CONFLICT

After Conquests/Seven Conquests, we (might as well) turn to Conflict (not Conflicts!), a similarly themed Poul Anderson collection. Having recently reread:

"Time Lag"

"The Alien Enemy"

"Kings Who Die"

"Details"

- we are left with:

"High Treason"

"The Pugilist"

"I Tell you, It's True"

"A Man To My Wounding"

"Among Thieves"

"The Turning Point"

Sometimes the title of a short story evokes an inchoate memory not of any plot details but only of emotional tone and not necessarily a favourable memory. However, this is irrelevant. We have demonstrated that a Poul Anderson story reread analytically repays our analysis with a wealth of entirely forgotten details and nuances so we will start with "High Treason" the next time that we return to this blog although, since I now approach the end of a period of recuperation from a cold, I will be publishing considerably less than ten so or so posts per day! Other aspects of daily life in twenty-first century Lancaster will resume. Into the future.

Psychodynamics

"License."

A psychodynamicist's analysis:

men evolved to hunt;

they are adapted for it biologically and psychologically;

their eyes are most sensitive to the colour of sunlight through leaves;

their feet are adapted to walk on yielding surfaces and are flattened by pavements;

they want to run freely and to sleep after a full meal;

they want the excitement of a chase and a kill, followed by a feast;

they need both tribal intimacy and opportunities for solitude;

they do not want crowding, confinement or subordination of life to a routine job;

psychodynamics showed that most men subconsciously but intensely hate civilization;

hatred must be vented;

soldiers could vent it;

but war has become too destructive and must be prevented;

the destruction, chaos and suffering of the Smashup vented a lot of anger;

now, crime has been legalized and regulated as a safety valve;

imprisonment has been abolished and outlawry instituted;

most people could not live happily in a world with neither war nor crime so they are allowed regulated crime.

The narrator, who makes this analysis, accepts a kidnapping job but would he have accepted a murder job? These also are regulated and legal.

(My task here has been to summarize this analysis, not to agree with it.)

Different Kinds Of Happy Endings

At The End Of "Strange Bedfellows"

There had been no question of Sevigny and Maura staying together. He helps her to make her escape and covers her tracks. Then, he will:

help the authorities to round up (some of) the bad guys;

enjoy a well-earned rest in a Canadian forest preserve;

happily return to his work in the Lunar air mines.

In this case, the happy ending is preservation of a beneficial and desirable status quo.

But what of cases where the status quo is undesirable or at best a stopgap?

"'It can't go on this way forever. The present system is frankly meant as a stopgap.'"

-"License," p. 159.

At The End Of "License"

Rheinbogen will:

stop his summer job as a gangster;

work as a psychodynamicist in one of Dulac's industries;

thus, stay in touch with Dulac's daughter, Marie;

research psychodynamics to find a longer term solution for society.

In this case, the happy ending is going beyond the status quo, first personally, then globally.

Breakfast And The End

"Strange Bedfellows."

Sevigny, with every hand - seemingly - against him, avoids recapture by hiding with Maura, the woman who had been used to distract him earlier. No one will look for him there. As in "License," we had wondered whether the heroine, for want of a better word, would play any role later in the narrative and she does. The ending is abrupt. After all his travails, Maura proposes to make breakfast for herself and Sevigny, then - scene change - he is reunited with his boss, the Buffalo, and everything works out ok. Andersonian endings are usually - not always - optimistic. (Always in novels, I think.)

One part of one panel in a comic strip by Alan Moore contains a parody of a comic strip script:

Pages 1-7: guys fight in space.

Pages 8-13: everything works out ok.

A summary of many stories but the author has to fill in the details!

Maui And A Dead Dirrel

"Strange Bedfellows." 

Although there is much opposition to the Luna Corporation on Earth, one Honolulu policeman tells Sevigny:

"'Me, I think this work on the Moon is the greatest thing that's happened since Maui's time.'" (p. 199)

Sevigny reports theft and kidnapping to the police who take him in for questioning but then try to hand him over to two US Federal Police Agents who have been told to arrest him for conspiracy. The kidnappers from whom he has escaped have political clout. This time, Sevigny's dirrel is shot and killed helping him to escape but he himself again flees into nightime Honolulu and is this story becoming a sequence of Andersonian fight and escape scenes? It will go somewhere else but we have to wait to find out where and when. Another twenty pages and we will have reached the end of Seven Conquests. That should be this evening.

Capture, Escape And Reflection

"Strange Bedfellows."

We see some "strange bedfellows." Sevigny is kidnapped by:

a representative of the Fatimite Brotherhood which holds that terraforming defiles the Moon;

a leading member of the Indian Conservationist Party which wants its country, not the Moon, to be reclaimed;

the chairman of a company that will fertilize Terrestrial deserts if the Moon is abandoned.

We are reminded of the disparate anti-UN alliance in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Helped by his dirrel, Sevigny grabs the gun that has been held on him and escapes - an Andersonian action scene.

Hurrying through city streets, Sevigny gapes at shop display windows and thinks:

"Was such luxury possible on an Earth that everyone called impoverished? Wait. Remember your history classes. Inordinate wealth for a few has always gone along with inordinate want for the many. Because the many no longer have the economic strength to resist...." (p. 197)

Surely we, living in Terrestrial history, take that for granted. However, for Sevigny, coming from a frontier society, it is a history lesson.

Even Anderson's action scenes are reflective.

A Meal In Honolulu

"Strange Bedfellows."

It is a long time since we have had a food post.

Donald Sevigny, Clan Woodman of the Shaws, and Maura Sumantri of Djakarta and Chicago set out to consume:

martini;

pate de foie gras;

smoked oysters;

marinated artichokes;

thousand-year eggs;

soup;

teriyaki;

consome Mexique;

filet of mahimahi;

tossed salad;

ice cream with Martian herb sause;

champagne.

However, their meal is interrupted by an action sequence.

From a skyscraper restaurant, they see:

multi-coloured Honolulu, flashing and glistening by night;

sheening ocean;

Waikiki surf;

crowded sky;

quarter Moon.

Sevigny is kidnapped but we are dwelling on the details, not following the action. That can wait.

Death And The Martians

"Strange Bedfellows."

There is Martian as well as human cultural diversity in this fictional Solar System:

the Great Confederation dries and powders a dead body and scatters it on the winds;

in Illach, they process a body as fuel for their Biological Engine;

K'nea uses bodies for animal fodder;

Hs'ach does something else but Sevigny cuts short R'ku's account.

It must be impossible to count how many fictional Martian species there have been. Have we seen the last of them? No, enterprising and imaginative sf writers, like SM Stirling, can write retro-sf.

Just move sideways in time and you can write what you want. But it had better be original!

One More Mini-Future History

"Strange Bedfellows."

The Buffalo will fill Sevigny in. That means he will fill us in.

Politics bores Sevigny:

"'Which shows how little you know about politics, son. It's the only game in town.'" (p. 180)

The Buffalo quotes a Poul Anderson title. Then he quotes a Heinlein one when he suggests that Sevigny have an expenses-paid vacation on Earth:

"'See the green hills of Earth, the ocean Columbus sailed, Westminster Abbey, the Taj Mahal, the Brisbane Follies...'" (p. 181)

It is always reassuring to learn that some of these places still stand in a fictional future.

The History

global wars

aftermath

peace of exhaustion

Commonwealth

right to bear arms under the Treaty of Toronto

problems not solved

stability ending

conquest of space

algae seeded on Venus

Cytherean clans economic and political units

little Venus-Earth trade or contact yet

declaration of Cytherean independence

terraforming of Luna by an international Corporation

opposition from various interests on Earth

suspected sabotage of equipment

Scene-setting.

Mare Serenitatis

 

"Strange Bedfellows."

"[Sevigny] dared not go full speed on this terrain, though the Mare Serenitatis might open beneath him at any time. And what a hell of a name that was, he thought in the back of his head." (p. 172)

This story was published in 1964. In 1969, President Nixon spoke to two astronauts on the Moon. I remember him speaking of wanting to bring peace and serenity on Earth. I wondered whether Poul Anderson could have had this in mind when he had Sevigny reflecting on the inappropriateness of the name, "Mare Serenitatis," but the dates clearly do not match. Oh, well. Good try.

"Strange Bedfellows" is another story that I almost might as well not have read before. I remember, I think, that our hero goes to Earth for cloak and dagger stuff there but that is as far as it goes. Read on.