Wind And A Sign

The Fleet Of Stars, 21.

Swearing Kinna to secrecy, Fenn tells her that she must not say a word to anyone, not even to her parents, to her robot pet:

"'...or the wind.'" (p. 278)

The wind is becoming incorporated as a character.

To seal the secret:

"She made a curious gesture, right forefinger flitting from left to right shoulder, then from brow to breast.'" (ibid.)

Gestures outlast their origins.

"...Harpagus drew the sign of the cross, which was a Mithraic sun-symbol."

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 5, p. 77.

A neighbour made the sign of the cross when I informed her of another neighbour's death.

During a pause in their confrontation, we are told that Fenn and Kinna:

"...could not hear the Martian wind, and the dust devils afar spun in silence." (pp. 279-280)

Could not hear them? But wind and devils must have been in their minds or the text would not have mentioned such inaudible outdoor phenomena.

I have written more than I expected to this evening but with Poul Anderson that is always possible.

What was the secret? Read The Fleet Of Stars.

Questions And Answers II

 

An alternative title for Planet Of No Return is Question And Answer. Since I knew this when composing the immediately preceding post, Questions And Answers, I might have mentioned the fact and also have illustrated the post with a Question And Answer cover illustration as here. However, when searching for images, I found the more attractive blue and white cover of Collected Works, Volume I, which I had never seen before so I used that instead. I have now found the red and yellow cover of Collected Works, Volume II, but there is not enough room for it on this post. I have ideas about how to present Anderson's collected works but they would not correspond to anyone else's. Imagine his three novels set BC, followed by the The King Of Ys Tetralogy, then the five Norse fantasies, then the The Last Viking Trilogy, then the three novels set in the fourteenth century and so on, in other words chronological order of fictional events as far as possible. In the twentieth century, there is a fantasy novel and a detective trilogy. There are also alternative histories and, of course, all the futures. The non-series short stories of various genres I would relegate to several volumes at the end of the collection instead of starting with any of them but this is just my peculiar point of view.

Questions And Answers

Are human beings ready to swarm out into the universe? Will we ever be? This question is the crux of Poul Anderson's Planet Of No Return, The Avatar and The Fleet Of The Stars. Does such a recurrent theme become "same-y" (as some people I have known have used that word)? In many works by Anderson, human beings do swarm out and, by and large, continue to conduct themselves as they have been accustomed to do on Earth. In two short dystopias, they become extinct. In Genesis, they become extinct but are re-created by a post-organic intelligence. That is a vast body of reflection on mankind and his place in the universe.

(I am just back from Manchester, tired and maybe not about to post much this evening. Think about Anderson's questions and answers.)

Information About Jihannath

Early departure for a day trip to Manchester tomorrow morning. No early posts.

Comments in the combox for Red Skies On Other Planets mentioned Jihannath.

For an Appendix on Jihannath, see FUTURISTIC SEX by Sean M. Brooks.

For other blog posts that mention Jihannath, see here.

Jihannath is a minor planet in Poul Anderson's Technic History. We compare and contrast such planets within the Technic History and between future histories.

Ancient Horrors

The Fleet Of Stars, 20.

Chuan lists three ancient horrors that the Synesis prevents:

famine;

servitude;

unfree speech.

Observations

We human beings now have the need and the ability and lack only the collective will to eliminate these and other such horrors.

If another, more powerful, agency protects us from famine etc, then we will have lost our human agency.

It will transpire later in this novel that the artificial intelligence which Chuan serves plans a massive deception of humanity, an immense and unforgivable contravention of "free speech." (How can we "speak" freely if we can think only within the elaborate falsehoods of a deliberately implanted and sustained misconception?) This alone invalidates Chuan's side of the disagreement between him and Fenn. But it also makes the cybercosm incredible. We should expect truth, not lies, from a pure intellect.

Red Skies On Other Planets

On Brae in the Technic History:

"Wherefore Flandry walked through smashed ruins under a red dwarf sun, with a few raindrops falling like blood drops out of great clotted clouds."

-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 303-339 AT p. 304.

Clouds like clotted blood?

Is Flandry a "Defender" or a conqueror?

"...he was lonesome among his fellow conquerors..." 

-ibid., p. 306.

On Mars in the Harvest Of Stars History:

"Corpses lay strewn among blackened, twisted hulks. Behind them, the hills out of which the guerillas had struck rose dark, torturous, riddled and seamed with hiding places, toward Arsia Mons and a sky the color of clotting blood."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 20, p. 252.

The sky matches the scene on the ground, of course.

"...landscape tumbled away in black desolation, weirdly pocked and riven, under a sky gone murrey."

-ibid., p. 256.

"Murrey" is one of Anderson's words that I had to google and my computer does not recognize it.

We, editorially speaking, are reading about a historical revolution and also about the Inrai outrages on one future Mars.

(For the full story, please read The Fleet Of Stars. I comment only on whichever arbitrary details catch my attention.)

News And Thunder

The Fleet Of Stars, 16.

From Vernal, Fenn telephones Wanika in the Pacific where data search has located her on the shiptown, Malolo. She relays a recorded message for him from Mars. Kinna tells him that:

"'...a ship from Alpha Centauri is approaching Proserpina.'

"Thunder rolled through his skull." (p. 206)

Observations

We, the readers, already know that an Anson Guthrie download is coming from Beta Hydri via Alpha Centauri but, because of the distances and times involved, what is known to us is news to them.

We are very used to elemental forces like wind or thunder emphasizing the dramatic moments or pauses in Andersonian dialogue. Here it happens again although this time the (metaphorical) thunder is only inside Fenn! Pathetic fallacies and metaphors are Anderson's punctuations.

Vernal, the Pacific, Mars, Proserpina and Alpha Centauri gradually come together. The convergence is slow but we expect a climax.

Our Real Future

During the Apollo missions, I was reading a lot of sf, mainly focused on James Blish but also reading Heinlein, Anderson etc. Consequently, I hoped for interstellar exploration in the early twenty-first century. Heinlein's Future History had introduced the idea of an interregnum of space travel. That has happened, more or less, at least beyond Earth orbit. But by now I would have expected reusable spaceships, not another circum-Lunar mission beginning with a big rocket blastoff and ending with a parachute splashdown. 

We are living in the real future, not in any of the fictional ones. Some of those fictional futures involved a World War III aftermath. Poul Anderson covered every option, including WWIII aftermaths followed by space travel. Late at night, I always ask: which further future are we moving into? Wells' Time Traveller sped through tomorrow into futurity. We will live into it, starting tomorrow morning.

Good night.

Whatever Is Alive

The Fleet Of Stars, 18.

"[Fenn] was in space, and he would not trade; but ever more he remembered the seas of Earth, wind in a sail, waves thunderous, and the thrum of a tiller beneath his hand. When you get right down to the bones of the matter, he thought, the only meaning the universe has comes from whatever is alive." (p. 227)

He means consciously alive. 

Where else could meaning reside? Some words mean objects to which they refer. Others derive their meaning from their use. Only consciousness and intelligence give meaning to sounds and signs. Only experiences that are enjoyed, appreciated, valued have any meaning. For a man enjoying "wind in a sail," see Fran And The Technic History.

I agree with Fenn (and Fran) but have to ask how it could be otherwise. When consciousness began, meaningfulness began, as also did the division of time not only into (as yet unnoticed) days and years but also into past, "present" and future. Any moment is "present" to any organism that is conscious in that moment but not otherwise. 

Robotic Software

The Fleet Of Stars, 18.

"As for safety, the software in the robot, which could not be altered or replaced without triggering a burnout of the robot itself, would never obey an order that had any reasonable probability of endangering others." (p. 225)

Here is a faint echo of Isaac Asimov's future history in a later Poul Anderson future history. What a long way we have come from I, Robot. Indeed, the title story of Robot Dreams is one of three alternative culminations of Asimov's Robot stories. And Anderson's inclusion of the term, "software," reflects the distance that has meanwhile been travelled in the real world with computer technology.

Sf is one long discussion of ideas and extrapolations. And, so far, Anderson's Genesis, published appropriately in 2000, is one culmination of sf.

Elsewhere On Earth

The Fleet Of Stars, 16.

Australia and New Zealand are fully modernized:

robotic industries;

residential communities;

recreational parks;

nature reserves.

In North America, and above the thirty-fifth parallel, the polity of Vernal is a Republic some of whose citizens, called Foresters, live in small settlements or isolated houses scattered throughout spacious woodlands. Fenn visits old family friends, Lars and Rachel, in their wooden house in the village of Thistledew whose emblem is a carven moose. Rachel is an elected mayor and magistrate. Lars cultivates a patch of land, fishes, hunts and guides occasional tourists or sportsmen. Foresters preserve ancient folkways. Forests are preserved for ecological and climatic reasons. Dwellers who did not maintain them would be replaced by robots and sophotects.

Yukonia has a scenic grandeur that the woodlands, stretching from the Rockies to the Alleghenies, lack although both are spacious, with a "...sense of freedom and life..." (p. 199) 

Cash, in a currency of ucus, still circulates so that individuals who do not draw their citizen's credit can remain undetected. Fenn does detective work to track down a fugitive which is his sole reason for going to Vernal. This one sub-plot is resolved in a short fight scene.

Nonalgorithmic, Quantum

The Fleet Of Stars, 14.

Fenn considers Kinna's small, insectoid, robot pet:

"...the algorithms that ran it could not be simple; they must be capable of learning and of flexible response to situations. There might actually be a nonalgorithmic, quantum element - which would make it technically a sophotect, though an electrophotonic system this size couldn't be smarter than, say, a dog." (p. 182)

Algorithmic "learning" is not conscious. According to this passage, two elements are required for consciousness: "nonalgorithmic" and "quantum." However, "nonalgorithmic" is merely negative. What positive property is required? "Quantum" is positive but not sufficient to imply consciousness. We are left as ever with a qualitative difference between unconsciousness and consciousness. Somehow organic sensitivity became conscious sensation. An organism that needed food began to feel hungry or one that was becoming lethally hot began to feel uncomfortably hot. Did this qualitative change in organismic responsiveness have to involve quantum mechanics? Consciousness and quantum mechanics have in common that both are mysterious. Also, quantum processes (seem to) involve an observer effect which links them to consciousness. That is as far as I can go with this question at present.

Yelling Storm

The Fleet Of Stars, 15.

Fenn stands for a long time watching a storm through the viewport of his and Wanika's cabin on the large, unsinkable, buoyant island, Waihona Lanamokupuni. When they converse, Fenn remembers that He'o's murderer, Pedro Dover, has been identified but not yet apprehended and, if caught, would merely be reformed.

He concludes:

"'Yes, I do have some months at leisure. Time for tracking Pedro Dover down.'" (p. 194)

That is the end of the dialogue and could have been the end of this chapter but Poul Anderson's readers know better than that. When a character has expressed himself thus, the elements must have their say, underlining or commenting on the human speech and, sure enough, immediately after Fenn's last sentence, the chapter itself ends with:

"The storm yelled." (ibid.)

It really never fails. 

There will be an Andersonian settling of accounts with a villain before the main plot resumes and, as part of this, we will be shown another part of the future Earth.

Meeting The Future

The Fleet Of Stars, 15.

Fenn tells Maherero, a high councillor of the Southern Coagency:

"'Nobody can forecast the future. If somebody isn't willing to meet it as it comes, he should get out of the way of those who are.'" (p. 190)

A succinct summary of the Andersonian philosophy? (Also van Rijnian etc?) See a much-quoted passage about "'...bases in the fourth dimension to protect us against an invasion from the future," here.

Maherero sits unmoving. The accompanying music, dance and bird flight stop. Has this been a diplomatic disaster for Fenn? Then Maherero laughs and accepts the deal to work with the Lahui Kuikawa on the transformation of Deimos. The music, dance and flight resume triumphantly. 

Interactive entertainment of guests is an important custom in this polity just as human service to new arrivals is among the Lahui and archaism is in London. Some customs are contrived whereas others are alive.

Fleet stands up well as an sf traveloque.

Fenn And Maherero

The Fleet Of Stars, 15.

After Amaterasu, the Habitat, Alpha Centauri, Luna, Mars, the Pacific and London, we read about a bay on the South Atlantic.

The restless, blue, green and white-foamed ocean shines and glitters. Its cool breeze is salt-tanged. Walvis Bay stretches from Pelican Point to a high tower of homes and offices. Pleasure boats dance while robots unload freighters. Metamorphic grass, trees and flowers cover former desert. Invisible communication lines cover half a continent. 

On the roof of the tower, Fenn and Maherero converse with refreshments while watching a dance accompanied by specially bred colourful birds. The dance leader follows their conversation through sonic ear plugs and directs the dance accordingly. 

The next question is what are they talking about but we will have to return to that later.

DNA

The Fleet Of Stars, 14.

"Some people didn't take to being civilized; their DNA wasn't right for it." (p. 185)

Poul Anderson's first, Psychotechnic, future history referred to:

"...the revolt of a primitive against the unnatural state called civilization and freedom."

-see here.

- whereas, in Anderson's Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn claims that he and his friends are wild animals. See here.

For more on this issue, see this blog research result. (Scroll down.)

OK. An issue that spans three future histories and The Winter Of The World and a good place to end for tonight, maybe, although you never know. I have not seen any news yet today. What is happening in the real world that generates all the fictional worlds? Any new madnesses or Messiahships?

(In one of my jobs that involved interviewing clients, "DNA" meant "Did Not Attend." Maybe fictional characters are those who do not attend reality?)

Narratives And Perspectives

Poul Anderson presents mutant immortals in The Boat Of A Million Years and mutant time travellers in There Will Be Time. Far from bring successive instalments of a single series, these works are the exact opposite of that: alternative speculations. An immortal can remember a historical period but not revisit it whereas a time traveller who does not remember a period can visit it for the first time. Thus, history plays different roles in these narratives, as also in the same author's historical novels.

Fictional characters sometimes experience time travel very differently. Anderson's Time Patrollers, seated on timecycles, experience what is to them an instantaneous transition from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another whereas the protagonists in Anderson's "Flight to Forever" are enclosed within their vehicle, called a "time projector," while external events fast forward around them. Anderson's mutant time travellers, travelling by will power alone, see the rest of the world fast forwarding or rewinding around them as does HG Wells' Time Traveller and this is not surprising because we are to understand that it was one of the mutants who gave the time travel idea to Wells.

Some completed bodies of work are straightforward boxed set material like four volumes of The King Of Ys, four of Harvest Of Stars, three of The Last Viking etc whereas others are not what readers would expect like:

three Maurai future history short stories;

one long Maurai novel;

There Will Be Time in which the Maurai History is fiction -

- or:

two Kith future history short stories;

a long novel presenting an alternative Kith history -

- or:

A Midsummer Tempest in which Holger Danske from Three Hearts And Three Lions and Valeria Matuchek from Operation Otherworld meet in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, from "House Rule " and "Losers' Night." 

Reading through any of these sequences gets you to somewhere completely unpredictable.

Poul Anderson's Series

Does anyone know how many series Poul Anderson wrote?

The Wikipedia Poul Anderson bibliography lists:

Hoka (with Gordon R. Dickson)

The Psychotechnic League (which I call the Psychotechnic History)

Tomorrow's Children, collected as Twilight World

The Technic History

Time Patrol

History of Rustum

Maurai and Kith (giving the wrong impression that these are one series)

Harvest of Stars

The King of Ys (with Karen Anderson)

Operation Otherworld

The Last Viking

The Trygve Yamamura Trilogy (not named as such)

This bibliography lists Tales Of The Flying Mountains as a collection although not as a collected series.

It does not mention:

connections between Three Hearts And Three Lions, A Midsummer Tempest, Operation Otherworld and two "Old Phoenix" short stories;

the three Wing Alak stories;

a few other connections between works.

For earlier posts on series, see here.

Like A Tide

The Fleet Of Stars, 14.

On Mars:

"The shrunken sun declined westward. Shadows rose in Crommelin Basin like a tide lapping around the city towers. Fenn took his departure." (p. 173)

The sun looks shrunken to Fenn who has come from Luna and Earth.

The comparison of the shadows with a tide is striking. It also evokes Mars as it was long ago and might be again in the future. Mars is green as seen from Earth in Anderson's The Winter Of The World. 

Sometimes Poul Anderson devotes a paragraph to a sunrise or a sunset. This time it is just one sentence but a good one.

Remember also the haiku in Anderson's Genesis:

"The shadows, like life,
"moved beneath summer daylight.

"Evening reclaims them." 

Chuan And Fenn

The Fleet Of Stars, 14. 

Chuan claims that what Fenn calls progress is the opposite because it is both dangerous and archaistic:

"'Our proper future, our true evolution, lies in the growth of intellect, consciousness, spirit.'" (p. 172)

Fenn replies that this:

"'Seems kind of overblown...'" (ibid.)

Chuan responds that it makes sense of a universe otherwise "'...without rhyme or reason...'" (ibid.)

I would say slow down, both! Some people have - not always but for a very long time - grown intellect in universities and spirit in monasteries. That should continue. But no one should lay down that it is "our" future and evolution - for everyone. Why legislate like that? I once told a guy why I had stopped drinking and he thought that I was telling him to stop drinking. 

Fenn should say not that science, philosophy and spirituality are overblown but that they are necessary and that those who want to do them should, just as others should expand human horizons in the ways that he plans to. This really does seem to be an unnecessary conflict that they are getting into.

All consciousness makes sense of an otherwise unconscious universe. Conscious organisms experience aspects of this universe which otherwise would not be experienced or known.

One energy

With many changing forms

Builds complicated ordered patterns of itself

On different psychophysical levels

And spatiotemporal scales

And becomes conscious of itself

Whose body is the universe

Whose sense organs are living beings. 

What Chuan Says

 

The Fleet Of Stars, 14.

Chuan thinks that renewed industrial activity in space could generate new ideas and faiths as troublesome as Catharism. Why should it do that? If, as he says:

"'In everything everywhere, the equilibrium is fearsomely precarious.'" (p. 172)

- then society is not being allowed to develop. It is being held back in what sounds like a very dangerous state instead of being helped out of it.

Why should renewed activity in space generate:

"'Economic rivalry...'" (p. 171)

- leading to:

"'The bitterness in those who try and fail.'" (ibid.)?

But, if it does have such consequences, then surely an advanced technological civilization would be able to cope with them much better than earlier generations had done?

Chuan says that:

"'...the field drive makes interplanetary war possible.'" (ibid.)

Sure, any advanced technology could be used for warfare but will not be so used if there are no other causes of conflict. But, if there are such causes, then they need to be addressed, not left to fester.

Chuan sounds like not the man in the middle but a man in a muddle.

Going Home

The Fleet Of Stars, 13.

Sometimes it seems more than fortuitous that a particular paragraph falls right at the end of a right-hand page so that it is necessary to turn the page in order to continue reading. Although there is no pause in the text, the reader experiences the very slight pause of a page-turning immediately before a dramatic development in the narrative. Thus, He'o, an intelligent seal, reflecting on humanity and expressing his own experience, tells Fenn and Stellarosa:

"'Yes, you are a peculiar race... I will never fully understand you. Do you understand yourselves?' His whiskers quivered. 'I, though, I am going home to my sea.'" (p. 159)

He'o is going home.

Turning the page, we read:

"Thunder smote. His skull exploded. Blood and brains fountained. The missile whanged off two walls before it dropped." (p. 160)

His last conscious thought before his instantaneous death was of the sea. Some would say that that was the best way to die although I disagree. He'o's best death would have been at the end of a very long old age while experiencing his sea.

Do we imagine that He'o does go home, i.e., that he enters a hereafter corresponding to his memory of the sea? We can imagine this and write fiction about it but consciousness must end when the brain that generates it explodes.

Theta-Ennea And Stellarosa

"The curator of Oxford...for reasons unrevealed to [Patulcius] currently used the name Theta-Ennea..."

-The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 7, p. 480.

Fenn and He'o are approached by a journalist from the Cosmochronicle Service who informs them that her:

"'...current name is Stellarosa...'"

-The Fleet Of Stars, 13, p. 155.

Names that are not only exotic but also merely current suggest social rootlessness. Fictional futures by a single author have common features.

Patulcius began life as Gnaeus Cornelius Patulcius in the Roman Empire. Fenn, born in an AI-dominated age, has a personal name with no surname but also a unique identification number. Poul Anderson's imagination encompasses past and future history. Immortals and time travellers experience both.

Oxford And London In Different Futures

Oxford

There is a curator who tries not quite successfully to empathize with earlier generations. Some others live in and preserve the town. 

When Patulcius visits:

"Outside, wind chased sunlight and cloud shadows along High Street. Across it dreamed the beautiful buildings of Magdalen College. Three persons wandered by, looking, occasionally touching. He suspected they were young, though of course you couldn't tell."

-Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991), XIX, 7, p. 480.

As in Anderson's World Without Stars, people with indefinitely prolonged lifespans look young.

London

Smoke, Hyde Park, a flower vendor, a pub, beer, darts, a museum set for tourists and antiquarians, dwellers whose subculture is archaism. (The Fleet Of Stars, 12, p. 146)

Will our future preserve our remains?

Past And Future Histories

London in The Fleet Of Stars reminded me of something in The Boat Of A Million Years so I am going to check Boat.

Some works cover both past and future periods:

The Corridors Of Time

There Will Be Time

the Time Patrol series

The Boat Of A Million Years

- three about time travel and one about immortality.

Boat, published only as a single long novel, could have been serialized first. Each chapter is set in a different century. It could then have been published in three volumes: past, present and future. By "present," I mean the twentieth century.

Past: from 310 BC to 1872

Present: 1931, 1938, 1942, 1975

Future: undated but remote

London has been preserved in Fleet and Oxford in Boat. That was the link.

Fenn On Mars

The Fleet Of Stars, 11.

It is time for more character interactions. Fenn, who has been in space, in the orbiting Habitat, inside Luna and both on and under the Pacific, is now on Mars where he:

hikes and talks with Kinna Ronay;

quotes from his conversation with Chuan;

remembers Wanika;

is concerned about the cybercosm;

hears the wind in his sonics (see Wind On Mars);

asks to be introduced to Martian Lunarians.

Plot threads converge but slowly because of the distances involved.

A Martian skinsuit extends three legs to form a stool when its wearer sits! How many readers have remembered that detail?

In Chapter 12, Fenn, back on Earth, in fact in antiquarian London, with Wanika, receives a recorded message from Kinna, still on Mars, and that is as far as we are about to reread this Sunday breakfast time.

Ad Martem!

Fenn's Futuristic Speculation

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

I cannot remember from previous readings whether what follows will happen in this future history series or whether it is only a possible future contemplated by Fenn.

He imagines that:

the Lahui Kuikawa, human beings and intelligent seals, flatten the Martian moon, Deimos, into concentric cylindroids, thus transforming it into a habitat much vaster than the one currently orbiting Luna;

from this base, they send generations of explorers and merchant adventurers out across the Solar System, thus gathering enough wealth first to terraform Mars, then to launch interstellar argosies.

This might be only a possible future within a fictional future. Nevertheless, Fenn draws a valid inference from it. By transforming Deimos and Mars and looking to the stars, the Lahui Kuikawa would transform themselves and therefore would no longer be Lahui Kuikawa. He reflects that the current extra-solar colonists have been transformed from Terrans into children of Earth Mothers. He could have added that, by cooperatively changing their natural environments with their hands and brains, our pre-human ancestors had changed themselves into rational, linguistic organisms and thus into human beings. That reflection takes us out of speculative fiction and back into our shared past. 

Pacific Performance And Perceptions

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

When an entire local population of Keiki Moana performs a ballet, Fenn does not understand it but:

"...it shook him with tragic power, like an earthquake or a stormwind." (p. 131)

When Fenn's companion, Wanika, summons their boat to return them to the shiptown, we are not told just that the boat arrived. First, we learn what they perceive while they wait. I summarize Poul Anderson's account but also encourage blog readers to read or reread his text: waves lap, air cools, Keiki hush, sinking sunlight goldens waters and kindles clouds, an albatross soars, blue darkens. Then the conversation resumes but that is another story. First, let us appreciate this Andersonian Pacific sunset like so many similar scenes, settings and scenarios.

I do not know what comes next, having paused on this point, and might now pause for food but keep reading out there.

Light And Dark

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

Our primary sense is sight. We neither smell objects nor hear echoes from them but see them. Therefore, we associate (Biblical) "revelation" - and, still more explicitly, (Buddhist) "enlightenment" - with light.

"In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John, 1: 4-5)

"The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (John 1: 9)

(In one tradition, the light becomes a man. In the other, a man becomes enlightened.)

Although we are not intelligent sea-dwellers, like the Keiki Moana, they too might associate either revelation or enlightenment with sunlight becoming visible above them as they return from the depths. So what "revelation" might they find in the opposite direction in the cold, dark and pressure at the limit of survivability? Poul Anderson describes this "religious revelation" with two words and one phrase:

"...awe and mystery and the implacability of the universe." (p. 130)

- or, to summarize more briefly, awe, mystery and implacability. Yes, these words are appropriate. Personally, when I swam down so far that I suddenly experienced cold, darkness and pain in both ears, that was not a religious experience but I am not an intelligent seal!

We remember Anderson's The Merman's Children and "Homo Aquaticus," the latter an instalment of his Kith future history series - and also the Starkadian sea-dwellers in his Technic History.

Keiki Moana

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

The sf travelogue continues as Fenn accompanies the intelligent seals, the Keiki Moana, into and under the Pacific.

Keiki ride waves, mount crests, plunge into and merge with hollows, herd flocks, bark songs, kill prey and bear scars from sharks. Fenn gambols with dolphins beneath meteoric silver flying fish.

In the depths, a whale passes and night is unending while Keiki track life, shifting currents and machines. Descent to the mortal limit is a rite of passage, a test of strength and a revelation.

Keiki females have their own culture and language. Keiki art, originally enacted, danced or sung, has come to include recorded literature and artifacts produced by directed robots.

We are overwhelmed and it is time for me to go into town. 

Bedside Reading

Lying on the mattress where I have slept for three nights, I find beside my head Poul Anderson's:

The Psychotechnic League

Time Patrol

Harvest Of Stars

- each the first volume of its series. How rich are Anderson's many series and other works.

Harvest Of Stars, mostly chase sequences, soars as transcendent speculative fiction only in its last few chapters but then that series takes off in Volumes II-IV. 

Time Patrol is ten instalments of very variable lengths, lacking only the long tripartite novel, The Shield Of Time.

The Psychotechnic History takes off as a future history series only after Volume I.

This is a rare pre-meditation post. The order of the day for this normal Saturday is meditation, breakfast, activities in town and probably a quiet evening. The Northern Irish guests will visit the nearby Lake District today or tomorrow, weather permitting. Life continues to be good here but bad in many other places.

Different Writers And Different Histories

We can compare future histories by different sf writers or different future histories by one sf writer, Poul Anderson. The immediately preceding post is enriched by comparisons of details in:

the Psychotechnic History

the Technic History

the Harvest Of Stars History

the Time Patrol (a past and future history)

- and there have also been recent references to Genesis and Maurai which leaves only Kith, Rustum and Flying Mountains not mentioned.

While I type in this language that will become Anglic or Anglo, Sheila's relatives, our house guests, converse around me in incomprehensible Northern Irish accents and it is time to give up the struggle.

Good night and peace on Earth (which still makes sense as an aspiration).

At Tharsis

The Fleet Of Stars, 9.

Kinna and Elverir, flying into the Martian wilderness towards Tharsis, pass above Guthrie Head and the Sisters. 

Outside their flitter:

"The landmarks dropped behind like time itself..." (p. 115)

Inside Kinna's mind:

"Fragments of the history blew past her like dust on the wind." (ibid.)

Two good comparisons: landmarks like time; history like dust on the wind. (That ubiquitous Andersonian wind.)

The Lunarians are not only physically but also psychologically different from Terrans and, in a previous volume, devised their own language. Elverir will introduce Kinna to those Martian Lunarians who call themselves neither brigands nor guerillas but Inrai. Why, in such a high tech society, would anyone:

rob caravans;

wreck machines;

kill sophotects and men?

Some explanation will be given but we must read on.

Elverir might just have told Kinna that the Inrai cause was just but Poul Anderson wants to convey some linguistic nuances. Thus, Elverir uses the adjective, "douris," (p. 113) which we are told means "natural" or "unwarped" rather than "just" or "righteous." Elverir's "'...zailin...'" (p. 119) with the Inrai was maybe his initiation rather than his indoctrination or training. 

Will the Inrai, who want their freedom from the Synesis, receive help from Proserpina? In Anderson's Technic History, will Aeneas receive help from Ythri or Merseia or will Diomedes receive help from Ythri? (We are not about to answer those questions here.)

The Inrai want a sovereign Lunarian Mars and Luna back. Kinna recognizes irredentism. 

"'Carthagalann stole Egypt, our rightful possession.'

"'Italia irredenta,' murmured Everard.

"'Hunh?'

"'Never mind.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 6, p. 210.

Elverir acknowledges that one of his comrades is "'...not wholly sane...'" (p. 119) about their cause. Shivering but not from cold, Kinna reflects:

"History said that causes brought forth such people. But the murderous great causes belonged only to history, didn't they? They were centuries extinct, weren't they?" (ibid.)

Here again, this late future history reminds us of Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History:

"There was something of the fanatic about Etienne Fourre.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York, September 1981), 31-129 AT V, p. 54.

In the wake of World War III, Fourre fights nationalism and builds the UN world government although the title character, Naysmith, thinks that in earlier days that same Fourre would have been with the Inquisition or Cromwell.

The spirit of the Psychotechnic History creeps closer when:

"The room was growing dark. [Kinna] imagined the specter of the nation-state walking in through the wall, from the cold and unbreathable wind outside, followed by war and war and war." (p. 125)

The Inrai began when, during a dispute about access rights, one Lunarian killed three sophotects and one man, then fled into the wilderness with fellow rebels. They are supported by independent Lunarian cities, rob caravans for supplies and fire at constables to keep them off. The cybercosm works towards a destiny whereas the Inrai want freedom from destiny.

The universe is big enough for both.

"Together"

Let me discuss something tangential but I will then return us to Poul Anderson's works. All my life, I have heard the Eton Boating Song but had only ever discerned the single word, "together." I hope that the song is audible here. It is mentioned, appropriately, in one of Dornford Yates' books.

What I like and approve of:

the music

togetherness

memory and nostalgia

acknowledgement of the passage of time

What I am not in tune with:

the focusing of all this on an English public school or indeed on any boarding school

Relevance to Anderson: 

continuity

conservatism

Flandry and his fiancee in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

The Sea Way

Compare:

the Cosmic religion in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

Cosmenosis in Anderson's Technic History

the Dao Kai/Sea Way in his The Fleet Of Stars, 8, which is -

more a philosophy than a religion (this has become a cliche although not a bad one);

a way of thinking, feeling and living;

behaviours rather than precepts;

organic;

founded on wholeness of life in oneness with the universe -

- and involves meditating under stars and under water.

OK. I could acknowledge the Sea Way while continuing to practice zazen.

Pacific Sensations

The Fleet Of Stars, 8.

On the floating platform:

structures are tinted pastel;

pedestrians chatter cheerfully;

flowers blaze;

floral fragrance penetrates salt air.

Beyond the platform:

the sun dusts blue waves with diamond;

a great ship holds a community of extended families;

a shuttle carries Iokepa and Fenn to the atoll, Nauru, covered with colourful parks, gardens and buildings - the centrum of the Lahui Kuikawa polity which also covers many other islands and large ships.

Welcome to one mixed community on Earth in this period of this future history series: maybe reminiscent of the Maurai in an earlier Andersonian future history?

Fenn Arrives On Earth

The Fleet Of Stars, 8.

In response to an invitation received from Iokepa Hakawau of the mid-Pacific Ocean polity called the Lahui Kuikawa at the very end of Chapter 6, Fenn travels from Luna to Kamehameha Spaceport in Hawaii from where he proceeds by air to a large, crowded, floating platform:

"As he stepped from the volant onto the airfield, into a wind lulling mild across three thousand kilometers of equatorial ocean, a brown girl gave Fenn a white smile and laid a garland around his neck." (p. 102)

A mild wind and a white smile belong together! Andersonian winds growl, roar, sigh, lull, caress, whisper etc as appropriate. 

Three thousand kilometers of equatorial ocean set the scene for this section of the narrative. So far, Anderson's text has transported its readers from the colonized fourth planet of Beta Hydri via Alpha Centauri and the Kuiper Belt to the orbiting Habitat, Lunar passageways and both country and city on the colonized solar planet, Mars.

A boy, not a machine, carries Fenn's bag. This greeting is not an artificial observance, as elsewhere on Earth and Luna, but a ritual "...as natural as breathing." (p. 103)

We find all these details in the opening three paragraphs of Chapter 8 and the in first sentence of the fourth paragraph. It pays to read carefully and to take notes. One kind of sf is the futuristic travelogue. See also Anderson's The Game Of Empire.

Linkage

The Fleet Of Stars, 7.

To make linkage, Chuan:

enters a monk-like cell;

places his interlink on his head;

lies down;

connects circuits;

relaxes;

issues a mental command.

The interlink interacts with a network implanted inside his head by nanomachines when he was a cadet, then both interact with his brain. This triad of interlink, network and brain harmonizes, then opens itself to, and becomes an integral part of, the system that governs the cybercosm on Mars. This cybercosm comprises sophotectic intelligences, computers, databases, scanners and sensors encompassing the planet. The intelligences and Chuan's brain are conscious, therefore the entire system is.

It is conscious of processes within atomic nuclei and of spatiotemporal curvature while it guides machines around Mars and in orbit and receives laser beams from Earth, Luna, Mercury, the asteroids and the outer moons. Chuan's thoughts enter a collective consciousness from which he receives new information to be disclosed to readers later in the novel. 

Three times in the past, Chuan has been granted Unity with the ever-growing AI consciousness which he will experience permanently when his personality has been downloaded.

Memory And Immortality

.

The Fleet Of Stars, 6.

The Prefect of the Synesis denigrates reports of immortality on extra-solar colony planets. He begins by stating that cerebral data-storage capacity is finite, an issue addressed in other Andersonian works. But does a brain retain - or need to retain - every experience?

However, even if retention were infinite, a more fundamental problem would remain. The longer you lived, the less often you would be able to remember any given earlier experience. Thus, how long would you retain any sense of identity or continuity with your younger self? Surely eventually you would effectively become a different person which is what happens naturally in any case when some people die and others are born? Maybe nature has got this issue right in the first place?

In any case, I fully agree with Fenn's response to the Prefect's speech:

"'...I don't think I'd mind a run of several thousand years, myself. And after that - who knows?'" (p. 82)

Exactly. Not caution, courage.

Chuan In Crommelin

The Fleet Of Stars, 7, returns us to Mars, this time to the city of Crommelin, and introduces a new character, Chuan, although he converses with Kinna Ronay whom we have previously seen in conversation with a Lunarian, Elverir. Chuan's parents, back on Earth, are registered as allegiant to the Padmayana sect which sounds authentic although I cannot find "Padmayana" on google. There is a Padmasana.

Kinna, wondering why Chuan has invited her, asks:

"'...why not cultivate somebody studying, oh, psychotechnics, with an idea of going into the Coordination Service?'" (p. 92)

Deja vu. Psychotechnics and a Coordination Service are major features of the Psychotechnic History, which was Poul Anderson's first future history whereas Harvest Of Stars is his seventh and second last. The distance between them approaches the infinite.

Chuan is a synnoiont who has been trained from childhood to commune with the cybercosm. We must learn what this means as we read about it. 

The Synesis

The Fleet Of Stars, 6.

The Synesis is the name of the social setup where human beings hold public office but the conscious AI "cybercosm" wields real power because it controls all the technology.

Fenn asks his mother whether the Synesis is:

"'...so marvelous?'" (p. 88)

Her reply is threefold:

"'It's what we have.'" (ibid.)

True of any social system while it exists.

Secondly:

"'It means peace, health, well-being, long life, and, yes, freedom to do and be the best we can.'" (ibid.)

She is an artist.

Thirdly, the Synesis contrasts favourably with earlier history:

"'How free were men when governments squeezed half their earnings from them and sent them off to die in wars anytime it chose?'" (ibid.)

Peace, health, well-being, long life and freedom for individuals like artists to create and to fulfill themselves. However, human beings are both individual and social and their control of their social destiny has been lost. Human beings are in a much better state without governments taxing and conscripting them and waging wars. However, they, the whole human race, needs to exercise the kind of control over its own circumstances that governments had previously exercised for it. Information and communication technology and automatic production can be used to enhance this kind of control instead of to stifle it.

Lack of fulfillment generates discontent. Fenn's mother says that quiet revolutions with unguessable outcomes are happening. He himself realizes that overt discontent may be just "froth" whereas a deeper change might also be happening and this is suddenly exhilarating. 

He has yet to meet Guthrie.

Chronicle Of Wretchedness

The Fleet Of Stars, 4.

This is good writing, it must be acknowledged:

"[Fenn's] education to date included the chronicle of wretchedness which was history until five or six centuries ago - a bare half-dozen lifetimes. He hadn't learned only about famine, disease, poverty, toil, environmental destruction, the ills that piece by piece technology had lifted off mankind. He'd learned about the unnecessary horrors, slavery, private abuse, rampant crime, inherited hatreds, sexual distortion and oppression, superstitious dreads, and institutionalized atrocities of government, war, regimentation, extortion, torture.... Humankind today was liberated. Wasn't it?" (pp. 49-50)

No. Not if Fenn has to ask that question! The text continues:

"If it had pulled back into a warm, little Earth-womb, that was only because it was cowardly and stupid. No?" (p. 50)

No. A cowardly and stupid species would not have been able to create the technology that has ended famine, disease, poverty, toil etc. Not everyone but enough people would have been courageous and intelligent enough to resist any pressure to retreat into a metaphorical womb. 

The news tells of unrest. Yes. And unrest can, not necessarily will, find an outlet: either remake society in the Solar System or go elsewhere and live otherwise as some have already done.

There is more good stuff to quote but we are going to have to take this in stages. Life beyond the computer calls.

Glory to the Emperor? Not in this timeline.

Good Or Bad?

Are science and technology good or bad for humanity?

Read:

Frankenstein

The Time Machine

The Shape Of Things To Come

Brave New World

1984

Player Piano

James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy

Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy 

Anderson's Genesis

Later - when we might have a little more leisure! - we will quote some telling passages from Harvest Of Stars, Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars. However, basically, the point is that, in this novel, technology has ended many ills but is no longer controlled by human beings and this is bad.

That means that another novel could be written in which we have retained control and that is good.

Onward and upward. The adventure continues. And so on.

Past And Future Histories

Reading past history increases my appreciation of future histories. Geography precedes history. An historian informs us that Russia is a gigantic, austere plain open to eastern winds and Asian migrations, then introduces populations, peasantries, nobilities, cities and so on. We know that we can read about all of these features elsewhere. A future historian introduces planetography and planetary populations and persuades us that we would be able to read about them elsewhere. Readers with amateur writing abilities can fill in some details with fanfic. (I can write but not fiction.)

Emil Dalmady comes from the colonized planet, Altai. Later, Dominic Flandry visits that planet. We accept what we are told about its history just as we accept a past historian's account of Russia. The background details do not really exist but Poul Anderson is able to write as if they did.

(Here at Blog Central, we have been busy preparing for four house guests for five nights arriving tomorrow. When they leave, I will visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. So posts might remain sparse. The spirit is willing but not always the social conditions!)