A Soothing, Then Unsettling, Helicopter Ride

The Byworlder, VI.

Almeida flies Yvonne home by helicopter:

"The ride was balm. Only a murmur of blades and wind, the gentlest quiver through seat and flesh, broke stillness." (p. 53)

The wind always plays along in Poul Anderson's texts. Yvonne is enjoying a metaphorical quiet after the storm so this wind merely murmurs. During the journey, she becomes unsettled when Almeida challenges her liberal intellectual world-view. Consequently (?), on arrival:

""A cold wind streaked by, ruffling hair and slacks, sheathing her face." (p. 56)

While they are still airborne, Anderson places them in their cosmic context by listing some visible stars and constellations:

Deneb

Vega

Pegasus

the Great Bear

Draco

Polaris

Almeida's profile joins our list of objects:

"...seen against the Milky Way..." (p. 53)

Almeida:

"'I think [America] can better be trusted than anyone else -'" (p. 56)

How many people think that their country can be trusted better than any other? But this time it happens to be true? They all say that as well. I happen to think that the world needs something more than just one of the current super powers gaining more power than any of the others. Do I think that my view is right? Of course I do. Otherwise, it would not be my point of view. Does my thinking that my view is right prove that it is right? Of course not! How many people need to grasp this distinction?

The BBC TV series, Doctor Who, primarily aimed at school children, was also watched by University students. When a stereotypical militarist, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, said, "And, of course, the only country that all other countries could trust not to misuse military intelligence in its own interests was Great Britain!," University students laughed. Was that script written very cleverly as nationalist propaganda for one age group but as satire for another?

Wang Li

Poul Anderson's The Byworlder, Chapter V, presents a sympathetic treatment of Wang Li, a well-meaning scientist obliged to live and work under Maoism. His father was wounded by the Americans in Korea and killed by the Russians in Siberia.

Remember that line of reasoning to the conclusion that a technologically advanced race must have solved its social problems? The Maoist version of that, expressed by Wang Li's superior, General Chou Yuan, is:

"'Some believe that the Sigman will inevitably put itself at the disposal of the people's sacred cause, when communication has become good enough for it to realize what conditions are like on Earth.'" (p. 45)

Put itself at the disposal! Of the Chinese government? We really do not know what will happen. My hope would be that a wiser and more technologically advanced alien would introduce, gradually, technological innovations that would ease the most pressing problems on Earth, thus starting to address the most immediate causes of conflict. Beyond that, it would be up to us - "the people" - how we responded to any help offered by an alien.  

Poul Anderson's Time Travel

We would like to see uniform editions of Poul Anderson's time travel works presented as a single discrete sub-category of his complete works. Thus, the Time Patrol series would be reissued in either two or four volumes. A revised and completed Past Times collection would still of course culminate in "Flight to Forever." There Will Be Time should be presented as the culminating volume of a trilogy beginning with the collected Maurai short stories and continuing with the long novel, Orion Shall Rise. Of these three volumes, only There Will Be Time deals with time travel but it nevertheless belongs with the Maurai History since, in this case, Anderson merged time travel with future history. That leaves The Corridors Of Time and The Dancer From Atlantis as two one-off time travel novels although I also link the latter to Conan The Rebel and The Golden Slave because these are Anderson's three novels set B.C. Anderson's time travel works considered as a whole are one massive successor to H.G. Wells' contrastingly brief The Time Machine.

We would also like to see long and detailed screen and graphic adaptations of Anderson's time travel works. A single actor would be able to play Brann in The Corridors Of Time and Merau Varagan in the Time Patrol series - as well as the Master in the Doctor Who series. In particular, the many future periods visited in "Flight to Forever" deserve different and special visual treatment. There is the climax of the restoration of the Galactic Empire followed by several even remoter future periods leading to the dissolution and reconfiguration of the universe, then a journey forward through Earth's past and back to this time traveller's starting point. These concepts and images deserve to transcend their original formulations as prose fiction.

A Special Post

Fiction reflects life. Futuristic sf reflects the period when it was written and sometimes explicitly comments on contemporary society. Time travel fiction set in the past can comment also although perhaps not as often. Manse Everard meets Chaim and Yael Zorach, an Israeli couple who run the Time Patrol base in Tyre in 950 B.C., during the reigns of Hiram and Solomon. Chaim explains:

"'...this post is special for us. We don't just maintain a base and its cover business, we manage to help local people now and then. Or we try to, as much as we can without causing anybody to suspect that there's anything peculiar about us. That makes up, somehow, a little bit, for...for what our countrymen will do hereabouts, far uptime.'

"Everard nodded."

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 246.

The trouble with that is that the Patrol exists to preserve every atrocity that was ever committed in history. This brings us back to the paradoxes. It seems to me that, if an event is known to occur/have occurred at a particular set of spatiotemporal coordinates - and there can be more than one temporal coordinate - then it is not the case that that event also does not occur at that set of coordinates. If we change the temporal coordinate, i.e., move to an alternative or parallel timeline, then of course, in that timeline, there might be a different or altered sequence of events. Thus, the Danellians and the Patrol could leave behind them their original timeline in which there is both a Holocaust and a Nakba and bring about a completely different sequence of events although they would then be unable to return to their original sequence of events.

Poul Anderson's Non-Humanoid Aliens

The Reardonite in "the Pirate" in the Psychotechnic History.

Rax in A Circus Of Hells in the Technic History.

The Baburites in "Esau" and Mirkheim in the Technic History.

The Dreamer in "Flight to Forever."

The Sigman in The Byworlder.

Baburites and Sigmans chew food with their claws. Baburites dissolve it in a pouch and suck it through a snout whereas Sigmans ingest it up an arm. Sigmans face both ways and have no front or back. Poul Anderson designed them to be physically disgusting to human beings. Read his description and see what I mean.

Communication with the Sigman failed for three years but then Yvonne made a breakthrough because she realized that human scientists had been synthesizing sounds that were unpleasant or even painful for the Sigman.

Steps To The Top

The Byworlder, III.

Skip approaches Chief Keogh of the Tuatha de Danaan Keeper caravan so that the latter will pass him on to a reputable scientist or engineer who can get him an interview with President Braverman or Commissioner Uchida. Skip reckons that no one in the US is more than ten steps away from the top. For example, he knows his father who knows a state committeeman who is friendly with Senators who know the President but Keogh must know more scientists and engineers than Skip's father and their word will carry more weight in this matter.

We made this same point in relation to Targovi and Flandry in Targovi IV. We still do not know what Skip wants to say.

Future Education

The Byworlder.

While Skip travels, a bore on a bus gives us more background information. Education has been technologized with the teaching machine (?), psychophysiological conditioning, subliminal exposure, simpler, subtler, deeper approaches and effective positive reinforcement. It sounds as if the methods of the Psychotechnic Institute have survived in this future. The bore bemoans the loss of scholarship but then says that he would joyfully nuke the Satanic Sigman! Not scholarship but obscurantism and worse. If an alien arrived tomorrow, then some among us would say precisely that.

Skip reflects:

"Frustration breeds fanatics..." (III, p. 26)

Yes, frustration. There is a social explanation.

Death And Completion

Aycharaych tells Dominic Flandry that death is a completion. See Reflections On Death. 

"'What did Paul Atreides tell you, woman?' he demanded...'He told you that completion equals death!' The Preacher shouted."

-Frank Herbert, Children of Dune (New York, 1977), p. 226.

So death is a completion and completion equals death? I question that second statement. I doubt that there is any connection between the two texts.

Occasionally rereading other future histories, I appreciate Poul Anderson's Technic History more by contrast. I must now complete my lunch and walk to Morecambe. We will return to Anderson's The Byworlder shortly.

The Earth Book In The Technic History

As regular readers of this blog already know, the first section of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, corresponding only to the first three of the seven volumes of Baen Books' omnibus collection, The Technic Civilization Saga, comprises:

The Polesotechnic League Tetralogy

Trader To The Stars

The Trouble Twisters

Satan's World

Mirkheim

Two Ythrian Volumes

The People Of The Wind

The Earth Book Of Stormgate (which is also the 5th League volume)

Three Other Stories

"The Saturn Game"

"The Star Plunderer"

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

The three stories could be collected to be read between League and Ythrians although "The Saturn Game" is pre-League.

The Earth Book illuminates earlier volumes because it collects:

the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," which was quoted, in a passage adapted as an introduction, at the beginning of the second of the three stories in Trader To The Stars;

"The Season of Forgiveness" which is a sequel to the first of the three stories in The Trouble Twisters;

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" which expands on Adzel's student days which were first mentioned in the third story in The Trouble Twisters;

"Esau," The Man Who Counts "Day of Burning," and "Lodestar" which shed light on different aspects of Mirkheim;

"Wings of Victory," "The Problem of Pain," "Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon" which are prequels to The People Of The Wind;

"A Little Knowledge" which is of more general significance.

Skip Travels

The Byworlder, III.

Despite having just begun a casual relationship with Urania, Skip:

"...burned to be off with the word that had come to him..." (p. 22)

This word must be important although we still do not know what it is. He burns to convey it to:

"...the President of the United States or the High Commissioner of the Peace Authority..." (ibid.)

- or someone like that. We are learning more about this future world state of affairs by subtler means than Urania's list of "income guarantee" etc in Chapter I. Skip is about to travel so we will learn more about the world as he travels through it although not tonight as I sometimes say. The first thing that Skip does is to phone data service and enquire about Keeper caravans...

High Tech Survival

The Byworlder.

We will not know what another rational species is like until we encounter one and, so far, they have been conspicuous by their absence on Earth, in the Solar System and as far as we can see beyond that. I know that the universe is a big place but maybe it is such a big place that the nearest technological civilization is several galaxies away and not even contemporary with ours. I am certain that, if and when we do make First Contact, then the Others will not be remotely like what anyone has ever imagined. (Although, of course, I could be wrong even about that.)

"'I agree with those who hold that star-exploring civilizations must be peaceful because otherwise they would have destroyed themselves before reaching the required level of technology.'" (II, p. 19)

Well, it depends what level of technology is required, doesn't it? But, more generally, I agree with a point that I first read somewhere in Arthur C. Clarke's non-fictional works. Any species that has had a very high level of technology for a very long time must have ceased to conduct intra-species conflicts because otherwise it would surely have destroyed itself before now? Can nuclear weapons continue to be manufactured and stockpiled indefinitely without ever being used? Have we just been lucky all this time? (Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers think so.) How long before terrorists get nukes? What news might we wake up to tomorrow morning? As part of the same argument, indeed even more obviously, the high tech species must have prevented its technology from destroying its environment.

The speaker goes on to say that the extra-solars cannot have any motive to attack Earth. Again, I tend to agree but we cannot be certain and would have to be prepared for anything.

Internet And International Stability

The Byworlder.

Chapter II ends when Yvonne passes:

"...inboard to confront the Sigman." (p. 21)

However, when we turn the page, Chapter III returns us to Skip in the Theontologist adobe village back on Earth. Suspense.

Chapter II presented several data of which we will note four. First, every encounter with the Sigman:

"...is fully recorded in every feasible way and put on the open data lines." (p. 15)

Thus, Earth has the Internet in a novel published in 1971. We knew it was coming. My name for it was "Cencom": Central Computer.

Secondly, Americans, Europeans, Russians and Chinese regularly send their representatives to try to converse with the Sigman. The Terrestrial powers are no longer at daggers drawn. There is some global stability and arms control.

Thirdly, Yvonne, American, feels that a pattern is emerging from her contacts with the Sigman. She might be on the verge of a breakthrough. This puts her in the same camp as Skip who thought that he had realized something. No doubt these two characters will come together.

Fourthly:

"Traffic Control's computers steered [Yvonne's] car out of town..." (ibid.)

Standard stuff in an Andersonian future.

POVs And A Realization

The Byworlder.

Chapter I is narrated entirely from the point of view (pov) of Skip and ends when he has an Andersonian moment of realization. A spacecraft from Sigma Draconis is orbiting in the Solar System. Puzzled by the continued failure of scientists and politicians to establish communication with the Sigman, as the single extra-solar alien in the spacecraft is called, Skip speculates about the Sigman's motivations, then suddenly stops speaking:

"'If -'" (p. 14)

His mouth falls open, he drops his fork and yells - all the signs of an Andersonian moment. We know that we will have to wait to learn what his realization is, especially since this is the end of a chapter and the following chapter introduces a new character in a new setting.

I have read The Byworlder at least twice before but cannot remember what Skip's realization is. Is it that the Sigman's motivations might be not scientific but artistic - what with Skip being an artistic kind of guy?

The opening passage of Chapter II begins with the pov of Yvonne Canter:

"...Yvonne Canter reflected." (p. 15)

"That's what they think, Yvonne told herself." (ibid.)

- but inexplicably changes pov:

"Almeida doubted Yvonne had had any bed partner in life except her husband..." (p. 17)

A double space between paragraphs immediately before:

"Almeida studied her." (p. 16)

- should have been used to mark the change of povs.

A double space on p. 17 does mark the return to Yvonne's pov and also a change of scene because she is now in space approaching the Sigman's vessel.

Truth And Falsehood

The Byworlder, I. 

Theontology:

our minds largely construct our apprehensions of reality;

everything imagined contains partial, distorted truth and points to cosmic oneness;

meditation on every aspect opens us to "'...direct apprehension of the divine.'" (p. 7)

A Catholic dogmatist once said to me, "Truth is one. Error is manifold." I replied, "Truth is one. Its expressions are manifold." Those are a classic Hegelian thesis and antithesis. What is the synthesis? That there is some truth in every error and some error in every expression of truth? I could live in the Theontological village, practicing Zen. I can participate in rituals provided that they do not demand an affirmation of faith in the literal existence of deities. I can accept food in a temple but not communion in a church.

Night

The Byworlder, I.

By moonlight, Skip sees:

cultivated fields

a stream

cottonwoods

sagebrush

boulders

a rabbit

an owl

"...majestic mountains." (p. 8)

"Skip felt his irreverent heart uplifted. The night was so huge and holy." (ibid.)

We remember:

High is heaven and holy.

Poul Anderson presents not only technological futures but also an appreciation of the natural world, past, present and future.

The "huge and holy night" is my time to turn to other reading.

Life Styles And Pathetic Fallacy

The Byworlder, I.

"'Please understand that this community doesn't disdain cybernation and machines. Without them - without income guarantee, the low price of most necessities, cheap and versatile power tools, everything technology makes possible - I doubt we could have made a go of this.'" (p. 10)

Urania of the Theontological Spirits cult addresses her guest and our viewpoint character, Skip, but she really lectures the reader with a list of aspects of their contemporary society. The author is cutting corners in laying out the background details for this novel. The monastery that supports our meditation group is maintained entirely by voluntary donations from members of the lay sangha (Buddhist community). Without that, the monks would have to be working clergy. "Income guarantee" would go a long way toward supporting a diversity of life styles. 

Something else happens between Urania and Skip:

"They kissed. The sun rose blindingly over a tall peak. A lark whistled." (ibid.)

That much is pathetic fallacy. The following sentence tells us something about the Theontological community:

"A few persons in sight voiced friendly cheers." (ibid.)

Sun, a lark and friendship. All is well, so far. 

The Jesus Cult

The Byworlder, I. 

Theontology incorporates the Jesus and other cults. Writers sometimes change our perception of the familiar by referring to it in terms that are unfamiliar. Thus, not Christianity but "Jesus cult." 

Other examples:

the adjective, "Christic";

"the brotherhood of the book and the bread";

"A man is sipping wine by candlelight in the presence of kneeling women."

Does the Jesus cult include Christians in any of the traditional senses? Probably not. They would not want to be classed as one "cult" among others. If I were in the Theontology commune or whatever it is, I would practice zazen in the Amida cult but might also make a contribution to the Jesus cult. I would suggest that we focus on the early Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom (a new consciousness and a new society) but not on the later Jesus who let Peter persuade him that he was the Messiah, then interpreted the Messiah as the Suffering Servant. Thus, our symbol would be the fish, not the cross.

Sandalphon's Cross

The Byworlder, I. 

"Sandalphon...was tall and richly bearded, belonged to the Jesus cult and had thus donned a black ceremonial robe, setting off a pectoral cross of turquoise-studded silver." (p. 6)

This passage has many connotations for me as a reader. Following our personal connotations takes us away from the author's textual denotations but is valid nonetheless. 

An image of an instrument of torture and execution is decorated in turquoise and silver! I dislike the cross or crucifix as a symbol of a blood sacrifice. There are crosses of other shapes. The Christian-shaped cross might be used to symbolize the intersection of time with eternity. The horizontal line is time. The vertical, which is longer, is eternity which always intersects time in the present. Thus, the past is to one side and the future to the other. Everything is there. Sort of.

Three better religious symbols, in my opinion, are:

the seated Buddha;

yin-yang;

the fish, for Christianity.

Next we will consider the Jesus cult. 

Introducing The Byworlder

Poul Anderson, The Byworlder (New York, 1971). 

Theontology (scroll down) sounds familiar but is not on google. The name combines theology or Theosophy with Scientology.

Starting to reread The Byworlder again, we find both that we have posted about it in some detail previously and also that we have forgotten most of the details. This is another implied future history since some sequence of events must link the author's time to this particular fictional future. From the opening page, we enter into yet another imagined future society with background references whose meanings will become clearer as the narrative proceeds and I am typing this over a hasty breakfast so we will have to return to this theme later. Let us try to spread some light in a darkening world.

Revisiting "The Voortrekkers"

Poul Anderson, "The Voortrekkers" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 249-270.

This story comprises nine narrative passages:

the first

the second

the third

the fourth, fifth and sixth

the sixth and seventh

the eighth and ninth

For discussions of the story in its entirety, see:

The Voortrekkers

Assessing "The Voortrekkers"

"Life After Life, Death After Death"

- and for more on the first passage, see:

Milky Way, Andromeda And Sirius

EXPLORATIONS: Contents

Poul Anderson's Explorations collects:

"The Saturn Game"

"The Bitter Bread"

The Ways of Love"

"The Voortrekkers"

"Epilogue"

"Starfog"

"The Saturn Game" and "Starfog" belong in the collected Technic History and are to be found there. "The Way of Love" belongs in the same volume as The Enemy Stars to which it is a sequel and indeed they have been republished as a single volume. The remaining three stories are one-offs. They belong in a multi-volume collection of all of Anderson's non-series shorter works which I think should be presented in chronological order of publication. Thus, there are several collections like Explorations that would not be reproduced as such in any Complete Works of Poul Anderson. In particular, The Armies of Elfland is entirely redundant.

"Epilogue": Climax

Can we analyse Poul Anderson's "Epilogue" without discussing its dramatic climax? Yes because we have already discussed that passage in reasonable detail in 2013. See Madness And Divinity.

The radio assault on the robots includes:

an Upanishad

Shakespeare

the Bible

- and Zero's response includes a robotic adaptation of part of the "Hail Mary" prayer.

Dramatic indeed but that almost concludes "Epilogue" so where next? We will find that out tomorrow.

Robots

It took me a long time to realize that Poul Anderson's "Epilogue" is a robots story. First, we read Zero's point of view with only occasional clues as to his body shape. Then the human characters perceive him as a large metallic four-armed humanoid although his wife is a completely different shape. Next, it occurs to us and to them that the word, "robot," is applicable provided that this does not imply that organic beings have constructed Zero to serve them, to obey orders - even to obey the Three Laws - or to replace human workers. Zero was created in a solution inside another machine for no other purpose than the propagation of his species so he is not a robot in the original sense of "worker" but is in fact a hunter of other machines whose metal and reusable parts he needs for survival. This machine ecology was not constructed for any purpose but merely grew by natural selection. Robots in the original sense are three billion years in the past.

In "That Thou Art Mindful Of Him," one of Isaac Asimov's culminating Robots stories, human beings are designedly roboticizing the Terrestrial ecology with artificial worms, insects, birds etc but that is design, not natural selection. Anderson's Psychotechnic History includes one robot story in which the moral is that the first robot in the world is already redundant and unemployed although, at the same time, human labour is being displaced by high tech automation and computerization.

Leadership

"Epilogue."

Hundred is a leader, not a ruler. He issues practical instructions which are complied with because they work and because they come from the wise Hundred who would lose his following if he became senile. He would not have to be deposed because he does not occupy any formal or official position in the first place. 

When Zero says "No..." to a direct order:

"Hundred surrendered, having lived long enough to recognize unbendable negation." (p. 228)

Hundred has neither the means nor the will to coerce Zero. He continues to address the immediate crisis, directing other members of their community.

Leadership is inherent in social interactions. You give a lead every time you make a suggestion that is accepted. Sometimes a leader steps forward, risking that he will not be followed, but never stands back to order others forward nor has he the means to do so. We lead by example.

Inside And Outside

"Requiem."

The two preceding posts highlight two different meanings of the words, "inside" and "within." What is inside human beings?

Objectively, physically, materially, empirically:

a brain;

soft material in red liquid.

Subjectively, mentally, psychologically, spiritually:

consciousness/awareness.

Some of those adverbs imply mind-body dualism but I am using the available vocabulary.

The philosophical question:

How does the objective generate the subjective?

Answer:

We do not know and maybe the question cannot be answered. 

Authors of fiction work with the objective-subjective distinction every time they write a narrative with a point of view. Objectively, the temperature is below freezing point. Subjectively, we are informed that one of the characters feels cold and notices that others are also shivering. An account is either objective or subjective but nothing bridges the gap.

Brains And Awareness

"Epilogue." 

Zero regards a captured biped and reflects that it is not a unit but an entity:

"Somewhere behind that glass and horrible tissue, a brain peered back at him." (p. 232)

A brain. Of course, this is just an English word used by the narrator just as "Zero" is not really Zero's name. Nevertheless, the word establishes for our benefit that Zero's kind have an internal organ which they identify as the seat of thought. Zero is coming to accept that his captive also thinks whereas Seven remains uncertain:

"'Despite our previous conversation... I cannot bring myself to believe quite seriously that these are anything but motiles or artifacts. Very ingenious and complex, to be sure...but aware, like a person?'" (p. 233)

Just before this, Seven has questioned whether the alien biped is conscious. I have come to realise that "consciousness" and "awareness" are synonyms, therefore that neither can be used to define the other, although these and related words can be used with slightly different nuances. If Seven thinks that the biped is not conscious/aware but instead is either a motile or an artefact, then apparently he thinks that motiles are not conscious/aware whereas I had thought that they were the equivalent of animals. According to Seven, only persons are aware. He agrees with Descartes. 

Can Chemistry Be Intelligent?

"Epilogue."

While we wonder how the intelligent machines function, Poul Anderson shows them wondering about us:

"'I cannot understand your description of the bipeds' interior,' Hundred said practically. 'Soft, porous material soaked in sticky red liquid; acrid vapors - How do they work? Where is the mechanism?'" (p. 228)

Seven thinks that the captured bipeds might be chemically powered artefacts. Zero thinks that they are auxiliaries of "'...the monster...,'" (p. 229) his name for the space boat, then realizes in amazement that they might instead be its masters! Meanwhile, the human beings have with some difficulty acknowledged between themselves that the robot which has captured them is autonomous. "'...mutual comprehension...'" (ibid.) grows but gradually.

Machine Evolution

"Epilogue."

The kind of environmental interaction that made mobile organisms conscious later makes mobile mechanisms conscious. A mechanism that processes its inputs with equivalents of cells and synapses is not only sensitive, like a good camera or microphone, but also sensorial, like an animal or human being - if we follow this line of reasoning. 

This evolution resulted from mutation and selection among unsupervised, solar-powered, self-repairing, self-reproducing, mineral-collecting sea rafts. The first mutation was that a new kind of raft collected metal from other rafts instead of from the sea. The new kind became predators. Then other changes occurred and, as with organisms, favourable changes were selected. Evolution spread to the land and to the air and under the sea. Alloys are less alterable but more durable than amino acids and machine parts had increasingly been designed to be interchangeable. Thus, predators sometimes consume their prey and sometimes just incorporate their parts. Three billion years later, the most complex and sensitive mechanisms are self-conscious and intelligent.

Is this remotely feasible? All that we can say for certain is that Poul Anderson runs with this idea as far as he can.

The "Epilogue" Ecology

When we are immersed in the details of the "Epilogue" timeline, it can seem as substantial a fictional future as some future history series. "Epilogue" presents not a history but an evolution and an ecology. The plant equivalents evolved from animal equivalents which began as hunters.

There are no microbes. Immobile units powered by molecular solar batteries break down ores, manufacture alloys and concentrate dielectric energy, using reagents like acids in glass. Mobile units extract processable metal and reuseable parts from each other. More complex machines divide into large, tall four-armed bipedal hunters and low, wide, bulky, two-armed octopodal reproducers. (The Arvelan sexes also differ in size.) Reproductive crystallization begins when the two body patterns heterodyne in electric currents and magnetic fields. When complete, the new unit is activated. 

Because the new unit that One is creating is almost complete, Zero, who has lost one of his four hands, is able to thrust his arm stump into her repair orifice and, after a while, withdraw it with a new hand. While inside, the stump was enfolded and scanned by interior tendrils. Meanwhile, the new unit's synaptic pathways gradually crystalize from solution. When one of its motor impulse pathways has been completed, the unit stirs within One. That word, "synaptic," addresses my question: how can these self-reproducing artefacts feel anything?

Zero's Senses

"Epilogue."

Zero's three captives generate a lot of:

"...sound-wave radiation." (p. 205)

In other words, people speak and even shout or scream! Zero theorizes that this radiation is caused either by a mechanical malfunction or by some auxiliary system switched on internally. Sure. We do not press a button on our bodies in order to speak. Zero's sound receptors are too insensitive for him to discern whether the radiation is modulated but, in any case, he dismisses anything so localised as a useful means of communication. Each person needs many square miles for sustenance - like Ythrians - so a community needs a medium like radio that can reach beyond the horizon although some lower motiles do use sonics.

Zero's internal sensors warn him that he needs replenishment. This sounds like seeing a red light or reading a screen message to warn you that your batteries are low. However, an energy drain makes him feel "...ravenous." (p. 207) He is hungry enough to eat unprocessed storage cells and salts. He also grinds a digger and her uncompleted new specimen even though he is unable to treat them with heat and acid. A rotor flees between the rods and crystals but Zero brings it down with his crossbow and takes it back to the cave for One. He sounds partly like a conscious machine and partly like a conscious being using machines.

Communication

"Epilogue."

Zero transmits an alarm:

"Forty miles thence, the person who may as well be called Two answered, 'Is that you, Zero? I noticed something peculiar in the direction of your establishment. What is the matter?'

"Zero did not reply at once. Others were coming in, a surge of voices in his head..." (p. 180)

Lisbeth Salander logs on to Hacker Republic:

"<Hi, gang.> Wasp wrote.

"<Wasp. That really U?> SixOfOne wrote. <Look who's back.>

"<Where you been keeping yourself?> Trinity wrote.

"<Plague said you were in some trouble.> Dakota wrote."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (London, 2009), CHAPTER 13, p. 320.

This is when Zero reminded me of Wasp. Hackers like Plague live mainly on line but they are exceptions where humanity is concerned. However, by contrast with the mass of humanity, Zero and his kind communicate entirely by radio and hardly ever physically. Zero has observed very few persons optically. By radio, they communicate ritual, friendship and art. Zero and Seven criticise each other's poetry. Ninety-six shares his abstract tone constructions, Eighty shares narratives and Fifty-nine shares speculations about space and time. Fourteen has shared with Zero his sensory impressions of the seashore, including the salt in the air. In this way, Zero has also experienced catching and eating an aquamotile.

The Travelers

In Poul Anderson's "Gypsy," a spaceship called the Traveler is lost in space whereas, in Anderson's "Epilogue," another spaceship called the Traveler is displaced in time. In "Gypsy," the Traveler becomes the first ship in the Nomad culture in Anderson's Psychotechnic History whereas, in "Epilogue," a one-off story, the Traveler crew learns of three billion years of technological evolution on Earth:

not soil but sand;

not tree trunks but metal shafts;

not branches but girders;

not twigs but geometrical structures;

not leaves but solar panels;

not grass or flowers but growing crystals;

not animals but "motiles";

not birds but "fliers";

not human beings but self-conscious robots;

not speech but radio.

Details are endless.

Poul Anderson's Diversity

"Epilogue."

Look how much comes out of analysing a single Poul Anderson short story which I have not yet finished rereading. In recent posts, we have discussed:

natural selection

consciousness

narrative points of view

descriptive passages

rationales for space-time travel

a comparison with The Time Machine

international conflict and potential war

a hint of humour

Maybe more. I do not think that humour is Anderson's strong point but he does do some humour along with everything else.

"Epilogue" was published in Analog in 1962 but I do not know which month so I have been attaching all the cover images.

Onward, hopefully.

Zero And The Visitors

"Epilogue."

Maybe this is a touch of humour? At the end of section I, Zero attacks three bipeds which had emerged from a "monster" that had descended from the sky and disables their communicators - carried outside their bodies! He runs with one kicking wildly under his arm. Another batters at him with its hands. He ties all three together, stuffs them into his carrier and takes them to his cave to study. End of section.

In section II, Hugh Darkington (viewpoint character), Frederika Ruys and Sam Kuroki descend from their interstellar spaceship to Earth in a space boat... 

So now we know who Zero's three captives were! The change of point of view between sections I and II is staggering. So much in a single short story. 

Miniature Histories

"Epilogue."

Many single novels or even shorter works turn out to be miniature future histories when analysed in detail, e.g.:

"Flight to Forever"

"In Memoriam"

"Requiem"

The Long Way Home

The Time Machine

When travellers from the twentieth century arrive in the far future, they ask: How did it happen? How did Victorian bourgeoisie and proletarians become Eloi and Morlocks? Or: How did beings like Zero come into existence? (It is not just the twentieth century, of course. The Time Traveller was from the nineteenth. Characters contemporary with their readers now set off from the twenty-first.)

In a boat descending from the returned Traveler, Sam Kuroki unwittingly explains. There were many self-maintaining gadgets including solar powered, self-reproducing, mineral-collecting sea rafts. Hugh Darkington adds:

"'There would have been radioactivity everywhere...'" (ibid.)

Radioactivity, mutation and adaptation.

Three Billion Years

"Epilogue." 

Section II confirms that the planet inhabited by Zero, One, Two, Hundred etc is indeed Earth of the future although three billion years is longer than usual. Human beings who had departed the Solar System just before an imminent global conflict return but so much time has elapsed because of a fault in the field drive. Poul Anderson effortlessly invented ways to transport his characters into the further future for story purposes. Reactive thrust rotated through a fourth dimension was applied along the temporal axis. Or a faulty manifold generated a t-acceleration effect. Two characters present different rationales. Either would have sufficed and Anderson could easily have devised a dozen more.

Before they left:

"Tension had mounted so horribly fast..." (p. 190)

Like now. Can people learn to think outside the box instead of always blaming every conflict entirely on the other side? Things will get worse before they get better.

The Milky Way has changed shape. Earth has no polar caps. Continents have shifted. No longer green and brown, they are black and ocher with points of reflection. The atmosphere is nitrogen, not oxygen. There is no chlorophyll or other complex organic compound. The ground is metallic. We have already read the point of view of an inhabitant of this environment.

Two Explorations

"The Saturn Game" and "Starfog" begin and end Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization and also begin and end his collection, Explorations. Anyone reading these two stories only in that collection has no way to know that they are instalments of a single series, let alone that they are the opening and closing instalments of one long future history series. Both stories are about space exploration although on vastly different scales. 

"Starfog" refers back to League, Troubles, Empire and Long Night and thus informs its readers that it has prequels. However, "The Saturn Game" is pre-League. Its only explicit link to the later History is its single reference to the Jerusalem Catholic Church. This is like real history, of course. Most of our present life is lived without making any explicit reference to anything that had happened thousands of years previously.

A single unchanged text has a different significance when it is published and read in a different context. In Explorations, "The Saturn Game" introduces not the Technic History but five other stories about explorations. We can read or reread it and "Starfog" without necessarily reflecting on their relationships to Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn or Dominic Flandry. A literary liberation of sorts.

Organisms And Mechanisms

This post is a response to the questions posed at the end of the preceding post.

Organisms are naturally selected to respond to their environment. Selected responses are genetically transmitted and inherited. In mobile organisms, some such responses become conscious motivations. Thus, adaptations and mutations on the molecular level of combinations of genes generate consciousness on the macroscopic level of organisms with central nervous systems. Thus also, consciousness is an emergent property of some organisms, not an independent substance interacting with organisms. Materialist philosophy is subtle and not reductionist.

Pleasure and pain have survival value but require consciousness. Therefore, sufficiently complex and sensitive organisms tend to become conscious. They pass from lacking sustenance to feeling hungry or from being dangerously hot to feeling uncomfortably hot. Can a mechanism be sufficiently complex and sensitive to become conscious? A mechanism has a power source and replaceable parts on the macroscopic level but is not able to change itself or to transmit information on the molecular level. Therefore, it cannot generate an equivalent of genes. This has to be an obstacle to becoming conscious.

Details Of The Techno World

"Epilogue."

Hundred is wise because of his age but slow-thinking because of irreversible polarization. Self-conscious motiles are called persons. Each had a creator and ancestors stretching back to a great-grandcreator and beyond. On an "ancient day":

"...some forgotten savage genius made the first crude spark gap and electricity was tamed." (p. 183)

- like Prometheus taming fire but what the persons do not know is that that "savage genius" was organic.

Lure accumulators emit signals that make small motiles enter their grinders. Obviously, self-maintaining mechanisms left to their own devices have evolved to compete and survive but how did they become conscious? Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation but can that same qualitative transformation occur in mechanistic sensitivity? Can a camera become an eye or a microphone become an ear?

Radio Hams And Hackers

"Epilogue."

Zero communicates by radio both with One who dwells in the same cave and with Two who is forty miles away although we must never forget that "Two" is only:

"...the person who might as well be called Two..." (p. 180)

When Zero sees something large descend and land, he transmits an alarm which is answered by Two, Hundred and many others. Two has noticed something peculiar in Zero's direction and asks what the matter is. Hundred, the oldest, who has had half a dozen bodies and presides in councils, calls for silence and orders Zero to report. Suddenly, an entire society is revealed to us.

I used to like the idea of radio hams conversing without meeting. Now we have email and other social media. The radio conversation between Zero, Two and Hundred in "Epilogue" reminds me of the email dialogue between the members of Hacker Republic in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. Wasp is in hospital and under arrest but her friends smuggle in her hand-held so that she can converse with her fellow citizens who could probably sabotage the Swedish government if she gave the ok: science fiction if it had been published forty years earlier.

Hunter Zero

"Epilogue."

Because communication is by radio, Zero overhears a conversation a hundred miles away.

Spoor is broken earthcrystals, slabs cut from boles and "...a trace of lubricant." (p. 178) 

Zero strides whereas his prey will be on treads. Checking himself, he finds that his parts are in order. His body has a swivelling lattice, a head and four hands. In the night sky, he sees stars with his optical sensors and hears radio internally.

The forest through which he strides is alloy, silicate, radiation-absorber plates, trunks, girders and jointed rods. Zero taps lubricant from a cylinder growth, thins his acid by drinking water and pauses to allow polarization in his energy cells to clear away. 

Something mysterious comes from above. We guess that a spaceship approaches and that Zero is about to meet organic intelligences.

Zero And One II

"Epilogue."

The characters whom the omniscient narrator labels "Zero" and "One" communicate with each other and with others of their kind by radio pulses, not by air vibrations. Thus, they have no idea that anyone else refers to them by uttered sounds or corresponding printed symbols. Zero is so designated:

"...because he, like any consciousness, was the center of his own coordinate system..." (p. 177)

- and One because she is:

"...the most important dweller in Zero's universe..." (ibid.)

Thus, in this case, "Zero" and "One" mean little more than "I" and "you." Each of us says "I" as the centre of his or her own coordinate system. Obviously the terms would have been reversed if section I had been narrated from the point of view of the character who is regarded as female because "she" remains in their cave "creating" (ibid.) while Zero goes out to hunt game. This game is not animals with edible flesh and potable blood but "motiles" with concentrated energy and reusable parts.

One helps Zero to fasten a carrier rack on his shoulders. He has shoulders. We still do not know whether he is wheeled, winged, bipedal, quadrupedal etc. He also carries weapons. Motiles beware. We need an explanation of this techno-ecology (techology) but that will come. We have just made it onto the second page of the text.

Zero And One

"Epilogue."

Zero and his significant other, whom the omniscient narrator designates "One" and "she," dwell in a cave where:

"Energy reserves were low..." (p. 177)

In our experience, a human couple dwell in a house or apartment where energy, as gas and/or electricity, is supplied from outside and stored food might run low. Of course, food is another kind of energy but a very different kind. We put food but not electricity directly into our bodies. Anything requiring electrical input is neither conscious nor even organic. However, Zero and One seem to consume electricity not just domestically but bodily. One needs to be recharged and Zero:

"...also felt a dwindling potential." (ibid.)

They have two sources of charge: growing accumulator cells and moving "motiles." The latter are preferable because:

their energy is more concentrated;

their charge is more easily assimilable;

they are more highly organized;

One can use many parts of motiles with little reshaping;

she would need to process a lot of accumulator cells while "...creating." (ibid.) (Pregnant?)

That charge is to them what food is to us is confirmed when the change from accumulators to motiles is described as "...a change of diet." (ibid.)

If Zero and One are self-maintaining, self-repairing artefacts, then how have they become conscious?

Zero

Poul Anderson, "Epilogue" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, 1981), pp. 177-240.

The opening paragraph:

"His name was a set of radio pulses. Converted into equivalent sound waves, it would have been an ugly squawk; so because he, like any consciousness, was the center of his own coordinate system, let him be called Zero." (p. 177)

Zero knows his radio name but not this sonic name, "Zero." He does not reflect on how his name would sound if converted into sound. It is an omniscient narrator that refers to Zero by the masculine pronoun and bestows the name, "Zero." 

This narrator proceeds, in the second paragraph, to inform us that Zero:

"...felt a dwindling potential." (ibid.) (My emphasis.)

- and that:

"Zero...wanted a more easily assimilated charge than the accumulators provided." (ibid.) (My emphasis.)

We have already been told that Zero is conscious. Consciousnesses feel and want. In fact, feeling a lack and wanting to satisfy it must be the most basic inner sensations? An organism has evolved from needing to both needing and wanting sustenance. Sensitivity has become sensation. Being has become conscious - although the references to "potential," "charge" and "accumulators" alert us to the possibility that Zero is a mechanism rather than an organism. In any case, he has definitely become our viewpoint character. But what exactly is he?

A Proto-Future History II

Regular blog readers will understand when I explain that I have visited Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop today and therefore have not posted until now. 

I am still appreciating Poul Anderson's skilful transition from his novel, The Enemy Stars, to his short story, "The Ways of Love." Nominally, three characters continue from the novel into the short story: Terangi and Tamara Maclaren and an alien. In practice, the entire character of the alien is created de novo for the short story. This alien species could have been presented in an independent story or novel but Anderson puts it to much better use by staying with the scenario of The Enemy Stars. We see that historically significant events are about to occur and indeed could have been recounted in further sequels. On the level of individual characters, Tamara has borne one child by her first husband and two more by Terangi. These three therefore would have been young adults in another decade plus. We want all of Anderson's fictional futures to continue indefinitely but this is impossible.

Names

A modern fictional narrative begins with a particular character's point of view, then informs us of that character's name when appropriate, perhaps when he is addressed. Thus, the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of Stieg Larsson's first novel reads in part:

"The trial was irretrievably over...but he had never doubted that he would lose."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), Chapter 1, p. 9.

So we have a male viewpoint character - thus, not the title character - and we will learn his name in due course. Sure enough, the second paragraph opens:

"Carl Mikael Blomkvist saw [the reporters] through the doorway..." (ibid.)

Then one of the reporters addresses him:

"'Give us a sound bite, Kalle Blomkvist.'" (ibid.)

In an older narrative tradition, an omniscient narrator began by directly informing his audience of the central character's name and status, then followed this with an objective account of that character's deeds. 

"There was a man called Orm the Strong, a son of Ketil Asmundsson who was a yeoman in the north of Jutland."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), I, p. 15.

The first datum is not what Orm thinks or how he feels at a particular moment but what he is called, who his father was, their social station and where they lived.

"A man called Geirolf dwelt on the Great Fjord in Raumsdal. His father was Bui Hardhand, who owned a farm inland near the Dofra Fell."

-Poul Anderson, "The Tale of Hauk" IN Anderson, The Armies of Elfland (New York, 1992), pp. 77-104 AT p. 77.

"There was a man called Eyvind the Red, who dwelt in the Danelaw of England while Aethelstan was king. His father was Svein Kolbeinsson, who had come there from Denmark..."

-Poul Anderson, Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973), I, p. 3.

The narrative reaches back before moving forward again.

"His name was a set of radio pulses."

-Poul Anderson, "Epilogue" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, 1981), pp. 177-240 AT p. 177.

OK. What is happening here? More next time.