A Couple Of Points In Murder In Black Letter

Poul Anderson's detective, Trygve Yamamura, was in the OSS, the WWII precursor of the CIA. Thus, like Manse Everard and James Bond, he was in the War although his series starts later.

In SM Stirling's Draka History, the OSS remains the OSS after that timeline's equivalent of WWII.

Surprisingly, Kintyre persuades Yamamura that it is OK to use a very crude form of sensory deprivation to interrogate a gunman whom they are detaining instead of handing over to the police. Thus, Kintyre and Yamamura are guilty of at least two serious offences.

Murder In Black Letter is not grabbing me. I am not really following the murder investigation and am commenting only on tangential issues. However, any text written by Poul Anderson displays points of interest. I will read the novel to the end although I might be doing other things in the meantime.

A busy British Bank Holiday weekend stretches ahead of us with the possibility of more terrorism at a major event. We are also in the midst of a General Election. Thus, we are able to choose electorally between two alternative policies on terrorism. Everyone in Britain needs to think very hard.

From Mars

"...it was a blow, to be shown himself as alien as a castaway from Mars."
-Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, Chapter 13.

"...alien..." and "...from Mars..." might remind us that:

Anderson is primarily an sf writer;
the idea of Martians exists in the minds of characters even in a contemporary novel;
even though such a novel usually avoids references to anything beyond Earth's atmosphere, the cosmic context of all life remains in the background. See here.

See also:

SF And Fantasy In A Detective Novel
Murder Bound, Chapters I-III
The Hadal Abysses
Cosmic And Historical Perspectives
Perish By The Sword

Cosmic Consciousness

After Mirkheim and Ramnu, I considered posting about Diomedes. However, this planet's peculiarities are summarized here and indeed there is more information about Mirkheim here and also about Ramnu here.

The idea was to summarize dramatic natural events that do not involve intelligence. For example, in Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part One, IX, pp. 96-97:

"Sol swung onward through its orbit, around galactic centre in almost two million years..." (p. 96)

That is dramatic enough. However, at this stage, Anderson postulates neither merely natural processes nor intelligent organisms with familiar motivations but, instead, powerful post-organic intelligences interacting with cosmic processes in ways that had been beyond the scope of their organic predecessors.

Thus, intelligences in the Solar System:

protect Terrestrial life by deflecting asteroids and comets;

counteract harmful effects of cosmic clouds;

direct machines to construct from interplanetary matter discs to shield Earth from lethal radiation generated by nearby supernovae, gamma ray bursters or colliding neutron stars;

over a total of four million years, prepare for the close passage of another star, then deal with the consequences;

manage or mitigate Terrestrial quakes, eruptions, climate swings and crustal plate collisions but then decide to let these processes proceed and observe how life adapts;

address other threats never imagined by human beings;

are not primarily concerned with any planet.

Meanwhile, post-organic consciousness spreads between the stars, evolves itself and transcends its earlier stages while the stars also evolve although we are not told how. Thus, intelligence is present but recognizable characters conversing and socially interacting are definitely not.

More Dramatic Natural Events

In the Mirkheim situation, a giant star with a giant planet went supernova. In the Ramnu situation, a giant star near a dwarf star with a superjovian planet goes supernova. The superjovian, which was liquid or gas throughout except for a quantum degenerate core of heavy elements, loses over 90% of its mass, mostly hydrogen with a small percentage of helium. These gasses, volatilized as a plasma, interact magnetically with the core which then explodes out of its super-compaction. The dwarf star captures gas from the supernova and moves up the main sequence.

Thus, there is a metal-rich G-type star orbited by a planet 310 times as massive as Earth with 7.2 standard gravity, oceans, atmosphere and photosynthesizing life, inhabited by small, intelligent gliders. See image.

Mirkheim

How much of a fictional narrative might describe not the actions of intelligent beings but natural events? In Poul Anderson's Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 500,000:

a star as bright as a hundred Sols burned for four hundred million years;

in a remote orbit, there was a planet as massive as fifteen hundred Earths, despite the fact that giant stars do not usually have planets;

the star exhausted the hydrogen fuel at its core;

it collapsed, fusing new elements, then exploded as a supernova;

any smaller planets were annihilated, their iron cores vaporized;

although the giant planet lost most of its mass, its molten core survived, coated in rare elements from the supernova;

for tens of millennia, the remnants of star and planet were surrounded by a nebula but this dissipated;

for half a million years, the remnants drifted in darkness, the planet's congealed alloy surface reflecting distant constellations.

Which other passages in Anderson's works describe such dramatic natural events with no input from intelligent beings?

The War II

See The War.

Contemporary novels become dated, then cease to be contemporary.

Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter was published in 1960. See here. Its main viewpoint character, Professor Kintyre, was aged nine in 1930. Thus, he was in World War II and, somewhere in the text, he tells us what either he or an acquaintance was doing in 1943. (I find it difficult to scan back and find relevant passages in an ebook.) (Later: I realized that I can search the ebook, e.g., for "1943.")

My interest, as before, is in fiction that was written when World War II was still a living memory. We are passing out of such a period. The longest running British TV soap opera began in late 1960 - originally intended as only a six-episode serial! In that opening episode, one elderly character spoke disparagingly about how a rather younger woman had conducted herself during the War. That whole period is becoming history. The cast of the soap has changed many times since then with only one character, originally a teenager, still played by his aging actor. I value Anderson's character, Manse Everard. Joining the Time Patrol in 1954, Everard both remembers the War and becomes able to revisit it.

And Dingle...

See Herbert Dingle (Wiki).

Poul Anderson and James Blish address technology and its effects on society. We have seen that their technological speculations encompass various alternative FTL drives and that both referred to Mach for this purpose. Blish had mentioned Mach, Einstein, Milne and his own fictional Haertel. In his second Jack Loftus novel, he adds Dingle!

In Milne's relativity, the light speed limitation is a mere mathematical convenience;

Dingle found two Einsteinian errors;

in 2011, Haertel showed that Einstein's relativity was a special case of Milne's relativity which was a special case of Haertel's own relativity;

in 2030, an FTL drive is one practical outcome of Haertel's theory;

in the 2050s, Jack Loftus and colleagues visit the Coal Sack nebula and the Heart Stars.

A project would be to write detailed accounts of every FTL drive in Blish's and Anderson's works.

The Future Of Humanity

Poul Anderson's works of futuristic sf project every possible fate for humanity:

early extinction in a dystopian short story;
gradual recovery from various kinds of disasters;
proliferation through the galaxy in several future histories;
unemployment and redundancy in some high tech futures;
replacement by Artificial Intelligences in a later novel.

James Blish addressed the future of human beings in a high-energy civilization here and in his second Jack Loftus novel where, again, most people are unemployed but are well provided for although they are denied the rights to vote and to procreate! (That will reduce the population quickly, surely? Are such drastic measures either feasible or desirable?)

It seems to me that the question, "What can the bulk of the population do in a high tech economy?" is wrongly put. Surely the question should be: How can society as a whole use enhanced technology to realize the full potential of each of its members? We stand on the threshold of Utopia yet fear a dystopia because we have not adjusted our thinking yet. (I think.)

Longevity And Mortality

Poul Anderson wrote three contemporary detective novels featuring Trygve Yamamura.
Isaac Asimov wrote four futuristic sf detective novels featuring Elijah Baley.
Anderson wrote the Dominic Flandry series.
James Blish wrote two Jack Loftus novels.

All three authors address longevity and mortality.

Baley deduces that the extrasolar colonists' longevity is a competitive disadvantage because it makes them overcautious.

Flandry's antagonist, Aycharaych, asks whether Bach, Rembrandt or Tu Fu could have created what they did if they had been immortal.

Jack Loftus' mentor learns that longevity can mean wisdom but can also mean stagnation and even senility whereas a short lifetime gives:

"'...a creativity, such that mankind has been pouring out in torrents for most of its recorded history.'"
-Mission To The Heart Stars, Chapter Eleven.

This blog records a small part of that creativity.

Murder In Black Letter

Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter has retained Kintyre instead of Yamamura as viewpoint character as far as Chapter 12. That chapter refers to:

Kipling;
Gamow;
Russell;
Ley.

Which Russell? Is it Bertrand?

Earlier, when a medieval manuscript had been removed from his room, Kintyre imagined small demons flying out with it, then reminded himself that, in the twentieth century, we do not believe in demons. In Black Easter, James Blish made the point that, if demons do exist, then they continue to do so whether or not they are believed in. In fact (or, rather, in fiction!), a demon swallows a sceptic who denies its existence.

The other Yamamura novels hinted at the supernatural but did not confirm it. So far, this volume has not hinted. Kintyre's momentary imagining hardly counts.