Psychotechs, Listeners, A Leader And A Titoist

"The Pugilist."

The Decaturists employ "psychotechs" (p. 98) to give them treatment to prevent them from talking under either serum or torture. 

Microminiature listeners slipped into food operate off body heat!

The Decaturists have a leader, Sotomayor, his identity and whereabouts unknown even to them.

The political officer, Mannix, identifies the narrator's politics as "'...Titoist.'" (ibid.)

Interesting details but there are nearly thirty more pages of this story. Not tonight! I try to leave some time for other reading.

Does anyone know how accurate pageview counts are? My computer screen tells me that this blog has had 1,071,487 pageviews since 1:00 AM., which I find hard to believe. This count will continue for another three hours.

More Of The Future History In "The Pugilist"

"The Pugilist."

In the Sacred War, Russian missiles destroyed the US's second-strike capability;

therefore, US cities became hostages, rendering their subs impotent;

however, the USSR was too damaged by US missiles either to control their Sino-Japanese antagonists or to occupy the US;

but a treaty imposed inspectors, advisers and arms limitations on the US;

Moscow determined who was an acceptable candidate for US President;

the US government began collectivization;

the Constitutional Convention proclaimed the People's Republic;

later, the narrator (he had to be born first) and others joined the Stephen Decatur Society.

The narrator's grandfather had expounded to him:

militarists, capitalists, imperialists, racists and the bourgeoisie were blamed for the war;

however, the liberals lowered the US's guard, the conservatives saved on taxes, the radicals disrupted and the copouts copped out!

Thus, some history and a comprehensive analysis.

Stone Mountain And Stephen Decatur

 

"The Pugilist."

I had not heard of Stone Mountain. The regime destroys the monument as a:

"...symbol of oppression..." (p. 94)

History should be preserved. In Britain, a crowd pulled down a statue of a slave trader and threw it into Bristol Harbour. The statue was rightly recovered and is now exhibited in a museum in its graffitied state. A jury found four people who had pulled it down not guilty of criminal damage. A new plaque on the now empty plinth tells the story. We live history and make it.

The narrator was a member of the Stephen Decatur Society. Here, more than ever, Poul Anderson's knowledge of history informs his futuristic sf. Remember the short story called "Marius." Another almost forgotten short story that I had approached with misgivings yields far more than expected.

Imposed Change And Future History

"The Pugilist."

There are changes that people, individually or collectively, want and implement for themselves and others that are imposed on them. Before the narrator's birth, the US government had tried to modernize, i.e., collectivize, Georgia but, because this was impracticable:

most small farms, stores, sawmills and repair shops were put on leasehold;

schools got taped propaganda instead of trained political educators;

the narrator's grandfather ranted that the black Sheriff was being used.

That grandfather had fought for the imperialist regime, suppressing the Mekong Revolution. The narrator's father was ten at the time of the Sacred War and the subsequent hungry years stunted his growth.

I am doing my best to summarize future historical details as they are disclosed to us. There are three generations here and there is always a wealth of information in a Poul Anderson short story. 

The Wind Shouted Too

 

Poul Anderson, "The Pugilist" IN Anderson, Conflicts (New York, August, 1983), pp. 89-127.

The opening sentence:

"They hadn't risked putting me in the base hospital or any other regular medical facility." (p. 89)

First person narration plus this guy is dangerous and in a military setting.

There is a war on. Although they are in the US, the narrator's wife works in a co-op and a Recreation Bureau has to ok its employees vacationing at Lake Pillsbury.

A guard has a stunner - a futuristic weapon, I think? The regeneration techniques that the narrator mentions are certainly futuristic.

This guy has been:

"'...charged with treasonable conspiracy against the People's Republic of the United States...'" (p. 92)

- not just individual treason like the narrator of "High Treason."

That phrase, "People's Republic...," is used literally, not sarcastically or ironically.

The narrator's wife, Bonnie, writes to him as John Reed but a political officer addresses him as Colonel Dowling. All will be made clear, no doubt.

The US and the Soviet Union are at war against a Sino-Japanese alliance.

Somewhere during the changes that have happened, the narrator's grandfather shouted with:

"...autumn sumac a shout of red behind him, and the wind shouted too, till I imagined old bugles blowing again at Valley Forge and Shiloh and Omaha Beach. Maybe that was when I first thought I might make the army a career." (p. 94)

(A man shouts so the wind does: Andersonian pathetic fallacy.)

OK? I'm not. We understand some of what is happening but not all of it yet.

History And SF

"High Treason."

"(You see, I've read quite a lot of history. Hobby of mine, and a way to pass the long time between stars.)" (p. 56)

Historical fiction and futuristic sf have in common that they are set in periods other than that of the author and his readers. Poul Anderson wrote historical fiction and his sf includes historical sf. Interstellar travellers reading and reflecting on history is a good way to bring history and sf together.

"'Earth-type planets are none too common. They wanted the same real estate we did.'" (p. 57)

Exactly the same language is used of Terrans and Merseians in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Because of the narrator's treason (= refusal to commit genocide), Earth will lose the interstellar war but this defeat will not be a disaster. It will be like the Americans defeating the English or the English defeating the French but not like the Germans winning World War II.

In the collection, Conflict, "High Treason" ends:

"So I am now going to spend what time remains in thinking about

"THE END" (p. 67)

- whereas, in the anthology, Four For The Future, this story ends:

"So I am now going to spend what time remains in thinking about"

Poul Anderson, "High Treason" IN Harry Harrison (Ed.), Four For The Future (London, 1974), pp. 45-59 AT p. 59.

Editor Harry Harrison saw no reason to add "THE END" after Anderson's unfinished concluding sentence and there isn't one.

Facing Death

"High Treason."

This is one of those occasions when a passage in a Poul Anderson text prompts personal reflections that take on a life of their own - and we think that this is valid and legitimate. Each of us has our own reflections, of course.

Today is Sunday, day of reflection. Yesterday I met and had a friendly conversation with a Methodist minister at a community event. A week from today, members of our meditation group will visit the Buddhist monastery to which we are linked over in the North East and will meet the Head of the Order before he returns to Canada. Although Jews have Saturday and Muslims have Friday, Sikhs in Christian countries attend Gurdwara on Sundays for convenience!

The passage:

"Perhaps I should not even have dismissed the chaplain. With so much religiosity about, as our universe goes down in wreck, I have painted myself more strongly Lucifer (for references to "Lucifer" in Anderson's works, scroll down) by not spending these last hours in prayer. Will my children hear at school, He wasn't just a traitor, he was a dirty atheist -? Never mind, I  am not entitled to a great deal, but let me claim the dignity of remaining myself." (p. 50)

"Remaining myself" can mean either shutting everyone else out or remaining honest and authentic.

Society is unhealthy if there is a religiosity that condemns "dirty atheists." Was the narrator offered a chaplain of his own denomination or was a single appointed chaplain foisted upon him? If the latter, then, if I were in the narrator's position and depending on the chaplain, I might have a conversation with him, then invite him to pray silently while I meditated. If he told me that I was damned, then I would invite him to leave.

"Spending these last hours in prayer..." can mean such different things for different people! God, if He exists, hears it all.

Impressionistic Reading: Beginning, Ending And A SPOILER ALERT

Poul Anderson, "High Treason" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, August 1983), pp. 49-67.

At last starting to reread this story but not going very far with it this evening. (Darkness and rain outside.) 

It begins:

"In three hours by the clock they will be here to kill me." (p. 49)

First person, future tense. We expect this opening to be followed by some present tense narration and also reminiscences explaining the narrator's death sentence. Will he be rescued or reprieved or escape? Nothing in the text has yet identified genre but that will happen soon. They are on board a ship. What kind of ship? Since this is an sf collection, we expect a spaceship and indeed there is a reminiscence about flitting down to a planet further down on the opening page. We guess from the title and from some opening remarks that the narrator is a convicted traitor. We have read this story before so we remember in general terms how it ends. Since we are focusing here on narrative point of view and on the author's deployment of tenses, we might as well at this stage look ahead and compare the opening sentence quoted above with the concluding sentence:

"So I am now going to spend what time remains in thinking about

"THE END" (p. 67)

- half-sentence.

Comparison And Contrast With Non-Fiction

Other reading always illuminates.

Non-fiction records reality whereas fiction merely reflects it. Thus, an investigative journalist writes a book about a recent event. He refers to then Prime Minister Tony Blair among many other real people. We all (?) remember Blair and can confirm his existence and activities by consulting many printed or on-line sources, not just this single book - which I recommend. Indeed, Blair has been represented on screen by an amazing number of actors. I cannot find any total number. Dramatizations and docudramas are sources of information although they must be checked against nonfictional sources.

Poul Anderson writes a series of narratives of different lengths about fictional future events. He refers to two public figures among many other fictional characters. We have never heard of either of these two figures before reading Anderson's accounts of them and these accounts are our only sources of information about these characters although we must imagine that other people living in the same fictional timeline would have access to multiple, multi-media sources comparable to ours about Blair.

Freelady Hanny Lennart, a vice president of Global Cybernetics, is described as the guiding genius of the Home Companies which is one of the two cartels that have coalesced within the Polesotechnic League. As such, she converses with Nicholas van Rijn twice - in our hearing, I mean. Later:

"...serving the [Solar] Commonwealth at a credit a year as Special Assistant Minister of Extrasolar Relations..."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim (Riverdale, NY, March, 2011), pp. 1-291, AT XIV, p. 195 -

- Lennart converses twice with Admiral Eric Tamarin-Asmundsen of the Hermetian Space Navy. 

If I have overlooked any details about Lennart, then they are to be found in Mirkheim because that is the only work in which she appears or indeed is mentioned.

Brechdan Ironrede, the Hand of the Vach Ynvory, is the Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council and appears only in Ensign Flandry although he is mentioned twice later. Those works are our only sources on Brechdan.

Two important figures: how much must be known about them in their periods and in later history? Any author who sets out to compile a history of Anderson's Technic History will have to absorb every minute datum in Anderson's texts and might also have to improvise some more whereas the main task for a biographer of Blair has to be selection. Fiction mirrors reality but cannot reproduce its detail or complexity. 

Today, we braved the elements for a Unity march with band and banners along Morecambe Promenade so I come late in the day to blogging.

War In Poul Anderson's Technic History

"Margin of Profit"

Fighting pirates. Could have become a war.

"A Sun Invisible"

Invasion of a planetary system.

The Man Who Counts

War on Diomedes.

"Hiding Place"

Action against pirates.

Mirkheim

The Babur War. First civil war in the Polesotechnic League.

"The Star Plunder"

A slave revolt.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

Imperial annexation of Ansa just completed, then a conflict in the Black Nebula.

The People Of The Wind

The war between the Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri.

Ensign Flandry

Not a war but a battle near Starkad.

The Rebel Worlds

The McCormac Rebellion in the Terran Empire.

"Outpost of Empire"

War against the Empire on Freehold.

The Day Of Their Return

A war of religion narrowly averted.

"Tiger by the Tail"

Flandry foments war in the Scothani Empire.

"The Game of Glory"

Annexation of Brae.

"A Message in Secret"

Conflict on Altai.

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

The Ardazhiro occupy Vixen while Terrans and Merseians fight elsewhere.

The Game Of Empire

The Magnusson Rebellion.

"A Tragedy of Errors"

Interstellar conflicts after the Empire.