The Future Through The Past

By reading science fiction, we learn how the future was viewed in the past:

a character in Robert Heinlein's Future History has a mobile phone but also shares the Solar System with Martians, Venerians, Callistans etc;

Dan Dare's timeline had a world government and an Interplanetary Space Fleet but neither Sterling decimalization nor inflation;

characters in Poul Anderson's The Star Fox/Fire Time diptych use "infotrieves" to access what we would call the internet but also travel in the ubiquitous "aircars" of much futuristic sf;

characters in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history have multipurpose pocket computers but write on them with styluses.

Thus, sf, coming from our past, moves forwards but also sideways in time.

(In 1956, while the overweight spaceman, Nicholas van Rijn, was being introduced in Poul Anderson's "Margin of Profit," I was being introduced to sf by Dan Dare, which featured the overweight spaceman, Digby. Heinlein, Anderson and Pournelle are, of course, three successive American future historians.)

Aleriona, Moties And Draka

One Aleriona who is bred to think like human beings and not allowed to procreate, in order not to disrupt his own society, is lonely and tries to befriend the captured Heim, thus giving the latter an escape opportunity.
-copied from here.

This Aleriona sounds like Niven's and Pournelle's Motie Mediators who can go mad from identifying with human points of view. Mediators must be sterile so that they will not put the interests of their children over those of their Masters, like the idea of a celibate priesthood.

Anderson's Aleriona have a Final Society, like Stirling's Draka.

However, none of this should be interpreted to imply that The Star Fox by Poul Anderson, The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and Drakon by SM Stirling are interchangeable works. On the contrary! Anyone who has not already read these three novels should be encouraged to do so and to appreciate their diversity.

All three works involve interstellar travel but in entirely different ways. Anderson and Niven & Pournelle present ingeniously imaginative aliens whereas Stirling speculates about what humanity might do to itself.

Some Points About Time Travel And Admiralty

If the universe began to exist at time t-zero, then what becomes of a time traveler who, not knowing this, tries to travel to a time earlier than t-zero?

Does he enter a void?

Or does the entire universe including a time traveler with a reverse arrow of time begin to exist at t-zero? Thus, in terms of that reverse arrow of time, the past-ward traveling time traveler would cease to exist at t-zero?

Another possibility might be that the earliest moment, in this case t-zero, is like the northernmost point, the North Pole. Thus, someone who travels to the North Pole and keeps going travels south again but through another hemisphere. In the same way, a time traveler who travels to t-zero and keeps going would travel future-ward again but through a different volume of space.

There are at least three possible answers. A Poul Anderson story ends unexpectedly with one of these three.

I have got back into "Admiralty" - see the two previous posts - so will probably post more about this third Gunnar Heim story. Hard sf premises lead to human stories. If Heim merely blockades occupied New Europe indefinitely, then the human colonists, living off the land but cut off from supplies by the Aleriona occupation force, will run out of vitamin C and will have to surrender. Learning this from a freed prisoner, Heim must change his approach. But, despite the evidence about Aleriona intentions, the World Federation remains reluctant to wage war. Policy might be changed by the emotional appeal of a shipload of New European women and children entering the Solar System. So Heim has to smuggle a ship to the surface of New Europe concealing it from the Aleriona by hiding it behind a small asteroid that has been nudged into a collision course with the planet...

At each stage, Anderson combines a hard sf concept with a human issue.

Admiralty And Admiralty II

I was surprised to find a passage that is much shorter in the later version of "Admiralty." See previous post. On p. 14 of Admiralty, there is a reference to an Aleriona delegate who is called "...Admiral Cynbe ru Taren..." I did not think that the text of The Star Fox had applied Terrestrial naval terms to the Aleriona, who instead had much more elaborate - literally florid - ways to describe their own military ranks and functions, so I checked the corresponding passage in the novel. This passage, on p. 143, turns out to be much shorter, one sentence instead of two paragraphs, and not to refer to Cynbe.

However, on the question of naval terms applied to Aleriona, The Star Fox, p.24, has "Cynbe ru Taren, Intellect Master in the Garden of War, fleet admiral, and military specialist of the Grand Commission of Negotiators..." so the word "admiral" is used even if only by way of comparison with Terrestrial ranks. Anyone who has the NESFA collections and The Star Fox can, if they want to, make detailed comparisons of the texts at every such point.

The Aleriona, like the Merseian Roidhunate, are unequivocally determined to eliminate humanity. Consequently, the human characters who are prepared to wage war are in the right. Peace mongers are at best mistaken and at worst dishonest. However, Anderson shows a different situation in the sequel, Fire Time, where it is the Terrestrials who are imperialistic in their war against the Naqsa.

"The boats went forth. Heim settled himself in the main control chair and watched them..." (The Star Fox, p. 139)

How many of us read about Captain Heim and the Star Fox and remember Captain Kirk in Star Trek? However, this is serious hard sf, not a popular TV series.

Admiralty And Admiralty

The title of this post refers to two versions of a Poul Anderson text:

(i) "Admiralty," original version, republished in NESFA collections, Vol 4, Admiralty (Framingham, MA, 2011);

(ii) "Admiralty" in The Star Fox (London, 1968).

(i) fills pp. 11-55 of Admiralty and is divided into nine sections numbered 1 to 9, preceded by an unnumbered introductory page.

(ii) fills pp. 133-204 of The Star Fox and is divided into ten Chapters numbered One to Ten.

In (i), the introductory page presents a summary that is unnecessary in The Star Fox where "Admiralty" is immediately preceded by the two earlier Gunnar Heim stories. The summary informs or reminds us that:

the Phoenix region of space is about 150 light years from the Solar System;

this region contains a French colony on the planet New Europe in the Auroran System;

the alien Aleriona from the system of The Eith have occupied New Europe and are building what will become impregnable orbital defences;

the Aleriona are opposed only by a single, well-armed privateer, Fox II, captained by Gunnar Heim;

Fox II captures Aleriona ships and sells them in the Solar System;

 
however, the prize crews cannot return because Fox's movements must remain unpredictable;

the Aleriona begin to arm unescorted cargo ships;

however, despite its unexpected armaments, Fox captures the ship, Meroeth;

nevertheless, this capture will end Fox's raiding missions - we must read on to find out why.

The introductory page begins with the omniscient narrator directly addressing the reader:

"Consider his problem." (p. 11)

This leads into the summary.

In (ii), Chapter One fills eight pages, presents less summary and describes the battle with Meroeth. Missiles and lasers are deployed. Meroeth's FTL drive is disabled and its captain surrenders. Heim sends a boarding party which learns that Meroeth carries human prisoners.

The second paragraphs of section 1 and of Chapter Two both begin:

"The mess seethed with men."

Crew and liberated prisoners celebrate.

Texts And Contexts II

Poul Anderson's Gunnar Heim stories:

"Marque and Reprisal,"
"Arsenal Port" and
"Admiralty"

- can be read either collected as The Star Fox, in which case they have a sequel, the novel Fire Time, or scattered among NESFA's The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, in which case each story is in a different volume and Fire Time is not mentioned since it is not a short work.

Some fans might even prefer the latter reading experience, unexpectedly re-encountering Gunnar Heim after reading a considerable number of different kinds of works in between. Several other series, e.g.:

Time Patrol;
Wing Alak;
Flying Mountains;
the Rustum History -

- are also to be found in whole or in part among The Collected Short Works... My preference would be for each of the series to be collected as a unit and for any additional Short Works volumes to contain only non-series stories. However, the NESFA collections prompted me to reread, and also to re-post about, what I call the Star...Time series. While hoping for an eventual Complete Works of Poul Anderson, we can meanwhile derive considerable enjoyment from reading the many overlapping volumes that have been published so far.

Episodic Fiction

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

Golden Age sf began as magazine stories, series and serials before being republished in books. Depending on its content, such a book could be classed as a collection, as a collected series or as a novel, although the "novel," when analyzed, could turn out to be composite. Thus, Poul Anderson's The Star Fox is not simply a single novel but is more accurately the collected and edited three-part Gunnar Heim series, or maybe serial.

Anderson's much later The Boat Of A Million Years is a long novel but constructed on the original model although, in this case, only one of its chapters had previously been published in Analog. The work could first have been presented as a series, or serial, before being collected as a past-present-future trilogy.

Instead, the public was presented with a single long volume encompassing an amazing breadth of content. Two readers known to me expressed dissatisfaction with the concluding futuristic chapter. They had enjoyed the historical fiction of the earlier chapters and regarded the unexpected futuristic sf as discordant whereas I have found Chapter XIX to be packed with content as I hope that recent posts have demonstrated.

The reader needs to appreciate this work for what it is, effectively a long series beginning on Earth in 310 BC but ending in space in an indefinite future. Each chapter needs to be read, and in some cases carefully reread, not dismissed because it differs from what went before. The entire work is about living with change.

Ishtar, Eleutheria And New Europe

(It will be explained why the cover of a novel set on Avalon in the Technic History illustrates a post about three planets in the Star Time history. Star Time = The Star Fox + Fire Time.)

"...I can foresee that kind of affair leading to secession [of the human colony on Ishtar], like Eleutheria's and New Europe's except that Primavera [human beings on Ishtar] would join the Gathering [an Ishtarian alliance]. And next I can see Earth either losing us or having to send occupation troops it can ill afford..." (Fire Time, p. 226)

These are excellent future historical references to earlier events in the previous volume, New Europe, and to current events in the present volume, Eleutheria. Although we read a much shorter segment of the Star Time history, we know that it is as solid a fictitious history as the History of Technic Civilization - presenting major events, exotic environments and imaginative aliens.

In The People Of The Wind, Ythrians and human beings live on Avalon while there is interstellar war between the Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri. In Fire Time, Ishtarians and human beings live on Ishtar while there is interstellar war between the World Federation and the Naqsan League. Some human beings have divided loyalties. Do these sound like the same book? That is only because I have summarized a few very general parallels while omitting all the details.

Anderson understands that generals send their men (or males) into action knowing that a large percentage will die. Hence questions like: how many lives is it worth to capture the city? Some fictitious military heroes survive every battle but, in The People Of The Wind, an Ythrian female loses her fiancee to friendly fire and, in Fire Time, a human woman loses her brother to the Naqsans and her Ishtarian friend to the barbarians. The barbarian leader dies also.

Easter Agenda

(Lancaster Priory Church. Some friends and acquaintances will be there today. I will meditate at home.)

Agenda
Family and social activities.
Finish reading SM Stirling's The Sky People.
Finish interrupted rereading of Poul Anderson's Fire Time.
Order further NESFA collections and "Lords of Creation" installments.
(Have now finished the third Stieg Larsson novel. Recommended.)

Although the NESFA collections contain much familiar material, I nevertheless reread the first Gunnar Heim story in NESFA collections vol 2. This led to rereading The Star Fox, then Fire Time. Moral: do not dismiss collections containing familiar material. None of these works should be read just once or even twice.

The next post will probably be about the conclusion of The Sky People but this is not always predictable.

Eclipse And Universes

We have a near total eclipse due next Friday morning - a sufficiently Andersonian event, I think - so I will be asked to drive the family to a suitable observation point.

Right now, I am passing back and forth between several fictional universes:

the Terran Federation of Poul Anderson's The Star Fox and Fire Time;

the Angrezi Raj of SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers and "Shikari in Galveston";

Stieg Larsson's Millennium;

the Smallville, Metropolis and Arctic Fortress of the Smallville TV series.

Copyright permitting, a fictional character would also be able to travel between these and other such universes. If I were able to write fiction, I would do Jane Austen's Mr Collins en route to dine with his Patroness the Right Honorable Lady Catherine de Burgh at Rosings only to encounter a time traveling Batman who would need his help but whom he would regard as a demon.

Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix scenario easily allows for any and all such bizarre inter-cosmic encounters.

Gunnar Heim's Consistency

Rereading Poul Anderson's Fire Time while remembering its prequel, The Star Fox, underlines what might be seen as Gunnar Heim's inconsistency. While the World Federation appeased the belligerent Aleriona, Heim gave a lead by waging a private war - literally private, as a privateer. Thirty years later, when the Federation did wage war against the Naqsa League, Heim denounced this war as imperialistic. A man can certainly change his views over thirty years but Heim hasn't. The two situations are entirely different.

The circumstances of the second interstellar war are worth spelling out:

each Terrestrial city has a large ghetto of the unemployable;

emigrants from some of these ghettoes have worked hard to build a colony in the inhospitable environment of the planet Mundomar;

another part of Mundomar has been colonized by the Naqsa, a species regarded as physically disgusting by many human beings;

declaring that possession of a second continent is necessary for their security, the human colonists occupy that continent and expel Nasqans from it;

the human colonists are backed by a powerful lobby and vested interests on Earth;

the Federation gives military support to the colonists.

Sounds familiar?

The Second Interstellar War III

Rereading Poul Anderson's Fire Time, I have reached Gunnar Heim's caustic comments on the war between the World Federation and the Naqsa League. However, searching the blog reminds me that I discussed this very chapter exactly two years ago! See here and here. So there is not much more to be said, except that - Anderson shows us how conflicts can differ. The Aleriona had wanted to eliminate humanity; Naqsa does not.

It is, of course, the job of military intelligence services to discover the enemy's motives and thus how any given conflict might be ended, not just to issue propaganda along the lines of "My country right or wrong!" Heim grasps the realities and replies to the propaganda:

"(Joy tumultuous in Shanghai Welfare. Gigantic on a wallscreen, the image of a politician pledges solidarity with the gallant Eleutherians. He is himself wealthy, but he needs these votes.)"
-Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977), p. 98.

"Life isn't a fairy tale..."

"Life isn't a fairy tale; the knight who kills the dragon doesn't necessarily get the princess."
-Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (London, 1968), 203.

So reflects Gunnar Heim. But he has at least killed the dragon. In real life, that would not necessarily happen either!

Fiction can be more or less realistic. A novel, whether mainstream or sf, can have any kind of ending: happy, unhappy or ambiguous. However, when the sf is also action-adventure fiction, certain genre conventions become applicable. The hero always defeats the villain even if he does not always wind up with the heroine.

Imagine traveling to a universe where the laws of probability were those of heroic fiction. Thus, if a Villain points a gun at a Hero and begins to squeeze the trigger, then it is a foregone conclusion that the Hero's Trusty Sidekick will creep up behind the Villain and KO him just in the nick of time. Depend on it. Elliot S Maggin suggested that Lois Lane, trapped underground, merely wonders how long it will take Superman to show up. In the Last Action Hero feature film, a Villain, traveling to (what we call) the real world, is amazed to discover that, in this world, the bad guys can win.

That film, like DC Comics and Anderson's Old Phoenix stories, features a multiverse where:

what is fiction in one universe can be real in another;
travel between universes is possible.

In such a scenario, there could be a universe where life is a fairy tale.

Men With Guns

"Moonlight glimmered on the guns of the men who stood there waiting for him."
-Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (London, 1968), p. 154.

An armed reception committee! Gunnar Heim has gone to meet some Basque-speaking New European partisans - like World War II revisited - but how does he know that these armed men are not the enemy waiting in ambush? Because, in this case, the enemy are not men but Aleriona.

Human beings have not yet fought members of another rational species, and I hope we never will, but there are times when our own physical differences begin to matter. Fighting the Japanese must have felt different from fighting the Germans - an immediately identifiable enemy even out of uniform.

Some of us traveled by coach to another city to take part in an anti-racist mobilization. The (Nazi) National Front were due to march with police protection so we planned to counter-demonstrate, hopefully in much larger numbers to demoralize our opponents. We had to walk in small groups from a coach disembarkation point to a counter-demonstration assembly point. We did not want to meet any groups of Nazis, especially not larger groups, moving in the same direction but there seemed to be a group of youths standing on every street corner...

I soon learned an important lesson. If even one youth in a group was black, then every member of that group was my friend whereas I had to be provisionally cautious about any group whose every member had the same skin color as myself! An unpleasant but fortunately infrequent experience.

It is unsettling suddenly to find yourself in a racial minority, like in a Manchester drinking club or in the shop on our street, but it soon becomes the norm unless someone makes an issue of it. Two white youths on our street who made a habit of racially taunting an Asian schoolgirl were fortunate that the girl's father was unable to break down their front door. They left the following day. But that was decades ago. Unlike some other cities, we have enjoyed peace since then.

Poul Anderson shows anti-Naqsan sentiment in his Star Fox future and James Blish's Chronology of Cities in Flight lists an anti-Earth pogrom in the Malar Cluster.

Meteors

(This is another post that begins somewhere else, then returns to Poul Anderson Appreciation.)

Superman began publication as an adult character in 1938 so his spaceship must have come to Earth about 1918, although no one usually associates him with that period. However, in the Smallville TV series, his spaceship arrived in 1989 so why was it not detected as an incoming missile by US radar defense systems? Because this time the small space capsule arrived in a large Kryptonite meteor shower. Did the ship's drive field carry the meteors through hyperspace?

In Poul Anderson's The Star Fox (London, 1968), the space privateers use "...a giant meteorite or small asteroid..." (p. 148) to conceal the descent of a spaceship onto the surface of the planet New Europe. Because of the speed of descent, air impact would destroy the ship:

"Unless she followed exactly behind the meteorite, using its mass for a bumper and heat shield, its flaming tail for a cloak." (p. 149)

Gunnar Heim must steer the ship through its "...narrow slot of partial vacuum..." (ibid), watching the external incandescence and internal instruments, guided by intuition and an unreeling computation of where he out to be at each moment. This sounds like other dangerous space passages in Anderson's works:

Dominic Flandry around a pulsar;
Nicholas van Rijn around an extinct supernova;
the Tau Zero ship around a new monobloc.

Before this, some of Heim's men made an "...epic..." (p. 148) trip around New Europe's moon but it is not stated exactly why. Did they detach the mass that became the meteorite?
(Later: No. The explanation is on pp. 190-191.)

A Habitable Planet?

When the Aleriona invaded the human colony planet, New Europe:

"Never doubting Earth would hurry to their aid, the seaboard folk of Pay d'Espoir fled inland, to the mountains and forests of the Haute Garance. That nearly unmapped wilderness was as rich in game and edible vegetation as North America before the white man." (The Star Fox, p. 145)

How probable is that on another planet? I don't know. But Anderson shows us that life is never as simple as it might appear. That opening phrase, "Never doubting Earth would hurry to their aid...," is crucial. The New Europeans know that they cannot survive indefinitely because their environment, however rich, lacks vitamin C. They have pills but not in an unlimited quantity whereas the Aleriona control the farms with Terrestrial plants and the towns with chemical factories.

Apart from that, the Haute Garance sounds like perfect defensible territory:

high tech;
low population;
wealthy colonists with hunting, fishing and camping equipment and flying vehicles;
fifty thousand scattered, easily camouflaged lodges and cottages;
portable chargers using solar, wind or water energy;
a communications net;
incomprehensible local dialects;
bases for launching raids against occupation forces;
a temperate climate;
perfect except for the lack of vitamin C.

The War In The Phoenix

The eighteen "space battles" that I mentioned in the previous post would perhaps not have been interesting because the Fox II has attacked only unarmed, unescorted transport ships! That is how casualties have been avoided.

The Aleriona escort some of their merchantmen but not many because most of their warships must search through a vast volume of space for "'...that which is named for the swift animal with sharp teeth.'" (The Star Fox, p. 138) Fox II intercepts valuable military and industrial cargoes intended to make occupied New Europe impregnable to Federation attack. Some captains of captured ships know a few words of a human language. Otherwise, sign language with guns suffices.

The Fox II crew is steadily depleted as smaller prize crews chosen by lot take the captured ships to be sold on Earth. Eventually, one such ship, instead of being sold, will carry the message that those who want to sign on again should rendezvous with Fox II at Staurn where it will re-arm. Thus, there could be a dozen more cruises - that could amount to a five year mission - unless the Federation wages war first. However, the nineteenth ship attacked has been hastily armed, although not well enough to resist Fox II, and carries human beings whose presence will change everything.

The Phoenix is a constellation visible from the Terrestrial southern hemisphere. Is it wrong, as suggested, to give the same name to a volume of space in that direction? A colonized region has to be called something and the name of the identifying constellation is as good as any. Another constellation has given its name to a galaxy two million light years away.

The Voyages of The Fox II, Its Four Month Mission...

In Poul Anderson's The Star Fox, Gunnar Heim's privateer spaceship is called not the Star Fox but Fox II after Heim's Navy ship, the Star Fox. Between Parts Two and Three of the novel:

"'Four months of commerce raiding, eighteen Aleriona ships captured, and we haven't had to kill anybody yet.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (London, 1968), p. 134.

- and now Heim begins to wind up the war. Thus, we have seen two stages of preparation - Fox II was bought and crewed in the Solar System, then armed on Staurn - for a campaign that has been waged between two Parts of the novel. As in his Technic History, Anderson begins a later story at a later date in order to advance the narrative.

This is all good stuff but it does mean that we have skipped over the campaign as such. Anderson excels at descriptions of space battles. Potentially, there are eighteen such episodes here. The privateer has kept busy, cruising without an overhaul and attacking approximately one Aleriona ship per week, so that there are no interesting planetary stopovers to report. Nevertheless, I think that something could be made of this untold part of the story, with some information also to be given about what is "meanwhile" happening back on Earth.

Heim, a widower, has a woman friend in the peace movement back on Earth and also wants to check on what has happened to another woman whom he had known on the Aleriona-occupied colony planet of New Europe so the reader looks forward to learning how these two relationships pan out.

Death And A Beginning

Two men have died. Gunnar Heim and his remaining companions might die also.

"His eyes went to the moon, his thoughts to Connie. He had no belief in survival after death, but it was as if she had drawn close to him."
-Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (London, 1968), p. 128.

Exactly: no expectation of a hereafter but we are nearer to our dead when we are near death.

Later:

"While his pilot flitted him the short way back to the yacht, he looked out. A flock of Staurni hunters was taking off. Sunlight flared across their weapons. The turmoil in him turned toward eagerness - to be away, to sail his ship again - as he watched those dragon shapes mount into the sky." (p. 132)

Heim is alive and going into action, inspired by sunlight on flying beings. Thus ends Part Two and thus begins Heim's private war.

Epic Journeys

An epic journey: walking long distance in high gravity carrying heavy survival equipment while threatened by a Walking Forest, hot geysers and Slaughter Machines. And so understated - this is just one incident in Part Two of Poul Anderson's The Star Fox.

Other such epic journeys are:

on Jupiter in Three Worlds To Conquer (see here);

from a colonized planet in the Cloud Universe through interstellar space and a dark nebula to an outpost of human civilization in "Starfog;"

to Jotunheim in The Broken Sword;

in search of Jotunheim in the Last Viking trilogy;

to the icebergs and back in The Man Who Counts;

a long time journey in "Flight To Forever;"

a long space journey in Tau Zero;

a cosmic journey in The Avatar.

No doubt there are others that I have forgotten. Yet another recurring feature that could be analyzed in its own right.