Limits On Interstellar Communication

"The 'instantaneous' pulses emitted by a ship in hyperdrive are detectable at an extreme range of about a light-year. They can be modulated to carry information. Unfortunately, within a few million kilometers quantum effects degrade the signal beyond recovery; even the simplest binary code becomes unintelligible."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 132.

However, the interstellar civilization in Anderson's For Love And Glory has an instantaneous hyperbeam. I remember that there was some limitation on the use of hyperbeam but not what it was.

In the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space History:

"'Someday they'll miniaturize hyperwave equipment to the point where it'll fit into a spaceship.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Inconstant Star" IN Niven, Ed. Man-Kzin Wars III (New York, 1990), p. 211.

And, later in that history, Beowulf Shaeffer, exploring the galactic center alone in a spaceship, speaks to his puppeteer employer instantaneously by hyperphone. (Too easy.)

Anderson's Starfarers features an instantaneous and transtemporal communicator and Ursula Le Guin's future history has the instantaneous ansible. However, the true master of interstellar communication is James Blish:

his ultraphone is FTL but not instantaneous;
his CirCon radio and Dirac transmitter are instantaneous;
in one application of the Dirac transmitter, it receives messages from the past and future as well as from the present;
his Heart Stars empire and Angels also have instantaneous interstellar communication.

This is the kind of systematic treatment of a theme that we often find in Anderson's works.

Mixed Ecologies

"Woodlots were the deep green of Terran oak and the orange-green of Kzin, tall frondlike growths in Wunderland's reddish ocher."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Hall of the Mountain King" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars V (New York, 1992), pp. 5-202 AT p. 38.

Human colonists and kzinti conquerors have imported trees to the Alpha Centaurian planet of Wunderland. Thus, the vegetation is green, orange and red.

For similar scenes on the human-Ythrian colony planet of Avalon, see here, then follow the link to a post on the human colony planet of Aeneas. On Nike (see also here), there is blue-tinted pale green native vegetation but:

"Otherwise, the country had been taken over by the more efficient, highly developed species that man commonly brought with him."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 484.

These are:

oak;
birch;
primrose;
grass overwhelming pseudo-moss that thrives only in shade.

On Lokon:

"Clover was another of those life forms that man had brought with him from Old Earth, to more planets than anyone now remembered..." (Flandry's Legacy, pp. 665-666)

However, either the life forms adapt to alien environments or genetic drift changes them at random. Thus, they are often unrecognizable, as humanity must eventually become. We think of man the conqueror but it seems that we should add oak, grass, clover etc to the list.

The Readers' Perspective

Readers of fiction have a privileged position. We can read the characters' inner thoughts and summarized biographies. We know the superhero's secret identity. When our hero's enemies meet to plot his downfall, we are there.

Tachwyr the Dark, Hand of the Vach Dathyr and successor of Brechdan Ironrede as Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council, addresses Council members on multiple screens:

"'The hour is upon us.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 264.

They include:

Odhar the Curt;
Alwis Longtail;
Gwyanafon of Brightwater  -

- harmless sounding names!

Ian Fleming convened a meeting of all the Russian Intelligence chiefs to authorize the execution of the man Bond. When that had failed, Fleming gave us several more villain's meetings:

Goldfinger's Hoods' Congress;
a meeting of SPECTRE, chaired by Blofeld;
a meeting of SPECTRE, chaired by Largo;
the Man With The Golden Gun's Group.

Bond, a spy, managed to eavesdrop on two of these! Nevertheless, readers are usually able to see and hear much that is unknown to the hero - unless he is the first person narrator of the entire text.

"Merseian bastards..."

"'Merseian bastards,' growled the marine."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 198.

Why do I quote this unmemorable and indeed somewhat distasteful phrase? In fact, the two words growled by the marine serve three literary functions.

(i) For those in the know, they confirm that this novel, The Game Of Empire, is part of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization where the Terran Empire and the Merseian Roidhunate have often clashed.

(ii) In any case, this reference to a hostile green-skinned alien provides that note of the colorful and exotic that we seek in any sf future history series.

(iii) But at the same time the fact that the marine refers to a recent military/naval skirmish with these "bastards" provides that contrasting note of plausibility that we also welcome. The fictional reality differs in interesting ways from the world familiar to us from newspapers and television but also parallels it in other ways that make sense. We can simultaneously enjoy the differences and appreciate the credibility.

(ii) and (iii) are the two points that I made here at the beginning of the previous post.

Breakfasts And "Good Morning"

Dominic Flandry tells Chives that "Good morning" is a contradiction in terms. Before breakfast, Flandry swims twelve laps, then exercises. Chives serves coffee royal and a souffle. I have just slouched out of bed for muesli and coffee.

On a weather-controlled fine spring morning, Chives retracts the outer wall so that Flandry sees flowers and an orange tree with a Cynthian song bird in his roof garden. He is surrounded by the towers of Archopolis, blue sky, white clouds, sparkling aircars and the pulse of machines. After eating, he smokes by a fountain in the garden.

From where I am sitting, I can see sky, clouds and trees but no towers, aircars, song bird or fountain and, of course, am not served by Chives. I should have worked for Terrestrial Intelligence.

Shortening The Dark Age

According to the blurb on the back of Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), Dominic Flandry:

"...sees the rot in the Terran Empire on every hand and knows that the Long Night will inevitably fall upon the galaxy. His consolation is that measures he has taken while fighting to postpone the final collapse may shorten the coming galactic dark age and hasten the rise of a new interstellar civilization."

Sounds familiar? Replace Flandry with Seldon and Terran Empire with Galactic Empire and we are almost reading a summary of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. But there are a few other differences:

Asimov did not use the term "Long Night," which Anderson perhaps overuses;

Asimov capitalized the "g" of "galaxy;"

Seldon did not fight to postpone the Fall of the Galactic Empire but did try to manipulate events to shorten the dark age;

the Terran Empire governs a four hundred light year diameter volume of space which is way short of the entire galaxy;

Flandry hoped to shorten the dark age by strengthening individual planets like Nyanza and Dennitza, not by applying a predictive social science.

"'I'd like to have Nyanza well populated. When the Long Night comes for Terra, somebody will have to carry on. It might as well be you.'" (Captain Flandry, p. 339)

If anyone thinks that Anderson's History of Technic Civilization plagiarizes Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, then think again. It is different and much better.

Fictions Within Fictions

Adventure fiction sometimes refers to adventure fiction. There are two ways to do this:

(i) one fictional character referring to another, e.g., James Bond saying that he likes Nero Wolfe (Bond does say this);

(ii) fictions within the fiction.

(i) Usually, when a fictional character refers to, e.g., Sherlock Holmes, we understand that Holmes is as fictional to the character referring to him as he is to us. There are exceptions. For example, Holmes is real in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and in CS Lewis' Narnia Chronicles.

In SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson King, an archaeologist is unhappy when his exploits on Mars begin to resemble those of a certain whip-wielding cinematic archaeologist and, when held captive, he reflects that adventure fiction heroes locked in dungeons always escaped instead of having to be rescued...

(ii) Fictional characters can also refer to fictions that exist in their world but not in ours. Flandry says:

"'...an undertaking such as [Magnusson's] would be the most audacious ever chronicled outside of cloak-and-blaster fiction.'" -Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. 450-451.

In a completer History of Technic Civilization, we would like to read:

one of their cloak-and-blaster novels;
media coverage of the Mirkheim crisis;
one of Andrei Simich's poems about a hero of Dennitza;
and a lot more.

Shakespeare presents more than one "play within the play." In Alan Moore's Watchmen, a comic about superheroes, a boy reads a pirate comic and we read it over his shoulder, becoming as involved with the fiction within the fiction as we are with the fiction. In our world, i.e., on Earth Real, Watchmen was dramatized as a feature film and the comic within the comic was dramatized as a short animated film. Following these Shakespearean and Moorean precedents, Anderson might have presented a cloak-and-blaster novel to be derided by Flandry for its inaccuracies and implausibilities.

Busy long weekend starting tomorrow so maybe less posts.

Axor's Quest

Major Premises

(i) "'...every oxygen-breathing species ever encounter-ed is in no state of grace, but prone to sin, error, and death.'" (Flandry's Legacy, p. 209)

(ii) "If science can show that the gospel account of Christ is not myth but bio-graphy...'" (p. 210)

(iii) "'...if it then finds that his ministry was, in empirical fact, universal...'" (ibid.)

Minor Premise

(iv) The Builders must have been too widespread, numerous, learned, powerful and wise to be destroyed by anything material.

Conclusions

The Foredwellers went on to a higher plane of existence but would have left inscriptions with messages, including information about any previous Incarnations. Thus, strangely familiar religions would be neither coincidences nor parallel developments but a deeper mystery and even "...the very revelation of Christ's universality, that will in time bring all sentient beings into his church...'" (p. 403).

Problems

(i) Would impeccability and inerrancy overcome the laws of physics and entropy to generate immortality?

(ii) I think that the gospels are neither myth nor biography but propaganda.

(iii) Surely a universal ministry would have to be to all, not just some, inhabited planets?
 How can Axor distinguish between evidence for an Incarnation and evidence for belief in an Incarnation?
An empirical fact would no longer be a matter of faith.

(iv) "The Builders must have..." is a hope, not a certainty.

Alternative World-View

Many unenlightened beings are born and die motivated by "...Ignorance, Anger, and Lust..." (Kim, p. 274), also translated as "greed, hate and delusion." Such beings can hear the Buddha Dharma and begin to cleanse their karma.

Religious Diversity

No one needs to be told that India is a land of many religions. Apart from the paths of Indian origin, there are episcopal St Thomas Christians and rabbinical Indian Jews although neither of these traditions has yet figured in Rudyard Kipling's Kim, which I am still reading. Strangers on trains inquire about each other's gods. A Tibetan Buddhist lama stays at an Indian Jain monastery and pays for Kim's European Catholic education whereas a Muslim horse-trader covertly working for British Intelligence pays for the many demonic invocations considered necessary to prepare Kim for his life on the Road. The begging lama has access to funds to be used for religious or charitable purposes though not for personal consumption. As in Europe, poverty for individual monks but wealth for monastic institutions.

Poul Anderson reproduces such religious diversity in his fictional Patrician System:

Diana Crowfeather hides her possessions, and sometimes sleeps, in a "...ruinous temple..." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 196);

the landlord at the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle is called Hassan (p. 200), possibly a lapsed Muslim;

Tigeries are pagan;

there is a Jerusalem Catholic church on Daedalus;

Olaf Magnusson is a Neosufi who, to our surprise, invokes "'...the God...'" (p. 400) of the Merseians;

the Zacharians have their own creation myth;

Fr. FX Axor, the Wodenite Jerusalem Catholic priest, hopes that records of the Foredwellers will lead to "'...the very revelation of Christ's universality...'" (p. 403);

the announcement of the Magnusson insurrection ends: "'Stand by. The Divine, in whatever form It manifests Itself to you, the Divine is with us.'" (p. 261)

An eclectic proclamation for a multi-faith society.

New Settings

In Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, the city of Olga's Landing is so well realized that a new reader might be forgiven for thinking that it was an already established setting whereas, in this case, Anderson is exercising the sf writer's prerogative to create ex nihilo an entire inhabited planet in any new story, even when that story is the concluding installment of a series or sub-series.

Continuity in the Technic History is provided more by the characters and by the interstellar situation than by any particular planetary environment although these also may recur:

Diomedes, the setting of The Man Who Counts, reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows;

Aeneas, introduced in The Rebel Worlds, becomes the setting of The Day Of Their Return;

Talwin, introduced in A Circus Of Hells, reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Further details on Imhotep include:

Olga's Landing, like the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas, began as a scientific base;

descendants of the original settlers are "...dark-skinned and aquiline-featured" (Flandry's Legacy, p. 197);

the landlord at the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle is called Hassan;

outback miners, joygirls and Tigeries drink at tables but a Wodenite is so large that he must lie on the floor.

So far, this information covers only one city. However, other regions of Imhotep have been colonized by Tigeries and vaz-Siravo and there is another colonized planet in the same planetary system.

The Religious Quest

Both Rudyard Kipling and Poul Anderson respected the religious quest. One Jungle Book story describes a successful Indian professional giving up everything to go into the homeless life. (I think that we can both seek spiritually and enjoy the benefits of civilization but spirituality involves different approaches.)

Kim (London, 1944) begins:

"Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way
"By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
"Be gentle when the heathen pray
"To Buddha at Kamakura!" (p.1)

Although Kim's lama's quest for the river that will wash away his sins is obviously mad, the sympathetic Catholic chaplain, "...wise in the confessional..." (p. 131), is "'...sure he's a good man'" (p. 130) whereas the unsympathetic Anglican chaplain is described humorously:

"'But this is gross blasphemy,' cried the Church of England." (p. 126)

Anderson fans will not need to be reminded of:

Peter Berg, the Christian who continues to question when he has encountered the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter;
Fr Axor whose quest for the Universal Incarnation is combined with scholarly study of Ancient relics;
the Protestant spaceship captain in Tau Zero who kneels and thanks God when he is shown the monobloc of a new universe.

Even van Rijn's piety is more sincere than I originally gave him credit for and the agnostic Flandry addresses his dead fiancee, thus becoming the first to pray to St Kossara.

Kim And Diana II

From his vantage point, Kim sees a Tibetan lama and offers to accompany him on his pilgrimage to find the River of the Arrow. Mahbub Ali, horse-trader and spy, thinks that Kim, accompanying the lama, can safely carry an Intelligence message.

From her vantage point, Diana Crowfeather sees a Wodenite priest and agrees to guide him on his pilgrimage to find evidence for the Universal Incarnation. Targovi, space traveling trader and spy, thinks that this innocent journey is a safe cover for Intelligence work.

I do not expect Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire to parallel Rudyard Kipling's Kim at every step but so far they have these similarities. Also, Kipling describes a busy street scene in the detailed style that I have come to expect from Anderson:

"...the press of all the races in Upper India...";
"...all manner of Northern folk...";
tending and feeding animals;
loading and unloading;
drawing water;
paying camel-drivers;
employing grooms;
swearing, shouting, arguing, chaffering;
cloisters rented to traders;
"...excited men and excited beasts..." (pp. 24-25)

I expect to enjoy Kipling's descriptions of India and will probably revisit Anderson's descriptions of the planet Imhotep.

Age And Death

Fiction reflects experience. When I first read about Dominic Flandry, age and death were far from him and me. In A Stone In Heaven, he reflects:

"...we're holding our own against the Old Man...Why not? What's his hurry? He's hauled in Kossara and young Dominic and Hans and - how many more? I can be left to wait his convenience."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 31.

Nowadays, I hear of the deaths of people that I knew at school and University. I googled a former friend only to read an account of his death at the age of fifty nine. Flandry and I grow old together. I will be extremely surprised to find myself still conscious after physical death but, if I do, then I will try to move towards the light as I have been advised.

I find this not morbid but intriguing. "Grow old along with me..." We are moving towards the point where all previous generations have been and where all future generations will go. Death is a transformation and a change of scene although I think that memory, and therefore the sense of identity, must be part of the scenery. The waters of Lethe...

Age and death affect organisms and civilizations. Anderson shows us Ys, Rome, the Solar Commonwealth and the Terran Empire.

For a personification of Death not as an Old Man but as an ever young woman, see here.

"Cultures Of Mixed Species"

Dominic Flandry says:

"'Cultures of mixed species look especially promising. Consider Avalon already.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 75.

Not only Avalon - human beings share:

Avalon with Ythrians;
Dennitza with Merseians;
Freehold with Arulians:
Imhotep with Starkadians;
Daedalus with Cynthians and Donarrians.

We see several strong intercultural influences. On Avalon, human beings join choths. On Dennitza, the Zmayi (Merseians) have a House in the Parliament. On Freehold, outbacker Mistresses of Skills apply Arulian techniques. Many more volumes could have been devoted to this single aspect of Technic Civilization.

Tigeries

This Ensign Flandry cover shows Flandry with Dragoika, a female Tigery. The previous post was illustrated with a Game Of Empire cover showing Flandry's daughter, Diana, with Dragoika's son, Targovi, the latter drawn with the exact proportions of a man wearing an animal costume.

Targovi's description:

as tall as a man but with disproportionately long and powerful legs;
broad, clawed feet;
a twitching stubby tail;
thick torso;
muscular arms and four-fingered hands;
round head;
flat face;
narrow chin;
a single breathing slit in the nose;
carnivore teeth;
fronded chemosensor tendrils above slanted scarlet eyes;
large mobile ears resembling bat wings;
black-striped orange fur with a white triangle at the throat;
a voice that purrs, hisses, growls or screeches.

On film, the body would be CGI and the voice should not sound human.

Dragoika's breasts are muscular, vascular organs from which infants suck blood. High blood supply makes females more vigorous and usually dominant. When Dragoika learns the fate of her home planet, Flandry learns that she can weep.

In a film, Tigeries would be constantly before us whereas, in a novel, we read their description once and forget most of it.

Loss Of Hope

When I read my first Dominic Flandry story, "The Game of Glory," not yet knowing that this was an installment of a series, let alone of a series within a series, I never suspected that I would one day discuss the politics of the Terran Empire. But it's good, isn't it?

"early 4th millennium ...The Empire and Merseia wear each other out."
-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. 795-804 AT p. 803.

The Terran Empire was already worn out and losing the will to live so how did it nevertheless manage to wear out the expansionist Merseian Roidhunate? Anderson shows us the moment when the Merseians lost hope, and it was within Dominic Flandry's lifetime.

The Merseian-backed Magnusson Rebellion has just been thwarted. On the Roidhun's Grand Council, Odhar the Curt counsels:

"'Console yourselves with the thought that we invested little treasure or effort in the venture. Our net loss is minor.'" (p. 447)

So the racial supremacists of Old Wilwidh need consolation? The Protector of the Council responds:

"'Except for hope,' Tachwyr mumbled. He drew his robe close about him; the room felt chill. 'I dreamed that I would live to behold -' He straightened. 'By adversity, the God tempers the steel of the Race. Let us get on with our quest.'" (ibid.)

When Magnusson's rising was announced, Tachwyr had thought that, after years of misery:

"This is the day when victory begins." (p. 268)

Now, he mumbles, feels chill and loses hope. This is the turning point for Merseia.

Pivotal Events

"'...occasionally a pivotal event does happen. More and more, I wonder whether we may not be about to have that experience again.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 322.

Magnusson's revolt is a pivotal event. If it succeeds, then humanity will be Merseian-dominated in two generations -

"...the envoy in the hidden place..." (p. 439) says:

"'...Your grandsons will belong to the first generation of the new humanity.'" (p. 441)

Eerie! - but, fortunately, it is prevented.

What is remarkable about the quotation from p. 322 is that it is spoken not by Manson Everard of the Time Patrol but by Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire. The Patrol guards pivotal events but obviously they can occur in any timeline.

We know that the Patrol does not operate in the Terran Empire timeline and we are not told of any other time travelers operating in that timeline. In fact, we should assume that there are none. The premise of the series is a single history without any extra-temporal interventions. But if, against all expectations, there were some time travelers in that timeline, then we could expect them to swarm around the lives of Manuel Argos, Hans Molitor and Olaf Magnusson like bees around honey.

Flandry's Legacy: Back Cover Blurb

THE LONG NIGHT COMES - AND AFTER IT, A NEW DAWN
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), back cover (blurb written by compiler, Hank Davis?).

I have thought that Long Night And Dawn could make an appropriate title for a concluding volume of the History of Technic Civilization. However, my concluding volume would collect the four works set after the Terran Empire but not also the last two novels set during Flandry's lifetime.

The blurb continues:

"Sir Dominic Flandry is now an admiral but takes little joy in his new rank. He sees the rot in the Terran Empire on every hand and knows that the Long Night will inevitably fall on the galaxy."

Not on the whole galaxy: the Empire rules just some of the terrestroid planets in a four hundred light year diameter sphere near the edge of one spiral arm and it is only one interstellar power. Other powers in known space are the Roidhunate of Merseia, the Domain of Ythri and the Dispersal of Ymir. The Dispersal, based on gas giants, not on terrestroids, overlaps the Empire, Roidhunate and Domain but may be much vaster.

"His consolation is that measures he has taken while fighting to postpone the final collapse may shorten the coming galactic dark age and hasten the rise of a new interstellar civilization."

Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon tried to shorten a dark age and to hasten a new civilization but not also to postpone the imminent collapse. This blurb makes the Flandry series sound like an alternative Foundation Trilogy but, we must add, an incomparably better Foundation Trilogy.

Flandry says:

"'I'd like to have Nyanza well populated. When the Long Night comes for Terra, somebody will have to carry on. It might as well be you.'"
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 339. 

On Dennitza, he and his fiancee, Kossara, anticipate:

"Service...staff rather than field Intelligence...for the future, not the poor wayworn Empire but a world he too could believe in, the world of their own blood."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 543.

Later, he tells Miriam Abrams:

"'The sophont races will survive. In due course, they'll build fascinating new civilizations. Cultures of mixed species look especially promising. Consider Avalon already.'"
-Flandry's Legacy, p. 75.

Yes and, in any case, despite the human element in its population, Avalon is outside the Empire, in the Domain of Ythri. We last saw Avalon immediately after the Terran War, before Flandry's birth, so I would like to have seen it again.

"'...I'm not optimistic about this period we are in: but it can be made less terrible than it'd otherwise be. And that isn't so little, is it - buying years for billions of sentient beings, that they can live in?'" (ibid.)

Here we return to the theme of postponing collapse.

When civilization is being restored after the Long Night, we are told that the planet Atheia:

"...was supposed to have retained or regained almost as many amenities as Old Earth knew in its glory..." (p. 665)

The Long Night meant no economic basis for building spaceships:

"'That meant little trade between planets. Which meant trouble on most of 'em.'" (p. 458)

But not necessarily on all of 'em, maybe not on Atheia. Roan Tom gains power on Kraken. Vixenites found New Vixen which later becomes part of the Commonalty. Thus, Flandry sees hope in Nyanza, Dennitza and Avalon and, later, there is the realization of hope on Atheia, Kraken and Vixen.

To return to the Flandry's Legacy blurb:

"In the meantime, he'll always be ready for one more battle against the Empire's enemies."

We return from Flandry's future to his present, where he is still fighting.

"A Stone In Heaven - When the daughter of Flandry's mentor asks for help, he intervenes to thwart a would-be dictator's plans to seize control of the Empire."

Flandry does indeed intervene but there is much more than that in this novel:

life on Ramnu;

the sense of Hermes as a complex society and economy within the Empire;

Flandry's exposition of the decline of the Empire;

his autumnal affair with Miriam - "They walked on into the autumn." (p. 188)

"The Game Of Empire - Flandry's daughter, Diana, and her felinelike alien friend have discovered a Merseian conspiracy against the Empire. Even with the help of her illustrious father, can they stop it in time?"

Yes. We know, unless we are reading the Technic History for the very first time and in chronological order of fictitious events, that the Empire will not be incorporated into the Roidhunate but will simply fall, bequeathing not Merseian rule but interstellar barbarism. Anderson's texts do not tell us what became of the Roidhunate but Sandra Miesel reasonably guesses in her Chronology of Technic Civilization that, in the early fourth millennium:

"The Empire and Merseia wear each other out." (p. 803)

Again, there is more in this last Flandry era novel than interstellar intrigue, mainly the fascinating planets, Imhotep and Daedalus, and some new perspectives on the earlier history.

"Plus four novellas, all in this seventh volume of the first complete edition of Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization saga."

Those four novellas are the only works set during the Long Night and its aftermath so they deserved a bit more discussion in the blurb!

While googling for Technic Civilization covers, I learned that, whereas Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire is Volume 5 of The Technic Civilization Saga, Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire is a separate edition, collecting A Circus Of Hells and The Rebel Worlds.

The Night Face: Conclusion

(From Monday 5 May until Friday 9 May, I will be on the Isle of Wight, away from a computer.)

In Poul Anderson's The Night Face, we sympathize with Miguel Tolteca, the Nuevamerican mercantile democrat, against Raven, the Lochlanna military aristocrat, but it is Raven that gets it right. Tolteca accuses Raven of not respecting the Gwydiona culture but it is Raven who, by his persistent questioning, solves the mystery of that culture. The bewildered Tolteca gets people killed by trying to reason with (temporary) madmen whereas Raven understands enough to address them with myths, then knows how to fight when this does not work. He does not expect to survive but enables the incompetent Tolteca and the rest of the spaceship crew to escape.

Anderson skillfully makes his readers sympathize with Tolteca, then see that he is wrong.

What the Gwydiona call "God" is not a religious or mystical experience but annual collective insanity. They have learned to protect themselves and each other as far as possible and to channel their homicidal urges through myth, dance, chanting and ritual - although Tolteca's uncomprehending interference upsets the apple cart.

This ending is brilliant but some readers (at least one) would have liked to read about a genuine mystical experience. In Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall," the people of the planet Lagash all go mad together when the nearby giant stars of an entire cluster appear in their sky once every two thousand years. Could some of them not instead have experienced mystical oneness with the cosmos and emerged saner afterwards?

The Characters In The Game Of Empire

Diana Crowfeather is the central character of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire (IN Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012) but Targovi the Tigery is the real hero of the intelligence operation that exposes the rebel Olaf Magnassun's link to the Merseians. It is Targovi who asks questions, becomes suspicious, follows the trail and confirms the suspicions despite the opposition of superiors supporting the rebellion. For this reason, Targovi, with his alien senses and abilities, becomes the view point character of several long passages.

Axor in his quest for Foredweller ruins is pushed from pillar to post - from Imhotep to Daedalus, then from Lulach to Zacharia - as cover for Targovi's intelligence operation but nevertheless makes significant progress in the quest and, by his physical bulk alone, is crucial to the trio's escape, with the stolen evidence and database, from Zacharia.

Anderson had presented a straightforward and uncomplicated account of how, in order to steal the data, Targovi scaled a wall, entered a building, killed a Merseian, severed his head (as evidence), downloaded the database and exited by the same route. The escape from the island is even more straightforward. The dinosauroid Axor, carrying and sheltering the gun-wielding Diana, crashes through a fence, runs onto the space field and fights resisting Zacharians while the loping Targovi burns through the lock of a Merseian spaceship, kills its occupants and steals the ship in which the trio escape.

Earlier, I had shared Targovi's amusement when Axor - a Catholic priest, although Diana is not of his flock - had expressed "'...fear for that maiden's virtue.'" (p. 404) Surely Diana is not still a virgin? Yes, she is. She avoids dependent relationships and unplanned pregnancy and has spent much time among Tigeries. She gets close to Kukulkan Zachary but comes to regard him as an "alien" when she learns of the Zacharians' collusion with the Merseians. (p. 424)