Wind And Wisdom At The Old Phoenix

Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), pp. 105-123.

As the narrator approaches the Old Phoenix:

"The signboard creaked faintly overhead in the wind." (p. 107)

Faintly, not loudly or threateningly: it is ambiguous as yet what kind of reception he will have in the inn. (By now, I notice any reference to the wind whether it is meaningful or not.)

Inside, an overheard conversation:

"'- battle tomorrow or the day after,' said he in the toga. 'At Philippi, I think. Harder will be what comes after, to restore the Republic." (p. 109)

- spoken in classical Latin. Highly relevant after our recent discussion in Ecce Romani. 

The barmaid to the narrator:

"'Three score and ten summers, the Book says. I should think yer couldn't afford ter waste time.'" (pp. 109-110)

Sound advice in any text. In our meditation group, we recite a text by Zen Master Dogen which says:

"If you want to find it quickly, you must start at once."

That was a quick breakfast post on a Saturday morning before proceeding into town for some usual weekend activities which might include a curry from a market stall.

Onward, Earthlings.

Three Free Houses

In England, a "free house" is a public house that is not tied to any one brewery and therefore is free to sell any brand of beer. Neil Gaiman extended this term to mean an inn that owes no allegiance to any one time or dominion. There are a few such in fiction, notably Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End and the same author's The Toad-Stone as well as Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix. However, we find that we have posted about these three before! Now is the time of evening to stop reading and to watch topical videos forwarded by former fellow student, Peter Bann. (But what a range of topics we cover.)

Bitterness, A Mood And Stars

What is the inner/psychological/spiritual state of a fantasy or sf character when he leaves this world and enters another? Much such fiction is in no way introspective so that questions about inner states rarely arise. However:

"One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out onto the hill."

-Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1972), p. 11.

After several pages of looking at the stars and questioning the validity of his marital life and domestic existence, this first person narrator embarks on a cosmic spiritual journey. 

Again:

"I was on the walk that most men take at least once in their lives, until sunrise, and no wish was in me for any society other than that of the stars."

-Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 105-123 AT p. 107.

This first person narrator sees the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, and thinks that accepting its hospitality should shake him out of his (unspecified) mood.

Disclosure of inner states adds depth. 

 

SpaceX

It is very unusual for the news of the day to be reported on this blog but anything can happen once. Elon Musk has just become the world's first trillionaire. That has to be a world historic economic event. 

Musk wants to take the "fiction" out of "science fiction" and to enable ordinary people to travel as far into space as they want to. How would Poul Anderson respond to this if he were alive now? We know that Anderson wanted mankind to get into space and that he expected entrepreneurs to give a lead. Regular blog readers know the names of relevant characters, Guthrie in particular. (And Harriman if we take Anderson's predecessor, Heinlein, into account.) So would Anderson be fully supportive of everything that Musk is doing today, on and off Earth? I honestly do not know but Anderson enthusiasts will obviously think about it.

British sf author, Bob Shaw, said once that a claw reaching from Earth and grasping the Moon might be an appropriate symbol... CS Lewis was against human beings going into space but that was Lewis. I think that we need a space program for practical and scientific - not military or strategic! - reasons.

I anticipate some discussion. 

Ecce Romani

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol reflects that the Romans brought not only slave traders, tax farmers and sadistic games but also peace, prosperity, a widened world and afterwards - in the post-Imperial wreckage - books, technologies, faiths, ideas and the memory of lives not devoted to mere survival. (Time Patrol, p. 604)

Reading about the Romans, I am struck by how like and unlike us they were:

civilized, urbane and literate;

participating in complicated political processes, including elections;

owning slaves and disrespecting even freedmen;

very close to physical violence - civil war seems to have been a routine political process!;

worshipping a literal, not a metaphorical, pantheon...

(We appreciate Jupiter in epic poetry but do not expect him to strike us with lightning.)

The Peak Of The Multiverse

Currently rereading Poul Anderson's "Losers' Night," I remain convinced that this single short story is the peak of Anderson's multiversal fiction. 

I have argued before that there should be a boxed set of uniform editions of:

Three Hearts And Three Lions

Operation Otherworld (in either one or two volumes)

A Midsummer Tempest

The Old Phoenix and other universes (a proposed title and collection)

Contents Of The Proposed Collection

"The House of Sorrows" (an alternative universe)

"Eutopia" (travel between alternative universes)

"House Rule" (the inn between the universes)

"Losers' Night" (again the inn but this time referring to characters from the previous three (or four) volumes - see Disappearance - and ending with Winston Churchill!

It is all there.

Some Connections

In Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy, the city of Ys is inundated.

In Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, Skafloc sees the sunken tower of Ys and he and Mananaan mac Lir, son of one of the Three of Ys, sail to Jotunheim.

In Poul Anderson's and Mildred Downey Broxon's The Demon Of Scattery, Mananaan recounts a story to Skafloc en route to Jotunheim.

The story is about a couple who become the paternal grandparents of Gunnhild, the title character of Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings.

Thus, these seven volumes are connected (as is much else, of course).

Disappearance

Three Hearts And Three Lions, NOTE (pp. 154-156). 

By the end of this NOTE and therefore also of the novel, Holger Carlsen has ransacked bookshops for:

"'Grimoires. Treatises on magic.'" (p. 156)

- and has disappeared. 

In A Midsummer Tempest, we learn that he has traveled between universes and is spending a night in the Old Phoenix. 

Poul Anderson's short story, "Losers' Night," confirms that Holger Danske has been in the Old Phoenix and also mentions other guests of that inter-universal inn:

Theseus (Greek myth)

Scheherazade (Arabian nights)

Falstaff (Shakespeare)

Huck Finn (Mark Twain)

Irene Adler (Sherlock Holmes)

Red Hanrahan (Yeats)

blind Rhysling (Heinlein)

"...an Abelard who remained a whole man..." (Anderson's "House Rule")

"...a Rupert of the Rhine who outfought Cromwell..." (Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest)

"Losers' Night" also lists several outstanding women including:

Gunnhild (Anderson's Mother Of Kings; Wikipedia article mentions Anderson twice)

Valeria Matuchek (Anderson's Operation Otherworld and conversation with Holger in the inn)

Not a small world but a big multiverse.

Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), pp. 105-123 AT p. 111.

The Wind At The End

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

Holger Danske (Wikipedia article mentions this novel)

(I can't find Carahue of Mauretania.)

See He Knew Himself for the silence when the wind stops.

Before that, when Holger gallops to the ruined church where he is to regain his legendary sword, Cortana:

"His iron clashed on him, leather creaked, the wind shouted." (p. 150)

"He heard the clamor of huge winds and saw murk before his eyes." (p. 151)

"He thought he heard the wind whistle through his ribs." (ibid.)

It is soon after that that the wind is gone but, shortly after that again, when the threatening Hell Horse departs:

"...the faintest of breezes awoke and scattered the fog." (p. 152)

That is the last of the wind references and they accompany Holger all the way to his understated defeat of:

"'...the host of Chaos...riding forth on mankind." (p. 153) 

Wind Above The Cliffs

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

"...the clouds were breaking up, weren't they? Too much wind for them. The wind went shrieking across a plain of whins and stiff grass, here and there a leafless tree, everything gray under hurried moonlight and unmercifully sharp stars. Holger couldn't see the smoke from the troll's bolthole; the wind scattered it too fast." (p. 147)

"Holger looked across the tumbled gray land. The wind struck him in the face." (p. 148)

"The wind was still loud, but Holger paid no heed." (p. 149)

When Carahue shouts that the huntsmen are coming:

"The noise flew torn in the wind..." (p. 150)

Loud wind breaks up clouds, shrieks, scatters smoke from the fire that killed the troll, strikes Holger's face and tears the noise of Carahue's warning shout and of the approaching horns. As we often observe, Andersonian winds do a lot of work! The wind-driven action builds to a crescendo.