Technological And Social Changes

"The Snows of Ganymede." 

"The ship, Let There Be Light...was a cruiser, one of the new models which could accelerate most of the way and reach even Jupiter in a couple of weeks." (III, p. 150)

The Psychotechnic History is still in that early period of innovations in interplanetary flight. On Earth, there are technological advances with social consequences:

"'My father was one of the intellectual routineer class which was displaced by the Second Industrial Revolution, though he never joined the Humanists. He didn't like living off citizen's allowance and odd jobs - called it a handout.'" (p. 152)

It is not a handout. It is his right. Technology that replaces labour should serve the interests of everyone in society.

White Americans And Pilgrims

Poul Anderson, "The Snows of Ganymede" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 141-214.

The White American Church:

arose during the lunatic years in the later twentieth century;

became popular in the southern states of the former US;

was a reaction against social troubles and science;

was backed by some politicians but, unlike Robert Heinlein's Angels of the Lord, did not win political power, at least not on Earth;

colonized Ganymede and wants to pay the Planetary Engineers to terraform Ganymede and Callisto.

Terraforming Jovian moons links the White Americans to characters in Anderson's Twilight World, Heinlein's Farmer In The Sky and James Blish's The Seedling Stars.

The Pilgrim Church, which had colonized Mars in "Un-Man," is an attempt to return to an imagined past whereas the White Americans try to leap forward to an imaginary millennium. Future religions are as diverse as past ones.

On the next street to ours, an entirely black church meets on Sundays in hired premises but I have no reason to believe that they are either millennarians or supremacists. That is not the nearest place of worship to where we live because there is a mosque at the end of our street. Everything in the present is a potential seed of the future. Any current religious group might conceivably form a government or colonize Ganymede in the next century.

Engineers

One of my best friends at University, Fran Cobden, was an Engineering student and an sf reader. 

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History includes an Order of Planetary Engineers.

Larry Niven's second Ringworld novel is The Ringworld Engineers.

Clifford Simak wrote Cosmic Engineers.

CS Lewis called hard sf "the Engineer's Story."

Colin Kapp wrote the Unorthodox Engineers stories.

A review of a Kapp collection informs us that one downside of puzzle-solving sf is the protagonist figuring the problem but not revealing the solution until the end of the story. I have commented on David Falkayn and other Anderson characters doing this.

Where would we be without the Engineers? 

Continuing Themes And Characters

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"Un-Man" introduces the Rostomily Brotherhood;

"The Snows of Ganymede" introduces the Order of Planetary Engineers;

"Brake" features a Planetary Engineer who is a Rostomily Brother.

"Gypsy" introduces the Nomads;

"The Pirate" introduces Trevelyan Micah of the Coordination Service;

in The Peregrine, Trevelyan joins the Nomads.

Thus, series give stories more substance. 

The only continuing characters in this future history series are:

Etienne Fourre in "Marius" and "Un-Man";

Trevelyan as above;

a colonial family in "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb."

This post has referred to nine of the twenty plus instalments in the Psychotechnic History, depending on how we count them.

Psychology Inside A Generation Ship

Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon has a psychohistorical Plan for the Galaxy which will result in a Second Galactic Empire ruled by psychohistorians. The psychologists in Poul Anderson's "The Troublemakers" have a plan for the generation ship, the Pioneer. The outcomes of this second plan will be that:

"'...the just and harmonious order of this voyage's beginnings will be restored.'" (p. 137)

"'...a satisfied and united humanity can begin making ready for the next great adventure.'" (p. 138)

Was all the socially engineered and manipulated conflict en route necessary to prepare the crew for the challenge of colonizing a planet? According to the psychologists, yes.

What is noticeable is that Anderson applies an Asimovian predictive science of society within a Heinleinian generation ship. He has already addressed the Asimovian theme of robots and the Heinleinian theme of longevity earlier in the Psychotechnic History. Anderson then proceeds to concepts transcending anything in either Asimov or Heinlein.

Clinton And Nystrom

Regular blog readers know that:

I give a lot of attention to narrative points of view (povs);

Poul Anderson usually has good control of his povs;

I do other reading, often of Stieg Larsson, later in the evening;

we sometimes link that later reading to Anderson.

With all that for context, I have found an interesting pov point in Larsson. Clinton, Nystrom and Sandberg are in conversation. When Sandberg speaks:

"Clinton and Nystrom exchanged glances."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (London, 2009), p. 588.

But whose pov is it? Reading on:

"...Clinton and Nystrom felt a surge of anxiety." (ibid.)

A double pov! That is unusual. And my impression, for what it is worth, is that this was unreflecting on Larsson's part.

Histories Within Histories

Anderson's Time Patrol series includes "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" in which a Time Patrolman from the twentieth century interacts with four generations of a Gothic family. Thus, a time travel series incorporates generational historical fiction. The later Time Patrol instalment, "Star of the Sea," also includes mythological writing.

Anderson's Psychotechnic History includes "The Troublemakers," which, set inside a multi-generational interstellar spaceship, summarizes the first eighty years/four generations of the internal history of the spaceship.

Thus, in Poul Anderson's works, time travel and space travel both generate histories within histories.

See History In The Pioneer.

Eloi, Okies And The Pioneer

"Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English landscape, had disappeared.

"'Communism,' said I to myself."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 6, p. 35.

Clearly, the Time Traveler means communal living, not bureaucratic dictatorship.

"Once aloft, Scranton had adopted the standard economy of all tribes of highly isolated nomad herdsmen, to whom the only real form of wealth is grass: a commune, within which everyone helped himself to what he needed, subject only to the rules which established the status of his job in the community."

-James Blish, A Life For The Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 131-234 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 154.

Money is used only for foreign trade.

(Before we move on, here is another interesting quotation from A Life For The Stars, given that we are now in the year 2024:

("The first interstellar expedition was launched from the Jovian satellary system in 2021..."

-CHAPTER FOUR, p. 168.

(It is not only Robert Heinlein's Future History that has dated.)

"'Any ship is a natural communist state.'"

-"The Troublemakers," p. 104.

Not any ship! The speaker refers, more specifically, to a large spaceship. Presumably, if a spaceship, like a sea ship, is to function as a ship, i.e., is to travel from port to port, then it needs a line of command from captain to officers to crew? That is not a commune. However, this spaceship is large enough to carry a community of several thousand people. That community might function as a commune.

Evan Friday thinks that the ship should be a meritorious hierarchy but again that refers to the line of command, not to the community.

Brotherhood And Merchants

"The Troublemakers." 

Although the Brotherhood of Workers has a nominal president, Poul Anderson presents the union as mainly a platform for the ambitions of Councillor Wilson. If I were there, then I would want to help to organize a movement within the Brotherhood for workers' rights and against the ambitions of any single individual.

"That fat demagogue! A lot of say his precious workers would have if he got what he wants!" (p. 105)

The precious workers would have to organize to have their say, preferably within the Brotherhood and not in a breakaway outfit. 

Anderson displays a class preference after Evan Friday has left the Brotherhood mass meeting: 

"...the merchant class had something to offer that he had never looked to find on the lower levels, and something, besides, which was strange to the topdecks." (p. 115)

The merchants:

are not narrow, as thought by others;

instead, have some quality and culture;

but are also conservative, timid, nostalgic and cliche-ridden.

Evan Friday sounds like the man to see the best in every class and to bring them together - which will turn out to be why the manipulative psychotechs have had him demoted.

The Ship

"The Troublemakers."

Evan Friday thinks:

"Couldn't they see - damn them couldn't they see that the ship was bigger than all their stupid ambitions, couldn't they see that space was the great Enemy, against which all souls aboard, all mankind had to unite?" (p. 111)

Change one word, "ship," to "planet" and you describe our condition.

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, mankind has two enemies, external and internal: nature (or space) and itself. See Space And Nature. Pulp sf addresses basic issues.