Late-Night Other Reading, Always Relevant

(It is hard to choose between cover images.)

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it."

-Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (London, 1965), CHAPTER 1, p. 7.

This is the opening paragraph of its author's first novel. The opening sentence of the second paragraph marks the first appearance of a certain central character:

"James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired." (ibid.)

My point here is that, in this and in many subsequent passages, Fleming writes autobiographically. He has experienced the scent, smoke, sweat and soul-erosion, the nausea, greed, fear and nervous tension. He merely has to commit them to paper.

By contrast, Poul Anderson's description of Dominic Flandry's visit to the Crystal Moon cannot be based on experience! Instead, it is an exercise in its author's vivid creative imagination and we appreciate it as such while also, in a different mood, enjoying Fleming's experiential account.

The TV news is on.

Speculations And "Backwardness"

The word from Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop:

Do major powers have blackmail material on Western political leaders?

What will the world be like a week from now? 

We lack a Time Machine but can wait. This works. Born in 1949, I now know what is happening in 2026. But how much of what is happening now is hidden from us? If blackmail works, then we won't know.

Poul Anderson, "Backwardness" IN Anderson, Kinship With The Stars (New York, 1991), pp. 154-166.

Having mentioned this story, let's reread it.

It is set at a time when there is a Greenland Resort and a Luna City. Regular sf readers have learned to deduce: the future but probably the near future; interplanetary travel but not yet human interstellar travel unless of course we are about to be told otherwise. 

Because the only point of this particular story is to make an observation about how much or how little intelligence is necessary for human evolution, Anderson makes a simplistic and entirely implausible story assumption:

"'Same plants grow on every Earth-like planet, just like the same people and animals. Not much difference...'" (p. 157)

A Terrestrial, in this case the Secretary General of the United Nations, automatically asks, "'Why?'" (ibid.) adding, "'...it can't be coincidence!'" (ibid.)

- whereas the captain of a Galactic spaceship is completely uncurious:

"'I don't know. I'm just a practical spaceman. Never worried about it.'" (ibid.)

How "practical" is it for a spaceman not to wonder about a question like that? Maybe on some cosmic scale this can be coincidence but, if so, then that is something that we urgently need to learn about! But already, in Captain Hurdgo's cheerful indifference, we approach the crux of the story. If his spaceship engine works, then that is all that concerns him... His men - and they are "men" - do not make enquiries in Terrestrial laboratories, libraries or museums but buy junk jewelry in Macy's...

I have not drunk alcohol - at least not regularly or in any large amount - for decades but Andrea (with my consent) put brandy in my coffee. I suddenly felt very tired and this might be my first and last post for today but I must watch some TV news at 10:00 pm. 

Which is stranger: fact or fiction?

Short Stories And Collections

A very large number of short stories have been republished in many collections with overlapping contents. It is possible to recognize a title while remembering nothing of the story or to remember a story while forgetting its title. I had to search this blog to find the title, "Backwardness." I thought that I had not reread "Among Thieves," which is in Conflict, recently but was mistaken. I had reread it in Strangers From Earth. The title, "Among Thieves," does not seem appropriate to this story and suggests instead the theme of "License." We will continue with collections despite their confusions. There are two stories left in Conflict, having concluded "Turning Point" and eliminated "Among Thieves," but regular blog readers know what I am going to say at this time of night.

Good night as long as it is not the Long Night.

Resolution And Transcendence

"Turning Point." 

The solution that is adopted is to disperse the Jorillians among scattered human societies where they will give a lead, scientifically, socially etc, and thus will advance human civilization but not build a Jorillian civilization. I think that this will work but will also go beyond itself. The Jorillians are canny enough to realize what has happened to them/been done to them and therefore will respond to that. Some or all of them will reestablish contact, then reconvene and either return to Joril or find somewhere else suitable. There they will be able to make scientific discoveries and to create new technologies unhindered by less intelligent humanity. If such a move were to provoke any hostility from human beings, then they would withdraw further. There is a lot of space out there as we were shown when the McCormac rebels fled outside known space in the Technic History.

Zen monks guide lay meditation groups but, if they were ostracized or persecuted, then they would withdraw and continue their own practice elsewhere, a good analogy for the Jorillians.

Every SF Premise

Poul Anderson gives the impression that he systematically considers every possible sf premise. Thus:

humanoid aliens that are many times more intelligent than us;

humanoid aliens that are many times less intelligent than us (title?);

militarily superior humanoid aliens who do not conquer Earth militarily but sell their military services to the highest bidder among Terrestrial governments and thus conquer Earth economically;

aliens whose psychic powers and occult knowledge exceed ours;

humanoid aliens who meddle in Terrestrial affairs but only cause a deterioration in the course of events;

a sudden increase in human intelligence;

the first humanoid robot is unemployed;

organisms can be immortal only if they are sheltered from all radiation, deep underground.

Nothing turns out as expected?

Superiority

Poul Anderson's "Wings of Victory" and "Turning Point" are spaceship stories. One criterion for such a categorization is that they could be adapted as episodes of Star Trek although, of course, they are better as they are.

In "Turning Point," the problem - at least it is perceived as such - is a humanoid planetary population whose every member from the youngest to the oldest is many times more intelligent than Einstein or even than whichever individual currently possesses the highest IQ on Earth. 

Having rapidly learned technology from humanity, these Jorillians can be expected to build an interstellar civilization that we will neither understand nor be able to participate in. I would say let them get on with it but the human characters believe that such a development would demoralize mankind. I have been told that, in Battlestar Galactica, parts of the galaxy are inhabited, or at least used, by vastly advanced beings whom the regular characters simply avoid. Peaceful coexistence seems perfectly possible. Human beings used to believe that they shared their Terrestrial and cosmic environments with superior beings. Maybe in future they can live with that as a fact?

Familiar Andersonian touches -

Biblical quotation: "'...what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'" (p. 278)

A dramatic pause in a conversation is punctuated or underlined by the wind:

"There was a stillness. I heard the forest sough in the night around us." (p. 279)

The night signifies: no answer yet.

A problem is solved by a sudden moment of realization:

"Haraszthy stiffened. He sat like stone for an entire minute before he raised his face and whooped aloud.

"'Why not?'" (p. 282)

Four stages: stiffening; stillness; whooping; solution revealed later.

Possible solutions: Exterminate or quarantine the Jorillians? Something else?

On Joril

 

The Quest For The Perfect Planet by WE Johns was a juvenile sf novel about an attempt to find an extrasolar planet with an environment that would be perfect for human beings to colonize. Surely impossible?

In Poul Anderson's "Turning Point," a survey ship from Earth finds the planet Joril:

"...with more water than Earth, it offered a mild climate everywhere. The biochemistry was so like our own that we could eat native foods, and there didn't seem to be any germs that UX=2 couldn't handle. Seas, forests, meadows made us feel right at home..." (p. 268)

UX=2?

Eat native foods? Surely impossible when those foods are end products of an entirely separate evolution? Anderson usually writes about incomers at least needing dietary supplements.

A five-man gravboat team comprises:

Jacques Lejeune, pilot;

the first person narrator, unnamed as yet, engineer;

Commander Ernest Baldinger of the Solar Peace Authority Space Force, Federal militechnic representative;

Walter Vaughan, Federal civil government representative;

Don Haraszthy, Trader agent -

- all skilled planetographers like our Adzel on whom be peace in his alternative timeline.

That gives us some idea of the political setup and is as much as I am going to write over toast and coffee this morning before going out to gym. Zen group this evening and Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop tomoz.

Ad astra.

Addendum: The following page names the narrator as Cathcart.

Some Turning Points

Poul Anderson, "Turning Point" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, 1983), pp.267-284.

In the Acknowledgements:

"Turning Point," Worlds of If, copyright 1963 by Digest Production Corporation.

On the Contents page:

The Turning Point         267

On p. 267:

TURNING POINT

At the head of the even-numbered pages, 268-284:

The Turning Point

On the opening page, the first person narrator quotes:

"The die is cast"

"In this sign conquer"

"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident"

"The Italian navigator has landed in the New World" (This was a surprise.)

"Dear God, the thing works!" (I can't find this.)

That opening passage is sufficient to determine that we will consider this story next.

The narrator reminds us that:

"...every planet is a complete world!" (p. 267) How many Anderson characters say that? If I had known that the question was going to come up, I would have counted.

He was on a ship that was surveying a planet that had been noted by the Traders - or maybe by another group called "...the Federals." (p. 267) All will be explained, of course. The crew had been surveying for a year and were "...jaded." (ibid.) This reminds us of Poul Anderson's Grand Survey ship, the Olga, and we have encountered interstellar Traders often enough before, of course.

It is good to know where we are going next.

All Of Poul Anderson's Future Histories

See Poul Anderson's Future Histories.

Maurai: post-nuclear-war Earth

Flying Mountains: asteroid colonization

Rustum: extra-solar colonization

Kith: interstellar trade

These four series sound like successive stages of a single sequence. Indeed, the asterites (asteroidal colonials) begin extra-solar colonization at the end of Tales Of The Flying Mountains. But it is not Rustum that they set out to colonize. These are four alternative timelines. However, a single future history can incorporate a Terrestrial future, staged extraterrestrial colonization and inter-systemic contact/communication/commerce. Thus, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

post-nuclear-war Earth

colonization of Mars and Venus

colonization of extra-solar planets, including Nerthus

the Stellar Union and its Coordination Service

Technic History:

The Chaos on Earth (off-stage)

exploration of the Solar System

the Grand Survey of extra-solar planets

the Solar Commonwealth, the Polesotechnic League and their successors

The Psychotechnic and Technic Histories demonstrate two ways to construct a future history series.

Psychotechnic: Follow Heinlein by compiling a future history time chart, then fit a series of stories into successive periods of the chart.

Technic: Link two previously independent series, then explain what happened between them. Why does Technic civilization have an early period of commercial expansion and a later period of imperial decline?

The two remaining future histories:

Harvest Of Stars: human-AI interaction.

Genesis: post-human AI.

These also sound like successive stages although they are alternative histories but they present ideas that could be combined with the other ingredients into one comprehensive future history series. 

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

We have learned that:

futuristic sf becomes dated but -

the future does not turn out as expected. 

Thus, after the first Moon landing, many of us expected a period of regular, routine interplanetary travel with bases and tourism on the Moon and flights to Mars. In that case, a lot of interplanetary sf would have become dated very quickly but it hasn't done. Well, the habitable Venus with oceans or swamps and jungles and Heinlein's frog-like Venerians has gone. But lunar bases have not happened yet and are still taking a long time to happen. Is our Musk like Heinlein's Harriman or Anderson's Guthrie? Will time tell?

Whatever happens, it will not not be as anyone had expected. (I say this also about a hereafter in the extremely unlikely event that there is one.)

Our entire supply of bags of crisps, chocolate bars and glowsticks was not enough. Twice the amount needed for next year.

Tomorrow, I will be away from home for most of the day and might not post. Next week, we might return to rereading Poul Anderson's collections but let's see how that pans out.

With the Time Traveller, into futurity -