L.L.? II

See L.L.? 

I must be brief but there is a parallel here. In a detective novel by Poul Anderson, a murdered man has scribbled the letters "L.L." (See the above link.) In The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Sir Charles Baskerville who died in mysterious circumstances had received a letter from a woman who had signed it with the initials, "L.L."

What can we make of that? Although I have read both books before, I can remember neither what the letters meant in the Anderson book nor who the woman was in the Conan Doyle book. But I will shortly be reminded of the latter. And I will shortly also know what is the secret mission of Allen Lancaster in Anderson's "Security." Fictional universes are complicated and many of their details are forgotten.

Starting "Security"

I have started into "Security" but it is not grabbing me yet and I will probably leave it aside till tomoz. I want to get back to The Hound Of The Baskervilles before midnight.

Like Simon Arch in "Snowball," Allen Lancaster works with dielectric polarization. The difference is that Lancaster lives in a future interplanetary period when society and science are subject to "Security." (James Blish's They Shall Have Stars is about security stifling science but secret scientific projects finding an escape route.)

Palpable fear of Security, retroactively reedited public propaganda and a new phonetic orthography all make Lancaster's milieu sound 1984-esque although its technology is more advanced. (I think that the 1984 regime will grind to a halt through lack of research.)

Security will replace Lancaster with a double while he works on a top secret project for them so we will find out what that is next time or of course blog readers might read the story online first.

Why do these obscure early short stories have so many different cover illustrations? What a strange new perspective we are gaining on Poul Anderson's works. I am wondering how to escape back to the continuity and the greater substantiality of the same author's Technic History. 

"Snowball": Conclusion

"Snowball." 

"Snow whirled against the house, blindingly, as if the world drew into itself and nothing lay beyond these walls. The muted skirl of wind came through, lonesome and shivering. But inside, there was warmth and a calm light."

This signifies that the social upheavals and conflicts are dying down so that now a new kind of life as normal can be found.

Our hero, Arch, needing to do something new, has an Andersonian moment of realization. His invention, capacitite, can concentrate energy and this can be used for:

"'Spaceships!'" (The last word of the text.)

Next: "Security."

Wind And Sky

"Snowball."

Like "Let There Be Light" in Robert Heinlein's Future History, this is a story about a new source of cheap energy. Someone might summarize the technical details and economic ramifications. Not me.

"Autumn, the New England fall of rain and chill whistling wind, smoky days and flame-like leaves and the far wild honking of southbound geese."

We are on familiar territory here, especially with the "chill whistling wind." However, the paragraph continues by outlining human activities:

"The crash came in September: a reeling market hit bottom and stayed there. Gasoline sales were down twenty-five per cent already, and the industry was laying men off by the hundreds of thousands. That cut out their purchasing power and hit the rest of the economy."

A newly unemployed man who remembers the breadlines of thirties tries to kill the inventor of the destabilizing factor, capacitite.

During the depression, there are:

"...a leaden sky and a small whimpering wind."

As ever, a whimpering wind exactly expresses what is going on for the human characters.

And I thought that a leaden sky had played a significant role in James Blish's Black Easter:

There may be some textual evidence that the demons are not really at large. When Domenico wondered why an angel conjured by the white magicians appeared headless:

“The leaden skies returned him no answer.” ²⁹

And when Hess suggests that they are all insane, he does so “…in a leaden monotone.” ³⁰

Does Hess’ leaden monotone confirm that Domenico’s leaden skies are part of a collective hallucination? The word “leaden” seems significant. Blish would have known that he used it twice and that, by doing so, he linked an inner state, insanity, to an outer appearance, an unanswering sky. However, the Goat’s swallowing of the hysterically incredulous Hess seems even more significant, a decisive statement that demons are real.

-copied from here.

Literary Connections

Authors expect at least some of their literary references to be recognized and also hope that their texts will affect their readers in the ways that they intend whether or not those readers fully understand how this has been done. Biblical or Shakespearean quotations usually have their own resonances whether or not their source is recognized. See "Give Me Strength!"

However, memory also operates by entirely accidental associations or resemblances that cannot possibly be anticipated or intended. Rereading a book can remind any of us of where we were the first time that we read it which is unique to each reader. There was a time when the name of Selden, the escaped convict in The Hound Of The Baskervilles, automatically made me think of Seldon, the psychohistorian in Asimov's Foundation, although there is no possible connection between these two guys even if, just possibly, "Selden" was somewhere in Asimov's memory when he wrote "Seldon." Nowadays, Holmes texts recall the fruitful connections between that series and Poul Anderson's works and these connections, of course, were fully intended by Anderson although not necessarily recognized by all readers. Indeed, "Altamont" and The Origin Of Tree Worship are quite obscure.

Fiction About Science

Science fiction could mean fiction about science, i.e., about the work of scientists and about scientific processes. How much would we have to know about science in order to understand such a kind of fiction? Would the author be able to explain scientific issues clearly enough for the benefit of readers who were not scientifically educated and would he also be able to hold their attention throughout a narrative specifically about scientific questions and their resolutions? Scientifically uninformed readers tend to skip past the scientific rationales in works of sf but suppose the content of such rationales was present not only in a few introductory passages but also throughout a novel or short story, forming the main content of its narrative? James Blish put a lot of scientific background into They Shall Have Stars about the development both of antigravity and of antiagathics. I mention this because, among Poul Anderson's short stories, "Catalysis," which we have just read, and "Snowball," which we might be about to read, seem to fit into this proposed category of "science fiction." I could quote some dialogue from either story to illustrate this point. However, I would have little or no understanding of what I was quoting.

Have You Ever Heard Of "Snowball"?

Next, maybe, will be "Snowball" and again I will not begin to read this previously unknown story at nearly 10:00 PM. These stories are so dissimilar to each other that starting to read a new one is a wrench. We have gone from an interstellar empire to Triton Station to now an Earth-based story. Each of these obscure stories has several cover illustrations.

There is a program on TV about Papal Conclaves. And we, editorially speaking, have begun to reread The Hound Of The Baskervilles. Christmas approaches but preparations are in hand. 

And discussion of Poul Anderson's works remains endless but might slow down for a while.

Technic History Collections

A short story collection is not usually a "short stories plus also one novel" collection. If Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate had not included The Man Who Counts, then the latter would have been the first volume in the Technic History, preceding even Trader To The Stars. The first person narrator of the concluding story in Trader... describes Nicholas van Rijn as:

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes, and t'Kela!"

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1964), pp. 115-159 AT p. 121 -

- thus explicitly referring to the contents both of the previous two stories in the collection and of the novel. 

Why is "Esau," published in 1970, placed before "Hiding Place," published 1961, in the Chronology of Technic Civilization? This puts "Esau" between The Man Who Counts and "Hiding Place," the first story in Trader...

The first two volumes, Trader... and The Trouble Twisters, are specifically about van Rijn and Falkayn respectively and therefore would not have included any chronologically earlier stories about other characters which in any case were not written until later and therefore could not have been included.

On Triton

"Catalysis."

A more recent and more up-to-date story than some that we have read recently, "Catalysis" was published in 1956, the same year as Poul Anderson's first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit."

We have become used to imagining regular space travel in the Solar System. If Triton Station is in danger of becoming uninhabitable, then surely the hundred or so scientists and children who have been living there for years at a time can evacuate? Not if they are visited by a single spaceship only once every few years and there are no spacecraft at the Station.

This is a story about a technical problem with a technical solution and also, of course, a moment of realization for the problem-solver. Our hero's final triumph is that he overcomes his stutter sufficiently to invite a woman colleague to a dance. 

A muralist has created a picture of the "green Earth," reminding us of a Heinlein title.

There is a similar Station on Titan. Saturn has 274 known moons so we will not list the names. The Solar System is a lot more than just one star, eight planets, their moons and an asteroid belt. Sf should show us all this. (Maybe it does.)

"The Saturn Game," the opening story of Anderson's Technic History, is about the exploration of the Saturnian moon, Iapetus.

When Anderson mentioned the Saturnian System (also here) in the Time Patrol series, he would not then have known how big it was.

Triton And Neptune

"Catalysis" is set in Triton Station.

The known moons of Neptune are:

Naiad

Thalassa

Despina

Galatea

Larissa

Hippocamp

Proteus

Triton

Nereid

Halimede

Sao

S/2002 N 5

Laomedeia

Psamathe

Neso

S/2021 N 1

The medieval "planets" (moving heavenly bodies) were:

Sun

Moon

Venus

Jupiter

Mercury

Mars 

Saturn

They excluded:

Earth

anything that can only be seen to move through a telescope

Uranus was seen without a telescope but not seen to move. Neptune and Pluto were first seen with telescopes. (Post corrected. See combox.)

Proteus and Triton are mentioned in a sonnet by William Wordsworth:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

This poem is in the public domain.

Beginnings, Troubles And Endings

Robert Heinlein's Future History begins on the substantial base of sixteen near future short stories collected in Volumes I and II. Thereafter, two short stories, "Coventry" and "Misfit," fall between two novels, "If This Goes On -" and Methuselah's Children. For this reason, Volume III has always comprised Revolt In 2100, collecting the first novel and the two short stories. Volume IV is the second novel and the much shorter Volume V completes the Future History by collecting just two remaining interconnected novellas.

In its original book publication order, Poul Anderson's Technic History begins with a collection about van Rijn, a collection about Falkayn and two novels about both. Again, two short stories fall between the two novels. In the original order, these two short stories were collected with ten other instalments in the later The Earth Book Of Stormgate whereas, in the still later The Technic Civilization Saga, the entire Technic History is presented in chronological order of fictional events, requiring a total of seven omnibus volumes.

In the original order, the first collection, Trader To The Stars, partly by its quotations from Percy Shelley, conveys the sense of adventure in the early days of the Polesotechnic League whereas the second novel, Mirkheim, is clearly and explicitly about the beginning of the end of the League. However, the second story in Trader... foreshadows later conflicts in its prologue, an extract from the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," which ends by informing readers that the League:

"...had its troubles."

-Poul Anderson, "Territory" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1964), pp. 53-114 AT p. 54.

"Catalysis" And Other Matters

Next (maybe) is "Catalysis" which I had never heard of before. It seems to be a completely different kind of story and I have no intention of beginning to read it this late at night. Jumping randomly from one early story to another makes for a somewhat disjointed reading experience although these texts do have an inherent interest in that they are previously unread and indeed unknown narratives in which we recognize ideas or themes that came to be more fully developed in the author's later works.

There have been more posts than usual today because this household has again been inflicted by the cold. It is to be hoped that tomorrow will see a return to Christmas preparations and to less blogging. The rest of this evening will be taken up with rereading the "Adventure" that begins when Holmes shakes Watson awake and says, "'The game is afoot.'" 

The End Of "Inside Earth"

"Inside Earth."

The story does end with an explanation of the strange imperial policy of encouraging, then defeating, rebellions.

This empire, like the Terran Empire in the same author's Technic History, has Nova- and Supernova-class battleships.

On the planet where the rebels conceal their underground Main Base, the wind:

is crazed;

mutters;

whines;

chews flesh;

is cold like a knife;

whistles its scorn;

rails;

is old and immortal;

moans;

blows;

wanders.

When the rebels are defeated and taken prisoner, one of them screams at their commander:

"'Levinsohn, you dirty Jew, you sold us out!'" (in VIII)

He did not. But the narrator cites this incident as showing that Terrestrials are still fatally divided. The Empire is only beginning to understand and control great social forces but aims to unite all intelligences long term.

Macbeth And Hamlet

"Inside Earth."

(There are more cover illustrations for "Inside Earth" than we can use.)

We quoted Macbeth.

Now the alien narrator quotes Hamlet:

"The time is out of joint

"O cursed spite,

"That ever I was born

"To set it right."

- as did Manse Everard:

"'The time is out of joint and you can't set it right today. You can't.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 14, A.D. 43, p. 593.

We find unexpected connections.

"Inside Earth"

Now we are reading "Inside Earth." I really had expected a story set physically under the surface of the Earth which this is not and the significance of the title is not yet clear, at least not to me. Extrasolar humanoids run an interstellar empire that has conquered Earth and that tries to goad Earthlings into uniting against it because a united Earth will make a stronger contribution to interstellar civilization - or something. I am not minded to reread to try to make any more sense of this.

We have found another description of the Milky Way with something against it:

"Her bow guns were dark shadows against the clotted cold silver of the Milky Way." (in IV.)

There are some good Andersonian descriptions:

"The Rockies are huge and serene, a fresh cold wind blows from their peaks and roars in the pines, brawling rivers foam through their dales and canyons - it is a big landscape, clean and strong and lonely. It speaks with silence." (in II.)

Maine fishermen and artisans are:

"...at home with the darkling woods and the restless sea and the high windy sky." (in III.)

The alien first person narrator is physically so similar to a Terrestrial human being that he can be surgically disguised as one and his mentality is almost indistinguishable. This is one of Poul Anderson's fictional universe where "human beings" somehow already inhabit many planets. 

Life

"World of the Mad."

Poul Anderson quotes and matches Shakespeare (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5) on the apparent pointlessness of a brief lifespan. Anderson's text, including the quotation, is as follows:

"He thought of Sol, Sirius, Antares, the great suns and planets of the Galaxy, and could not keep from shuddering. Drabness, deadness, colorlessness, meaninglessness! Life was a brief blind spasm of accident and catastrophe, walled in by its own shortness and the barren environment of a death-doomed cosmos. Too small to achieve any purpose, too limited even to imagine a goal, it flickered and went out into an utter dark.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

"Creeps in this petty place from day to day

"To the last syllable of recorded time,

"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

"The way to dusty death..."

Life:

"...a brief blind spasm..." (Anderson);

"...a walking shadow, a poor player..." (Shakespeare)

Death-doomed cosmos? But how many cosmoses are there? We do imagine some goals and achieve some purposes. 

"...flickered and went out into an utter dark..." sounds Shakespearean. 

But there is another side to life. It is surely better to be alive than never to have existed?

I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

February 27, 1940 Coyoacan

L. Trotsky

Immortality And The Wind On Tanith

 

"World of the Mad."

Tanith reads like the source of the wind that blows through Poul Anderson's multiverse:

"A wind blew through drifting clouds, and it seemed as if the wind had language too and spoke to the men, if they could but understand it."

Yet another sf rationalization of "immortality": whereas life elsewhere is metastable, on Tanith it arises spontaneously from complex chemistry and human bodies are free from any chemical or colloidal degradation. In Anderson's "What Shall It Profit?," shielding an organism from all radiation made it immortal.

"There was a storm outside; the cottage shook to a fury of wind and was filled with its noise and power."

"The wind roared and boomed, with a hollow voice that seemed to shout words in some unknown tongue..."

"Her voice was very small in the racket of wind."

Langdon "...would go striding through [fire-storms] like a god shouting back at the wind."

Eileen remembers in "...winter storms on Terra... a big wind driving snow against the house."

"The wind yammered, banging on the door."

"There was a new voice in the storm now, a great belling organ was crying to him to come out..."

"The storm sang outside, and he heard music and lure and enchantment."

"The wind called and called."

When Eileen is alone because Langdon has answered the call and gone out in the storm, it seems to her that all the powers of Tanith are against her:

"The wind hooted and whistled, piping down the chimney and skirling under the eaves."

"All the old forgotten powers of night and dark and Hell were abroad, whirling on the wind and slamming against the door and banging their heels on the roof."

"...the wind sang to him. It filled him, the song of the wind, the song of Tanith. He was lost in it..."

This is when he knows that he approaches allness and peace.

He experiences fire, wind, trees, a chant, living forests, dancing hills and an ancient Tanithian flying in the storm while Eileen has a miscarriage. The wind that was exultation to him was devastation to her. They leave Tanith and return to mortality.

Oneness With The Allness

"World of the Mad."

An unusual story: I think that everyone just has to read it for themselves. 

"...as a man grew older, without loss of physical and mental faculties, he found more and more within himself, an unfolding inward richness..."

I think that that can be true even within an unextended lifespan. Does the remembered younger self not sometimes seem to have been superficial? But "within" and "inner" should not imply introversion: a deepening perception or understanding of both inner and outer.

Langdon wonders whether "...the ancient natives..." had "...simply become extinct..." or "...finally seen the allness of the world and gone - elsewhere?" Like the Chereionites in the Technic History? (Or, at least, what many believed had become of the Chereionites.)

His wife, Eileen, remembers winter storms on Earth:

"'If it was around Christmas time, we'd be singing the old songs..."

A topical reference.

Outside in the storm, Langdon approaches oneness:

"He knew - in another moment he would know, he would be part of the allness and have peace within him."

Transcendent experiences, which characters can have in any kind of fiction.

"World Of The Mad"

OK. We are now starting to read "World of the Mad" online. How far will this go?

Four senses:

curling purple mists and a floating face (sight);

rolling, quivering ground (touch);

rumbling, shifting strata and voices singing in the fog (sounds);

the viewpoint character, Langdon's, sense of direction (kinesthesia).

There are "three hurtling moons." ERB's Mars/Barsoom has two. Langdon is on a planet called Tanith where he sees what is described as a "temporal mirage" of a long dead city with winged inhabitants.

Tanith is an extrasolar colony where men do not age so that Langdon is another "immortal" character. In well-established sf jargon, Earth is referred to as "Terra." We encounter familiar echoes of other genre sf stories.

No doubt all will be made clear but, for me, that will have to be after a lunch break.

Wealth And Sacredness

"The Season of Forgiveness."

On Ivanhoe, the dwellers in the ruined city of Dahia remember that their imperial ancestors had ruled territories that have, for the past five thousand years, been deserts inhabited by nomads. Polesotechnic League merchants build their base within the city where they have access to a large stable work force but negotiate with the nomads of the Black Tents for trade in the valuable adir herb. Will mere nomads become rich while the Dahians who still faithfully serve the gods of an ancient empire remain weak? Never. After many centuries, the Dahians suddenly declare an interest in the deserts. Even if war destroys trade, honour will not be lost. And how can the merchants broker peace? They are powerful but (apparently) motivated only by profit, not by anything sacred - until they celebrate the birth of one who came to Earthlings to speak of peace and of much else. These merchants should have special wisdom during the season of their Prince of Peace. 

Although Nicholas van Rijn is not in this story, we recognize his touch. Although he is a master profit-maker, van Rijn has his own sense of sacredness and also knows how to motivate human and non-human beings with very dissimilar value-systems. It is appropriate that, in The Technic Civilization Saga, "How To Be Ethnic In On Easy Lesson," about student James Ching, and "The Season of Forgiveness," about apprentice Juan Hernandez, are collected in a volume entitled The Van Rijn Method.

In two stories, Poul Anderson presents three different Ivanhoan societies and Ivanhoans later join the Supermetals company. 

Hibernating Talwinians resemble Ganesh. Ivanhoans resemble Aslan.

End And Beginning

 

"The Temple of Earth."

It did not take long to read to the end where the last word is "...beginning."

In Lunar gravity, men can float down from a balcony and can also take flying leaps during sword fights like John Carter on Mars. Like ERB's Carter series, "The Temple..." is "sword and science" as against "sword and sorcery." All that happens is several fights until the viewpoint character is on the winning side at least for the time being. A sequel would be "The Return to Earth."

I will try to find out whether there are any more old Poul Anderson stories on line. However, we are grateful that Anderson went on to write about something other than sword fights.

Tommic And The Long Night

"The Temple of Earth." 

I will not summarize the whole story, especially since everyone can read it online.

Tommic is either a local god or the devil responsible for the Fall.

The ruling faction within the Temple wants to restore science and to unite mankind in freedom as against slavery but:

"'If we fail, as seems all too probable, the long night will descend completely.'"

Staving off the Long Night is an Andersonian quest.

The viewpoint character, Rikard, has now changed sides twice in the corkscrew of Lunar politics. The action moves fast and we do not know where it is going except that it will probably be towards a better future.

Four Senses On Ivanhoe

"The Season of Forgiveness." 

See Shadows Lay Thick which outlines three senses on Ivanhoe but I had missed something because the concluding sentence of the immediately preceding paragraph reads:

"Wind, shrill in the lanes, bore sounds of feet, hoofs, groaning cartwheels, an occasional call or the whine of a bone flute." (p. 130)

There were four senses but I was so focused on a single paragraph that I had missed the one before it. This time, we notice first the perennial wind and secondly that those words, "shrill," "groaning" and "whine," exacerbate the unEarthly uneasiness of this extrasolar environment. Poul Anderson's detailed descriptions are inexhaustible. Rereading, we always find more.

The Fall And All

 

"The Temple of Earth."

Engineers preach sermons about:

sin;

a consequent Fall from Earth where there is green everywhere, great pools of water and enough food for everyone and where you can walk outside without a spacesuit;

a return to Earth at death;

or banishment to Mars for criminals etc.

The real history, known to few, is of a war that destroyed civilization on Earth and left the Lunar colonies isolated.

On the Moon, machines wore out, "wise men" died, cities fought with swords and spears:

"'...and finally the long night of ignorance fell on us. And that is the true story of the Fall."

And that is also the first Long Night in Poul Anderson's works. We return to roots.

Lunar City

"The Temple of Earth." 

On the Lunar surface, an airlock in a guarded, armoured dome leads to a tunnel down to a farm cavern with walls too far away to be seen. Overseen peasants tend green food plants in long rows of tanks. Slaves feed cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry near a slaughterhouse. 

A winding ramp leads up past:

doorless lower-class compartments;

factories for the manufacture of weapons, tools, clothes etc plus ore-smelting and refining;

(the air factory, controlled by the Chief Engineer, is further up in the Temple);

a park, with grass, trees and roses, frequented by noble-class warriors, administrators and Engineers; 

a level of spacious upper-class apartments with slaves and guards but gentlefolk in litters;

the richly furnished prince's home which has a high, muralled wall, spear-wielding sentries, a footman and a window high up in a larger surface dome.

Quite a place.

In which other works does Anderson show this kind of barbarism in a vacuum?

The Temple Of Earth And The Ghostly Glory Of The Milky Way

"The Temple of Earth" by Poul Anderson begins with an Andersonian fight scene on the Moon between protagonists in spacesuits although their weapons are bows and arrows, spears and axes. To kill someone is to "send him to Earth." "Go to Mars, you bastard!" is a curse. We infer that the Moon has been colonized but that society and technology have retrogressed and that planets visible from the Moon have come to be identified with regions of a hereafter.

We read yet another description of the Milky Way:

"...the ghostly glory of the Milky Way..."

We will read this 1953 story to the end, not knowing what to expect, but maybe not this evening. So far, we have read to that point in the narrative where the viewpoint character has just been captured by his enemies.

It has become rare to find an as yet unread Anderson story but maybe there are others like this online.

The Everlasting Light

Arthur Conan Doyle's Christmas story, "The Blue Carbuncle," includes the phrase, "the season of forgiveness," which became the title of Poul Anderson's Christmas story (see combox here) which concludes:

"-the hopes and fears of all the years

"Are met in thee tonight."

-"The Season of Forgiveness," p. 139.

Sheila sings in a choir which today sang carols in the town centre. Aileen (daughter) and I sat opposite, drinking coffee. The choir concluded with "O little town of Bethlehem," which Aileen then said was her favourite carol. Fiction and life converged. 

Someone must be able to bring the Abrahamic and other theistic traditions together. By "bring together," I do not mean "doctrinally unify." Impossible and unnecessary. We can live with doctrinal differences in such matters. I mean "understand and acknowledge instead of misunderstand and condemn." There are different versions of stories. What I call a story, some call literally true. OK. That is another difference.

Years ago, we had a Service for Peace in Lancaster Catholic Cathedral with readings from the Veda, the Torah, the Koran and the Fourth Gospel. The Bishop said that it was good to hear the Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic. 

An Ivanhoan says that the Earthlings:

"'...should have special wisdom, now in the season of their Prince of Peace.'" (p. 137)

These Ivanhoans, unlike those in the previous story, "The Three-Cornered Wheel," have the Pagan attitude of accepting the reality of other gods.

"The everlasting light" (think of a menorah) is universal. In the Buddha Dharma, a man is enlightened. In the New Testament, the light becomes a man.

"From delusion, lead us to truth.

"From darkness, lead us to light..."

-my adaptation of the Gayatri Mantra.

Future Historical References

 

See A Planet And A Faith.

David Falkayn's "significant adventure" on Ivanhoe was:

in a previous volume;

before he worked for Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors;

while he was still apprenticed to Martin Schuster.

The previous "glimpse into a major human faith" was:

earlier in the Earth Book;

did not feature any continuing characters;

was set on the planet Avalon (not yet named);

involved a conflict of practice between Christianity and the Ythrian New Faith;

and involved a Christian character from the planet, Aeneas, which appears later in the Technic History.

A Planet And A Faith

There are two agendas in The Earth Book Of Stormgate. First, Poul Anderson is gathering together the remaining Polesotechnic League and Ythrian stories. Secondly, Hloch informs us in his general introduction that:

"This is the tale, told afresh, of how Avalon came to settlement and thus our choth to being."

-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), p. 14.

Then why include "The Season of Forgiveness," which is set neither on Ythri nor on Avalon and does not feature anyone involved in the colonization of Avalon? Hloch has an answer for everything:

"Hloch includes it, first, because it shows more than the usual biographies do of a planet on which Falkayn had, earlier, had a significant adventure. Second, it gives yet another glimpse into a major human faith, alive unto this year and surely of influence upon him and his contemporaries." (p. 126)

Amen to that. Christmas preparations here.

The Ever Howling Wind

"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez."

When I find a passage in Conan Doyle that is almost word for word as we would have read it in Poul Anderson, I wonder whether Anderson had picked up this way of writing from Conan Doyle.

First, the scene setting:

"Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows." (p. 233)

But that wind goes further and seems to comment on the dialogue. While the young detective, Stanley Hopkins, recounts his baffling murder case to Holmes and Watson:

"'...this is the lad who has met his death this morning in the professor's study under circumstances which can point only to murder.'

"The wind howled and screamed at the windows. Holmes and I drew closer to the fire, while the young inspector slowly and point-by-point developed his singular narrative." (p. 236)

Hopkins' account continues but not before that howling, screaming wind has had its say. I had been trying to move away from Poul Anderson's works for the rest of this evening but that interruption to Hopkins' dialogue took me right back into them.

If you ever write a pastiche of either Holmes or Anderson, then you have got to include that wind.

1894

 

Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez" IN Doyle, The Return Of Sherlock Holmes IN Arthur Conan Doyle: 3 In 1 (Mumbai, 2004), pp. 233-259.

"...three massive manuscript volumes...," containing Holmes' and Watson's work for 1894, include:

"...the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker." (ibid.);

"...an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow." (ibid.);

"The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case..." (ibid.);

"...the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin..." (ibid.);

"...the episode of Yoxley Old Place..." (ibid.)

Although "Each of these would furnish a narrative...," (ibid.) Watson recounts only the sixth of these listed cases. Poul Anderson recounts the second and locates it accurately in 1894. We appreciate two intersecting series.

Seasonal Reading

Poul Anderson, "The Season of Forgiveness" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 126-139.

In the combox for The Solutions And A Culmination, I explained why I place so much emphasis on Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate. This omnibus collection includes the first appearances of Sandra Tamarin, Coya Conyon, Merseians and Baburites. These two women and two extrasolar species are important elements in the culminating Polesotechnic League novel, Mirkheim. The Earth Book really is a concentrated essence of the Technic History. 

The Earth Book also collects "The Season of Forgiveness," which reuses the planet Ivanhoe, first introduced in the first David Falkayn story in The Trouble Twisters. Since "The Season..." is Anderson's Christmas story, it will be appropriate to reread it next but there is no hurry.

The opening paragraphs present a good overview of how the Polesotechnic League operates over long interstellar distances. Ivanhoe is:

"...the chill planet of a red dwarf star, away off in the Pleiades region, where half a dozen humans laired in the ruins of a city which had been great five thousand years ago, and everywhere else reached wilderness." (p. 127)

The planet:

"...had had no more than a supply depot for possible distressed spacecraft." (p. 128)

We read about that in the Falkayn story. Since then, an investigator has found the valuable herb adir in deserts on another continent. Master Trader Thomas Overbeck's team must persuade Ivanhoans to harvest adir in exchange for trade goods, like the deal on Suleiman in the previous story where the Baburites had intervened. Human traders will not come to a permanent base without their families and will not stay long if the families become unhappy so Apprentice Juan Hernandez's plan to welcome children with a Christmas party will make a good start. We read about the by now familiar League but not about any familiar characters. Known space is big.

A Stronger Wind

I found the conclusion of The Star Beast anticlimactic and am disinclined to reread any more Heinlein Juveniles - although I have found yet another cover illustration.

The concluding chapters reminded me of James Blish's The Star Dwellers in which teenagers make a treaty between Earth and powerful aliens. Young protagonists interact with other species in some of Poul Anderson's Technic History instalments.

The wind plays tricks which remind us of its frequent role in Anderson's works:

"Wind sweeping across the miles-wide field forced [Mr. Kiku] to clutch his hat. 'I do not like wind,' he complained to Dr. Ftaeml. 'It is disorderly.'

"'There is a stronger wind ahead,' the Rargyllian answered soberly."

-CHAPTER XVI, p. 165.

A stronger wind ahead - a good description of where we are at right now. Sf prepares us for the future which starts immediately after the present.

Revels Ended

William Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. 

Poul Anderson wrote a sequel to both, A Midsummer Tempest, and quoted:

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

"The solemn empires, the great globe itself,

"Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

"And like this insubstantial pageant faded

"Leave not a wrack behind -"

-The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1 -

- in "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (December, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 480.

Robert Heinlein quoted more of that same speech:

"Our revels now are ended. These, our actors,

"As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

"Are melted into air, into thin air:

"And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

"The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

"Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

"And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

"Leave not a rack behind."

- in Between Planets, Double Star, Have Spacesuit - Will Travel and Farnham's Freehold.

However, despite quoting from the beginning of the speech, Heinlein omitted its concluding sentence:

"We are such stuff

"As dreams are made on; and our little life

"Is rounded with a sleep."

Heinlein denied death! Anderson did not. Although he did not write about the deaths of van Rijn or Flandry, we do read stories set long after their deaths. Although the mutant "immortals" in Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years plan to reconvene a million years hence, there is no guarantee that any of them will in fact survive that long.

James Blish wrote The Triumph Of Time to show that even beneficiaries of antiagathics will be killed by the end of the universe if not by anything else before then.

Hostages

We approach the conclusion of Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast, which has been a good source of comparisons, but must finish it tomorrow.

"'Hostage,' Mr. Kiku said primly, 'is a word that no diplomat should ever use.'"

-CHAPTER XV, p. 154.

He has not denied that he is insisting on hostages, just that that word should ever be used. And he does all this with a straight face. We can learn from the diplomat, Kiku, just as we learn from the merchant, Nicholas van Rijn.

Another short post but I really am trying to get to bed after midnight again.

We deal with cosmic matters and with trivial details. All is one.

Lewis, Heinlein And Anderson On The Hereafter

Introduction

This blog appreciates Poul Anderson and also recommends some other high quality sf writers including:

the early Wells

CS Lewis

the early Heinlein

James Blish

SM Stirling

Lewis

I have read Lewis' spiritual autobiography, popular theology and theologically informed fiction, both adult and juvenile. Some critics might regard Lewis' fantasy and sf as propaganda and I personally have problems in particular with his Perelandra for its anti-Darwinism. However, he did write imaginative and insightful novels and short stories which were admired by the agnostic James Blish and still are by many, including myself.

Lewis presents philosophical arguments (which I do not accept) for theism but merely assumes indefinite continuation of human consciousness after physical death. I regard such an assumption as a major weakness. Of course, we must heed any alleged arguments or evidence for survival. Lewis implies acceptance of the evidence of Spiritualism:

"'They prefer taking trips back to Earth. They go and play tricks on the poor daft women ye call mediums. They go and try to assert their ownership of some house that once belonged to them: and then ye get what's called a Haunting.'" 

-CS Lewis, The Great Divorce (London, 1982), p. 61.

Here, a resident in the hereafter plausibly describes some aspects of our experience.

Heinlein

Apparently, Heinlein believed in survival because he wanted to: the worst possible reason.

"'When you die, you don't die all over, no matter how intensely you may claim to expect to. It is an emotional impossibility for any man to believe in his own death.'"

-Robert Heinlein, "Elsewhen," quoted in Heinlein In Dimension.

(If I have "Elsewhen" upstairs, then I can check it for myself but blog readers might remember my reluctance to climb stairs late in the evening.)

It is perfectly possible to believe in our own deaths. I did not experience anything before I was born. Why should I experience anything after I am dead? I did experience my consciousness being irresistibly driven down into darkness by a general anaesthetic. I remember nothing between that extinguishment and my later reawakening. If I had died under the anaesthetic, then there would have been no further experiences or memories of this individual. Life and consciousness would have continued but mine would have ceased as they surely will. How can anything, especially something as complicated as memory and identity, continue forever?

Panshin doubted that it was emotionally impossible for any man to believe in his own death but suspected that this was true of Heinlein. Indeed.

Heinlein, through one of his characters, attempts an argument for immortality:

"I am immortal. I transcend this little time-axis; a seventy-year span on it is but a casual phase in my experience. Second only to the prime datum of my own existence is the emotionally convincing certainty of my own continuity. I may be a closed curve, but, closed or open, I neither have a beginning nor an end. Self-awareness is not relational; it is absolute, and cannot be reached to be destroyed, or created. Memory, however, being a relational aspect of consciousness, may be tampered with and possibly destroyed."

-Robert Heinlein, "They," IN Heinlein, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (London, 1980), pp. 138-153 AT p. 146.

Slow down, man. Emotionally convincing? A closed curve would be immortal? Why can you not end? Go to sleep and do not wake up. Self-awareness not relational? Self is recognized as such only in relationship to other, like left-right, up-down, on-off etc. Awareness or consciousness is precisely the relationship between a subject and its objects. That relationship can certainly be created and destroyed. Memory possibly destroyed? It can certainly be destroyed and that is the end of the continuity of the self. 

Heinlein's "Goldfish Bowl" should be upstairs but is summarized on Wikipedia. See the link. One of the scientists who finds himself in a featureless environment considers the hypothesis that he has died and is in a hereafter. That is how pervasive this idea is in Heinlein's works.

Anderson...

...considered a scientific rationale for survival - a similar rationale is present in Starfarers although in less detail - but, in Anderson's works, this is only a speculative story idea. Anderson had neither the religious faith of Lewis nor the emotional conviction of Heinlein.

Death In SF

Poul Anderson wrote fantasies in which a hereafter is assumed as a fictional premise and one sf story in which a dying but mentally powerful alien transfers his mental pattern from his neurons to the cosmic wave, thus losing physical parts and senses but gaining:

"'...new psionic abilities which more than compensate. He could speak mind to mind with living Cibarrans, tell them the facts - and then, maybe, go on to the next phase of his existence, like a butterfly leaving the cocoon -'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Martyr" IN Anderson, The Gods Laughed (New York, 1982), pp. 7-32.

There is a "maybe" in there. Nevertheless, these Cibarrans live longer than their bodies. This one dies but then returns to his home planet as a wave pattern.

However:

this is speculative fiction, not a supernaturalist doctrine believed or promulgated by the author;

the kick in the face at the end is that a Cibarran tells a man that human beings do not have immortal souls.

I mention this in order to contrast Anderson with Robert Heinlein and CS Lewis but that will have to wait until a later post.

Extrapolative And Speculative Fiction

Heinlein In Dimension.

Alexei Panshin distinguishes:

"...between extrapolation and speculation." (VII., p. 160)

- by which he means:

Extrapolation

"...the closely reasoned inferential process." (ibid.)

"...an account of the operation of known processes." (ibid.)

e.g., Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

Speculation

"...the less confined concern with how and of what the world is made." (ibid.)

"...an account of the essential nature of things." (ibid.)

e.g., James Blish's The Triumph of Time.

I would have said that we extrapolate from the known and speculate about the unknown. Thus, a mission to Mars is extrapolation whereas the arrival of an extrasolar spaceship is speculation. 

Panshin adds that extrapolation and speculation overlap and also that a deeper sort of speculation is:

"the author's attitude toward life, or his conception of the world." (ibid.)

Is that a sort of speculation? Many attitudes and world-views are dogmatic and not what we would usually call speculative. Speculation requires some imagination.

The opening story of Poul Anderson's Technic History, "The Saturn Game," is extrapolative. Which stories are speculative? Can anyone divide up Anderson's works on this basis?

Panshin arrives at unconscious meanings and attitudes by examining an author's recurrent:

"...symbols, themes, and ideas..." (p. 161)

He identifies liberty and unreality as Heinleinian themes whereas I have identified freedom and diversity as Andersonian themes.

Interplanetary Politics

 

After comparing several aspects of Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast with diverse passages in works by Poul Anderson, let's close for tonight with CS Lewis.

"'You know that there is an interplanetary conference in progress?'

"She answered smugly, 'I make it a rule never to pay attention to politics.'"

-The Star Beast, CHAPTER XIV, p. 142.

Lewis the fictional character and first person narrator as opposed to Lewis the author reflects that he and his fictional friend Ransom:

"...were both getting more and more involved in what I could only describe as inter-planetary politics."

-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 150.

And there are interstellar politics in Anderson's Technic History as when the Merseians regard diplomacy as continuation of war by other means.

We need only add, before retiring for the night - it is after midnight again - that Lewis' "interplanetary politics," like Heinlein's, involve Earth, Mars and Venus but otherwise are completely different!

But read all three authors.

North American Union And Diamond Dust

Twilight World And Maurai informs us that:

"In Twilight World, the remnants of the United States and Canada merge as the North American Union..."

Both Rapid Technological Advances And Geopolitics and Alaric Wayne II refer to that same North American Union.

In North American Future History, the US and Canada amalgamate as the North American Federation.

In The Maurai Period, there is a North West Union.

In Pun And Gun, a North American Intelligence officer interrogates a rebel asterite.

In Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast, the North American Union is one part of Earth which is the leading planet in the Federated Community of Civilizations, usually referred to as the Federation.

Again, we find terminologies common to different fictional futures.

While searching for the North America in Tales Of The Flying Mountains, we find yet another description of the Milky Way:

"...the Milky Way girdled the universe with diamond dust..."

-Poul Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains (New York, 1984), p. 104.