Red Skies On Other Planets

On Brae in the Technic History:

"Wherefore Flandry walked through smashed ruins under a red dwarf sun, with a few raindrops falling like blood drops out of great clotted clouds."

-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 303-339 AT p. 304.

Clouds like clotted blood?

Is Flandry a "Defender" or a conqueror?

"...he was lonesome among his fellow conquerors..." 

-ibid., p. 306.

On Mars in the Harvest Of Stars History:

"Corpses lay strewn among blackened, twisted hulks. Behind them, the hills out of which the guerillas had struck rose dark, torturous, riddled and seamed with hiding places, toward Arsia Mons and a sky the color of clotting blood."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 20, p. 252.

The sky matches the scene on the ground, of course.

"...landscape tumbled away in black desolation, weirdly pocked and riven, under a sky gone murrey."

-ibid., p. 256.

"Murrey" is one of Anderson's words that I had to google and my computer does not recognize it.

We, editorially speaking, are reading about a historical revolution and also about the Inrai outrages on one future Mars.

(For the full story, please read The Fleet Of Stars. I comment only on whichever arbitrary details catch my attention.)

News And Thunder

The Fleet Of Stars, 16.

From Vernal, Fenn telephones Wanika in the Pacific where data search has located her on the shiptown, Malolo. She relays a recorded message for him from Mars. Kinna tells him that:

"'...a ship from Alpha Centauri is approaching Proserpina.'

"Thunder rolled through his skull." (p. 206)

Observations

We, the readers, already know that an Anson Guthrie download is coming from Beta Hydri via Alpha Centauri but, because of the distances and times involved, what is known to us is news to them.

We are very used to elemental forces like wind or thunder emphasizing the dramatic moments or pauses in Andersonian dialogue. Here it happens again although this time the (metaphorical) thunder is only inside Fenn! Pathetic fallacies and metaphors are Anderson's punctuations.

Vernal, the Pacific, Mars, Proserpina and Alpha Centauri gradually come together. The convergence is slow but we expect a climax.

Our Real Future

During the Apollo missions, I was reading a lot of sf, mainly focused on James Blish but also reading Heinlein, Anderson etc. Consequently, I hoped for interstellar exploration in the early twenty-first century. Heinlein's Future History had introduced the idea of an interregnum of space travel. That has happened, more or less, at least beyond Earth orbit. But by now I would have expected reusable spaceships, not another circum-Lunar mission beginning with a big rocket blastoff and ending with a parachute splashdown. 

We are living in the real future, not in any of the fictional ones. Some of those fictional futures involved a World War III aftermath. Poul Anderson covered every option, including WWIII aftermaths followed by space travel. Late at night, I always ask: which further future are we moving into? Wells' Time Traveller sped through tomorrow into futurity. We will live into it, starting tomorrow morning.

Good night.

Whatever Is Alive

The Fleet Of Stars, 18.

"[Fenn] was in space, and he would not trade; but ever more he remembered the seas of Earth, wind in a sail, waves thunderous, and the thrum of a tiller beneath his hand. When you get right down to the bones of the matter, he thought, the only meaning the universe has comes from whatever is alive." (p. 227)

He means consciously alive. 

Where else could meaning reside? Some words mean objects to which they refer. Others derive their meaning from their use. Only consciousness and intelligence give meaning to sounds and signs. Only experiences that are enjoyed, appreciated, valued have any meaning. For a man enjoying "wind in a sail," see Fran And The Technic History.

I agree with Fenn (and Fran) but have to ask how it could be otherwise. When consciousness began, meaningfulness began, as also did the division of time not only into (as yet unnoticed) days and years but also into past, "present" and future. Any moment is "present" to any organism that is conscious in that moment but not otherwise. 

Robotic Software

The Fleet Of Stars, 18.

"As for safety, the software in the robot, which could not be altered or replaced without triggering a burnout of the robot itself, would never obey an order that had any reasonable probability of endangering others." (p. 225)

Here is a faint echo of Isaac Asimov's future history in a later Poul Anderson future history. What a long way we have come from I, Robot. Indeed, the title story of Robot Dreams is one of three alternative culminations of Asimov's Robot stories. And Anderson's inclusion of the term, "software," reflects the distance that has meanwhile been travelled in the real world with computer technology.

Sf is one long discussion of ideas and extrapolations. And, so far, Anderson's Genesis, published appropriately in 2000, is one culmination of sf.

Elsewhere On Earth

The Fleet Of Stars, 16.

Australia and New Zealand are fully modernized:

robotic industries;

residential communities;

recreational parks;

nature reserves.

In North America, and above the thirty-fifth parallel, the polity of Vernal is a Republic some of whose citizens, called Foresters, live in small settlements or isolated houses scattered throughout spacious woodlands. Fenn visits old family friends, Lars and Rachel, in their wooden house in the village of Thistledew whose emblem is a carven moose. Rachel is an elected mayor and magistrate. Lars cultivates a patch of land, fishes, hunts and guides occasional tourists or sportsmen. Foresters preserve ancient folkways. Forests are preserved for ecological and climatic reasons. Dwellers who did not maintain them would be replaced by robots and sophotects.

Yukonia has a scenic grandeur that the woodlands, stretching from the Rockies to the Alleghenies, lack although both are spacious, with a "...sense of freedom and life..." (p. 199) 

Cash, in a currency of ucus, still circulates so that individuals who do not draw their citizen's credit can remain undetected. Fenn does detective work to track down a fugitive which is his sole reason for going to Vernal. This one sub-plot is resolved in a short fight scene.

Nonalgorithmic, Quantum

The Fleet Of Stars, 14.

Fenn considers Kinna's small, insectoid, robot pet:

"...the algorithms that ran it could not be simple; they must be capable of learning and of flexible response to situations. There might actually be a nonalgorithmic, quantum element - which would make it technically a sophotect, though an electrophotonic system this size couldn't be smarter than, say, a dog." (p. 182)

Algorithmic "learning" is not conscious. According to this passage, two elements are required for consciousness: "nonalgorithmic" and "quantum." However, "nonalgorithmic" is merely negative. What positive property is required? "Quantum" is positive but not sufficient to imply consciousness. We are left as ever with a qualitative difference between unconsciousness and consciousness. Somehow organic sensitivity became conscious sensation. An organism that needed food began to feel hungry or one that was becoming lethally hot began to feel uncomfortably hot. Did this qualitative change in organismic responsiveness have to involve quantum mechanics? Consciousness and quantum mechanics have in common that both are mysterious. Also, quantum processes (seem to) involve an observer effect which links them to consciousness. That is as far as I can go with this question at present.

Yelling Storm

The Fleet Of Stars, 15.

Fenn stands for a long time watching a storm through the viewport of his and Wanika's cabin on the large, unsinkable, buoyant island, Waihona Lanamokupuni. When they converse, Fenn remembers that He'o's murderer, Pedro Dover, has been identified but not yet apprehended and, if caught, would merely be reformed.

He concludes:

"'Yes, I do have some months at leisure. Time for tracking Pedro Dover down.'" (p. 194)

That is the end of the dialogue and could have been the end of this chapter but Poul Anderson's readers know better than that. When a character has expressed himself thus, the elements must have their say, underlining or commenting on the human speech and, sure enough, immediately after Fenn's last sentence, the chapter itself ends with:

"The storm yelled." (ibid.)

It really never fails. 

There will be an Andersonian settling of accounts with a villain before the main plot resumes and, as part of this, we will be shown another part of the future Earth.

Meeting The Future

The Fleet Of Stars, 15.

Fenn tells Maherero, a high councillor of the Southern Coagency:

"'Nobody can forecast the future. If somebody isn't willing to meet it as it comes, he should get out of the way of those who are.'" (p. 190)

A succinct summary of the Andersonian philosophy? (Also van Rijnian etc?) See a much-quoted passage about "'...bases in the fourth dimension to protect us against an invasion from the future," here.

Maherero sits unmoving. The accompanying music, dance and bird flight stop. Has this been a diplomatic disaster for Fenn? Then Maherero laughs and accepts the deal to work with the Lahui Kuikawa on the transformation of Deimos. The music, dance and flight resume triumphantly. 

Interactive entertainment of guests is an important custom in this polity just as human service to new arrivals is among the Lahui and archaism is in London. Some customs are contrived whereas others are alive.

Fleet stands up well as an sf traveloque.

Fenn And Maherero

The Fleet Of Stars, 15.

After Amaterasu, the Habitat, Alpha Centauri, Luna, Mars, the Pacific and London, we read about a bay on the South Atlantic.

The restless, blue, green and white-foamed ocean shines and glitters. Its cool breeze is salt-tanged. Walvis Bay stretches from Pelican Point to a high tower of homes and offices. Pleasure boats dance while robots unload freighters. Metamorphic grass, trees and flowers cover former desert. Invisible communication lines cover half a continent. 

On the roof of the tower, Fenn and Maherero converse with refreshments while watching a dance accompanied by specially bred colourful birds. The dance leader follows their conversation through sonic ear plugs and directs the dance accordingly. 

The next question is what are they talking about but we will have to return to that later.