however, more energy can immediately be borrowed to make another interstellar jump of about 100 astronomical units with the exact value depending on the local metric;

relativistic effects - increase of mass, shortening of length and time dilation - occur as interstellar distances are traversed.

Planets Visited By Kith

Starfarers, 21.

Marduk: the natives are four-armed like ERB's green Martians and Poul Anderson's Ferrans and fight with swords;

Osiris is a gas giant with moons;

Rama: there are horned animals to hunt;

Dagon: there are statuettes of gods.

(All named after Terrestrial gods.)

Kenri's father, Wolden:

has mementos from all these planets;

has seen fifteen hundred years of Terrestrial history;

says that Fleetwing might escape from the oppressive Dominancy simply by taking a trip of a thousand years!

Further, such a long trip would enter new regions of space. We want to read a Wolden pov novel.

Leaving his parents, Kenri:

"...went out into the darkness of Earth." (p. 181)

- a darkness both literal and metaphorical.

Forever And Flandry

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is both a reflection on its author's experience in Vietnam and a response to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers but also a commentary on the kind of space opera represented by Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series. As the Wikipedia article says:

He also subverts typical space opera clichés (such as the heroic soldier influencing battles through individual acts) and "demonstrates how absurd many of the old clichés look to someone who had seen real combat duty".^[5]

^{In just a single novel, Flandry's individual acts defeat the McCormac Rebellion, allow the rebels to escape and arrange the assassination of the corrupt Governor who had deliberately provoked the Rebellion. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to just one man.}

Forever

Starfarers.

Referring to oppressive Terrestrial rulers, a Kithman says:

"'Greatmen, vicars, I'll outlive the bastards.'" (10, p. 84)

Hearing children playing in Kith Town, Kenri reflects:

"Some of those children were born a hundred or more years ago and had looked upon worlds whose suns were faint stars in this sky." (21, p. 173)

We really need a novel that shows a starfaring character periodically returning to an ever-changing Earth during several slower-than-light circuits of colonized planetary systems. Such a novel could have been set in Larry Niven's Leshy Circuit.

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is perhaps the nearest approach to what I am talking about. However, in that novel, Terrestrial civilization becomes uniform very quickly. Poul Anderson conveys a sense of more complex historical processes.

Autumn In Kith Town

Starfarers, 21.

Kenri Shaun plans to stop starfaring and to remain on Earth. As his Kith career approaches its end - or, at least, so he believes -, the Terrestrial year, appropriately, approaches its end:

"Kenri started down Aldebaran Street. A cold gust hit him; the northern hemisphere was spinning into autumn." (pp. 172-173)

Kith Town streets are lit by obsolete glowglobes because starfarers want to come home to a place that is familiar even if outmoded. Most houses are unoccupied, tended by machines, for decades. Some will remain unoccupied because their owners will not return. Even this early in the narrative, the autumn of Kith culture is prefigured.

Kith Town was introduced in Chapter 10. At that stage, the Kith traded in pure chemical elements, special feedstocks and new information but were overtaxed by the local overlord, the Vicar of Isen. The Solar System also contained Lunarites and Martians. There is reference to "Outerfolk" (p. 82) but I do not know whether these are in the outer Solar System or outside the System. (In context, probably the former.) In all cases, colonized planets change the colonists whereas:

"We starfarers - our starfaring keeps us changeless." (p. 83)

Yet Another Technicality

Starfarers.

When the zero-zero drive is operating:

the Bose-Einstein condensate becomes unstable;

 

consequently, the energy taken from the substrate is not fully returned to it through the condensate;

 

this slight differential causes a minute, random possibility of destructive quantum gate malfunction;

 

such malfunctions would explain some starship disappearances;

 

however, the probability decreases with quantum gate capacity;

 

because Envoy's gamma is five thousand, the danger to her is much less than that from ordinary space travel hazards. (29, pp. 272-273)

 

The energy that is not returned smoothly to the substrate is instead reclaimed violently from the surrounding matter, thus wrecking a starship. However, the danger can be eliminated by devising quantum-wave guides. Thus, future starships will have not only the zero-zero drive and the field drive but also quantum-wave guides as well as other improvements. (49, pp. 473-474) The future of interstellar travel is secure.

 

When Yu has explained the unstable condensate problem to Nansen, she continues but then pauses:

 

"'Although-'

"The wind shrilled. 'Yes,' prompted Nansen after several seconds.

"'I don't know.' He heard the trouble in her voice. 'Something else in the equations -'" ( 29, p. 273)

 

Yu is troubled so, of course, the wind shrills, right on cue. The something else is the possibility that the zero-zero drive threatens cosmic stability, which is later refuted.

Summarizing Starfarers

Summarizing the content of successive chapters of Poul Anderson's Starfarers makes us realize how much content there is:

future Terrestrial history

Envoy

the Kith

the planet, Harbor

the planet, Aerie

the planet, Brent

malfunctioning von Neumann machines

Tahirians

another starfaring race

virtual particles in the vacuum

Seladorianism

the Venture League

the zero-zero drive

the Tahirian field drive

This reads like a summary of several volumes. Starfarers is an extremely condensed future historical work, like the same author's Genesis.

Interstellar Wanderers In Three Universes

We imagine an inter-universal meeting between:

a Nomad, from Poul Anderson's first future history series;

a Kithman, from one of Anderson's shorter future history series;

an Okie, from James Blish's main future history series.

However, these three kinds of "starfarers" inhabit not only alternative future histories but also universes with different laws of physics.

In the Kith universe, the light speed barrier remains impenetrable.

In the Psychotechnic History, a large spaceship - but nothing larger - can be made to fly faster than light. 

In the Okie history, an entire city can be raised from a planetary surface, enclosed in an atmosphere-protecting shield and moved through space faster than light. Later, a planet is moved between galaxies.

"Go with God!" as Blish's Warriors of God proclaim.

The Hebrew Bible differentiates between major and minor prophets, the difference being only that the "minor" prophetic books are shorter, not that they are less important. Poul Anderson's several future histories can be divided up on a comparable basis.

Starfarers, Starfleet And Starmen

I thought that, somewhere near the end of Starfarers, Nansen said that the Venture League was building a starfleet but now I can't find it. "Starfleet" reminds us of Star Trek and also of Anderson's own The Fleet Of Stars.

A Kithman whose ship has been wrecked says:

"'It will be...not easy...becoming planet dwellers.'"

-Starfarers, 51, p. 490.

 

When they are told that more ships are being built and will need crews, his companion sobs:

 

"'We shall be starfarers again?'" (ibid.)

 

John Amalfi proposes that the people of New York settle on a planet in the Greater Magellanic Cloud:

 

"'We would have to settle down - maybe even take to dirt farming; it would be a matter of giving up being an Okie, and giving up being a starman. That's a lot to give up, I know.'"

-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 420.

 

Some people have always preferred to travel, roam, wander. If a new way of life opens up, then there will be some who will want it and nothing else. 

Circularity And The Cosmos

"'In a reality forever liable to chaos, the Patrol is the stabilizing element, holding time to a single course... left untended, events would inevitably move toward the worse. A cosmos of random changes must be senseless, ultimately self-destructive. In it could be no freedom.

"'Has the universe therefore brought forth sentience, in order to protect and give purpose to its own existence? That is not an answerable question.'"

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

"What we have learned about communication across time suggests that the cosmos may have evolved us in order that we shall at last save it. Can this be true? It is imaginable...."

-Starfarers, 52, p. 493.

 

Unanswerable although imaginable. The following proposition at least is true simply because it is a tautology: If a universe can exist only because of circular causality, then the only space-time continua that exist are ones that incorporate a causal circle.

Long Ago And Far Away

I should have included James Blish's Cities In Flight, The Seedling Stars and Haertel Scholium among the future histories with early FTL. See STL And FTL In Future Histories. 

In Cities In Flight, the City Fathers computers, having been switched off for a while, still think that the Okie city, New York, is in the Rift, a valley cut in the face of the galaxy, and offer to present a determination for the far Rift wall. John Amalfi is the Mayor of New York:

"Amalfi removed the headset gently.

"'The Rift wall,' he said, moving the microphone away from his mouth. 'That was long ago - and far away.'"

-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER FOUR, p. 333.

In Poul Anderson's Starfarers:

"'I'm remembering how Al Brent must have died.'

"'That was long ago and far away.' Six thousand years and light-years. Not enough to grant forgetfulness." (51, p. 484)

"Long ago and far away" is an evocative phrase, expressing time passed and distance traveled. It is especially significant in the kind of interstellar context at which both Blish and Anderson excelled.

Inner And Outer

Jack Havig says that the Star Masters are:

"'... a lifebringer to Earth...'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 174.

He continues:

"'I mean, a civilization which just sat down and stared at its own inwardness - how soon would it become stagnant, caste-ridden, poor and nasty? You can't think unless you have something to think about. And this has to come from outside. Doesn't it? The universe is immeasurably larger than any mind.'" (pp. 174-175)

Then he acknowledges:

"'It is well to have those mystics and philosophers. They think and feel, they search out meanings, they ask disturbing questions -'" (p. 175)

What civilization has merely stared at its own inwardness? Any civilization is an interaction between a population and its environment. India has contributed:

mythology;

literature;

philosophical systematizations of logic, atomism and materialism;

hatha yoga;

"karma yoga," Krishna's teaching of nonattached action;

Buddhist meditation;

"Arabic" numerals and the decimal point.

The Tahirian Field Drive

Starfarers.

The full name of the zero-zero drive is the quantum field gate drive. However, this is not the Tahirian field drive.

A Tahirian spacecraft approaches Envoy:

"'N-n-no jets.' His crew had never before heard Nansen stammer. 'Dios todopoderoso, how does it boost?'

"'We'll learn,' Kilbirnie called once more." (22, p. 209)

 

"'What about those jetless flyers here?'

"'That may be an application of principles we know in ways we have not thought of.'" (23, p. 222)

 

"On its drive that [Nansen] did not understand, the boat glided up toward his vessel." (24, p. 227)

 

"Eventually [Ruszek] might accumulate such a stack of information that Yu could make something of it, maybe even figure out how the jetless drive worked. He suspected the principle was quantum mechanical, and a starship's engineer was necessarily a jackleg quantum physicist." (27, p. 251)

 

"'I think once I have analyzed these readings, with Esther's help, I will know how the field drive operates.'

"'You don't? I mean, uh, you told me before, you're sure it's a push against the vacuum.'

"Yu sighed. 'An interaction with the virtual particles of the vacuum,' she corrected. 'Energy and momentum are conserved, but, loosely speaking, the reaction is against the mass of the entire universe, and approximately uniform. What I referred to was understanding the exact, not the general, principle.'

"'Uniform? Don't they adjust the field inside a hull? Weight's the same during any boost.'

"'In quantum increments, obviously.' Yu paused. 'Compared to this drive, jets are as wasteful as ...as burning petroleum, chemical feedstock, for fuel once was on Earth.'

"'What I like is the handling qualities. How soon can you and your computer design a motor for us, Wenji?'

"'Not at all, I fear, until we're home. Besides, we couldn't possibly do so radical a retrofit on Envoy, or even her boats.' Yu's voice lilted. 'However, I think with Hanny's help when she gets back, we can devise a unit that will compensate for linear acceleration and keep the vector in the wheels constant.'

"'Do you mean, when the ship's under boost, we won't have to cram like swine onto those manhater-designed gimbal decks?' Ruszek waved clasped hands above his shining pate. 'Huzzah!' he bellowed." (28, p. 262)

"'You've found out enough about the field drive that you can build one for us -'

"'No, no, please. I have explained that we can't retrofit Envoy and her boats. They are too integrated with their existing systems. I do think that we can add a unit that will make us more comfortable under acceleration, but any real shipbuilding must await our return to Earth.

"'Where they may already long have had such craft.'" (29, p. 272)

 

Back at Earth:

 

"They had never heard of a field drive here, or apparently anywhere in the space known to man. Was that historical accident, or did the invention require a Tahirian kind of quantum mechanical insight, guided perhaps by hints the Holont gave those visitors before they fled from it and withdrew from the stars?'" (48, p. 449)

 

On Harbor:

 

"...Our first starships are ready, ships better than any known before, thanks to the union of human technology with the new knowledge brought from afar." (52, p. 492)  

Starfarers In Two Future Histories

The word, "starfarers," is used on the second last page of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time.

In Starfarers, the starfarers are the Kith, the Envoy crew and the Venture League. The League, led by the Envoy survivors, employs former Kith but also includes anyone else with sufficient strength, skill and motivation. In There Will Be Time, the starfarers, called the Star Masters, are both human and non-human and are the direct successors neither of the Maurai Federation nor of the Eyrie but of Jack Havig's time travel group. The Venture League will transmit "'Newness, fresh ideas, or stories -'" (Starfarers, 48, p. 457) The Star Masters transmit:

"'Ideas, arts, experience, insights born on a thousand different worlds, out of a thousand different kinds of being -'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 175.

 

The Maurai History

Maurai (three short stories)

Orion Shall Rise (long novel; the end of the Maurai period)

There Will Be Time (time travel novel; past and future history, before and after the Maurai)

 

Kith Histories

Kith (three short stories)

Starfarers (novel, incorporating revised versions of two of the stories)

The Venture League

Starfarers, 49, 52.

The Venture League, although financed by fledgling businesses, is a social movement with a cosmic goal that incorporates but transcends immediate financial returns. As such, the League resembles an active social philosophy, a socially active religious movement or a political party seeking not immediate electoral results but a sustainable human future.

Such a movement must gain and sustain momentum. If the hundreds of young applicants can be organized into an active nucleus, then thousands more will be recruited throughout the Tau Cetian system. Otherwise, the movement will decline especially in the face of hostile counter-propaganda. The academy must begin to educate recruits with home-study courses to be followed by simulator training, then practical experience, but they need Nansen's advice on content as well as the early return of a Kith ship. When Fleetwing approaches but becomes undetectable, i.e., goes off the zero-zero drive, this is a potential disaster. However, Envoy rescues Fleetwing, thus transforming tragedy to triumph.

Shortly after:

the first starships are equipped with the Tahirian field drive and officered by Kith;

planetary engineering will make new worlds habitable;

thus, starfaring will become profitable for everyone;

other races will be initiated into starfaring;

many zero-zero drives will bind universe and substrate together, thus strengthening existence; 

holontic time communicators, once built, will unite the universe across space and time.

The Venture League is a potential series.

The Conflict On Harbor

Starfarers, 49.

Of course it should be possible both to deploy Envoy's innovative capabilities beneficially on Harbor and also to use those same capabilities to expand mankind's role in the universe. However, the Venture League's opponents believe that a serious revival of starfaring is an impossible, insane goal and they therefore resist what they see as the wasting of any resources in such activity. These opponents are well-resourced and influential, able to undercut League businesses, pressurize financiers and publish disparaging propaganda, even subsidizing Seladorian missionaries.

Is it these same opponents that block the full application of Terrestrial nanotechnology and robotics on Harbor? Such an application of technology would end poverty and transform society but would also disempower precisely those groups that currently control funds and resources and use them to divert production and distribution into directions profitable for themselves. When necessities and more than necessities have become as free as air, then no one will any longer either sell goods and services or profit by selling them. Life will be lived on an entirely different and inherently freer basis.

STL And FTL In Future Histories

STL = Slower than light interstellar travel.

FTL = Faster etc.

 

Three Kinds Of Future Histories

(i) STL only.

(ii) STL, then FTL.

(iii) early FTL.

(i) Poul Anderson's:

Tales Of The Flying Mountains

Kith History

Rustum History

The Boat Of A Million Years

Tau Zero

Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy

Genesis

Larry Niven's A World Out Of Time

 

(ii) Robert Heinlein's Future History

Larry Niven's Known Space History

Anderson's Psychotechnic History

(iii) Anderson's Technic History

Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium History

In (i), the premise is not just that no means of FTL is ever discovered but that FTL remains theoretically impossible. The sudden invention of an FTL drive at the end of Tau Zero or Starfarers would be almost as unacceptable a deus ex machina as the sudden arrival of an alien spacecraft at the end of a mainstream novel.

Anderson's There Will Be Time is ambiguous. The main characters are mutant time travelers and:

"'Physicists talk about a mathematical equivalence between traveling into the past and flying faster than light.'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 174.

- so maybe FTL will be developed but, if not, then time travelers will travel futureward to extra-solar planets in subjective minutes or hours within STL ships whose interstellar journeys last for objective centuries. These possibilities imply two alternative sequels to There Will Be Time. Another two possibilities are suggested when Leonce says:

 

"'Maybe we'll find a New Earth to raise [children] on... Or maybe we'll wander the universe till we die.'" (p. 175)

 

We want to read all these unwritten narratives.

At Tau Ceti

Starfarers, 49.

There are many fictional versions of Tau Ceti. This is the one in Poul Anderson's Starfarers.

The reception of Envoy is more like what would have been expected on Earth in earlier millennia: tumultuous welcome, appearances, interviews, celebrations, lectures, conferences, interpretation of data downloads. 

Human beings live not only on the planet Harbor but also throughout the Tau Cetian planetary system. On Harbor, there is still a Kith village on the Isle of Weyan. A woman called Chandor Lia is president of the Duncanian continent and her son, Chandor Barak, becomes director of the new Venture League's academy on the seventh floor of the League's headquarters in the city of Argosy. Like men in Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Chandor unexpectedly wears a kilt.

Although the League, founded by Captain Nansen of Envoy, attracts financing and runs businesses, its ultimate aim is neither gain nor glory but "...humankind's place in the universe." (p. 466) The League is opposed by those who want the capabilities brought by Envoy to be used profitably at home. 

The Further Future: Further Details

Starfarers, 48.

"'In the name of Selador...oneness.'" (pp. 460-461)

That name can be changed without changing the message:

"Our names they mean nothing...

"They change throughout time..."

-see Trios.

"'For everything that is life, oneness.'" (p. 461)

No problem with that.

"'...bring down the falsehoods of the Biosophists...'" (ibid.)

No! That is antithetical to the Seladorian big tent/broad church approach especially since "Biosophy" means "Life-wisdom." Does any liturgy include that kind of denunciation? Do Catholics chant:

"...bring down the falsehoods of the Methodists..."?

 

Some Other Details

 

The transformation of Earth over several centuries has included the creation of an inland sea in Paraguay. Millions of invisibly small machines monitor and guide the water, the nearby land and the life in and on them. Thus, technology blends with nature.

Village residents are accompanied by pets, including cockatoos, hounds, vividly colored cats and more exotic animals, like Lunarians in Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy.

Seladorianism II

Starfarers, 48.

Zeyd of the Envoy crew asks:

"'I gather that religions, customs, even laws vary from group to group, and each develops as it chooses, or splits off to start something new. Doesn't that lead to conflict?'" (p. 454)

Why should it?

Zeyd's guide, Mundival, replies:

"'All are Seladorian... Different deity or none, different usage, yes, but all accept the oneness of life. That means, too, the oneness of humans.'" (pp. 454-455)

So Seladorianism, like Hinduism, is a "big tent," allowing very different philosophies and theologies to coexist peacefully.

"Zeyd knew of no faith that had ever brought universal harmony." (p. 455)

And no faith ever will. However, the end of economic conflicts will mean the end of ideological rationalizations of such conflicts. Beliefs that were merely fantastic reflections of social alienations will cease to exist. Spiritual inquiries and practices will continue but do not have to be divisive. "Oneness of humans" will mean difference without division and unity without uniformity.

"He wondered how meaningful those cultural uniquenesses were, and what measures were now and then necessary to maintain the global peace." (ibid.)

Why should uniquenesses not be meaningful? Why should any measures be necessary? Zeyd assumes the continuance of underlying causes of conflict which clearly no longer exist. There is no cause of conflict between right-handed and left-handed people or between blue-eyed and brown-eyed people - although there would be conflict if a system of discrimination had been constructed on some such irrational basis.

"Regardless of what it called itself, he didn't think Seladorianism was just a philosophy." (ibid.)

The implication being that "just a philosophy" would be merely optional whereas Seladorianism is covertly dogmatic or coercive? The evidence is that "Seladorianism" is merely a name allowing maximum cultural diversity within a common humanity. The "a religion or a philosophy?" question arises within Buddhism. The latter is a philosophy because it is an outcome of inquiry and analysis and a religion because it is a response to transcendence.

Varday says that there have been three thousand years of peace and Nansen reflects:

"'Thanks to...Selador. Who seems to have done better than the Christ they seem to have forgotten." (p. 459)

But it is not thanks to Selador. That is just the name of the most recent prophet and religious founder. The peace is thanks to the social use of nanotech and robotics. And, for some, that global peace will be a springboard to further discovery, not an end of discovery.

Virtual Reality In The Future

Starfarers, 48. 

Uses of virtual reality:

the Envoy crew are guided through virtual reality tours of Earth before they descend to its surface;

people of Earth experience other planets virtually, not physically;

education includes virtual experiences of horrific historical events.

Although virtual experience is highly advanced, no one is addicted to it.

Varday, Nansen's guide, says that every generation must repeat the work:

"'Against the beast that is born in us.'" (p. 459)

The old protean enemy.

Varday also says:

"'We of Earth today seek what we may find in ourselves... You seek elsewhere, outward.'" (p. 460)

Too simplistic. An advanced civilization easily incorporates both inner and outer quests.

"Through The Corridors Of Time"

See the combox for A Corridor Of Time.

Not from the grand old masters,

      Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

      Through the corridors of Time. 

-copied from here.

 

A new correspondent and the source of a Poul Anderson title - and why does Time have "corridors," plural?

Economics

Starfarers, 48-49.

Although nanotech and robotics have made all necessities and perhaps also all comforts free, the places of business in Elya include shops so what is bought and sold?

A mansion belongs to an association of which Varday is a member and she currently has the use of it. What is the basis of such membership?

Earth exports Seladorianism but not nanotech to Harbor, Tau Ceti, where there is both money and poverty although we are also told that:

"...technics feeds, clothes, houses, medicates everybody..." (49, p. 471)

 Do vested interests oppose nanotech as they oppose the Venture League and subsidize Seladorian missionaries?

Planets have become self-sufficient so there needs to be a reason for star travel other than trade.

Times And Places II

Starfarers.

Kith Town 

10: Kith Town begins "...as a district in a small city." (p. 77) 

 

Later, it is surrounded by trees, grass, sunflowers, flocks of crows and grazing neobison that are hunted only by "...wild dogs and master-class men..." (p. 78) when this part of central North America has become "...a vicarial preserve." (ibid.)

 

21: The low Kith Town buildings are surrounded by the towers of a city where the previously peaceful nearest neighborhood has turned bad.

 

44; Kith Town is "...ever dwindling..." (p. 423)

48: Kith Town is a robotically tended museum surrounded by the ruins of cities that had occasionally engulfed it.

 

An outstanding future history. 

Times And Places

 

Starfarers.

(Posting delayed by a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. Watching superhero TV series. Robin, operating independently, stomps drug dealers and says "F--- Batman!" Outstanding.)

Chicago

Starfarers presents no year dates so we cite only chapter numbers. In 44, in Tenoya Lowtown, people occupy excavated remnants of Arakoum and, before that, Cago. In 48, Elya is built above layers of cities:

 

"...the whole way down to Chicago." (p. 454)

 

Tenoya:

 

to the west, a dusty, desolate plain;

 

to the east, a cultivated former lake bottom with pipes, processors and robots;

in the city, large buildings (former office blocks?) now filled with tenants, smaller dwellings made from wreckage, bulbous temple spires, a fortified garrison, dust and smoke.

Elya:

to the west, grassy plains, trees and large, wild, genetically engineered grazers;

to the east and north, a cultivated bottomland with robots tending biosynthetic plantations;

on the height between these two landscapes, one hundred thousand people in widely spread houses with gardens and groves, various places of business, Sanctuary and shrines surrounded by natural stone, plants and branching towers, other buildings mostly underground.

A Chill Wind

Previously with Dornford Yates and Stieg Larsson and now with Susan Howatch, appreciation of Poul Anderson has compelled me to notice similar literary details in the works of other authors. Thus:

"But my relief was gone, my depression was crawling back to possess me and..."

- wait for it:

"...a chill wind blew towards me as I turned to face the sea."

-Susan Howatch, Penmarric (London, 2014), IV, CHAPTER NINE, p. 496.

 

If not for the omnipresence of the wind as pathetic fallacy, analogy and (almost) dramatis persona in Anderson's works, I would have read past this passage without comment. However, we appreciate a novel more fully by pausing on apparently inconsequential words and phrases.

Heroes' Welcome

Starfarers, 48.

It seems that Earth-Envoy communications are not broadcast, like by a news or documentary network. However, individuals can tune in on the conversations and millions do. Visitors to the planetary surface would be mobbed so it is better that crew members go singly, each to be accompanied by a designated guide. Virtual reality tours precede physical visits. Virtual reality is of high quality although no one on Earth is addicted to it.

Crew members are referred to as:

"...the honored guests from the remote past..." (p. 452)

- as if they were literal time travelers, not returned space travelers. The fact of their having made an interstellar journey seems to be irrelevant. The future civilization combines admirable and questionable aspects.

Three Prophetic Writers

Starfarers, 47-48.

HG Wells' Time Traveler travels to 802,701 AD and beyond, then returns to the nineteenth century, whereas Envoy travels to an extra-solar civilization, a pulsar and a black hole, then returns to Earth. However, returning to Earth equals traveling to Earth eleven thousand years in the future. Thus, what the Time Traveler finds on his outward journey the Envoy crew find on their return journey: nature conquered by technology and a decadent society. The main difference is that, in The Time Machine, industrial workers have devolved into Morlocks whereas, in Starfarers, they have been replaced by robotics and nanotech. Anderson supersedes Wells in a powerful dialogue about future society.

CS Lewis's anti-Wellsian contribution, That Hideous Strength, argues that technological control of society would be literally diabolical.

Post-Imperial Pax

Starfarers, 44.

"'Rats' nests of tribes, peoples, classes, religions, godknowswhats, scourings of wars, migrations, revolutions, conversions, history - much too much history, much too little of it ours.'" (p. 411)

Thus speaks an Imperial Governor ("Executive"). The natives are "rats' nests" and "scourings." He acknowledges his ignorance: "godknowswhats." It is a problem for him that their history differs from his. One of the cities that he governs is "'Aswarm with fanatics.'" (p. 412) I am confident both that there is a line to be drawn between fanatics and other anti-Governance campaigners and that the Executive and I would draw that line in a different place.

It does not have to be like that. Today our Muslim neighbors celebrate Eid. Brightly garbed visitors from other cities fill the street. Two families give us plates of curry, rice, cakes and bread that make our evening meal. 

In Preston ("Priest Town") twenty miles away:

the City logo is a Lamb with a Cross;

there are many Catholic religious houses;

Preston City Church has become Preston City Mosque;

but the church congregation has moved to new premises;

one street had a church, mosque and Gurdwara next door to each other;

but the Gurdwara (Sikh Temple) was due to move to larger premises;

another street has an ornate Hindu Temple at one end and had a Pagan Moot meeting in a pub at the other end;

there is a nearby Buddhist Center;

an Anglican Bishop was a guest at an Eid celebration.

 

We celebrate diversity.

Lost In The Corridors Of Time

Susan Howatch's character, Adrian Parrish, goes to war in 1914:

"I braced myself, prepared to ride into battle bearing aloft the standards in which I believed so passionately, prepared to die if necessary for the cause I thought so worthwhile.

"But I did not die. Nor did I ride into battle on a milk-white charger like some mythical crusader lost in the corridors of time."

-Susan Howatch, Penmarric (London, 2014), III, CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 352.

 

See also A Corridor Of Time.

 

Again Howatch, no doubt unknowingly, echoes Poul Anderson. Time might be compared to a corridor but why should it be thought to have "corridors" in the plural?

Return II

Starfarers, 48-49.

Envoy communicates audiovisually with Earth. A scholar interprets for an enthroned woman, the Unifier Areli, who "'...bids peace...'" (48, p. 447) She is not mentioned again. (She is mentioned again but not much.)

"It was clear that robotics and nanotechnology had made all necessities, services as well as goods, and perhaps all comforts too, free, like air and sunshine. There was presumably some way to control their distribution and maintain a stable population, but whatever coercion this required was not obvious." (49, p. 450)

There is no need either to control the distribution of air and sunshine or to coerce an affluent and informed population to practice birth control. Poul Anderson imagines an advanced civilization but either he or his characters have difficulty in accepting its implications.

Kith visits are rare and unimportant and the scant interplanetary traffic is entirely robotic. Kith no longer live on Earth. The Envoy crew remain starfolk and cannot settle on Earth.

Return

What do interstellar travelers find when they return home?

Dan Dare: the Mekon has conquered the Solar System with robots.

Dan Dare (later): Earth has been evacuated for some reason.

Larry Niven, A World Out Of Time: Earth orbiting Jupiter; teleportation; new kinds of immortality.

Poul Anderson, "Epilogue": robotic evolution.

Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home: complicated.

Poul Anderson, Starfarers: that is what I am rereading right now.

What Is Peace?

Starfarers, 45.

Envoy, returning, detects declining star travel around Sol. Immediately, what I see as a false dichotomy is posited:

"'If humans aren't adventuring anymore, could they be at peace, as the Tahirians wanted to be?'" (p. 428)

Peace is the absence of armed conflict, not the end of adventure, initiative, exploration or discovery.

Hanny says that most people most of the time stayed put. Sure. Most people cannot go on voyages of exploration nor do they need to. If I lived in the Solar Commonwealth of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then I would not ache to become an apprentice in the Polesotechnic League. I would live and work on Earth while learning as much as possible about Ythrians, Wodenites, Cynthians, Merseians etc.

Hanny asks:

"'...would peace be so terrible?...Suppose Earth is tranquil and beautiful. Suppose we can find something for ourselves like your estancia. Then I could gladly settle down.'" (ibid.)

But of course some former explorers and adventurers should be able to settle down on a peaceful, tranquil, beautiful Earth while others continue to explore and adventure beyond Earth. I feel that the word, "peace," is being devalued here.