Important Or Unimportant?

Are Earth and humanity important or unimportant on a cosmic or even just a galactic scale? Obviously they can be either or in some intermediate position. Sf in general and Poul Anderson in particular show us both. Anderson has a collection, The Gods Laughed, about superior aliens. On glancing through this volume just now, I had no recollection of having read "When Half-Gods Go." (That phrase, "Half Gods," is hyphenated on the opening page of the story although not on the contents page of the book.)

Here is an intermediate position. Aycharaych, when it has not yet been disclosed that he himself is of the species known as "the Ancients," admires human variety:

"'Your versatility approaches miracle.'"

-The Day Of Their Return, 3, p. 90.

Some aliens in some sf say this but surely any intelligent species would have to be versatile? Intelligence is versatility. Aycharaych is dishonest and is saying whatever will evoke the response that he wants to get from Chunderban Desai who thanks him but adds:

"'I don't believe, myself, we are unique. It merely happened we were the first into space - in our immediate volume and point in history - and our dominant civilization of the time happened to be dynamically expansive. So we spread into many different environments, often isolated, and underwent cultural radiation...or fragmentation.'" (ibid.)

That would explain the "'...wonderful variety...'" (ibid.) that Aycharaych claims to have found while travelling through the Terran Empire.

What is the probable reality in our universe? Brian Cox has persuaded me that even multicellular organisms might be rare. We already know that consciousness, manipulation, intelligence, civilization, technology, space technology and lasting civilizations with all of these attributes might be rare. What does that leave us with? Our uniqueness? Or spacefaring civilizations so few and so far apart in space and time that they never even detect each others' existence let alone communicate or meet physically?

In either of those two scenarios, we are very important indeed. It is our responsibility to survive, to develop and to make contact if that is remotely possible. (Meanwhile, there remains a continued motivation to destroy what has already been built.)

In the universe of Anderson's Technic History:

"We are one more-or-less intelligent species in a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

Even in that scenario, every single species and every single sophont would have immense value and significance although less obviously so.

Places On Planets

We are now living in the projected future of Global Warming. There is a heat wave and trains have been cancelled. On the assumption that such cancellations will not still be in place a week hence, I will be in London Thursday to Sunday next week without a computer. Books ordered, including SM Stirling's second Roman time travel novel, are scheduled to arrive some time after that. I have eighteen years left to live according to a Romany palm reader - not that I believe that with absolute certainty (indeed, it could be disproved today) but nevertheless such people have more than once said things that turned out to be true.

When someone travels across a planetary surface, there are places that they visit and other places that they know of but do not visit. Poul Anderson's fictional planets are complex enough for this to be the case. High Commissioner Desai leaves Imperial House to visit the University of Virgil but unfortunately does not also visit the industrial Web - at least not while we are watching him, which is what matters here.

Ivar Frederiksen travels with tinerans, then Riverfolk, to the Orcans but does not visit the Highlanders although Tatiana Thane concocts a ruse to use the Highlanders as a decoy to mislead the authorities hunting for Ivar.

In The Game Of Empire, Diana Crowfeather and her companions, while on Daedalus, travel along the Highroad River from Aurea to the Cynthian village of Lulach but, because of a change of plan, do not also visit the Donarrian settlement of Ghundrung, instead flying directly to the island of Zacharia.

Like real places.

On Aeneas

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

Some ironies:

While High Commissioner Desai is interviewing Aycharaych, he must pause to check the relevant data received from Sector HQ in Catawrayannis on Llynathawr. Desai politely asks Aycharaych whether he minds waiting for a few minutes. Of course not! As we later realize, this short wait gives the telepathic spy an even longer opportunity to scan the High Commissioner's surface thoughts. Even more so when Desai then invites Aycharaych to an early lunch and an extended conversation... The Chereionite's personal magnetism and charm are insidious. However, longer term, Desai remains on his guard and makes enquiries. But, by that time, Aycharaych, agent of Merseia, has vanished into the Aenean wilderness.

Nova Roma at night:

in Desai's office, blackness relieved only by glowboards and shifting Creusan moonlight;

outside and above, stars, moons, Milky Way and three planets;

elven city;

radiant shadowy houses;

dark dappled streets;

mercury river and canal;

afar, a ghostly desert dust storm;

cutting keening wind.

Is Aeneas the most detailed colony planet in the Technic History?

Its inhabitants:

University scientists, scholars, students and support staff

Landfolk squires, yeomen and tenants

Townfolk guilds and corporations

Web manufacturers, merchants and managers

tinerans

Riverfolk

Orcans 

Highlanders

However, these are all human. Dennitza has zmayi/ychani (Merseians by species, not by loyalty) represented in a third House of Parliament whereas Avalon has Ythrians represented by choths existing alongside the Parliament of Man.

What a complicated universe.

Many Mariuses

Everyone has heard of Caesar. Everyone who has read Poul Anderson's Psychotechnc History has heard of Marius. The opening story of this future history series is entitled "Marius," its point being that the Roman Marius had been a great general but a disastrous politician. (I know that there are always opposing views of politicians! - but here I am going with what one of Anderson's characters tells us.) 

At one stage, Julius Caesar had to hide in a different place every night from the secret police of the dictator, Sulla, who, when he at last gave way to the eminent men who had pleaded Caesar's case, warned them:

"'There are many Mariuses in this fellow Caesar.'"

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 1.

As another point of interest, one woman, Julia, was the wife of Marius and an aunt of Caesar.

While we live, we learn.

Aycharaych And Axor

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

Aycharaych knows of the Chinese Taiping Rebellion and tells Desai:

"'The leaders were inspired by a militant form of Christianity - scarcely what Jesus had in mind, no?'" (p. 92)

We receive various data later in this novel, then in later novels:

Aycharych is a Chereionite;

the Chereionites were the Ancients;

Fr Axor will seek for evidence of the Universal Incarnation among inscriptions of the Ancients;

Aycharaych is probably killed when Flandry orders the bombardment of Chereion - but not necessarily;

if Aycharaych survives, then he will no longer have any reason to work for the Merseians and might even work against them;

Axor might stay in touch with the Terran Intelligence agent, Targovi.

And a speculative outcome of all that - Axor and Aycharaych meet and together research the Ancients, starting with whatever Aycharaych remembers of the immense base of knowledge that he had had (and that Flandry destroyed) on Chereion.

Desai Interacts With An AI And And An Alien

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

"'Send him in, please.' (By extending verbal courtesy even to a subunit of a computer, the High Commissioner helped maintain an amicable atmosphere. Perhaps.)" (p. 88)

I think that it was Kevin in the Gregson the other night who said that internet companies want users now not to waste time or energy on politeness to AI's. We really have come a long way technologically.

Desai asks for the alien, Aycharaych, to be sent in without the slightest idea of what he looks like and catches his breath when he sees him. Not to be xenophobic or anything but would you be happy to have an alien coming in without knowing what to expect? Of course, human beings have had a lot of contact with a lot of different kinds of aliens by Desai's time. But still.

The receptionist computer is programmed to mimic languages instantly and accurately which:

"...gratified visitors, especially nonhumans." (ibid.)

- although we can rely on Aycharaych not to give a damn. (Except that this is our first sight of him if we are reading the Technic History in chronological order.) 

Tempora Mutantur

It means "Times change."

I remember my father's widowed mother and her sister and brother-in-law, then contemplate my daughter and granddaughter. The change in beliefs, values and life-styles is complete. Five generations. To my parents and grandparents, the difference between Catholic and Protestant was enormously important. My daughter has always understood that she lives among Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and secularists.

Fran once reflected, "The people with whom I do not speak the same language! Like my mother to whom it matters enormously whether I am a Catholic or a Protestant... And I am either a Catholic or a Protestant... or else an atheist... or else something very strange!" (I did not think that Fran was going to pop up here but he sure helps.)

Science fiction future histories and time travel stories should show such social changes and Poul Anderson does in the generation gap between Nicholas van Rijn and Coya Conyon and in a future doctor's comments on Carl Farness' sexual mores.

Anderson does it.

Details On Aeneas

Extrasolar terrestroid planets colonized by human beings in Poul Anderson's Technic History - there are a few:

Hermes

Avalon

Dennitza

Aeneas

Nyanza

Altai

Unan Besar

Vixen

Imhotep

Daedalus

Some are realized in minute detail. Frex, in Nova Roma on Aeneas:

"...the gray ashlars bore a veneer of carefully chosen and integrated slabs, marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite, materials more exotic than that; and often there were carvings besides, friezes, armorial bearings, grotesques; and erosion had mellowed it all, to make the old part of town one subtle harmony."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 3, p. 87.

There is much more - statues and plants among fishponds and fountains in vitryl-roofed courts, cramped and twisted streets where countryfolk ride horses or stathas - but I don't want to quote lengthy paragraphs. As I always say, read Anderson.

Buffer Zone

Any future history series has an indefinite number of potential spin-off series. Star Trek has become a future history because it covers more than one generation. Years ago, in Waterstones Bookshop, I came across a paperback novel, title and author's name long forgotten, which was the opening volume of a series about a Klingon Bird of Prey Commander. Does anyone know whether this Bird of Prey still flies?

One sentence in Poul Anderson's Technic History suggests a comparable spin-off:

"Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 82.

OK. A Terran Navy special forces team works in the buffer zone where it explores, establishes advance bases, covertly contacts any natives that have not yet been contacted by Merseia and spies on any that have been. The Merseians maintain a similar force, not necessarily all of their own species, although we know that they have no Chereionites to spare.

What would it be like for intelligent species to live in such a zone? Such a series could have legs.

Two More From Suetonius

We can get used to reading history in parallel with historical fiction.

"Some of Domitian's campaigns, that against the Chatti for instance, were quite unjustified by military necessity; but not so that against the Sarmatians, who had massacred a legion and killed its commander."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 299.

This is the kind of remark that interests and amuses us when we have just read a novel like SM Stirling's To Turn The Tide whose characters include a Sarmatian former gladiatrix who is a skilled fighter and bodyguard.

"Only an amazing stroke of luck checked the rebellion which Lucius Antonius, the governor of Upper Germany, raised during Domitian's absence from Rome; the Rhine thawed in the nick of time, preventing the German barbarians in Antonius' pay for crossing the ice to join him, and the troops who remained loyal were able to disarm the rebels."

-ibid.

This supports the much-discussed "history is a series of accidents" theory. Sf readers imagine an alternative history in which the Rhine remained frozen and Lucius Antonius overthrew Domitian. This might also happen in the Time Patrol timeline:

time criminals could deploy a weather-control potential distributor from the Cold Centuries;

a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy could keep the Rhine frozen for longer.

This is another of those posts where I did not know in advance where I was going to wind up.