Psychological Differences

"It hurt [the kzinti] less, losing friends, provided the friends died bravely; and few of them had mastered the art of putting oneself in the head of an enemy." (The Man-Kzin Wars, p. 172)

These are two differences between human and kzinti psychology. The belief that a brave death is a good death is common, in Anderson's works, to Vikings and Ythrians and, in ERB's works, to green and red Martians.

"Kine die, kinfolk die.
"This I know that does not die:
"How dead men's deeds are deemed."

The inability to understand an enemy's viewpoint is a definite failing on the part of the kzinti. I remember a trade union branch secretary telling me that we had to see an issue from management's point of view. Did they think that the work force would resist if I was dismissed? As we saw when discussing Poul Anderson's Technic History, Terran Intelligence had to assess the real intentions of the Merseians, not engage in wishful thinking about their High Command including pacifists!

For other fictional examples of human superiority, see here.

Vocabulary And Violence

"She...deployed her diriscope..." (The Man-Kzin Wars, p. 154)

I could not find "diriscope" by googling.

"...the fulvous crescent." (p. 163)

This is a color.

"...in the course of gigayears..." (ibid.)

Of course a gigayear is a long time but how long?

"...they'd banked gametes..." (p. 166)

Again, we know the general meaning but I did not know most of those details in the Wiki article.

"...buckminsterfullerene." (p. 168)

"'...a small astrobleme...'" (ibid.)

"...the metal-poor rock is friable..." (ibid.)

"Sixty carbons around one lanthanum..." (ibid.)

Meanwhile, the violence is excellent. When kzinti land to take prisoners, their boat is toppled by explosives and each kzin is shot. Next, Dorcas hijacks the tug, empties it of its contents, then uses it to haul those former contents onto a collision course with the kzinti warship. Last, the tug itself is launched at the kzinti base. Anderson's characters get the job done with minimum effort.

Poetry, Soft And Hard SF And The Sun

Some of us knew of "The Golden Apples of the Sun" by Ray Bradbury before we heard of "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by WB Yeats. The last line of Yeats' poem is the title of Bradbury's short story. It would be appropriate to bind both in a short volume with appropriate illustrations and some discussion of their content. A Lancaster comrade of Irish descent sings "Aengus" at parties.

If Heinlein, Anderson, Niven etc are hard sf writers, then who are soft? At least Bradbury, Simak and Lewis. Bradbury surely writes poetry in prose rather than speculative fiction? Instead of studying the Sun from a safe distance with a spectroscope, Bradbury's characters fly close enough to scoop some matter out of it. The captain uses a "...robot Glove..." (The Golden Apples Of The Sun, London, 1970, p. 167), really a waldo although not named as such, to control the giant hand that moves the Cup.

"'What time is it?' asked someone." (p. 165)

Wittgenstein discussed the time on the sun philosophically.

A soft sf writer can write about a Cup scooping solar matter but how do hard sf writers treat it? Alan Moore has Earth people colonizing Sun spots but this is just an out there idea. In The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, a spaceship protected by a force field flies into a star. In "Iron," Poul Anderson has kzinti in a refidgerated space tug called Sun Defier flying close to a red dwarf to scoop closely orbiting asteroids:

"'Damn near half the sky a boiling red glow...the cabin is a furnace you can barely endure...'" (The Man-Kzin Wars, pp. 148-149)

This is Anderson's hard sf equivalent of The Golden Apples...

Overlapping Trilogies

(I have discovered that "Man-Kzin Wars IX" looks like "Man-Kzin War Six" if it is typed in lower case without punctuation or spaces: mankzinwarsix.)

"Iron" by Poul Anderson is in The Man-Kzin Wars (1988).

"The Children's Hour" by Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling is in Man-Kzin Wars II (1989).

"The Asteroid Queen" by JE Pournelle & SM Stirling and "Inconstant Star" by Poul Anderson are in Man-Kzin Wars III (1990).

"In The Hall Of The Mountain King" by Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling is in Man-Kzin Wars V (1992).

"Pele" by Poul Anderson is in Man-Kzin Wars IX (2002).

Each of these trilogies should be read in the order of publication. However, how do they relate to each other chronologically? I think that "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" precedes "Inconstant Star." However, any such judgment is subject to further reading/rereading and to other readers' comments.

Future histories are a subject of endless research.