End And Beginning

The Avatar.

"JUMP.

"Blackness, nothing, blind and absolute. Folk moaned in a kind of terror." (XLIII, p. 359)

Chinook has jumped futureward into a period when:

the universe has expanded to four or five times the size that mankind knew;

clusters of galaxies have receded too far away to be seen;

the Milky Way and its neighbour galaxies are disintegrating cinders;

the dimmest stars are dying;

but one black dwarf has a planet with life because the Others have transformed its moon into a nuclear reactor which is an artificial sun that should last for five or six billion years;

that single planet has white clouds, sapphire and lapis lazuli oceans and green continents.

Should Chinook continue futureward or turn back?

Caitlin argues that the living planet shows that the Others are pro-life and anti-death. Therefore, an outpost of theirs should be found at the very end.

"JUMP.

"Light, everywhere light. It was as if space had become a dewdrop in dawnlight, and they at its heart." (XLIV, p. 366)

CHINOOK At The End Of The Universe

The Avatar, XLIII.

When the universe is old, dark and dying, Chinook viewscreens show not the view outside but:

Pericles

Shah Jehan

Hokusai

Monet

Phidias

Rodin

Crew members listen to:

Swan Lake

"Sheep May Safely Graze"

There is more to say here but not enough time to say it.

Two More Biblical References

The Avatar.

Chinook lingers near a large T machine that seems to be a cosmic junction. The crew hope to be spotted by someone else passing through:

"'Somebody happening past who's not too advanced to pay attention, the way we're not too advanced to notice a fellow man in the woods. Or else somebody who's so very far along that his eye is on the sparrow.'" (XLI, p. 354)

We had the sparrow reference recently here which will be why Broderson mentions it again.

Next Chinook travels to a time between seventy and a hundred billion years after the crew's births when:

"'No stars are left alive except the dimmest [the meek shall inherit], and they are now dying, while the galaxy itself is disintegrating.'" (XLIII, p. 360)

This is not the kind of "meek" that the Gospel verse anticipated but Anderson's author's mind seems to have automatically spotted any possible textual opportunity for a Biblical reference.

Joelle thinks that, if they travel further into the future, then they will learn whether the universe oscillates - as in Anderson's Tau Zero - or expands indefinitely - as was thought at least until recently.

Motivations And Aspirations

Fictional characters who engage only in cynical power politics and power struggles are uninteresting and inauthentic. By "inauthentic," I mean not that no such individuals exist - look at the world right now! - but that life is not only or mainly about people like that. If a central character exercises power, then we need to be shown the lives and aspirations of some of the people over whom he exercises it. There should not be a permanently off-stage population of a future Earth or another planet. This is my problem with Frank Herbert's Dune series and with some other sf.

In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, the threat from Terra is met by:

the Marchwardens

the Wyvans

Khruaths

choths

the Parliament of Man

individual Avalonians, both Ythrian and human

(It is possible to search this blog for explanations of Planha terms.)

If the leading characters had been motivated only to exercise power over each other, then the book would have been very different and also not worth reading.

SF Paraphernalia

When I read sf in the 1960's, it was enough for me then that this was prose sf addressed to adults and featuring spaceships and other sf paraphernalia. It was taken for granted that familiar ideas like telepathy, immortality and robots could enter a narrative at any time. I remember among many other works of that period:

After Doomsday by Poul Anderson

Earthman, Come Home by James Blish

Fury by Henry Kuttner

Nowadays, I do not keep up with new sf and older works must match up to much stronger criteria if they are to be worth rereading. Anderson's The People Of The Winds vividly depicts individuals and communities on a colonized planet anticipating, enduring and surviving a war. The opening dialogue sets the tone:

"'Any day we may be at war. We may already be.'"

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 437.

From that moment, we live the Terran War with the Avalonians and with some of the Terrans.

Lived History

Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March, 2011), pp. 437-662.

The difference between how people perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others:

"'I'm only a local.'

"'You're a descendant of David Falkayn.'

"'That doesn't mean much.'

"'It does where I live.'" (III, p. 466)

And it means a lot to those of us who have read Anderson's History of Technic Civilization consecutively.

Human integration into Ythrian culture:

"'...I didn't think they used drugs much in Highsky either.'

"'They don't. Barring the sacred revels. Most of us keep to the Old Faith, you know.'" (VI, p. 502)

A threat for the future:

"'...the Roidhunate is far off and not very big. But it's growing at an alarming rate, and aggressive acquisitiveness is built into its ideology. The duty of an empire is to provide for the great-grandchildren.'" (III, p. 474)

Philippe Rochefort wonders whether their reproductive patterns determine the lives of intelligent organisms:

"But no, a Jerusalem Catholic can't believe that. Biological evolution inclines, it does not compel." (IV, p. 481)

We will see more of the Merseian Roidhunate and of Jerusalem Catholicism later in the Technic History. 

Caitlin And People

The Avatar.

Caitlin Mulryan is able to use sex for love, friendship, pleasure or therapy and is able to handle a number of men who, without her help, would have been jealous, possessive, judgmental, conflicted, in general negative. Is this just how she is, what I call her "karma," or is it because she is an avatar of the Others who, we gather, have a positive attitude to all life? Caitlin achieves remarkable results with a young man who is initially hostile because she is his brother-in-law's mistress and who then becomes infatuated with her. I have read as far as Chapter XXXIX of L and so far nothing has gone wrong. (Roman numerals are tiresome.)

Caitlin also helps other women. Susanne does not want to marry because it would be wrong to have children in a lost spaceship with limited supplies and there is no contraception available but maybe Caitlin as the ship's doctor and with access to its database can do something about that?

As with Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, a novel about a long space journey has to address both the universe outside the spaceship and the people inside it. But the people can be very different.

 

Interventions By The Others

The Avatar. 

The Others do more than provide interstellar transport machines for species that achieve interplanetary capability.

They also:

directed humanity to the Phoebean System;

gave the Danaans metal tools to use on their gas giant planet;

gave the pulsar dwellers the Oracle;

constructed observation stations for other races at the pulsar and at a black hole.

Also, the Oracle, a self-conscious and hyper-intelligent artifact, gives Chinook data that will enable the holothete to plot a probable path to the Others' frontier. Something like this was necessary. Random rotations around T machines would not have returned Chinook to the Solar System where a major problem awaited resolution. 

Another novel could describe a ship travelling indefinitely through space-time via T machines. Such a ship would require a self-sustaining internal environment and also some mechanism to ensure that each T machine led to another T machine, not just to empty space. With these requirements in place, the sky would be the limit. Or rather would not be. The Others travel between universes.

From Falkayn To Flandry And Beyond

David Falkayn and Dominic Flandry cannot meet but we can trace the history between them. Each of the following numbered points represents a different historical period.

(i) David Falkayn becomes a grandfather during the colonization of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon.

(ii) Ivar Holm works in a mountain Rescue Station during the colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon. 

(iii) Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon closes The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

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

(v) The Empire grows.

(vi) Daniel Holm, Christopher Holm who is Arinnian of Stormgate Choth, Tabitha Falkayn who is Hrill of Highsky Choth and many others successfully resist Terran Imperial annexation of Avalon.

(vii) Dominic Flandry and later his daughter, Diana Crowfeather, defend the Empire.

(viii) Later generations survive the Fall of the Empire and eventually build bigger and better interstellar civilizations.

This is almost as complicated as real history and can become fannishly fascinating.

POVs In CHINOOK

The Avatar, XXXV.

"Elsewhere aboard, folk slept, Frieda and Dozsa together, the rest by themselves: Broderson and Weisenberg peacefully; Joelle heavily, under sedation; Rueda rolling about; Susanne with a smile that came and went and came again. Under robot control, Chinook drove on toward the transport engine." (p. 313)

This paragraph concludes a chapter. But is it noteworthy? Why quote it? Double spaces between paragraphs divide this chapter into four narrative passages:

(i) an objective account of Broderson and Caitlin together;

(ii) Caitlin's pov (point of view) as she visits Weisenberg;

(iii) an objective account of Caitlin and Leino together;

(iv) an objective account of everyone in the ship other than Caitlin and Leino.

The omniscient narrator enters Caitlin's pov in (ii) although even that is mostly an objective account. In (iv), he relates what no one else knows, what is happening in each cabin. This is less usual. (Does the omniscient narrator have a gender?)