Muslim-Buddhist Synthesis

In Poul Anderson's "A Message in Secret," Altaians profess a Moslem-Buddhist synthesis. When visiting a large, Cathedral-sized, Mosque in London, it occurred to me that Muslims and Buddhists would be able to practice in a single chamber simultaneously, Muslims standing, kneeling and prostrating on the floor towards the centre of the room whilst Buddhists sat around the sides of the room facing the wall. But this would be simultaneous practice, not theoretical synthesis. It could be done to economize on space. Unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

Catawrayannis Base

Dominic Flandry thinks that the humanly colonized planet Altai, out beyond the side of the Terran Empire that faces towards Betelgeuse, might become:

"A Merseian base here, in the buffer region, outflanking us at Catawrayannis...."

-Poul Anderson, "A Message in Secret" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 341-397 AT p. 344.

Well, no. The Catawrayannis that we know is a city on the planet, Llynathawyr, in Sector Alpha Crucis on the opposite side of the Terran Empire. Poul Anderson's galactographical references are usually consistent.

Later, Flandry says that the commandant at Catawrayannis Base will have to send a task force to Altai. But naval HQ in Sector Alpha Crucis is at Ifri whereas Llynathawyr is the seat of civil government.

However, there can be more than one place with the same name. Cynthians discovered Llynathawyr, named it and the city that they built, then sold them to the Terran Empire. Another Cynthian crew must have gone out towards Betelgeuse and founded a Catawrayannis out that way.

"Difficult things have simple explanations. Discuss," as a school English teacher once told me.

Life In The Time Patrol

Imagine that you work in the London office of a large European organization. The office might have existed for decades before your arrival in it. It may be that you will be based in that single office for an entire working life of several decades and that the office will continue to exist for an even longer period after you have either retired or died. But you do not know any of that for certain in advance.

Now compare Poul Anderson's Time Patrol. First, Patrol agents live for indefinitely prolonged lifespans - like the whole human population of an interstellar civilization in Anderson's World Without Stars. Secondly, for the period, 1850-2000, the Patrol has only three main offices which all exist 1890-1910, communicating with sub-offices either by small message shuttles or by physical visits. It follows first that an agent could spend a very small part of his working life in any one of those three main offices - or even in all three although paradoxes like meeting yourself or knowing your own personal future are avoided - and secondly that someone somewhen has records of all the business conducted in all three offices. If an agent is recruited in the mid-twentieth century and sent to start work in 1890, then someone at the time of his recruitment can have records of all the Patrol business conducted in that office for the entire period of its existence and also of all Patrol movements back and forth through time in the longer period, 1850-2000. This is strange to say the least and makes life in the Time Patrol qualitatively different from any other human experience. Manse Everard says at one point that they always have problems to deal with but there is no "always." There is a perspective from which all the work of the Patrol has been completed and Everard as a recruit or trainee might meet someone who has that perspective.

The Beginning Of A Future History

 

In Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate (1978), the first four stories are:

"Wings of Victory" (1972)

"The Problem of Pain" (1973)

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

"Margin of Profit" (1956)

In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I (2009), the first five stories are:

"The Saturn Game" (1981)

"Wings of Victory"

"The Problem of Pain"

"Margin of Profit"

"How To Be Ethnic..."

Saga,Vol I, is a revised Earth Book. These few stories are a miniature future history series. "The Saturn Game" states that it is set in the mid-twenty-first century. Sandra Miesel's Chronology places "Wings..." in 2150, "The Problem..." in the twenty-fourth century and the remaining two stories in 2416. These last two are contemporaneous and can be read in either order. In "Wings...," a Grand Survey ship discovers Ythri and "The Problem..." refers to this discovery. This is already a future history series before the first mention of the League. The Ythrians provide historical continuity.

Later And Earlier

When reading a fictional series, we sometimes know that an event has happened earlier in the characters' lives, then appreciate reading a later written account of that event. Holmes tells Watson and thus us about his first case...

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, "The Trouble Twisters" (1965) tells us that Adzel as a student sang Fafnir and paraded at Chinese New Year. "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" (1974) tells us how that had happened. In "Wingless" (1973) Nat Falkayn's father is called Nicholas. In Mirkheim (1977):

"Nicholas Falkayn was born in his great-grandfather's mansion..."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XVIII, p. 247.

There is an aesthetic satisfaction in watching the pieces of the narrative fitting together.

In The People Of The Wind (1973), Philippe Rochefort is a Jerusalem Catholic. In "The Saturn Game" (1981), Jean Broberg was brought up as a Jerusalem Catholic. This might not seem significant until we remember that Rochefort lives several centuries in our future whereas Broberg was brought up in the early twenty-first century! Suddenly, future changes, which will affect Christian denominations as well as everything else, are not remote but here and now. We are going somewhere if not into the Technic History.

Companion Volumes And A Sequel Of Prequels

Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, a novel, and his The Earth Book Of Stormgate, an omnibus collection, are companion volumes. Hloch's fictional introduction to the Earth Book, referring to places and institutions on Avalon and to the effects of the Terran War, is a direct continuation from the text of the novel. After that war, Hloch had visited Imperial planets as a member of a merchant crew before returning to Avalon. Thus, a certain amount of time has elapsed. Hloch's twelve introductions and single afterword constitute a sequel to The People Of The Wind. However, the twelve works that Hloch introduces are all set earlier than that novel. Thus, the Earth Book is a sequel of prequels. It carries its readers a short distance forward in time but also fills in a considerable amount of the Technic History's fictional past.

First, Hloch, an Ythrian, introduces two human accounts of early contact with Ythrians. This is how it all began, as it were. Secondly, we are surprised and pleased to encounter familiar characters from the Polesotechnic League, having already read their swan song in the earlier novel, Mirkheim. Finally, two accounts of the human-Ythrian colonization of Avalon bring us as close as possible to the situation that had existed at the beginning of The People Of The Wind - although the Terran Empire still has to be founded and to grow before the plot of the novel can take off!

We read about Falkayns and a Holm on Avalon: ancestors of characters in the novel. At last, there is a sense of completion - although there are still another ten volumes in the Technic History!

Life And Time

Because fiction reflects life, novels and fictional series often show the passage of time in the lives of their characters. One short story by Poul Anderson even begins:

"Once upon a time..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), pp. 115-159 AT p. 116.

The unnamed first person narrator refers not to a fairytale past but to his own earlier life which, he adds:

"...was long ago..." (ibid.)

Since then, his friend of that time, Harry Stenvik, has accepted domesticity, built a house above a fjord and:

"...raised mastiffs and sons." (p. 117)

Stenvik's oldest son, Per, has recently become a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League. Thus, a generation has passed since that "Once upon a time..."

Years have also elapsed for Per's ensign:

"'Manuel Felipe Gomez y Palomares of Nuevo Mexico...'" (p. 118)

- who says:

"'I thought of home and of one Dolores whom I had known, a long time ago.'" (p. 143)

Every adult, even a younger man in a junior post, has a personal past. Manuel had:

"'...traveled in space as a mercenary with Roger's Rovers, becoming sergeant before I left them for [van Rijn's] service.'" (p. 142)

None of this is any previous instalments but it is as solid as the fictional biographies of the several continuing characters. A few sentences or a single paragraph can add immense substance to a future history series. For example, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" ends when its first person narrator, James Ching, is offered a Polesotechnic League apprenticeship. However, additional material in The Earth Book Of Stormgate discloses that Ching kept a journal throughout his spacefaring career and that he settled down in Catawrayannis. "Esau" ends when Emil Dalmady enters entrepreneurship training sponsored by Nicholas van Rijn. However, additional material in the Earth Book discloses that Dalmady's later career was successful, that some of his children went to Avalon with Falkayn and that one of them, Judith wrote, in her old age, about Falkayn's grandson in his youth! - an unexpected behind the scenes link between Dalmady's story, "Esau," and Nat Falkayn's story, "Wingless."

Despite its "Once upon a time..." opening, "The Master Key" ends not with "And they all lived happily ever after..." but with the characters preparing to return to their dangerous careers and with van Rijn pouring scorn on the unadventurous bulk of mankind - whose lives and work maintain Technic civilization. (That last clause is my editorial comment.)

The New Faith And Others

Referring to the immediately preceding post, Christopher Holm became Arinnian by joining Stormgate Choth and later married Tabitha Falkayn, a direct descendant of David Falkayn, who is also Hrill of Highsky Choth, most of whose members, according to Hrill, are of the Old Faith. If we are reading Poul Anderson's Technic History in chronological order of fictional events, then we remember that a conflict between Christian and New Faith attitudes to death and dying was the crux of Peter Berg's narrative in the earlier story, "The Problem of Pain." My point, as ever, is how rich, detailed and interconnected the Technic History is. Any summary has to be revised more than once to include every internal connection.

Here we can contemplate three galactic monotheisms:

Ythrians of the New Faith see the shadow of God the Hunter across the future;

Peter Berg's church had concluded that Jesus came only to humanity whereas the Jerusalem Catholic Church ordained the Wodenite Axor who seeks for evidence of an extraterrestrial Incarnation;

Merseians of the Roidhunate believed that "the God" had intended galactic hegemony for their race.

Three paradoxically incompatible monotheisms.

If Merseians are as diverse as human beings, then their failure to conquer the galaxy will have multiple consequences. Some will become secularists whereas others might convert to the New Faith or to a Terrestrial religion. Among Wodenites, although Axor became a Christian, Adzel had embraced Mahayana Buddhism.

The galaxy sounds like London or Birmingham. (In Birmingham, there were Christian, Muslim and Krishnaist propagandists on the streets. On visiting the Buddhist Centre, I recognized a Sikh messenger coming out as I went in and was told that people brought up in Jewish and other traditions came to inquire about alternatives.)

Many Informants

What a wealth of fictional historical informants in recent posts:

Minamoto

Hloch

Vance Hall

Noah Arkwright

Urwain

Le Matelot

- but there are many more such Technic Historians, e.g.:

an unnamed narrator is present when van Rijn solves the problem of the planet Cain which is recounted to him by the narrator's friend's son and the son's ensign;

Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society, introduces Admiral John Henry Reeves' account of Manuel Argos, Founder of the Terran Empire.

The following examples are all in Hloch's Earth Book Of Stormgate:

Maeve Downey's autobiography, Far Adventure, describes Aram Turekian's discovery on Ythri;

Peter Berg meets an unnamed narrator/letter writer on Lucifer and confides in him about his experience with Ythrians on Gray/Avalon;

James Ching's journal includes an early account of Adzel;

two chapters of AA Craig's Tales Of The Great Frontier inform us about van Rijn on Earth and in space and about Jack Birnam on Avalon;

three of Judith Dalmady/Lundgren's stories originally published in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana, inform us about her father's interview with his employer, van Rijn, concerning his work on Suleiman, about Falkayn's grandson's experience with Ythrians on Avaloin and about other merchants on Ivanhoe;

a historical novelist describes van Rijn's struggle to survive on Diomedes;

three narratives specially written for the Earth Book by Christopher Holm/Arinnian, including one co-written by Hloch, inform us about van Rijn's first trader team (Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan) on Merseia and Tametha, about van Rijn and the team at Mirkheim and about unscrupulous traders on Trillia and Paradox.

Introductions IV

(IX) The "Margin of Profit" extract used to introduce "Territory" expounds the technological and economic underpinnings of the Polesotechnic League:

automation means cheap manufacturing;

the proton converter means cheap energy;

gravity control and quantum hyperdrive make the Polesotechnic League "...a supergovernment, sprawling from Canopus to Polaris..." - Poul Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), p. 54 - with a trans-political, trans-cultural, multi-species membership spreading a universal civilization and a lasting peace.

(X) The Shelley verse:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,

"Fraught with a later prize;

"Another Orpheus sings again,

"And loves, and weeps, and dies.

"A new Ulysses leaves one more

"Calypso for his native shore." (ibid., p. 115)

- is symbolic. A spaceship is an Argo. Profits are a later prize. Merchant princes are potential mythic/epic figures - although Anderson's closest approach to Orpheus, Hugh Valland, is in a different fictional future, World Without Stars.

The narratives confirm that the League is multi-species. Van Rijn has an alien secretary. Even on Earth, a merchants' conference includes a Martian and a Centaurian. On the planet Vanessa, a Jaleelan factor with a Kraokan liaison officer sits beneath the League emblem with the motto, "All The Traffic Will Bear," (written in old English or contemporary Anglic?) and converses in League Latin ("ad fortunam tuam") with the Hermetain David Falkayn. Later the factor even says, "'...some of my best friends are human!'" - Poul Anderson, "A Sun Invisible" IN Anderson, The Trouble Twisters (New York, 1967), pp. 55-93 AT p. 85 (Latin phrase, p. 67).

Finding ourselves to be only one intelligent species among many will be a bigger experiential threshold than the isolation of interplanetary travel. In fact, the opening story, "The Saturn Game," is the only Technic History instalment that involves no alien contact. Although the second story, "Wings of Victory," recounts human first contact with Ythri, the xenologist in the crew has in his youth studied Cynthians and also knows of Woden.

Human beings often coexist with elves, orcs etc in fantasy and with extraterrestrials in sf. When Falkayn reflects that is own species is among the most predatory in the universe, this is not necessarily a serious extrapolation but is an auctorial comment on humanity.