The End Is A Beginning

The Lords Of Creation.

OK. A local war is resolved but the whole rest of the Dyson sphere remains to be explored so what happens next? Volume IV? Trilogy 2, Volume I? As an early Star Trek film poster proclaimed, "The Adventure Continues..." - or at least should continue. This cannot be the end. The end of the trilogy is only a beginning. Will the same characters return to the Sphere or will we be introduced to what would become a fourth set of characters in the series? The original "Lords" can remain off-stage indefinitely, I think. How far is the Sphere from the Solar System? Instantaneous interstellar transition is a neat trick, not to say implausible. Such things can be made to seem easy in sf - but they would benefit from some kind of explanation.

Even in retro-sf, we are always looking forward to what is going to happen next.

Lewis And Anderson

In CS Lewis' fictional Solar System, the truth of monotheism is acknowledged everywhere except by many of us benighted souls on Earth - and, even here, Maleldil and his servitors turn out to be actively present.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, such questions remain open but are treated seriously. Two alien monotheisms, Ythrian and Merseian, are incompatible with any Terrestrial tradition whereas two Wodenites, Adzel and Axor, have converted to different Terrestrial religions. 

I consider such questions and occasionally publish brief posts on the Religion and Philosophy blog where today I have felt moved to add "God."

Moran

See Wells And Verne. 

Of course the list from Mary Shelley to Poul Anderson and his successors covers the modern sf tradition. Anderson's other literary antecedents are:

the Bible

the Eddas

the Sagas

Saxo Grammaticus

Der Nibelungenlied

a Danish ballad

William Shakespeare

Rudyard Kipling

Arthur Conan Doyle

- and maybe some that I don't know about.

We have noticed the many Holmesian references in Anderson's works, particularly the appearance of a private investigator and his amanuensis in "Time Patrol."

In SM Stirling's The Lords Of Creation, one of the Brittanians is named Colonel Sebastian Moran although their ancestors came to the Sphere pre-Doyle so this is a coincidence although it conveys the ambience of the Brits.

(End of posting for a while. We will walk to Morecambe for a concert and tomorrow will visit Bowness on Windermere. On Tuesday, I will visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. On Wednesday, there will be a solar eclipse here.)

Wells And Verne

The Lords Of Creation, CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Janice reflects that the Britannian ancestors who came to the Dyson sphere were so historically recent that they were:

"Post Jules Verne, or mid-Jules Verne, at least." (p. 155)

For a long time, I have thought of Poul Anderson as a successor of:

Mary Shelley

Mark Twain

HG Wells

L. Sprague de Camp

Robert Heinlein

- but have not included Verne in this list maybe because I think in terms of English-language sf?

In Alan Moore's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the early twentieth century space race is between the British who have Cavorite and the French who have a big cannon...

Retro-sf should acknowledge and combine the heritages of Wells and Verne. The latter disliked Cavorite:

"'Il invente!'"

No Horizon

The inner surface of a Dyson sphere has no horizon because it is the inner surface of a sphere. The planet Daedalus has no horizon because atmospheric conditions refract sunlight around the curve of the planet. In both cases, a distant object is not seen because it is too far away but not because it is out of the line of sight. Nevertheless, inhabitants of a Dyson sphere live on the inside of a sphere whereas inhabitants of any planet, including Daedalus, live on the outside.

What else is either similar or dissimilar? Daedalus has been colonized by human beings, including Zacharians, and also by Cynthians and Donarrians, and is in the Patrician System where Imhotep has been colonized by human beings and by land and sea Starkadians. (In The Game Of Empire, we see neither Donarrians nor sea Starkadians but we have seen both in earlier instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History.)

So far, SM Stirling's Dyson sphere seems to have been colonized only by human beings, indeed by types and nationalities that we recognize, but I have read only as far as p. 110 of 203 of The Lords Of Creation. The land area of a Dyson sphere presents immense possibilities (see the combox here) so what else are the American explorers with their EastBloc representative about to find? On this blog, I post while reading so that, on a first reading, I do not know The Shape Of Things To Come, to use a phrase. But the remaining 93 pages will soon disappear below the temporal horizon. How long have we been reading interesting narratives? How long will be continue to? What will come next?

(There are many books called Lords... or The Lords... Of Creation.)

Night Flight On Daedalus

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Kukulkan Zachary takes Diana, Axor and Targovi to the island of Zacharia in a flying:

"...first class passenger cruiser..." (p. 365)

- because only this is big enough:

"...to carry the Wodenite in comfort..." (ibid.)

They stand in an observation lounge with a completely transparent floor. Would you find that comfortable? It reminds me that Wonder Woman used to fly an invisible plane. However, in this cruiser, metal ribs cross the otherwise unseen floor and there are both fore and aft bulkheads.

During their night flight:

the sky is deep violet-blue above and berylline near the ocean;

a few stars are visible;

the Daedalian sun-ring surrounds the Phosphoric Ocean making distant rain and the sea below the ring gleam;

that sea gleam shades to turquoise, then to black which however swirls and sparks with green life;

Zacharia shows rivers, lakes, mists, mountains, valleys and light from dwellings and from other travellers by air or water.

We try to summarize a descriptive passage accurately and wind up writing something almost as long as it. For another attempt at the same passage, see also:

Night On Daedalus

York And Lancaster

Some of Poul Anderson's characters visit York and this blog is written in Lancaster. These are the two "Roses" cities.

In York yesterday, we:

visited the Minster;

visited the home of a Catholic martyr, which is now a chapel;

bought Yorkshire curd tart;

bought hand-made wooden kitchen cutlery from a Ukrainian market stall holder;

had a good time.

We are still reading SM Stirling's The Lords Of Creation for the first time.

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.