New Narratives And Multiple Generations

SM Stirling's The Sunrise Lands ends with betrayals and mysteries so what can we do but read the next volume which should arrive soon but meanwhile I am reading for the first time Poul Anderson's second Trygve Yamamura novel which is an interesting text because, as far as I have read into Chapter 2, Yamamura has been on-stage briefly but not yet as the viewpoint character.

How many generations of Emberversers will Stirling show us? Anderson condenses five generations of Goths into "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth." See here and here. In Anderson's Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn's granddaughter marries David Falkayn and their grandson is the central character of one short story. That is also five generations. We want to learn more about van Rijn's and Falkayn's descendants and in fact we do meet one later direct descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, who, despite her human ancestry, is adopted and raised by Ythrians and identifies herself as "Ythrian" when the Domain is at war with Terra.

The Emberverse, Yamamura, the Time Patrol and the Technic History are four very different and fascinating fictional series. I am still reading the first and second and rereading the third and fourth.

"De Mortuis..."

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
-Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, ebook, Chapter 2.

We have quoted so much Latin that I thought that another aphorism would be appropriate. This one is particularly appropriate in a detective novel. A man has been killed. A man who had argued with him says, "Speak no ill of the dead..." I don't agree with that. If I called a man dishonest or corrupt before he died, then I will continue to call him it after his death.

Would it be possible to find relevant Latin, Biblical and Shakespearean quotations as headings for every chapter in a novel? In Dante's Purgatory, not having heard of Shakespeare, they illustrate every moral point with a story from the Classics, the Old Testament and the New Testament, respectively. Earlier literature enriches later.

The top image shows Berkeley, the setting of the novel. Our small sf group meets tonight in the Gregson Centre. See second image and here.

Introducing "Trig"

You know where you are with a series, sort of. Starting to read Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter, I know in advance that it is the second of three mystery novels about the detective, Trygve Yamamura, and that I have already read the first and third installments. Thus, I do not expect any surprises. Yamamura will solve a murder. He will not marry, age, retire, die or experience any major life change. All of these things can happen to a continuing character and his series becomes more interesting when they do but they are not going to happen here. It is like watching an episode of a TV series.

I am reading the novel as an ebook and must continually alternate my screen between the text and the blog. That makes this a different kind of experience, visually. The text does not begin with Yamamura as its viewpoint character. The point-of-view character, Kintyre, is fencing with a man of whom we quickly learn that:

his surname is "Yamamura";
he is a private detective;
Kintyre addresses him as "Trig";
his first name is "Trygve";
he is tall, thin and of partly Oriental ancestry;
he prefers Japanese swords;
he smokes a pipe;
he has recently left the Berkeley police force to start his agency.

We stay with Kintyre when he and Yamamura part company but obviously more is going to happen.

Song Of The Earth

What patterns would we discern if we were able to perceive the world on a vaster scale? Lacking enhanced perceptions, we can instead consult the imaginations of a few creative writers and end with a question about a Poul Anderson character.

SM Stirling's Rudi Mackenzie has religious experiences on battlefields. He hears:

"...part of the song the worlds sang."
-SM Stirling, The Sunrise Lands (New York, 2008), Chapter Twenty, p. 493.

Elliot S. Maggin's Superman: Miracle Monday (Caveat Corner Books, 2017), Chapter 16, "Song Of The Earth," describes how the world sounds to someone with super-hearing.

CS Lewis' Elwin Ransom thinks that he sees the Great Dance. Somewhere (I think) James Blish's Jack Loftus hears radio noise as the music of the spheres.

Question: does Poul Anderson's universal telepath, Aycharaych, tell us how he senses the universe?

Aycharaych

I have been thinking about Poul Anderson's universal telepath, Aycharaych, but it gets complicated.

Our Experience
When I overhear a conversation in English, perhaps three processes occur with at least apparent simultaneity:

(i) my ears detect sounds;
(ii) my brain processes data;
(iii) I understand the spoken words.

I know that (ii) can occur without (iii) because I had a dream caused by a ringing telephone.

When I overhear a conversation in Russian or Chinese:

(i) occurs;
some parts of (ii) can occur, e.g., I might recognize the language or remember some of the sounds;
(iii) cannot happen.

A microphone can do (i). A computer program can analyze sounds, speech patterns and linguistic structures but cannot generate semiconscious dreams or conscious perceptions. Thus, the kind of data-processing in (ii) requires an organic brain capable of consciousness and intelligence. (iii) requires actual consciousness and intelligence.

Aycharaych's Experience
His brain (i) detects and (ii) processes radiation from other nearby brains. Probably a sufficiently sensitive scientific instrument would be able to detect and process cerebral radiations but would not thereby become conscious - unless, of course, the instrument were also an AI that duplicated all of Aycharaych's brain functions. Aycharaych also (iii) immediately understands the thoughts that are associated with the radiations that he has detected. That sounds like the equivalent of me instantly understanding any language even if I had never learned it or even heard it before. Surely impossible?

A Rule Of Thumb

There is a rule of thumb in sf but it can be broken. The rule is "save the appearances." What do I mean by that phrase in this context?

A premise of much sf is technological and social change. The future will be unlike the past and present. New things will happen in the future and the future begins tomorrow. Tomorrow, a large interstellar spaceship might enter the Solar System, approach the Earth and hover above the UN building. But, if there are ETs already here, then they are concealed or disguised. Thus, the appearances are saved. There has to be a sufficient explanation of why history went as it did and why the present is as it is even if tomorrow everything will be different.

Thus:

the Cavorite sphere was lost;
the Time Traveller never returned;
the Martians will arrive tomorrow - even though, in this case, we read an account of their invasion after the event;
in various works by Poul Anderson, aliens, immortals and time travellers are concealed among us now.

It goes without saying that immortals or time travellers conceal themselves. We do not know anything about them, do we?

But how can the rule of thumb be broken? First, the story can be set in an alternative present - and Poul Anderson did this also. His goetic timeline will not diverge from ours tomorrow because it has already diverged earlier when Einstein and Planck cooperated on rheatics instead of independently originating relativity and quantum theory, respectively.

Secondly, much superhero fiction maintains the pretence that political and economic structures, even including the identities of current post holders in high office, would be able to remain unchanged despite the public presence of a host of superhuman beings whose mere existence should change everything utterly. Thus, their timeline is the same as ours except that superhuman beings appear in newspaper photographs instead of in comic strips.

Alan Moore showed twice that superhero fiction can only be set in a genuinely alternative timeline:

the US wins in Vietnam if it has a superhero;
the Warpsmiths teleport weapons of mass destruction into the Sun.

And, in the goetic timeline, World War II was fought against a Caliphate and with magic. Poul Anderson worked only in prose, not in a visual medium, but his ideas were at least as fantastic as anyone else's.

Feel Good

OK. I have finished reading a superhero novel and am back to reading straight sf, to be followed by Poul Anderson's detective fiction. However, there is something that might be of interest to Poul Anderson Appreciation readers. Anderson wrote fantasy and sf. Superhero fiction combines these genres. Thus, in Elliot S. Maggin's Superman: Miracle Monday, Kristin Wells travels by technological means from the twenty ninth century, then, after arriving in the twentieth century, is possessed by a demon from Hell! Anderson, like most writers of imaginative fiction, keeps technological time travel in one genre and demons in another.

The outcome of the temptation of Superman has theological implications that prompted me to compare it with the New Testament and Paradise Regained. See here. Miracle Monday is a feel good book that everyone deserves to know about.

A Route Through The Blogverse

Here, we compared passages in works of prose fiction by Poul Anderson, CS Lewis, James Blish and SM Stirling.

Here, we added a comparison with a work of graphic fiction by Alan Moore.

Here, we compared this work by Moore with a prose novel about graphic fiction characters by Elliot S. Maggin.

Maggin's novel was written to coincide with this feature film but otherwise is independent of it.

Here, I speculated about Poul Anderson writing a scientifically rationalized Superman novel with an otherwise real-world setting.

That is five previous posts, proceeding from Anderson to Anderson via Lewis, Blish, Stirling, Moore, Maggin, Superman, two blogs and three media.

The present agenda is:

to finish reading Miracle Monday;
to finish reading The Sunrise Lands;
to start reading Murder In Black Letter.

Demonic Possession

Does Poul Anderson describe a demonic possession anywhere? I might have forgotten and have not read all his short stories. He does use various standard fantasy threats in some works, e.g., here.

Is Poul and Karen Anderson's Dahut possessed? Surely some of her behaviour suggests this? See here and here.

I ask about possessions because I am currently reading about one in Miracle Monday. In the Inferno, Dante meets the soul of a guy who is still alive on Earth. The explanation is demonic possession. We have referred to a possession in CS Lewis' Perelandra and to another in Garth Ennis'
Royal Blood.

In real life, some people either are possessed or imagine that they are with comparable results.

The Devil Speaks III

See The Devil Speaks II.

Since then, I have read about Asmodeus in Alan Moore's Jerusalem (see here) and am currently reading Elliot S. Maggin's Superman: Miracle Monday in which Samael sends the curiously named demon, C.W. Saturn, to destroy Superman, not physically but morally.

It was because the Adversary had spoken in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos that we listed these other cases of the Devil speaking in literature and fiction.

We have also listed human villains. Stirling's are the most evil, I think. Anderson's Aycharaych and Merau Varagan are (a) different from each other and (b) both psychologically interesting. There are many versions of Lex Luthor. Maggin's version has to express himself in ingenious, elaborate, expensive, flamboyant deceptions. His motivation does not seem to be evil and I do not expect him to seek common cause with C.W. Saturn but what do I know of the mind of a villain?

As Hamlet said:

"One may smile and smile and be a villain..." (see here)