Skyholm

In other works, Poul Anderson describes large, spherical faster than light spacecraft capable of waging pitched battles in space with force fields and nuclear missiles. "Captain to all officers and men! Captain to all officers and men! Merseian warcraft sighted! Stand by for hyperdrive! Stand by for combat! Glory to the Emperor!" (Here I quote from memory but that is the sort of thing.) This reads like stirring stuff but Anderson always makes sure that we know what it means when a single sentient being dies.

We can vicariously enjoy faster than light space battles, described with technical precision, first because they are unlikely and secondly because, with humanity, in that period, spread across a vast volume of space, no war can threaten racial survival. Despite the deaths, it all seems like a game: "The Game Of Glory"; The Game Of Empire. Later, in the Commonalty period and on an even vaster interstellar scale, humanity might have left war behind.

I mention large, spherical faster than light spacecraft in order to contrast them with their comparatively low tech counterpart in Orion Shall Rise. Skyholm is a two kilometer wide aerostat hovering above clouds, mist and rain. Sunlight penetrating its double skin heats the air at its center that keeps it aloft. Solar collectors and thermal convertors generate electricity which:

runs the jets counteracting stratospheric winds;
supply on board needs;
beamed below, power synthetic fuel plants and other industries.

(Apart from Skyholm and a few local generators, the Domain lacks electricity because metal for conductors is too expensive. Anderson imagines a part past, part future period.)

Energy is stored for war or tempest. Skyholm lasers break a hurricane.

After the nuclear war, its international crew, the Thirty, moved this one surviving aerostat from its position above a now obliterated Paris to its present position above Tours and protected that city from desperate outsiders. The locals restarted the industries needed to maintain Skyholm whose skin, weakened by stratospheric ozone and ultraviolet, must be replaced piece by piece once a decade. Other areas accepted the protection of the Aerogens, now Thirty Clans: aerial surveillance provides safe borders, free trade, public safety, detection of crop diseases and rich fishing grounds, updated maps, weather forecasting and weather modification.

So, while the Maurai restored civilization in the Southern Hemisphere, this is what occurred in Uropa.

Man Versus Nature

Anderson often describes combat but, in Orion Shall Rise, he presents an inspiring variation - or alternative.

Observers in Skyholm, a two kilometer wide stratospheric aerostat above Tours, alert the Weather Corps when they detect, approaching Uropa, a Force Twelve hurricane that will:

"...flatten the Etang area, drown a score of fishing villages, and probably wreck Port Bordeu..." (1)

  - disrupting shipping and killing the two thirds of the inhabitants who cannot be evacuated in time.

Weather Command orders all of its Stormrider jet aircraft to Port Bordeu for a briefing before flying to the hurricane. Three jets enter the storm at different points. Ascending from the middle of the storm to an altitude of ten kilometers, Stormrider Iern probes with radar, infrared sensors, calibrated magnifiers and a Maurai television camera. Having located the eye of the storm, he then maps it by spiraling in loops of three kilometer's radius, two kilometers apart. Enclosed in night, wind, lightning, thunder, rain and sleet, he fights to keep his craft intact and in the air. Entering the calm at the center, he returns to the fight while instruments gauge and an ultrahigh-frequency beam transmits pressures, velocities, ionizations, potentials and gradients to the Domain's single, powerful computer at Skyholm.

Finished transmitting and now close to hill-high waves, he returns to the center and climbs. At Skyholm, solar collectors continually refill accumulators powering lasers focused on well-chosen parts of the storm, either drilling and eroding or upsetting the balance. The core, still active but reduced in force, veers northwest, causing strong winds and heavy rains along the coast for two or three days but nothing disastrous. Further energy input might drive the core against Eria (Ireland) so Skyholm desists.

Combat skills and techniques, a fighter jet but without weapons and no human beings killing each other. Why can't it always be like that? Earth also needs an asteroid defense system. Ierne reflects that:

"A storm so great that men fought against it came but twice or thrice in a career." (2)

But there must be other kinds of hazards and disasters that they can fight?

He might also see human combat. There have been conflicts in Espaynia, Italya and Iberya. However:

"Iern hoped the peace would endure. He didn't relish the idea of killing men. He didn't even hunt -" (3)

Iern is a good contrast to warrior heroes. His battle against the storm is a hopeful precursor of a peaceful future when jet aircraft no longer fight each other.

(1) Anderson, Poul, Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 14.
(2) ibid., p. 16.
(3) ibid., p. 15.

From Maurai To Skyholm

If not for the early Author's Note mentioning the Maurai, the reader would not immediately know that Orion Shall Rise connects with that series. The 468 page text begins on page 1. The Maurai are first mentioned on page 7 and then only in a list of five or more other nations with which "the Domain" must deal. On page 13, we learn that, although our hero still uses a large, crude, vacuum tubed radio set powered by his castle's coal-fired generator, transistorised portable radios can be bought from the, obviously more advanced, Maurai Federation.

Thus, this novel is set in a later period when more nations have become prominent. Also, its narrative net has been cast more widely so that we initially view the Maurai from a foreign perspective.

The Domain, covering much of Europe, is controlled by aristocratic families, the Thirty Clans of the Aerogens, from a stratospheric aerostat called "Skyholm" or "Ileduciel." The Domain includes households like that of Mael the Red whose farm is worked by himself, his family, his tenants and their families. The account of how Mael's household receives an Aerogen visitor with a feast would fit into one of Anderson's historical novels.

The Aerogen and his host's daughter have a son who is brought up in Mael's household until his father takes him away to be his heir. Thus, Chapter One, starting on page 10 (so far we have read only a Prologue), begins with the son, Iern, now grown, taking his place in the world.

We realize both that the Domain is a powerful realm with which the Maurai will have to deal and that winds of change blow yet again. As Iern grew up, many centuries in our future but nevertheless surrounded by medieval city walls, Stone Age tombs, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens and passage graves:

"...he got into him a sense of time as an endless storm-wind, on which men and nations and gods were blown like autumn leaves, forever." (1)

(1) Anderson, Poul, Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 8.

More About The Maurai II

The original Maurai series is just three stories set centuries apart, thus with no characters in common. The third story, "Windmill," unlike the others, has a first person narrator. The story is his letter to a character whom we do not see and begins mid-sentence. Again, it shows a Maurai abroad so the concluding passage of the second story, "Progress," remains our only sight in this series of their home civilization.

"Windmill" confirms that the Merican god Oktai had been imported by Mong invaders who have since been expelled. The dark ages are past and more people now place their trust in science.

The Maurai enforce ecological conservation at the expense of the kind of rapid industrial and technological progress that had squandered resources, causing overpopulation and nuclear war. Thus, Anderson comments on his period while addressing major issues and showing his characters disagreeing about them.

Windmills as such are of course acceptable. However, the windmills of the title are being used to pump dry a water table that is "...vital to an entire ecology..." so they must be stopped just as an atomic power station was destroyed in "Progress." (1)

Anderson also shows us the society changing. First, the narrator proposes, in "...a radical break with tradition...," that the Maurai help those whom they have dispossessed to reclaim stony ocean islands with topsoil, seeds, rainwater cisterns, solar stills, palm and breadfruit culture and sea ranching. (1) Secondly, the leader of the dispossessed community ends the story by reminding the Maurai that they will not be powerful forever...

That conclusion could have led into a sequel. However, the next Maurai-related work is not another short story but a long novel, Orion Shall Rise, which begins with an Author's Note explaining that this new work is not fully consistent with the earlier stories, although the novel does derive its title from "Windmill":

"...risings of Orion and the Cross unseen!" (2)

(1) Anderson, Poul, "Windmill" IN Anderson, P, Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 139-168 AT p. 167.
(2) ibid., p. 165.

More About The Maurai

More on Religion, Psychodynamics and Civilisation

Religion

In the second Maurai story, "Progress," Lesu Haristi is addressed as "...Son of Tanaroa..." (1) Thus, the Maurai pantheon has aspects of both the Hindu Trimurti and the Christian Trinity.

Trimurti: Creator, Preserver, Destroyer.
Trinity: Father, Son, Spirit.
Maurai pantheon: Creator, Son, Destroyer.

Centuries after the events of the first Maurai story, a Merican still swears by Oktai. A newly introduced nationality, the Beneghalis, swear by Vishnu, the Hindu Preserver.

Psychodynamics

Psychodynamics is an academic discipline applicable to analysis of the "...ethnopolitical situation..." (2) Maurai "...peace enforcers..." are psychodynamic teams (somehow) redirecting the energies of any barbarians who threaten their neighbors. (3) (Neat trick. "Peace enforcement" sounds rather contradictory.)

Anderson cleverly makes us think that psychodynamicists have developed telepathy but, if we read on, we find that the "head-to-head" used by Maurai agents is based on a different means of communication.

Civilisation

Until the concluding section of this second story, we have seen Maurai only away from home. Now at last we see one of their cities. After a pedicab ride into the hills, a foreigner visits a quiet, sunny, book-lined house above groves and gardens sloping down to a mast-filled harbor.

The Maurai, acting covertly, destroy a newly constructed Beneghali atomic power station in order to preserve gradual progress with cultural diversity. A growing industrialism would have spread everywhere very quickly and would have returned the globe to the precarious state that it was in before the War of Judgement whereas psychodynamic science implies that the diverse cultures which originated in isolation during the dark ages after the War will interact creatively if they are allowed to continue their separate developments:

the Maurai exploit the sea and limit their population;
Mericans develop dry farming and continental trade;
Okkaidans adopt moderation as a way of life;
Sberyaks systematize reindeer ranching;
Beneghalis return to the old ways of machine techniques
etc.

In a few short passages, Anderson sketches a world that is rich in diversity and ingenuity if not yet in material possessions. In the first story, three very different cultures had interacted. In the second, there are more.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "Progress" IN Anderson, P, Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 73-137 AT p. 113.
(2) ibid., p. 75.
(3) ibid., p. 92.

A Science Of Society?

The premise of both Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic future history is that a group of experts can apply a science of society to society, thus ensuring that a government, or a clandestine group monopolising the science, would be able to achieve its aims (an Empire can be rebuilt on schedule; discontent can be managed so as to prevent social breakdown) as readily as an engineer can build a bridge. The same idea occurs in works by Heinlein and in other works by Anderson.

Anderson's Maurai Federation has made some moves in this direction. Their paramathematical psychology is at an early stage but "...helps control population..." (1)

Ruori of the Maurai sees evidence that his current enemies sometimes fight each other and reflects that:

"The Federation's political psychologists were skilled at the divide-and-rule game." (2) 

Ruori, understanding social processes, sees that the settled Meycan civilisation can conquer the "Sky People" raiders not with an army but with priests (Christian missionaries), merchants, culture and learning. He advocates this because he wants to preserve the Sky People's scientific approach which the Meycans, for all their rote learning from ancient texts, lack.

How plausible is the idea of an applicable science of society as practised by Asimov's "psychohistorians" and Anderson's "psychotechnicians" and approached by Anderson's Maurai? The premise of the Maurai series is that the industrial technological civilisation of the Northern Hemisphere had destroyed itself in a nuclear war so that the Islanders in the Southern Hemisphere, lacking metal to cannibalise, have had to survive by applying scientific method not to oil, iron or uranium but to wind, sun and life. This could include their paramathematical and political psychology.

However, society is us, not an external substance or process that we can observe from outside and perform experiments on. Maybe we, by cooperation and education, can together acquire a better understanding and control of our own activities? The idea of the applicable science of society as presented in these works of sf seems to be the idea of a minority manipulating the majority. And, since society is divided into conflicting interest groups, this controlling minority is likely to serve either its own interests or the interests of whichever other group pays its salaries and funds its activities. Anderson's Psychotechnic History does show the Psychotechnic Institute being overthrown and society preferring to live without that kind of minority control.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "The Sky People" IN Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 9-71 AT p. 22.
(2) ibid., p. 34.

Maurai Religion: First Impressions

The Sky People are pagan. Seeing a cathedral, they call it a "temple." One of their leaders invokes "Oktai the Stormbringer" and remembers, as a child, "...opening presents on Midwinter Morning..." (1) Death in war gives a chance to be reborn as a Sky Man but their enemies deserve to be reborn as swine.

The Maurai are pagan. One refers to "Shark-toothed Nan" and another to "...ancestors..." (2) The latter, Ruori, also thinks of a "Bispo" (Bishop) as a high priest, is unsure how to address him and does not understand the word "immodest." But Ruori is educated enough to recognize that the deity "Esu Carito" of whom the Bispo is a high priest is "...cognate with the Maurai Lesu Haristi." (3)

The Meycan city visited by the Maurai and attacked by the Sky People is Christian. It has a cathedral with a statue of "S'Ose" (?) and a bishop who refers to "...el Dio's punishment...". (3) A young woman crosses herself when the Bispo refers to "...judgment..." (3)

The unmarried young women of the city are chaperoned whereas the Maurai have brought "wahines" and Ruori would like to make love to his host's daughter on first acquaintance.

There will be more but this is considerable information to gain from the opening pages.

Addendum, 2/7/12: Near the end of this first story, Ruori invokes "...great creating Tanaroa...," the remaining member of the Maurai trinity. (4)

(1) Anderson, Poul, "The Sky People" IN Anderson, P, Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 9-71 AT p. 12.
(2) ibid., p. 14.
(3) ibid., p. 16.
(4) ibid., p. 69.

Maurai Civilization

The basis of the Maurai civilization:

the Southern Hemisphere suffered less in a nuclear exchange ("the War of Judgment");

Islander populations did not outrun the sea's ability to feed them;

having less metal to cannibalize than mainlanders, they instead applied scientific method to sun, wind and organisms;

by applying genetics, they created useable seaweeds, plankton and fish;

scientific forest management gives them adequate timber, organic-synthesis bases and some fuel;

they develop and apply solar, wind and tidal energy;

wood, ceramics and stone replace metal for most purposes;

early paramathematical psychology helps to control population;

having mastered nautical techniques, they can sail large ships fast, almost into the wind;

their whale ranchers keep large herds;

unlike mainland populations, they preserve printing, universal literacy, scientific medicine, a healthy diet, spacious living and personal freedom.

I have gathered this much so far by rereading a few pages into the first story, "The Sky People." The Maurai, the "Sea People," are about to meet others, the Sky People of the title, who have rediscovered and are applying scientific method so that it will be more appropriate to form an alliance with them than with a superficially more attractive culture that is declining back towards barbarism because it merely applies rote knowledge bequeathed by the ancients, depends on muscle power, has a peon class, tears down old ruins and does no research on new energy sources.

Published in 1959, "The Sky People" was one attempt by Anderson to show a recovery of civilization after a nuclear war. Much later, information about a "nuclear winter" implied that such a war would not be survivable.

The End Of The Universe

Three times in Poul Anderson's works, a character or group of characters survives until the end of our universe:

by space travel with time dilation;
by time travel;
by spacetime travel.

Space travel: a Bussard ramjet.
Time travel: a conventional time machine, here called "the time projector."
Spacetime travel: via a network of T machines.

Each character or group goes somewhere different afterwards:

the space travelers survive into the next universe;
the time traveler continues forward around the circle of time back to 1973;
the spacetime travelers return to their origin point through the T machine network, having learned that there are many universes and will be one after ours.

AI's hope to survive the end of the universe by utilizing the energy of photon decay. Another group of space travelers features in a novel called After Doomsday but this Doomsday is merely the end of all life on Earth. As ever, the impression generated by Anderson's works is one of comprehensiveness.

"Flight To Forever" Timeline, Part II

4400-25,296	The time projector cannot emerge because it is enclosed by a half mile high stone tetrahedron erected by Ixchulhi conquerors.
25,296	Since the Ixchulhi wars, mathematical psychology has united the Galactic Empire. Primitive landsmen at Sol. Barbarians on the periphery and in the Magellanic Clouds.
26,000	The pyramid has become a wooded hill.
27,000	A small agricultural village.
28,000	Men quarry the pyramid for stone.
30,000	A small city has been built from the stones of the pyramid.
31,000	The Solar Matriarchy pays tribute to the Empire which has stopped expanding.
34,000	The barbarians have moved in and the city has been destroyed.
35,000	Peasant huts.
36,000	The Empire declines. A small troop has been hired to defend Earth.
45,000	Maurco the Doomer, holding only three systems, is the last Emperor anointed according to the proper forms.
50,000	Saunders' time effect wins a space battle. Empire restored. A rival sends Saunders onwards to prevent him from marrying Empress Taury.
60,000	Saunders stops the projector but salt water seeps in.
4 million years	A city full of energies and a telepathic voice warning Saunders that its forces will destroy him if he stays.
100 million	Snow. A being who agrees that he should go on.
1 billion years	Blue grass. A city that warns him away. The sea, then a mountain, the sun changing and Earth spiralling towards it.
100 billion	The Sun is a red giant.
Billions	Darkness. The universe is dead.
Many billions	Light. The universe is reforming.
Later.	On a molten planet.
Geological ages	Rain on naked rock. Then seas, land, jungles.
Millions.	The Moon is recognisable.
Later.	He recognises the village.
1936	He enters a bank and checks the date on a calender.
1973	He returns, a little early.