A Multi-Layered Narrative

This blog rotates around Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate and sometimes gravitates towards it. One reference generates more. My paperback Earth Book became powder so I acquired a hardback which now has a torn and battered dust cover.

The narrative of this volume is multi-layered:

Emil Dalmady works for Nicholas van Rijn on Suleiman;

he recounts his experiences to van Rijn back on Earth;

a generation later, on Avalon, Dalmady's daughter, Judith, writes "Esau," presenting an account of her father on Suleiman and in conversation with van Rijn;

also on Avalon, Hloch includes "Esau" and two other stories by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren from the periodical Morgana in the Earth Book which is read by members of his choth and presumably also by other Avalonians of both species;

we read the Earth Book because we exist in an alternative timeline where all of the above is fiction written by Poul Anderson!

OK. I need to shut down the computer and get across town to a meeting.

A Time Travel Series And A Future History Series

To summarize many previous posts, my two main interests in sf are time travel and future histories. Poul Anderson excels at both and combines them in There Will Be Time which might, on that account, be regarded as his culminating volume except that his canon culminates several times. If we were to take just one Anderson volume onto a desert island, should it be:

Time Patrol, which collects the entire Time Patrol series excluding only the long novel, The Shield Of Time, -

- or:

The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which "spans, illuminates and completes" the first main section of Anderson's longest and most detailed future history series, the History of Technic Civilization?

For many years, I would have said Time Patrol but I now favour the Earth Book because of its more complicated structure and double-layered narrative. The twelve collected installments, including one novel, take us from First Contact with Ythri during the first Grand Survey to the human-Ythrian colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon. Thus, they begin before and end after the entire Solar Commonwealth-Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History, which they also incorporate. Hloch's twelve introductions and single afterword transport his readers even further into the future, into the early Terran Empire period and the aftermath of the Terran-Ythrian War which is recounted in the Earth Book's companion volume, The People Of The Wind.

The Earth Book is followed by the Young Flandry Trilogy if read as a discrete volume or by "The Star Plunderer," about the Founder of the Terran Empire, when its contents are incorporated into The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III (of VII). Thus, there are two alternative but equally valid reading orders.

The Earth Book is the kind of detailed future history series that Robert Heinlein had envisaged when he began to write the original Future History which inspired Anderson's Psychotechnic History.  

Fictional Texts

What is the status of a fictional text? If it has a first person narrator, then that narrator might be mistaken, lying or composing a fiction within a fiction. Usually this is not an issue but it can be made into one. Poul Anderson's War Of The Wing-Men has an omniscient narrator. However, when this novel was republished under its proper title, The Man Who Counts, in the omnibus Technic History collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the fictional editor of the Earth Book, Hloch, informed his Avalonian readers that this text was a historical novel about Nicholas van Rijn and that it had originally been published either on Terra or on Hermes with a different author's name and date given in each case! We know from later installments that van Rijn had been on Diomedes but we read only a fictional account of what he did there. Three other Technic History installments collected in the Earth Book are based on fictional "facts" but, we are told, had originally been published as short stories in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana. Immediately after the Earth Book, a scholar in a much further future informs us that John Henry Reeves' account of the Founder of the Terran Empire, Manuel Argos, is either an authentic memoir or a historical fiction.

A discerning blog reader might suspect that this breakfast post is occasioned by late night other reading. Thus, Ian Fleming's The Spy Who Loved Me, narrated by its heroine, is, prima facie, contradicted by the following Bond novel. However, that narrator tells us what Bond had told her that the Secret Service had believed at the time! Thus, multiple narrative layers intervene between the readers and any fictional "facts." In the eleventh of the twelve Bond novels, an obituary written by M informs readers of The Times that the previous ten novels and one collection had been grossly inaccurate popular accounts written by a former friend and colleague of Commander Bond. Thus, all the inconsistencies - which are certainly present - are instantly smoothed over.

In two concluding volumes by Dornford Yates, his familiar characters discuss all his previous novels and collections as works of fiction written by one of them. Boy Pleydell, who had narrated the Berry books, now turns out to have been the author of these and other works attributed to Dornford Yates.

Fictional narratives disappear.

Present And Future

The King of Spain has just been on TV, expressing support for relatives of people killed in a massive train collision. Does the Terran Emperor do likewise when the screen field generators of a luxury liner approaching Callisto fail, killing everyone on board? How much of our experience would be reproduced in the Terran Empire? Their tourists include extraterrestrials although not Ythrians because that species cannot fly in Terrestrial gravity. I do think of Ythrians when pigeons proliferate in Market Square.

In other fictional narratives by Poul Anderson, aliens, immortals and time travellers are among us now. A fan could walk around town comparing real and fictional experiences although I do not know how many people do that. Not me all the time. Remember that fictional characters experience their worlds. Jim Ching sees a blue Alfzarian in an airbus just as I see foreign students in a ground bus when I travel locally with a free pensioner's pass.

(Attending the Gregson last night, I learned of an upcoming fiftieth anniversary! Life is good when it's not bad and I am now about to switch off from Poul Anderson and reread some more Ian Fleming before turning in. Laterz.)

Contemporary And Futuristic Fiction: 007 In New York And Flandry In Archopolis

Ian Fleming wrote "007 in New York" about where James Bond eats, drinks, sleeps and does other things while he is in New York. He gives Paris the same treatment in several paragraphs of "From A View To A Kill," e.g.:

"Since 1945 [Bond] had not had a happy day in Paris. It was not that the town had sold its body. Many towns have done that. It was its heart that was gone - pawned to the tourists, pawned to the Russians and Roumanians and Bulgars, pawned to the scum of the world who had gradually taken the town over. And, of course, pawned to the Germans. You could see it in the people's eyes - sullen, envious, ashamed."

-Ian Fleming, "From A View To A Kill" IN Fleming, For Your Eyes Only (London, 1964), pp. 7-37 AT pp. 12-13.

We get the impression that Fleming knows the score - and I think that he did. My question is: would Poul Anderson have been able to write a comparable "Flandry in Archopolis" passage? Yes, but not as easily. An author of contemporary fiction has it easy. He can refer to Russians, Romanians, Bulgars and Germans and know that we know what he means. Anderson would have had to have written several earlier Technic History instalments to establish the reality of four or more social/ethnic/national/planetary groups that he would then have been able to refer to in the same kind of way. Not easy. But we appreciate what Anderson did do with Ythrians, Merseians, Wodenites, Cynthians etc. The Technic History is the most "lived in" future history series.

I love these far gone comparisons.

"Drawn In"

We are still with "The Pugilist" although probably not for much longer!

Why would anyone join a revolutionary organization? Dowling's two guards give different answers:

(i) "'What brought me into the Society in the first place was...well, one damn thing after another, like when I was a miner and they boosted our quota too high for us to maintain safety structures and a cave-in killed a buddy of mine.'" (p. 113)

(Proof enough that the "People's Republic" is governed neither by nor for the People.)

(ii) "'I believe in God.'" (ibid.)

This guy is not prevented from going to church but he objects to all the clergy being spokespersons for the state: "'The Social Gospel...'" (ibid.) I would not object to a Social Gospel but I would object to state-controlled clergy but, in any case, we are not talking about me! The present point is that motives differ.

At a recent gathering, I met a guy who said that he was a Marxist who believed in God. I looked forward to some interesting conversations but then he stopped coming! Our paths cross and part for diverse reasons.

CS Lewis as fictional character and first person narrator tells us that he was:

"...afraid that I might get 'drawn in'. I suppose everyone knows this fear of getting 'drawn in' - the moment at which a man realises that what had seemed mere speculations are on the point of landing him in the Communist Party or the Christian Church - the sense that a door has just slammed and left him on the inside."

-CS Lewis, Voyage To Venus (London, 1978), Chapter One, p. 6.

I do not think that everyone knows this fear but obviously some of us do. Sometimes people say, "There was no turning back..." In "The Pugilist," some people who joined the Society would have started with speculations...

When I first read Voyage To Venus, I was leading a very sheltered life in a boarding school and was astonished that Lewis would link together the Communist Party and the Christian Church like that. I started learning about people and the world after leaving school.

John Henry...

Sometimes, by a slip of the tongue or the pen, we get a word, name or phrase wrong and sometimes we worry and have to check whether we did. Checking, I find that I did write "John Henry Reeves," not "John Henry Irons," in The Lessons Of Life.

John Henry Reeves is a character in Poul Anderson's "The Star Plunderer" whereas John Henry Irons is a completely different character in a different medium. See Steel (John Henry Irons). One of the things that we like to do on this blog is to compare Anderson's works with other authors' works or with works in other media. 

The character, Steel, exists because Superman was, temporarily of course, dead. Series characters rarely die, even in a concluding episode, if there ever is a concluding episode. 

In Anderson's canon, van Rijn must be long dead when Flandry is alive and Flandry must be long dead when Daven Laure is alive but we are not shown any of these characters' deaths. Harald Hardrada is the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy and he has to die at Stamford Bridge in 1066 in Volume III because that is historical. And what a great cast of characters this post has mentioned:

John Henry Reeves

John Henry Irons

Superman

Nicholas van Rijn

Dominic Flandry

Daven Laure

Harald Hardrada

Read and reread.

Addendum: I have conceptualized two retellings of Superman in one of which he dies. See:

Getting Superman Right

The Lessons Of Life

David Falkayn, promiscuous in his youth, learns to be monogamous with Coya Conyon. 

Dominic Flandry, promiscuous in his youth, settles down with Miriam Abrams although she understands that he does not "wait" for her when she is away from home for extended periods.

Manse Everard and Janne Floris learn that they should not stay together but, later that same year, Everard meets Wanda Tamberly.

Gaius Valerius Gratillonius rejects Mithras, accepts Christ and begins to build feudalism when the Roman Empire has withdrawn from Northern Europe.

John Henry Reeves learns that the destiny of the human race lies with the leadership of Manuel Argos.

Christopher Holm learns not to be an idiot.

In "License," Rheinbogen learns that he can "hunt" academically instead of literally. 

In "The Pugilist," Dowling learns too late that he was wrong to turn against the rebel cause.

Nicholas van Rijn had learned everything that he needed to know long before we first saw him.

The discerning blog reader will have realized that this has been a pretext to divulge my own life lessons which are:

"Seek and ye shall find." (Mt. 7:7)

"To thine own self be true." (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.)

An Englishman finds inspiration in the Bible and Shakespeare even though his seeking takes him elsewhere.

Keeping The Future World As It Will Be

"The Pugilist."

The Decaturist rebels are embedded in the US military. Their plan is to seize control of the US missiles in order to prevent those missiles from being used to intervene in the Russian civil war. Without any outside help given to either side, that civil war will weaken Russia, thus enabling the US to become the dominant partner in the alliance. However, thanks to the turncoat, Dowling, the People's Republic of the United States retains control of its missiles and, on this basis, is able to issue threats that make the Kunin faction back down. As in a contemporary thriller, the status quo is preserved but, in this case, that is not a good outcome. But Poul Anderson explored every kind of possible future, good and bad. I must eat and get out to the Gregson.

Keeping The World As It Is

In Good Guys, Bad Guys, we discussed fictional ambiguity about "good guys and bad guys" and, in this context, referred to:

Poul Anderson's Technic History;

Ian Fleming's James Bond;

Anderson's "The Pugilist."

I now see a wider issue that connects Bond and "The Pugilist" in a more roundabout way. First, let us differentiate several kinds of fictional narrative:

in a contemporary novel, our familiar contemporary world exists at the beginning of the narrative and still exists unchanged at the end - anything else would take us out of the realm of a "contemporary novel"!;

in some sf novels by HG Wells, the Time Machine, Cavorite, invisibility etc is invented but then lost so that the world remains unchanged (and the impressionable reader understands why it is that he still lives in an unchanged world!) - Wellsian novels set in the future do not fit into this category;

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave begins in the (then) contemporary world but major changes happen and the human race winds up in a transformed future;

in some contemporary thrillers, there is a threat that would have caused major changes but the threat is averted - thanks to Bond, London is not nuked, the British Secret Service is not discredited by a double killing and a scandal on the Orient Express, the gold is not stolen from Fort Knox, hijacked nukes are not detonated with great loss of life and Britain is not devastated by biological warfare.

And here is the connection. In "The Pugilist," there has been a nuclear war and the US is now ruled by the USSR. Thus, the "Pugilist" is set in one of those possible futures that the heroes of contemporary thrillers, like Bond, strive to prevent. The task of MI6, CIA etc is to ensure that the world remains exactly as it is.