Centauroids

Starfarers, 24.

A mythological centaur is the top half of a human body on the front of a horse's body. The Tahirians are at least "centauroids" because they have four legs, two arms and a head. Apart from that, Poul Anderson tries to make them sound alien. We are dismayed to read about:

"...two elliptical eyes..." (p. 212)

- but then we read:

"...-presumably eyes -..." (ibid.)

- and also that there is another pair of eyes, large and circular.

Two black and two green with neither whites nor pupils. There are also antennae with clustered cilia.

Of the eyes, the inner black pair might be for day vision, the others for night and peripheral vision. Bones perform the role of teeth. Four small tongues might be chemosensors.

Anderson is trying but he has taken a basically terrestroid organismic form, then changed details like the number of pairs of eyes and tongues.

Until late tomorrow or the day after.

Laters.

(I wanted the cover of a Mike Carey Lucifer comic with a woman centaur but couldn't find it online.)

Human-Tahirian Communication

Starfarers, 23.

Engineer Yu Wenji produces a hand-held device. A horizontal section has a control board and guidelines while a longer vertical section has screens showing moving characters on its front and back and also produces sounds. The devices can be operated by human or Tahirian fingers although the latter seem flexible and boneless like elephants' trunks. We have become used to communicating with hand-held devices although with fellow human beings at a distance, not with members of another intelligent species standing or squatting in front of us. Yu must work with the linguist, Sundaram. 

I am preparing to attend a meeting this evening and to be out of town for most of tomorrow. 

Everything is peaceful between the Envoy crew and the Tahirians but the serpent in the garden is Brent. And we know from other chapters that life is not good back on Earth.

Tahirians

Starfarers, 23.

Tahirians invite the Envoy crew to make camp on Tahir. The camp is visited by a few Tahirians but is not plagued by journalists, crowds, salespeople etc. Is this because Tahirian society is "'...very controlled...'" (p. 216) or just alien? The latter makes more sense. Why should intelligent beings have nuisance-making journalists etc? After a while, the guests are invited to go on tours. Who has decided this and how? How long does it take to understand even a strange human society let alone an alien one? Tahirians communicate mainly through body language so that conversations between them and human beings are impossible. 

Dominic Flandry learned Eriau. Olaf Magnusson was fluent in three Merseian languages, including Eriau. Arinnian of Stormgate Choth whose human name was Christopher Holm translated texts from Planha into Anglic. Human-alien communication is not necessarily going to be as easy as that and Poul Anderson shows us this with the Tahirians. Each future history conveys more.

Yes But No

Starfarers, 22.

"A being stood unclad against a background of enigmatic apparatus. The first word aboard for it had been 'centaur,' but that was like calling a man an ostrich because both were bipeds." (p. 211)

We have read this before, at least twice in the Technic History:

"[Falkayn] confronted the Minotaur.

"No...not that exactly...any more than Adzel was exactly a dragon. The impression was archetypal rather than literal. Yet as such it was overwhelming."

-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 235-423 AT XV-XVI, pp. 344-345.

"Preconceptions always get in the way. Flandry's first startled thought was Wolf! Now he realized that of course the Ardazhiro was not lupine, didn't even look notably wolfish. Yet the impression lingered."

-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 VII, p. 199.

Centaur, Minotaur, dragon, wolf: is Poul Anderson trying to have it both ways here? He has to avoid stating that an alien organism resembles anything Terrestrial, whether biological or mythological, but he wants us to think of something so he presents a description, then immediately denies that description!, knowing however that the description will remain in his readers' minds: an overwhelming impression, a lingering impression...

Power And Greed

 

Starfarers, 22.

The Envoy crew watches alien technology "terraforming" a planet. Brent's eyes smolder while he ponders "'The power...The power.'" (p. 208) Sundaram wonders whether low gigawattage despite high transmission efficiency means that the population is "'...less greedy?'" (p. 209) I prefer Sundaram to Brent but, if we say that either man is better than the other, then we probably just demonstrate which kind of person we are? Poul Anderson shows us each kind of character so that we can make our judgements. It is like dealing with a real spaceship crew. Ambassadors from Earth will have to be chosen with almost superhuman wisdom. The main task of the first explorers will just be to learn before doing anything. As Carl Sagan said once on TV, we can't just go out into the galaxy and ask, "Hi, there. Are you fellows Prespetarians?'" It is going to be more complicated than that. Will the Yonderfolk think of power or of greed or of something else? 

Evolution In Aldiss, Anderson, Lewis And Stapledon

Since we concluded the previous post with a quotation from Brian Aldiss, we should additionally mention that Aldiss wrote both a time travel novel and a Frankenstein novel and also that, like Poul Anderson, he followed Robert Heinlein not only by writing a future history but also by linking a generation ship story to the future history. Furthermore, Aldiss' single-volume future history, Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, has a culminating instalment based on the completely non-Darwinian idea that animal evolution culminated with humanity in this galaxy and will begin with humanity in the next. Not an amoeba but a complete human organism will somehow form.

CS Lewis' Perelandra presents the Christian Fundamentalist idea of (as yet) sinless First Parents created on another planet.

In what I remember of Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Man, a recognizably different human species just began to be born among the population when its time had come. Natural selection was not involved. However, Stapledon did show Darwinian processes operating later in the novel when human colonists of Neptune degenerated into animality and intelligence eventually re-evolved.

Anderson applies fully Darwinian principles when recounting the evolution of Diomedeans, Ythrians and Didonians. See Speculution. Anderson was a hard sf writer who respected religion but who did not lose sight of physics or biology.

Parallel Authors

Culminations probably indicates why I think of Poul Anderson and James Blish in parallel. "The Horn of Time the Hunter," Mission To The Heart Stars and "This Earth of Hours" all involve a spaceship returning from the direction of the galactic centre. The Technic History and Cities In Flight recount the rise and fall of interstellar civilizations. In "The Horn," Jorn reflects that:

"When you fled at almost the speed of light, time shrank for you, and in his own life he had seen the flower and the fall of an empire."

-Maurai And Kith, p. 218.

The universe ends in Tau Zero and The Triumph Of Time. The parallel extends to changes in supernatural realms in works of fantasy. Thus, in The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson), the Olympians, the Three of Ys and Mithras all withdraw before the new God born in the reign of Augustus and the Age of Aquarius while, in Black Easter/The Day After Judgement, demons win Armageddon but then Satan, now God, undoes the damage.

There is an endless cycle of destruction and renewal, it seems. 

Decades ago, Brian Aldiss ended a short story with the phrase:

"...a voice singing in a new universe."

-Brian Aldiss, "Dumb Show" IN Aldiss, Space, Time And Nathaniel (London, 1966), pp. 153-159 AT p. 159.

- and thus spoke for sf.

Culminations

"The Chapter Ends," "Starfog" and "The Horn of Time the Hunter" are three future historical culminations.

In "The Chapter Ends," psychotechnicians lead Galactic civilization.

In "Starfog," a new period of unprecedented wealth begins in post-Technic civilization.

In "The Horn...," a Kith ship returns from a twenty thousand year round trip to the fringes of the galactic nucleus and its crew will soon learn what has become of the Kith and mankind.

"The Horn..." is such a climax that it will seem like an anti-climax to return to Starfarers or even to its remaining Kith story.

James Blish's works include several future historical culminations:

in The Triumph Of Time, two universes end but several are created;

in "Watershed," Adapted Men recolonize Earth;

in Mission To The Heart Stars, the star dwelling energy beings called Angels will join Earthmen, dolphins, beadmungen and Aaa against the Heart Stars hegemony;

in "This Earth of Hours," survivors of a space battle begin a long journey back to Earth to warn of the threat from the Central Empire.

At the very end of "This Earth...," the viewpoint character sees that the galactic night is as black as death - a threat like the horn heard again at the end of "The Horn..."

The Horn

Maurai And Kith.

What is the sound that Jong Errifrans thinks that he hears on an unknown planet? It is described as:

"...the distant blowing of a horn. It would begin low, with a pulse that quickened as the notes waxed, until the snarl broke in a brazen scream and sank sobbing away." (p. 215)

That seems to be more than just something that might or might not be there as a background noise. It goes through four stages: a low pulse; quickening, waxing notes; a brazen scream; a sinking sob. And he hears this same sequence several times. 

In his sleeping bag, he thinks that he hears the horn.

He hears it briefly but louder the following day on the beach. It reminds him of a hunter's bugle on a frontier planet. This is just before he sees inhabitants of the planet carrying the body of his friend.

Just before he is lowered into the sea to recover his friend's body, he hears, in the stillness of his helmet, his own breath and pulse and:

"...the hunter's horn, remote and triumphant." (p. 232)

But this last is given three possible explanations:

"- some inner sound, a stray nerve current or mere imagination -" (ibid.)

The first explanation offered for a sound that no one else heard had been:

"'Some trick of the wind...'" (p. 215)

In the concluding paragraph:

"I wonder what that sound was, he thought vaguely. A wind noise, no doubt, as Mons said. But I'll never be sure. For a moment, it seemed to him that he heard it again, in the thrum of energy and metal, in the beat of his own blood, the horn of a hunter that pursued a quarry that wept as it ran." (p. 239)

That was what he had seen on the frontier planet.

In the concluding paragraph, he is inside a spaceboat as it leaves the planet so he cannot possibly hear anything back down on the planetary surface any more than he could have heard anything through his space helmet before he was lowered from the hovering spaceboat.

When he seems to hear the horn in the thrum of energy and the beat of blood, it is clear that at this stage the sound has become part of him. We are left with the mystery of whether there really was any external source of the sound on the planetary surface.

Seabirds In Two Timelines

Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty, looks out from a high building across the city of Pelogard on the planet, Serieve. Apart from the works of man, he sees that:

"Immense flocks of seabirds dipped and wheeled. Or were they birds? They had wings, anyhow, steely blue against a wan sky. Perhaps they cried or sang, into the wind skirl and wave rush; but Laure couldn't hear it in the enclosed place."

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 720.

They are birds if they are descended from seagulls imported at many removes from Earth whereas, if they are the outcome of independent Serievean evolution, then maybe they should be classified as equivalents of birds.

In another future history series, Kithmen explore a planet where there are:

"...seabirds, whose wings made a white storm over the tower tops and whose flutings mingled with wind skirl and drum roll of surf..."

-Maurai And Kith, pp. 215-216.

Since this planet had also been colonized by human beings, maybe these seabirds were imported?

Each description reminds us of the other. Flandry's Legacy is Volume VII of The Technic Civilization Saga whereas Maurai And Kith is two short future history series in a single volume. 

Serieve is on the edge of another spiral arm of the galaxy whereas the unknown planet visited by the Kith is:

"...three hundred light-years from Sol's calculated present position." (p. 220)

"Starfog" is listed as set in 7100 whereas the Kith story is set twenty thousand years after the Golden Flyer had departed from Tau Ceti to:

"...the fringes of the galactic nucleus." (p. 224)

- which, in turn, was thousands of years in our future.

Undersea On The Unknown Planet

 

Maurai And Kith.

Using his spacesuit as a diving suit, Jong sees "...coraloids...," (p. 233) not corals, on the sea bottom. The white "seabirds" (p. 215) should be described as ornithoids. We would not want to see recognizable seagulls if the story were filmed. The "...great tiger-striped fish..." (p. 216) should be called a piscoid. It would have to be CGI'ed. 

Jong must retrieve a Kithman's mortal remains so that they can be given a Kith funeral, launched on an "...orbit into the sun." (p. 231) Momentarily, Jong wonders whether his dead friend would prefer to stay under the sea, "...lulled to the end of the world." (p. 233) Yes if he were a sea-dweller but no because he had been a starfarer. What we do with the dead is entirely a matter of local customs and traditions.

"The knowledge exploded in Jong. For a century of seconds he stood alone with it." (p. 234)

This is one of many Andersonian moments of realization. I do not think that I have noted this one before. "...a century of seconds..." must mean a short time that seemed like a long time. In fact, one hundred seconds, over a minute and a half, would be a long time to stand with a realization.

Back in the spaceboat, Jong, looking through a port:

"...watched the sea, molten silver beneath him, dwindle as the sky hardened and the stars trod forth." (p. 239).

Sliver sea, then sky and stars, a succinct summary of the themes of this volume.

"Ghetto" And "The Horn..."

In Poul Anderson's Maurai And Kith, "Ghetto" and "The Horn of Time the Hunter" make a neat future historical sequence albeit of only two instalments. "Ghetto" is about the Kithman, Kenri Shaun of Fleetwing, and mentions his friend, Jong Errifrans of the Golden Flyer. "The Horn..." is about Jong but set twenty thousand years later because of time dilation. "The Horn..." is also a spaceship and planet story although the only one in this timeline.

Starfarers incorporates "Ghetto" and one other Kith story, not "The Horn...," and adds some more so that the Kith History exists in two versions. We are used to different versions of single stories but not of future histories.

We encounter Time the Hunter in one Kith story and God the Hunter in several Technic History stories. Such experiences reverberate across the timelines.

The Maurai, "The People of the Sea," encounter a group called "The Sky People," whereas the Kith, "The People of the Stars," encounter a human population that has returned to the sea.

I will be out of town for most of Friday this week so probably will not post then.

Spaceships And Planets

A common sf scenario: A spaceship arrives at a new planet. Its crew must answer questions about the planet like which is the dominant species etc. The spaceship can be:

In Poul Anderson's Technic History

a ship of the Grand Survey

a trade pioneer crew

a ship of the Allied Planets re-civilizing isolated colonies

a Commonalty Rangers ship

In Anderson's Kith History/Starfarers

an exploratory expedition

a Kith ship

Others

one of James Blish's Okie cities

the USS Enterprise

a one-off ship in a one-off story

But examples are endless.

Empty Earth?

Maurai And Kith.

"Maybe Earth lay as empty, Jong thought, not for the first time." (pp. 219-220)

An sf writer must imagine not only what space explorers find when they are out there but also what they find when they return to Earth especially if they have been gone for a long time like twenty thousand years in this case. Of course, the author is free to imagine anything both times. I very faintly remember that Dan Dare once returned from an interstellar expedition to find Earth deserted because there had been an evacuation but why or where to I have no idea. A coded message received from March 12, 3022, in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time seems to be a routing order during a mass evacuation (but it cannot be the same evacuation!) Sf stories remind us of each other. People ask, "Wasn't there a Star Trek like this?" Each of us has a unique set of memories so what does "empty Earth" connote for anyone else?

Wind On Two Planets

Poul Anderson, Maurai And Kith (New York, 1982), pp. 215-239.

Instead of making the abrupt transition from Kenri Shaun back to the crew of Envoy, let's stay with the Kith and read about Kenri's friend, Jong Errifrans of the Golden Flyer. Both "Ghetto"/Starfarers 21 and "The Horn of Time the Hunter" inform us that Jong is a Kithman of the starship Golden Flyer. 

In "Maurai And Kith," Kenri's story, "Ghetto," ends on p. 214 while Jong's story, "The Horn...," begins on p. 215. "Ghetto" ends not with:

"...the cold night wind of Earth."

- as in Starfarers 21 (see here) but with:

"...the cool damp night wind of Earth." (p. 214)

I surmise that Poul Anderson changed "cool" to "cold" to reflect the coldness of Kenri's reception by the Terrestrial social class into which he had hoped to marry.

Jong's story begins when he hears a sound like a blowing horn. His friend suggests that it is a trick of the wind, adding:

"'The damned wind is always hunting here.'" (p. 215)

So we pass directly from Kenri and the wind to Jong and the wind! That damned wind is always hunting in Poul Anderson's universes.

Wind On Earth

Starfarers, 21.

During a difficult conversation:

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

These winds are entirely metaphorical.

When he has decided against joining the ruling caste but will instead stay with his people:

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

Empty streets match his empty mood. This wind is physical but its coldness reflects the lack of human relationship and warmth between the Star class and the Kith. That class will be long gone when Kenri returns to Earth and he will be long gone when Envoy returns. Does history teach just that everything goes?

Two Periods In The History Of A Place

Starfarers, 10, 21.

In 10, Kith Town is surrounded by a vicarial preserve; in 21, by a city. How much history has elapsed?

Vicarial Preserve

boundless grass hiding remnants of farmsteads

sunflowers

a herd of grazing neobison, hunted only by wild dogs and master-class men

flocking crows

broken walls

scattered slabs and shards

City

soaring towers

their columns, tiers and pinnacles

glowing streets and skyways, resembling phosphorescent spiderwebs

strings, arcs and fountains of blazing, flashing lights of every colour

brilliance heightened by scraps of dark sky

Viewing the city from a monorail, Kenri Shaun wonders whether any world is more exotic. 

I remember as a small child looking at a big city and knowing that incomprehensible adult activities went on there. Sf writers imagine future cities beyond our comprehension.

Future Historical Culminations And Human Changes

Given enough time, either natural or artificial selection will change humanity: one example from James Blish and four from Poul Anderson.

Blish

In The Seedling Stars, Book Four, "Watershed," Adapted Men have spread through the galaxy and now colonize a changed Earth.

Anderson

In "The Chapter Ends," humanity evacuates Earth and the Galactic periphery because the human way of mentally controlling cosmic energy interferes with the way used by inhabitants of gas giants. 

In "The Horn of Time the Hunter," colonists of an extrasolar planet have become aquatic.

In Twilight World, Epilogue, descendants of post-World War III mutants terraform outer satellites and reclaim Earth.

In "Starfog," a human planetary population has adapted to a much higher radiation level than their Terrestrial ancestors and has become a different species.

Larry Niven

In "Safe at Any Speed," if we can take this seriously, the whole population has inherited genes for good luck - so that interesting stories have become impossible to write: end of the Known Space future history series.

Olaf Stapledon

In Last And First Men, eighteen human species, some of them artificial, inhabit Earth, Venus and Neptune.

The Horn And Jong Errifrans

Poul Anderson's "The Horn of Time the Hunter"/"Homo Aquaticus" stands in the same relationship to earlier Kith stories as his "Starfog" does to earlier Technic History stories, the point in both cases being that human populations in widely scattered planetary systems have been separated for so long that not only future history but also future evolution is now involved. It is fitting when a future history series concludes with an instalment that shows how things have panned out in a further future. There are other examples.

Despite not being incorporated into Starfarers, "The Horn..." remains organically linked to this future history series. It is about Kithmen and its viewpoint character is one Jong Errifrans. Both "Ghetto" and Starfarers, 21, inform us that a Kithman of that name is a friend of Kenri Shaun although not on Earth at the time. 

We need two boxed sets:

I. A collection of three Kith stories; the novel, Starfarers.

II. A collection of three Maurai stories; the novels, Orion Shall Rise and There Will Be Time.

Time Dilation? II

 

See Time Dilation?

There is something more to be said about this, having read popular accounts of relativity. 

A torch pointing straight up from the floor of a spaceship sends a beam of light up to the ceiling where a mirror reflects the beam back down onto the torch. To observers within the spaceship, the beam has traversed the height of the cabin twice whereas, to observers outside the ship, it has traversed two diagonal lines of greater length than that height. It has traveled further but at the same speed because the speed of light is constant. Therefore, less time has passed within the ship than outside it. This should happen whether the ship is moving outward from Sol to Proxima Centauri or returning from Proxima Centauri to Sol.

I think.

Of course I should have thought of this when I was conversing with someone who thought otherwise. But I have read elsewhere that one school of thought maintains that the time gained on the outward trip will be lost on the return trip so there must be some reason why some people in the know think that.

Wind In Kith Town

Starfarers, 21.

Kenri Shaun walks through Kith Town:

"Kenri went down Aldebaran Street. A cold gust hit him; the northern hemisphere was spinning into autumn. He hunched his shoulders and jammed hands in pockets." (pp. 172-173)

"A maple stirred overhead as he turned at the Shaun gate, its leaves crackling in the wind." (p. 178)

After leaving his parents, Kenri reflects that Kith Town is not really changeless. It has been affected by wars, mobs and new proclamations:

"Kenri shivered in the autumn wind and walked fast." (p. 187)

That wind has stayed with him from p. 172 to p. 187 and has become metaphorical. He shivers both because of the wind and because of his reflections. Leaving Kith Town, he enters the Earthling neighbourhood where conditions are indeed bad.

Time Dilation?

 

Commander Henry Hatfield was an amateur astronomer and a contemporary of Patrick Moore. A very long time ago, Commander Hatfield told me in conversation that, in his opinion, the time gained through time dilation on an outward interstellar journey would be lost on the return journey so that, at the end of a round trip, if a hundred years had passed on Earth, then a hundred years, not some shorter period of time, would also have elapsed for the astronauts.

My Comments

(i) I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician so I really cannot comment. However, I get the impression that most people with any knowledge of the subject do not accept Commander Hatfield's view. And, indeed, how can the universe know whether we are making an outward or a return journey?

(ii) This does not matter for Poul Anderson's Tao Zero or The Boat Of A Million Years because their characters do not return to Earth. However, Commander Hatfield's view, if valid, would make nonsense of Anderson's Starfarers which is why I raise the issue here. 

Good night.

1500 + 1000

Starfarers, 21.

Kith are like time travelling historians although, of course, only futureward. Kenri's father says:

"'In view of the conditions we've found [on Earth], the captain and mates are seriously considering a change of plans. Next voyage not to Aurora, but a long excursion. Long, including into regions new to us. We may not be back for a thousand years. There'll be no more Dominancy. Your name will be forgotten.'" (p. 180)

- and:

"'Do you truly hope to join the highborn? What's great about them? I've seen fifteen hundred years of history, and this is one of the bad times. It will get worse.'" (ibid.)

Having seen fifteen hundred years, Wolden Shaun can authoritatively judge first that present conditions will get worse and secondly that the Dominancy will not last for a thousand years. He is prepared to leap ahead a thousand years, not knowing what the world will be like then. And that would be an amazing thing to be able to do. What is the longest period of history through which any Kithman survives?

Between The Future History And The Technic History

In the previous post, I skipped past Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History in order to draw a parallel between Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Technic History. Volume I of the Psychotechnic History, inappropriately entitled The Psychotechnic League, presents its fictional premise that a predictive science of society is possible but difficult to deploy against the protean enemy which is man himself in revolt against the unnatural state of civilization. However, despite the problems that will overwhelm the Psychotechnic Institute in Volume II, "Un-Man" and "The Sensitive Man" present an optimistic perspective of World War III devastation technologically transformed. An apartment building two miles long and over two hundred stories high, indeed a single-building city, overlooks Midwest Agricultural corn fields stretching beyond the horizon while men colonize the seabed and other planets. We will live into only one future but can imagine many and are currently detoured from Anderson's Kith History.

Parallel Future Histories

The "Cold Lairs" in Kipling's The Jungle Book, which are referenced in Poul Anderson's Starfarers, 20, reminded me of something in Poul Anderson's Technic History which turned out to be the "Cold Valleys" mentioned by Ruethen of the Long Hand near the beginning of "Hunters of the Sky Cave" although, since it seems that Ruethen's tribe inhabits these valleys, maybe they can count as "lairs"? 

We cannot read one future history without thinking of others. They occupy parallel timelines. And we should never forget Robert Heinlein's Future History which was the inspiration for Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Volume I of the Future History is The Man Who Sold The Moon, a collection of six stories including two about the title character, DD Harriman. The opening volumes of Anderson's Technic (not Psychotechnic) History were Trader To The Stars and The Man Who Counts, three stories and one novel about the title character of both volumes, Nicholas van Rijn. Since van Rijn reappears in four subsequent volumes, he becomes a much more rounded and colourful character than Harriman and sponsors several substantial successors. The Future History needed to have been much longer than it became which I think was the original intention. 

The Shauns

Starfarers, 21.

We are back in Kith Town on Earth and our viewpoint character is Kenri Shaun of Fleetwing. Kenri's full name is highlighted in the opening sentence whereas, in the original version of this story, entitled "Ghetto," it had first appeared in the third sentence. "Ghetto" was the first Kith story to be written. Later, Poul Anderson constructed a history for a Kith family with an evolving surname:

Michael Shaughnessy

Ramil Shauny, Michael's great-grandson

Ormer Shaun

Wolden Shaun, Kenri's father

Kenri Shaun

Vodra Shaun

Future histories involve fictional biographies and genealogies. In Anderson's Technic History, there are:

Tamarins, Falkayns and Runebergs on Hermes;

Falkayns and Holms on Avalon;

Abrams on Dayan;

McCormacs and Frederiksens on Aeneas;

Kittredges on Vixen;

Miyatovichs and Vymezals on Dennitza.

Although Starfarers remains a single-volume future history, it is constructed with comparable attention to detail.

The Cold Lairs

Starfarers, 20.

Exploring a planet in a ship's boat:

no danger of infection because, although the life is protein in water solution, it is too different;

few large animals;

only relics of intelligent beings (see below);

ground cover of yellow fronded blades, a few centimeters tall;

darker membranous foliage on trees (?);

small gauzy-winged flyers;

ivylike plants reclaiming bright walls and iridescent towers;

Kilbirnie says, "'The Cold Lairs.'" (p. 166)

She says that the phrase comes from an old book. I thought that it sounded like Tolkien but it is Kipling.

This time, having posted about it, I am more likely to remember it.

Why has a civilization ended? Why has an intelligent species gone into the cold?

Comparisons

We have compared:

Poul Anderson's Nomads with his Kith and tinerans and with James Blish's Okies (see also tinerants); 

the post-organic intelligences in Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, Genesis and The Boat Of A Million Years with each other and with the different approach to artificial intelligence in his Starfarers;

the long relativistic space journeys in Starfarers, Boat... and Tau Zero;

STL with FTL;

mutant immortality in Boat... with artificial indefinite longevity in World Without Stars and the Time Patrol series;

Anderson's Kith "heart stars" with Blish's "Heart Stars":

mutable with immutable timelines in time travel narratives by Anderson and others;

British and American future history models.

There have probably been other comparisons. Sf writers share an imaginative space in which common ideas are developed in different directions. Poul Anderson occupies a vast volume of such an imaginative space.

Story-Telling At The Kith Fair

Can "sitters" join the tinerans on Aeneas in Poul Anderson's Technic History? No.

Can "groundhuggers" join the Kith in Anderson's Starfarers? Rarely and with difficulty. 

An Aerien proves that he has what it takes to be a Kith by playing a trick to get himself recruited. Even before his recruitment, this enterprising young man had started to learn Kithic and also Xyrese because of how widely the latter is spoken around the hear stars:

Sol

Tau Ceti

Delta Pavonis

the primaries of Maia and Aurora

others?

"'...Aerie is the furthest of all worlds where humans dwell...'" (17, p. 125)

- because beyond that the travel time becomes too great.

(In James Blish's Jack Loftus novels, "the Heart Stars" means the galactic centre where there is an ancient interstellar hegemony. In Anderson's The Game Of Empire, one passage refers to the heart of the Terran Empire.)

In Chapter 17, two Kith, one of them playing a polymusicon, entertain a Kith audience by jointly relating their recent experience with the young Aerien so there could be different ways to adapt this narrative to screen: leave out the narrators and their audience; stay with them throughout; alternate between the performance and flashbacks to the related events; simplify the complicated narration - Rusa with the musical instrument keeps interrupting the main narrator, Shaun.

Obstacles

Starfarers, 18.

A later Andersonian theme is that slower than light interstellar travel, even if started, might involve too much effort, energy, expenditure etc for too little profit, return, whatever and might therefore decline. By Chapter 18, this seems to be happening both to the Kith and to the starfaring civilization that Envoy is aimed towards. A variation on this is that, if the ruling intelligences become electronic, post-organic, whatever, then they might lose interest in empirical exploration. The latter happens in the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and in The Boat Of A Million Years although post-organics spread through the galaxy and beyond in Genesis. 

A related issue is as follows. If we detect something interesting, e.g., five thousand light-years away and if we then set out to investigate it close up but we travel at sub-light speed, then will whatever it was still be there when we get there? When approached, the starfaring civilization is seen to be drastically contracting - which returns us to the first point.

In Starfarers, as in The Boat Of A Million Years, the characters find ways to sustain interstellar travel despite such obstacles.

Nomads And Kith

Starfarers, 17.

Continuing the line of thought from the previous post:

Indeed, the Nomads include a Thorkild Sean so "Ormer Shaun" did look very like another Nomad name.

Nomad men wear kilts whereas Kith ships, separated for decades or centuries, develop their own distinctive styles of dress - which include a green kilt worn by Shaun! His ancestor, Michael Shaugnessy, was originally from, or at least somehow associated with, Ireland so maybe that ancestry explains both the greenness and the kilt?

The more that we dig into the details in Poul Anderson's works, the more such details we find. They are like fractal designs. But now I really must try to get into some other reading before this evening is over.

Because of their foreignness, the Kith are often disliked on Earth although welcomed on colony planets. The Nomads are regarded as a chaos factor by the Stellar Union Coordination Service. However, some Coordinators become Nomads and the latter carry knowledge through the Third Dark Ages. Discussing the Kith History has taken us back to the Psychotechnic History which preceded the Technic History. No other sf writer has so many future history series to compare and contrast.

The Kith Village On Harbor

Starfarers.

Chapter 16 explains that the hostile robotic spacecraft encountered in 15 were probably mutated von Neumann machines.

17 returns us to the Kith but in the Kith village on Harbor at Tau Ceti instead of in Kith Town on Earth at Sol. Three or more ships in port at the same time means a Fair as when Fleetwing arrives to find Argosy and Eagle in orbit and this delays Argosy's departure. This reminds Poul Anderson's readers of the Nomads in his Psychotechnic History although the Nomads' ships are conventional sf faster than light hyperdrive spaceships. Many fictional futures parallel each other in some respects but not in others. We can imagine alternative futurians comparing their experiences in Anderson's inter-cosmic inn, the Old Phoenix.

Ormer Shaun, second mate of Fleetwing, and Haki Tensaro, textile dealer from Eagle, have a beer at the Orion and Bull, another fictional inn although this one is merely named. The surname, Shaughnessy, has been shortened to Shauny and now to Shaun. Confusing Kith with Nomads, I thought at first that "Ormer" was a surname and that "Shaun" was a personal name. In fact, it can be an alternative spelling of "Sean." Nomads and others in the Stellar Union period of the Psychotechnic History place their personal name after their surname but Kith do not.

17 and 21 are Kith short stories adapted as chapters of Starfarers. 10 and some other chapters expand the Kith history and the whole novel presents more than that history.

Hail, Poul Anderson.

Conflict And Communication

Starfarers, 15.

When robot craft attack Envoy, Ruszek and Brent, the two crew members with military experience, go EVA to defend their ship:

"The jetpacks on their backs were like the wings of the warrior angel Michael." (p. 110)

- a Biblical reference. See here. There is battle in heaven.

Meanwhile, Sundaram attempts communication on every wavelength:

flashes for numbers from 1 to 100;

digital symbols for operators identified by conducted operations;

sinsusoidal, parabolic and exponential variations of amplitude;

a succession of prime numbers.

This is First Contact in this timeline. I am not a mathematician so I do not understand all of Sundaram's experiments in communication but they are intended to show that Envoy is inhabited by conscious minds, not by automata. 

Recurrent Nova

Starfarers, 14.

A binary star. A has novaed and become a neutron star. B is a red dwarf. A, retaining most of its mass and gravity, draws matter from B. A bridge, river or cataract of hydrogen gas joins A and B. Condensed by weight and heated by its fall, the hydrogen periodically explodes into another nova. The cycle will end eventually and might culminate in a Type 1 supernova followed by a black hole. 

Poul Anderson shows cosmic events as dramatic. 

POV In NGC 5460

Starfarers, 14, p. 98.

On this page, the viewpoint changes from collective to individual. In the first three paragraphs, Envoy enters NGC 5460. We are told:

"...you could see those faint glimmers..."

"...you..." means any of the ten crew members. Again:

"The crew fared onward in awe."

The remaining three paragraphs recount a conversation. Dayan addresses Nansen. Yu comments. Nansen asks a question. Immediately we are told:

"The question sent an electric thrill along his spine and through his skin."

Nansen has become the individual viewpoint character. No one else experiences a thrill in Nansen's spine or skin. The philosophical question of subjectivity and objectivity is present in every fictional narrative.

NGC 5460

Starfarers, 13.

Last night, I reread Chapter 11 but skipped past it blogwise because it served only to confirm that there is a problem with Brent which he keeps reconfirming by barking, glaring etc.

In 13, Envoy pauses for realignment purposes near the NGC 5460 cluster where a non-stellar neutrino source, possibly nuclear power plants, is detected within the cluster. As in The Boat Of A Million Years, evidence of intelligence necessitates a decision whether to interrupt the mission. In Boat, Hanno, as captain, imposed his decision whereas Nansen allows a vote.

In the opening sentence of 14, Envoy approaches and enters the cluster. 

Don't go far. Stay tuned.

Memories Of Earth

Starfarers, 12.

Before dying on a planet of Delta Pavonis, old Michael Shaughnessy remembers:

Newgrange

a parish church

York Minster

Chartres Cathedral

the University of Salamanca

the portrait of the Empress Theodora at Ravenna

Michelangelo's Day of Judgment

the Parthenon

Egyptian tombs

Shwe Dagon

the Great Wall

the Forbidden City

Kyoto

Virginia hills known to Washington and Jefferson

Machu Picchu

We recognize some places from other Poul Anderson works.

Shaughnessy tells this to the winds of a planet where his wife was buried centuries before.

This character has given us a glimpse of Nansen's career before Envoy, an introduction to the Kith and now memories of the Earth that was.

The history continues.

The First Kith

Starfarers, 10.

Michael Shaughnessy has become one of the first Kith. He is seventy although his grandson, who gave up starfaring because his wife would not have been happy in space, is a hundred and ten and the Mayor of Kith Town which is currently surrounded by a vicarial preserve although, as I remember, later in the history it will again be a district of a city. Is Santa Verdad a real place? All that remains of it is:

"...a long, high mound and a few broken walls..." (p. 78)

The family name has changed to Shauny and Mayor Ramil Shauny has a neochimp servant. (Planet of The Apes?)

The immobile street is centuries old and buildings are antiquated. Kith town has taken form.

Conditions on Earth and the colonies change but:

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

Earth is ruled by greatmen and vicars but Michael will embark on a long voyage and:

"'...outlive the bastards.'" (p. 84)

Envoy has been gone 750 years/2 months. Future history is on its way. Chapter 11 takes us back inside the ship. 

Meanwhile, Back On Earth, Time Passes

Starfarers, 9.

The "galactic river" is "cold" in 9 and "frosty" in 40. See:

The Sea Of Space

Galactic River

In Tau Zero, The Boat Of A Million Years and Starfarers, a relativistic spaceship departs the Solar System. In Starfarers alone, the ship will return and meanwhile readers are kept informed of events on Earth and elsewhere in human space during its absence.

At the end of 9, the ship has set off and the crew are starting to settle in for the journey. We expect this narrative to continue. Instead, Chapter 10 opens:

"The town began..." (p. 77)

What town? We are back on Earth with a different set of characters. This opening paragraph summarizes some future history. The town had begun:

"...as a district in a small city." (ibid.)

However, we are told, people draw together when their way of life makes them increasingly foreign to those around them. What way of life? How are they becoming foreign? We suspect that the Kith, slower than light interstellar traders, are being introduced as their future history is incorporated into this long novel. We are told:

"As time passed, the district became a community in its own right. And it abided, while change swept to and fro around it like seas around a rock." (ibid.)

How much time? How many generations? Poul Anderson conveys the sense of more than one lifetime but, with time dilation, individuals can continue returning to Earth while generations are born and age there. Turning the page, we find that our viewpoint character is Michael Shaughnessy whom Nansen had known at Epsilon Eridani. 

Martels And STARFARERS

I find it hard to disengage from time travel but, if we stay with James Blish's John Martels for a while longer, he night help us back towards Poul Anderson's Starfarers.

Martels' "time projection" from 1985 to 25,000 A.D. counts as time travel because there is at least the possibility of his return. Martels inhabits a fascinating timeline that is one branch of Blish's Haertel Scholium, a kind of mini-multiverse. Characters in the twenty-first century of this timeline engage in Wellsian discussion of time, dimensions and consciousness. Like Wells' Time Traveller, Martels arrives in a post-civilizational perpetual summer where there is a museum of past technology. He is told something that seems relevant to the mind-body question that we have discussed in relation to artificial intelligence in Poul Anderson's works. A personality is a semistable electromagnetic field using the computing apparatus of a brain and the energy source of a body. Since we do not understand how neurons cause consciousness, we might think that the consciousness resides instead in the electromagnetic field but the same question arises. How does such a field generate consciousness? The philosophical question remains whatever the empirically discovered nature of the organism and/or any associated fields.

A variation on time travelling is provided by "world-line cruising." (See here and here.)

In Martels' timeline, the instantaneous Dirac transmitter receives messages not only from the present moment but also from every other part of the four dimensional continuum, i.e., from the past and future as well. Thus, intertemporal communication, which is a conceptual link to Starfarers.

Experience Before Understanding

Before he is shuttled to the Oligocene, Manse Everard has been carefully warned that the organization that is recruiting him patrols time. Some other characters experience a disorienting dislocation and must then come to an understanding of what has happened to them. In Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis, Duncan Reid is snatched by the vortex and black thunders and deposited in a desolation where, he thinks, he must be dreaming, delirious or dead. Needless to say:

"A wind boomed..."

-Poul Anderson, The Dancer From Atlantis (New York, 1972), III, p. 25.

Reid must learn that he is in the time of Atlantis.

("...vortex..." is a terminological parallel with Doctor Who.)

In James Blish's A Midsummer Century, John Martels finds himself not only in a strange environment but also in the wrong body and is stunned to be told that, by his reckoning, he is now in about 25,000 A.D. In this respect at least, his experience is closer to that of Wells' Time Traveller than of Anderson's visitors to historical periods.

In Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, Malcolm Lockridge travels along what looks like a long underground tunnel before being told that the tunnel has taken him and his companion to a historical period.

We encourage blog readers to remember other examples. 

We are puzzled by this long detour into time travel and might return to Starfarers tomorrow.

(Timefarers would make a good title.)

Concept And Experience

Time travel involves physics, philosophy and fiction. I can only read popular accounts of the physics but am more familiar with the philosophy and the fiction. 

Any time travel narrative has at least two aspects, conceptual and experiential: a conceptual framework, whether explicit or implicit, for time travel and the experiences of the time travellers.

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, the framework is explicit although confused, a detailed discussion of the nature of time. There are two experiential stages. First, the process of time travelling is itself experienced. The Time Traveller perceives everything outside himself and his vehicle as accelerated. Secondly, his experience of several future periods is described, vividly and colourfully.

In Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol," the conceptual framework is provided by some brief instruction in the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene. Instead of the Time Traveller's four dimensions, the Time Patrol deals with 4N dimensions.

The experiential aspect is present but different. First, there is no experience of time travelling as such because each temporal transition is subjectively instantaneous. Secondly, although Manse Everard has been shuttled to the Oligocene for training, then back to the twentieth century, the reality of time travel does not strike him until he is travelling through London in a hansom cab in 1894. Thereafter, this and every other historical period is described in detail.

Different Ways Of Describing Observed Or Imagined Events

I have read that sometimes on a subatomic level a particle-antiparticle pair is created but the antiparticle almost immediately mutually annihilates with an already existing particle. Is this creation and annihilation or a single particle zigzagging spatiotemporally? On a macroscopic level, it would mean that, as a man, A, walks across a city square, something appears or materializes nearby. The materialization immediately splits into two men, B and C, identical with A and with each other. B walks forward on a path parallel to A's whereas C walks backwards towards A and collides with him, whereupon C and A disappear. Are they A, B and C or just A zigzagging spatiotemporally?

Sf writers usually imagine bodily continuity of a time traveller between his departure and his arrival. HG Wells' Time Traveller and Poul Anderson's mutant time travellers become mysteriously invisible and intangible but do continue to exist while time travelling whereas Anderson's Time Patrol timecycles and their occupants merely disappear and (re) appear. In Responses To Time Travel, I wrote:

"It is not logically impossible for a five minutes older version of me to appear and then to coexist with me for five minutes before I disappear. In other words, I would have time travelled five minutes into the past."

 However, this event can be described non-chronokinetically, i.e., without reference to time travel: a duplicate of me with prescient memories is created five minutes before I am annihilated. Futureward time travel is even easier to account for: I am annihilated and later re-created.

Bon voyage.

The Other Blog

If a post is about a time travel work by Poul Anderson, should it be published on this Poul Anderson Appreciation blog or on the Logic of the Time Travel blog? Because the latter blog has been neglected, I have added an explanatory post to it. See here.

Responses To Time Travel

Do I think that time travel is logically possible? Yes, although not all of its supposed consequences are. It is not logically impossible for a five minutes older version of me to appear and then to coexist with me for five minutes before I disappear. In other words, I would have time travelled five minutes into the past. Do I think that anything like that is likely to happen? No. Such events do not happen and there are strong grounds for believing that they are physically impossible. So what should be the response of a fictional character who finds that, in his experience, such events do happen?

We know in advance that a text that we are about to read is classified as fiction, even as science fiction, and we probably also know from the title, blurb etc that it is about time travel. So we are not surprised when Jack Havig's mother, suddenly hearing a baby crying in the next room, walks through carrying her baby and is so surprised at seeing an identical baby that she drops her baby only to see it disappear in mid-air... We just think about it and work out what must have happened but meanwhile the unfortunate mother is freaked to say the least...

I think that such events are logically possible but not that there is the slightest possibility in any other sense that they will happen.

Religions Real Or Fictional II

Starfarers, 7.

(I have just been out to our Zen group and back.)

Before eating, Captain Nansen pauses for those who want to bless the meal.

Being nominally Reform Catholic, he crosses himself as does Ruszek.

Zeyd bows his head.

Mokoena folds her hands, looks down and whispers.

Yu and Sundaram become meditative.

Kilbirnie, Brent, Dayan and Cleland wait respectfully.

That is everyone on board accounted for.

(I have heard a Buddhist equivalent of "grace before meals" but have not committed it to memory.)

A very strong unifying factor in society is that, except for a few sectarians, everyone attends weddings and funerals of friends and colleagues irrespective of denomination or tradition. The crew accept that, in different circumstances, they would attend a Reform Catholic church for their captain's wedding or funeral - but what practices will they find on Earth after ten thousand years? (This question is answered later in the novel.)

Religions Real Or Fictional

Starfarers.

Hanny Dayan debunked Cosmosophy. 

(I have just been reading about Theosophy and how Krishnamurti transcended it.)

"'[Mamphela Mokoena's] parents are ministers in the Samaritan Church.'" (6, p. 44)

(A Christian organization named after a branch of Judaism?)

Alvin Brent's mother was in the New Christian Church.

(That can mean anything, as we know.)

Zeyd is an adherent of the Ahmaddiyah Movement.

(This is real. Here.)

"Sundaram sat on the ground, on a bank of sacred Ganges..." (8, p. 69)

I identify with Sundaram.