Brains And Spaceships

Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends" seems to be inexhaustible.

When Jorun has explained to Julith that artificially mutated brains enable Galactics like him to control cosmic forces and thus to "'...fly between stars...'" (p. 26) by an act of will alone, he has to add:

"'But your people don't have that brain, so we had to build spaceships to take you away.'" (ibid.)

A technology that enables people who do not usually use spaceships to build a fleet of faster than light ships for a single evacuation job across thousands of light years! Although we read this sentence casually, its implications are anything but casual. What else is achieved by the great multi-species civilization at the Galactic Centre? We always feel that we are reading only a very small part of a much vaster story that can never be completed.

Twentieth Century Space Travel

Andrea thinks that NASA could have paid for itself by selling and profiting from its discoveries and technological off-shoots, also that Projection Orion would have been able to send a large craft to Alpha Centauri in 99 years. Maybe sf ideas of the later twentieth century and early twenty-first century could have come about after all?

Back home from Andrea's place overlooking Morecambe Bay, I need to clear my head from a bus journey (no longer driving a car), meditate and read or blog or maybe just read. 

Back here later today or tomoz, maybe.

Loa And Other Planets

Loa is the name of a moon of the planet Nyanza in Poul Anderson's Technic History and the name of a planet in his "The Chapter Ends." See blog search result for Loa. (Scroll down.) The planet Loa is "...jeweled with islands..." (p. 256) These posts also mention other planets. 

In "The Chapter Ends," the Galactics evacuate Terrans to an unnamed planet which is:

"'...the most Earthlike world we could find that wasn't already inhabited.'" (p. 261)

However, its trees, grasses, soil, fruits, animals, birds, fish and every sensation are subtly different because no two planetary evolutions can be identical.

Here, we are:

writing this post over breakfast;

about to drink a second coffee after beans on toast;

reading Colin Dexter's fourth Inspector Morse novel;

preparing to visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop for most of the afternoon;

appreciating existence.

Onward and upward.

Merseian Language And Psychology

In Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry, A Circus Of Hells and The Game Of Empire, there are scenes where Merseians converse among themselves. I think that, on screen, CGI-generated Merseians speaking to each other in English would not be credible. The dialogue would have to be in Eriau with subtitles. Unlike Tolkien, Anderson did not create any nonhuman languages so that someone else would have to invent some Eriau, Planha etc. And, of course, Merseian, Ythrian etc voices must not sound human.

The Gethfennu is Merseian organized crime, therefore comparable to the Mafia. However, having just read:

Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia (London, 1997) -

- I can confidently assert that the psychology of individual Merseian criminals would not be remotely like that of the Italian-Americans described by Pistone! (That guy is still alive. What an achievement!)

Free Flight

William Atheling, Jr./James Blish, "Things Still To Come: Gadgetry and Prediction" IN Atheling/Blish, More Issues At Hand (Chicago, 1970), pp. 41-50.

Atheling/Blish asks why no one is imagining "free flight" (p. 46) any more.

"...[Jorun] held out his arm, and [Julith] clasped it with one hand while her other arm gripped his waist. The generator inside his skull responded to his will, reaching out and clawing itself to the fabric of forces and energies which was physical space. They rose quietly, and went so slowly seaward that he didn't have to raise a windscreen."

-"The Chapter Ends," pp. 259-260.

Free flight. 

However, "The Chapter Ends" was published in 1953 whereas "Things Still To Come..." was originally published in 1964 so maybe Atheling/Blish was right that no one, except comic strip and film script writers, was still imagining free flight when he wrote the latter.

Free flight is one of our "impossibles" - for the time being.

A Rich Story

What a rich story is Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends."

We have posted about:

Solis Township (and here)

Sol City

Earth Seen From Space

Super Powers

a house interior

a metaphorical mountain (and here)

the galactic periphery

the statue on the fountain in the market square

the beach

uninhabited regions

a sunset

(In Market Square, Lancaster, we no longer have a fountain but a plinth on which people perform or demonstrate and from which they speak or preach.)

After appreciating many details in this single story, we can:

discuss whether the story really belongs in Anderson's Psychotechnic History;

in any case, discuss that entire series as well as its relationships to other future history series written by Anderson and by other sf authors;

imagine inhabitants of these alternative histories visiting Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

Anderson informs us that both Heinlein's Rhysling and his own van Rijn have been in the Old Phoenix.

Adzel and Axor, two Wodenites from different periods of Anderson's Technic History, have converted to alternative Terrestrial religious traditions and therefore might meet to discuss their differences.

This post has rambled but it is all one multiverse.

On Another Beach

"They landed on the beach."

-"The Chapter Ends," p. 260.

See: On The Beach

This broad beach comprises white dunes separating salty grass from roaring, tumbling surf. Damp air blows. Sand grits as Jorun sits. Sun sets at sea, a huge gold disc. Wet wind rumples hair. Jorun feels the intricacy of a conch and hears "the sea" in it. Rolling waves boom and spout.

"The Terrans called [the waves] the horses of God. A thin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold." (p. 261)

For more horses in the sea, see also:

Elves And The Sea

The End

Depopulated Earth

See:

Oceans Rush...

The Quiet Earth

Forests Green And Fair

In "The Chapter Ends," Jorun flies over uninhabited expanses on Earth:

wind-rippled plains like oceans of grass;

herds of wild cattle darkening the plains;

hoof beats like thunder in the earth;

hundreds of kilometers of old, mighty trees;

gleaming rivers piercing the forests;

fish leaping in lakes;

sunshine spilling like warm rain;

eye-hurting radiance;

swift cloud shadows;

all empty of man;

frightening vitality;

life covering earth, filling oceans and making heavens clangorous.

Jorun's grim planet has moors, crags and spindrift seas.

Three Market Squares On Two Planets

We have discussed the market squares (scroll down) in Lancaster and in Olga's Landing on Imhotep. Today Lancastrians had a procession with two lions and a dragon around the town centre, then music and food in Market Square.

There is also a market-square in Solis Township on Earth in the far future of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." The statue of the dancing girl on the fountain in the centre of this square is one of the memorable images in Poul Anderson's works, I think because mankind is about to evacuate Earth so that the statue will be left to crumble without ever again being seen.

Searching this blog for "dancing girl" (scroll down) brings up two references to this fountain and two others to a living dancing girl in Tyre.

First And Last

We can think of perhaps eight sf authors who have each written one or at most two future histories and we can then compare their works with no less than eight future histories written by one author, Poul Anderson. Further, Anderson's first future history, the Psychotechnic History, and his eighth, Genesis, are so dissimilar as to seem to belong to different fictional categories.

In the Psychotechnic series, many planets bear life and many intelligent species cross space faster than light whereas, in the single text of Genesis, life is rare and post-organic intelligences emanating only from Earth cross space slower than light. Interstellar travel is the only common idea and these two conceptions of it are diametrically opposed.

Also, the fictional history of the Psychotechnic series has been superseded by the ongoing course of events whereas Genesis looks like standing indefinitely - except that so many exoplanets have now been detected that maybe unicellular life at least is quite common? But how much of it has made the difficult transition to multicellular life? Hopefully, much more will be learned in our lifetimes. New future histories begun now might be superseded quickly.