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.

A Telling Point

"The Double-Dyed Villains."

A frivolous story can make a serious point. The premier and his wife are relieved when their kidnapped daughter is returned unharmed. They have been through hell. But then Wing Alak asks the premier:

"'Have you ever thought how many millions of mothers this holy war of yours would have left without any prospect of getting their children back?'" (p. 173)

He explains:

"'...I had to think of the whole Galaxy, not Luan. Sometimes someone must suffer a little lest someone else suffer a lot more.'" (p. 176)

That is Alak's motivation and everything that he has done suddenly appears in a different light.

Wrong And Right

 

"The Double-Dyed Villains."

Galactic League Patrol agents act wrongly in every conventional sense. They deceive, thwart, seduce or betray their clients/victims. However, it also turns out that this is how the Patrol saves lives and keep the peace. It is all one big act and joke.

As has been pointed out in the combox, bluffs can be called:

Robert Heinlein's Future History includes a volume in which, although technology has progressed, society has regressed;

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series includes an installment in which Seldon's psychohistorical predictions are wrong;

James Blish's Okie series includes an installment in which the germanium-backed Oc dollar collapses, bankrupting the flying cities;

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History includes an installment in which the Psychotechnic Institute has failed and has been overthrown and outlawed;

Anderson's Technic History includes an installment in which the Polesotechnic League is cartelizing and is thwarting the development of planets and species lacking the necessary start-up capital;

the League Patrol series needed an installment in which someone called the League's bluff.

Some Late Night Other Reading

James Bond looks out of the window of his room in the St Regis Hotel, New York. We could compare sights seen by Bond with those seen by Poul Anderson's Time Patrolmen, including Manse Everard, in the same city. However, since it is nearly midnight here, we will focus instead on a single detail, relying on our regular readers to recognize its relevance:

"The wind sighed sadly outside in the velvet dusk, lending his room still more warmth and security and luxury."

-Ian Fleming, Live And Let Die (London, 2004), 4, p. 35.

This wind comments twice. It is sad - why? - and, by contrast, it emphasizes Bond's expensive indoor comfort.

And, this time, that really is all that we have time for tonight.

Good night.

Space Patrols

Poul Anderson, "Enough Rope" IN Anderson, Kinship With The Stars (New York, October 1991), pp. 216-248.

In the author's introduction:

"The scars of World War Two were not yet healed when I, in a story called "The Double-Dyed Villains," raised the question of whether armed forces - which science fiction was widely using in the form of various kinds of space patrols - really were a good answer to the problem of maintaining law and peace." (p. 216)

We will refer to:

Robert Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles;

Heinlein's Future History;

Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Space Cadet is a Scribner Juvenile about the Interplanetary Space Patrol which prevents nuclear war by monopolizing nuclear weapons. A hero of the Patrol is John Ezra Dahlquist who died preventing a coup by his superior officer.

"The Long Watch" is a Future History short story about Dahlquist's death.

In the Psychotechnic History, the armed force of the Solar Union is the Solar Guard which is split by civil war when Earth withdraws from the Union.

And that is all that there is time for tonight.

League Patrol Policy And Deceit

"The Doubled-Dyed Villains."

An anticlimax, really. Alak kidnaps the Premier's daughter to make him call off the war but then carefully explains that:

Patrol agents are not allowed to kill;

they lie about having a large battle fleet;

he would not have harmed the daughter, whatever had happened;

the Patrol deploys such deceits because the only alternative would be genocidal interstellar wars waged by themselves or others;

as part of this, he explains the three other cases that we have been shown during the story.

Not much of a basis for an extended series although there are two other stories to check out.

In different timelines:

the Polesotechnic League preserves mercantile freedom - for a while;

the Time Patrol preserves human history;

the League Patrol preserves Galactic peace.