Introducing Wing Alak

Poul Anderson, "The Double-Dyed Villains" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, Volume I, Call Me Joe (NESFA, Framingham, MA, March 2009), pp. 157-177.

OK. We begin to read the Wing Alak trilogy over Sunday breakfast after meditating and before walking to the gym so we will not penetrate very far into this first story this morning.

A planetary premier whips up his population over their telescreens, declaring war on the League government and its Patrol. He will lead the Galaxy and refers to:

"'...man's tortured history.'" (p. 157)

Thinking quickly, sf readers deduce that this story is set in a future period when human beings have long been settled on planets throughout the galaxy.

Our viewpoint character, listening to the premier's speech in his hotel room, is called Wing Alak, a name that discloses nothing. However, when he is arrested, Alak is addressed as:

"'Wing Alak of Sol III...'" (p. 158)

- even though he has been posing as:

"'...Gol Duhinator of Maxlan IV...'" (ibid.)

The alert sf reader is thus informed that Alak is an undercover operative from Earth - probably capital planet of the League. Maxlan has to be a star, the planet where this is happening is called Luan and Luan's immediate grievance is that the League has given Lhing to Marhal:

"'...as a political bribe...'" (p. 157)

- according to the enraged Premier, Tranis Voal.

Stay tuned.

(The NESFA volume is too bulky to carry to the gym. However, I have two paperback volumes to take to read over lunch after an hour of exercise.)

One Minor Series

Short stories are too short. When we have finished one, we have to start another and we do not necessarily want the next one in the collection although there are many collections and a trilogy of short stories should occupy more time:

"The Double-Dyed Villains" is in Call Me Joe (see image);

"Enough Rope" and "The Live Coward" are in Kinship With The Stars.

The author's short introduction to "The Live Coward" reads:

"And here is another example of Wing Alak at his Machiavellian work. I could have written more stories in the series, but three were plenty. It was time to go on to something new."

-Poul Anderson, Kinship With The Stars (New York, October 1991), p. 249.

- which was Anderson's stated reason for discontinuing his Technic History.

We might also reread some of The King Of Ys although we will certainly not repeat all that we have already posted about that Tetralogy. But we also know that something new can always be found in Poul Anderson's works. Having just returned from the Light Up Lancaster Festival, it is time for some Other Reading.

Poul Anderson's Three Main Series

When I want to discuss what I regard as Poul Anderson's three main series, I have to check what I have posted about them already. Maybe I have already covered them adequately? See Four Series. The Last Viking Trilogy belonged on that list because it is straight historical fiction whereas:

the Time Patrol series combines historical fiction with sf (time travel);

The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson) combines historical fiction with fantasy (gods);

the History of Technic Civilization is not historical fiction but future history.

But what a comprehensive list of genres!

Time Patrol, Ys and Technic History are surely the main three? The later Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, a different style of future history, is comparable in length although not as substantial in content - in my opinion.

But what an amazing list of series, these five and others by Anderson. His first future history series, the Psychotechnic History, pales in comparison with its major successor, the Technic History, but remains a Heinleinian future history nevertheless.

Winding Up On "A Man To My Wounding"

"A Man To My Wounding."

OK. This story does bear some further analysis. That early expository passage, the broadcast address, not only sets the scene but also plays a role in the eventual action. First, the speaker's remark that wars had escalated made the narrator reflect that assassinations might escalate. Secondly, the fact that the speaker was not only an academic but also a leader in a major political party, although not one that held office as yet, made the narrator think that he, the speaker, might be the next target - the enemy eliminating national leaders even before they become national leaders. In fact, the narrator has a moment of realization:

"I stood unmoving for an instant. The crowd milled around me...

"Then I started running." (pp. 201-202)

Lastly for now, maybe, we notice that this a dated future. The narrator/field agent has to use a grocery store phone booth to call his organization's local HQ...

(James Bond had to use a public phone whereas his successor, the Man from UNCLE, used a hand-held communicator decades before the rest of us had acquired mobile phones.)

An Ending And A Question

I have read to the end of "A Man To My Wounding." The first person narrator thinks:

"...we are the kings who die for the people..." (p. 201)

Ideas are being recycled.

The enemy sets out to assassinate not only current political leaders but also talented younger people who might become future leaders. Thus, the assassination system escalates just as war had done and the story ends not with a conclusion but with a question:

"'Where is it going to end?'" (p. 209)

The narrative had seemed to meander but this turns out to have been its destination point. OK. We can now move on to something else.

Flandry And Bond On Women

At the end of his second novel, Dominic Flandry makes a judgement about women whereas, at the end of his first novel, James Bond makes a judgement about one woman, having expressed himself about women earlier. In both cases, the judgement arises from the duplicity of Intelligence work. When Flandry suggests that Djana join Naval Intelligence, maybe even becoming a double agent in the Roidhunate, she sees this as yet another man trying to use her and puts her distinctive kind of psychic curse on him. Flandry concludes:

"Women! The aliens among us!"

-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 193-365 AT p. 365.

Bond would have proposed to Vesper Lynd and maybe resigned from MI6. However, she commits suicide, leaving a letter telling him that she has been a double agent for the Russians. He resolves to remain in the Service in order to track down SMERSH and phones HQ:

"'This is 007 speaking. This is an open line. It's an emergency. Can you hear me? Pass this on at once. 3030 was a double, working for Redland.

"'Yes, dammit, I said "was". The bitch is dead now.'"

-Casino Royale, CHAPTER 27, p. 189.

Aliens; the bitch.

It has been good to reread a novel from cover to cover, to pick out several single sentences or short passages for comment and comparison and to illustrate these posts with notable book covers. We may have completed Flandry-Bond comparisons for a while.

Future, Present And Past

Three kinds of reading complement each other:

sf about future political conflicts like Poul Anderson's "The Pugilist," "A Man To My Wounding" etc;

the current news;

recent political historical works like Bye Bye Blackshirt: the fight against Oswald Mosley, antisemitism, and the British Union of Fascists, 1934-1936, by Mark Krantz who signed a copy for me at a book launch meeting last night.

Futuristic sf is part of this spectrum, commenting on the time in which it is written and the recent past. 

I am finding "A Man To My Wounding" somewhat heavy going but will persevere until the end, knowing that something is always to be learned from reading anything written by Poul Anderson.

(Book launch and other meetings are held in a Methodist Church Centre. We walk through a very lively Food Bank to get to the meeting room. All human life is here - or some of it, at least. The Centre is just off Dalton Square with the Town Hall and the statue of Queen Victoria.)

Some Special Days

Because of our cultural heritage, certain phrases resonate in our consciousnesses whether or not an author intends any such resonance. When Poul Anderson wrote:

"On the third day he arose..."

- and Mike Carey wrote:

"...the third day he rose..."

(for both references, see On The Third Day)

- they obviously intended to remind us of something!

However, I am far less certain that Ian Fleming had anything particular in mind when he wrote:

"On the morning of the third day a bloody nightmare shook him awake, trembling and sweating."

-Casino Royale, CHAPTER 19, p. 132.

- or:

"...on the eighth day he asked for her..."

-ibid., CHAPTER 21, p. 149.

(For a possible significance of the eighth day, see again the link to "On The Third Day," above.)

In Facing Death, we referred to religious observances on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Two further points about Fridays:

Christians have fasted and abstained on Friday because it was the day of the Crucifixion;

I suspected that Muhammad had opted for Friday as the Muslim day of prayer just to be different from Jews and Christians and a Muslim friend acknowledged that some aspects of Islam have been instituted on such a basis but he nevertheless checked on the Internet and found that one significance of Friday is that it is the day on which Adam was created!

See A Self-Contained Universe.

If (mythologically speaking), God rested on the seventh day, having created human beings on the sixth day, then, yes, Adam was created on a Friday! (But note the two creation stories in Genesis, summarized in the linked post.)

I acknowledge without apology that passages in works by Anderson and other imaginative authors can generate lines of thought that carry us far away from those authors' texts. If my interests were different, then I would post more about Anderson's many references to world history or to the physical sciences. But other readers must follow their lines of interest. We might eventually compile a collection of "Anderson on Everything."

Marks On Paper

Physically, a book is ink marks on paper. It comes to life when read. RG Collingwood argued that, if copies of Shakespeare's works survived but the ability to read and understand English was lost, then the works would no longer exist. They exist only in the minds of theatre audiences and readers and can be transmitted in different physical media. 

If this is the case, then we maintain decades-old short stories like Poul Anderson's "The Pugilist," "A Man To My Wounding" etc by reading and rereading them. The texts are lifeless until reread. Keep them alive.

Twenty Strong Women Characters In Poul Anderson's Works

Betty Riefenstahl

Coya Conyon

Tabitha Falkayn

Persis d'Io

Djana

Aline Chang-Lei

Luang

Kit Kittredge

Ella McIntyre

Kathryn McCormac

Tatiana Thane

Fraina of Jubilee

Miriam Abrams

Diana Crowfeather

Graydal

Dagny

Yasmin

Evalyth Sairn

Janne Floris

Wanda Tamberly

As usually happens, I am finding that there are more than I had bargained for and I do not want to go and look up names at this time of night. However, I have just found several on the blog instead of going upstairs to check future history volumes.

Contrast James Bond's attitude:

"These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men."

-Casino Royale, CHAPTER 15, p. 105.

(I said that it was difficult to choose between cover images so here is another.)

It is worse in Goldfinger: homosexuality results from giving women the vote.