From Anthologies To Collections

I do not go for original anthologies, themed or otherwise. I might get a copy of such an anthology for one story by one author and not read the rest. So it is good when a story written for such an anthology is republished in a collection by its author. Look how good Poul Anderson's seven Roger-Elwood-edited stories are:

the two Technic History stories are in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

the one Maurai story is in Maurai And Kith;

the four Rustum stories are in New America.

Three collections are more convenient than seven anthologies.

The Technic History is enhanced by the inclusion of two juvenile short stories, one in the Polesotechnic League sub-series, the other in the Ythrians sub-series. The four Continuum contributions double the length of the history of Rustum. The Maurai story, the third in the series, again set generations later, presents further progress because the Maurai now have some jet aircraft whereas such aircraft had been legendary at the time of the second story, "Progress."

Roger Elwood

We owe Roger Elwood some good Poul Anderson stories that were first published in original anthologies edited by Elwood. 

The Technic History

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," Future Quest (1974)

"Rescue in Avalon," Children of Infinity (1973)

The Maurai History

"Windmill," Saving Worlds (1973)

The Rustum History

"My Own, My Native Land," Continuum I (1974)

"Passing the Love of Women," Continuum II (1974)

"A Fair Exchange," Continuum III (1974)

"To Promote the General Welfare," Continuum IV (1975)

Subjective Experience

See:

blog references to John Searle, here

Neurons And Sensations 

Energy And Consciousness 

Subjective And Objective

 

Maybe the mind-body problem approaches resolution?

 

Causality

Causes and effects are not identical and are only empirically and contingently connected. There would be no logical contradiction if water were to remain liquid or were even to become solid above 100 degrees Centigrade, although, in the latter case, a new molecular theory would become necessary.

 

Causality of Consciousness

Electrically firing, chemically interacting neurons causes consciousness although some other cause might have been found. Disembodied consciousness is not logically impossible although a "pure spirit" would be a subject but not an object of consciousness and therefore would be undetectable. 

 

Subjective Experience

Given that a particular organism is conscious, there must be something that it is like to be that organism. See What Is It Like To Be A Bat? My subjective experiences are what it is like to be this organism. Every organism knows what it is like to be one organism and no other. If that is the case, then subjective experiences cannot exist independently of the organism.

A Window On Tomorrow

 

John W. Campbell edited:

Robert Heinlein's Future History;

Isaac Asimov's Robots and Foundation;

James Blish's Okie series;

Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League.

 

When Campbell speaks, we listen, even if we then disagree.

 

"These are a window on tomorrow; a television set tuned to the future. But we lack the key to the door that would let us walk through into that future; we must only watch and listen to the highest of all adventures - the conquest of the stars!"

John W. Campbell, Jr., INTRODUCTION IN Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon (London, 1963), pp. 11-14 AT p. 14.

 

The first story in the Future History, "Life-Line," was published in 1939 and set in 1951. The Man Who Sold The Moon was first published in 1950. Did Campbell believe that he and his readers were permanently confined to the 1950s as if those years were a place, not a decade? The mid-point of Heinlein's Future History Chart is:

 

2025 (The Stone Pillow)

(Brackets indicate a "story-to-be-told.")

Thus, some of us who were alive in the 1950s have "walked" through nearly the first half of the Future History Chart simply by living long enough. And The Man Who Sold The Moon does not show "the conquest of the stars!" The first four of its six stories are Earthbound. The first Moon landing happens in the fourth story in 1978 although Heinlein's PREFACE says that it could be sooner. The first interstellar round trip does not happen until the fourth of five volumes.

 

Sure, interstellar travel is a major factor in American future histories although some, like Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Maurai History, take a while to get there.

How Valuable Is Science?

"The Sky People."

Ruori's verdict on the Meycans:

"'What you lack is merely the means of gaining new knowledge...if left to yourselves, you will slide gracefully back into the Stone Age.'" (p. 71)

Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers encounter two timelines where, never making the scientific revolution, mankind never breaks out of an endless cycle of empire and collapse. Scientific method is of inestimable value and science fiction needs to state this fact more often.

CS Lewis, in his unscientific sf, damns with faint praise when he writes of:

"The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves...'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 9, P. 560.

Good and innocent in themselves! They are a great deal more than that.

Ruori has a typically American sfnal way of speaking about science:

"'The way of the Sky People is the rough way outward, to the stars.'" (p. 71)

Yes, scientific knowledge will include means of space travel, including interstellar travel, but it is not our destiny to go there, necessarily. We can know about the universe from any point within it although it will certainly be helpful to get out at least into the Solar System.

Lorn says it again in the following story:

"'Power to go to the stars.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Progress" IN Anderson, Maurai And Kith (New York, New York, 1982), pp. 73-137 AT p. 110.

I am all for it if someone wants to do it.

Systematic Research

"The Sky People."

The Meycans have not made any vessels to resist air attacks because they:

"'...don't know how to make a fabric which will hold the lifting-gas long enough, or how to control the flight...." (p. 35)

Ruori retorts:

"'And being a nonscientific culture, you never thought of doing systematic research to learn those tricks...'" (ibid.)

I would not have a clue how to begin systematic research on fabrics or flight. I am a philosopher, not a scientist. But I do want to be part of a society where someone does know how to conduct scientific research.

Tresa replies that her people:

have had to resist northern Mong and southern Raucanians for centuries;

have had to spend years and lives building canals and aqueducts;

are saddled with an uneducated, unsupportable population.

Tresa's reply is no good. If the Meycans know how to build canals and aqueducts, then they can learn how to build something else. The struggle for existence cannot possibly be so time-consuming that it leaves no time for research. Meycan society supports nobles and clergy so it can certainly also support scientists.

(The attached cover image shows Tresa, Ruori and an air attack.)

Loklann And Ruori

"The Sky People" presents two viewpoint characters:

Loklann sunna Holber, captain of the skyship, Buffalo;

Ruori Rangi Lohannaso, captain of the seaship, Dolphin.

Ruori explores and trades. Loklann raids. He lands, kills a man, captures the man's wife to sell to a Mong slave trader and decides that prisoners will be kept in the temple (cathedral) until it is plundered. When a priest emerges wielding a cross, Robra sunna Stam, mate of the Buffalo, kills him with an ax blow to the head and kicks the body aside.

I am out of sympathy with the Sky People, as with the Irish barbarians that raid France in The King of Ys. Whatever a tribe's material condition, there has to be better way to survive and thrive than by murder and plunder.

The Science In Science Fiction

"The Sky People."

Sometimes science fiction is about science:

"'The scientific method is only a means of learning. It is a...a perpetual starting afresh.'" (p. 21)

Ruori pauses to think, then invents an appropriate phrase. In his time, many people think that:

"'...science was the cause of the old world's ruin.'" (ibid.)

- or that it consisted of (almost magical) formulae for:

"'...making tall buildings or talking at a distance.'" (ibid.)

In the long aftermath of the War of Judgment, science would be identified with some of its effects, not with its method.

Tresa admires the Maurai without understanding the basis of their success:

ships that sail fast, almost into the wind;

full fishing nets;

whale ranch herds darkening the sea;

farming the ocean for food and fiber;

Ruori's shirt crafted from fishbones;

a spacious house for every family;

a boat for nearly every family member;

literate children;

printed books;

no sickness;

no hunger;

everyone free;

el Dio smiles!

Ruori explains:

application of science to wind, sun and life;

genetic engineering of seaweed, plankton and fish;

forest management;

solar energy;

wood, ceramics and stone replacing metal;

airfoils;

the Venturi law;

Hilsch tube;

force, heat and refrigeration from wind;

paramathematical psychology.

Sf is about the present:

"'The ancients exhausted the world. They mined the ores, burned the oil and coal, eroded the land, until nothing was left.'" (p. 21)

And The Time Machine projected Victorian class divisions into devolved human species in 802,701 A.D.

But sf is also about the future. How might science be applied differently? (Anderson's Maurai History.) Future paradigms will be different. (James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time.)

Culture Clash II

"The Sky People."

"It was too bad these Meycans - the nobles, at least - thought a girl should be reserved solely for the husband they eventually picked for her." (p. 15)

To Ruori, it would be natural for him and Tresa to make love on first acquaintance. She takes him onto a balcony where:

"An aged serving woman, stationed to act as a duenna for couples that wandered thither, had wrapped up in her mantle against the cold and fallen asleep." (p. 19)

Ruori addresses Bispo Don Carlos Ermosillo as "'S'nor'...hoping it was the right title." (p. 17)

It probably isn't but clergy get used to being addressed respectfully by people unfamiliar with the complicated terminology. In which film does a US Army chaplain say, "You don't have to call me 'Father.' I'm an Anabaptist.'"? 

Culture Clash

"The Sky People."

Not only does Ruori have to ask what "immodest" means but Tresa fails to explain it to him. He thinks that "'Are all your folk so graceful?'" (p. 17) is a question to be answered, not a compliment to thank her for.

When the bishop suggests that human greed and el Dio's punishment mean much the same, Ruori regards him closely and wants to converse further but this is because the clergyman speaks knowedgeably about the history of his continent - "human greed" - not because of any interest on Ruori's part in theology.

The Maurai help to defend the city against the piratical Sky People but find that they have more in common with the scientific and technological sky pirates than with the decaying Meycan civilization.