Family Histories

Thanks only to Hloch's Earth Book introductions, we learn how some Avalonian family histories intersect. A short story about David and Coya Falkayn's grandson, Nathaniel, in his youth is written by Emil Dalmady's daughter, Judith, in her old age - and had been published in Morgana long before its eventual inclusion in the Earth Book. Especially for the Earth Book, the stories of David Falkayn on Merseia and of Nicholas van Rijn at Mirkheim were jointly written by Hloch and Christopher Holm who had married Tabitha Falkayn. We infer that Daniel Holm and his son, Christopher, were descendants of the Ivar Holm who had been involved in the colonization of the Avalonian continent, Corona. Poul Anderson conveys much in a few passages and could have made the Technic History a much longer familial and historical saga. Belatedly, Mirkheim presents more background and personal information about the Falkayns, Tamarins and Runebergs back on Hermes and we are also shown three different generations of Kittridges from Vixen. Readers probably forget most of this information because it is so condensed. 

In The Flying Hold

"Lodestar."

A large hold in an Ythrian spaceship serves two purposes. Ythrians need it to fly around in and it is also:

"...the sole chamber aboard which could comfortably accommodate Adzel." (p. 365)

It is where Falkayn confronts van Rijn and where the latter realizes that his protege and his granddaughter are becoming a couple. While van Rijn looks at Falkayn and Coya:

"...upon him were the eyes of Adzel, Chee, and Hirharouk the sky dweller." (p. 367)

It is fitting that an Ythrian also is present. Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan are van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew. Coya is his granddaughter. Hirharouk is the Ythrian of Wryfields Choth whose spaceship has brought van Rijn and Coya to Eka-World/Lodestar/Mirkheim where they meet Falkayn and the others. A tense confrontation is followed by an agreement. Hloch refers to "David and Coya Conyon/Falkayn..." (p. 368) in his next interstitial passage and, two pages after that, David Falkayn is referred to as a grandfather! Fictional biographies are merging back into future history. We regret the passage of the characters but not yet the end of the Technic History.

Ythrians And Wodenites

"Lodestar."

Just within The Earth Book Of Stormgate alone, we have already encountered Ythrians in "Wings of Victory" and "The Problem of Pain" and one Wodenite, Adzel, in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," "Day of Burning" and earlier in "Lodestar." Therefore, it means something to us when we read that Hirharouk, an Ythrian:

"...matched pride against Nadi's patience..." (p. 363)

- Nadi being a newly introduced Wodenite. Trekkies know what Vulcans and Klingons are like. Poul Anderson's readers know what Ythrians, Wodenites, Cynthians and Merseians are like.

Hloch's introduction to "How To Be Ethnic..." informs his readers that this story:

"...makes the first mention known to Hloch of a being who was to take a significant part in later history."

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70 AT p. 55.

The text of the story opens:

"Adzel..." (p. 56)

- which is the name of that "being." Later in the Earth Book, we see Adzel taking a significant part in history on Merseia and at Mirkheim. If we read "How To Be Ethnic..." not as the fifth story in the first volume of The Technic Civilization Saga but as collected in the Earth Book and after the previous Technic History volumes, then we have already seen Adzel in action alongside a Hermetian and a Cynthian in Nicholas van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew. In that case, the name is already of considerable significance and it is a pleasure to re-encounter this character in a different context.

Planha And Anglic

"Lodestar."

"'Iyan wherill-ll cha quellan.'" (p. 359)

- a single scant sentence in Planha. Van Rijn understands. Coya does not. Hiraharouk does not translate but responds and then relates that three spacecraft are approaching from the supermetals planet and also that they outgun his ship. Coya's concern is not just that there might be conflict but that it might be against David Falkayn who maybe has reached this "lodestar" ahead of van Rijn. 

In any film dramatization, we should hear Planha dialogue either with subtitles or with enough of it translated for Coya by Hirharouk or van Rijn.

One of my regrets is that I am not multilingual. 

Meanwhile, back in Lancaster, I will finish breakfast and walk by the river to the gym.

Back here later. 

Wealthy Trolls

"Lodestar."

Somewhere recently I read that a fictional character was as wealthy as a troll. Was it Lizbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy? (I think so.) In any case, having just found Nicholas van Rijn described as "...troll-burly, tugging his beard..." (p. 358) immediately after Coya Conyon has discoursed on the wealth to be found on the surface of the planet Mirkheim (not named yet), I searched this blog and found a troll's face on Mirkheim. Poul Anderson knew what he was doing when he linked trolls and wealth in this way. 

Coya explains:

a supernova explosion floods out astronomical quantities of neutrinos, particles and quanta at every energy level;

the very small percentage of supermetals scatters thinly and is effectively lost;

however, the planet Mirkheim captured a minute fraction of these supermetals amounting to billions of tons, easily extractable or even pure, and more than Technic civilization can ever consume;

"'It took a genius to think this might be!'" (p. 358)

It is when she makes this concluding remark that she becomes aware of van Rijn's eyes on her and he stands like a burly troll. He has thought that this might be but does he suspect that she speaks of someone else who might have been here before him?

Coya Between Van Rijn And Hirharouk

"Lodestar."

"Standing on the command bridge between [van Rijn] and Hirharouk, Coya stared at the meters and displays filling an entire bulkhead..." (p. 355)

Imagine what that scene would look like on screen:

Coya tall and slender;

van Rijn taller, broad and corpulent; 

Captain Hirharouk 150 centimeters tall, standing on his wings, covered in feathers but with a mouth, not a beak;

in front of them, screens covering an entire inner wall of the Ythrian spaceship.

Hirharouk should speak Planha when he issues orders. 

The Technic History should be filmed and should be filmed well, to surpass Star Trek, Babylon 5 etc. Every single visual and auditory detail matters and should be rendered accurately.

Reasons

"Lodestar."

Van Rijn says that, as young people become more prudish, governments and companies become more brutish. Coya replies:

"'The second is part of the reason for the first.'" (p. 353)

Only part? That qualification acknowledges complexity. Poul Anderson shows us conflicting opinions in a changing society. Readers need not agree fully with either character. We know that societies change for complicated reasons and that protagonists disagree about the reasons. The author shows us that that is what is happening in this story and we can think about which side we would take if we were there. Which sides would van Rijn and Coya be on if they were alive now? We here and now are not yet out of the Chaos whereas the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League are heading towards the Troubles.

A non-human being, the Ythrian, Hirharouk, comments:

"'In the end, God the Hunter strikes every being and everything which beings have made. Upon your way of life, I see His shadow. Let the new come to birth in peace.'" (p. 367)

Unfortunately, the new will not come to birth in peace but it will come to birth. History will continue. Let us hope that it will continue also for us.

Technological Revolutions And Supermetals Personnel

"Lodestar."

Successive technological revolutions:

transistors;

fusion converters;

nega-gravity generators;

supermetals-based engineering.

Technic civilization technology starts way ahead of ours, then goes way further. Later instalments of the series should reflect this.

Supermetals crews and agents are of known species but mostly from backward planets or neglected colonies like:

Diomedes;

Woden;

Ikrananka;

Lochlann;

Catawrayannis.

Thus, some planets that had made scant appearances get recycled plot-wise, adding substantiality to the Technic History. Lochlann is human. Catawrayannis is still Cynthian although it will be sold to the Terran Empire later when there is a Terran Empire.

Cosmic SF

"Lodestar."

"The primordial element, with which creation presumably began, is hydrogen-1, a single proton accompanied by a single electron." (p. 350)

This paragraph proceeds to explain that:

"To this day, [hydrogen-1] comprises the overwhelming bulk of matter in the universe." (ibid.);

vast masses of hydrogen-1 condensed into increasingly hot globes, i.e., stars, where atoms combined into heavier elements;

novae and red giants spread these heavier elements through space;

later stars generated when these elements condensed produced planets with life and consciousness.

This understanding has become our modern cosmogony. Perhaps the creation myth closest to a scientific understanding was the Norse story of a void in which interaction between the extreme but opposed forces of heat and cold generated life, including the first giants and gods. Impersonal material forces preceded consciousness, then the gods fashioned the world that we know from the body of a giant: the sky from his skull; mountains from his bones; oceans from his blood etc.

I want to compare this passage with a reference to "ylem" in James Blish's Cities In Flight. However, we find not only that we have already quoted the Blish passage but also that Anderson too refers to "ylem." See here.

Two ultimate cosmic sf writers.

Natural Or Artificial

"Lodestar."

Nicholas van Rijn hopes that the supermetals sold by the Supermetals company have been generated naturally, not artificially, because a market in artificially produced supermetals would imply that an alien civilization with a frighteningly high level of technology is intervening in Technic civilization for unknown purposes. That danger has to be investigated. As it turns out, Supermetals mines the supermetals from the remnant of a giant planet orbiting a former supernova. Thus, these supermetals are naturally generated. 

If there had been a civilization as powerful as van Rijn feared, what might it have done? Of course, it might have found some reason to oppress less powerful races or to manipulate them in ways that were detrimental to their own best interests. However, it would certainly have no reason to exploit or to steal from any such races because it would surely be able to produce whatever it needed with its own technology. 

A more likely scenario, I think, is that the more powerful civilization would continue to conduct its own affairs, which might include interstellar travel, while hardly noticing what anyone else was doing. I overheard someone talking about a TV sf series in which space travellers know of parts of the galaxy where an incomprehensibly superior technology operates - and usually avoid such areas. Might this have been the Vorlons in Babylon 5, which I have never seen? If not that, then what?