More Alien Grinning

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER XII.

Svantozik, who interrogates Flandry, nods, chuckles, shrugs, grins and whispers when thinking to himself. Is he not coming across as too anthropomorphic? Now a Merseian, a Wodenite, a Tigery, a Chereionite and an inhabitant of Ardazir have all grinned or smiled. 

Differences from humanity:

bad news does not demoralize the Ardazirho but increases their defiance;

good news would not hearten them in captivity but relax them, making them more likely to collaborate;

it has come as news to Svantozik that Terrans can have strong feelings about members of the opposite sex and that such feelings can even cause desperate actions!

OK. Not everything is the same.

Technological Impossibilities

I was mistaken in Reflections On Technology. For this purpose, we must refer to the introduction to the first David Falkayn story, "The Three-Cornered Wheel," not the second, "A Sun Invisible."

Vance Hall explains that technological advances thought to be impossible have nevertheless happened:

ray guns were impossible until lasers were invented;

spaceships had to expend mass in order to accelerate until artificial gravity was invented;

faster than light interstellar travel was impossible until the quantum hyperdrive was invented.

But that is as far as Hall takes us. We had hoped to find more information on cheap energy sources in Technic civilization.

The way Hall tells it, the hyperdrive does not seem to have followed from gravitics.

There might be at least an analogical parallel between quantum hyperdrives and zazen meditation:

in the Technic History version of hyperspace, the spaceship does not enter a different kind of space but makes quantum jumps through ordinary relativistic space;

in zazen, the mind does not enter a state without thought but practices not thinking about whatever thoughts do arise. 

Cheap Manufacturing And Energy

"Margin of Profit," including its passage of historical reflection, was revised whereas "Territory," introduced by that passage, was not. Consequently, both versions of the passage are reproduced in The Technic Civilization Saga.

In the original version:

automation made manufacturing cheap;

proton converters made energy very cheap;

both gravity control and the hyperdrive made interstellar travel possible.

(This recalls James Blish explaining that antigravity, anti-agathics and the Germanium monetary standard made interstellar trade by flying cities possible.)

In the revised version:

automation and Solar System mineral wealth made most manufacturing cheap;

small, clean, simple fusion units made energy very cheap;

gravitics led to the hyperdrive;

the hyperdrive made interstellar travel possible.

Can this energy be stored? In any case, it is easily produced and very cheap.

The Seventeenth Century

Neil Gaiman's 1602 puts Marvel superheroes when they do not belong in early seventeenth century England. Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest puts steam trains and other anachronistic items in England later in that century. This is another unexpected parallel. A Midsummer Tempest is already obviously paralleled by Gaiman's The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Sandman: The Tempest.

1602 makes a major character out of Virginia Dare, the legendary first white person born in North America. This puts 1602 into the same kind of Pocohontas-related territory as SM Stirling's alternative history novel, Conquistador, although I confess to not remembering all the details of that while writing this now! (However, see Three Timelines.) I did read Conquistador twice and discussed it on this blog both times on the principle that Stirling is a worthy colleague and successor of Poul Anderson who also wrote alternative histories, e.g., A Midsummer Tempest. Some later writers focused more specifically on this sub-genre.

Reflections On Technology

Some questions have arisen as to whether Poul Anderson is consistent in his description of the level and application of technology in the Terran Empire period of his Technic History. We will approach this issue by carefully rereading two relevant earlier passages about the technological basis of the Polesotechnic League which preceded the Empire. There is an omniscient narrator's reflective passage in "Margin of Profit," which is repeated as an introduction to "Territory," and there is also the introduction to the second David Falkayn story, "A Sun Invisible." I just need some time to meditate, to retrieve two volumes from a bookshelf upstairs and to reread the appropriate passages! I expect to be back here shortly. Meanwhile, anyone who beats me to it might want to comment on this post concerning the passages in question?

The Vixenite North

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER XII, p. 77.

I have tried before to summarize Poul Anderson's account of summer in the northern hemisphere of Vixen but maybe missed some details:

snow melts;

wild rivers become lakes which bake dry;

storms hit the equator and parts of the south;

the north becomes arid salt flats and small dreary seas;

fires make pampas barren;

erosive conditions prevent mountains;

furnace winds blow dust and ash over plains;

"gnarled ranges";

"lifeless hills":

"twisted crags";

flash floods carving arroyos into huge scars.

Sometimes Anderson's text is already a summary and cannot be summarized any further. 

Ardazirho headquarters is in a "gnarled ranges" etc region just below the arctic circle, safe from ground attack and dug so far underground as to be almost impregnable to air attack. Flandry sees warships and missile emplacements. He goes willingly into this hell.

Questions About The Technic History

Some comments pick at the fabric of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Is it implausible that van Rijn and Falkayn experience both the glory days and the beginning of the terminal decline of the Polesotechnic League?

Does antigrav make roads on Vixen and river trade on Aeneas and Daedalus redundant?

When were mobile phones invented in the Technic History?

Is it plausible that Aycharaych was able to hoodwink the Merseians for so long?

Are there any more questions like this?

We appreciate the Technic History as, in my opinion, the very best of the American future history series before we begin to unravel its possible inconsistencies.

Stormclouds

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER XI.

A party of Ardazirho whirring down a Garth street on their unicycles:

"...left a wake of frightened silence behind them." (p. 70)

Poul Anderson describes not only the invaders but also their effect on the subdued Vixenites. There follows another sentence that also serves two purposes:

"The winter sun burned low to northwest, big and dazzling white in a pale sky, among hurried stormclouds." (ibid.)

First, a description of the Vixenite environment. The white sun is another welcome difference. Secondly, pathetic fallacy. Hurrying stormclouds match whirring invaders. Readers recognize the appropriateness of the stormclouds even if they do not analyse Poul Anderson's literary techniques.

Pathetic fallacy continues as Flandry keeps his assignation with Kit under "...the gloomy winter sky..." (p. 76) at the Rocket Fountain (scroll down) in Explorers' Plaza.

Howlers On Unicycles

We Claim These Stars.

Imaginative details matter in sf that is set in the future and/or on another planet. We must be continually reminded that the narrative is not set here and now but there and then. For this reason, we welcome the data that the Ardazirho howl when going into battle and that they patrol a conquered city on motor unicycles, not on motorbikes. They also travel locally on foot as much as possible albeit in small armed parties, of course. Nor do they explain why they do this although Anderson must present some plausible speculative reasons: they enjoy the challenge or their sensitive noses and ears prefer the open air...

When five Ardazirho walk from headquarters to barracks in the dark and rain, Flandry must identify Clanmaster Temulak by face alone and must render him unconscious by physical attack while Emil Bryce kills the other four with cyanide darts into exposed flesh. This must be done quickly before the arrival of howling reinforcements, summoned by the racket of Flandry's fight with Temulak, and Flandry must also spray petrol to prevent tracking by scent. A job for two highly skilled men. Flandry is confident enough to grin while he sprays the petrol.

Anderson's Dominic Flandry and Frederik Forsyth's Mike Martin demonstrate that an army of such saboteurs would be able to wreak havoc with an invading army, especially by organizing resistance. After all, if every man, woman, child and dog simultaneously set out to kill one invader each, then there would not be enough invaders to go around. Anyone who knew Flandry would advise the wolves to kill him as soon as they had arrested him.

Information About Garth

Rereading Poul Anderson's We Claim These Stars, I must check what I have already posted for example about the city of Garth on the planet Vixen:

Garth

Mild Wind

Vixenite Place Names

In Garth

I do not feel up to rereading the text in that amount of detail now but nor do I need to. In Anderson's texts, it is usually possible to find previously unnoticed or at least unremembered details and we should be able to find some of those.

Standing Still

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER X.

Flandry and the Vixenite Emil Bryce wait in the rain to ambush Ardazhiro. Rain penetrates Flandry's hood but he must not move. He resents the ease with which Bryce, a professional hunter trained from boyhood, remains completely stationary for half an hour but surely Flandry's own profession requires similar skills? See:

A Long Wait

- particularly the concluding paragraph and the combox. Hunters must focus their attention outward, not inward.

For more about Flandry's activities on Vixen, see here.

Also:

Organizing The Resistance

Vixen

Flandry On Vixen

On Vixen

Milk In The Milky Way?

Wolves On Vixen II

Vixen

Since Vixen has been on the agenda, I decided to link back to some previous posts.

On Vixen

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER IX.

A humanly colonized terrestroid extra-solar planet is going to have some environmental differences from Earth:

yellow phosphorescent fungi high on forest trees, bright enough to see by at night;

unfamiliar plant scents and animal sounds.

But at the same time the colonists will have reproduced some aspects of life on Earth: 

through the forest, a broad road; 

approaching along that road, a large truck whose driver stops to give a lift to Flandry and Kit.

This scene could be happening here and now.

By invading and occupying the planet, the Ardazirho reproduce some of the conditions of Europe during World War II - but the invaders are non-humanoid enough to be nicknamed "wolves" and are aided not by trained dogs but by packs of batsnakes.

Two Periods Of The Technic History

Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan fall meteorically in order to land undetected on Baburite-occupied Hermes. Falkayn is Hermetian. The power behind the Baburites is a Polesotechnic League cartel, the Seven in Space. The Baburites had appeared before. The League is disintegrating. 

Flandry, Chives and Kit fall meteorically in order to land undetected on Ardazirho-occupied Vixen. Kit is Vixenite. The power behind the Ardazirho is the rival Imperium of Merseia. The Ardazirho had not appeared before. The Terran Empire is declining.

Apart from all their similarities, the two periods are completely different!

Girl And Kitten

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER VIII.

Kit Kittredge to Dominic Flandry:

"'Your Navy might decide to fight the war out where 'tis. An' then my whole planet, my people, the little girl next door an' her kitten, trees an' flowers an' birds, why, 'twill just be radioactive ash blowin' over dead gary hills.'" (p. 54)

("...gary..." should be "...gray...," of course, as the relevant volume in The Technic Civilization Saga confirms.)

Flandry to Aycharaych:

"'...the device every conqueror, yes, every altruistic liberator should be required to wear on his shield ... is a little girl and her kitten, at ground zero.'

-A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, IX, p. 465.

Explanation (i): the image of the little girl and her kitten occurs twice because the same author wrote both dialogues.

Explanation (ii): this image occurs twice because, when Flandry conversed with Aycharaych, he remembered what Kit had said.

Both explanations are valid, of course.

Unanswered Questions

A Technic History instalment could be written to show that much that we thought we knew was false.

Flandry:

"In those days [Aycharych] had claimed that the enigmatic ruins found upon many worlds of that sort were relics of his own people, who ranged and ruled among the stars in an era geologically remote. He claimed.... He's as big a liar as I am, when either of us wants to be. If they did build and then withdraw, why? Where to? What are they upon this night?"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT IX, p. 462.

Tachwyr:

"But Aycharaych died when the Dennitzans bombarded his planet. At least, he vanished, you could never be altogether sure of anything about the Chereionite."

-Poul Anderson, The Game of Empire IN Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER SIX, p. 267.

Is Flandry's question: where are the Chereionites? answered at the end of A Knight... when he finds that Chereion is occupied only by computers, holograms and Aycharaych himself? Is the rest of the race extinct? That answer serves in the absence of any information to the contrary. But such information could have been provided. And the same observation applies to Aycharaych's own disappearance. As the British sf bookseller, Pete Pinto, suggested to Anderson: Aycharaych should return but in an Aycharaych novel, not in a Flandry novel.

The Gods In Space And Time

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER VI.

Flandry:

"And in that well-worn nick of time, which goes to prove that the gods, understandably, love me, helped arrived." (p. 35)

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol:

"A man had to take whatever the gods offered and they were a miserly lot."

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 4, p. 74.

The gods live in our imaginations where they always did. Flandry meets pagan extra-terrestrials like the Tigeries. Everard travels to times when the gods were taken for granted like we take atoms. So maybe "the gods" come more easily into their everyday vocabularies. Comprehensive as ever, Anderson also wrote fantasies in which the gods literally existed.

"Ever Heard Of Vixen?"

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER III.

Vice Admiral Fenross to Captain Flandry:

"'Ever heard of Vixen? Well, I never had, either, before this. It's a human-settled planet of an F6 star about a hundred light-years from Sol, somewhat north and clockwise of Aldebaran. Odd ball world, but moderately successful as colonies go. You know that region is poor in systems of interest to humans, and very little explored. In effect, Vixen sits in the middle of a desert.'" (p. 19)

When this story was first published in 1959, none of Poul Anderson's readers had heard of Vixen. Anderson created the planet ex nihilo at this point in his text. Now, however, if we read Anderson's History of Technic Civilization in chronological order of fictional events, for example by reading Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I to VII, then, in Volume III, we come across Henry Kittredge from Vixen and, in Volume VI, we find Fenross asking Flandry whether he has ever heard of Vixen. Indeed, Vixen and then New Vixen also appear in Volume VII but, unfortunately, that is the end of the Technic History.

Aycharaych: Depths And Shallows

 

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, IX.

For all his philosophical and cultural depth, Aycharaych can be offensively shallow. He claims that Jaan has gained by the schizophrenia that Aycharaych has imposed on him. He suggests that Flandry:

"'...might have lived more whole of heart...'" (p. 464)

- if he had served Merseia. Flandry angrily and rightly rejects this. He prefers his cynicism to cheering a leader and adds that every conqueror and liberator should wear a device showing a girl and her kitten at ground zero. Sounds relevant, topical, up-to-date? Flandry, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Meanwhile, in other reading, Matt Helm investigates a flying saucer which cannot be an extra-terrestrial spaceship because Helm's series is not sf. But all fiction meets in our collective imagination.

The Conversation On Talwin

Flandry's mindscreen and its power pack make an ugliness through Aycharaych's nerves and the Chereionite warns Flandry not to wall off his brain for too long:

"'...from those energies which inspirit the universe, behind a screen of forces that themselves must roil your dreams.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT IX, p. 459.

Does Aycharaych understand the mind-brain relationship better than human philosophers? We cannot understand how neurons generate consciousness but maybe they don't. Neurons are macroscopic enough to be governed by classical mechanics, not by quantum mechanics. Consciousness and quantum mechanics are both mysterious and the latter involves an observer effect so does quantum mechanics explain consciousness and do Chereionites think and intuit on the quantum level, closer to the mind-brain interaction?

Aycharaych speculates that consciousness of mortality inspires human creativity but surely all rational species are mortal? Maybe Chereionites live longer? He refers initially to human consciousness of imminent death.

The Conversation In The Crystal Moon

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER II.

Aycharaych congratulates Flandry on l'affaire Nyanza, a touch of Fransai in the Anglic, and informs him that:

"'Not even excepting Xingu, [Richard] Strauss is the most misunderstood composer of known galactic history.'" (p. 12)

I had to google to confirm that Xingu was not a Terran composer. Aycharaych refers to known galactic history. Most of the galaxy is unknown.

Aycharaych visited Terra clandestinely to walk in certain forests and see certain paintings and graves. Knowing him, he probably did more than that.

When Aycharaych sees violet as black, Flandry deduces that he sees further into the red and that his sun is cooler and redder than Sol. That does not identify it but every datum helps.

Conversations And Confrontations Between Flandry And Aycharaych

In We Claim These Stars/"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

CHAPTER II: conversation in the Crystal Moon in Jovian orbit.

CHAPTER XVII: conflict and confrontation in the Sky Cave.

In A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

IX: remembered conversation on Talwin.

XX: conflict and confrontation on Chereion.

Don't these two works look more and more like parallels of each other?

Another (Sort of) Parallel: The Two Heroines

Flandry tells Kit Kittredge that he is:

"'...just not the forever-and-ever sort.'"

-CHAPTER XVIII, p. 125.

- and leaves her on Vixen.

Later, he has become the forever-and-ever sort but Kossara is assassinated.

Same result: he remains a bachelor, ready for the next assignment and heroine.

I think that his treatment of Kit is callous.

Aycharaych Smiled

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER II.

See Do Aliens Smile? II which links to Do Aliens Smile?

Why fetch this up again?

"Aycharaych smiled." (p. 11)

"Aycharaych...smiled..."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 73-238 AT 3, p. 89.

"[Aycharaych] smiled."

-ibid., p. 91.

"He smiled wider than before. His teeth were wholly nonhuman."

-ibid., p. 93.

At last a reminder that, despite all the smiles, Flandry and Desai are dealing with a nonhuman being.

We might start looking out for how many aliens smile.

Eriau And Anglic

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER I.

Flandry refers to "...the Merseian Empire..." (p. 8), not to the Roidhunate. Ruethen refers to his "'...tribe...'" (ibid.), not to his Vach. The Eriau terms have been translated into Anglic for us or the author had not invented the Eriau terms yet, whichever way we prefer to put it. Both statements are valid. The text is an artefact in our world while its content is a narrative set in a fictional world.

"Roidhun" is an Eriau title. "-ate" is an Anglic affix as in "directorate" or "Khanate." We imagine loan words and other linguistic interactions. "Admiral" is derived from Arabic "amir al," "commander of."

Ideally, every sf author would be able to do a Tolkien job on his alien languages but that is impossible. CS Lewis gives us a very few Solar words. His Narnians speak English because their first king was a London cab driver. I did not expect to begin with Flandry and Ruethen and wind up in Narnia.

Some Visuals

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER I.

This story abounds in vivid visuals. Flandry has borrowed a space yacht with a clear plastic bubble for a saloon. When he switches off the lights, he and his guest are surrounded by black space and wintry stars with Jupiter swelling before them and illuminating the yacht's interior so that Lady Diana's jewels glitter like raindrops. This has to be filmed in detail.

They arrive at a clear-walled artificial Jovian satellite, the Crystal Moon, with planar gravity fields holding giant synthetic jewels in orbit around a central minaret and a zero-gravity outer conservatory containing mutant ferns and orchids. With Jupiter, the Milky Way and the constellations all visible, they walk between yacht and satellite along a transparent tube to be greeted by the Merseian, Ruethen, standing before an iridescent sliding ramp. And that is just CHAPTER I.

An Or Any

"'The measure of our damnation is that every one of us with an intelligence - and there are some - every one sees the Long Night coming."

-Poul Anderson, We Claim These Stars (New York, 1959), CHAPTER VIII, p. 52.

Regular rereading highlights oddities of phraseology. Perhaps for the first time, we wonder whether "an intelligence" should have been "any intelligence" so we check with two other versions of this text:

"'...with any intelligence...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Agent of the Terran Empire (London, 1965), pp. 83-187 AT VIII, p. 125.

"'...with any intelligence...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 149-301 AT VIII, p. 210.

Two against one. We have had some of these before, haven't we?

Here is another example. In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, an English woman (mis)pronounces "Merlin" as "Merling," as well she might. Lewis had a good ear for the spoken language. In the omnibus edition, The Cosmic Trilogy, "Merling" has been corrected (?) or at least changed back to "Merlin." Regular readers spot what publishers and proof readers might miss. But we become familiar only with texts that merit such close study.

"Hunters..."

Another parallel between "Hunters of the Sky Cave" and A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows is that each of these two works presents a climactic show-down between Dominic Flandry and Aycharaych. In "Hunters...," Flandry captures Aycharaych. In A Knight..., he neutralizes him as an agent of Merseia and possibly also causes his death although that is secondary.

"Hunters..." has had two lengths and three titles:

"A Handful of Stars"

We Claim These Stars

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

It has grown from a magazine short story to an Ace paperback to an inclusion in a Dominic Flandry collection to an inclusion in a The Technic Civilization Saga volume, its ultimate place in Poul Anderson's works. All that can come after that is, hopefully, further editions of the Saga.

The opening sentences perfectly convey the confidence of Merseia and the decadence of Terra:

"It pleased Ruethen of the Long Hand to give a feast and ball at the Crystal Moon for his enemies. He knew they must come. Pride of race had slipped from Terra, while the need to appear well-bred and sophisticated had waxed correspondingly."

-Poul Anderson, We Claim These Stars (New York, 1959), CHAPTER I, p. 5.

Will our entire species interact with other rational species and, if so, will we be describable in such terms? While the Terran and Merseian space navies fight beyond Antares, Terran aristocrats, including Flandry, accept the hospitality of the Merseian representative in the Solar System. We appreciate this space opera narrative without asking whether it is plausible futurological speculation.

Saga, Vol VI

Dissimilar though they are, the Old Phoenix Inn and the Flandry period of the Technic History are in the same multiverse. Flandry refers to van Rijn who visits the Old Phoenix.

In Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra:

"The Plague of Masters" (short novel)

"Hunters of the Sky Cave" (short novel)

"The Warriors from Nowhere" (short story)

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (longer novel)

"Hunters..." and A Knight... are structurally similar. In both, Flandry, Chives and the heroine travel in the Hooligan from Terra to the heroine's home planet.

Chives and the Hooligan come on-stage in "Hunters..." and remain there until A Stone in Heaven, the first instalment to be collected in Volume VII. At present, my attention is refocusing on "Hunters..."

Free Houses

"...the free houses that owe no allegiance to any one time or dominion..."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997), p. 29, panel 2 -

- include:

Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End;

Gaiman's Toad-Stone;

Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix.

Differences between Worlds' End and Old Phoenix

(i) The Old Phoenix is between worlds whereas Worlds' End is at the end of all worlds. (Since worlds are ending all the time, the Worlds' End Inn is continually created.)

(ii) The Old Phoenix is always the same:

"The taproom is changeless..."

-Poul Anderson, "Loser's Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1996), pp. 105-123 AT p. 108 -

- whereas Worlds' End changes its size and shape even while people are in it.

(iii) In the Old Phoenix:

"Windows are always shuttered, I suppose because they would not look out over any of the worlds on which the front door opens, but onto something quite peculiar."

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 12.

- whereas guests in the Worlds' End both hear and see a storm - which is really a "reality storm" - and then see something very peculiar.

Saga, Vols V-VI

We have seen that The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes V and VI, contain:

two non-Flandry works;

the seven shorter Flandry works, including two short novels, that had previously been collected as Flandry of Terra and Agent of the Terran Empire;

the single longer Captain Flandry novel, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.

"Single" because Flandry is "Young" in three earlier novels and an Admiral in the two later ones. We have now summarized half of the Saga.

I want to delve deeper into Volume VI but later.

Novels And Shorter Works

"This book is a sort of coda to the biography of Dominic Flandry, Intelligence agent of the Terran Empire. His chronicles had occupied five novels and two collections of shorter stories..."

Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 191-192 AT p. 191.

These are the opening sentences of Poul Anderson's introduction to his novel, The Game of Empire. Like Anderson, I had thought that the Dominic Flandry series comprised five novels and two collections of shorter works. However, these seven shorter works include two shorter novels.

We Claim These Stars/"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

As an Ace paperback: 121 pages of text.

In Agent of the Terran Empire: 103 pages.

In Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra: 151 pages.

"The Plague of Masters"

In Agent of Terra: 106 pages.

In Sir Dominic Flandry..., 144 pages.

(This work also had an Ace paperback edition but I do not have a copy.)

Thus, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VI, Sir Dominic Flandry... collects three novels and one short story:

"The Plague of Masters"

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"
"The Warriors from Nowhere" (33 pages)

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (266 pages here; 213 as a paperback)

It is evident that:

"The Warriors..." is indeed short;

A Knight..., one of the "five novels," is longer than the two that had been included in earlier collections.

Thus, Volume VI, like Volume IV, is an omnibus collection of three novels - plus the one short story that can retroactively be regarded as a prelude to A Knight...

Lengths Of Works Of Prose Fiction

There are:

very short stories, even one-pagers

short stories

novelettes

novellas

novels, which can be of very different lengths

Alone among volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader, informs us on its contents page of the lengths of the works that it collects. Thus, we are told that:

"Territory" is a novella;

"The Trouble Twisters" is a novella;

"Day of Burning" is a novella;

"The Master Key" is a novella;

Satan's World is a novel;

"A Little Knowledge" is a short story;

"Lodestar" is a novella.

Five novellas, one short story and one novel. This information would be helpful in other collections.

The categories are based on word numbers. Not being able to guesstimate the number of words in a text, I fall back on page numbers. My rule of thumb is that a novel is 100+ pages. But page number varies between editions due to font size etc.

The Flandry Series

The way that I think about Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series does not match the way that the series is presented in Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga. Volume IV is entitled Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire yet begins with a story that does not mention Flandry followed by a novel that merely mentions Flandry. Clearly, these two works should be in an earlier volume. Then Captain Flandry... would begin properly with "Tiger by the Tail," currently its third story, which is in fact the earliest published instalment of the Captain Flandry series. After that, the Captain Flandry stories follow in their correct order. However, Volume IV ends with "A Message in Secret" and Volume V begins with "The Plague of Masters." The latter is a direct sequel to the former and belongs in the same volume with it. More on all this later.

Le Matelot

Hank Davis, compiler of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, describes the passage signed by "Le Matelot" as the introduction to "Hiding Place," which was the first of the three Nicholas van Rijn stories collected as Trader to the Stars. But it is not. Examining a copy of Trader to the Stars, I judge that Le Matelot introduces the volume as a whole. Le Matelot is on p. 7, p. 8 is blank and "Hiding Place" begins on p. 9. The content of Le Matelot refers not to this first story but simply to the Polesotechnic League. Therefore, Le Matelot introduces the League period as such. In Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, Le Matelot should precede not "Hiding Place," the last story in this volume, but "Margin of Profit," the fourth story, which introduces both van Rijn and the League. "Le Matelot" is an ultimate statement of a new beginning and should appear as early as possible in Saga, Volume I.

Works of fiction coexist in an imaginative space. The Technic History and Cities in Flight are alternative future histories. Van Rijn from the Technic History visits the Old Phoenix Inn. I am just about to return to Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End. And that is all for this evening.

Ends And Beginnings

The previous post about change in Poul Anderson's Technic History ended with a new beginning at the end of the Technic History and therefore connected with a new beginning at the end of Volume I of James Blish's future history, Cities in Flight. Any change is an end and a beginning. Cities in Flight, Volume IV, ends with the ultimate new beginning:

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph of Time IN Blish, Cities in Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

Returning to that conclusion of Volume I, when Wagoner wonders whether to sign his name, he reflects:

"There was writing enough in the stars that he could see, because he had written it there. There was a constellation called Wagoner, and every star in the sky belonged to it. That was surely enough." (p. 129)

What an inspiring introduction to a future history series. Wagoner has been responsible for the discovery of the antigravity and the antiagathics that make interstellar flight possible. Blish, more than any other future historian, devoted early instalments of a series to the invention of the necessary technology. Anderson devotes the first instalment of his Flying Mountains series to the discovery of gravity control, thus paralleling Blish.

Blish's canon is smaller. In Cities in Flight, the interstellar traders and empires exist only in Volumes II and III. We blog more about Anderson partly because of his larger output.

Change

Apart from the sixteen Technic History instalments about the Polesotechnic League and the fifteen about the Flandry period, the remaining twelve instalments convey times of change. 

In "The Saturn Game," exploration of the Solar System has begun and Earth is being renewed after the Chaos.

In "Wings of Victory," the first interstellar Grand Survey has begun and Ythri is discovered.

In "The Problem of Pain," Ythrians have become spacefarers. Some have studied on Aeneas and are now exploring Avalon.

"Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon" are about the early stages of the colonization of Avalon.

"The Star Plunderer" is about the Time of Troubles and the proclamation of the Terran Empire.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships": the early Terran Empire has just incorporated Ansa.

The People of the Wind: The Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri adjust their borders while the Merseian Roidhunate grows.

"A Tragedy of Errors": alliances are formed during the Long Night.

"The Night Face": a long isolated planet is re-contacted.

"The Sharing of Flesh": the Allied Planets re-civilize isolated planets.

"Starfog": humanity has spread through several spiral arms, the planet Vixen, which existed in the Flandry period, has established its own colony, appropriately called New Vixen, and a new era of immense wealth is about to begin.

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, ' is a new beginning."

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities in Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

Posting about the end of Anderson's Technic History recalled the end of Volume I of Blish's future history.

Change And Stability V: League And Empire

Two long sections of Poul Anderson's Technic History are each set entirely within a particular (different) period. Consequently, each of these sections exhibits much more stability than change.

The Polesotechnic League

16 instalments

beginning with the fourth instalment in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I

ending with the first instalment in Volume III

The Flandry Period

15 instalments

beginning with the first instalment in Volume IV

ending with the second instalment in Volume VII

The fifteenth League instalment, "Lodestar," displays major conflicts in the League and the concluding instalment, Mirkheim, demonstrates that these conflicts are terminal.

In the thirteenth Flandry Period instalment, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, the Terran Empire has lost its legitimacy because it is now ruled by a usurper who came to power in a civil war that had occurred between instalments. However, the theoretician, Chunderban Desai, explains to Dominic Flandry that this is nothing new:

"'The cycle fills the history, yes, the archaeology of this whole planet we are sitting on. Old China and older Egypt each went thrice through the whole sorry mess. The Western civilization to which ours is affiliated rose originally from the same kind of thing, that Roman Empire some of our rulers have liked to hark back to for examples of glory.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-60 AT III, p. 388.

"'...we can find over fifty examples just in the dust of this one world.'" (ibid.)

So apparent changes are just more of the same?

At the end of Volume VII, mankind has many civilizations so that the process of rise and fall, if it continues, will have to occur in many parts of several spiral arms.

Change And Stability IV

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume IV, Young Flandry

A change for the reader because this volume is not a collection of stories but a trilogy of novels.

Change for an individual because Dominic Flandry is promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant to Commander.

Change for the Empire because benign Georgios is succeeded by vile Josip. This will have even direr consequences in Volume VI when Josip dies without an heir.

The biggest change feared by Flandry and others is the "Long Night" that will follow the Fall of the Empire but that will not happen until well into Volume VII. And how far we have come since the beginning of Volume I!

Change And Stability III

Poul Anderson's The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III

This volume is about nothing but change, most - although not all - of it, accompanied by conflict. Volume III, Rise of the Terran Empire, contrasts sharply with Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, just as, in Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume III, Revolt In 2100, contrasts sharply with Volume II, The Green Hills of Earth.

Rise of the Terran Empire collects six Technic History instalments. 

Mirkheim recounts the first civil war in the Polesotechnic League which is also the beginning of the end of the League. This solid novel is our last sight of van Rijn, Falkayn and the trader team and we also see some disaffected Merseians, precursors of the Flandry period.

"Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon": two stages of the Falkayn-led colonization of Avalon, first the Hesperian islands, then the Coronan continent. Joint colonization by human beings and Ythrians without conflict other than some initial friction.

"The Star Plunderer": nothing but conflict. Earth sacked. The Commonwealth dead. A slave revolt. The Terran Empire proclaimed. We are now as far as we can get from the peaceful era of Volume I.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships": Conflict continues. The Empire expands by force and is threatened by powerful aliens.

The People of the Wind: There is now a Terran Empire, a Domain of Ythri and a small but growing Merseian Roidhunate. An Empire-Domain border dispute ends when the Empire concedes that Avalon will remain in the Domain.

The scene is now set for the following three and a half volumes of the Saga.

Change And Stability II

Poul Anderson's The Technic Civilization Saga

Volume I

The first three stories in this volume are preliminaries. In the remaining eight instalments, the period of the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League has been established and is not yet in decline. Nicholas van Rijn is old but still active in no less than four instalments, including one novel. Adzel studies on Earth. David Falkayn rises quickly within the League. League merchants trade on many planets, including Ivanhoe which appears twice. An endless series could have been set within this period. However, large scale change happens and will become evident in Volume II.

Volume II

"Territory": No change so far. Van Rijn remains active.

"The Trouble Twisters": Change for individuals. Van Rijn appoints Falkayn to lead the trader team.

"Day of Burning": Change with long term consequences on Merseia.

"The Master Key": Van Rijn slows down and solves a problem from an armchair.

Satan's World: An external threat to Technic civilization.

"A Little Knowledge": Merchants deal unscrupulously with other species.

"Lodestar": Major conflicts within the League, even between van Rijn and Falkayn. 

Change And Stability

History has two aspects:

Change. Over several millennia, very great change, all the way from hunting and gathering to saturation bombing and climate catastrophe.

Stability. Periods of relative stability when life becomes routine and seems not to change except in unimportant details. The life of an individual changes all the way from birth to death but, at any given time, many individuals are alive at every intermediate stage. Thus, it seems that nothing really changes.

A future history series has to show both aspects.

Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volumes I-IV

I: technological change in the second half of the twentieth century.

II: daily life in the interplanetary period.

III and IV: social regression and political revolution.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

Between World War III and the Second Dark Ages: 

world government and reconstruction.

Between the Second and Third Dark Ages: 

interstellar government and coordination.

Poul Anderson's Technic History

To be continued.

Land, Sea, Air And Time

Just south of here, the M6 Motorway passes above a canal and a railway line that run in parallel and aircraft are sometimes seen overhead. Road, rail, water and air: is anyone also time travelling at that point on the Earth's surface?

If either H. G. Wells' Time Traveller or one of Poul Anderson's mutant time travellers passes from the remote future to the remote past at that point, then he is present, invisible and intangible, every time I drive above that canal and railway line and beneath those planes. He might momentarily glimpse the M6 but will not notice individual vehicles. Time travel fiction is a good way to reflect on the transience of life.

A Time Patrol timecycle disappears from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates and appears at another set without existing between them. In Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis, the space-time vehicle called the anakro passes above land and water while travelling through time. Anderson's time corridors are underground and it should be possible to construct a corridor in ordinary space that will give access to any moment in the internal history of a time corridor. Lastly, with T-machines, as in Anderson's The Avatar, a time journey is also a long space journey and therefore does not involve remaining stationary on Earth.

One example from Wells, followed by five from Anderson.

Saga And Earth Book

In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, Earth Book instalments are seven out of eleven. In Volume II, they are three out of seven and, in Volume III, they are two out of six. So they kind of peter out. But nevertheless they comprise exactly half of the instalments in Volumes I-III. Also, the Ythrian connection continues in Volume IV and is finally mentioned one last time, by Dominic Flandry, in Volume VII. The Earth Book remains a major part of the Technic History even when its contents have been dispersed through three of the seven omnibus volumes. It is getting late here and I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

Diversity

Fiction reflects life. We see cultural diversity in large cities now and also see it continued in Poul Anderson's Technic History:

Orthochristianity on Dennitza;

Catholicism on Nuevo Mexico;

Judaism on Dayan;

Hinduism on Ramanujan;

a Moslem-Buddhist synthesis on Altai;

a Sikh in Ensign Flandry;

St. Carl's Church in Starfall on Hermes;

a glass cathedral in Domkirk on Freehold;

a ruined temple where Diana Crowfeather keeps her sleeping bag on Imhotep;

Merseians striking their gong (an independent tradition).

I have visited a Jain Temple in Leicester and a Gurdwara in Manchester and, on Saturday, with a group of bilingual (Arabic- and English-speaking) Palestinians, visited the men's prayer room in the Central London Mosque. It was more like a Buddhist meditation hall than either a church or a synagogue. And maybe we are at the beginning of an interstellar civilization? (I doubt it but maybe.)

Beginnings

The first volume of The Technic Civilization Saga collects (not in this order):

the first story in the Technic History;

the first story in Trader To The Stars;

the first two stories in The Trouble Twisters;

the first seven stories in The Earth Book of Stormgate -

- so it is a genuine beginning!

Much as I appreciate The Earth Book of Stormgate as a comprehensive and pivotal volume, I have to acknowledge the Saga for its completeness.

Donvar Ayeghen And Michael Karageorge

So far, the process has been:

a short story is published in a magazine;

it is collected with a new introduction in Trader To The Stars, The Trouble Twisters or The Earth Book of Stormgate;

it is re-collected together with its more recently acquired introduction in The Technic Civilization Saga.

We now find two exceptions that are also companion stories:

"The Star Plunderer" was introduced by Donvar Ayeghen of the Galactic Archaeological Society in its original magazine publication;

"Sargasso of Lost Starships" acquired its introduction by Michael Karageorge in The Technic Civilization Saga.

(Also, the author behind Michael Karageorge is not Poul Anderson but the Saga compiler, Hank Davis.)

We might eventually get to perceive The Technic Civilization Saga in all its aspects.

"...We Are On Our Way"

Perhaps the most inspiring - or perhaps a better word is "awesome" - passage in Poul Anderson's Technic History is the concluding paragraph of the introduction to "Hiding Place":

"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way.

"-Le Matelot."

Again, this introduction was added in the collection, Trader To The Stars, and is rightly retained in The Van Rijn Method. Nicholas van Rijn is the title character of both these volumes. "Hiding Place" is the first of three stories in Trader To The Stars, which was Volume I of the Technic History, but the last of eleven stories in The Van Rijn Method, which is Volume I of The Technic Civilization Saga. A whole ten instalments, including a full novel, are set earlier than the story that had been the first to be collected.

Although Le Matelot's generation did not know or care where they were going, we, having read the Technic History, do know and it is not all good.

"How To Be Ethnic..." And "Esau"

In "Esau," a conversation between Emil Dalmady and Nicholas van Rijn frames an account of Dalmady's experiences on the planet, Suleiman. However, Dalmady remains the viewpoint character, and is described in the third person, throughout. An author decides how to present a narrative at the beginning and at any crucial turning points. Readers might have expected van Rijn's perceptions of Dalmady in the framing sequences and Dalmady's first person account in the inner story but, in this case, Anderson operates otherwise. 

Hloch informs us that children of Dalmady went to Avalon with Falkayn and that one of them, Judith, wrote "Esau" as well as two other stories that were published in Morgana and later incorporated into the Earth Book. As with the later life of Jim Ching, we would not have known any of this without Hloch's input. Hloch's introductions are as much a part of the Technic History as are the introduced stories.

Hloch states that "How To Be Ethnic..." shows us:

"...Terran society when the Polesotechnic League was in its glory..."

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 176.

- but also that, at the time of "Esau," League philosophy and practice:

"...were becoming slightly archaic, if not obsolete."

-Poul Anderson, "Esau" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 517-553 At p. 517.

- yet there is at most only a decade and a half between these stories in Sandra Miesel's CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION.

Maybe these two stories should be further apart in the Chronology?