What We Do Not Know

Years ago, at an sf con, there was Fran, me and another guy. The other guy thought that the light speed limit was frustrating: so many things that we can see from a distance but cannot explore close up. I was not so sure. At any stage of transportation technology, we will be able to see further than we can travel. That is part of the deal. We are at least in the universe and can surely travel at least to the limits of the Solar System and improve telescopes to see much further than we can now. Other galaxies remain as mysterious to Poul Anderson's Technic Historians as they are to us. A few of his characters go further but they cannot see everything.

Fran said that there are so many things that we do not know, that maybe among the things that we do not know is a way to travel faster than light. Not if the light speed limit really is a fundamental physical feature of this universe. Science is always provisional. The vastness of the unknown is a reason to continue learning, not to hope for a particular outcome. Whatever we learn will be unexpected. We will return this point from another direction later.

Moving Space

Years ago, in his New Maps Of Hell, Kingsley Amis explained the sf "hyperdrive" as follows: although a spaceship cannot move through space faster than light, if a volume of space were somehow to be moved through the surrounding space, then it would be able to carry along with it a spaceship that remained stationary within it. I thought that that made some sort of sense at the time. 

Observations

I have never encountered that explanation of hyperspace in sf;

we do encounter many different explanations;

the cleverest is Poul Anderson's quantum hyperdrive with which a spaceship makes many short quantum jumps without traversing the intervening spaces, therefore without running up against the relativistic light speed limit;

the speculative Alcubierre drive does involve moving space insofar as expansion and contraction are forms of motion.

We have discussed Anderson's several faster than light (FTL) drives. See blog search result.

I am fairly sure that Anderson said somewhere that he devised a different scientific rationale for FTL every time that he used the concept. (His physics degree enabled him to do this.) However, searching for this quotation, I found James Blish saying it of Lester del Rey!

Brian Cox argues that future theories should not contradict but incorporate relativity just as the latter incorporates Newtonian physics. Yes, but that might allow for some way around instead of against the light speed limit which is what sf writers try to imagine. But will any warp drive require impossible quantities of energy? Some ideas work in theory but only in theory like a T-machine would have to have infinite length or something?

Differences Of Scale

We are following some lines of thought starting from What Is Possible?

Problems with slower than light interstellar flight begin with the fuel problem that is common to all space flight. How do you carry enough fuel? The more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need to carry it. Secondly, organisms do not live long enough to complete an interstellar voyage and are not adapted to spend long periods of time away from the kind of environment in which they evolved. A spacecraft surrounded by vacuum with cosmic rays sleeting through it for decades and centuries is not a hospitable environment.

Brian Aldiss wrote once that human beings populated their Terrestrial environment with other intelligences, nature deities and spirits etc, which do not exist, then populated the Solar System with Selenites, Martians etc which do not exist and now populate extra-solar planets with other intelligences which (he thought) do not exist either. A lot more has been and is being learned about the number and characteristics of exo-planets so I think that, with increasing probability, ET's can be out there but how many, how near, and how easy to contact?

We have projected consciousness into nature and onto the heavens and are still doing that in a different way, i.e., we have traversed oceans and continents and built civilizations and empires and imagine ourselves continuing to operate in this way in the galaxy where, however, the spatiotemporal scale is completely different. Quantity affects quality. There has to be some scale on which we cannot operate so where is the dividing line?

What Is Possible?

Some lines of thought have come up and might take some time to develop so I might start into something, then break off and return to it later - one of the beauties of blogging. It will be seen that everything written below is relevant to sf in general and to Poul Anderson's works in particular.

As a philosopher, I make a big deal out of two kinds of impossibility. Some people might either not understand this distinction, at least initially, or not see why it matters. In any case, both kinds of impossibility are kinds of impossibility. Let us just stay with that for the time being. 

Where is the line between possible and impossible?

interplanetary travel

slower than light interstellar travel

faster than light interstellar travel

inter-galactic travel, same differences

inter-universal travel

time travel (by this, I mean travel into the real past among events that really happened, not events that look like the past but are malleable by the traveller)

It will be seen that Anderson's works are all over this list. How confident do you feel about proceeding down the list? We know that interplanetary travel is possible because it has been done, albeit on the meanest scale, but what is next?

Brian Cox has mounted a powerful argument that we should draw the line under interplanetary travel, that even STL interstellar travel will not happen and is not happening. I was going to share a video exposition of Cox's argument but it has become unavailable. I very inadequately summarized the argument in Not To Be Pessimistic But. I have more to say about this and will not be alone in that.

Four Decades III

1971-1980

Pre-League

"Wings of Victory" (April, 1972) (Ythrians)

"The Problem of Pain" (February, 1973) (Ythrians)

League Period

"A Little Knowledge" (August, 1971)

"Wingless" (July, 1973) (Ythrians)

"Rescue on Avalon" (1973) (Ythrians)

"Lodestar" (1973) (Falkayn; team; van Rijn; Ythrians)

"The Season of Forgiveness" (December, 1973)

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" (1974) (Adzel)

Mirkheim (1977) (Falkayn, team, van Rijn)

Terran Empire

The People Of The Wind (February-April, 1973) (Ythrians)

The Day Of Their Return (1973) (an Ythrian) (Flandry quoted) 

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (September/October-November/December 1974) (Flandry; Aycharaych))

A Stone In Heaven (1979) (Flandry)

Four Decades II

1961-1970

Polesotechnic League

"Hiding Place" (March, 1961) (van Rijn)

"Territory" (June, 1963) (van Rijn)

"The Three-Cornered Wheel" (October, 1963) (Falkayn)

"The Master Key" (July, 1964) (van Rijn)

"The Trouble Twisters" (July-August, 1965) (Falkayn; team; van Rijn)

"A Sun Invisible" (April, 1966) (Falkayn)

"Day of Burning" (January, 1967) (Falkayn; team; Merseians)

Satan's World (May-August, 1968 (Falkayn; team; van Rijn)

"Esau" (February, 1970) (van Rijn)

Terran Empire

Ensign Flandry (October, 1966) (Flandry; Ridenour; Merseians)

"Outpost of Empire" (December, 1967) (Ridenour)

The Rebel Worlds (1969) (Flandry)

"The White King's War" (October, 1969) (Flandry)

A Circus Of Hells (1970) (Flandry; Merseians) (incorporates the previous item)

Post-Empire

"Starfog" (August, 1967)

"A Tragedy of Errors" (February, 1968)

"The Sharing of Flesh" (December, 1968)

Observations

This decade is more straightforward:

van Rijn continues;

he employs and works with the trader team led by Falkayn;

Flandry's earlier career is recounted;

there are sixteen instalments, not counting "The White King's War";

that leaves thirteen more instalments to be accounted for in the remaining complete decade which we will probably not consider this evening! 

Four Decades

Because we count from 1 to 10, not from 0 to 9, we should count a decade, century or millennium from a year ending -1 to a year ending -0. Thus, four decades in the second half of the twentieth century were:

1951-1960

1961-1970

1971-1980

1981-1990

These were the decades during which Poul Anderson wrote his History of Technic Civilization.

(Because I was born on 1 January, 1949, these decades were also when I was reading sf, starting with comic strips in the 50's, then with paperbacks in the 60's. All those past futures...)

However, only two Technic History instalments were published in the 80's:

"The Saturn Game" (1981), which, in terms of the fictional chronology of the series, is the earliest episode;

The Game Of Empire (1985), which is the last novel to feature Dominic Flandry and the fifth last instalment in the series.

1951-1960

In this decade, there was a Terran Empire series and a Polesotechnic League series which had not yet coalesced into a single Technic History series.

Terran Empire

"The Star Plunderer" (September, 1952) (pre-Empire; Manuel Argos)

"Sargasso of Lost Starships" (January, 1952)  (post-Argos; pre-Flandry)

"Tiger by the Tail" (January, 1951) (Flandry)

"Honorable Enemies" (May, 1951) (Flandry; Aycharaych)

"The Warriors from Nowhere" (Summer, 1954) (Flandry; Chives)

"The Game of Glory" (March, 1958) (Flandry)

"A Handful of Stars" (June, 1959) (Flandry; Aycharaych)

"A Message in Secret" (December, 1959) (Flandry)

"A Plague of Masters" (December, 1960-January, 1961) (Flandry)

"A Twelvemonth and a Day" (January, 1960) (post-Empire)

Some Observations So Far

To reflect the fictional chronological order, I have listed the two pre-Flandry stories first and the single post-Empire story last. However, apart from that, everything else is in publication order. In that order, the series begins appropriately with the first published Captain Flandry story in January, 1951, and ends in December, 1960 - albeit running over into January, 1961.

There are ten instalments of a four-period future history series. The Captain Flandry series is almost complete, lacking only its concluding novel, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (1974), later expansions to "A Message in Secret" and "A Handful of Stars" and later revisions to "Tiger by the Tail," "Honorable Enemies" and "The Warriors from Nowhere." The single post-Empire story will be expanded and re-entitled in 1963 and re-entitled again in 1978. This information is complicated to summarize.

The Polesotechnic League

"Margin of Profit" (September, 1956) (van Rijn)

The Man Who Counts (February-April, 1958) (van Rijn)

Some Further Observations

So far, the Polesotechnic League series comprises only two instalments about Nicholas van Rijn. But these two main characters of the Technic History, Flandry and van Rijn, have both been introduced in the 1950's.

When "Margin of Profit" is incorporated into the Technic History, it has been revised and is no longer the opening instalment. Instead, it is preceded by one story published in 1981 and by two others published in 1973 and is also contemporaneous with yet another published in 1973. It is not only the first van Rijn story but also part of something much longer and vaster. 

Twelve instalments published in the first decade and two in the 1980's leaves twenty-nine instalments that were published in the two intervening decades. Will we also analyze those decades?

Important Events Published In The 1960's

League and Empire become a single series.

David Falkayn and the trader team are introduced.

The Flandry series expands backwards from "Captain Flandry."

Important Event In The 1970's

The Ythrians are introduced.

The Polesotechnic League series concludes.

The Flandry series expands forwards.

I wrote in the preceding post that the League and Empire series were first linked in "A Plague of Masters" in 1961. In fact, "A Plague of Masters" was first published as a book under the alternative title, Earthman, Go Home!, in 1961 but had previously been serialized in December, 1960-January, 1961, so maybe the League-Empire link was published at the end of 1960 rather than at the beginning of 1961?

Merseians In The Empire And League Periods

Merseians were introduced as a collective space opera villain in the second Captain Flandry story, "Honorable Enemies," in 1951.

Dominic Flandry visits Merseia in his first novel, Ensign Flandry, published in 1966.

David Falkayn and the trader team visit Merseia in "Supernova"/"Day of Burning," published in 1967.

Thus, in the late 1960's, Poul Anderson was both expanding his Flandry series and linking it to his Polesotechnic League series. That linkage had been initiated by a single reference in the Captain Flandry story, "A Plague of Masters," in 1961.

The third element of the Technic History, the Ythrians, was not introduced until "Wings of Victory" in 1972 and its remaining instalments were all published in 1973 except for the omnibus The Earth Book Of Stormgate which was published in 1978.

I ought to have more to say about this but it is getting late here.

Unexpected Holmes

However well written, even the best detective fiction has its limitations when compared with the best of sf. It becomes like a crossword puzzle when the detective explains how the crime was committed, what the clues were etc. Sf can incorporate detective fiction but not vice versa.

We recently acquired Colin Dexter's thirteen Inspector Morse novels and have now added Dexter's single collection which contains six Morse stories and five others including (I now discover) one about Sherlock and Mycroft narrated by Watson! Unexpected. And a very tenuous connection to Poul Anderson: not only howling wind and beating rain and detective fiction but also, more specifically, an appearance by Sherlock Holmes.

Sheila is at one of her choirs and I am about to go to Zen.

Publication Histories II

 

Asked to write a story for an original juvenile sf anthology, Poul Anderson wrote about a human-Ythrian interaction on Avalon.

Asked to write a story for another such anthology, he wrote about Adzel's student days on Earth which had already been alluded to when Adzel was introduced in the third David Falkayn story which was also the first trader team story.

For Boys' Life, he wrote about another Avalonian human-Ythrian interaction, this time involving David Falkayn's grandson, and also about Christmas on the planet Ivanhoe which Falkayn had visited previously.

Asked to contribute to a John W. Campbell memorial anthology, he wrote about Falkayn's confrontation with Nicholas van Rijn in an Ythrian spaceship at Mirkheim.

Asked to contribute a story on the theme of "redemption," he wrote a post-Imperial Technic History instalment.

Thus, the Technic History would have been poorer without these six differently sourced stories.