Juvenile SF

Heinlein, Asimov, Blish and Anderson wrote juvenile sf, Anderson less than the others:

one Time Patrol installment;
three Technic History stories;
"Escape the Morning" (see here, here, here and here);
Vault of The Ages.

I mention this because I am rereading James Blish's The Star Dwellers, which is Heinleinian in:

its insistence that education should not be painless and that car drivers should know calculus;
its pairing of a teenage cadet with an older mentor;
its presentation of a private company exploiting space and also of a Secretary for Space coping with potential interstellar crises -

- and I wish that our crises were interstellar, not just Terrestrial.

Dynamic Diversity

(Lancaster: Dalton Square, Queen Victoria, Town Hall.)

Today there will be a celebration of diversity in Lancaster. (Later: see here.) The City Council meets in the Town Hall. We will assemble in Dalton Square. Sometimes also there are gatherings in Market Square where the former Town Hall is now the City Museum.

From Monday to Thursday, I will be in Birmingham, a city that usually inspires posts comparing its diversity to that of Poul Anderson's multi-species Terran Empire. This time, I might learn more about that city's Tolkien connection. But I might not have much access to a computer while there.

The current agenda is to continue reading Anderson's Murder In Black Letter, then to read the next two volumes of SM Stirling's Emberverse series. As John Carter says, "We still live!"

Connections And Parallels

Because the Emberverse titles are listed in the wrong order in the back of my copy of The Sunrise Lands, I have got The Sword Of The Lady before The Scourge Of God but will acquire and read the latter before reading the former.

Of interest in the Acknowledgments of The Sword Of The Lady:

apparently, the opening paragraph of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is quoted as an ancestral epic in Chapter Seventeen;

Stirling refers to the song, "Fiddler's Green," which is yet another link to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Gaiman's Fiddler's Green is a place in the Dreaming but escapes and wanders the waking world as a person called "Gilbert," modelled on GK Chesterton whose Fr Brown series we have just mentioned.

From (i) works of fiction by different authors and (ii) works of fiction about alternative histories, we can wind up with (iii) stories in which different authors' fictional narratives are set in alternative histories, as shown in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix stories. In Bill Willingham's Fables graphic novels, characters from fairy tales live in hiding in New York, having been driven out of their homelands on parallel Earths. Since the Trygve Yamamura novel that I am currently reading features Italian characters and concerns and since Pinnocchio has a big role in Fables, I find a powerful if obscure conceptual connection between this Yamamura novel and that graphic novel series. The connection is strengthened by the fact that we have just discussed parallel universes in relation to detective fiction.

As Anderson's Time Patrol finds chaos lurking behind time criminals, Stirling's Emberversers seem to find something else lurking behind their human enemies?

(Tomorrow looks like being even busier and less blog-friendly.)

"Sherlock Nero Poirot"

To answer an earlier question, I have read:

no Nero Wolfe or Gideon Fell;
very little Miss Marple or Lord Peter Wimsey;
maybe two Fr Brown collections.

What I like about the Fr Brown series is that the villain reforms and becomes the detective's companion.

When Poul Anderson's Trygve Yamamura taunts a friend as "Sherlock Nero Poirot," we recognize at least two of these names and can easily learn the significance of the one that is less familiar. In fact, googling "Nero detective" brings up Nero Wolfe.

Anderson's text almost certainly means that Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot are known as fictional characters to Yamamura and his friend as they are to Anderson and his readers but there is another possibility. Fictional characters can be real to each other. There is some evidence that Holmes is real to Wolfe. See here. Both Holmes and Poirot become celebrities in their fictional worlds. Therefore, one or both could be known to Yamamura as a celebrity rather than as a fiction. Holmes' world contains not only the events of "A Scandal in Bohemia" etc but also Watson's published accounts of those events - thus raising the question whether Watson reported accurately. Fiction can go through some very strange stages. Holmes is real to Anderson's Time Patrol. However, if Holmes is real to Wolfe, it does not follow that the Patrol and Wolfe are real to each other because Holmes can exist in more than one alternative world.

Discussing detective fiction has led to discussing alternative history fiction. Imagine all the detectives existing in their parallel worlds - and someone communicating between them.

Re-Enter Trygve

Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, Chapter 7.

Robert Kintyre has investigated and has fought a suspect. We learn a little about judo. Now Kintyre reports back to Trygve Yamamura whose office is above a drugstore in downtown Berkeley. Did we know that?

Yamamura taunts Kintyre as "Sherlock Nero Poirot." Three references in one! I have not read any of Nero Wolfe but (I think) James Bond said he liked him (as a fictitious character), (later: he did) which might have boosted Wolfe's sales. Also, is it true that the Wolfe series hints that its hero is a son of Sherlock? Sean has just asked me in the combox whether I have opinions about Fr Brown, Lord Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple or Gideon Fell. Mostly, no! But let me get back to you. Probably busy with other activities today.

A Second Song In The Same Bar

Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, Chapter 6.

For the post on the first song, see here.

Poul Anderson quotes four lines of an Italian song, then attributes it to Lorenzo the Magnificent. Googling reveals this to be Lorenzo de Medici. Google also gives information, in Italian, about the song which begins:

"Quant' e bella giovinessa..."

- and I also found an English translation. See here.

"What beauty lies in youth..."

Thus, read detective fiction by Poul Anderson and learn some history.

Blog readers might notice that I post about whatever interests me even if it is not the main point of a text. I am not summarizing the plot of the murder mystery so far. I might or might not do that later. Here, I read back through three texts set on the fictional planet, Avalon, in order to summarize background information about the planet, the sort of information that we usually skip past to get to the action. As yet, I am three pages into Chapter 6 of Murder In Black Letter but this pace suits me fine. Reading, rereading and discussing Poul Anderson is a life-long project and I rarely know what the next post will be about.

A Song in A Bar

In Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter, Robert Kintyre enters a bar in North Beach, hears some lines from a song, recognizes the song and knows who wrote it. I did not. However, googling the quoted lines brings up the title, all of the words and a (possibly apochryphal) attribution to Rudyard Kipling.

The song was referenced in an Emberverse novel by SM Stirling and possibly also elsewhere in the Anderson canon. However, I have neither quoted nor linked to this song on the blog because I found the words distasteful.

It is interesting to keep finding these connections, though.

Reading Murder In Black Letter

I have read Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter as far as the beginning of Chapter 6 and so far the point of view character has remained Trygve Yamamura's friend, Robert Kintyre, not Yamamura himself, who has remained off-stage since the opening conversation between him and Kintyre. OK. No hurry. Not being a big fan of detective fiction, I will continue to read the novel but without any great involvement in its plot.

For me, the big three fictional detectives are Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Montalbano and Trygve Yamamura. Yamamura is of interest because he is written by Poul Anderson. Also, of course, Anderson managed to give this character an interesting background and a colourful setting. I will not solve the mystery before we are told the solution. How many readers of detective fiction are able to do this?

How many interesting series characters did Anderson write? How many interesting central characters of single novels did he write? Quite a lot.

Comparing Salamanders II

See Comparing Salamanders.

CS Lewis, The Silver Chair (London, 1998), Chapter 14, p. 191.

Salamanders:

live in the subterranean fire;
are the only beasts that do so;
are too white-hot to look at;
but most like small dragons;
speak to the Underworlders out of the fire;
are witty and eloquent.

That is all that I can find but it is enough to make a comparison with the salamanders of Poul Anderson, Alan Moore, Tim Powers and Robert Heinlein.

Comparing Salamanders

For a salamander in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, see here.

For salamanders in Alan Moore's Jerusalem, in Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates and maybe also in CS Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, see here.

And I have so far neglected to cite the salamander in Robert Heinlein's Magic, Inc, which:

appears when summoned;
grows from a tiny spark into a living flame or fire-ball six inches across;
floats, dances, whirls and flames without needing fuel;
is perfect, beautiful, alive and a singing joy, neither moral nor human;
is harmoniously curved and coloured;
speaks in pure liquid notes while its colours vary accordingly;
can touch a man without burning him.

Each author takes the idea of a salamander and imagines it differently.