Backtrack

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Let's backtrack. In Production Of Anti-Matter, we summarized a conversation between Venator and Lirion but missed one part. 

Lirion says that, without more energy from anti-matter, the Lunarians at Proserpina will be imprisoned in sameness. Venator asks whether they have:

"'...no inner resources.'" (p. 69)

Lirion scoffs. Machine intelligence admires its own:

"'Abstractions, mental constructs...'" (ibid.)

- but that is not:

"'...for living creatures...'" (ibid.)

Like passivity versus violence, this is another false dichotomy. Organic intelligence encompasses pure mathematics and its application to the empirical universe and everything else: emotions, social interactions, artistic creativity, spirituality, whatever else we might think of. Stop splitting up the truth and fighting over the parts!

A parable told by Jiddu Krishnamurti:

The Devil's friend saw a man picking up a small piece of the truth. The Devil said, "It doesn't matter. He is only going to organize and systematize it."

From The Pacific To The Moon

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 4.

Jesse Nicol had spent time on a shiptown of the Lahui Kuikawa. It was there that he decried unoriginal art.

There was a sunset:

"The sun, become a red-gold shield, was on the horizon. Glade blazed from it across the waters." (p. 84)

Some Lahui:

"'...swim down the sunset road with the Keiki.'" (ibid.)

During a silence after a fight:

"The sun dropped from sight, the sea-road faded into darkness." (p. 88)

Nicol saw the Moon above the deckhouse and wondered whether he should seek employment by the Lunarians there, which is where we have already seen him. CHAPTER 5 will return us to Nicol with Falaire on the Moon but not tonight, folks. The sun has long set here as well.

From An Odyssey To An Elegy

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 4.

Sometimes an sf writer presents a list, for example of familiar names or events, but then continues that list into the future. Thus, Poul Anderson's Jesse Nicol asks:

"'What's the sense in producing an imitation Odyssey, The Trojan Women, Hamlet, The Waste Land, Elegy at Jupiter?" (p. 83)

We know four of these titles. Nicol knows them and the fifth. He tells us what all five have in common:

"'Those spoke about love, strife, triumph, grief, terror, mystery, in the language of the people and their gods, or people who'd lost their gods but were gaining a universe.'" (ibid.)

Nicol's problem is that, for centuries, all writing, music, art and science has been nothing but variations on old forms and themes, trying to revivify:

"'...something...that was worn-out before their grandparents were born.'" (ibid.)

It is appropriate that his list ends with an elegy.

Production Of Anti-Matter

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

The Federation stops production of anti-matter on Mercury because it has stockpiled enough for foreseeable contingencies in its stable economy. 

Unlike in other fictional futures, including some by Poul Anderson, no living being has been on Mercury, only specialized armoured machines. Installations on the surface and in orbit captured and focused solar energy. Photons striking nucleons caused quantum convulsions that generated new positive and negative particles which magnetic lines of force conducted to separate destinations, thus creating masses of anti-matter. 

Lunarians took anti-matter to Proserpina but their supply has become low and they have no way to generate any more whereas "...a single large consignment..." (p. 68) from the Federation would enable them to:

"'...build a fusion-powered factory to make more...'" (pp. 68-69)

Proserpina's iron core is rich and a source of industrial wealth but difficult to hollow out for habitations so more energy is needed.

Venator, representing the Federation, is appalling:

"'Do you feel we owe you access?...Your folk chose to go live on the fringe of deep space because they wanted no part of our civilization.'" (p. 68)

Sure. Having been made different, the Lunarians wanted to live differently. Is that a reason not to help them? Is their request not an opportunity for rapprochement?

Even worse:

"'Have you then concluded that altruism is, after all, a virtue?'" (ibid.)

Well, it is, isn't it? In the following volume, a representative of the cybercosm compares that entity to Jesus and the Buddha. (The cybercosm dominates the Federation despite Venator's denial.)

Venator continues:

"'You want this Federation that you loathe to supply you, when you have nothing to exchange that we need.'" (ibid.)

The Federation supplies its own needs and can afford to give, whether "loathed" or not. (Surely beside the point?)

Venator again:

"'I ask you again, why should we? You're not dying of hunger or cold.'" (p. 69)

Is that the only time when the Federation would help them? Indeed, would it help them even then?

Lirion's reply is that the Federation would gain a new and strange society shaking it out of its stagnation. Anderson's readers think, "Yes!" Venator thinks:

"Yes...that is exactly what we fear." (ibid.)

It has to be made clear to readers why this is feared. Lirion remarks that the cybercosm has:

"'...its own ends, which are not remotely human.'" (p. 72)

Venator thinks:

"How could they be?" (ibid.)

What are they then?

Malcontents And Troublemakers

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Venator continues his line of thought quoted in the previous post:

"It was the metamorphs and their few full-human adherents who were the malcontents, the troublemakers - Lunarians above all, but others too, more dangerous because less obvious...." (p. 63)

Dangerous to what? Is this made sufficiently clear? The cybercosm does not maintain a social equilibrium because it thinks that that is in the best interests of all human beings. The way to serve the best interests of all human beings would be to find out what the malcontents want and help them to do it. They in turn would lead humanity forward - after argument and debate, of course. No, the cybercosm itself has some long-term cosmic plans that require it, if not to control, then at least to be able to predict, everything else that happens, including what organic intelligences do. 

OK. Then let's communicate and cooperate with the cybercosm. But it does not allow that. But I wonder whether Poul Anderson has created an artificial conflict for the sake of the narrative. Another future history - which I cannot write! - might show beneficial human-AI interaction on a cosmic scale.

I did not know where I was going with this post until I had finished it.

The Hunter's List

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Venator asks himself:

"Who in their right minds would want a return of...?" (p. 63)

- and then inwardly recites a list of horrors which I will reproduce as a list:

war

poverty

rampant criminality

disease

famine

cancerously swelling population

necessity to work no matter how nasty or deadening the work might be

mass lunacy

private misery

death in less than a hundred years

Thank you, Venator. That is a very good list of very bad things, a comprehensive list of horrors inflicted on human beings, some by themselves, others not. There is nothing in this list that mankind cannot in principle end in the future although right now we are stampeding the other way - either denounce or applaud mass destruction, depending on who perpetrates it.

We can certainly reply to Venator:

No one in their right mind wants war etc but we also want individual and collective self-determination and we should not be compelled to accept your peace at the expense of that.

I think that we can have it all - but let's find out.

Extinction

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2.

"...extinction had claimed some splendid creatures, mammoth, saber-tooth, great-antlered Irish elk; and it seemed to Nicol that eagles or tigers, existing on narrow ranges under strict protection, were not what their natures meant them to be." (p. 52)

Sure. If we had resources enough, then we could populate a terrestroid planet with birds of prey and wild animals. But protecting them is better than letting them become extinct and every species eventually ceases to exist in one way or another in any case. Individual eagles or tigers do not instantiate Platonic Ideas of eaglehood or tigerhood. Their natures are temporary and changing but scientists can observe and record. Nothing is meant to be but it is for a while.

Space Pilots In Two Timelines

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2.

In On The Moon, we listed Robert Heinlein's Future History stories which are set on the Moon but did not mention "Space Jockey" which is about a rocket pilot who regularly flies between Earth and Moon and, at the end of the story, accepts a job that will involve flying only between the Moon and Lunar orbit provided, of course, that he and his wife move house and live permanently in Luna City. This is the daily life of the future as depicted in the Future History.

This parallels Jesse Nicol's work. Nicol flies between points on the Lunar surface or between Luna and the orbiting Habitat. He is employed by Lunarians although some of his flights:

"...demanded higher accelerations than Lunarians could readily tolerate...." (p. 50)

Alienated from the period he lives in, Nicol is lucky to work among alien-like Lunarians and even has a relationship with a colleague, Falaire, who is of Selenarchic descent.

Again, reading Anderson, we remember Heinlein.

Resemblances And Outmoded Ideas

A Superman comic reminded me of a Robert Heinlein novel and Poul Anderson's The Night Face reminded me of another superhero, Green Lantern. See:

Words And Texts

Poul Anderson's World Without Stars reminded me of another Superman comic. See:

Hugh Valland And Superman

Yet another Superman comic, this one written by Alan Moore, reminded me of James Blish's Mission To The Heart Stars. In this case, the connection was that Superman's antagonist, Mongul, physically resembled Blish's Hegemon of Malis. 

Blish's Heart Stars federation, self-designated "the Hegemony of Malis," has become, like Asimov's planet Trantor, an outmoded sf concept. Blish's idea was that, since stars are much closer at the galactic core, an interstellar federation might develop more quickly there. Now, instead, it is generally accepted that there is a massive black hole at the centre as in Larry Niven's A World Out Of Time and Anderson's For Love And Glory.

(Asimov had the Galactic Imperial capitol at the galactic centre but a later contributor to Asimov's Foundation series moved Trantor further out so that the black hole could occupy the centre.)

On The Moon

A large part of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set on the Moon:

"Requiem"

"The Long Watch"

"Gentlemen, Be Seated"

"The Black Pits of Luna"

"It's Great To Be Back"

"The Menace from Earth"

"Searchlight"

"Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon"

We remember these stories when we read Poul Anderson's Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2, set on the Moon. A Lunarian woman lopes on the surface, her outspread solar collectors and cooling surfaces resembling dragonfly wings, her silver, mostly bionic, spacesuit fitting her like a second skin. A Lunarian man leads his vacuum-adapted moonwolf on a leash. Jess Nicol remembers the phrase, "Magnificent desolation..." (p. 44)

Anderson's vision continues and completes Heinlein's.