Fenn On Mars

The Fleet Of Stars, 11.

It is time for more character interactions. Fenn, who has been in space, in the orbiting Habitat, inside Luna and both on and under the Pacific, is now on Mars where he:

hikes and talks with Kinna Ronay;

quotes from his conversation with Chuan;

remembers Wanika;

is concerned about the cybercosm;

hears the wind in his sonics (see Wind On Mars);

asks to be introduced to Martian Lunarians.

Plot threads converge but slowly because of the distances involved.

A Martian skinsuit extends three legs to form a stool when its wearer sits! How many readers have remembered that detail?

In Chapter 12, Fenn, back on Earth, in fact in antiquarian London, with Wanika, receives a recorded message from Kinna, still on Mars, and that is as far as we are about to reread this Sunday breakfast time.

Ad Martem!

Fenn's Futuristic Speculation

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

I cannot remember from previous readings whether what follows will happen in this future history series or whether it is only a possible future contemplated by Fenn.

He imagines that:

the Lahui Kuikawa, human beings and intelligent seals, flatten the Martian moon, Deimos, into concentric cylindroids, thus transforming it into a habitat much vaster than the one currently orbiting Luna;

from this base, they send generations of explorers and merchant adventurers out across the Solar System, thus gathering enough wealth first to terraform Mars, then to launch interstellar argosies.

This might be only a possible future within a fictional future. Nevertheless, Fenn draws a valid inference from it. By transforming Deimos and Mars and looking to the stars, the Lahui Kuikawa would transform themselves and therefore would no longer be Lahui Kuikawa. He reflects that the current extra-solar colonists have been transformed from Terrans into children of Earth Mothers. He could have added that, by cooperatively changing their natural environments with their hands and brains, our pre-human ancestors had changed themselves into rational, linguistic organisms and thus into human beings. That reflection takes us out of speculative fiction and back into our shared past. 

Pacific Performance And Perceptions

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

When an entire local population of Keiki Moana performs a ballet, Fenn does not understand it but:

"...it shook him with tragic power, like an earthquake or a stormwind." (p. 131)

When Fenn's companion, Wanika, summons their boat to return them to the shiptown, we are not told just that the boat arrived. First, we learn what they perceive while they wait. I summarize Poul Anderson's account but also encourage blog readers to read or reread his text: waves lap, air cools, Keiki hush, sinking sunlight goldens waters and kindles clouds, an albatross soars, blue darkens. Then the conversation resumes but that is another story. First, let us appreciate this Andersonian Pacific sunset like so many similar scenes, settings and scenarios.

I do not know what comes next, having paused on this point, and might now pause for food but keep reading out there.

Light And Dark

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

Our primary sense is sight. We neither smell objects nor hear echoes from them but see them. Therefore, we associate (Biblical) "revelation" - and, still more explicitly, (Buddhist) "enlightenment" - with light.

"In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John, 1: 4-5)

"The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (John 1: 9)

(In one tradition, the light becomes a man. In the other, a man becomes enlightened.)

Although we are not intelligent sea-dwellers, like the Keiki Moana, they too might associate either revelation or enlightenment with sunlight becoming visible above them as they return from the depths. So what "revelation" might they find in the opposite direction in the cold, dark and pressure at the limit of survivability? Poul Anderson describes this "religious revelation" with two words and one phrase:

"...awe and mystery and the implacability of the universe." (p. 130)

- or, to summarize more briefly, awe, mystery and implacability. Yes, these words are appropriate. Personally, when I swam down so far that I suddenly experienced cold, darkness and pain in both ears, that was not a religious experience but I am not an intelligent seal!

We remember Anderson's The Merman's Children and "Homo Aquaticus," the latter an instalment of his Kith future history series - and also the Starkadian sea-dwellers in his Technic History.

Keiki Moana

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

The sf travelogue continues as Fenn accompanies the intelligent seals, the Keiki Moana, into and under the Pacific.

Keiki ride waves, mount crests, plunge into and merge with hollows, herd flocks, bark songs, kill prey and bear scars from sharks. Fenn gambols with dolphins beneath meteoric silver flying fish.

In the depths, a whale passes and night is unending while Keiki track life, shifting currents and machines. Descent to the mortal limit is a rite of passage, a test of strength and a revelation.

Keiki females have their own culture and language. Keiki art, originally enacted, danced or sung, has come to include recorded literature and artifacts produced by directed robots.

We are overwhelmed and it is time for me to go into town. 

Bedside Reading

Lying on the mattress where I have slept for three nights, I find beside my head Poul Anderson's:

The Psychotechnic League

Time Patrol

Harvest Of Stars

- each the first volume of its series. How rich are Anderson's many series and other works.

Harvest Of Stars, mostly chase sequences, soars as transcendent speculative fiction only in its last few chapters but then that series takes off in Volumes II-IV. 

Time Patrol is ten instalments of very variable lengths, lacking only the long tripartite novel, The Shield Of Time.

The Psychotechnic History takes off as a future history series only after Volume I.

This is a rare pre-meditation post. The order of the day for this normal Saturday is meditation, breakfast, activities in town and probably a quiet evening. The Northern Irish guests will visit the nearby Lake District today or tomorrow, weather permitting. Life continues to be good here but bad in many other places.

Different Writers And Different Histories

We can compare future histories by different sf writers or different future histories by one sf writer, Poul Anderson. The immediately preceding post is enriched by comparisons of details in:

the Psychotechnic History

the Technic History

the Harvest Of Stars History

the Time Patrol (a past and future history)

- and there have also been recent references to Genesis and Maurai which leaves only Kith, Rustum and Flying Mountains not mentioned.

While I type in this language that will become Anglic or Anglo, Sheila's relatives, our house guests, converse around me in incomprehensible Northern Irish accents and it is time to give up the struggle.

Good night and peace on Earth (which still makes sense as an aspiration).

At Tharsis

The Fleet Of Stars, 9.

Kinna and Elverir, flying into the Martian wilderness towards Tharsis, pass above Guthrie Head and the Sisters. 

Outside their flitter:

"The landmarks dropped behind like time itself..." (p. 115)

Inside Kinna's mind:

"Fragments of the history blew past her like dust on the wind." (ibid.)

Two good comparisons: landmarks like time; history like dust on the wind. (That ubiquitous Andersonian wind.)

The Lunarians are not only physically but also psychologically different from Terrans and, in a previous volume, devised their own language. Elverir will introduce Kinna to those Martian Lunarians who call themselves neither brigands nor guerillas but Inrai. Why, in such a high tech society, would anyone:

rob caravans;

wreck machines;

kill sophotects and men?

Some explanation will be given but we must read on.

Elverir might just have told Kinna that the Inrai cause was just but Poul Anderson wants to convey some linguistic nuances. Thus, Elverir uses the adjective, "douris," (p. 113) which we are told means "natural" or "unwarped" rather than "just" or "righteous." Elverir's "'...zailin...'" (p. 119) with the Inrai was maybe his initiation rather than his indoctrination or training. 

Will the Inrai, who want their freedom from the Synesis, receive help from Proserpina? In Anderson's Technic History, will Aeneas receive help from Ythri or Merseia or will Diomedes receive help from Ythri? (We are not about to answer those questions here.)

The Inrai want a sovereign Lunarian Mars and Luna back. Kinna recognizes irredentism. 

"'Carthagalann stole Egypt, our rightful possession.'

"'Italia irredenta,' murmured Everard.

"'Hunh?'

"'Never mind.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 6, p. 210.

Elverir acknowledges that one of his comrades is "'...not wholly sane...'" (p. 119) about their cause. Shivering but not from cold, Kinna reflects:

"History said that causes brought forth such people. But the murderous great causes belonged only to history, didn't they? They were centuries extinct, weren't they?" (ibid.)

Here again, this late future history reminds us of Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History:

"There was something of the fanatic about Etienne Fourre.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York, September 1981), 31-129 AT V, p. 54.

In the wake of World War III, Fourre fights nationalism and builds the UN world government although the title character, Naysmith, thinks that in earlier days that same Fourre would have been with the Inquisition or Cromwell.

The spirit of the Psychotechnic History creeps closer when:

"The room was growing dark. [Kinna] imagined the specter of the nation-state walking in through the wall, from the cold and unbreathable wind outside, followed by war and war and war." (p. 125)

The Inrai began when, during a dispute about access rights, one Lunarian killed three sophotects and one man, then fled into the wilderness with fellow rebels. They are supported by independent Lunarian cities, rob caravans for supplies and fire at constables to keep them off. The cybercosm works towards a destiny whereas the Inrai want freedom from destiny.

The universe is big enough for both.

"Together"

Let me discuss something tangential but I will then return us to Poul Anderson's works. All my life, I have heard the Eton Boating Song but had only ever discerned the single word, "together." I hope that the song is audible here. It is mentioned, appropriately, in one of Dornford Yates' books.

What I like and approve of:

the music

togetherness

memory and nostalgia

acknowledgement of the passage of time

What I am not in tune with:

the focusing of all this on an English public school or indeed on any boarding school

Relevance to Anderson: 

continuity

conservatism

Flandry and his fiancee in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

The Sea Way

Compare:

the Cosmic religion in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

Cosmenosis in Anderson's Technic History

the Dao Kai/Sea Way in his The Fleet Of Stars, 8, which is -

more a philosophy than a religion (this has become a cliche although not a bad one);

a way of thinking, feeling and living;

behaviours rather than precepts;

organic;

founded on wholeness of life in oneness with the universe -

- and involves meditating under stars and under water.

OK. I could acknowledge the Sea Way while continuing to practice zazen.