A Detail And Democracy

A Detail

Only by closely studying the text of Poul Anderson's intricately constructed "Hiding Place" have I discovered what might be a minor discrepancy that could if necessary be explained as an error by one of the characters. The chief engineer says that the tentacle centaurs live at "'...triple gravity...'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 579) whereas the captain later says that they "'...live under...about half again Earth's gravity.'" (p. 596) In this second conversation, it is the caterpiggles that live "'...under three Gs...'" (ibid.) and their high gravity environment is a reason for eliminating them as the zoo keepers. See previous post.

Democracy
Nicholas van Rijn treats his employees only according to their merits. Fighting Captain Torrance over a woman, he knocks out one of Torrance's teeth but then cradles the head of the fallen captain, offering brandy, and says that "'...we get [the tooth] fixed...'" (p. 602) at the next port. Shortly afterwards, he whispers:

"'Don't tell anyone or I have too many fights, but I like a brass-bound nerve like you got. When we get home, I think you transfer off this yacht to command of a training squadron. How you like that, ha?'" (pp. 602-603)

Say what you want, do what you want, punch him in the stomach (there is muscle under the fat) but, as long as you work right, you get promoted. Captain Bahadur Torrance of the planet Ramanujan is yet another character whose later career we would have followed with interest.

Eliminations

How a process of elimination identified the zoo keepers (see recent posts and here):

Eliminated
The gorilloids (tested with a specially devised instrument):
color blind;
unable to focus on the ship's instruments;
brain small;
most brain activity controlling animal functions;
canine intelligence level.

The lone elephantoid (this and the rest considered logically):
too big;
one individual not enough to pilot and land the ship, then collect and care for specimens etc.

The tiger apes:
reverting to quadrupedalism;
not specialized enough.

The caterpiggles:
the emergency acceleration switch fell too easily, thus not suitable in high gravity;
such light shelves would not be built in high gravity.

The tentacle centaurs...
...breathe hydrogen, therefore would not use copper oxide rectifiers exposed to their atmosphere.

The helmet beasts:
too small and slow;
not enough room for real brains.

Solution
The cabins have big and small cubbyholes. A zoo keeper is a helmet beast symbiotically attached to a gorilloid. Flandry informs us that the planet of the Togru-Kon-Tanakh came to be named "Vanrijn."

Freya And Valhalla

Names of deities and hereafters in mythology and fantasy become names of planets in hard sf. See Ansa.

Freya, a colony planet on the fringe of human civilization, has no extra-planetary enterprises and no spatial traffic except a few merchants of the Polesotechnic League who visit the League base in a green Freyan valley but never stay long. The Solar Spice & Liquors factor sells pepper and nutmeg. A century ago, the Freyans expelled the "Adderkop" outlaws who then colonized a planet in unknown space beyond the League outpost, Valhalla.

Since then, the Adderkops have increased in numbers and built a bigger fleet of obsolete warships but remain too weak to attack Freya so instead they prey on defenseless planets, exact tribute and conduct overpriced trade. Knowing that the League wants to expand into this volume of space and will not tolerate banditry, the Adderkops harass League outposts in the hope that the merchants will back off. However, Nicholas van Rijn leads an expedition to Freya where he bribes, bluffs, interrogates prisoners, makes deductions, gets a clue to a previously uninvestigated region of space and, going there, follows a neutrino trail to a human colony planet that must be the Adderkops. Then, flying to Valhalla where he is to be met by a League patrol ship, he will be able to send a few Star class battleships against the Adderkops.

It would be good to read a series of stories about the crew of a League patrol ship or battleship. Not employed by the Solar government, they will not wage war against any other government and will use only enough force to keep the trade routes open so their adventures will to that extent differ from those of Dominic Flandry who, in a later period, has enlisted in the Space Navy of the Terran Empire.

Festina Lente

Monday 5 January was the beginning of the first full working week of 2015. Although we are retired, regular activities resume:

gym;
meditation group;
an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Albert Docks, Liverpool;
Latin class next week.

(We have completed the Christmas season but meanwhile our neighbors are lighting their houses to celebrate the birth of the Prophet.)

The class reminds me that I found an unexpected and unexplained Latin phrase in the van Rijn story, "Hiding Place." An engineer examining a captured alien spaceship advises one of his men:

"'...remember, festina lente.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 588.

The captain asks, "'For fear of wrecking the ship?'" (ibid.)

- which may be booby-trapped.

But we are not told precisely what the phrase means, which is "make haste slowly." In other words, work as quickly and efficiently as possible but without rushing, cutting corners or taking risks. I happened to understand that one but might not have. English dialogue is occasionally peppered with such Latin phrases. Are they simply adopted unchanged by Anglic-speakers and for how long will they be preserved? By the end of the Technic History, Anglic itself is referred to as an ancient language. Poul Anderson's complete works display a vast panorama of the Roman Empire and several successor civilizations.

Brains II

"'...what's really to the point, the degree of brain activity more or less independent of the other nerve paths. That is, whether the animal is thinking.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 590.

Here is the philosophical mind-body problem in a nutshell. Someone is thinking. He is conscious of the subject-matter of his thoughts which could be anything, for example the novels of Poul Anderson. Someone else is observing the thinker, using scientific instruments. The scientific observer is conscious of detectable cerebral processes.

Thus, there is a single process of thinking. However, there are also two qualitatively distinct perspectives on this single process. My account of what I thought about Anderson's novels and a scientist's account of the neurological interactions detectable inside my brain seem to be accounts not only of different processes but even of qualitatively different kinds of processes.

There is a difference between the questions, "What did I think?" and "How did I think it?" However, the second question has two kinds of answers: certain neurons interacted and certain ideas interacted. Some terms like "data" bridge the gap but only partially. Sensory inputs, including, e.g., the sight of a printed page, are cerebrally processed and meanings are recognized. However, there remains a qualitative difference between the recognition of meaning, which we all experience whenever we read a familiar word, and a technologically detectable exchange of electrical or chemical impulses between neurons in a brain. I think that we have to say that the cerebral event causes the mental event.

Mental events involve or at least refer to consciousness - even though, paradoxically, there can be unconscious mental processes. "Meaning," "recognition" and "experience" assume consciousness whereas "electrical or chemical impulses" does not although the impulses seem to be the causes of consciousness. My best attempt to explain the emergence of consciousness is to suggest that naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was quantitatively transformed into conscious sensation.

"Conscious sensation" is tautologous because "sensation" is another of those words that assume or imply consciousness. However, I write "conscious sensation" in order to differentiate this psychological process from organismic sensitivity which is not necessarily conscious. Consciousness, as soon as it did exist, was naturally selected because pleasure and pain have survival value. "Psychological" means "of consciousness." Any attempt to define consciousness either assumes it or leaves it out. Thus, I think that it is impossible to write, "X is ---," then to fill in the blank in such a way that readers of the sentence say, "X is consciousness," unless the blank is filled by one or more synonyms of "consciousness."

Causes and effects are neither identical nor interchangeable. A quantitative difference between wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation causes a qualitative difference between colors as perceived by sighted organisms whose eyes are sensitive to those particular wavelengths. For a longer discussion of "Minds and Brains," see here.

Hiding Place

In Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place," the viewpoint character, Captain Bahadur Torrance, is a Lodgemaster in the Federated Brotherhood of Spacemen whereas, in Anderson's earlier story, "Margin of Profit" (see here), Captain Rafael Torrens was a Lodgemaster in the Federated Brotherhood of Spacefarers. However, no doubt "spaceman," "spacefarer" and "astronaut" are interchangeable English translations of a comparable Anglic word (or words). By the time of the Mirkheim crisis, the Brotherhood will have been merged or amalgamated into the United Technicians.

Torrance wears "...the Ship-and-Sunburst of the Polesotechnic League." (The Van Rijn Method, p. 558) I do not have a relevant passage to hand right now but it sounds as if the Terran Empire is going to adopt the symbol of the League?

Torrance is from Ramanujan as, in a later period, is Dominic Flandry's friend, Chunderban Desai. Ramanujan is one of the planetary battlefields in the Solar Commonwealth's first civil war. Torrance is captain of Nicholas van Rijn (see here and here)'s space yacht, the Hebe G.B. The next few posts might focus on some aspects of their singular journey which has already been partly discussed here and here.

For example, in the Technic History version of hyperspace, astronauts attached to the hull of a ship are enclosed in its force-field and therefore are carried along through hyperspace although:

"Without compensating electronic viewscreens, the sky was weirdly distorted by aberration and Doppler effect, as if the men were already dead and beating through the other existence toward Judgment." (p. 571)

If there is a postmortem Judgment (which I doubt), then we are beating toward it right now, even before entering "...the other existence..." I think that Anderson's words imply this. He writes "...as if..." (this is hard sf) but leaves us with the image of men under a strange sky bound for their final Judgment. To read a fantasy in which a magician entering the City of Dis comments that he and his colleagues have been making this journey all their lives, see James Blish's The Day After Judgment.

Aliens And God

Would it be advisable to introduce Terrestrial religious ideas to extraterrestrials who did not already entertain similar ideas? In science fiction, the answer to this question depends on the religious beliefs of the author.

CS Lewis' Elwin Ransom, stranded on another planet, wonders whether he should begin the "religious instruction" of the natives. When they say that Oyarsa must decide his case, he hypothesizes that Oyarsa is either a ruler in a palace or a god represented by a priest in a temple. To test the latter idea, he asks whether Oyarsa made the world and receives a shocked response. Do the people of Thulcandra (Earth) not know that Maleldil made and still rules the world? Where is Maledil? He is with the Old One. Where is the Old One? It is not his nature to be in any place... They are telling Ransom what he had been going to tell them.

In a short story by Harry Harrison, literal-minded extrasolar beings are puzzled because a newly arrived missionary preaches the omnipresence of God whereas the established trader, when asked, denies the existence of God. How to resolve this contradiction? Crucify the missionary to see whether he is raised up... And thus learn guilt.

In Poul Anderson's "The Master Key," the Cainites treat another intelligent species as domesticated animals. In their world-view, every intelligent being is either a master or a slave and escaped slave would be dangerous. One of van Rijn's men explains the idea of God but, when asked, denies that God or anyone else ordered the traders to come to Cain. The traders had a master but no longer obey him. They are escaped slaves and must be attacked without warning. (Addendum: I have expressed that slightly wrongly and will return to it in a later post.)

In Anderson's Technic History, two Wodenites convert to Terrestrial religions. See also here.

Le Matelot

Le Matelot comments on the early days of the Polesotechnic League. His opening words:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"As it has before and will again."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 555,

and his conclusion:

"We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way." (p. 556)

- are inspiring.

"...sailing out among the stars..." makes him and his contemporaries "...akin to Europeans overrunning America or Greeks colonizing the Mediterranean littoral..." (p. 555)

They have a frontier along which they discover, pioneer, trade, proselytize and compose epics and sagas. Technic civilization, different from either Classical or Western, spreads itself thinly across unimaginable volumes of space, learns from non-human peoples and changes unpredictably. The Polesotechnic League, although analogous to European medieval mercantile guilds and descended from Terrestrial concepts, also mutates and miscegenates unpredictably.

And that thought leads Le Matelot to his magnificent conclusion.  

Two Unusual Planets Early In The Van Rijn Series

"Diomedes' poles are in the ecliptic plane. Each spends half the year in winter and night. Intelligent Diomedeans are winged migrators."
-copied from "Unusual Heavenly Bodies" (see here). 

For more information on Diomedes, see here and here. 

In the second installment of the Nicholas van Rijn series (see attached image), Old Nick is stranded on Diomedes. The third installment, "Hiding Place," briefly mentions yet another unusual planet:

"'They're under three Gs...Even so, their planet has oxygen and nitrogen rather than hydrogen, under a dozen Earth-atmosphere's pressure. The temperature is rather high, fifty degrees. I imagine their world, though of nearly Jovian mass, is so close to its sun that the hydrogen was boiled off, leaving a clear field for evolution similar to Earth's.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 596.

Large planets made habitable by cosmic accidents are among those listed in "Unusual Heavenly Bodies." Although they begin to sound familiar, each is a unique creation of Anderson's scientifically informed imagination. I may be posting more about events on Diomedes. 

(It has been a struggle to publish this post with the old, borrowed laptop. Normal service might slow down or cease for an indefinite period.)

Alien Animals II

See here.

By a process of elimination and by some positive inferences, Nicholas van Rijn deduces that the helmet beasts insert their cilia into the gorilloids' sphincters and that the two organisms thus linked form a single intelligence. These beings hid in their own zoo by separating into their two symbiotes. One positive clue was cabins with bunks for both: niches for gorilloids and cubbyholes for helmets.

In true future history style, these beings are appropriately referred to centuries later when Dominic Flandry encounters tripartite symbiotes. Flandry does not at this point refer to Nicholas van Rijn but does reveal that the planet of the Togru-Kon-Tanakh, the bipartite beings, is called Vanrijn! - which we had not known before.

Today has been taken up with a Catholic funeral and its aftermath. One friend of the deceased attended wearing his Jewish skullcap. I will shortly return to the same Community Center to meet two other sf fans and expect some of the family from the funeral still to be present. The deceased had had 13 children, 35 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.

A next project for this blog might be to reread and post about The Man Who Counts. I will also be reading for the first time the second Modesty Blaise novel, to be discussed on Comics Appreciation. Life continues to be a blast.

Alien Animals

Nicholas van Rijn and his crew, including one Ramanujan and one Altaian, explore an alien zoo ship. They find:

a giant tendrilled shark;

tiny, flying, scaled, glittering reptiles;

tiger-striped, bear-sized, clawed, carnivorous mammals (tiger apes);

red, six-legged, otter-like creatures;

black, faceless, hydrogen-breathing quadrupeds with six ropy arms, two ending in boneless fingers, living under high pressure in triple gravity at seventy below (tentacle centaurs);

snakes living in the same conditions as the tentacle centaurs;

a green, scaled, elephant-sized quadruped with a trunk ending in psuedodactyls (the elephantoid);

large, oxygen-breathing bipeds with sphincters in their necks (gorilloids);

small, helmet-like quadrupeds with tentacles ending in cilia and human-like eyes (helmet beasts);

dark blue, silver-spotted, man-sized, oxygen-breathing caterpillars with two arms and hands, each with no thumbs but six opposable fingers, from a high gravity planet (catterpiggles).

This shows the difficulty of imagining alien animals without comparing them to Terrestrial animals. Superman had an extra-terrestrial zoo in his Fortress of Solitude. As described by Alan Moore, this contained "neonmoths" that shrieked with human voices and sentient puddles that evaporated when overexcited.

This comparison of a Nicholas van Rijn story with a Superman story is not frivolous. Although Superman initiated the new genre of "superheroes," he himself is an sf character who, while flying through space, can encounter interstellar traders like van Rijn or pirates like van Rijn's enemies in this story, the Adderkops.

(How can the Adderkops, having colonized a planet in unknown space a century ago, have increased the number of their warships since then?)

Origins Of Van Rijn

Nicholas van Rijn was introduced as a character by the publication in Analog Science Fiction of "Margin of Profit"(1956), although that original, pre-revised, text was not consistent with the emergent History of Technic Civilization. Van Rijn became a series character with the publication of "The Man Who Counts" (ASF, 1958) and "Hiding Place" (ASF, 1961).

Those of us who first read the Technic History not in ASF but in books first encountered van Rijn in Trader To The Stars, which collects "Hiding Place," "Territory" (ASF, 1963) and "The Master Key" (ASF, 1971). For us on first reading, it was appropriate that "Territory" was prefaced by a long expository passage quoted from "Margin of Profit." That was van Rijn's first story which we had not yet read and thus it had an authoritative status.

As for van Rijn's fictional origins within the series, there is no information. Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization says:

2376  Nicholas van Rijn born poor on Earth.
-Sandra Miesel, "Chronology of Technic Civilization" IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 612.

For an alternative view of the Chronology, see here.

Do the texts confirm that van Rijn was born poor? If not, it is a logical deduction. Van Rijn reminisces:

"He thought back to the days when he had ridden ships through yonder spaces, bargaining in strange cities or stranger wildernesses, or beneath unblue skies and in poisonous winds, for treasures Earth had not yet imagined. For a moment, wistfulness tugged at him. A long time now since he had been any further than the Moon..."
-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method, pp. 135-173 AT p. 147.

Thus, a feel for his earlier days but no biographical data.

Spans, Illuminates And Completes...II

The previous post showed that The Earth Book Of Stormgate not only spanned and completed the Polesotechnic League period of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization but also applied the perspective of the post-League novel, The People Of The Wind. Thus, there were:

two League collections, starring van Rijn and Falkayn respectively;

two League novels, each starring both;

one post-League novel, featuring a direct descendant of both;

the concluding League collection, including one more novel and presented from a post-League perspective.

However, the narrative was not yet complete:

one more pre-League story was written later;

two post-League stories preceded The People Of The Wind;

the History of Technic Civilization continued for many volumes after The People Of The Wind.

Fortunately, not only the six volumes and three separate stories already mentioned but also all subsequent volumes have been fully incorporated into Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, seven omnibus volumes collecting the entire History in chronological order for the first time.

The eleven works collected in Vol I, The Van Rijn Method, comprise:

the one newer story;

seven of the twelve works that had been collected in The Earth Book;

two of the three works that had been collected as The Trouble Twiters;

one of the three works that had been collected as Trader To The Stars.

Further, the previously collected stories retain their fictitious introductions from the earlier collections:

seven by Hloch of the Stormgate Choth;

one by Vance Hall commenting on Noah Arkwright;

one by Noah Arkwright;

one by Le Matelot, beginning "'The world's great age begins anew...'"

The perspective expands. The Saga is like a bigger and better Earth Book.

The seven works collected in Vol II, David Falkayn: Star Trader, comprise:

the two remaining works that had been collected in Trader To The Stars;

the one remaining work that had been collected in The Trouble Twisters;

three more from The Earth Book;

the first of the two League novels, Satan's World.

The faithfully reproduced introductions are:

a passage from the first Trader story in Vol I;
Urwain the Wide-Faring's memories of Noah Arkwright;
a passage from Percy Shelley's "Hellas";
three more from Hloch.

(Who is this guy, Noah Arkwright? Don't ask.)

The six works collected in Vol III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, are:

the second League novel, Mirkheim;
the two remaining stories from The Earth Book;

the two post-League stories mentioned earlier;
The People Of The Wind.

The introductions are:

two more - plus one conclusion - by Hloch;

one from the much later perspective of Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society;

one by Ayeghen's contemporary, Michael Karageorge (this time scripted not by Poul Anderson but by Saga compiler, Hank Davis).

Thus, the expanded Earth Book extends from the second story in Vol I to the third story in Vol III and the History continues for another four and a half volumes
after that.

There is in addition a perspective from right outside the fictitious history because introductions by the author, where they exist, are also included. In his introduction to "The Night Face," in Vol VII, Flandry's Legacy, Anderson informs the reader that Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Christopher Holm, Dominic Flandry and other characters lived in the past of this story.

The inclusion of Holm may be a surprise. However, Christopher's/Arinnian's role is pivotal because he is a viewpoint character in The People Of The Wind and, fictitiously, one of the authors of The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

Humour And Point Of View

Let us follow what happens between van Rijn and Joyce with a few carefully chosen quotations:

"...Nicholas van Rijn...got himself quartered next to her and she had enough trouble by day fending off his ursine advances..." (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 6)

"One hairy hand stole across the table and closed on Joyce's.
"'Here comes Uulobu,' she exclaimed, pulling free and jumping to her feet." (p. 20)

"He patted her knee...Joyce got up for another cup of coffee and seated herself at a greater distance." (p. 24)

"...he had had a hard life, poor thing. No one had ever really taken him in hand..." (p. 63)

"...after all, he really was a very interesting person..." (p. 76)

We might regard this as humorous or sexist but there is another feature to note. It is all narrated from Joyce's point of view. The flamboyant, larger than life van Rijn exists to be presented to the reader as perceived by others. In fact, is there any passage that is narrated from his point of view?

T'Kelan Psychology

(Please bear with me while I discuss philosophy and religion on a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. It is relevant.)

Human beings were active social organisms long before they became reflective individual subjects. Motivations precede morality. Immature and insensitive behavior existed long before the ability to feel any guilt about it. I think that this fact is the truth behind the myths of original sin or of karmic consequences from previous lives.

Each of us is born with baggage that is not of our choosing but I think that the baggage comes from biology and society, not from a "soul," whether created bearing original sin or transmigrating with bad karma - although "karma," meaning action and its consequences, certainly operates both in individual lives and in world history. Our origin as a species was a Darwinian ascent from animality, not a Biblical descent from innocence.

I discuss these profound issues here because that famous religious philosopher, Nicholas van Rijn, discusses them profoundly in "Territory," where he points out that our animal ancestors were arboreal herbivores before they became plains carnivores whereas t'Kelan animal ancestry was entirely carnivore. This explains otherwise puzzling t'Kelan behavior. They have more powerful killing instincts and are less gregarious:

"'Carnivores can't be. You get a big concentration of hunters in one spot, and by damn, the game goes away.'" (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 56)

They never built nations. Individuals and small groups fight but larger groups, even when they exist, organize no wars. Prides wage no vendettas because one individual killing another is not regarded as bad. In fact, those who do not fight or own and defend territory for hunting are regarded as odd. Human beings who deny that they come to invade must be either lying or weak so van Rijn must prove his strength and courage before he can even begin to negotiate and trade. (Like PG Wodehouse's Jeeves, although in a completely different context, van Rijn has the knack of doing what looks like precisely the wrong thing, for example insulting a native leader, then turns out to have been precisely the necessary thing to do.)

"'We was animals long before we became thinkers and, uh -' van Rijn's beady eyes rolled piously ceilingward - 'and was given souls. You got to think how a race evolved before you can take them...I mean understand them.'" (p. 55)

But I think the evolution rules out the need to postulate souls. I have come to accept that van Rijn's Catholic faith is sincere - his dickering with St Dismas being merely the humorous expression of his mercantilism - but he thinks about business, leaving theologians to do what, as he says in "The Master Key," they are paid to do, for example to think about whether aliens have souls.

T'Kelan Society

 Right now, I am so immersed in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization that I feel as if I am living inside it: not a bad place to be but how long can I stay here?

Meanwhile, here we go with t'Kelan society:

the basic social unit everywhere on the planet t'Kela is the pride;

a pride is the oldest male, his wives (there are about three females to every male), their children and some of the leader's father's widows;

all hunt but only males fight;

the largest pride is about twenty which is "'...as many as can make a living in an area small enough to cover afoot, on this desert planet...'" (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 32);

savages have no organization beyond the pride;

in the most advanced, Kusulongo, society, covering half the northern hemisphere, ten to twenty prides form a cooperative "clan," claiming a common male ancestor, each following wild herds through its own large territory, with all clans loosely federated into a "Horde," each of which annually meets at a traditional oasis for trade, socializing, marriages and also arbitration or combat because clans often argue over honor or ammonia wells;

Kusulongans nearly always marry within their Horde which is distinguished by dress, customs, gods ("Real Ones") etc;

there are individual clashes and Volkerwanderungs but no organized wars between Hordes (is this for pragmatic economic reasons as Joyce suggests or for deeper psychological reasons as van Rijn suspects?);

the Ancients, survivors of the lost civilization in their mountain city, are paid for their services as record keepers, physicians, metallurgists, weavers, gunpowder manufacturers, magicians and astronomers able to predict solar flares.

The next topic, which will complete the picture, is t'Kelan psychology.

Making Sense Of T'Kela

Would it really be possible to make a profit selling drink and spices after crossing interstellar distances at super-light speeds and negotiating with alien intelligences? It sounds like an astronomically expensive way to do it.

In "Territory," Nicholas van Rijn visits the planet t'Kela:

t'Kela's sun is a very old type M dwarf with few heavy atoms;

half an AU out, t'Kela is about 40% more massive than Earth with a low specific gravity but some iron and copper;

suns like t'Kela's emit so little ultraviolet that they do not energize "...primordial organic materials..." to interact very fast (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 24);

so life starts slowly in the liquid ammonia oceans;

it usually uses carbon dioxide and ammonia to photosynthesize carbohydrates and nitrogen, the latter breathed by animals;

but, possibly because of some catalytic agent, life sometimes evolves differently, for example on t'Kela and, in another planetary system, Throra;

oceanic ammonia hydroxide contains some liquid water;

t'Kelan and Throran plants use gaseous carbon dioxide and "dissolved" water to photosynthesize carbohydrates and free oxygen;

animals reverse this process but a specialized molecule holds the released water in their tissues so that plants have to retrieve it from decaying organisms;

oxygen from plants attacks ammonia but slowly because solid ammonia sinks to the bottom of lakes and oceans where it is protected from the air;

gradually, "...ammonia and oxygen yield free nitrogen and water..." (p. 25);

water freezes, seas shrink, air loses oxygen, deserts grow;

on Throra, a bigger planet with a denser atmosphere, therefore more heat conservation, nitrogen-fixing bacteria halted the drying-out a billion years ago;

on t'Kela several thousand years ago, so much ammonia was lost that the greenhouse effect, dependent on carbon dioxide and ammonia vapor, was significantly reduced;

increasing quantities of ammonia solidified and fell to the bottom where they were protected from melting;

carbon dioxide seasonally condensed or even solidified;

plants, needing carbon dioxide and ammonia, died and animals with them;

continent-sized areas became barren, agricultural civilization was destroyed and nitrogen-fixing bacteria were annihilated;

higher animals will be extinct within a thousand years, all life in ten thousand;

however, human beings from Esperance will reintroduce nitrogen-fixing bacteria;

a microagricultural program using soil chemistry will produce a suitable ecology;

the Esperancians will also melt and electrolyze water, releasing oxygen both to refresh the air and to burn t'Kelan petroleum, thus generating carbon dioxide to strengthen the greenhouse effect;

released chemical energy will supplement newly installed nuclear power stations "'...to do the electrolysis and to energize the combination of hydrogen from water with nitrogen from the atmosphere, recreating ammonia.'" (p. 27)

The Esperancian Joyce explains this process, then t'Kelan society, to van Rijn, thus enabling him to deduce why t'Kelan and human psychologies differ. He articulates some basic insights about the evolutionary and biological bases of psychology but these will have to wait until a later post.

More Details In The Master Key

The narrator of "The Master Key" describes Nicholas van Rijn as "...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes and t'Kela!" (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 281)

Thus, "Margin of Profit," The Man Who Counts and "Territory" precede "The Master Key" chronologically. "Margin..." introduces van Rijn, and The Man Who Counts develops his character at greater, novelistic, length, then the van Rijn series proper kicks off with "Esau" and the three stories collected in Trader To The Stars, including "Territory" and "The Master Key."

In the previous post on "The Master Key," I neglected the detail that the narrator's friend, Harry Stenvik, speaks with a "...soft Norse accent..." (p. 276) These cumulative details, although usually instantly forgotten, build up a solid picture of the characters and their environment. We remember that what we read was substantial even though we forget most of it.

Often we are told which colony planet a new character hails from. Sometimes, though not always, we know the planet from elsewhere in the Technic History. Harry's son's ensign is from Nuevo Mexico (not known) beyond Arcturus. In other stories:

Emil Dalmady is from Altai (known);
the narrator of "The Problem of Pain" meets Peter Berg from Aeneas (known) on Lucifer (not known) where they discuss Gray/Avalon (known);
Noah Arkwright quotes a prospector on Quetzalcoatl (not known);
Urwain the Wide-Faring mines on Despair (not known);
the pretender Magnusson's wife is from Nyanza (known);
two very different characters come from Ramanujan.

I will remember more items for this list when walking down the stairs.

More On Van Rijn

Poul Anderson revised "Margin of Profit" for The Earth Book Of Stormgate and the revised version was reprinted in The Van Rijn Method. However, I have the original version in Un-Man and other novellas so I will read it for the first time for comparison. Hank Davis, compiler of The Technic Civilization Saga of which The Van Rijn Method is Volume I, wrote that the revision intensified van Rijn's characterization and fitted the story more consistently into the Technic History so I will look out for any inconsistencies.

Also, although I have reread "Territory," the second story in the van Rijn collection Trader To The Stars relatively recently, I have again forgotten almost all the details. Van Rijn and a handful of human beings, including a woman with whom he interacts, are on another planet where they have some trouble with the natives and van Rijn for once exercises some combat skills. At the end of the story, they have solved their problems but will remain stranded on that planet for a while? Or will have a long journey home? I think.

Reading these two stories is next on the agenda so these volumes will accompany us on a trip to nearby waterfalls which my family want to photograph.

Colourful Ambiguous Symbolism

The concluding sentence of Mirkheim:

"Above the cliffs, a few eastern clouds turned red." (1)

This is mixed symbolism. Red is a colour of sunsets. Something is ending. But these are eastern clouds. This is a morning. Something is beginning. Yet again, red in the morning is a warning...

The entire novel, particularly in its last few pages, has shown us endings. The Polesotechnic League, hailed with the phrase "...the world's great age begins anew..." in an earlier volume, is now in terminal decline. (2) The old team had been reassembled but not as before:

"And so we fare forth again, we three and our ship, like our young days come back...except that this time our mission is not into the hopeful yonder." (3)

The main characters comment on the end of an era.

Adzel: "...those were good years. Were they not? I will miss my partners." (4)

Chee: "We can't go home to what we left when we were young; it may still be, but we aren't, nor is the rest of the cosmos...We enjoyed the trader game as long as that lasted." (5)

Van Rijn: "...maybe we will lead a little expedition quite outside of known space, for whatever we may find...A universe where all roads lead to roaming. Life never fails us. We fail it, unless we reach out." (6)

Falkayn: "...I can look for a place to begin afresh." (7)

And that fresh beginning is in the following story where Falkayn's grandson grows up with winged Ythrians in Falkayn's colony of Avalon.

(1) Anderson, Poul, Mirkheim, London, 1978, 218.
(2) Anderson, Poul, Trader To The Stars, St Albans, Herts, 1975, p. 7.
(3) Mirkheim, p. 34.
(4) ibid., p. 216.
(5) ibid., pp. 217-218.
(6) ibid., p. 215.
(7) ibid., p. 212.