Alienness

Sure, we enjoy reading about other intelligent species interacting with human beings and even with each other but much of what they do is what human beings would have done in any case, as CS Lewis complained.

As cited in the immediately preceding post on this blog:

a Cynthian runs an inn;

a Merseian prisoner of war asleep in a bed is shaken awake by a Tigery whose sole mundane aim is to gather military intelligence;

and so on.

However, Poul Anderson also presents genuinely alien psychologies:

Ythrian attitudes to death in "The Problem of Pain" and to sex in The People Of The Wind;

an Ythrian population can debate and decide planetary policy in six hours and human beings can be incorporated into this fully democratic "Khruath" system;

Chee Lan, descended from predators who hunted alone or in small groups, is loyal only to kin and close friends and cannot conceive of universal altruism.

Multiple Species

vaz-Siravo

Merseians

Tigeries

a Donnarian

Irumclagians

Shalmuans

a Wodenite

a Cynthian

These eight species appear or are mentioned in the first two chapters of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire. Members of each of these species have already played active roles in earlier instalments of Anderson's Technic History. The species interact in interesting or entertaining ways. In CHAPTER TWO, Targovi, a Tigery, visits an inn owned by Ju Shao, a Cynthian, and, later, interviews Fodaich Eidhafor the Bold of the Vach Dathyr, a Merseian.

Ythrians, although important in the Technic History, are not mentioned in this novel.

This is how a future history series works. Details accumulate, become parts of the narrative background and interact with each other until history goes beyond them into remoter futures.

Aurea

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWO.

Capital city of the colonized planet, Daedalus, in the Patrician System.

The original small town has been demolished or engulfed by the newly built sector defence command with its accompanying civil bureaucracy and private enterprises.

Soaring towers and sprawling industry.

Non-stop traffic on streets and elways or in the air.

Settlements elsewhere are enclaves in the wilderness.

A small part of the original town clings to a steep slope beneath the plateau with a view across hundreds of kilometers on this horizonless planet. 

Colonists of Daedalus are of many species from within the Terran Empire.

Targovi, a Tigery trader and covert Intelligence agent from Imhotep, visits an inn owned by a Cynthian, Ju Shao.

Aurea and Daedalus are as fully realized as Olga's Landing and Imhotep although these cities and planets appear only in this single novel.

Future History And Hidden History

I think that it is impossible to read anything written by Poul Anderson without finding something to say about it.

"'The glorious revolution was necessary,' Patel declared. 'Emperor Hans restored order and purged corruption.'

"'Ah, but his sons -'"

-The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWO, p. 220.

Of course a successful revolution is "glorious"!

"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?

"For, if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."

-John Harington.

People are surprised when I tell them that our present British constitutional monarchy results from nothing less than a "Glorious Revolution" in 1688.

Patel speaks indiscreetly:

Naval personnel feel that the present Emperor has been badly, even treasonably, advised;

reform is overdue;

the Admiral has sent recommendations;

meanwhile, dissatisfaction and consequent restlessness might require him to declare martial law...

Another glorious revolution?

Or is it all just a "Game"?

War

"'You can't leave now,' Daniel Holm told his son. '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.

That is the opening paragraph of the novel.

"'-Sir, we may be on the edge of a real war.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 215.

That is the closing sentence of the opening chapter of the novel.

There can be a sense of excitement at the beginning of a war. Things are going to change, maybe for the better. There can certainly be excitement in reading about a, real or fictional, war. In these two novels, as in Mirkheim, Anderson vividly conveys a sense of what it is like to live in troubled times.

We have got used to living in a world where wars happen somewhere else, not here. Or in history or fiction. Now, Iran might attack US bases in Britain.

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

"...we may be on the edge of a real war."

Fiction reflects life.

Two More Sets Of "Others" (Not Necessarily Called That)

In Poul Anderson's The Avatar, the Others are an Elder Race, i.e., an ancient, technologically superior, intelligent species whose artifacts, T-machines, are present throughout the narrative and they themselves come on-stage near the end of the novel.

Google informs us that, in Rome To The Stars by SM Stirling and Melissa Olthoff, to be published on 6 October 2026, the Roman Empire that we know from Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series will expand into the galaxy, encountering advanced technology left behind by an ancient civilization that had transplanted human beings to other planetary systems. Yet more Elder Race activity, maybe.

The Others In Two Timelines

In Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, Axor's quest for the Universal Incarnation was initially inspired by Foredweller remains/relics/remnants on his home planet, Woden. We know from Anderson's The Day Of Their Return that remnant walls and indeed entire structures also exist on the planet Aeneas. Diana has heard that the Builders were "the Chereionites" and an Aenean spaceman referred to them as the Old Shen. Other names are Ancients, Elders and Others. That the Chereionites were the Ancients is indeed what Aycharaych, a Chereionite, told Erannath, an Ythrian, on Aeneas in The Day Of Their Return but who knows?

What does Axor expect? An eventual multi-species religion acknowledging two Incarnations, Terrestrial and Chereionite? (Or whichever species the Forerunners turn out to be?)

It turns out that "They" are not about to "Return." That was a deception fostered by Aycharaych. However, Marc Vitrac and his companions in SM Stirling's The Sky People are in a more perilous predicament because they have learned not only that the inhabitants of Venus are human but also that the language spoken there is Indo-European! It follows that the superior technology that terraformed Venus and Mars and seeded those planets with Terrestrial organisms was still active comparatively recently and therefore might still be around - unlike Anderson's long-gone Ancients.

Wodenite Biology

There are theroids on both Dennitza and Ishtar.

Wodenites are neither theroids nor herpetoids but are endothermic, two-sexed and viviparous and breed only in season, making celibacy easier for them than for human beings.

This information is imparted when Diana Crowfeather meets Francis Xavier Axor whose first two names, taken at baptism, reveal him to be a Christian.

Unfortunately, although three cover illustrations for Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire show the land Starkadian, Targovi, none display the large, quadrupedal, dinosaurian Axor. However, another Wodenite, Adzel, is to be seen on a cover of Satan's World.

All the details in Anderson's Technic History hang together.

Interplanetary SF

One way to write interplanetary sf is to catalogue the Solar System. Characters travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus etc. Robert Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles begin with Rocket Ship Galileo about going to the Moon. His Future History begins with The Man Who Sold The Moon although the first four stories in that collection are about different technological advances pre-space flight.

By the time Poul Anderson was writing sf, the Solar System was taken for granted. His Technic History began with interstellar exploration although a later-written story set earlier describes the exploration of the outer Solar System. Larry Niven's Known Space future history begins with exploration of Mercury, Venus, Pluto, Mars and technological advances on Earth, to be followed by colonization not of Mars but of the asteroids. (Which is the more substantial future history, the Technic History or Known Space? I have my opinion.)

Two trilogies: 

the volumes of CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy are set on Mars, Venus and Earth;

the first three volumes of SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series are set on Venus, Mars and -? (I don't know. I haven't read it yet!)

There is always something new.

Who Did It?

Even in my early days at University, I still did not understand natural selection. I remember thinking and saying that, if a part of an organism performed a function, then it must have been designed to perform that function.

Hard sf is based in a scientific understanding of cosmogony, cosmology and evolution. Poul Anderson imagines the evolution of:

Diomedeans

Starkadians

Ythrians

Didonians

Talwinians

t'Kelans

Throrans

See Speculution (Speculative Evolution).

This issues hits characters in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series when they find Terrestrial organisms almost (or exactly?) duplicated on Mars and Venus. Dr Feldman, paleontologist and ethnologist, loathes:

"'...the God-did-it crowd...'"

-SM Stirling, The Sky People (October 2007), CHAPTER TWO, p. 26.

But Marc Vitrac and his companions begin to find evidence for:

"'...the aliens-did-it stuff...'"

-CHAPTER NINE, p. 201.

Yes. Feldman, Marc etc inhabit a hard sf universe.