Again The Technic History (Plus THEY SHALL HAVE STARS)

interplanetary exploration

interstellar exploration

interstellar trade

interstellar imperialism

diverse interstellar civilizations

Five stages in a future history series that grew organically, the first and fifth stages each represented by only a single story with forty-one instalments including many novels between them. OK: I can never get over how good Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is, with The Earth Book Of Stormgate as its peak surpassing Robert Heinlein's The Green Hills Of Earth.

James Blish was my all time favourite sf writer before I really got into Poul Anderson whose output is so vast that it can take some time to get into him properly. A Dominic Flandry story read in a magazine and thought to be a one-off gives no hint of how much comes before and after.

The recent Jupiter Project got me into rereading James Blish's They Shall Have Stars for the first time in a long time which has enhanced my appreciation of this novel as the opening volume of a future history series - although not as vast as Anderson's. One major difference between these two authors is their outputs.

Future Freedoms

Interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom in American sf and, in several cases, is accompanied by escape from tyranny back on Earth. I could list titles but I think that we have been through them before:

Robert Heinlein's Howard Families escape persecution by hijacking a generation ship;

when SM Stirling's Draka conquer the Solar System, some Americans escape to found an extra-solar colony;

Poul Anderson's Technic History features the "Breakup" and, in another series, his extrasolar planet, Rustum, is colonized by ideological refugees;

the opening instalments of both of James Blish's future history series, Okies and pantropy, end with political refugees fleeing from the Solar System.

Six examples from four major sf authors. But this is wishful thinking. The bulk of humanity has to resist encroachments on its freedom here on Earth.

In a future history series, the opening instalment is a story complete in itself and the second story begins in a different time and place:

in the Technic History, the action moves from a Saturnian moon to an extrasolar planet;

Volume I of Blish's Cities In Flight ends with Senator Wagoner in his cell on the last day whereas Volume II opens centuries later with Crispin deFord waiting to watch the city of Scranton leave Earth (and, if we have read this series in publication order, then we already know deFord's fate);

Book One of Blish's The Seedling Stars ends with Sweeney on Ganymede whereas Book Two opens in a completely different milieu with Honath the Purse-Maker...

As James Blish once said, we grew up with science fiction...

References

Our parallel rereadings of four works set on Jupiter has carried us to some strange places. First, the four works in question are:

a non-series story by Poul Anderson;

one of the two opening instalments of James Blish's Cities In Flight;

an instalment of Clifford Simak's City;

ERB's last John Carter story.

Secondly, however, we have also referred to:

the opening story of Anderson's Technic History;

the closing story of his Psychotechnic History;

the opening and closing stories of Blish's The Seedling Stars;

CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown";

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy;

ERB's The Land That Time Forgot;

Anderson's The Devil's Game, Murder Bound and Mirkheim.

I think that that is the full list. In any case, it is all that I have time for tonight. Tomorrow, gym.

Some Relevant Passages In Works By James Blish

Even in James Blish's more accurate description of Jupiter as a gas giant planet, Helmuth finds life forms which resemble jellyfish floating through the atmosphere. Because Jupiter occupies four fifths of the sky of Jupiter V, the Bridge gang feel as if they are falling down onto the planet whereas, in Anderson's "Call Me Joe," Jupiter occupies a fifth of the sky of Jupiter V and, if there had been any significant gravity, Cornelius would have felt that the planet was falling onto him but instead he feels sucked upward. (Different sensations in different timelines.)

On Ganymede, an Adapted Man thinks:

"To an Earthman, nothing could have looked more desolate  - but no Earthman was looking at it."

-James Blish, "Seeding Program" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 5-66 AT p. 66.

In The Seedling Stars, the omniscient narrator spells out that the viewpoint character is living through a pathetic fallacy even though that character cannot realize this because he has never read any fiction!

There is bound to be a lot more that I have not noticed.

When They Sit Up

Some by now familiar features of Poul Anderson's prose texts:

descriptive passages addressing three or more of the senses;

pathetic fallacy, particularly focusing on the wind which can roar, shriek, moan or whisper as appropriate and once whips a villainous character immediately after a vile act;

comprehensive exploration of alternative answers to basic questions about consciousness, time, the future etc;

moments of realization when problem-solving heroes spot solutions but do not yet elucidate us.

In that last example, characters typically tense or stiffen. Twice in "Call Me Joe," they sit up:

"If he wasn't so tired...

"Joe sat up. Sleep drained from him as the realization entered. He wasn't tired, not to speak of. Anglesey was."

-"Call Me Joe," p. 26.

(That passage even uses the word, "realization.")

"'We speculate in a vacuum,' said Cornelius. 'Tomorrow, maybe I can tell you. Now I know nothing.'

"Viken sat up straight...

"'You know a good deal more than you've admitted,' said Viken. 'Don't you?'" (p. 28)

In the second case, Viken realizes that Cornelius has realized something.

On Jupiter

Hard to conceive of life out in the soupy maelstrom that was Jupiter, not knowing, of course, that through Jovian eyes it was no soupy maelstrom at all. 

The wind brushed against him with what seemed gentle fingers and he remembered with a start that by Earth standards the wind was a roaring gale, a two-hundred-mile an hour howler laden with deadly gases. Pleasant scents seeped into his body.

-clifford_d._simak_desertion (1).pdf

Poul Anderson's Edward Anglesey:

"'...I like it down there. I like being Joe...

"'What I can't put in[to my notes] is how Jupiter looks through a Jovian's infrared-seeing eyes....

"'...everything about Jupiter which is cold and poisonous and gloomy to us is right for Joe.'"

-"Call Me Joe," p. 24.

The psychologies of Anglesey and of James Blish's Robert Helmuth are (i) very different from each other and (ii) important to their stories.

Anglesey, crippled and incapacitated in his human body, is "'...strong!'" (ibid.) as Joe on Jupiter whereas Helmuth fears Jovian gravity. He anticipates and recurrently dreams that:

antigravity will be developed so that men can explore Jupiter up front;

he will feel obliged to volunteer;

the antigravity device will be a rush job, not working properly;

he will be crushed to death...

He wakes screaming from the nightmare.

A character in Blish's other future history series disposes of the idea of adapting men to live on Jupiter:

"'On worlds where only extreme modifications of the human form would make it suitable - for instance, a planet of the gas giant type - no seeding is attempted. The Council maintains that such worlds are the potential property of other races than the human, races whose psychotypes would not have to undergo radical change in order to survive there.'"

-James Blish, "Watershed" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 181-192 AT p. 190.

- as in Anderson's "The Chapter Ends" where human beings and gas giant dwellers divide the Galaxy between them.

It is all one multiverse.

Series And Non-Series Stories

It makes a difference whether an sf story is part of a series. In Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe," background details include a Psionics Corporation and a Federation Science Authority. These organizations do not need to be referred to or to be taken into account in any other work by Anderson since "Call Me Joe" is a one-off/non-series story. By contrast, James Blish's corresponding story of Jovian exploration, "Bridge," was specifically written to explain the discovery of the antigravity that is central to Blish's Cities In Flight future history. Antigravity becomes possible following experiments conducted in the higher gravitational field of Jupiter. In this respect, "Bridge" parallels "The Saturn Game," the opening story in Anderson's major future history series, the History of Technic Civilization. This story also recounts exploration in the outer Solar System before the commencement of interstellar travel and introduces a minor detail that gains significance later. There is a strong inclination on this blog to return to unravelling the intricacies of the Technic History. However, the current agenda remains to continue rereading "Call Me Joe" and "Bridge" which now will have to be some time tomorrow.

Clifford Simak's Jupiter, Part II

(Today, we have just seen a partial solar eclipse which seemed to me an anticlimax.)

We have reread to the end of Clifford Simak's "Desertion." Thus, of the four Jupiter narratives that were to be discussed, only those by Poul Anderson and James Blish remain to be reread to the end.

Like Anderson and Blish, Simak describes the Jovian environment as a perpetual maelstrom where the prevalent liquid is not water but ammonia. Like Anderson, Simak concludes his narrative with human minds in Jovian bodies happy to live on Jupiter. Unlike Anderson and Blish, Simak proposes not ice as a construction material but metal with increased electronic tension enclosed in tough quartz to protect it from the ammonia rain. 

Simak's characters possess  a technology that enables them to "convert" a human body into an organism able to live on another planet, then to re-convert that body back into human form! - so why are human explorers confined inside domes on the Jovian surface when they sound as if they are already Lords of Creation? Well, their conquest of Jupiter is delayed by the fact that those who are converted and released find their new existence so paradisal that they do not want to  return and do not even communicate this information to anyone else so that it seems to those back in the dome that the "converted" have been sent to their deaths. (In CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown," several men in succession are sent to the Moon and do not return but, in that case, the reason is deadly.)

Anderson's character on Jupiter has to struggle to survive. He does not find himself in a paradise. But Anderson and Simak are a hard and a soft sf writer, respectively. (Lewis also "soft.")

Blish And Anderson On Jupiter V, Part II

See Blish And Anderson On Jupiter V.

Poul Anderson's Edward Anglesey:

"He looked around, blinking. After the Jovian surface, it was always a little unreal to find himself here again, in the clean, quiet orderliness of the control room."

-"Call Me Joe," p. 11.

James Blish's Robert Helmuth:

"Helmuth did not reply for a moment. The abrupt transition from the storm-ravaged deck of the Bridge to the quiet, placid air of the operations shack on Jupiter's fifth moon was always a shock. He had never been able to anticipate it, let alone become accustomed to it; it was worse each time, not better."

-They Shall Have Stars, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 47.

Simak's characters do not return to their dome.

Anderson's Jovian gravity is 3 Terrestrial whereas Blish's is 2.5. On both versions of Jupiter, ice is a strong building material. Blish adds that, in Jovian conditions, steel is powder and aluminum "...splits at a tap." (p. 30) Thirty miles below the surface of the Bridge, there is a "...raging sea of liquid hydrogen..." (p. 32) There are few "permanent" land-masses with a question mark about their permanence. (p. 49)

Blish accurately describes a gas giant planet, having coined the term.

Blish And Anderson On Jupiter V

Poul Anderson, Call Me Joe; James Blish, They Shall Have Stars. (Both here.)

Blish: Helmuth controls machines on Jupiter by waldos.

Anderson: Anglesey controls an organic body by psionics.

Blish: Helmuth works for the US which is still in the Cold War with the USSR.

Anderson: Anglesey works for the Psionics Corporation which is contracted by the Federation Science Authority.

Anderson's team on Jupiter V is all male.

Blish's Helmuth has an uneasy interaction with a woman colleague and is also in ham radio contact with men on other Jovian moons.

No doubt there is more but, here in Lancaster on Earth, the sun and other responsibilities beckon.

We will catch up with Clifford Simak's Jupiter later. (Too many texts to juggle at once.) (Simak's characters work for the Jovian Survey Commission.)