Spiritual Development II

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane, just before she mentions duty: 

"'...[Cosmenosists] think reality is always growin' toward what is greater than itself...'" (pp. 129-130)

"...greater..." is mystically vague but she means intensifications or refinements of consciousness. So is reality always growing towards this? Well, no. What has happened so far?

There was an earliest moment with no earlier moments just as there are no points further north than the North Pole. At that earliest moment, condensed energy was released with natural forces that allowed for the emergence of a complex ordered universe rather than a random chaos. Were the forces "fine tuned"? Not by any intelligent being because intelligence had not emerged yet. 

Energized complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating, the first unicellular organism. Chemistry was not "growing toward" biology although presumably a random event would have happened some time. I understand that multicellular organisms are unlikely although they have evolved at least once. Consciousness was an accidental byproduct of natural selection. Organisms were selected for sensitivity. Pleasure and pain, if they were possible, would have survival value. Therefore, sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into sensation. 

Now that we are not only conscious but also self-conscious and intelligent, we can decide to work towards the goal of self-development but reality had not been growing towards such an outcome. There might be universes where some of the earlier random events like the fusion of two simple cells into a single complex cell allowing for the emergence of multicellular organisms did not happen.

Now that we are here, we can do something about it but we should not think that preconscious reality had had any inbuilt tendency to work towards us.

Spiritual Development

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

The previous post was cut short by a Sunday walk. What else did Tatiana say? That:

"'...first duty of those who stand highest is to help those lower -'" (p. 130)

That makes sense in her universe where intelligent species are as numerous as snowflakes but not in ours as yet. Ivar Frederiksen later makes the point that the evidence from all those known species indicates that natural selection develops intelligence only so far - and that does seem reasonable. However, spirituality is not just intelligence. It involves psychological and moral development, self-knowledge, insight and wisdom. Surely some species will be further developed spiritually and therefore able to help or guide others? In fact, from his theological perspective, Axor to ask why all those known species are "Fallen." Surely some at least should not have Fallen? Or was there just one cosmic Original Sin for everyone? That seems unlikely but the question only arises from a particular theological perspective. To me, it makes sense that instincts for self-preservation and species-propagation had survival value for conscious species but then became obstacles to spiritual development in intelligent species. Pleasure, pain and consciousness became not "sin" (Biblical terminology) but "greed, hate and delusion" (Buddhist terminology) and can be transmuted into their opposites: nonattachment, compassion and wisdom.

But Tatiana unreasonably expects the Builders to return and liberate everyone. We liberate ourselves. 

Rumours On The Wind

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane looks to what she calls the transcendental, not the supernatural, and claims that her Cosmenosis is a philosophy, not a religion. These are words. In fact, with no evidence, she expects the Builders to return and heeds the rumours of a forerunner even though such rumours are, as she acknowledges:

"'...forever driftin' in on desert wind...'" (p. 130)

Of course that wind plays its role!

I would advise Tatiana: continue to practice science and meditation and don't listen to rumours! Consider what you know scientifically about the Builders/Elders/Ancients/Forerunners and their artefacts and go no further than that unless and until you find new evidence as Axor tries to do. He hopes to confirm an explicitly religious belief but Flandry is right to fund his research. Who knows what will turn up? I know the answer to that question: something completely unexpected.

Today is Sunday. Attend church and/or worship/contemplate in the temple of earth and sky.

Wind In Gotham City

Sometimes late at night, I want to add once last post for the day but don't want to have to do any complicated reading first. I am really going out on a limb with this one but I can't help it. Poul Anderson's texts really have sensitized me to the wind as a sound effect, as punctuating or underlining the dialogue, as commenting on the action, as pathetic fallacy, sometimes almost as an additional dramatic character. But this means that I notice the wind in other authors' works probably even where it has no significance whatsoever. Thus, the plant elemental, the Swamp Thing, has greened Gotham City. The streets are full of trees with normal life at a standstill:

"I listen...to a city that has not known silence...since the coming of the automobile...

"The cars are dead now...and wind strums the high branches."

-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing: Earth To Earth (New York, 2002), p. 24, panel 5.

Yes. Wind strumming the high branches expresses and symbolizes the guardian of the environment triumphing over urban civilization!

(I would not have thought that without Poul Anderson.)

Alright. That's it. Normal service will be resumed tomoz or soon.

Places In Time

Places That Are Realized In Two Time Travel Works

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series

Everard's apartment

The Time Patrol Academy

The Pleistocene lodge

In Anderson's There Will Be Time

Senlac

The Havig group's main base

Manse Everard is often shown in his apartment. He is trained in the Academy in "Time Patrol" and attends an emergency meeting there in "Delenda Est." Wanda Tamberly is trained there in The Shield Of Time. Everard vacations at the lodge with Piet Van Sarawak in "Delenda Est" and with Wanda in The Shield...

Senlac, Jack Havig's home town, is realized in detail whereas his time travel base, although I have listed it here, is really only described telegrammically despite its being the main equivalent of the Academy in a different timeline. There Will Be Time is a thin and terse novel whereas the same narrative could have been presented and elaborated in a much longer volume.

Fictional Universes II

Fictional universes contain not only persons but also places that take on a life of their own. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Virgilian System includes the planets, Dido and Aeneas. The latter, lighter and dryer than Earth, kind of like a Mars with a breathable atmosphere, would have been more suitable for colonization by the nearby Ythrians. However, human scientists, wanting to study the tripartite inhabitants of the even less hospitable Dido, established a base, which became a University, on Aeneas. The Rebel Worlds, set mainly on Dido, has one chapter set on Aeneas. Its sequel, The Day Of Their Return, is, except for a single early flashback, set entirely on the surface of Aeneas. 

Hermes, important as the home planet both of David Falkayn and of Sandra Tamarin, remains off-stage until it becomes a major setting in Mirkheim and is again visited in A Stone In Heaven.

Avalon, is shown at four different stages of development in three short stories and one novel. Its notable locations include the Weathermother mountain range and the cities of Gray and Centauri, the latter containing Livewell Street named after a local flower.

Dennitza appears only in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where, however, it imparts a real sense of place to the Kazan, the Obala and Zorkagrad.

Returning again to another author in another medium and genre, Alan Moore fully exploits the connotations and implications of the familiar place name, "Gotham City," before bringing on stage its most notorious inhabitant.

Fictional Universes

Readers like to immerse themselves in fictional universes. I need hardly cite examples. An author who immerses himself in such a universe, whether his own or someone else's, can utilize it as a background to create new kinds of stories about new characters. Asked to contribute to a few juvenile anthologies, Poul Anderson took the opportunity to write short stories about the colonization of Avalon, with David Falkayn referred to only as the grandfather of the viewpoint character, Nat.

Anderson also familiarized himself enough with several other sf universes to be able to write stories set in those universes as summarized in the combox here. These included Asimov's Robots series. Anderson's story, "Plato's Cave," features the regular US Robots troubleshooters, Powell and Donovan, and also refers to Stephen Byerley who was running for Mayor somewhere in another story at that time - an excellent use of existing material.

These observations are occasioned by my appreciation of Alan Moore's transformations of multiple DC Comics characters, some universally known, others obscure, in his Swamp Thing series to which I will now return over a second mug of breakfast coffee. A normal Saturday in Lancaster stretches ahead.

New Instalments?

We will be able to read new instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History only if someone else writes them but this should be done either very well or not at all. I do not accept any later additions to Stieg Larsson's Millennium series - which have not been based on whatever unfinished manuscript was left by Larsson. I do not even accept Robert Heinlein's later additions to his own Future History!

We fully accept that some kinds of fictional characters are written by multiple authors, e.g.:

Sexton Blake, 4000 stories by 200 authors in 5 media;

comic strip and TV characters.

Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller have been able to re-create comic book characters and to write substantial graphic novels about previously inconsequential heroes and villains. A writer with such skills would be able to make new additions to a future history series that is already consequential but this is unlikely to happen.

Meanwhile, we appreciate how much a single author was able to put into the Technic History.

Important Or Unimportant?

Are Earth and humanity important or unimportant on a cosmic or even just a galactic scale? Obviously they can be either or in some intermediate position. Sf in general and Poul Anderson in particular show us both. Anderson has a collection, The Gods Laughed, about superior aliens. On glancing through this volume just now, I had no recollection of having read "When Half-Gods Go." (That phrase, "Half Gods," is hyphenated on the opening page of the story although not on the contents page of the book.)

Here is an intermediate position. Aycharaych, when it has not yet been disclosed that he himself is of the species known as "the Ancients," admires human variety:

"'Your versatility approaches miracle.'"

-The Day Of Their Return, 3, p. 90.

Some aliens in some sf say this but surely any intelligent species would have to be versatile? Intelligence is versatility. Aycharaych is dishonest and is saying whatever will evoke the response that he wants to get from Chunderban Desai who thanks him but adds:

"'I don't believe, myself, we are unique. It merely happened we were the first into space - in our immediate volume and point in history - and our dominant civilization of the time happened to be dynamically expansive. So we spread into many different environments, often isolated, and underwent cultural radiation...or fragmentation.'" (ibid.)

That would explain the "'...wonderful variety...'" (ibid.) that Aycharaych claims to have found while travelling through the Terran Empire.

What is the probable reality in our universe? Brian Cox has persuaded me that even multicellular organisms might be rare. We already know that consciousness, manipulation, intelligence, civilization, technology, space technology and lasting civilizations with all of these attributes might be rare. What does that leave us with? Our uniqueness? Or spacefaring civilizations so few and so far apart in space and time that they never even detect each others' existence let alone communicate or meet physically?

In either of those two scenarios, we are very important indeed. It is our responsibility to survive, to develop and to make contact if that is remotely possible. (Meanwhile, there remains a continued motivation to destroy what has already been built.)

In the universe of Anderson's Technic History:

"We are one more-or-less intelligent species in a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

Even in that scenario, every single species and every single sophont would have immense value and significance although less obviously so.

Places On Planets

We are now living in the projected future of Global Warming. There is a heat wave and trains have been cancelled. On the assumption that such cancellations will not still be in place a week hence, I will be in London Thursday to Sunday next week without a computer. Books ordered, including SM Stirling's second Roman time travel novel, are scheduled to arrive some time after that. I have eighteen years left to live according to a Romany palm reader - not that I believe that with absolute certainty (indeed, it could be disproved today) but nevertheless such people have more than once said things that turned out to be true.

When someone travels across a planetary surface, there are places that they visit and other places that they know of but do not visit. Poul Anderson's fictional planets are complex enough for this to be the case. High Commissioner Desai leaves Imperial House to visit the University of Virgil but unfortunately does not also visit the industrial Web - at least not while we are watching him, which is what matters here.

Ivar Frederiksen travels with tinerans, then Riverfolk, to the Orcans but does not visit the Highlanders although Tatiana Thane concocts a ruse to use the Highlanders as a decoy to mislead the authorities hunting for Ivar.

In The Game Of Empire, Diana Crowfeather and her companions, while on Daedalus, travel along the Highroad River from Aurea to the Cynthian village of Lulach but, because of a change of plan, do not also visit the Donarrian settlement of Ghundrung, instead flying directly to the island of Zacharia.

Like real places.