Comparing ERB

This blog focuses on Poul Anderson and refers to other imaginative sf writers. It contends that:

Anderson succeeds but also surpasses HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Robert Heinlein;

Anderson's works should be filmed but only if it can be done very well;

James Blish should be read also;

SM Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson, particularly in the sub-genre of alternative histories;

a series, such as several by Anderson, can become a single, sometimes more elaborate, story behind the stories (see here).

Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is comparable in imagination although not in literary quality. He is a persistent presence in popular consciousness if only because of Tarzan and, to a lesser extent, John Carter, just as Lewis Carroll is persistently present because of Alice in Wonderland. (Narnia, if not as widely recognized, is certainly up there.)

We have found a single ERBian allusion in Anderson's works whereas Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy is retro-sf explicitly inspired by ERB and other pulp writers.

There could be an anthology of stories set on Jupiter:

"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson

"Desertion" by Clifford Simak (from City)

"Bridge" by James Blish (from Cities In Flight)

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by ERB (from John Carter Of Mars)

James Blish could not understand why I would include the ERB story. For completeness, for nostalgia and for the absurdity of ERB's scientific explanation of human life on the Jovian surface.

ERB's Martian series is interestingly elaborate:

Volumes

I-III: narrated by Carter

IV: Carter's son

V: Carter's daughter

VI: the second Earthman on Mars, Ulysses Paxton

VII: a Martian warrior's story transmitted to Earth by Paxton on the Gridley Wave which is also used to communicate with Pelucidar at the Earth's Core

VIII: a second Martian warrior's story transmitted as above

IX-XI: narrated by Carter, featuring his granddaughter and trips to a Martian moon and Jupiter

Also:

a trilogy that is a future history sequel to the Martian series, about travel between Earth and Moon;

volumes about Venus and an extra-solar planet;

information, in a Martian book, that there are Mercurians.

But it all sounds better than it reads, I think.

(We are tired from a day-trip to York and you are lucky to receive this post which I mentally drafted on the return journey!)

Targovi's Tendrils And Clawed Feet

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Targovi watches Pele Zachary who sets out:

"...on an overcast afternoon, when odors of wilderness lay rank and dank in windless heat." (p. 358)

Three senses - and we usually read about wind, not windlessness!

Observing with Tigery senses, he follows Pele while remaining out of sight:

"Targovi's tendrils picked the faint traces of her individual scent-complex out of the air. Yes, she was definitely bound for the field." (p. 360)

His tendrils also detect vibrations. He has a hunting animal's abilities to blend into the background, to move without sound, to bound up a tree with clawed feet and to soar from tree to tree above the Zacharians that he is following but he must return to the ground as they approach habitation in order not to be noticed by the arboreal Cynthians who will not expect to see their familiar outworld itinerant trader clambering about among the trees of their village.

Of the three kinds of beings mentioned in this post, only the Zacharians are a kind of humanity. Cynthians are from Cynthia but also have settlements on Daedalus and elsewhere. Tigeries are originally from Starkad, now destroyed, but currently settled on Imhotep.

See also:

Some Details On Daedalus

Tigeries

In The Sphere

The Lords Of Creation.

A Dyson sphere with a humanly breathable atmosphere, especially one that has been at least partly colonized from Earth, is a perfect setting for discovering new civilizations by airship instead of by spaceship. Kind of a Trek without the Stars. Given historically recent transplantations of people from Earth, the language barrier can plausibly be as big or as little as the author decides. This particular sphere is in 1 AU orbital distance not from a star but from some kind of light- and heat-emitting artifact.

A series with such a setting could be extended indefinitely perhaps with the newly discovered civilizations becoming progressively more alien and incomprehensible. However, as it stands, this novel completes a trilogy with the previous volumes set on Venus and Mars, respectively.

Bob Shaw's Orbitsville, an earlier fictional Dyson sphere, was created by transforming stellar energy at 1 AU distance from the primary into matter. How did the Lords of Creation do it? The only rule here is: expect the unexpected. 

The Fransay and Britannians are in conflict although they cannot know anything of resentments arising from World War II back on the Round World!

The ending will be unexpected but will then seem to have been inevitable.

The sphere is an obvious setting for an anthology of original stories and Poul Anderson would have been able to create a story fitting perfectly into the Lords Of Creation background.

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.