Recognizable Narrative Elements

Poul Anderson, "Conversation in Arcady" IN Anderson, Dialogue With Darkness (New York, February 1985), pp. 223-233.

We recognize:

yet another hovering bird of prey -

"High overhead a fish hawk went circling." (p. 223);

a small shuttle boat that descends to Earth because an interstellar mother ship is too big to land;

interstellar travellers who should have benefitted from time dilation and from "Anti-Eld" (p. 224) but not from FTL;

a life of comfort and ease on Earth.

We remember time travellers visiting future periods in "Flight to Forever."

We expect the conversation to be a culture clash but will find out tomoz.

Four More Collections

After rereading a Poul Anderson collection entitled Alight In The Void, how are we choose between volumes entitled:

Dialogue With Darkness

The Dark Between The Stars

Kinship With The Stars

Homeward And Beyond?

I have presented these titles in a proposed conceptual order instead of, e.g., their publication order. But now let's consider the latter:

Homeward And Beyond (Berkley Medallion Books, New York, July 1976)

The Dark Between The Stars (Berkley Books, New York, December 1981)

Dialogue With Darkness (TOR, New York, February 1985)

Kinship With The Stars (TOR, New York, October 1991)

There is a certain amount of information summarized there. 

A 1991 collection can include stories published later than 1976 but might include earlier stories as well. Kinship's FOREWORD informs us that it presents "...tales told decades ago..."

As usual, we find stories that we know are in other collections although none of the volumes listed here overlap. It is now my task to pick one story from one of these collections. It will be either "Time Heals" in Dialogue With Darkness in accordance with our recent focus on time travel or "Conversation in Arcady," also in Dialogue..., in accordance with our recent focus on interstellar travel, but, as I often say, not tonight.

Good night. 

Mutants And Aliens

"Earthman, Beware!"

When Joel says that he is not human, Peggy asks whether he is a mutant but then says that he couldn't be and he confirms that:

"'...all this could never happen in one mutation.'" (p. 39)

He is an alien. 

A Brian Aldiss story, title forgotten, refers to aliens but then says that these aliens have not come from another planet. Instead, they have been born among us! Of course, the word for this is "mutants" but Aldiss was playing with language. He gained the connotations of "aliens" just by using the word.

"Earthman, Beware!" was published in 1951, the same year as Captain Comet, a mutant born ahead of his time - and this character was apparently based on Captain Future, first published in 1939. Another time and another world. Read what Captain Future's Solar System was like.

We have exhausted "Earthman, Beware!" and Alight In The Void for the time being and will look through some other Poul Anderson collections.

Mental Powers

"Earthman, Beware!"

Joel to Peggy:

"'I have some powers over the mind,' he said slowly. 'With your co-operation, I could adjust your feelings about this.'" (p. 48)

She says, "'No -'" (ibid.) but is unable to resist his strong will and telepathic brain. Is he right to do it when she has said no? And, if we were offered it, should we consent to someone else adjusting our feelings? In zazen, we practice "sitting with" whatever thoughts or feelings come up.

Although he adjusts her feelings towards him, he does not erase her memory of his extraterrestrial origin. In fact, she suggests how he might contact his people. However, when the elders of his species arrive, they:

"...make certain changes. Your memory and that of others, your body, the work you are doing and have done -" (p. 60)

He wakes up thinking that he is a Terrestrial human being. But have they also changed his body, changed Peggy's memory, removed all trace of his many inventions and discoveries and erased everyone's memories of them? God-like powers, indeed.

The Same Ultrawave

For previous blog posts about "Earthman, Beware!" see here.

"...the concept of waves was hardly applicable to something that traveled with an 'infinite velocity'..." (p. 52)

Indeed. And the very next comment is that "infinite velocity" is:

"...a poor term semantically, but convenient." (ibid.)

Anything that travels from A to B instantaneously either extends from A to B or exists at both A and B but not at intermediate points simultaneously.

Joel reflects that:

"...ultrawave effects...did not appear unless there was a properly tuned receiver somewhere. They seemed somehow 'aware' of a listener even before they came into existence." (ibid.)

Ramacan in "The Star Beast" explains that:

the ultrawave is "'...not electromagnetic...'" but "'...ties in with wave mechanics...'" (p. 72);

"'...it's 'aware' of the receiver and only goes to it. There must be a receiver as well as a transmitter to generate the wave.'" (p. 73)

This establishes that Joel and Ramacan refer to the same ultrawave.

Joel discovers it and Ramacan says that it:

"'...was discovered - oh, it must be a good seven or eight hundred years ago now.'" (p. 72)

I have not quite reread to the end of "Earthman, Beware!" yet. The implication of this story might be that the ultrawave is not remembered on Earth after Joel's discovery of it. But what has been discovered once can be discovered again.

Joel's Physics And Psychology

 

"Earthman, Beware!"

Joel describes his attempt at interstellar communication:

"'Energy fields vibrating a certain way produce detectable effects in a similar setup well removed from the first... these effects are transmitted with no measurable time lag or diminution with distance.'" (p. 46)

Two Observations

(i) This sounds exactly like James Blish's instantaneous Dirac transmitter.

(ii) When Margaret/Peggy hears Joel's account, she comments:

"'I see. It's a sort of ultrawave.'" (ibid.)

But it sounds like action at a distance and not like a wave. Joel had intially said:

"'...you might call it radiation, though it has no relation to the electromagnetic spectrum.'" (ibid.)

But radiation crosses space - and at finite speed - between two "setups" whereas what Joel describes is an instantaneous remote effect.

When Joel reflects not on physics but on psychology:

"Humans were that way, groping through a darkness of solitude, calling to each other across abysses and never, never understanding." (p. 32)

That is how we appear to someone with his insight and mental abilities but it is also a one-sided account. If solitude and lack of understanding were absolute, then there would be no communication and therefore also no self-consciousness.

Alaskan Forest

"Earthman, Beware!"

OK. What do we have here?

This viewpoint character can detect things that we cannot. With "Something in his brain...," (p. 29) rather than with additional sense organs, he detects, as he approaches his cabin, metal, oil, rubber and plastic which he identifies as a newly arrived helicopter. There are also fragments of thought, nervous energy and cellular and molecular interactions. He identifies these "...vibrations of human presence..." (p. 30) as a single person and, more specifically, as an acquaintance named Margaret. This telepath (?) is an inventor who has devised an odourless repellant that keeps mosquitos away from his cabin.

Poul Anderson describes the "darkling" Alaskan forest in which:

"A faint evening breeze rustled the dark pines..." (ibid.)

The breeze is faint. Nothing threatening yet! However, our multi-talented hero is saddened, annoyed and dismayed by Margarets' arrival. Read on.

We discover yet again that it is possible to reread a story by Poul Anderson and to find many forgotten and interesting details. 

This has been yet another breakfast post, folks. 

Not Clark Kent But Joel Weatherfield

Poul Anderson, "Earthman, Beware!" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 29-60.

Can a humanoid being with superior sensory powers and intelligence come from an extra-solar planet and live on Earth, passing himself off as a human being? I would say definitely not. Quite apart from the problems of crossing an interstellar distance and entering the Solar System undetected, evolution on another planet is not going to produce anything that looks remotely like us. Yet this proposition is the premise not only of Superman but also Poul Anderson's "Earthman, Beware!"

In Anderson's "Starfog," Daven Laure is satisfied that the Kirkasanters are human - or, at least, are of human descent - because of their detailed physical resemblance except, of course, for expectable racial differences. Joel Weatherfield does not resemble us in every detail but is close enough to carry off the deception. We just have to accept this as the kind of sf that was written in the 1950's. I don't think that Weatherfield arrived in a spaceship but will have to reread to check.

(Retold stories are updated. In 1938, Superman arrived, as a baby, in a small spacecraft. In the twenty-first century, such a craft would have been detected approaching Earth - except that it arrived as one small part of a massive meteor shower!)

What We Read

Second hand bookshops remind us of what we used to read and regard as important. James Bond has endured whereas his TV spin-offs, the Man and Girl from UNCLE have not. In the 1960's, I read sf paperbacks because I had graduated from comic strips to prose fiction about people in spaceships and on other planets with robots and aliens. Nowadays, an sf novel has to contain much more than these sf trappings to hold my attention. As we know, Poul Anderson and James Blish do offer much more than that.

A fictional universe can expand in different directions, incorporating different kinds of fiction, e.g.:

Poul Anderson

James Ching attends school in San Francisco Integrate in the period of the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League.

James Blish

The energy beings called Angels who appear in two juvenile novels also form part of the background of an adult short story with a very different tone and theme.

Ian Fleming

Dexter Smythe committed murder in 1945 and must face the consequences two decades later. It is a minor detail that the man sent from London to interview him is called James Bond - although we also learn an extra biographical detail about Bond.

Dornford Yates

The Berry books are (supposed) humour although Berry Pleydell's cousin, Jonathan Mansel, tracks down criminals in the Chandos books and The Stolen March, belonging to neither series but sharing some characters with them, is a fantasy.

Read them all.

(I bought the book shown today.)

"Gods" And Danellians

"Flight to Forever."

Anyone who travels far enough into the future in this timeline will encounter beings that Martin Saunders thinks of as "gods." (p. 233) Their city is described here. They are the nearest equivalent to the Danellians in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series. These "gods":

make the time projector airtight and indestructible;

increase its speed to millions of years per minute;

insert an "...annihilating device..." (p. 239) which destroys the projector as soon as it has returned to 1973.

"They didn't want its devices from the future loose in the twentieth century." (ibid.)

In other words, they perform a Time Patrol function in their timeline. Presumably they have time travel technology and take other measures to preserve the timeline. There is always more than we know.