Emperors And Philosophy

We have discussed Roman Emperors in connection with fiction by Poul Anderson, SM Stirling and others. Julius Caesar had been made a dictator for life and had accepted the titles, "Imperator" and "Father of his Country," and referred to the republic as something that might be restored so why is he not counted as the first Emperor? He is the first of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." Is it just because his position was not supposed to be hereditary? - which ironically it became precisely because of his assassination.

Fiction dramatizes the philosophical mind-body question although usually we do not notice this because usually we do not philosophize. In Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain," the first person narrator informs us that the planet Lucifer has long days - an objective fact - and also that he and his colleague had toiled, sweated, itched, stunk and become grimy and weary through one of those days - a subjective experience.

One objective condition, e.g., the application of heat to a liquid, causes another objective condition, the boiling of the liquid into steam. We observe both conditions. Another objective condition, a neural interaction, causes a subjective event, a sensation. In this case, we can observe the objective condition but not the subjective event. We know of the subjective event because we experience sensations and detect them in others. Someone winces when pricked with a pin. But we do not observe his sensation because that is subjective, not objective. 

Philosophers enquire about the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, two aspects of reality.

What Happens Next?

The Day Of Their Return.

It is revealed that Jaan was a false prophet in a very real sense - technologically possessed by an agent of Merseia - and it is simultaneously announced that Ivar Frederiksen, heir to the Firstmanship of Ilion, who had tried to lead a rebellion, will now make his peace with the occupation forces of the Terran Empire. Will even these two devastating developments be enough to derail the movement for Aenean independence that we have seen gathering momentum throughout this novel? I would not think so. There will be further years of turmoil ahead and we need another novel especially Sector Alpha Crucis is close to the Domain of Ythri and we also want to know what has been happening on Avalon. Poul Anderson's Technic History needed to have been two or three times its finished length. JRR Tolkien said that The Lord Of The Rings was "too short" and I agree - although lengthy, it feels rushed - and the Technic History is definitely too short.

Spiritual Development II

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane, just before she mentions duty: 

"'...[Cosmenosists] think reality is always growin' toward what is greater than itself...'" (pp. 129-130)

"...greater..." is mystically vague but she means intensifications or refinements of consciousness. So is reality always growing towards this? Well, no. What has happened so far?

There was an earliest moment with no earlier moments just as there are no points further north than the North Pole. At that earliest moment, condensed energy was released with natural forces that allowed for the emergence of a complex ordered universe rather than a random chaos. Were the forces "fine tuned"? Not by any intelligent being because intelligence had not emerged yet. 

Energized complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating, the first unicellular organism. Chemistry was not "growing toward" biology although presumably a random event would have happened some time. I understand that multicellular organisms are unlikely although they have evolved at least once. Consciousness was an accidental byproduct of natural selection. Organisms were selected for sensitivity. Pleasure and pain, if they were possible, would have survival value. Therefore, sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into sensation. 

Now that we are not only conscious but also self-conscious and intelligent, we can decide to work towards the goal of self-development but reality had not been growing towards such an outcome. There might be universes where some of the earlier random events like the fusion of two simple cells into a single complex cell allowing for the emergence of multicellular organisms did not happen.

Now that we are here, we can do something about it but we should not think that preconscious reality had had any inbuilt tendency to work towards us.

Spiritual Development

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

The previous post was cut short by a Sunday walk. What else did Tatiana say? That:

"'...first duty of those who stand highest is to help those lower -'" (p. 130)

That makes sense in her universe where intelligent species are as numerous as snowflakes but not in ours as yet. Ivar Frederiksen later makes the point that the evidence from all those known species indicates that natural selection develops intelligence only so far - and that does seem reasonable. However, spirituality is not just intelligence. It involves psychological and moral development, self-knowledge, insight and wisdom. Surely some species will be further developed spiritually and therefore able to help or guide others? In fact, from his theological perspective, Axor to ask why all those known species are "Fallen." Surely some at least should not have Fallen? Or was there just one cosmic Original Sin for everyone? That seems unlikely but the question only arises from a particular theological perspective. To me, it makes sense that instincts for self-preservation and species-propagation had survival value for conscious species but then became obstacles to spiritual development in intelligent species. Pleasure, pain and consciousness became not "sin" (Biblical terminology) but "greed, hate and delusion" (Buddhist terminology) and can be transmuted into their opposites: nonattachment, compassion and wisdom.

But Tatiana unreasonably expects the Builders to return and liberate everyone. We liberate ourselves. 

Rumours On The Wind

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane looks to what she calls the transcendental, not the supernatural, and claims that her Cosmenosis is a philosophy, not a religion. These are words. In fact, with no evidence, she expects the Builders to return and heeds the rumours of a forerunner even though such rumours are, as she acknowledges:

"'...forever driftin' in on desert wind...'" (p. 130)

Of course that wind plays its role!

I would advise Tatiana: continue to practice science and meditation and don't listen to rumours! Consider what you know scientifically about the Builders/Elders/Ancients/Forerunners and their artefacts and go no further than that unless and until you find new evidence as Axor tries to do. He hopes to confirm an explicitly religious belief but Flandry is right to fund his research. Who knows what will turn up? I know the answer to that question: something completely unexpected.

Today is Sunday. Attend church and/or worship/contemplate in the temple of earth and sky.

Wind In Gotham City

Sometimes late at night, I want to add once last post for the day but don't want to have to do any complicated reading first. I am really going out on a limb with this one but I can't help it. Poul Anderson's texts really have sensitized me to the wind as a sound effect, as punctuating or underlining the dialogue, as commenting on the action, as pathetic fallacy, sometimes almost as an additional dramatic character. But this means that I notice the wind in other authors' works probably even where it has no significance whatsoever. Thus, the plant elemental, the Swamp Thing, has greened Gotham City. The streets are full of trees with normal life at a standstill:

"I listen...to a city that has not known silence...since the coming of the automobile...

"The cars are dead now...and wind strums the high branches."

-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing: Earth To Earth (New York, 2002), p. 24, panel 5.

Yes. Wind strumming the high branches expresses and symbolizes the guardian of the environment triumphing over urban civilization!

(I would not have thought that without Poul Anderson.)

Alright. That's it. Normal service will be resumed tomoz or soon.

Places In Time

Places That Are Realized In Two Time Travel Works

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series

Everard's apartment

The Time Patrol Academy

The Pleistocene lodge

In Anderson's There Will Be Time

Senlac

The Havig group's main base

Manse Everard is often shown in his apartment. He is trained in the Academy in "Time Patrol" and attends an emergency meeting there in "Delenda Est." Wanda Tamberly is trained there in The Shield Of Time. Everard vacations at the lodge with Piet Van Sarawak in "Delenda Est" and with Wanda in The Shield...

Senlac, Jack Havig's home town, is realized in detail whereas his time travel base, although I have listed it here, is really only described telegrammically despite its being the main equivalent of the Academy in a different timeline. There Will Be Time is a thin and terse novel whereas the same narrative could have been presented and elaborated in a much longer volume.

Fictional Universes II

Fictional universes contain not only persons but also places that take on a life of their own. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Virgilian System includes the planets, Dido and Aeneas. The latter, lighter and dryer than Earth, kind of like a Mars with a breathable atmosphere, would have been more suitable for colonization by the nearby Ythrians. However, human scientists, wanting to study the tripartite inhabitants of the even less hospitable Dido, established a base, which became a University, on Aeneas. The Rebel Worlds, set mainly on Dido, has one chapter set on Aeneas. Its sequel, The Day Of Their Return, is, except for a single early flashback, set entirely on the surface of Aeneas. 

Hermes, important as the home planet both of David Falkayn and of Sandra Tamarin, remains off-stage until it becomes a major setting in Mirkheim and is again visited in A Stone In Heaven.

Avalon, is shown at four different stages of development in three short stories and one novel. Its notable locations include the Weathermother mountain range and the cities of Gray and Centauri, the latter containing Livewell Street named after a local flower.

Dennitza appears only in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where, however, it imparts a real sense of place to the Kazan, the Obala and Zorkagrad.

Returning again to another author in another medium and genre, Alan Moore fully exploits the connotations and implications of the familiar place name, "Gotham City," before bringing on stage its most notorious inhabitant.

Fictional Universes

Readers like to immerse themselves in fictional universes. I need hardly cite examples. An author who immerses himself in such a universe, whether his own or someone else's, can utilize it as a background to create new kinds of stories about new characters. Asked to contribute to a few juvenile anthologies, Poul Anderson took the opportunity to write short stories about the colonization of Avalon, with David Falkayn referred to only as the grandfather of the viewpoint character, Nat.

Anderson also familiarized himself enough with several other sf universes to be able to write stories set in those universes as summarized in the combox here. These included Asimov's Robots series. Anderson's story, "Plato's Cave," features the regular US Robots troubleshooters, Powell and Donovan, and also refers to Stephen Byerley who was running for Mayor somewhere in another story at that time - an excellent use of existing material.

These observations are occasioned by my appreciation of Alan Moore's transformations of multiple DC Comics characters, some universally known, others obscure, in his Swamp Thing series to which I will now return over a second mug of breakfast coffee. A normal Saturday in Lancaster stretches ahead.

New Instalments?

We will be able to read new instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History only if someone else writes them but this should be done either very well or not at all. I do not accept any later additions to Stieg Larsson's Millennium series - which have not been based on whatever unfinished manuscript was left by Larsson. I do not even accept Robert Heinlein's later additions to his own Future History!

We fully accept that some kinds of fictional characters are written by multiple authors, e.g.:

Sexton Blake, 4000 stories by 200 authors in 5 media;

comic strip and TV characters.

Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller have been able to re-create comic book characters and to write substantial graphic novels about previously inconsequential heroes and villains. A writer with such skills would be able to make new additions to a future history series that is already consequential but this is unlikely to happen.

Meanwhile, we appreciate how much a single author was able to put into the Technic History.