Sagittarius And Light-Years

Poul Anderson, "Home" IN Anderson, New America (New York, December 1982), pp. 231-259.

See Orbit (anthology series)

Thirty-three light-years from Sol, as his ferry leaves its mother ship and descends from orbit, Yakov Kahn sees:

"...the sprawl of Sagittarius." (p. 233)

- and reflects that the galactic centre lies beyond those dust clouds.

Poul Anderson's readers remember:

"'...the Sagittarian frontier of the Stellar Union...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, July 1979), CHAPTER IV, p. 23.

- and:

"'Civilization - the civilization of man and his non-human allies - has moved inward, toward the great star-clusters of Galactic center. This part of space means nothing to us any more; it's almost a desert. You haven't seen star-light till you've been by Sagittarius.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, June 1982), pp. 253-281 AT p. 262.

It is all one universe in different works of fiction.

Kahn reflects on his eventual return to Earth:

"Almost seventy years will have passed since we started out. And even then I was an anachronism, too many missions to too many stars..." (p. 234)

This relativistic interstellar travel reminds us of the extra-solar explorer, Joshua Coffin, in the first Rustum story. So far these stories could be set in the same future timeline. But there will be more tomorrow or the day after.

Stories Of Interstellar Travel

What we need, of course, is a multi-volume Complete Works of Poul Anderson, to include one volume, most appropriately entitled The Rustum History, which would collect the eight Rustum instalments and "The Queen of Air and Darkness." This ninth story is set on a different colonized extra-solar planet and in a much later period but in the same future history as the Rustum stories.

What we have is three volumes:

Orbit Unlimited

the first four Rustum instalments

New America

the second four Rustum instalments (= Dan Coffin sub-series)

"The Queen of Air and Darkness"

"Home"

"Our Many Roads to the Stars" (essay)

The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories

the two non-Rustum stories that are in New America

four further stories which we have previously discussed in:

A Future History Or Not?

Poul Anderson's Ninth Future History

see blog search result for Gearch

Publisher's Notes in New America attempt, not quite successfully, to link "Home" to Rustum and "The Queen..."  "Home" is another story about extrasolar colonization but one that moves sideways in time.

Curiously, in New America - at least in my edition (TOR, New York, December 1982) - whereas each left-hand page is headed "Poul Anderson," the right-hand pages of the four Rustum stories are headed "New America" but the right-hand pages of the subsequent works are each headed with the title of that particular work, thus:

"The Queen of Air and Darkness"

"Home"

"Our Many Roads to the Stars"

Our next task is to reread "Home" to check its details and either to review or to confirm which future history series it belongs in.

To The Stars

Poul Anderson, The Infinite Voyage: Man's Future In Space (London, 1969).

Chapter 10: More Suns Than One, pp. 123-135.

Chapter 11: Voyage to the Stars, pp. 136-153.

Poul Anderson, "Our Many Roads to the Stars" IN Anderson, New America (New York, December 1982), pp. 261-287 (essay published, 1975; postscript, 1982).

These works will show us the state of knowledge from the late 1960's to the early 1980's when Anderson was writing sf about interstellar travel. Although this information is now scientifically dated (to say the least), it retains a certain fictive or literary relevance just as the Martian canals, which turned out not to exist, had meanwhile found their way into fiction and literature - as indeed had the Martians, inhabiting not Mars but our imaginations.

I will try to assimilate the technical information some time tomoz. 

Continuing Rustumite History

"To Promote the General Welfare."

Historical continuities persist until the end:

the Rustumite Constitutional Convention is attended by Daniel Coffin's now grizzled son, Charlie, who had been adopted by the de Smets in "A Fair Exchange," and also by Coffin's granddaughter's husband's mother;

the Convention is addressed by Morris O'Malley, grandson of that Jack O'Malley who had salvaged equipment from the lowlands with Coffin in "My Own, My Native Land."

The Rustumites apply the term, "proletariat," to an undesirable, unemployable, dangerous social mass that must be prevented from coming into existence (!) whereas some of us on Earth apply that term to all those who work for a wage or salary, an economic class that has become the global majority in less than two hundred years.

The Convention had convened to devise a form of planetary government but we are told only the outcome of the impromptu debate about the approaching space fleet. Rustumite history will continue with:

a research program to find a biochemical or other treatment to enable all human beings to live in the denser atmosphere of the Rustumite lowlands;

the arrival, several decades hence, of the second fleet of immigrants from Earth.

For Poul Anderson's readers, the history of this timeline does continue but on another planet.

Wolfe And Svobodas

To Promote the General Welfare.

Commissioner of Astronautics Svoboda had arranged for his own son, Jan, and a fleetful of others, including Theron Wolfe, to emigrate to the extra-solar planet, Rustum.

On Rustum, Wolfe becomes the first mayor of Anchor.

Decades later, the Rustumite Constitutional Convention meets in Wolfe Hall in Anchor.

When a second fleet of emigrants/immigrants approaches from Earth, the chief of interstellar communications on Rustum is Theron Svoboda. 

We have lost count of the number of generations of Svobodas.

OK. That was just another slab of future historical continuity before your blogger goes out to an evening meeting in a community centre in Lancaster.

(The attached image is from a different timeline than the one in Poul Anderson's New America.)

Many Earths

Readers of Poul Anderson's works are very aware that, when Daniel Coffin describes Earth as it had been at the beginning of Anderson's Rustum History (see Cultures), that is the Earth of one period in just one of many timelines. Other Earths are as different from ours and from each other as a historically and scientifically informed author is able to imagine. We will cite just two examples.

A Time Patrol instructor confides:

"'Wait till you've been to the decadent stage of the Third Matriarchy! You don't know what fun is.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 14.

The rest is left to our imagination.

An Earth that I particularly like comes right at the end of another novel:

"Earth is a quiet world."

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), XVII, p. 120.

However, we are assured that, despite the quieteness, there are sounds. The following is part paraphrase and part quotation:

wind soughs in great forests;

"...birds sing, cataracts brawl, the oceans rush on the moon's trail around the globe." (ibid.);

there is enjoyment in starport towns and galactic youth in educational centres;

there are also living arts, sciences and scholarship;

but nothing new is built and the old is preserved;

robots guard an immortal spaceman's property for centuries;

ivy and lichen grow on the mostly empty Niyork towers;

traffic is minimal - "...an occasional groundcar, a few pedestrians." (pp. 122-123)

I would like it. Many would not.

Cultures

"To Promote the General Welfare."

Daniel Coffin describes the culture on Earth at the time when the Constitutionalist exiles had departed:

"'The culture was turning more and more from science and technology to mysticism and ceremony.'" (p. 138)

The only ambiguous term in Coffin's assessment is "mysticism" which can imply either mystification (bad) or contemplation (good) (in my opinion, of course). A well-rounded culture should value science, technology, contemplation and ceremony. Most people appreciate some kind of ceremony at least at a funeral. However, replacing science and technology with contemplation and ceremony would be disastrous especially in a world that needs to maintain its existing high technological level for sheer survival. We can not only hope for but also move towards a more well-rounded culture in the future. Sf can prepare its readers for the fact that the future will be different without predicting what it will be - except that it will also be different from what anyone has imagined.

Elwood's Continuum

Yes. I checked. See Sequel. Continuum, 1-4, edited by Roger Elwood, was a series of anthologies of new additions to already existing series written by their respective authors. See here. Poul Anderson's four additions to his already existing Rustum History were later collected in New America and the new instalments by the other authors were likewise collected so that the original Continuums have become redundant.

This explains some odd features of the Anderson stories. Written to order, they are uncharacteristically didactic. In these four successive instalments, Danny/Dan/Daniel Coffin systematically ages, solves problems of qualitatively different kinds - technical, scientific, personal, economic and political - and steadily grows in social stature, out of the shadow of his imposing father into the most important single individual in the Rustumite lowlands.

Elwood has been accused of editing mediocre anthologies but we are glad that he facilitated the writing of two excellent short stories that fitted into the chronology of Anderson's Technic History.

Lulling Wind And Graceful Bounds

"To Promote the General Welfare."

When Coffin has lectured Stein:

"Stein rode, sunk in thought. Wind lulled, leaves whispered." (p. 133)

Lulling and whispering help deep thought. Wind underlines conversational silence and by now feels like Poul Anderson's punctuation. There is a second sentence in this short paragraph:

"Two kilometers off, a herd of cerothere left a wood and started across the sward in graceful bounds." (ibid.)

What a contrast between a species that must ponder its collective future and another that need only bound gracefully.

Radio contact has been established with Earth albeit at a distance of twenty light-years. That is another change. 

When in Anchor, Coffin stays with the de Smets who had fostered one of his sons who, however, will be long into adulthood by now.

The series continues to develop even in this, its concluding episode. Next, Anderson will take us to another colonized extra-solar planet centuries later in the same timeline.

The Proletariat

"To Promote the General Welfare."

Daniel Coffin has to tell George Stein what the proletariat is! 

Coffin explains:

"'Not everybody on High America succeeded in becoming an independent farmer, a technical expert, or an entrepreneur. There are also those who, however worthy, have no special talents.'" (p. 131)

Let us pause for a moment. Do "technical experts" include teachers, doctors and nurses? And maybe some others that I cannot think of right now that would also be necessary on Rustum? I am trying to identify those who have "special talents." So who does not? Coffin continues:

"'Laborers, clerks, servants, routine maintenance men, et cetera. Those who have jobs, whatever jobs they happen to get, rather than careers.'" (ibid.)

The unskilled and semiskilled - who are employed by farmers or entrepreneurs. OK, so far.

Coffin continues:

"'Those whose jobs are automated out from under them when employees acquire the means to build machinery - unless they accept low wages and sink to the bottom of the social pyramid.'" (ibid.)

(Should "employees" read "employers"?)

Does Coffin think that, if everyone had "special talents," then everyone would succeed in becoming a farmer, expert or entrepreneur and that no one would become a labourer, clerk, servant or maintenance worker? Surely it is instead the case that only a minority are able to succeed and that they are able to do this only because they are members of a society where it is possible for them to employ others as labourers etc?

Coffin patronizes those labourers etc. First, he says, "...however worthy...," then he goes further:

"'Mind you, I'm not scoffing at the people I'm talking about. Mostly they're perfectly decent, conscientious human beings. They were absolutely vital in the early days.'" (ibid.)

Absolutely vital. Yes, not everyone could have "succeeded" even if everyone had had "special talents." I would have been one of those "human beings," probably seeking employment as a clerk while hoping that social advances would open up possibilities of higher education or at least of public libraries.

Coffin continues:

"'If something isn't done, Rustum will repeat Earth's miserable history..." (p. 132)

We have discussed this before. I quoted Coffin's litany of that miserable history in The Future Of Rustum. He regards the majority of the human race as a problem instead of as a potential future. We can have not only "demagogues" (ibid.) but also new leaders. Why should upheavals "'...only lead to tyranny'"? (ibid.) We are discussing humanity which is ourselves. Can we not trust ourselves to solve the problems that we ourselves have created?