Subordination

We see human beings subordinated to:

Martians in The War Of The Worlds;

extrasolar aliens in Martian-like machines in John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy;

Borthudians in the van Rijn period of Poul Anderson's Technic History;

green Merseians in the Flandry period of the Technic History;

feline kzinti in Larry Niven's Know Space History;

green Treens in Dan Dare;

Daleks in Doctor Who;

fellow human beings who make themselves biologically superior in SM Stirling's Draka History.

(That is another of those lists that grew in the writing.)

I was reminded of Draka and serfs when reading about a kzin and his human secretary. Like a Draka, the kzin promises to attend the secretary's offspring's naming-day celebration.

Subordination can be one way to survival. In a novel by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, workers asked what they thought about the prospect of an alien invasion, said that, under the aliens, they would still have to work. In one of Aesop's fable, a donkey carrying a heavy burden is advised to run away from an invading army but, when told that they are unlikely to make him carry anything heavier because he is already at his limit, says that he will stay where he is.

Having said all that, slavery is definitely worse than paid work and should be resisted at all costs!

The Solar System In Context

We are physically involved with the cosmos even while remaining on the Earth's surface. The Solar System rotates around the center of one member of a group of galaxies and Terrestrial life is composed of elements fused inside other stars. Science fiction writers have different ways of communicating our cosmic involvement apart from the obvious concept of interstellar travel:

in Larry Niven's Known Space future history, human beings are mutated Pak breeder colonists of a former Slaver food planet;

in Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, an intelligent gas cloud in radio contact with other such clouds passes through the Solar System whereas, in Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle's Fifth Planet, another star with its planetary system passes through;

in Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, human life is transformed when the Solar System passes out of an intelligence-inhibiting radiation zone;

in Anderson's The Byworlder, a space-traveling intelligent being with an entirely different biology and psychology enters the Solar System and establishes communication whereas, in Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, different extrasolar species are allowed to colonize Mars and Jupiter, respectively.

Making the Martians of the Technic History extrasolar colonists rather than natives was a stroke of genius, showing that the author questioned all of his own premises. We can see that Mars is unlikely to bear life, let alone intelligence, yet a lot of sf, including an already written Nicholas van Rijn story, involves our old friends, the Martians. Thus, "Margin of Profit" was incorporated into Anderson's main future history not by editing out the Martians but by revising their history.

Between Galaxies

Reflecting on intergalactic sf (previous post) suggested one further author who can be compared in some respects, although by no means all, to Poul Anderson. Fred Hoyle was a British scientist who wrote some Wellsian hard sf, mainly in collaboration with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle. Fred Hoyle's output was, of course, much smaller than Anderson's and he never invoked FTL, not even with a scientific rationale. Alien intelligences affected Earth in other ways. For example, an intelligent gas cloud entered the Solar System and, in a later novel, another star with its planetary attendants passed through.

Hoyle Senior wrote a stage play called Rockets In Ursa Major. I knew someone who had seen it performed. Both Hoyles novelized the play, near future sf assuming regular interplanetary spaceflight. They then wrote a sequel, Into Deepest Space, in which the familiar characters embark on an STL relativistic time dilation intergalactic journey like the one in Tau Zero. Instead of surviving into the next cyclical universe, they pass through (something like) a black hole-white hole system into our flip side universe. (I am relying on memory for this summary.)

Hoyle continues the British Wellsian tradition. CS Lewis wrote anti-Wellsian and anti-Stapledonian sf. James Blish wrote Wellsian sf but also post-Lewisian fantasy and sf. Philip Pullman has written anti-Lewisian fantasy. Hoyle was definitely pro-Wellsian philosophically although he did not explicitly refer to Lewis. Poul Anderson, unlike Hoyle, had a sympathetic understanding of religious belief.

The Wider Picture

We have established that a single writer, Poul Anderson, deserves a blog unto himself. However, I also like to refer to the bigger picture. For brief remarks on literature from the Bible and Homer to some modern sf, see:

The Bible In Science And Literature;
A British SF Classic;
A British SF Classic II.