From Trojans To Terrans

The immediately preceding post proceeded from Trojans via Greeks and Romans to Terrans and we skipped past some intermediate stages like British and Americans! There really were people who believed that the British Empire would last forever because the British were the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and their Empire was the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham and this world-view is echoed in one timeline of Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse where Shakespeare is the Great Historian so (it is argued that) the English were everywhere in antiquity - except that I am getting mixed up between British and English.

Sometimes imagination and ingenuity are invested in interpreting scriptural and historical texts to sanctify preconceived conclusions like the Anglo-Israel theory outlined above. A far more productive use of any author's imaginative and intellectual abilities is to create works of acknowledged fiction which can, e.g., envisage future empires without insisting that any such empires will come about! All that we do know for certain about the future is that it will be unlike what anyone has imagined. I think that it is the task of sf writers to convey that: novelty and unpredictability.

Historical Connections

In terms of film adaptations, I would have preferred The Iliad before The Odyssey and The Aeneid after it. Virgil's Aeneid, presenting Aeneas from Troy as an ancestor of Romulus, founder of Rome, and prophesying an endless empire for the eternal city, connects with:

(i) Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series which shows -

an alternative outcome of the second war between Rome and Carthage;

a potential alternative outcome of the Northern Revolt in the Roman Empire;

Goths rejecting or responding to Roman/Christian influence;

Britain after Roman withdrawal;

(ii) Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy about the decline of the Western Roman Empire;

(iii) Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, set in the Eastern Roman Empire;

(iv) SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series about an alternative Roman Empire;

(v) Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization which features an eventual Terran Empire.

See also the blog search result for "Ilion."

My mind boggles!

Of course, the Aeneid connects with much more, e.g., Dante's Inferno, but it is the works by the Andersons and Stirling that mostly concern us here.

Narratives About Something

Recently I tried rereading some sf from years ago but did not read it to the end. I realize now that what I wanted then was stories about people in spaceships, not stories that were about something and that also happened to feature people in spaceships. Poul Anderson's first few Dominic Flandry stories are space opera but his later Flandry novels are about historical processes and alien evolution. The Merseians are transformed from cliched villains into a plausible species. The Technic History incorporates the lengthy Flandry series and, as we know, another entire series with additional stories set before, between and after, thus making it, in my opinion, the most complete future history series.

The film, The Odyssey, expresses concern about the decline of civilization, an issue that was not present in the Homeric epic but that is relevant now and was expressed by Poul Anderson. 

A Real Mars?

SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings reads as if it is about a real Mars (not our real one, of course!) which other versions merely hint at. That is what writers of fiction try to do. CS Lewis tells us, quite legitimately, that HG Wells' Martians are very different from the real Martians... My other general observations are, first, that I strongly dislike Stirling's Martians' attitudes to life and to each other and, secondly, that I still find them rather complicated and convoluted to read about but that last point just means that I need to persevere as a reader.

And the relevance of all this to Poul Anderson is that, both for comparative purposes and also for their own sakes, Anderson presents more fictional Martians than any other sf writer, even Heinlein.

In a short post, and without initially intending to, we have referred to no less than Stirling, Lewis, Wells, Anderson and Heinlein - and will now stop short of listing others especially at this time of night!

Good night or whatever time of day it may be where you are now.

A Trip

Here at Blog Central, we are on an "all one universe" trip because:

Percy Shelley wrote -

"A new Ulysses leaves once more

"Calypso for his native shore.";

Poul Anderson quoted those lines in Trader To The Stars;

Ulysses is Odysseus;

we have just had a family outing to the film, The Odyssey;

in that film, of course, Odysseus leaves Calypso for his native shore.

And now your friendly neighbourhood blogger needs some food and drink after hours at the cinema. 

We might be more focused laterz.

Some Comparisons

At a Memorial Evening for James Blish, the publisher, Charles Monteith, described Blish's Cities In Flight as "a greater and higher Star Trek." We can make a similar comparison with Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In Star Trek, there are many intelligent species and perhaps two main ones:

Klingons

Vulcans/Romulans

In the Technic History, there are many intelligent species and perhaps four main ones:

Merseians

Ythrians

Wodenites

Cynthians

Wodenites and Cynthians are mainly represented through individuals:

Adzel, then Axor;

Chee Lan - and some others.

But perhaps the closest parallel to Spock is the Chereionite, Aycharaych: pointed ears and a more powerful telepath but on the other side.

Trekkies should read Anderson and Blish.

Merseians

The Game Of Empire.

CHAPTERs SIX and ELEVEN and the concluding passage of TWENTY-TWO are entirely about Merseians. The first and third of these are set on Merseia, like "Day of Burning" and several chapters of Ensign Flandry.

Tachwyr the Dark had been a mei when Dominic Flandry was an ensign, then a lieutenant. We are pleased (?) to learn that, when Flandry has become an Admiral of the Fleet, Tachwyr has become the Hand of his Vach and the Guardian of the Roidhun's Grand Council.

CHAPTER ELEVEN brings out most clearly that the Technic History is a future history not only of Terrans but also of Merseians when it tells us that:

Qanryf Bryadan Arrowswift of the Vach Hallen comes from an arctic shore of the Wilwidh Ocean;

Afal Uroch the Lucky of the Vach Rueth has partial Lafdiguan ancestry.

See also here.

The demoralization of the Merseians that will lead to their failure to conquer the galaxy surely sets in at the end of CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO when Tachwyr realizes that he will not live to see the subjugation of humanity.

The Third Kittredge

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER EIGHT.

Again, background details help the narrative: Ensign Helen Kittredge from Vixen and trained at the Foundry joins Magnusson's rebellion and the battleship on which she serves follows his flagship into Sector Aldebaran. The narrator imagines her as having leave on Ansa. The new information in this chapter includes the disclosures that a dim red dwarf will henceforth be known as Battle Sun and that the battleship with Helen Kittredge as an energy weapons controller takes a lethal hit in that battle. The character is introduced only to be killed but also to dramatize the human face of war.

The italicized items, including Helen's surname, have all appeared before, the Foundry earlier in this novel which explains why its name had seemed familiar on a previous reading!

The Kittredges join the Falkayns and Holms as families with more than one generation in the Technic History.

Martian Meanings

Late at night, tired, I found it easy to post about the Divine, a pet subject after all. However, meanwhile, I was finding SM Stirling's Martians difficult to read and think about. That is not a complaint! Who wants to read only texts that are easy? However...

One of them thinks:

"...I must keep in mind that death from another's volition is possible at any point on one's personal world-line."

-SM Stirling, In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings (New York, March 2008), CHAPTER ONE, p. 40.

He means that he must remember that someone can kill him at any time but why express it like that? Because he is a Martian human being, of course.

What is not acceptable, as Bob Shaw said at an sf event years ago, is to describe incomprehensible speech and actions and then to explain it all by the phrase: "Alien motivations!" But the authors that we discuss here do not see fit to conduct themselves like that. Shaw in particular said that it was a point of honour for him to explain everything.

These Martians make their kind of sense and it is our job as readers to understand it, even if not tonight.

Divine

The Game Of Empire.

Olaf Magnusson accepts the immediate objects of his thoughts:

"...as the aspect of the Divine which was set before him tonight."

-CHAPTER FOUR, p. 250.

The announcement that he is going to:

"...take leadership of the Terran Empire..."

-CHAPTER FIVE, p. 261 -

- ends with:

"'Stand by. The Divine, in whatever form It manifests Itself to you, is with us.'"

-ibid.

A very carefully worded statement that can provide a basis for any response whatsoever to the announcement!

A long time ago, I was impressed with the phrase, "the Divine Ground," in Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy because I wanted to move into mysticism while remaining monotheist. However, "Ground," like "It," is an impersonal term.

Today, I met with another guy called Paul who practices meditation taught by Elan Vital, the former Divine Light Mission, reads Christian mystics and attends the Church of England. Again, a light is not a person although I have just texted Paul to ask whether "Divine Light" implies a personal God.

If I were in the Patrician System to hear that announcement, then I would accept the statement that the Divine - in some sense! - is with us but I would also be wondering how to respond to Magnusson's attempted coup and, of course, I would not yet know what was really behind it. Poul Anderson is always full of surprises.

Alienation

If a human population, originally from Earth, had lived on another planet for tens of thousand of years, then they would by now have become strangely foreign or alien to Terrestrials in psychology, language, behaviour etc - as alien as some of the fictional aliens in works of sf. SM Stirling shows this clearly in In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings. 

Decades ago, an sf comic strip set in the future showed a meeting of what looked like standard fictional aliens. However, a footnote explained that these individuals with differently shaped and hued bodies were descendants of human colonists of extrasolar planets, physically changed by their mutually diverse and alien environments.

Sf writers need to make such differences of speech, culture etc, if not yet of body shape, clearer when describing e.g., in Poul Anderson's case, Hermetians, Avalonians and Dennitzans. These are human inhabitants of planets called Hermes, Avalon and Dennitza as opposed to Wodenites, Cynthians or Ythrians who are natives of Woden, Cynthia and Ythri.

On Avalon, jointly colonized by human beings and Ythrians:

Planha pronunciation influences Anglic pronunciation;

when Christopher Holm speaks as Arinnian of Stormgate Choth, his accent diverges even more and he sounds as if he is translating directly from Planha;

Terrans find it difficult to spy on Avalon because they cannot imitate Avalonian human thought, speech or even ways of walking.

But more of these differences need to be evident to readers. On Aeneas, there are noticeable differences in speech patterns between Nords, tinerans and Riverfolk, all human.

Magnusson's Background

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER THREE.

Admiral Olaf Magnusson:

was born on Kraken whose spacefolk trade as far as Betelgeuse or Merseia;

enlisted young in the Marines;

at Syrax, took command of a crippled ship;

was sent to the Foundry, the Navy officer school in Sector Aldeberan, which is where he was during the civil war;

helped to suppress two later rebellions and to negotiate with the Merseians (we read elsewhere that he speaks three Merseian languages, including Eriau, fluently);

married a Nyanzan heiress.

Regular readers of Poul Anderson's Technic History recognize multiple background details:

Kraken

Betelgeuse

Merseia

Syrax

Sector Aldeberan

the civil war

(Eriau)

Nyanza

- but not the Foundry which is introduced here.

Each instalment of a future history series builds on the foundation provided by earlier instalments and adds more - but we know that by now.

The Mars Of Fiction

How much do we know about it? Certain ideas float to the surface:

humanoid inhabitants

an ancient civilization on a drying planet

canals

sword

airships

a board game 

These features are common to Edgar Rice Burrough's Martian series and to SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series. Some of the ideas also appear elsewhere. The canals on a dying planet are legendary.

How does Mars come to be inhabited?

(i) There just are native Martians.

(ii) In Michael Moorcock's ERB pastiche, Michael Kane time travels to Mars at a time before Martians had migrated to Earth.

(iii) In Lords Of Creation, technologically superior aliens terraformed Mars and transplanted Terrestrial human beings to it.

(iv) In Poul Anderson's Technic History, extra-solar aliens colonize Mars.

(v) Martians existed but are now extinct.

(vi) In works by Anderson and others, Terrestrials colonize Mars and become the "Martians."

(vii) There are even versions of Mars that were never inhabited!

Senses And Silence

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER THREE.

Silence falls often. (Scroll down.)

Diana and Targovi converse privately in a crow's nest:

"Wind swirled in shrouds, bore iodine odors. The ship creaked and whooshed. A low sun threw a bridge over the waters. Forsaking this quest for another world would not be quite easy." (p. 242)

Four senses but I have said that before. (See also here.) That last sentence above reflects the fact that these characters can leave this planet and travel to another.

When there is a dramatic pause in the dialogue:

"Silence fell, save for wind, sea, and ship." (p. 245)

This is silence of speech but not of the sea setting and we have become used to the perennial wind. Completing our appreciation of the setting, Diana:

"...stared out beyond the sunset." (p. 247)

She looks beyond her immediately sensed scene of sun, sea and sky but we can meanwhile pause to appreciate it.

ERBianism

Poul Anderson did not write any Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches unless we count that single recently referenced passage. See:

Two Virtual Realities

- although it would have been well within his abilities to do so. 

The ingredients are present for all to see. The most basic is that another planet must harbour both a fully human race into which our hero can marry and also savage beast-men whom he must fight. A second ingredient is a gallimaufry of dangerous wild animals including, in the Land that Time Forgot and the Earth's Core and on SM Stirling's Venus, dinosaurs coexisting with human beings. Stirling has done what Anderson could have done, including a scientific rationalization for the retro-Solar System.

At the end of The Sky People, there is a two-tier transition to the alternative Mars which we will reread next.

Any ERBian cast of characters includes an obvious villain/traitor/saboteur etc. Stirling, like Anderson, is considerably subtler in his characterization. (Not difficult.) Marc dislikes the pompous British guy, Blair, so we expect a major conflict between them but that does not happen but something does happen about Blair...

Introducing the wheelbarrow works as well on this Venus as it does in ancient Rome.

Dissent And Denial

Imagine, for the sake of argument, an alternative future history in which the Merseians, having got ahead of us in terms of faster-than-light interstellar travel, have, in the mid-twenty-first century, occupied the Northern Hemisphere of Earth and are committing genocide in the South. Would the entire human race unite against the invaders? Yes? No? Might some Northern Terrestrials claim that incorporation into a technologically advanced interstellar civilization was the salvation of humanity and deny that the genocide was happening? We do not know any other intelligent species but we do know our own species!

Sf writers can use fictional aliens to comment on humanity and on contemporary issues. One Star Trek episode referred to the Vietnam War. IIRC, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was not shown in Britain because it mentioned the date of the British withdrawal from Norther Ireland. Futuristic sf is relevant.

Controversial almost to the point of civil war? Certainly. Appropriate subject-matter for sf? Definitely. Like Wells' prediction, then denunciation, of the use of aircraft to bomb cities.

There are at least two kinds of aliens in sf:

those that are used as commentaries (see above);

those that are dramatized scientific speculations about extraterrestrial biology.

Needless to say, Poul Anderson gives us both, e.g., 

the Merseian Roidhunate as an approximate analog of the Soviet Union;

Ythrian biology, psychology, sociology and theology.

In the case of the Merseians, it is the Roidhunate, not the entire species, that is hostile, as Anderson brilliantly shows in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Can I praise the Technic History highly enough? No.

Forest, Sea And People

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER THREE.

On Imhotep, a single green and gold forest with silver rivers and lakes covers a continent. The Crystal River flows into Dawnside Bay where Tigeries evacuated from Starkad have built the new town of Toborkozan. Out at sea, a slow but powerful wind fills the sails of the Tigery ship, Firefish, which is followed by flying snakes, while the high Imhotepan gravity gives speed and force to the green-crested, purple-troughed waves which shimmer, rush, boom and fling bitter spindrift.

Targovi lands his flying van on its pontoons beside the ship, secures a towline and flies across on a gravity impeller to be greeted by Diana Crowfeather and also to meet Axor. His clandestine plan is to persuade the young woman and the Wodenite to accompany him to Daedalus where they will provide unwitting cover for his continued spying operation, his targets being not agents of a foreign power but the local authorities whom he suspects of treason. He could have just obeyed his immediate superior's orders and stayed quiet. (With the fate of the Empire at stake, of course.)

Alienness

Sure, we enjoy reading about other intelligent species interacting with human beings and even with each other but much of what they do is what human beings would have done in any case, as CS Lewis complained.

As cited in the immediately preceding post on this blog:

a Cynthian runs an inn;

a Merseian prisoner of war asleep in a bed is shaken awake by a Tigery whose sole mundane aim is to gather military intelligence;

and so on.

However, Poul Anderson also presents genuinely alien psychologies:

Ythrian attitudes to death in "The Problem of Pain" and to sex in The People Of The Wind;

an Ythrian population can debate and decide planetary policy in six hours and human beings can be incorporated into this fully democratic "Khruath" system;

Chee Lan, descended from predators who hunted alone or in small groups, is loyal only to kin and close friends and cannot conceive of universal altruism.

Multiple Species

vaz-Siravo

Merseians

Tigeries

a Donnarian

Irumclagians

Shalmuans

a Wodenite

a Cynthian

These eight species appear or are mentioned in the first two chapters of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire. Members of each of these species have already played active roles in earlier instalments of Anderson's Technic History. The species interact in interesting or entertaining ways. In CHAPTER TWO, Targovi, a Tigery, visits an inn owned by Ju Shao, a Cynthian, and, later, interviews Fodaich Eidhafor the Bold of the Vach Dathyr, a Merseian.

Ythrians, although important in the Technic History, are not mentioned in this novel.

This is how a future history series works. Details accumulate, become parts of the narrative background and interact with each other until history goes beyond them into remoter futures.

Aurea

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWO.

Capital city of the colonized planet, Daedalus, in the Patrician System.

The original small town has been demolished or engulfed by the newly built sector defence command with its accompanying civil bureaucracy and private enterprises.

Soaring towers and sprawling industry.

Non-stop traffic on streets and elways or in the air.

Settlements elsewhere are enclaves in the wilderness.

A small part of the original town clings to a steep slope beneath the plateau with a view across hundreds of kilometers on this horizonless planet. 

Colonists of Daedalus are of many species from within the Terran Empire.

Targovi, a Tigery trader and covert Intelligence agent from Imhotep, visits an inn owned by a Cynthian, Ju Shao.

Aurea and Daedalus are as fully realized as Olga's Landing and Imhotep although these cities and planets appear only in this single novel.

Future History And Hidden History

I think that it is impossible to read anything written by Poul Anderson without finding something to say about it.

"'The glorious revolution was necessary,' Patel declared. 'Emperor Hans restored order and purged corruption.'

"'Ah, but his sons -'"

-The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWO, p. 220.

Of course a successful revolution is "glorious"!

"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?

"For, if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."

-John Harington.

People are surprised when I tell them that our present British constitutional monarchy results from nothing less than a "Glorious Revolution" in 1688.

Patel speaks indiscreetly:

Naval personnel feel that the present Emperor has been badly, even treasonably, advised;

reform is overdue;

the Admiral has sent recommendations;

meanwhile, dissatisfaction and consequent restlessness might require him to declare martial law...

Another glorious revolution?

Or is it all just a "Game"?

War

"'You can't leave now,' Daniel Holm told his son. 'Any day we may be at war. We may already be.'"

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 437.

That is the opening paragraph of the novel.

"'-Sir, we may be on the edge of a real war.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 215.

That is the closing sentence of the opening chapter of the novel.

There can be a sense of excitement at the beginning of a war. Things are going to change, maybe for the better. There can certainly be excitement in reading about a, real or fictional, war. In these two novels, as in Mirkheim, Anderson vividly conveys a sense of what it is like to live in troubled times.

We have got used to living in a world where wars happen somewhere else, not here. Or in history or fiction. Now, Iran might attack US bases in Britain.

"Any day we may be at war. We may already be..."

"...we may be on the edge of a real war."

Fiction reflects life.

Two More Sets Of "Others" (Not Necessarily Called That)

In Poul Anderson's The Avatar, the Others are an Elder Race, i.e., an ancient, technologically superior, intelligent species whose artifacts, T-machines, are present throughout the narrative and they themselves come on-stage near the end of the novel.

Google informs us that, in Rome To The Stars by SM Stirling and Melissa Olthoff, to be published on 6 October 2026, the Roman Empire that we know from Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series will expand into the galaxy, encountering advanced technology left behind by an ancient civilization that had transplanted human beings to other planetary systems. Yet more Elder Race activity, maybe.

The Others In Two Timelines

In Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, Axor's quest for the Universal Incarnation was initially inspired by Foredweller remains/relics/remnants on his home planet, Woden. We know from Anderson's The Day Of Their Return that remnant walls and indeed entire structures also exist on the planet Aeneas. Diana has heard that the Builders were "the Chereionites" and an Aenean spaceman referred to them as the Old Shen. Other names are Ancients, Elders and Others. That the Chereionites were the Ancients is indeed what Aycharaych, a Chereionite, told Erannath, an Ythrian, on Aeneas in The Day Of Their Return but who knows?

What does Axor expect? An eventual multi-species religion acknowledging two Incarnations, Terrestrial and Chereionite? (Or whichever species the Forerunners turn out to be?)

It turns out that "They" are not about to "Return." That was a deception fostered by Aycharaych. However, Marc Vitrac and his companions in SM Stirling's The Sky People are in a more perilous predicament because they have learned not only that the inhabitants of Venus are human but also that the language spoken there is Indo-European! It follows that the superior technology that terraformed Venus and Mars and seeded those planets with Terrestrial organisms was still active comparatively recently and therefore might still be around - unlike Anderson's long-gone Ancients.

Wodenite Biology

There are theroids on both Dennitza and Ishtar.

Wodenites are neither theroids nor herpetoids but are endothermic, two-sexed and viviparous and breed only in season, making celibacy easier for them than for human beings.

This information is imparted when Diana Crowfeather meets Francis Xavier Axor whose first two names, taken at baptism, reveal him to be a Christian.

Unfortunately, although three cover illustrations for Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire show the land Starkadian, Targovi, none display the large, quadrupedal, dinosaurian Axor. However, another Wodenite, Adzel, is to be seen on a cover of Satan's World.

All the details in Anderson's Technic History hang together.

Interplanetary SF

One way to write interplanetary sf is to catalogue the Solar System. Characters travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus etc. Robert Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles begin with Rocket Ship Galileo about going to the Moon. His Future History begins with The Man Who Sold The Moon although the first four stories in that collection are about different technological advances pre-space flight.

By the time Poul Anderson was writing sf, the Solar System was taken for granted. His Technic History began with interstellar exploration although a later-written story set earlier describes the exploration of the outer Solar System. Larry Niven's Known Space future history begins with exploration of Mercury, Venus, Pluto, Mars and technological advances on Earth, to be followed by colonization not of Mars but of the asteroids. (Which is the more substantial future history, the Technic History or Known Space? I have my opinion.)

Two trilogies: 

the volumes of CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy are set on Mars, Venus and Earth;

the first three volumes of SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series are set on Venus, Mars and -? (I don't know. I haven't read it yet!)

There is always something new.

Who Did It?

Even in my early days at University, I still did not understand natural selection. I remember thinking and saying that, if a part of an organism performed a function, then it must have been designed to perform that function.

Hard sf is based in a scientific understanding of cosmogony, cosmology and evolution. Poul Anderson imagines the evolution of:

Diomedeans

Starkadians

Ythrians

Didonians

Talwinians

t'Kelans

Throrans

See Speculution (Speculative Evolution).

This issues hits characters in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series when they find Terrestrial organisms almost (or exactly?) duplicated on Mars and Venus. Dr Feldman, paleontologist and ethnologist, loathes:

"'...the God-did-it crowd...'"

-SM Stirling, The Sky People (October 2007), CHAPTER TWO, p. 26.

But Marc Vitrac and his companions begin to find evidence for:

"'...the aliens-did-it stuff...'"

-CHAPTER NINE, p. 201.

Yes. Feldman, Marc etc inhabit a hard sf universe.

More Martians

Reading SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series made me consider writing a post about Mars and Martians in works of sf, including, of course, those of Poul Anderson, but that is a big subject and maybe we have done it before? Consequently, I searched the blog specifically for the phrase "composite Mars" because I had remembered that two authors, Larry Niven and Alan Moore, had each constructed a Mars inhabited by a small number of the Martian races already created by other authors. (Moore has Gulliver Jones and John Carter watching the Wellsian Martians departing to invade Earth etc.) The search result was beyond my imaginings and makes me want to regard the matter as having been adequately addressed at least for the time being!

In fact, see also the blog search result for:

Poul Anderson's Martians

In Olga's Landing II

Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), CHAPTER ONE.

See In Olga's Landing.

We try to convey the feel of Anderson's descriptive passages and have come close in the above linked post although we omitted some details:

the sky is not just blue but "...clear, deep blue..." (p. 195);

the breeze is cool although -

"It would have been deadly cold before [Diana's] people came to Imhotep" (ibid.);

Mount Horn is twelve kilometers above sea level;

the city holds not only the Pyramid but also the Institute, industries, shops, hotels, apartments and spaceport;

Diana is in the old quarter whose description we have quoted several times before (search the blog for "old quarter" although at least one other such quarter will come up!);

pioneers built in brick and low because of Imhotepan gravity;

in the market, videos show Terran sleaze and a vaz-Siravo dance from the Seas of Yang and Yin;

a gun dealer sells rifles, stunners and illegal Merseian blasters.

Every scene in Anderson's works reads as if the place exists and has not just been created at the stroke of a pen - or on a typewriter or a computer screen. We want to read more but can gain immensely just by rereading.

World Con, '62

Poul Anderson is a minor character in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series. We will come back to that. 

No wonder I could not remember whether:

"World Science Fiction Convention

"Chicago, Earth

"Labor Day, 1962"

- was in Lords Of Creation, Volume I, The Sky People, or in Volume II, In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings. It is at the end of Vol. I as a preview and at the beginning of Vol. II as the PROLOGUE (although maybe not still present as a preview in later editions of Vol. I?). 

We are still rereading The Sky People, rediscovering obscure ERBian references like "Vepaja," but have skipped ahead to the preview.

If you read this preview/PROLOGUE, then read the Wikipedia account of the 1962 World Con, then you will find that Stirling has got the names of Con attendees and even of the Guest of Honour right.

In Stirling's alternative historical Con, sf authors say a lot of things relevant to their works and this could lead to a detailed post on my Science Fiction blog. In fact, it probably will lead to something on that blog but, for present purposes, we will confine ourselves to "Poul" and to "the editor of Astounding." (Later: See Mars Books.)

While the authors watch transmissions from a Martian lander, Poul:

had brought in a case of Tuborg and is described as a postwar Young Turk (The Sky People, p. 314);

addresses "Arthur" on p. 315;

grumbles that the Viking horns worn by fans were not historical on p. 316;

comments on Martian sea level and highland air on p. 317;

is said to like messing about with boats and to murmur about pointing into the wind on p. 319;

guffaws that the Martians have put the lander in a sack when the screen goes dark after a tarpaulin has been thrown on p. 322.

The Astounding editor insists that Terrestrials are the most advanced Solar species on p. 319. This was a disagreement with Asimov.

Campbell:

edited Heinlein's Future History, Asimov's Foundation and Robots, Blish's Okies and Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn;

published Heinlein's Time Chart;

made suggestions that affected Foundation, Okies and the Technic History.

In the case of the Technic History, Campbell's suggestions were the ideas that became the Ythrians and Mirkheim.

Dominic Flandry And His Legacy

Volumes IV-VII of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization are:

IV Young Flandry

V Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire

VI Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra

VII Flandry's Legacy

Young Flandry collects three novels, beginning with Ensign Flandry.

We gather from these titles alone that Flandry starts young, matures, is promoted and knighted and has an impact.

Flandry's Legacy begins with A Stone In Heaven whose Chapter I ends:

"'...have you ever perchance heard of Admiral Flandry?'"

-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 1-188 AT I, p. 16.

Flandry's Legacy continues with The Game Of Empire. In CHAPTER ONE of that novel, Diana Crowfeather says:

"'Oh, my father's Dominic Flandry. You may have heard of him. He's become an Admiral of the Fleet, but forty-odd years ago he was a fresh-caught ensign...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Flandry's Legacy, pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 212.

The Wodenite, Axor, responds in part:

"'I have, yes, encountered tales of Admiral Flandry's exploits...'"

-ibid., p. 213.

The remaining four instalments collected in Flandry's Legacy take us centuries and millennia beyond Flandry's lifetime although readers of the series as a whole recognize consequences of his exploits even in the concluding instalment.

1818-2026

In recent posts and comboxes, we have differentiated sf from fantasy and have outlined sf's trajectory from its founding novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818), through the classics, the Golden Age and New Wave to recently published novels like SM Stirling's The Winds Of Fate (2025).

Poul Anderson's works, 1947-2001, cover just over fifty years of this period of just over two hundred years and fully develop the Wellsian-Stapledonian themes of space travel, time travel, alien invasion and future history as well as more recent themes that they did not know about.

(Frankenstein is the pivotal character between Gothic fiction and sf as Superman is between sf and superheroes and Anderson could easily have created a substantial sequel to either.)

I feel drawn towards rereading Anderson's The Game Of Empire, alongside other current reading, but it remains to be seen how much such rereading will generate blog-wise.

Nothing more this evening!

Solar Planets In The Pulps And Later In Heinlein, Asimov, Blish, Anderson And Stirling

Follow the link from "Northwest Smith " in Planetary Adventurers.

Ninety years ago, pulp sf writers treated the Solar System like a galaxy of inhabited planets with breathable atmospheres and even jungles on moons of Jupiter. Such an approach even affected Robert Heinlein's Future History although that series is primarily about the future development of human society, not about human-alien interactions. Isaac Asimov admitted in The Early Asimov that he wrote in this tradition even when he knew better.

We can see later writers emerging from the tradition. In James Blish's Cities In Flight and Mission To The Heart Stars, Martians had existed but are now extinct. Poul Anderson has half a dozen versions of Martians. There are Martians in his Psychotechnic History and in the original version of his "Margin of Profit" although, when that story was revised to fit into his Technic History, these "Martians" had become extra-Solars who had colonized Mars. Anderson also has Venerians in "Sister Planet," Jovians in Three Worlds To Conquer and Mercurians in "Life Cycle." 

When SM Stirling wrote a series in which Mars and Venus turned out to be more or less how earlier sf writers had imagined them, he also worked towards an explanation. A scientist working on Venus says:

"'Sam thinks...and I think...that two hundred million years ago, in the earliest Jurassic...this planet was different. Radically different from what we have now; as far as we can tell, it didn't have life at all. And we don't have any idea what changed it.'"

-SM Stirling, The Sky People (New York, October 2007), CHAPTER TWO, pp. 40-41.

But they will find out.

Planetary Adventurers

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, a virtual reality features John Carter on Mars. See:

Two Virtual Realities

Is this Anderson's only reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB)?

In a Known Space story by Larry Niven, a murderer on Mars is called John Carter, although Niven's text understates the name.

In his Acknowledgements for The Sky People, SM Stirling includes the pulpsters who created:

John Carter

Northwest Smith

"Wrong Way" Carson of Venus

I am sufficiently familiar with ERB to recognize Carter and Carson but not "Nobs" who is mentioned on p. 62.

SM Stirling's LORDS OF CREATION Trilogy

Volume III, which has almost the same title as the Trilogy, should arrive tomorrow but first I should reread Volumes I and II which I have retrieved from the room where a house guest is sleeping. There is also a short story with the same planetary setting as Volume II but I seem no longer to have the relevant anthology. Books are shed during a house move, especially to a smaller house. 

Volume I is The Sky People, which has the same title as one of Poul Anderson's Maurai short stories. 

Can I say anything more about this series now? I will be busy some of the time tomorrow and out of town all day on Friday.

I thought that The Sky People conveyed the same sense of adventure in a new world as Stirling's Conquistador and The Peshawar Lancers.

HG Wells pioneered alternative histories in Men Like Gods and A Modern Utopia. We are still in the grand sf tradition.

Magical Space Travel?

What form does space travel take in a fantasy narrative? I confess to not remembering the details in Poul Anderson's Operation Luna but see:

The Magicians Who Sold The Moon

a steel broomstick

a piece of Moon rock

a Native American medicine bundle for life support

There might be more details somewhere else on the blog but these three seem to be the essentials.

In Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, magicians become detached from the Earth so that it is painful for them to touch it and eventually they float upward and away. The (evil) Master is drawn towards the Moon. He winds up like a balloon held to the Earth by only a single rope which Ashbless cuts... The Master recedes towards the Moon, cursing and complaining. Ashbless thinks that he will:

"...cut the title right out from under Neil Armstrong." (13, p. 402)

That is odd.

In Operation Luna, Valeria Matuchek is the first human being on the Moon in her timeline and therefore is the equivalent of Neil Armstrong - or, alternatively, of the Master - in that timeline.

About Now

Brian Aldiss said that sf is always about the time at which it is written. The twentieth century experience of two World Wars and more wars made sf less utopian and more dystopian. Poul Anderson moved from writing about intelligent species from many planets crossing space faster than light to writing about post-organic intelligences emanating from a single planet and crossing space slower than light. Alternative history fiction is a commentary on contemporary experience, not (or not just) an escape from it. SM Stirling's American time travellers narrowly escape from World War III. They escape. We do not. Where are reality and its fictional reflections heading to now? We are still in the Chaos which may be the only part of Anderson's Technic History to come true.

-Punk And Retro-

Poul Anderson's sf is Golden Age/Old Wave as opposed to New Wave.

Here at Behind-The-Times blog, we are only just getting to grips with New Wave phenomena like cyberpunk, steampunk and dieselpunk although we have previously mentioned retro-sf. (Scroll down.)

Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates is seminal steampunk.

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation is retro.

Anderson did not write any steampunk or retro although he could easily have turned his hand to either of these sub-genres if an editor or publisher had asked him to. 

Every time that a new sf idea or sub-genre is mentioned, it is necessary to scan Anderson's vast output to check whether anything that he wrote does come under this category. And probably none of us is familiar with everything that he wrote.

Steampunk or retro characters would easily fit into the multiversal clientele of the Old Phoenix, whose name seems appropriate.

Sf is always looking forward, to the future, and back to the classics like Wells, people in the past looking forward - to the future. Now we just have to meet ourselves. 

Wind Whispered

Regular readers know how often this blog analyzes the role of the wind in Poul Anderson's texts where it punctuates the dialogue and effectively comments on the action. This wind theme has become so persistent that it has made me oversensitive to similar turns of phrase in works by other authors. 

In Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, when William Ashbless' magically generated clone says that it has come to kill him, Ashbless draws his sword and asks why. That is all that needs to happen for narrative purposes. However, between the drawing of the sword and the asking of the question:

"The wind whispered in the tall grasses."

-Epilogue, p. 463.

That sentence could have been written by Anderson - and a whisper is appropriate in the circumstances.

On the following, and concluding, page of the novel, when Ashbless has killed his attacker:

"The chilly spring breeze blew all thoughts of the past out of his mind, and with a sense of adventure he hadn't known in decades he walked on down the path to the moored boat..." (p. 464)

Ashbless, formerly time traveller Brendan Doyle, had known that Ashbless's body - so it was thought - would be found dead from a sword wound. Since he is now living beyond his expected span and with a sense of adventure, that "spring breeze" is highly appropriate.

Don't just follow the narrative. Appreciate the text!

(The Anubis Gates has a sequel, Nobody's Home, which seems to concentrate on fantasy since it is about ghosts.)

Apep And Hell

Brendan Doyle, now William Ashbless, looks down the throat of the serpent Apep:

"...when it opened its vast jaws he thought he could see negative stars shining in a remote distance, as if Apep's mouth was the gateway to a universe of absolute cold and the absence of light."

-The Anubis Gates, 15, p. 452.

See Poul Anderson's Hell in:

The Low Continuum

Operation Chaos Conclusion

Metamythics

Powers: negative stars; absolute cold; absence of light.

Anderson: full entropy.

Here and now: full night; Good Night!

SF And Fantasy

(Today we travelled not around Morecambe Bay by train but up the Lune Valley to Ruskin's View by bus.) 

SF

Empirically discerned natural laws operate invariably.

By applying natural laws, intelligent beings construct technology with which to control natural forces, e.g., using steam to move engines, radio waves to send messages, electricity to light and heat buildings, nuclear reactions to generate energy etc.

Gravity control, instantaneous communication, faster than light space travel etc must result from future technology, not from any contravention of natural laws.

Any other intelligences are extraterrestrial.

Fantasy

Some conscious beings (gods, angels, demons, magicians) control natural forces by acts of will, sometimes expressed by spells or incantations, but without needing technology. Thus, objects are moved, messages are sent, light and energy are generated etc "magically" and not technologically. Natural laws are not utilized but suspended by acts of will.

Other intelligences are supernatural.

Some Authors

Poul Anderson wrote both kinds of fiction well.

CS Lewis freaks us out when, in the opening chapter of Perelandra, he suggests that, on Mars, Ransom had met beings that were both extraterrestrial and supernatural.

Authors can create sf/fantasy mixes, e.g., Tim Power's zones where machines do not work but magic does.

Comment

We live in the world described by sf, not by fantasy.

Diversity And Entropy

Continuing to reread Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, we find that this novel is mostly neither sf in general nor time travel in particular but fantasy. Gods exist. Magic works. To become the nineteenth century poet, William Ashbless, whose photograph he has seen, Brendan Doyle must not only time travel but also switch bodies by means of a magic potion. Of course, Powers' fantasy, like his time travel, parallels works by Poul Anderson although a completely different set of works by Anderson. The latter writer's distinguishing features include his vast output, his consistent combination of quality with quantity and his comprehensiveness. Whereas many other authors specialize in hard sf, alternative histories, fantasy, historical fiction or detective fiction, Anderson wrote all of these although some more than others.

It is unthinkable that time travel would intrude in a heroic fantasy like The Broken Sword or that magic would work in the Time Patrol series although characters from the different kinds of universes can meet in the Old Phoenix Inn between universes. How much might the real universe (or multiverse) encompass? A lot, although mothing like what has been imagined. Scientists have had to discover the laws of motion, the electromagnetic spectrum, biological evolution, sub-atomic particles, the strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum mechanics, mass-energy equivalence, relativity including the light speed limit, other galaxies, cosmic expansion, curvature of space, black holes, dark matter and dark energy in a universe where consciousness is not (like gravity etc) a fundamental force of nature but instead is a by-product of natural selection within temporary, local, negative entropy. This real universe is the setting of Poul Anderson's hard sf, including his Technic History where civilizations are entropic. In Norse mythology, which Anderson celebrated, the conflicting but interacting forces of heat and cold are basic whereas consciousness, including deity, is emergent. The entropic and Norse universes come together when an explorer of a globular cluster at the far edge of another spiral arm remembers the myth of fire and ice. See:

Cloud Universe And Ginnungagap.

Predecessors And Coinages

As an sf writer, Poul Anderson is a successor of Mary Shelley, HG Wells and Robert Heinlein. Surely these three authors are his principle predecessors?

Relevant Works

Frankenstein

The Time Machine

The First Men In The Moon

The War Of The Worlds

The Shape Of Things To Come

The War In The Air

The World Set Free

The Future History

Magic, Inc.

Wells coined the terms, "Time Machine," "Time Traveller" and "time travelling" (later shortened to "time travel.") Mark Twain, writing before Wells, had used the phrase, "transposition of epochs." (Twain and L. Sprague de Camp are another two Anderson predecessors although specifically on time travel.)

When a fictional character living in 1810 is told that someone has "jumped" from 1810 to 1684, he should not immediately respond, as we would, with the phrase, "time travel." That is anachronistic. It happens in Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.

I must finish rereading The Anubis Gates. Tomorrow, to celebrate a birthday, two of us will travel by train around Morecambe Bay. There should also soon be a family visit to a cinema to see The Odyssey. More myth.

"The Boat of Millions of Years"

The above phrase on the opening page of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates links this book with the title of Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years as we have previously said here. Anderson's novel features slower-than-light interstellar travel by a small group of immortals whereas Powers refers directly to Egyptian mythology:

"'...the twelve hours of the night...

"'It's the course through the Tuaut, the underworld, that the dead sungod Ra follows every night on his dark voyage from sunset to sunrise. Darkness becomes solid there, and hours are a measurement of distance, like sailing on an uncoiled clock face.'"

-The Anubis Gates, 10, p. 337.

Hours as distance: travel through time. Doyle replies that he has already travelled along such a river. 

Time as a river is a major image in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. See The River Of Time. Ra makes a big appearance in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.