Massacre

OK. I have had to reread Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary at least as far as the end of Chapter XI in order to readdress a moral issue discussed recently in our combox, here.

The violence had stopped and the crowd in the Stadium was electing a new President. I would have left them to it. That President and any government that he would have been able to lead would have implemented disastrous policies? Maybe. Such accusations are always made during elections. Of course, Pournelle as author loads the dice so that his readers and those characters whom we regard as trustworthy know that this time the accusation is accurate. But it is never as clear cut as that in real life. People claim to know the truth of every contradictory proposition. And does such certainty justify replacing an election with a massacre? Never.

Sure, Falkenberg's men were fired on in the Stadium but this was because they had gone into the Stadium where Falkenberg had then announced the arrest of everyone present. And, after being fired on by some of those present, Falkenberg's men then, on his orders, used grenades and bayonets against a mostly unarmed crowd. Did Pournelle set out to defy and sicken his audience?

The novel is entirely about how human beings, both as individuals and in groups, large or small, interact with each other. This is what novels should be about. But this is an sf novel which should also be about our place in the universe and that does not mean just under-described terrestroid planets used as platforms for a continuation of all-too-familiar Terrestrial violence.

I am not sure how much more of Pournelle I will reread.

As previously stated, I will be away from this computer from early tomorrow until late on Friday. Saturday will be the last day of this month so maybe there will be a few more February posts then. 

Future History Background Details

Because Ansa is a planet in a story in Poul Anderson's Technic History, we appreciate later references in that History to Ansan vermouth, onion soup etc. See here. Also,"livewell" is an Avalonian flower imported to Earth. 

Early in Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary (London, 1977), there are references to:

"...badges of the dark rich bronze alloys found on Kendicott, berets made from some reptile that swam in Tanith's seas."

-I, p. 30.

However, we have not been shown either Kendicott or Sparta yet. (At least, I do not think that we have. The publication history of this series is complicated. I have not read it all and there is much of what I have read that I do not remember.)

When Falkenberg and his men arrive on the planet Hadley, something large and black rises from the water but immediately sinks back. A local seems not to notice it whereas Falkenberg's Marines shout excitedly. Readers need to be shown more of native life.

What does Pournelle do well? He shows us a large number of plausible individuals in believable economic and political predicaments and conveys a strong sense of important events occurring both on- and off-stage. I am committed to rereading The Mercenary at least until the plot development which has been the subject of recent combox discussion. Whether I stay with the text after that depends on whether it is able to hold my attention.

Let's democratize the CoDominium instead of building an old-style Empire... Too late! That is what is going to happen.

Six Future Historians

In recent posts, we have referred to the four Campbell future historians:

Heinlein

Asimov

Blish

Anderson

- and two successors:

Niven

Pournelle

- a tight-knit literary group.

Anderson modelled his Psychotechnic History on Heinlein's Future History and contributed:

one story to the Robots sub-series of Asimov's Foundation and Empire future history;

three stories to the Man-Kzin Wars sub-series of Niven's Known Space future history;

one story to the War World sub-series of Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Blish adapted Star Trek: The Original Series scripts as prose short stories and wrote an original Star Trek novel whereas Niven adapted one of his own Known Space stories as an animated Star Trek episode.

Niven and Pournelle collaborated on several novels, including two volumes of Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Pournelle and SM Stirling collaborated on at least two Man-Kzin Wars stories.

I have probably missed something.

Colonizable Planets?

Like Isaac Asimov and unlike Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle introduced uninhabited terrestroid planets only so that his human characters would be able to build empires and wage wars on and between those planets as well as on Earth. Pournelle has Great Patriotic Wars on Earth, then Formation Wars and Secession Wars in the galaxy. 

Contrast Asimov's and Pournelle's sketchily described extra-solar planets with the details that Anderson provides about Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza, Aeneas etc.

For further discussion of this issue, see also:

Aldiss, Amis, Anderson, Asimov, Lewis

The question currently in my mind is not whether exo-planets have life but whether they have multi-cellular organisms.

See:

The Improbability Of Complex Organisms

The discussion is good even if not all the works discussed are.

Starward.

Another Comparison

Comparing future histories takes us temporarily away from Poul Anderson's works although we soon return to them. He wrote eight whereas sf writers usually write one at most.

In Pournelle's CoDominium History, the US and the USSR become the CoDominium whereas, in James Blish's Cities In Flight, the USSR incorporates the US. In both these histories, life is bad on Earth but no one knows how to improve it - but some can escape out of the Solar System. The CoDominium is succeeded by Empires whereas, in Cities In Flight, the Bureaucratic State is succeeded by interstellar trade and peripheral empires although the trade is more important - as it is in Anderson's Polesotechnic League and Kith series.

Like sf in general, future histories are a dialogue.

Addendum: The CoDominium suppresses scientific research. In Cities In Flight, security stifles research.  

Five Future Histories

OK. We are juggling five future history series here, by Heinlein, Anderson (2), Niven and Pournelle. That is plenty.

How do these futures begin?

Heinlein: technological innovations on Earth and the first rocket to the Moon.

Anderson, Psychotechnic History: recovery from nuclear war and early application of psychotechnics.

Anderson, Technic History: exploration of Iapetus, Ythri and Avalon.

Niven: exploration of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto.

Pournelle: use of a recently invented faster than light drive to forcibly relocate Welfare recipients to newly discovered extrasolar planets! (A down-to-Earth future, almost.)

The Chronology in Pournelle's The Mercenary (1977) covers the period, 1969-2060. The three parts of the book were originally published in 1971, 1972 and 1973. The "future" begins immediately after the publication date of any given story. Rereading The Mercenary in 2026, we notice that only four years in this Chronology remain in our future:

2030

2040

2043

2060

2030 will soon be with us.

Comparing Future Histories

Today: day trip to Manchester.

This morning over breakfast: starting to reread Jerry Pournelle, The Mercenary.

Purpose: to reassess Pournelle's future history, especially in comparison with Heinlein's and Anderson's.

General impression so far: Anderson wrote about future civilizations, including their wars, whereas Pournelle wrote about future wars.

Continuing to reread: Poul Anderson, The Peregrine.

Continuing to read: Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels ( a welcome return to recent Britain).

Got to go: a coach to catch.

Back here laterz. 

Details Of Interstellar Economics

The Peregrine, CHAPTER VI.

Solarians are economically self-sufficient and do not trade with the extra-solar colonies.

"A small but brisk trade went on between the stars of any given sector,..." (p. 38)

(Small, within each sector.)

"...carried by merchant ships or by such Nomads as weren't heading out into the depthless yonder." (ibid.)

(So some Nomads still do that.)

Despite the opening sentence of this post, some goods from Sol and other civilized systems reach the frontier where the need for spaceports, warehouses, depots, services, repairs, shops, factories, entertainment and administration means that there are cities although only one per planet or system: on Nerthus, Stellamont, the only physically realized extra-solar city in the Psychotechnic History.

Trevelyan Micah meets and (almost) "infiltrates" the Nomads of the Peregrine there. 

Why An Interstellar Civilization Might Be Unstable

The Peregrine.

See:

Why Should An Interstellar Civilization Be Unstable?

We receive some answers.

The Shar of Barjaz-Kaui on Davenigo/Ettalume IV has started to tax traders. The Nomads cannot overthrow him by force because the Coordination Service knows of Davenigo. (Otherwise, the Nomads would have overthrown the Shar by force...?) Next best thing, the Nomad ship, Adventurer, and maybe also Bedouin, will try to subvert the Shar's government and to replace him with someone friendlier. If that is what some Nomads get up to, then no wonder the Cordies have to work overtime. And some Nomads have strayed a long way from their original "...undying voyage..." (CHAPTER II, p. 7)

Even more blatantly, the Stroller has sold guns to a race deemed unready for such technology and the Cordies have found out. Other Nomads do not condemn the Stroller but learn to watch their step with the Cordies for a while. Nomads are indeed disruptive.

More generally, Trevelyan Micah explains to Braganza Diane that:

human beings have visited a million stars and this number continually increases;

many visited stars have one or even more planets inhabited by intelligent beings with alien psychologies;

these beings' responses to an interstellar civilization are unpredictable and could be catastrophic.

The Cordies, unlike the Nomads, are concerned about the interests of all intelligent species.

This One

Poul Anderson captures slight differences in modes of speech. On Aeneas, Nords speak Anglic without the articles, "a" and "the," e.g.:

"'Do I have choice?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 7, p. 121.

"'I don't think "supernatural" is right word... I'd call Cosmenosis philosophy rather than religion.'" (p. 128)

- although I have found one instance of the indefinite article:

"'What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin' universe whose creation was meanin'less accident?'" (p. 129)

Aenean Riverfolk replace "a" with "one":

"'That was one coffin.'" (12, p. 169)

In the Psychotechnic History, Nomads sometimes replace "I" with "this one." Peregrine Joachim Henry says of himself:

"'This one has been sort of curious for the last few years...and he's been keeping his eyes open.'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER II, p. 9.

However, Joachim immediately reverts to the first person pronoun:

"'You might think I was a Cordy, the way I've been reconstructing the crime.'" (ibid.)

In spiritual practice, "this one" might be more appropriate than "I." Who or what is present in all experience and thus also in meditation? First, an individual subject of consciousness. Second, the universe conscious of itself through the individual. I usually call these the individual self and the universal self but "this one" and "the One" would be simpler. This one is not separate from the One which is much more than this one. This one exists by responding to others and must also respond to the One which is experienced as transcendent other. That other is personified but persons are self-conscious individuals, thus individual subjects, not the universal subject. 

City

The Peregrine, CHAPTER III.

Flying soundlessly over western North America, Trevelyan Micah sees:

vastness

greenness

forest

rivers

grass

isolated houses

small villages

reflected sunlight -

- and reflects that transportation, communication and socioeconomic unity have made Earth a single city.

Are vastness and greenness a "city"? It all depends on how we use words. Lancaster City District encompasses not only streets and buildings but also fields and countryside. As the train hastens through the village of Galgate, then between more fields with the University on a hill to the right, a recorded voice announces that we are now approaching Lancaster whereas all that we are really approaching is Lancaster Railway Station. We are already well within the boundaries of the city.

Cities include parks and the planet-wide city on Terra in the Terran Empire period of Poul Anderson's Technic History includes massive landed estates.

Future cities are big in sf.

Six Instalments

The Peregrine, CHAPTER II.

Peregrine Joachim Henry tells the Nomad Captains' Council:

"'I even talked my way into the Cordy office on Nerthus, and got a look at their Galactic Survey records." (p. 11)

The Nomads were founded in "Gypsy."

Nerthus was introduced in two stages in "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb."

The Coordination Service office on Nerthus had to deal with a Galactic Survey man in Virgin Planet.

Coordinator Trevelyan Micah, having already appeared in the chronologically earlier "The Pirate," will shortly join the Nomad ship, the Peregrine, when it stops at Nerthus.

Thus, these six instalments form a closely integrated future history series. They are not the whole of this second part of the Psychotechnic History but they are most of it.

Nomad Life

The Peregrine, CHAPTER II.

See: Captains' Council.

There were twelve families in Traveler I under Captain Thorkild Erling. When a ship becomes overcrowded, its young crew members found a new one. After three hundred years, there are over thirty ships, including Traveler III, each carrying an exogamous tribe of about fifteen hundred. Each captain is elected from within a single family. Wives join their husbands' ships. The President of the Captains' Councils is always the Captain of the Traveler, currently Traveler Thorkild Helmuth.

An entire sub-series could have been written about Nomadic history.

Poul Anderson's Four Time Travel Novels

The Shield Of Time is part of the Time Patrol series.

There Will Be Time is very different in several respects and is an addition to the Maurai future history series.

The Dancer From Atlantis is historical science fiction and is one of three novels set BC, the other two being Conan The Rebel and The Golden Slave.

The Corridors Of Time covers different past and future periods and therefore might be classified alongside The Boat Of A Million Years and a collection of short stories set in various past periods.

For these reasons, I shelve these four works separately.

Trade And New Horizons

The Peregrine, CHAPTER II.

Dialogue between two Nomad captains, Peregrine Joachim Henry and Vagabond MacTeague Laurie.

Joachim: "'Canopus is still free territory; no ship has a claim on it yet.'"

MacTeague: "'Why go on a Jump when you've got all the trade you could want right in your own territory?'"

Joachim: "'I suppose your crew agrees with you?'"

MacTeague: "'Well, most of them. We've got some, of course, that keep hollering for "new horizons," but so far they've been voted down.'" (pp. 5-6)

The first Nomad ship, the Traveler, had travelled not around a known trade route but outward into the unknown. Something has been lost or at least has changed. In CHAPTER XI, Trevelyan senses disappointment in the first captain's later writings. That captain, a Thorkild, had narrated "Gypsy." Following Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson well knew how to construct a future history series.

Contradiction

The Peregrine, CHAPTER II.

"No doubt of it, man wasn't built to sit in a metal shell and hurry from star to star. It wasn't strange that so many had dropped out of Nomad life." (p. 5)

I have commented on this twice before but let's make more of a point of it this time. There is a major contradiction in American science fiction in my opinion. On the one hand, interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom (I think). I heard a woman at a Con, probably a Trekkie, proclaim through the mike, "We are going to the stars!" Are we? Not in this generation. On the other hand, a spaceship is "a metal shell." The starfarer is enclosed, almost as if in a tomb.

However, people embarking on interstellar voyages ought to be able to take more spacious environments with them. James Blish argued that antigravity would be able to move cities, even planets. Poul Anderson's asterites, in Tales Of The Flying Mountains, use gravity control to set off for Alpha Centauri within and on the surface of a mobile planetoid. So let's abolish all these metal shells.

The Nomads and the Kith are good but, like Martians, they are old sf.

The Domestic And The Dramatic

That is a comprehensive post title. I have contrasting aspects of Poul Anderson's works in mind.

Thesis: Domesticity.

Antithesis: Drama.

Synthesis: Domestic Drama.

A fictional narrative can begin dramatically by hastening "into the midst of things" See Rogue Sword.

After a double layer of introductory passages, a dialogue between Morruchan Long-Ax, the Hand of the Vach Dathyr, and Master Merchant David Falkayan begins:

"'No.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Day of Burning" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 149-194 AT p. 152.

Falkayn must wonder what he has said wrong now. Consecutive readers recognize Falkayn but must begin to learn about Merseians.

The Peregrine, CHAPTER V, begins even more emphatically:

"'NO!'" (p. 31)

- in the middle of an argument, and this is where the drama becomes domestic.

Dramatis Personae

Peregrine Captain Joachim Henry

Peregrine Thorkild Sean

Peregrine Thorkild Elof, Sean's father

Ilaloa, a female Lorinyan (non-human but humanoid)

Landlouper MacTeague Nicki, widow of Sean's brother, thus Peregrine and Thorkild by marriage

The Domestic Drama

Sean and Lorinya want her to accompany him as his wife, against Nomad law.

Elof : "'NO!'"

Nicki, sharing quarters with her brother-in-law, welcomes Ilaloa.

Elof appeals to Henry who rules that Sean can keep a pet!

Domestic life in the Psychotechnic History as in a couple of Technic History instalments.

Moving Books

Over a year after moving house, we have moved a tall bookcase between rooms and I have taken this opportunity to reorganize its contents. "Aldiss" precedes "Anderson" alphabetically but I have many more volumes by Anderson and have arranged them, before any others, as follows:

Prehistory

History

Alternative Histories

The Time Patrol

Contemporary Fiction

Future Histories

Individual SF Novels

Anderson Collections

Anderson in Anthologies

Non-Fiction

It is going to be easier to find what I am looking for. 

My "B"'s: Blish, Bradbury, Burroughs but the greatest of these is Blish.

Others will come after and still others will be donated to Oxfam.

Why Should An Interstellar Civilization Be Unstable?

 

The Peregrine.

See:

In The Stellar Union Period

I set out to summarize Trevelyan's account of the Stellar Union but found that I had already done it. He says that cross-purposes have clashed and that this has:

"'...meant annihilation.'" (CHAPTER XII, p. 105)

But why? Each home planet of an intelligent species must be economically self-sufficient. Trevelyan states that there are no strong economic ties with colony planets. Apparently he has said somewhere, on- or off-stage:

"'...that there was no reason for interstellar empire...'" (CHAPTER XVIII, p. 159)

- although he then makes a single exception, as a defence against ideological attack.

But surely space is big enough for starfaring races to bypass each other or to communicate, at most, at a distance? What purposes would clash? Let alone seriously enough to mean annihilation? This requires further elucidation.

I think that there would be not one civilization, not many, and that, if one went under, others would not.

Peregrine Trevelyan

 

I became unsure as to whether Trevelyan Micah's departure from the Coordination Service to become a Nomad had been mentioned in a text by Poul Anderson or only in an interstitial passage by Sandra Miesel. The only possible text was Star Ways/The Peregrine. However, the relevant passage, when sought for, is to be found not in the concluding CHAPTER XX but slightly earlier in CHAPTER XIX. 

Trevelyan explains that the Service dislikes the Nomads because:

"'They're a disrupting influence on an already unstable civilization.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), p. 168.

(We will return to the question of why an interstellar civilization should be unstable.)

However, the Nomads are not evil and, having spent time with them, Trevelyan is:

"'...beginning to think that a healthy culture needs such a devil.'" (ibid.)

He thinks that he will become a Nomad, thus Peregrine Trevelyan. Incredibly, he still thinks that the "integrators," Service computers, should "...give a final verdict..." (ibid.) But he believes that he has "...found the way." (ibid.) The way to what? In this context, he can only mean the way to a stabilization of interstellar civilization. If he and other Cordies with their specific abilities are adopted, then:

"They would give Nomad life a direction and a restraint it lacked and needed, quietly, without disrupting its spirit." (pp. 168-169)

Thus, Trevelyan's aim remains the stabilization of the Stellar Union, not (yet) the preservation of knowledge after the dissolution of that Union.

Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon prepares for the Fall of the Galactic Empire.

Anderson's Dominic Flandry prepares for the Long Night after the Fall of the Terran Empire.

Paul and Karen Anderson's Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, preserves what he and others find that they are able to preserve after the inundation of Ys and the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Northern Europe.

Trevelyan does not yet realize that he is at the same historical crossroads as Seldon, Flandry and Gratillonius.

Tachyons

"The Pirate."

A spaceship in the normal mode can be tracked by:

amplified sight;

thermal radiation;

radar;

neutrinos from its powerplant.

- on the tachyon mode by:

"...a weak emission of super-light particles..." (p. 219)

When Trevelyan Micah and Smokesmith in the Genji followed Murdoch Juan and his crew in their Campesino, Murdoch's crew detected the Genji's tachyons while faster-than-light and her neutrinos while slower-than-light.

Tachyons are faster-than-light particles. (Theoretical, as yet.) When in the tachyon mode, a spaceship emits super-light particles/tachyons. But what is the "tachyon mode"? Are the ship and its contents transformed into tachyons? Or, at least, are they endowed with whatever property of tachyons makes them move faster than light?

Have there been two hyperdrives in the Psychotechnic History, the first involving multiple dimensions and discontinuous psi functions, as in "Gypsy," and the second involving tachyons, as in "The Pirate"?

Who can possibly say?

An Existential Conflict And A Creative Tension

In the first part of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, there is an existential conflict between the Un-Men and the "protean enemy" whereas, in the second half of this future history series, the conflict between the order-preserving Coordination Service and the unintegrated Nomads is more like a creative tension. Civilization has advanced to a stabler level. Coordinators and Nomads are a perfect thesis and antithesis and the perfect synthesis is provided when some Cordies join the Nomads, bringing with them knowledge and expertise that will survive through the Third Dark Ages and inform later civilizations. 

If "The Chapter Ends" is to be believed, then the next level of thesis and antithesis is between human and Hulduvian ways of controlling cosmic energy and this conflict is resolved by agreeing to divide the galaxy between oxygen- and hydrogen-breathers. 

The Slain Race

"The Pirate."

Poul Anderson devotes six pages to what Trevelyan learns about the slain race from their architecture, art, pictorial record and decayed technology. They had not used automobiles, had avoided pollution and had clearly thought ahead about such problems. It pays to reread these pages carefully. Trevelyan and the readers want to know what it had been like to be those people but the whole point of the story is that this entire race is not discovered until it is extinct so its legacy must be preserved:

"We guard the great Pact, which is the heart of civilization, of society, and ultimately of life itself: the unspoken Pact between the living, the dead, and the unborn, that to the best of our poor mortal abilities they shall all be kept one in the oneness of time. Without it, nothing would have meaning and it may be that nothing would survive. But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

In another Andersonian universe, Time Patrollers have an even closer experience of the oneness of time.

Sheila is at choir and I am about to go to Zen. Next week, Monday to Friday, we will be in a hotel in Wales and I will be without my laptop.

Two Kinds Of FTL And One Of Time Travel?

 

In "Gypsy":

"The principles of the hyperdrive are difficult enough, involving as they do the concept of multiple dimensions and of discontinuous psi functions." (p. 20)

But, in "The Pirate":

"...once [another spaceship] went over to the tachyon mode, only a weak emission of super-light particles was available." (p. 219)

- "available" for tracking purposes.

Sound like two completely different means of faster than light travel although in the same future history series?

Elsewhere in space and time:

"'...discontinuity is entirely possible.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 10.

This speaker replies to someone who, he says, insists on:

"'...only continuous functions.'" (ibid.)

He is talking about time travel but it sounds like the "Gypsy" account of FTL.

All of this is inside Poul Anderson's multiverse, however.

I Have Found That Passage

 

Worth quoting in full:

"'The Narodna Voyska has been a, a basic part of our society, ever since the Troubles. Squadron and regimental honors, rights, chapels, ceremonies - I'd stand formation on my unit's parade ground at sunset - us together, bugle calls, volley, pipes and drums, and while the flag came down, the litany for those of our dead we remembered that day - and often tears would run over my cheeks, even in winter when they froze.'

"Flandry smiled lopsidedly. 'Yes, I was a cadet once.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT V, p. 409.

Not glorification of the military as in Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

No way am I militaristic but Dennitzans would have had to defend their planet during the Troubles and, in Kossara's time, they are on the marches facing the Merseian Roidhunate. Fortunately, Anderson also shows us peaceful inter-species interactions. In the Technic History, human beings and Ythrians amicably share Avalon. In the Psychotechnic History, human beings and Hulduvians amicably share the Galaxy.

Have I said before that Poul Anderson covers every option?

Farewells

We recently posted about the elegiac tone of Poul Anderson's "The Pirate" and quoted from the opening pages but missed a sentence that straddles two pages:

"'You don't have to go, not yet,' Braganza Diane said, a little desperately because she cared for him and our trumpeter blows too many Farewells each year." (pp. 212-213)

How could we have forgotten that? Well, we do remember tones but misremember details. And this reminds us of a passage in Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where Flandry and Kossara, as members of their respective armed forces, speak of remembering their dead... (Can anyone out there locate this passage?)

There are other details to notice in the opening pages of "The Pirate." The Dordogne country is not only:

"...in the fullness of time..." (p. 212)

- but also:

"...steep, green, altogether beautiful..." (ibid.)

As in The Peregrine, written earlier but set later, Trevelyan is summoned by a "machine" (p. 212) but this time he updates his terminology, referring to his summoner neither as a computing machine nor an integrator but as a "computer"! (p. 213) (We still use the archaic phrase, "time machine," because of Wells.)

After all this build-up, all that remains is to reread the story and to re-accompany Trevelyan and Smokesmith on their mission to the planet called Good Luck.

Time Passing

See the previous post. 

The theme of time passing, past and to come continues on the following page. Diane asks Trevelyan to add the rest of this leave to his next and to spend it with her but he avoids a promise.

"...he...phoned good-bye to some neighbors - landholders, friendly folk whose ancestors had dwelt here for generations beyond counting." (p. 213)

Then Diane flies Trevelyan to Aerogare Bordeaux. I thought that "Aerogare" sounded futuristic but it is just French for "Air terminal."

When he flies to Port Nevada:

"His timing was good. Sunset was slanting across western North America and turning the mountains purple when he arrived." (ibid.)

Slanting sunset, endlessly evocative, fits the elegiac tone of a story about actual and anticipated endings.

The Oneness Of Time

"The Pirate."

In the Dordogne country -

Braganza Diane lives in an internally renovated medieval stone house built against an overhanging cliff;

in front of her house, bushes cover:

"...a site excavated centuries ago, where flint-working reindeer hunters lived for millennia while the glaciers covered North Europe." (p. 212);

every day, the Greenland-Algeria carrier flies overhead;

every night, spaceships visibly lift towards the stars where men now travel.

A future history series shares our past history which can be shown sometimes. In this passage, Poul Anderson lays on multiple layers of time:

"Middle Ages"

"ancientness"

"centuries ago"

"millennia"

"glaciers"

"daily"

"at night"

And to sum all this up:

"In few other parts of the planet could you be more fully in the oneness of time." (ibid.)

That sums up Poul Anderson's works also. 

Two Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories have parallel structures:

Psychotechnic

World War III.

UN world government, then Solar Union.

The Second Dark Ages.

The Stellar Union.

The Third Dark Ages.

Galactic Civilization.

One story about post-War reconstruction.

No stories set during either Dark Ages.

One story (disputed) set in the Galactic Civilization.

Technic

The Chaos.

The Solar Commonwealth.

The Troubles.

The Terran Empire.

The Long Night.

Civilizations in several spiral arms.

One Story about post-Chaos reconstruction.

One each during the Troubles and the Long Night.

One in the civilization of the Commonalty.

A Future History Outline

In recent posts, we have referred to just a few instalments of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History but these few have indicated an interesting future history:

conflicting sovereign nations were a disruptive factor on Earth;

the bulk of the population became technologically redundant;

when the hyperdrive was discovered, there was mass emigration from Earth;

the Traveller became lost in space, searched unsuccessfully for Earth, then settled on Harbor but some of its crew resumed their endless voyage and became the first Nomads;

the Coordination Service served the Stellar Union;

Coordinator Trevelyan Micah intervened in the Good Luck case, then later worked with and joined the Nomads;

the Nomads carried knowledge through the Third Dark Ages and influenced later interstellar civilizations whether or not those civilizations include the Galactic Civilization of "The Chapter Ends."

Anderson later added "The Pirate" because that story fitted into that background but it was the story that counted. "The Pirate" refers to the planet Nerthus which is a common setting and reference point in the series although the stories referring to it are quite dissimilar.

The Case

"The Pirate."

This story is not only about Trevelyan Micah and the other individuals listed on its opening page. (See the above link.) It is also:

"The case of the slain world named Good Luck..." (p. 211)

- which we are told:

"...is typical." (ibid.)

So a world is slain? Someone commits global genocide? And this is typical? Well, no. A planetary population has died from natural causes, has been killed by the radiation from a supernova. (In the Technic History, another planetary population is saved from such a fate.) But the dead must be respected. The physical remains of their civilization must be studied. So the depopulated planet must not be immediately exploited for commercial gain. That is what the young generations so often do not understand.

Guarding The Pact

In the first part of Poul Anderson's Technic History, six stories and two novels were published as the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy which was followed by one Ythrian novel, The People Of The Wind. Then, eight further League instalments and four Ythrian stories were collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate but this time an extra layer of commentary was contributed by the twelve introductions and one afterward fictitiously written by the Ythrian, Hloch. 

Something similar although on a much smaller scale happened in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. "Gypsy" and The Peregrine are two instalments about the Nomads. The latter also features Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service. "The Pirate" is a later written story about Trevelyan set between "Gypsy" and The Peregrine but it also contains an extra layer of commentary contributed by its first person narrator who remains off-stage and speaks from one generation later than the events involving:

"...Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, red Faustina, and the rest..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 211-251 AT p. 211.

We are partially prepared for the narrative by the enunciation of the names of its main protagonists. The tone is reflective and elegiac. The narrator, a Coordinator (Cordy) begins:

"We guard the great Pact: but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand." (ibid.)

- and ends:

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

These sentences match Hloch's commentaries. It is as if the unnamed narrator mourns in advance for the end of the Stellar Union which we know will come later in this future history series.

Poul Anderson

In the previous post, we compared Poul Anderson to Mark Twain and L. Sprague de Camp regarding time travel to a historical period.

In the post before that, we compared Anderson to Larry Niven and James Blish regarding faster than light interstellar travel.

We can also make the following comparisons -

Mary Shelley: the creation of life.

HG Wells: time travel to the future; Martian invasion; future society.

Olaf Stapledon: cosmic history.

Robert Heinlein: future history; immortality; generation ships; circular causality; magic as a technology.

Isaac Asimov: robots; a science of society; detective fiction.

James Blish: historical fiction; fantasy.

Hal Clement: extraterrestrial organisms.

Neil Gaiman: an inter-universal inn.

Nothing that we have not said before. Poul Anderson deserves to be promoted and not just by me. He was a visionary of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. His values were freedom and diversity. He looked backward, forward and outward - to history, the future and the universe. We move forward with Andersonian vision, to learn about exo-planets and receding galaxies.

A Debate In Three Stages

James Blish said in private correspondence that sf writers borrow and copy from each other in a way that would be regarded as plagiarism in any other genre.

Example: 

Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee..., Premise:

A twentieth century man is mysteriously transported to an earlier period.

Twain

Applying modern knowledge, he made big changes which were not recorded in the Dark Ages.

de Camp

Applying modern knowledge, he made big changes and changed the course of history.

Anderson

Lacking knowledge and skills appropriate to the period, he did not survive.

A debate in three stages.

(Other reading: I bought Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business. It's good.)

Twenty Years In The Traveler

"Gypsy."

Even faster than light spaceships take time to move between stars so sf writers need to be clear about how much time and whether there are different rates of FTL. In Known Space, Larry Niven has Quantum I and Quantum II hyperdrives. The latter takes Beowulf Shaeffer to somewhere near the galactic core and back. In Cities In Flight, James Blish simply forgot what the Okies' top speed was meant to be and described a fleet of cities moving at impossible speeds across the galaxy. Blish acknowledged that this was an error. Then a dirigible planet went all the way to the Metagalactic Centre. Greater mass is meant to enable greater speed but the Metagalactic Centre, if such exists, is a long way.

In just two decades plus, Poul Anderson's Traveler visits:

a blue hell of a planet;

pirates on a red sea;

tournaments on Drangor;

immense cities on Alkan;

a cephalopod philosopher;

a planet with beautiful but hostile natives;

barbarians;

ancient laboratories and libraries;

a methane storm;

paradisal Luanha;

centauroids attacking an aerial city;

Hralfar;

Atlang;

Thyvari;

New Jupiter -

- and the crew quickly learned how to communicate and converse on each inhabited planet.

Too much.

Psychology And Other Races

"Gypsy."

This is a psychological story. It is not explicitly stated but should be obvious to any attentive reader that Thorkild Erling's wife, Alanna, is happy on Harbor and does not want to resume spacefaring but nevertheless proposes this and pretends to want it because she knows that it is what her husband and several others want. I meant to quote some passages that clearly demonstrate that this is the case but it would have meant copying out large chunks of the text. Just read or reread the story!

The Traveler had been launched toward Alpha Centauri soon after the invention of the hyperdrive but the ship went off course and became lost in interstellar vastness. How does Thorkild know that there are other "...races..." (p. 32) in the Galaxy?

Three ways:

the fifth planet in the same system as Harbor is inhabited;

in Spacecamp Cove on Harbor, there are traces of non-human visitors who had hyperdrive;

the Traveler visited many inhabited planets during its twenty plus years searching for Earth.

These proto-Nomads know what kind of Galaxy they inhabit.

Relevance Or Irrelevance Of Psychotechnics

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, far from applying a predictive science of society, the Stellar Union Coordination Service is perpetually behind in its intelligence-gathering. 

Although there are many intelligent species in the Galaxy, none is more intelligent than mankind because there is a natural limit to the complexity of nervous systems and particularly of brains. An overcomplex brain becomes unable to control itself. The same limit applies to computers and to systems of computers. Terminologically, Coordinator Trevelyan Micah refers not to "computers" but to "computing machines" (or just "machines") and "integrators." He tells Diane:

"'The overworked integrators are years behind in correlating information... A thing can grow to monstrous proportions before they learn of it.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), CHAPTER IV, p. 30.

So predictive social science has gone by the board. The Service deals not only with human colonies but also with non-human species to which the equations of psychotechnics can never have applied.

However, some aspects of psychotechnics remain applicable:

"...tediously worked-out equations indicating psychological probabilities..."

- CHAPTER VII, p. 51

- had preceded Trevelyan's approach to the Nomads. But, when those equations and his other preparations are "behind him":

"...for what followed, he had no data, no predictions -" (ibid.)

Another indication of the continued relevance of psychotechnics at least on the level of individual psychology is given when some intelligent beings are classified as:

"'...unintegrate.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 211-251 AT p. 22.

The Peregrine informs us that, with the invention of the hyperdrive, many people emigrated from the Solar System because they had been made technologically redundant. This ties in with the earlier Psychotechnic History instalment, "Quixote and the Windmill." Trevelyan reminds Diane of what had happened in Terrestrial history:

"'...when there were sovereign states working at unintegrated cross-purposes.'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER IV, pp. 28-29.

This ties in with the suppression of nationalism and the enforcement of a UN World government in the earlier instalment, "UN-Man." However, the Coordinators are unable to enforce a unified government on a Galactic scale.

In "The Chapter Ends," Jorun not only is a psychotechnician but also is responsible to:

"...the Integrator on Corazuno..." (p. 256)

- so there are some connections between this story and earlier instalments.

The TRAVELER And The Nomads

In "Gypsy"

The Traveler was a single early faster than light interstellar colony ship, lost in space. Its crew spent some years looking for Earth but did not find it. Therefore, they settled on an uninhabited terrestroid planet, Harbor, where they used automatic machinery to farm and a spaceboat to trade with another inhabited planet in the same system. However, some Harborites realize they they had preferred spacefaring so they set off on an endless voyage, becoming the first Nomads. Some of them will colonize planets whereas others will use automatic machinery to build more ships, thus becoming:

"...a fleet, a mobile city hurtling from sun to sun."

-Poul Anderson, "Gypsy" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 12-34 AT p. 32.

They expect to become:

"...the bloodstream of the interstellar civilization which was slowly gestating in the universe." (ibid.)

This is the role of James Blish's flying cities although they are instead compared to pollinating bees.

In The Peregrine

An interstellar civilization exists, protected by the Coordination Service. Within that civilization, each Nomad ship flies around its own trade circuit and they periodically meet at a planet outside known space called Rendezvous. The original endless voyage has been lost. 

The Nomads will survive the Stellar Union.

Civilizations

We casually use the word, "civilizations," when discussing a minor future history series whereas in fact all the literature on Earth would not be enough to capture every aspect of a single civilization. There will be not just one-off novels but entire schools of literature written and set inside the Galactic civilization of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." We can think in the abstract about such literary schools but cannot possibly imagine what it would be like to read and understand future narratives, just as we can think about a fourth dimension but cannot visualize it.

See:

Historians Of Civilization II

We need to read about dwellers in future civilizations, not just about space explorers or others with special missions on the frontiers.

STARTLING STORIES, Winter, 1955

"A CHRONOLOGY OF THE PSYCHOTECHNIC SERIES" IN Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 283-284.

"Prepared by Sandra Miesel, based in part on the chronology published by Poul Anderson in Startling Stories, Winter, 1955." (p. 284)

Anderson followed Robert Heinlein's lead by publishing not only instalments but also a chronology of a future history in an sf magazine. We, in this generation, need to know how much of the Starship Chronology is "in part." I have just ordered Startling Stories, Winter, 1955, on eBay.

Until that arrives, we can continue this discussion. Not all of the stories presented as "Psychotechnic" fit equally well together as a future history series. The appropriateness of "The Chapter Ends" is disputed. I propose three instalments as a framework for the later part of the History:

"Gypsy" introduces the Nomads

"The Pirate" introduces Coordinator Trevelyan Micah

In The Peregrine, Trevelyan joins the Nomads

We accept that, after The Peregrine, the Nomads carry seeds of knowledge through the Third Dark Ages, thus contributing to later civilizations, and we can continue to disagree as to whether "The Chapter Ends" represents one of those later civilizations.

Original publication dates:

"Gypsy," 1950

"The Chapter Ends," 1953

Star Ways/The Peregrine, 1956

"The Pirate," 1968

We expect more from "The Pirate" since it was written later and, in fact, it describes the "hyperdrive" as:

"...tachyon mode [with] only a weak emission of super-light particles..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Starship, pp. 211-251 AT p. 219.

Starward!

Psychophysiology

"The Chapter Ends." 

See blog search result for "psychohistory."

Psychotechnics as it is presented in the opening instalments of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History is both a predictive science of human societies and a practical science of human psychophysiology. However, those are too very different projects and only the latter is mentioned in "The Chapter Ends." Therefore, it is not certain that the earlier and the later psychotechnics are identical. After all this time, that is a new realization at least for me. 

We may have exhausted "The Chapter Ends" at least for the time being. Who knows what we will contemplate next?

The White Tower

"The Chapter Ends."

Can we grind this story into even finer particles? We can try.

Might the "steely pillar" of the spaceship count as a "dark tower" to which the Terrans come? (When we start looking for imagery, we find it everywhere.)

I ask this because "The Chapter Ends" also presents a white tower:

"One tower still stood - a gutted shell, white under the stars, rising in a filigree of columns and arches which seemed impossibly airy, as if it were built of moonlight." (p. 274)

Airy, built of moonlight - the antithesis of "dark." This tower is a vantage point that becomes a meeting place when Cluthe and Taliuvenna arrive to sightsee after finishing their work in an African district. However, their attitude is frivolous whereas Jorun's is serious. He is a more suitable viewpoint character for this solemn occasion, the departure of mankind from Earth.

50 Or 60 Millennia

"The Chapter Ends."

Sol City, capital of the First Empire, was built:

"'...fifty or sixty thousand years ago...'" (p. 275)

- according to the Galactic called Cluthe. And Jorun says that that Empire:

"'...fell, fifty thousand years ago.'" (p. 263)

The earliest Terrestrial, interplanetary and interstellar civilizations had to have been a long time before that. Thus, nothing from any earlier period is mentioned in this story - except that the science of psychotechnics has been revived and fully developed. Only when Jorun is very tired does he feel his:

"...psychosomatic control slipping." (p. 264)

This story shows a human apotheosis after a history of conflict. The equivalent story in Poul Anderson's later Technic History is "Starfog."

Ruined City

"The Chapter Ends."

When Jorun flies above the ruined imperial palace:

"An owl hooted somewhere, and a bat fluttered out of his way like a small damned soul blackened by hellfire." (p. 274)

So the Galactics retain myths and metaphors of souls and hell. Is this black bat a fitting image for those who had dwelt in Sol City and its palace? Jorun has just been reflecting on their nobility, splendour, evil and wistfulness. The current dwellers are cats, owls, bats and hawks.

"He didn't raise a wind-screen, but let the air blow around him, the air of Earth." (ibid.)

Jorun wants to experience the Earthly elements like the couple who stepped out into the rain here.

He meets Taliuvenna who:

"...came from Yunith, one of the few planets where they still kept cities, and was as much a child of their soaring arrogance as Jorun of his hills and tundras and great empty seas." (p. 275)

We want to be shown more of this Galactic civilization.

Future histories have different aliens. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, human beings build a Solar Union, then a Stellar Union, and encounter Nerthusians, Alori etc whereas, in Anderson's Technic History, human beings build a Solar Commonwealth, then a Terran Empire, and encounter Ythrians, Merseians, Cynthians, Wodenites etc but really there is no reason why the same aliens cannot exist in different future histories as human beings do. In James Blish's Haertel Scholium, the inhabited planet Lithia is destroyed in 2050 in A Case Of Conscience but exists millennia later in The Seedling Stars.