The Gods Here And Now

See Jotuns.

"'Has not the king called on the gods?' asked Hadding.
"'Indeed he has, again and again, with mighty offerings,' Ivar said. 'Nothing has come of it. No wizard, no spaewife, no dream has been able to tell anybody why Thor won't make an end of this monster.'"
-Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), XVIII, p. 152.

We imagine a time when the gods sometimes intervened. Such historical fantasies can have two possible sequels.

First, works like:

The Ring Of The Nibelung by Richard Wagner;
The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien;
The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson;
"The Magic Goes Away" by Larry Niven -

- explain that supernatural beings have withdrawn, giving way to the present age of men. That is plausible and fits the facts.

Another possible sequel would be an alternative present in which the gods still intervene, e.g., maybe the Germans did attempt to invade Britain but their fleet was sunk by Aegir or Poseidon? As it is, if the gods are still around, then they no longer intervene publicly. (See Gods Stories.)

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, authentic versions of Odin and Thor, and of all the others, still operate but behind the scenes whereas, in Mark Millar's The Ultimates, a modernized, hippified Thor intervenes openly. See here.

How do Terrestrial gods cope with an interstellar setting? Not very well. They are too Terrocentric.

Creative imagination encompasses every conceivable option and Poul Anderson's works cover a lot of them.

Endgame

Murder In Black Letter by Poul Anderson.

Chapter 15 ends when Yamamura asks Kintyre, "'Who is our man?'" Chapter 16 begins when Kintyre tells him. Yamamura, surprised, almost drops his pipe. Kintyre explains his reasoning. This is definitely a "Robert Kintyre, Amateur Detective" novel, not a "Trygve Yamamura, Private Detective" novel.

There are twenty chapters. Is the rest of the narrative just the tracking down of the now identified master villain? I remember that there is a culminating chase sequence represented by the cover illustration.

I will continue to reread because I always find other interesting details in Anderson's texts.

Two Details In Murder In Black Letter

I ask not, "What does 'East Lynne' mean?' but why does Guido say:

"Next week, East Lynne."
-copied from 15, here.

Despite Yamamura being back on stage, Kintyre continues to do all the detective work:

What else was there? Some information on crime in the Mediterranean countries. And—God help us!"
The table went over with a crash as Kintyre stood up. It was not himself who screamed: "Margery! She's next in line!"
-copied from 16, here.

This is a moment of realization and Margery has been found with her throat cut at the end of Chapter 16. Four chapters left and I expect to find something of interest in each of them.

A Proverb Hidden In The Prose

that was the chance she took, but chance had a way of favoring those who acted boldly
-copied from 15, here.

See also the Latin proverb, here.

Andrea is a pagan whose deity is Fortuna. Apparently, a priestess kept the Roman temple of Fortuna clean and tidy but no prayers were offered there because fortune must be respected and cannot be entreated. I agree that chance governs life.

Deodand

"And until we can identify the one who hired the killers—the real murderer; the others are only a deodand—he's free to murder someone else."
-copied from 14, here.

The first time I read this novel, I must have just skipped past its unusual words. A deodand? (Which my lap top does not recognize.)

Is the term really applicable as Kintyre uses it? We have only six chapters left and Kintyre remains the viewpoint character although Yamamura is back on stage and, it turns out, has been investigative even while off stage. Someone holds them at gunpoint when they leave the Alley Cat at the end of Chapter 14. My excitement has not reached a crescendo. But I expect to find plenty of interesting words and phrases in Chapters 15-20. However, I had better not read any more of this text tonight.

Today, we attended an Apple Festival at a local Community Association. Tomorrow, we might visit some interesting buildings open for the Heritage Festival. We celebrate the countryside and history and will eat at Aileen's and Yossi's place tomorrow evening. (We also celebrate family.)

Fear And Counter-Fear

Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, 14.


Yamamura and two companions question a man who is afraid to divulge what he knows about armed criminals. Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander interrogates a man in exactly this situation. Lisbeth's technique is to make the man more afraid of him. He stands upright with a noose around his neck. If she paralyses him with a taser, then his muscles will relax...

I must read on to learn how Yamamura fares with his potential informant. Consecutive blog readers might deduce that I am not gripped by this Yamaura novel. However, any text written by Poul Anderson deserves our attention. I always appreciate his style and literary techniques and pursue strange words and phrases as in some recent posts. In fact, I never know what to expect from his narratives as in life.

Received And Accepted Traditions

It is possible just to reflect on life while referring the reflections to Poul Anderson's works.

A man in a radio discussion of religious beliefs objected to the placing of emphasis on "traditions." He claimed that what mattered was that he believed something, not that his tradition taught it. I disagree. Tradition is central. He believes as he does either because he has been brought up in a particular tradition or because he has adopted a belief that has been transmitted to him by a tradition. Either way, there would be no belief without tradition.

We are familiar with a spiritual tradition either because we have been brought up in it or because we have come to it. Some of us do it both ways. Thus, I was educated in one tradition but now participate in a different one.

Coincidentally:

both traditions involve images, incense and offerings made on an altar - although the differences are greater than the similarities;

Poul Anderson's two Wodenite converts to Terrestrial traditions, Axor and Adzel, represent the two traditions in question.

Thus, if I were able to time travel along the Technic History timeline and to meet these characters, then I would want to:

discuss theology with Axor;
argue that his idea of the Universal Incarnation is similar to the Hindu idea of avatars;
suggest that his idea of the Ancients going beyond is similar to Buddhism;
meditate with Adzel.

Both these guys are converts. Once I asked an adult convert to Catholicism why she had converted. All that she said was, "The first time I went into a Catholic church, I felt as if I had come home, so I made inquiries about the Catholic Faith and realized that there was no turning back." I thought that this answer was inadequate but did not pursue the matter. The coming home feeling might be explained by reincarnation or rebirth, not that I accept either.

Any two babies could have been swapped at birth. Thus, someone who is now a Methodist would have been brought up as a Maoist and vice versa. The list is endless. Thus, everyone needs to ask:

Why am I so sure that the belief in which I happen to have been educated is the one true belief among so many errors?

Can I see that I would have converted to this belief if I had not been brought up in it?

If the answer to the second question above is "No," then why continue to accept the belief?

Science fiction shows us many beliefs in many periods in many worlds, thus emphasizing the relativity of belief. The immortals in Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years convert to Christianity when it is expedient but then outlive the gods.

Three-Time Losers

(There are many images for "three-time loser" so I chose the one that you see.)

O'Hearn carries a gun, and he's a three-time loser already, do you understand what that means? I've seen his gun!"
-copied from 14, here.

I did not understand "three-time loser." It is one of those American expressions. But I google everything in Poul Anderson's texts, although not always to post about.

I had encountered the term before and sought it out. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (London, 1986) presents much of its narrative through TV news reports:

"GOOD MORNING GOTHAM!
"...twelve killed in a mysterious explosion that leveled a bay ridge apartment building...the rescue team sighted Batman on the scene...
"...following her arrest order for the Batman, Commissioner Yindel filed a formal protest with the Media Council against the Joker's appearance on the David Endochrine Show...
"The Council denied her protest...the body of three-time loser Hector Mendez was found in an East Side alley. He had been literally skinned alive...
"The American Hostages Guild has declared a General Strike, in response to treatment of their members in the recent Libyan incident..."
-Book Three, "Hunt The Dark Knight," p. 13.

I found it odd that the news reader specified how many times Mr. Mendez had "lost."

Russian Eggs And More About Films

here come the appetizers. Pay special attention to the characteristically Dutch delicacy, Russian eggs, but don't ask me how they came by that name."
-copied from 13, here.

An unprofound post, serving only to increase our Food Thread by a single entry.

Perhaps there are three kinds of screen adaptations of novels:

nominal (only the name is the same);

authentic (I have cited examples before, see Other Reading and TV Dramatizations);

intermediate.

In the Swedish dramatizations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, every actor is perfect in his or her role, every character is authentic and the plots are recognizable from the books although many details differ unnecessarily, my point here of course being that I would want to see even better treatment accorded to Poul Anderson's works if they were to be filmed.

Dilemma

With limited time this evening, should I publish the 100th post for this month or rewatch The Girl Who Played With Fire? I am interested in the clever devices by which the makers of the films, having cut incidents from the plots of the novels, find different ways to bridge the resulting gaps. As a hypothetical example, suppose that someone filming Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows had cut Flandry's visit to the planet Diomedes, where he learned of Aycharaych's part in the conspiracy, but then introduced an extended conversation between Flandry and Kossara while still in space that yielded the same information?

My answer is that this should not be necessary. I want to see any novel adapted to screen not as a two or even three hour "feature film" but as an extended serial, long enough to leave nothing out.

Now to watch the dvd.