Wing Alak And The Bible

Poul Anderson, "The Live Coward" IN Anderson, Kinship With The Stars (New York, October 1991), pp. 249-276.

"[Wing Alak's] Patrol uniform was as dandified as regulations allowed." (p. 251)

"[Philippe Rochefort] stretched to the limit the tolerance granted officers as regards their dress uniforms - rakishly tilted bonnet bearing the sunburst of Empire, gold-trimmed blue tunic, scarlet sash and cloak, snowy trousers tucked into low boots of authentic Terran beef-leather."

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT IV, p. 487.

"...[Dominic Flandry's] bonnet was tilted more rakishly on his seal-brown hair than a strict interpretation of rules would have allowed; his frame was draped in a fantastic glittergold version of dress tunic and snowy trousers rucked into handmade beefleather halfboots; the cloak that fluttered behind him glowed with phosphorescent patterns through the chill dusk..."

-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER TWO, p. 203.

Alak is in good company but in a different timeline.

He says:

"'Get thee behind me, Satan...and don't push!'" (ibid.)

When people say, "Get thee behind me...," are they knowingly quoting the Bible or just repeating an English language phrase that they have heard? Might the latter count as an indirect quotation?

Alak irreverently adds "...don't push...," foreign to the spirit of the original.

We see here a faint echo of Poul Anderson's greater works.

Economics And Some Other Issues

"Enough Rope."

Wing Alak induces an enemy ruler to think that it is a good idea to occupy a planet inhabited by a hive species that will uncomplainingly slave to manufacture all his war materials, thus bankrupting the factories on the home planet and motivating the industrialists to depose the ruler, a scheme worthy of Nicholas van Rijn. Thus ends the second Wing Alak story. We will reread the third since it immediately follows the second in this collection but we are bound to regard the Galactic League series as a backyard in a side street in a suburb of the city of Poul Anderson's creations.

Meanwhile, The King Of Ys calls.

Regarding some recent combox discussion, I think that Dominic Flandry and James Bond are too dissimilar to be comparable. Ian Fleming shows us the world that he lived in. Poul Anderson imagines other worlds. (One minor parallel between the two fictional biographies is that both characters lost both parents early in life, which has to have some effect on how they operated later. But they are very different.)

Onward and upward.

Remembrance

See Alternative Biographies.

We salute Manse Everard and James Bond as two (fictional) veterans of World War II. I used to work with WWII veterans but they retired long before I did. This year, there were only twelve veterans of that war at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. Today, at 11:00 am, some people in Lancaster came out of their workplaces to stand for a minute's silence and others joined them. There have been too many wars since WWII.

See also War Memorials.

Alternative Biographies

Reading fiction set in the 1950's reminds us of World War II not because the War happened in that decade -it didn't! - but because the characters who were adults then would have been involved in the War or at least alive during it. It remained a major part of their recent past. This applies both to Poul Anderson's Manse Everard, Time Patrolman, and to Ian Fleming's James Bond, secret agent.

Everard served in the War and was recruited by the Patrol in 1955. Bond served in the War either after he had bought a car in 1933 and worked for the Secret Service before the War or after he had joined the Service only in 1941 and then only by falsely claiming an age of nineteen. M who informs us of the second date adds that popular accounts of Commander Bond's adventures are inaccurate!

The Time Patrol is familiar with alternative biographies. In fact, such a discrepancy has to be resolved in the very first Time Patrol story:

"To us, it was a matter of record that one Charles and Mary Whitcomb lived in Victoria's England. It was also a matter of record that Mary Nelson died with a family she was visiting in 1944, and that Charles Whitcomb had lived a bachelor and finally been killed on active duty with the Patrol."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 6, pp. 51-52.

M resolves a contradiction by telling us that Fleming's earlier accounts were inaccurate. Everard resolves a contradiction by rescuing Mary in 1944 and arranging for Whitcomb to leave the Patrol. However, such extratemporal interventions could not happen in Fleming's universe! Contemporary fiction exists in a bubble where its characters and their settings never overtly interact with the Solar System, the Milky Way, other galaxies, other dimensions, other timelines or whatever else might be out there even though they must be surrounded by, and indeed must be a very small part of, the totality of reality.

Both contemporary fiction and sf are realistic but in different ways.

See also earlier blog references to WWII here.

A Mission

Roma Mater.

"'The Duke of the Britains...summoned [Gratillonius] by name.'" (I, 1, p. 16)

Should that not be "Britons"? According to the Notes, the Latin was:

"...Dux Britannarium..." (p. 444)

In any case, Gratillonius is thrilled:

"What could that mean? A mission? The blood thrilled in Gratillonius." (ibid.)

That reminds us of another fictional character who is thrilled by a summons that might mean a mission:

"...the signal that had fired him, like a loaded projectile, across the world towards some distant target of M.'s choosing."

-Ian Fleming, From Russia, With Love (London, 1964), p. 84.

However, Gratillonius' mission, unlike any other, will make him, for several years, the last King of Ys and the title character of this Tetralogy. A legendary adventure begins, retold in a twentieth century novel.

Task Force

(This is the cover of another book but it is a cover that we have not had before and the image is appropriate.)

We appreciate space combat in Poul Anderson's Technic History. See also:

The Battle At The Red Sun

Hyperdrive And Combat

"Enough Rope" describes an interstellar task force -

a thousand warships:

scouts;

flanking cruisers;

dreadnaughts, each able to sterilize a planet (!) -

- and a thousand noncombatants:

transports;

supply craft;

flying workshops.

This force has been sent by the Galactic League so it is going to be used in an elaborate bluff and not in military action? OK. We are (re)reading the story at a snail's pace between other activities. (Can't remember any of it.) Wing Alak has one skill in common with PG Woodhouse's Jeeves: the ability to do what looks like precisely the wrong thing but then turns out to have been precisely the right thing. I think that I can see how the story is going. By ducking and diving, by occupying an inhospitable planet near the enemy's home system but then withdrawing and occupying somewhere else as soon as a fleet is sent to dislodge them, the League force will cause the enemy to expend a lot of energy and to exhaust itself without any shots being fired. Fearing an attack that never comes from this large force moving around undetectably between nearby planetary systems, the enemy will take all kinds of unnecessary defence measures and precautions inconveniencing its civilian population, transportation etc. We will read to the end tomorrow or the day after.

Fictional Biographies

Harald Hardrada is a historical figure and also the central character of a historical fiction trilogy, The Last Viking by Poul Anderson. 

The following characters are listed in historical order although with at least one divergent timeline:

Harald Hardrada, King of Norway

Sherlock Holmes, private investigator

James Bond, secret agent

Manson Everard, Time Patrolman

Nicholas van Rijn, Master Merchant, Polesotechnic League

David Falkayn, MMPL

Dominic Flandry, secret agent

(As an appendix to this list, Anderson also created several strong "proto-series" characters: Manuel Argos; Diana Crowfeather; Roan Tom; Daven Laure.)

An exercise for a reader of fiction is to try to construct a series character's biography. First, the series itself recounts at least one period of the character's life although a central character's death is not usually recorded. (Two exceptions: Poirot; Morse.) Concerning the above listed characters, we are informed only of Hardrada's time and place of death but those are matters of historical record in any case.

Secondly, a series often refers to earlier events in a character's life, thus providing clues for a fictional biographer. Thirdly, the biographer can simply invent details for periods that the author has not covered although I think that such an approach is to be frowned upon. We should aim at a minimalist, not a speculative, biography. 

Persis d'Io discovers that the nineteen-year old Dominic Flandry is already sexually experienced and confident. James Bond lost his virginity and his notecase in Paris at the age of sixteen. We have a place and an age for Bond but not for Flandry. That is all.

(This post is occasioned by the facts that we are rereading Bond and that Fleming's novels present two minimal but also mutually incompatible biographies which might become the subject-matter of a post on another blog.)

Maximus And Gratillonius

Poul and Karen Anderson, Roma Mater (London, 1988). 

Maximus tells Gratillonius:

"'You'll burn for ever after you die, unless you take the Faith.'" I, 1, p. 23.

He describes Gratillonius not as a man of a different faith but as:

"'...obstinate...'" (ibid.)

Here is a man who states his own belief as if it were an incontrovertible empirical fact like: "The sun is above us." Dialogue starts when two men acknowledge that their beliefs are beliefs and that something has to be said to back them up. Dialogue continues when there is listening, not mere assertion. And it continues for life both for those who deepen whatever belief they started out with and for those who change it. 

But, unfortunately, we meet Maximus's successors on the street to this day. Some propagandists are offensive but it would be a worse situation if they were banned.

Gratillonius On Hadrian's Wall

At present, I am more interested in Gratillonius of the Roman Empire than in Wing Alak of the Galactic League. On the opening page of Roma Mater, Gaius Valerius Gratillonius, a Romano-Briton and Roman centurion, standing on Hadrian's Wall, fifteen feet high and seventy-seven miles long, at noon on the Birthday of Mithras, sees: 

above, clear sky, low blazing sun;

southward, hills, ditch, earthworks, fields, fort and settlement;

northward, the Wall's shadow on a descending cliff, forested heights, flashing icicles and flying crows;

westward, a nearby tower;

eastward, the Wall stretching over the horizon with observation turrets, mile-castles, gleaming metal, cloaks and standards and, below it, the legionary base.

And that is a good start to a historical Tetralogy.

The League And Lancaster

"Enough Rope."

It seems that League Patrol bluff can fail. The League adopts a three-stage approach to any problem:

first, reason;

second, bluff;

third, any other means short of force, e.g., bribery, blackmail...

The "...any means..." (p. 225) are said to include "...fomented revolution..." (ibid.) which of course is force but it is not war waged by the League or even by whichever government the League is dealing with. Revolution within a realm is meant to prevent any external wars waged by that realm.

I will persevere with this story although I am finding its opening passages unpromising. A powerful ruler proposes to embark on interstellar conquest and Wing Alak will have to bluff, bribe or blackmail him out of it? However, I must not prejudge the story. I have read it before at least once but years ago and have no memory of what happens next.

We said that we might reread parts of The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson). Volume I, Roma Mater, opens on Hadrian's Wall which is a short distance to the north from where I now write. However, all that existed at the site of the future Lancaster back then was a Roman fort overlooking the River Lune. Lancaster Castle, which occupies the site of the former fort, is medieval, most likely dating from the late eleventh century. The Andersons' map of Britannia shows Carlisle, York, Chester and other major cities but nothing corresponding to Lancaster. Nevertheless, this is our part of the world.