"God Has Not Left You."

World Without Stars, XIV.

Azkashi discouraged by a setback in their struggle against the Ai Chun slink away from the human compound:

"...into the mists. They spoke little, but that little made a mumbling across the land like the first wind-sough before a storm." (p. 100)

This is a good analogical use of the perennial wind. In this case, there is no actual wind but the mumbling is like the sound of a wind. And a retreat by the Azkashi at this stage of the conflict will be followed by the storm of an Ai Chun advance. 

Hugh Valland saves the day. The Azkashi think that God is not with them when the galaxy is not visible overhead. Ya-Valland - the prefix means "male" - tells ya-Kela, the One of his Pack:

"'God has not left you.'" (p. 103)

- and proves it. A screen on a scientific instrument shows the sky above their heads with the sunlight removed. The planets, Oroksh and Ilyakan, are visible and the galaxy blazes brighter than ever before.

"'Fear not the downdevils; God is with you yet.'" (p. 104)

Ya-Valland's new role is that of prophet.

Religion In The World Without Stars

We should say something about religion, then see how this applies to World Without Stars.

See Traditions.

I think that religion is response to transcendence. Theism is personification of transcendence and therefore is one kind of religion. Non-theistic religions are Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism and the Hindu Samkhya system. 

The transcendent is variously conceived as:

many persons;

three persons;

one person;

an impersonal reality;

a transcendent state.

(I go with the fourth and fifth options.)

Religious experience is of an awesome presence or of an inner oneness or of a projected, culturally conditioned, image: Kali, Krishna, Christ, Mary etc.

Of the three groups in the "world without stars," Ai Chun, Niao and Azkashi, only the Azkashi have a religion. Argens comments that:

"Their planet showed few phenomena to inspire awe, like stars or volcanoes or seasons." (p. 76)

He overlooks the galaxy which, when above the horizon, dominates the night sky and is worshiped by the Azkashi.

The Ai Chun recognize nothing as superior to themselves and think that they created the universe but only in the way that they now construct buildings or selectively breed other species. This "creation" was not the act of a transcendent being. The Ai Chun bred the Niao for intelligence and the latter are devoted to the Ai Chun like dogs to masters, not like worshipers to a deity. However, some Niao went feral as the Azkashi, shedding submissiveness but retaining devotion, now expressed as worship of the galaxy and as mutual loyalty. Thus, rebellion generated religion.

With molecular biology, the Ai Chun might have eliminated every wild gene and prevented the Azkashi. However, some other external factor, like the arrival of the Earthmen, would eventually have challenged their rule.

Some Azkashi might be converted to a Terrestrial monotheism by persuading them that the galaxy is only a manifestation of the Creator.

Darkness, Rain, Storm, Wind And Thunder

World Without Stars, XII.

Pathetic fallacy abounds. Tied up below decks in a galley, Argens hears the Herd capture the human camp. Then:

"I heard the Ai Chun wallow past my prison, bound ashore. I sat in darkness and heard the rain begin." (p. 83)

Argens' incarceration in darkness and the beginning of the rain coincide, appropriately, with the subjugation of humanity. This continues. Leaving the galley, Argens and his guard descend:

"...to a canoe, through a lashing blindness of rain and wind to the beach. Day had now come, tinting the driven spears of water as if with blood." (ibid.)

This is all good descriptive and atmospheric stuff: blindness, blood and the wind that is our constant companion in many Andersonian texts. The present text continues:

"My goggles were blinkered with storm; I shoved them onto my forehead and squinted through red murk. I couldn't see our spaceship. The headland where our compound stood was a dim bulk on my left. No one was visible except my giant guard and the half dozen canoe paddlers." (ibid.)

Through the redness that is like blood, Argens sees neither the spaceship nor the compound but only his captors. All is lost...

Well, not everything. Next we read a characteristic Andersonian fight and escape scene. Prodded and enraged, Argens grabs his guard's knife and stabs him with it, then is chased through bawling thunder and hissing rain but rescued by his allies, the Pack.

How many captured Anderson heroes assault a guard and escape?

Late Evening Post

There is a time of the evening when you want to add one more post to the blog but do not want to have to do any more reading to do it. 

On BBC TV, Alice Roberts has just summarized theories about Stonehenge, including both the idea that the stones celebrate summer and life and also the opposite idea that they celebrate winter and death, the latter recently propounded by yet another TV presenter, Neil Oliver.

Poul Anderson's work cover many periods of history and also include two references to Stonehenge. Thus, TV viewing, like other reading, can be blog-relevant.

Domestics: laid up with a cold, although not too incapacitated to blog, I will have to miss a day-trip to London this Saturday.

Brain And Mind

World Without Stars, XI.

The perennial mind-body question comes up again when the telepathic Ai Chun try to control Argens. He experiences images, impulses, terror, anger, bliss, lust, stiffness and sweat although it is comparable only to mild drunkenness. The Ai Chun project scientifically known energies in order:

"...to stimulate corresponding patterns in my brain." (p. 75)

But they are bound to fail because he is of a different species, because his neurons work differently, because it is impossible to be taken over against your will and because:

"You're closer to your own nervous system, and better integrated with it, than anyone else can be." (pp. 75-76)

"You" are a psychophysical organism. You are close to, and integrated with, your nervous system because it is a crucial part of the organism. But how do neuronic patterns cause mental images and feelings? That is the mind-body question.

Unequals

World Without Stars, XI. 

It is extraordinary to read about beings to whom it is axiomatic that any other intelligent species exists only to serve them. The Ai Chun are incapable of conceiving that the newly arrived Earthmen are their equals (at least) with whom they might trade, make treaties, exchange information, share cultures etc. 

"'We dismissed the former visitors, and we shall not let you run free in the world. Have no fear. Your potential usefulness is admitted. While you obey, you shall not be harmed. And when you grow old you will be cared for like any aged, faithful Niao.'" (p. 75)

"'The seed we planted long ago is bearing its fruit... We will occupy your camp and put you to work.'" (p. 78)

They honestly believe that is a fair and reasonable offer! 

The first rule of inter-species diplomacy: find out what the other guys want and whether it is compatible with what we want. Don't just take it for granted that they have no independent wants!

It is easier to write about aliens that do not understand what we understand than the other way around.

Clearly, the Ai Chun cannot survive contact with galactic civilizations.

Seven Names

Einstein

Milne

Dingle

Mach

Nernst

Dirac

Haertel

Have I missed any? These names are cited by Poul Anderson, James Blish or both when presenting science fictional rationalizations for faster-than-light (FTL) interstellar travel. FTL is made to seem plausible when it is presented as an imminent next stage in an already existing scientific tradition.

Einstein in both, obviously. 

Milne in Blish.

Dingle in Blish.

Mach in Anderson and Blish.

Nernst in Blish.

Dirac in Blish.

Those turned out to be mostly "in Blish" but I had to do it to find out. Correct me if I am wrong but I think that the many references to Dirac in Poul Anderson Appreciation are comparisons with Blish's Dirac transmitter, not Andersonian references to Dirac. Blish extends the list by adding the fictional Haertel. Anderson's works do not present any corresponding figure.

Ai Chun

World Without Stars, XI.

"...you don't need hard radiation for mutation to occur; thermal quantum processes will do the same less rapidly." (p. 73)

I didn't know that. But it figures. Change is constant even if slow.

Argens tells the Ai Chun that what thinking animals have in common is more important than any differences in bodily shape. Aristotle: "Man is a rational animal." English law: "Murder is the unlawful killing of a reasonable creature..." (Our laws already protect aliens.)

The Ai Chun disagree. They have existed unchanged with no surviving biological enemies in an apparently unchanging world for over a billion years. They build and stockbreed and have even bred one bipedal species for intelligence. Finally, believing in reincarnation, they think that they themselves had created the whole universe in an earlier life. They do not remember why they had created Yonderfolk or Earthmen but their entire world-view - and self-view - is threatened by any claim either to exist independently of them or to have originated in a vaster and more complicated universe. In particular, the galaxy, seen only at night, is too bright for their eyesight and therefore is their equivalent of the Devil. I detect a contradiction here but world-views of this kind do generate contradictions. 

The Ai Chun remind me of the Party in 1984, wielding absolute power in their own domain and denying anything external to themselves.

Deductions

World Without Stars, X.

Members of the Herd, travelling in a galley, take two Earthmen, Argens and Rorn, to meet their masters, the Ai Chun. En route, Rorn makes some deductions. Cheap boats and wilderness should make for individualism. Instead, the fishing crew that chanced on the human camp did not make contact but immediately reported back to some headquarters and it took time for a delegation to be sent. Also, the language of a group of aliens who had visited once a long time ago has been preserved and carried across the planet. Conclusion:

"'...we're on the marches of a very big and very old empire.'" (p. 66)

Argens agrees that this:

"'Makes a good working hypothesis...'" (ibid.)

- as indeed it does. And it has been deduced from details that many of us would have missed. James Blish's Okies, entering a new planetary system, have to make this kind of deduction very quickly in order to assess what they are dealing with. For them, it is a matter of earning a living.

Relevant Other Reading

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data

"(Conan Doyle, Scandal in Bohemia)"

-quoted in Colin Dexter, Death Is Now My Neighbour (London, 1996), Chapter Twenty, p. 126.

Other reading - Dexter quotes Conan Doyle and we think that Poul Anderson did also so we search the blog and find:

An Old Proverb

Quiz question: which fictional detectives die in their last novel?

This is the fourth and probably the last post on this blog for today but please see also:

Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines II

Scholium Criteria

Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines III