Possibilities

In All One Universe, on p. 250, Poul Anderson writes that prediction is impossible because history is chaotic. However, he adds that we discern some regularities, know some natural laws and see some possibilities. Thus, imagination and reason can generate narratives about possible events.

Is the future completely chaotic? We know some possibilities, e.g., nuclear or ecological devastation, but no certainties. In fact, chaos produces the unexpected. In that case, could there be a collection or anthology to examine the consequences of low-level possibilities?

If the assassination attempt on Trump had succeeded...

If the Capitol Hill rioters had succeeded in killing a Democrat politician...

There is one possibility that I think we can rule out:

If (name a current world leader) had a Road to Damascus conversion to the exact opposite of his current world-view...

We know enough about human psychology to rule that one out.

Will we all wake up tomorrow morning? 

More Strangers

(Today, we, editorially speaking, heard a talk by Lord Reay - see also here - and suggested that it contained so much information that it should have been a series of talks.)

Poul Anderson, "Terminal Quest" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 1-28.

See:

Terminal Quest

In fact, just read or reread that previous post. It contains more information about this story than I had expected it to. 

Here is another intelligent, two-armed quadruped whose planet has been colonized by "Strangers" who turn out to be human beings but this story has a different ending which is prefigured by the title.

What did we miss while discussing "Strangers"? Human beings are "Night Folk" because the sunlight on the colonized planet is lethal to them so that they must spend daylight hours inside shuttered buildings or venture out only when completely covered up.

After "Terminal Quest," we might return to All One Universe and reread some other pieces in that collection.

Concluding "Strangers"

 

See Continuing "Strangers."

OK. We have reread to the end and there is maybe not much more to be said. There are human beings but we do not read their points of view. We are not told either how they had come to this planet or how they came to be stranded upon it. There is an explanation of the climate change: a heavy sun and a large moon frequently alter the planet's rotation. The "Night Folk"/human beings help the Wold People without harming the Charioteers. Poul Anderson's characters are always problem solvers. 

When Ak'hai'i realized that he must appeal to the Night Folk, he had a quieter than usual Andersonian moment of realization:

"I came back to my body knowing what I must do." (p. 7)

Next: "Terminal Quest." This is unappealing at present but we will have a crack at it.

Continuing "Strangers"

See "Starting Strangers."

Something that I did not mention before: there is only one "moon." We are used to more on extra-solar planets!

Something that I have learned by rereading further: the narrator and his species sit on their tails like the same author's Merseians and Mithrans.

I am having a strange experience as a reader. I know that I have previously read every item in Poul Anderson's All One Universe. We are currently rereading the first story in this collection, "Strangers," because, like a couple of others that we have reread recently, it is about human beings colonizing an already inhabited planet. However, I have no memory of the content of the story and might as well be reading it for the first time.

Although the narrator, Ak'hai'i, and his people are physically very unlike human beings, their predicament is all too familiar from other works by Anderson. The climate is changing, populations are on the move and the Wold People are attacked by militarily superior Charioteers with iron weapons.

When Ak'hai'i goes to the Night Folk for help, he describes the individual whom he approaches and we recognize one of us, a human being. And that is as far as I have reread over breakfast this morning.

Today: a talk in Lancaster Museum by a hereditary member of the House of Lords.

This evening: Zen group for me and choir for Sheila.

In the gaps: rereading "Strangers" and Stieg Larsson and reading about the Spanish Civil War.

Starting "Strangers"

I am not getting drawn into rereading "Strangers" and will soon be engaged in other activities here but of course I will persevere on a future occasion. Let us in the first instance consider a few phrases in the opening passage. 

"...Lost Motherland." (p. 3) Implies a matriarchal society?

"...the northern horizon flickered with the campfires of the dead." (ibid.) Aurora?

"Wind lulled and ruffled my fur." (ibid.)

The wind is always with us and this narrator is not human.

"I am no saint or familiar of the Unseen..." (ibid.) What is the Unseen? Is it just believed in? Might it also be experienced? Would that experience be projected or objective?

"...the Watermother says I should..." (ibid.) Again with matriarchy?

The narrator recalls:

"...what happened long ago." (ibid.)

This might remind us of Anderson's Didonians recalling their contact with humanity.

"...I crouched down, not to be seen against the western stars and the Sky Flow." (p. 4)

Is the Sky Flow another description of the Milky Way that we have previously missed?

The Future

"If, somehow, a writer knew the future, s/he could not write a story set in it. There would be too much strangeness, too much explaining to do. (Think of yourself going back just a hundred years in time and trying to tell people what it was like up ahead.)"

-Poul Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), p. 250.

I have imagined a novel written and set in 3000 AD, temporally transported to 2000 AD, translated and published without explanation. It would refer to then recent events without explaining them just as we can refer, e.g, to World War II, or just "the War," without having to explain that. Such a novel would be incomprehensible, disregarded and long forgotten by 3000 AD.

Sf can be not only set in our future but also show characters dealing with their futures, eg, HG Wells' Time Traveller and Anderson's Martin Saunders in "Flight to Forever." One of Anderson's Time Patrolmen reflects:

"It was a peculiar feeling to read the headlines and know, more or less, what was coming next. It took the edge off, but added a sadness, for this was a tragic era."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.

While reading headlines in 1955, he would know something of our situation in 2026.

Characters in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time receive increasingly incomprehensible messages from successive periods of their future.

Fictional series can hint at future events long before divulging them. Near the beginning of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, a fictional introduction refers to a recent (to the author) "Terran War" which does not occur until the end of Volume III. 

Through seven volumes, Julian May refers to a Metapsychic Rebellion which finally occurs in a concluding volume.

We cannot know the future but can imagine and fictionalize about it.

"Strangers" II

Poul Anderson, "Strangers" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), pp. 1-21.

Each story, article or other entry in this collection is preceded by an auctorial introduction. The introduction to "Strangers" informs us that:

this story is about the inhabitants of another planet;

it is hard sf, assuming nothing currently regarded as physically impossible;

although human beings have travelled to an extra-solar planet, they do not necessarily have FTL;

they might instead have utilized time dilation, suspended animation or something else.

In other words, this story might fit into one of Anderson's STL future histories:

Rustum

Directorate

Kith

In any case, the story is entirely about conditions on a particular planetary surface and we have posted about it before. See:

Strangers

"Strangers"

Historical Complexity And Interpretation

We, editorially speaking, are reading a newly published book written to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. Real history is much more detailed than fiction although some fictions plausibly simulate reality. I understand that Tolkien's Middle Earth is convincingly and consistently detailed. Poul Anderson conveys the sense of clashing factions in a civil war in "Tiger by the Tail" and an entire political spectrum on an occupied planet in Mirkheim.

Historians interpret events in:

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series (See Reality And Interpretation);

the Interludes of Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains;

reality (was Franco's campaign a crusade against left terror or, alternatively, was the entire Civil War just a regretful fratricide caused by democratic immaturity?)

When we return to recent themes, we will reread two further stories about human beings colonizing - or maybe, in the second case, just visiting? - an already inhabited planet:

"Terminal Quest," in Alight In The Void

"Strangers," in All One Universe

We have a lot to (re)read both blog-wise and otherwise.

"The Faun"

"The Faun."

In this story:

one extra-solar planet;

two human characters;

two alien animals;

more exposition than action;

the unexpected name, Krishnamurti (see also here).

We have probably said all that we are going to say about this short story in earlier posts and will shortly redirect our attention elsewhere.

Faun And Wyvern

There is nothing left to reread in The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories except "The Faun," a juvenile short story with just over five pages of text. Having just returned from the Duke's Playhouse, we will not reread this story tonight. However, we notice its reference to Epsilon Eridani. Also, it is another sf story that begins like a fantasy: first, the title; then the opening sentence -

"A wyvern flew up in a thunder of splendid wings."

-Poul Anderson, "The Faun" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (New York, December 1973), pp. 86-91 AT p. 86.

Extraterrestrial birds and animals can be named after mythological beasts.

I want to check stories in a couple of other Anderson collections but a house guest is sleeping in the room with the books. Meanwhile, I also want to reread some more Stieg Larsson before turning in. This weekend, "Heritage" events continue in Lancaster: concerts in churches etc.

Onward, Earthlings.

See also:

Dragon, Wyvern And Faun

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