Understanding Of Languages

When we read an English-language novel set in France, we understand that the characters converse in French even though we read their dialogue in English. How else can it be done?

In Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry and The Game Of Empire, Merseians on Merseia, and also in the second case in a spaceship, converse in Eriau but, of course, we read their conversations in English. In Anderson's The People Of The Wind, Ythrians on Avalon and in space converse in Planha while we read English. Time Patrol agents converse in Temporal...

I am not sure how it can be done but I think that authors need to help their readers to reflect on linguistic differences. In an English-language novel (title and author's name forgotten), a Frenchman says not that "everyone" comes into town on a Saturday but that "all the world" comes into town on a Saturday. "All the world" is a literal translation of the phrase, "tout le monde," which the French use when we say "everyone." There must be other similar ways of reminding a reader that another language is being spoken. This requires some knowledge of languages but it would be good if all of us had some of that!

See also:

Reading Other Languages

The Great Art

Languages

When a Marine swears in French, a Dyson Sphere native asks:

"'Vow parlass Fransay?'"

-SM Stirling, The Lords Of Creation (Rockville, Maryland, July 2025), CHAPTER THREE, p. 40.

Contact!

SM Stirling is an author who displays knowledge and understanding of languages.

(A European visitor to London, frustrated by his inability to communicate at a reception desk, muttered to himself, "Ili ne komprenas min kaj mi ne komprenas ilin!" One receptionist responded, "Ah, mi komprenas!" because she did know some Esperanto. An unfortunately rare occurrence.)

Anderson, Fleming And Lewis In A Hereafter? (No)

I can't help it. Rereading Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, I still wish that this novel had initiated a new sub-series about Targovi and Diana Crowfeather working for Imperial Intelligence, with Axor and Aycharaych somewhere in the background, with additional information about the Chereionites and about the structure of the Jerusalem Catholic Church and, of course, with new information about previously unreported aspects of Technic civilization, just as the planets of the Patrician System had appeared for the first time in The Games Of Empire.

I believe neither that there is a hereafter nor that, if there were one, writers would simply continue their careers as if still alive! As CS Lewis would have said, Heaven (if it exists, of course) is experience of reality, not continued writing, or other artistic representation, about reality.

Decades ago, the travel writer, Peter Fleming, was contacted by a man whose young daughter practiced automatic writing and had purportedly produced a new James Blond novel really written by Peter's deceased brother, Ian. Peter Fleming concluded that the man and his daughter were honest and that she really did write books automatically but that this text could not possibly have been authored by his brother unless the hereafter had a very bad effect on an author's style and creativity.

If there are to be any further Technic History or James Bond novels, then they are going to have to be written by authors who are still alive but can any one writer satisfactorily reproduce the style of another?

According to Michael Ward in Planet Narnia, there are seven and only seven Chronicles of Narnia, because CS Lewis based each book on one of the seven planets of medieval astrology/astronomy. Someone might add intermediate volumes about, e.g., what Peter was doing back in Narnia while the others were in Calormen, but it would have to be someone who either shared or at least fully empathized with Lewis' distinctive brand of Platonic Christianity. Difficult.

We compare Anderson favourably with Fleming and Lewis, different though those two are from each other - to say the least! Imagine an encounter between Axor and Aslan.

No Flandry

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Targovi, the Tigery itinerant trader, discloses to Rihu An, a Cynthian police lieutenant in Lulach, that he is an Imperial Intelligence agent although he self-deprecates:

"'Oh, I am no Flandry.'" (p. 331)

(Further evidence that we are in an era of "Flandry's Legacy.")

But how appropriate. In his opening volume, Ensign Flandry, Dominic Flandry met the Tigery, Dragoika, on Starkad. Now, in Flandry's concluding volume, The Game Of Empire, Dragoika's son, Targovi, born on Imhotep and currently operating on Daedalus, has followed his mother's friend's footsteps into Intelligence and is working with Flandry's illegitimate daughter, Diana Crowfeather. This new beginning is a fitting ending to the Flandry period of the Technic History although we would have preferred more.

Comprehensiveness And Beyond

In his comprehensiveness as an sf writer, Poul Anderson addressed:

telepathy

teleportation

mutants

longevity

immortality

scientifically rationalized magic

interplanetary exploration

slower-than-light interstellar travel

a generation ship

several scientific rationalizations of faster-than-light travel

several versions of Martians

other aliens

extraterrestrial environments, ecologies and evolutions

cosmological sf

eight future histories, including Heinleinian and Stapledonian models

time travel, with both paradoxes

alternative histories

the Frankenstein question ("Is it right to create human beings?")

robots

conscious artificial intelligence

a predictive science of society

future warfare

dystopian futures

post-nuclear-war Earth

space opera

excellent contributions to several other authors' series

- but not artifacts larger than planets, as in:

the Ringworld Tetralogy and "Bigger Than Worlds" by Larry Niven

the Orbitsville Trilogy

the Bowl Of Heaven Trilogy by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

The Lords Of Creation by SM Stirling

And now we know the answer to an earlier question:

CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is set on Mars, Venus and Earth;

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy is set on Venus and Mars and in a Dyson Sphere. 

Merseians And Martians

My mind has been elsewhere for most of today as my body will be elsewhere on Friday this week with a day trip to York. 

Meanwhile, we cannot really compare Merseians with Martians because there is only one fictional race of Merseians whereas there are no one knows how many fictional races of Martians. Poul Anderson's Merseians, at least those of the Roidhunate, like HG Wells' Martians, want to conquer Earth whereas Ray Bradbury's Martians are almost entirely wiped out by chicken pox brought from Earth - just as Wells' Martian invaders are killed by Terrestrial microbes - while at the same (in a different timeline) CS Lewis' Martians are protected from Terrestrial evil by superior beings in the Solar System. What could be more different? And those are just three of the most prominent examples.

The comparison that I have in mind here is with SM Stirling's Martians. Merseians are multicultural. See information about Cnif hu Vanden here and particularly here. By contrast, Stirling's Martians have been monocultural throughout a very long history and this makes it hard to tell how much of their psychology is genetic as opposed to cultural. Is a monocultural species easier to write about or must the author work harder to keep it consistent? As a mere reader, I can only guess.

Thank you all for so many page views for a day when this is the first post.

Grand Canal

There is a Grand Canal in Venice and in China and in a few other places. 

There are at least two on (different fictional versions of) Mars:

Rhysling mentions the Grand Canal in Robert Heinlein's Future History;

another Grand Canal surrounds Mons Olympus in SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings.

Poul Anderson has a lot of Martians but maybe not any canals? 

For James Blish on Martian canals, see Versions Of Mars.

CS Lewis said that he put "canals" on his fictional Mars because "...they are part of the popular tradition." (See here.) However, Lewis' "canals" are deep inhabited river valleys, not artefacts. 

It is appropriate that a fictional Mars should have a Grand Canal and that in fact there are at least two. Fictional Mars is a major part of our heritage.

Planetary Princesses

Edgar Rice Burroughs

John Carter marries a princess on Mars.

Carson Napier marries a princess on Venus.

Julian V has a love affair with a princess on the Moon.

SM Stirling

Marc Vitrac marries a "...high priestess-cum-princess..." (In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, CHAPTER SIX, p. 148) on Venus.

Jeremy Wainman has an affair with the Martian woman who is:

"'...rightfully Emperor and King Beneath the Mountain, holding and swaying the Real World. Or at the very least, the Designated Successor.'"

-ibid.,  CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 159.

(I have read this book but forgotten its ending and am rereading it but have not reached the end.)

Poul Anderson

Dominic Flandry has an affair with Queen Gunli on Schotha. 

In Archopolis

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWELVE.

Rereading a passage set in Dominic and Miriam Flandry's Archopolis apartment, we find that we have discussed this passage in no less than three previous posts:

Four Senses In Archopolis

Cities And Stars IV

Terra In THE GAME OF EMPIRE

There cannot be much more to be said - except that I turn out to have disagreed with myself about how many senses the passage appeals to.

I like the parallels between Flandry's Archopolis, van Rijn's Chicago Integrate and Everard's New York. Hectic cities are a major part of human experience.

That slightly delayed Sunday walk (see previous post) will be to a band in a park beside Morecambe Bay.

We still live.

On The Highroad River

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TEN.

The Waterblossom proceeds, slowly because it is "...ponderous and heavily laden..." (p. 297), from Paz de la Frontera towards the Cynthian town of Lulach. At first, there are teeming rowboats and hydrofoils but later only barges and a towed timber raft. The brown, sheening, murmurous river is two kilometres wide with forested banks. Fliers dart and skim. It is quiet and cool. On horizonless Daedalus, Diana sees the river valley receding as if to infinity, toylike snowpeaks, a far away gleam that is the ocean and sunlight spreading into a ring instead of disappearing. Day becomes dusk, not night. She sees Imhotep and Icarus - another planet and a moon - but no stars except a few scattered points. Axor praises the Creator.

And now, in Lancaster, a Sunday walk, possibly along the river or the canal or towards the Bay.

On The Waterfront

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER NINE. 

The waterfront at Paz de la Frontera has warehouses, wharfs, watercraft, bustling human and nonhuman beings and scurrying machines and:

"Beyond, the stream flowed broad and brown." (p. 294)

"...broad and brown..." is familiar. See no less than seven other rivers described in works by Poul Anderson that are quoted in posts linked here.

The description of the scene from the wharf continues:

"The opposite shore was dimmed by a thickening rain." (ibid.)

Next come the reactions of two of the characters:

"Shan U registered a feline dislike of the wet, but Diana welcomed its warm sluicing. She felt cleansed." (ibid.)

Diana needs cleansing because she has just had to fight off four human males with a Tigery knife.

Shan U is a Cynthian and this species is squirrel-like although here his response to the rain is described as "feline" and one of Diana's assailants had described him as a "'...monkey-cat.'" (p. 292)

No single comparison will be quite accurate. The attached cover image shows Diana not with a Cynthian but with a Tigery disguised as a performing animal.