Magia And Goeteia

OK. I have found a direct linguistic link between Poul Anderson and CS Lewis. Lewis' evil scientists/magicians:

"'...thought the old magia of Merlin, which worked in with the spiritual qualities of Nature, loving them and knowing them and reverencing them from within, could be combined with the new goeteia - the brutal surgery from without.'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 13, 4, p. 648.

Anderson, following Robert Heinlein's Magic, Inc., presents magic as technology in Operation Chaos but switches to the terminology of "goetics" in the sequel, Operation Luna. 

Anderson treats Christian characters sympathetically. Lewis imaginatively re-presents Christianity three times:

The Narnia Chronicles

The Ransom ("Cosmic") Trilogy

The Great Divorce

Read Anderson and Lewis.

Famagusta Waterfront

Rogue Sword, CHAPTER XVI. 

At the crossroads of three continents:

Smells

paint

tar

sandalwood

cinnamon

spikenard

pepper

ginger

baled silks

barreled wines

barreled dyes

sour smell of slaves drowning spices

Ships

galleys

cogs

dromonds

dhows

feluccas

Men

Iberians

Italians

Frenchmen

Germans

Flemings

Englishmen

Moors

Armenians

Syrians

Turks

Tartars

Indians

a Cypriote labourer

a Frankish baron

slaves

Another Andersonian list-description.

Lucas In Cyprus

Rogue Sword.

In CHAPTER XIV, Lucas, pursued by horsemen with hounds, persuades a young woman to conceal him in her hut. Between chapters, she and he sail to Cyprus where he leaves her in a convent. In CHAPTER XV, he travels and converses with Cypriotes and finds his way to his old friend, Brother Hugh de Tourneville, the Knight Companion to the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers.

Historical and geographical references abound:

the Troodos Mountains

Limasol

Lusignan

the Dodecanese

the Aegean Sea

Kyrenia

Famagusta

Knights Templar

Nicosia

Local update: Sheila and Aileen, wife and daughter, have gone to a flower show in Southport; I am typing this, have just had Jehovah's Witnesses at the door and will shortly go to a gym after a gap.

Maybe back here later.

Alternative Futures

Rogue Sword, CHAPTER XV.

When Lucas escapes, goes elsewhere and interacts with other characters, the narrative moves quickly and again is filled with historical and geographical references, more of these than we can cope with this evening although we expect that we will soon return to them.

It is a commonplace that the early part of a future history series is soon contradicted by our advancing reality although this has not yet happened to Poul Anderson's Technic History and will never happen to his Genesis. We sometimes compare Anderson's several future histories to each other and also to those of other authors including, for obvious reasons, Robert Heinlein.

Another possible comparison is with CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength which is not a future history but is nevertheless relevant to this discussion because it addresses conflicting visions of the future of mankind and is Lewis' reply to Wells' and Stapledon's single-volume future histories. Published in 1945 and set vaguely after the war, Lewis' novel describes a crisis that did not occur in post-war Britain. Thus, it soon became an alternative history. The fictional crisis occurred in a fictional town and university so that not only the history but also the geography is alternative. I would like to read a sequel set in that timeline but that is not going to happen. It has just occurred to me to wonder whether the political crisis in That Hideous Strength is the sort of thing that Lewis might have expected from a post-war Labour government.

The attempted scientific control of society is also relevant to Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Inquisition

Rogue Sword, CHAPTERs XIII-XIV.

Lucas is arrested for witchcraft in the name of the King and on behalf of the Inquisition. His unbaptized slave has practiced innocent magic and his estranged mistress has fabricated evidence. He once saw a man racked. He is in danger of being burned. He orders the slave to confess to anything to avoid torture. A Dominican represents the Inquisition here as in the alpha timeline in The Shield Of Time.

We, or at least I, can only say what a dreadful regime and how good it is that it is now centuries in the past.  

Growth And Completion

See The Technic History And Lancaster.

Any appearance of system is of course only an appearance. Poul Anderson did not set out to write specific numbers of instalments set in successive periods of a pre-planned future history series. However, now that an organically grown series is complete, readers are able to analyze its 43 instalments as follows:

1 about interplanetary exploration

1 about first contact with Ythri

1 about Ythrian-human exploration of Gray/Avalon

1 about Adzel as a student

6 about van Rijn without any other continuing characters

2 about Falkayn before he led van Rijn's first trader team

2 about that trader team (1 introducing Merseia)

3 about van Rijn and the team

2 about other League merchants

1 about Falkayn-led human-Ythrian colonization of Avalonian islands

1 about their colonization of a continent

1 about the post-League Troubles

1 about the early Terran Empire

1 about Avalon against the Empire

3 about young Flandry defending the Empire against Merseia

2 other Imperial instalments

8 Captain Flandry instalments

2 "Admiral Flandry" novels

1 about the post-Imperial Long Night

3 about later interstellar civilizations

The series grew to completion. A summary omits many inter-connections but regular readers know what they are.

The Technic History And Lancaster

When I see pigeons land beside the statue of Queen Victoria in our Dalton Square, I think of Ythrians.

When I see Sikhs in Lancaster, I think of Commander Ranjit Singh who assumes command of a disabled spaceship and orders Ensign Flandry to man the gun in Section Four in Ensign Flandry.

I used to think of ways to revise The Technic Civilization Saga but now I more or less accept the way that its volumes are organized, particularly Volume IV-VII:

IV: the three Young Flandry novels;

V: 2 non-Flandry instalments + the 1st 4 Captain Flandry instalments;

VI: the 2nd 4 Captain Flandry instalments;

VII: 2 "Admiral Flandry" novels + 4 post-Imperial instalments.

Very systematic.

Writing Dulled Colour, I had to check the spelling of Mark Studdock's surname in CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength. Now I am rereading Lewis. Regular blog readers know that "Other Reading" is a feature of evenings here.

Addendum: Seeing a Sikh man seated in Dalton Square, I asked him to remind me of the five signs or "K"'s of Sikhism because I could only remember four. He had to look up the fifth on his phone!

Lucas And The Wind

Rogue Sword, CHAPTER XIII.

The wind plays an active role for a few pages.

"The draperies rippled. Outside, a noisy wind chased clouds across the sun and away again." (p. 189)

Noisy wind echoes human uproar:

"The next several weeks roared."

-Chapter XI, p. 158.

Such uproar brings rapid changes - bad, then good; darkness, then light - alternating quickly. This continues:

"Lucas wandered among trees that tossed and soughed in the great streaming wind. Light and shadow fled across the world." (p. 189)

Djansha's voice is timid, scarcely audible through "...the gusty air." (ibid.) Wind snatches petals from roses behind her and flaps her skirt, revealing her ankles. Dead leaves whirl. Shadows rush along the Boca Daner, a stretch of water. When Lucas promises to provide Djansha's dowry:

"'The gale alone answered him.'" (p. 191)

His heartbeat outshouts the wind. 

The wind is a constant background with everything else measured against it.

Dulled Colour

CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength could be subtitled "The Salvation of the Soul of Mark Studdock." The future of mankind on Earth is decided and, at the same time, one viewpoint character comes to see that his whole life so far has been wasted in superficial self-seeking.

A similar process seems to be occurring in Poul Anderson's character, Lucas Greco:

"Was the possession of certain bricks and roofs worth so much death?

"What is it, thought Lucas, that forever dulls the color of my finest moments and draws gargoyles among all my lions?"

-Rogue Sword, Chapter XII, p. 181.

Lucas is successful in a worldly sense and yet at the same time sees through his success. Why is it that some of us perceive more deeply whereas others do not?

Living History

Anderson's Technic History is such a living future history series that we, editorially speaking, find it possible to reflect on its contents and to write about them almost indefinitely. It always seems to be new and fresh. Volumes I-III are less than half of the total but are denser in content because the career of a single individual, Dominic Flandry, is more prominent in Volumes IV-VII. Volume I alone gives us van Rijn, Falkayn, Adzel, other Polesotechnic League merchants and two stories about contact with Ythrians whereas Volume IV comprises just three novels about Young Flandry, not that readers complain.

Meanwhile, here at Blog Central, we reread past history in Anderson's Rogue Swords which includes quotations from the writings of Ramon Muntaner, a participant in the events and a character in the novel. As we already know, Anderson's works span past, future and alternative histories and even a place where people from different histories can meet: a God's eye view or the next best thing. Winston Churchill drinks in the Old Phoenix Inn and we recently saw a look alike at a Forties Festival. 

I did not expect to begin this post with the Technic History and to end it with Churchill.

The Imperial Stars has the same contents as Young Flandry but a better cover.