"Luckily..."

 

"Kings Who Die."

How many short stories begin and end with the same sentence?

"Luckily, Diaz was facing the other way when the missile exploded." (p. 11)

"Luckily, Diaz was facing the other way when the missile exploded." (p. 40)

In the first sentence, Diaz has survived the destruction of the spaceship in which he had been a crew member. In the concluding sentence, he has sabotaged and escaped from the command ship of the enemy fleet, thus decisively winning the battle for his side, and has also gained crucial military intelligence. He has come a long way and has come full circle. Luck has stayed with him. She favours the brave.

And maybe the insight gained into the underlying sociopsychological cause of the war can help to resolve a conflict which otherwise will remain endless because it is fought only in space and never allowed to harm Earth or even the Lunar bases? 

The Theoretical Basis

"Kings Who Die."

L. F. Richardson is to this story what John K. Hord is to Poul Anderson's Technic History and Oswald Spengler is to James Blish's Cities In Flight.

Rostock claims that he has:

"'...carried Richardson's work a good deal further and more rigorously. I say to you now only that civilized societies must have a certain rate of immolations.'" (p. 32)

- hence this story's title: 

"'Today the machine age has developed its own sacrificial kings. We are the chosen of the race, the best it can offer. None gainsays us. We may have what we choose, pleasure, luxury, women, adulation - only not the simple pleasures of wife and child and hope, for we must die that the people may live.'" (p. 33)

Diaz will wind up defeating Rostock militarily instead of joining forces with him but surely this Richardsonian theory warrants further investigation?

Consciousness And Computation

"Kings Who Die."

Rostock is one of those sf characters who have linked their brain to a computer, thus combining conscious intuition with rapid computation. Since this story was published in 1963, what Rostock says about computers must have become dated:

"'In spite of much loose talk about giant brains, computers do not think, except perhaps on an idiot level. They simply perform logical operations, symbol-shuffling, according to instructions given them...

"'...the larger a computer becomes, the more staff it requires..." (p. 28)

Right now, not individual computers but data centres, networks of computing and storage resources, are becoming dangerously big. 

Rostock compares his situation to that of mortals who became gods in the Greek myths:

"'I think they hardly noticed the palaces and music and feasting on Olympus.'" (p. 30)

What a conception of the gods! When, and only when, human labour had produced palaces for a tiny social minority, it was then imagined that supernatural beings dwelt in even greater palaces. But Rostock imagines that what mattered to a new god was how he:

"'...mastered his new capacities... won a god's understanding...'" (ibid.)

Like the change from animal to human?

I can't find this online but I think that the manuscript of one of John Keats' unfinished epics, either Hyperion or The Fall of Hyperion, had ended:

"Immortal glory dawned. He was a god."

War In Different Periods Of Different Timelines

"...whether the cause be good, bad, or indifferent, the human flesh caught in the middle is just as dead and maimed, the wealth is just as wasted."

-Poul Anderson, Foreword IN Seven Conquests (New York, 1970), pp. 9-10 AT p. 10.

This is a persistent Andersonian point and we recall two echoing events -

Diaz remembers men:

"...who stared without immediate comprehension at a red spurt which a second ago had been an arm or a leg..."

-"Kings Who Die," pp. 35-36.

Manse Everard sees a "...burly Italian peasant...":

"...staring without belief at the stump of an arm..."

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 8, p. 223.

And they are not alone. Diaz also remembers:

breath and blood from bursting helmets;

the shuddering, vomiting and defecation of radiation sickness;

gassing the insane because insanity catches in space.

The Italian peasant sits beside a Carthaginian slinger feebly pulling at a javelin in his stomach.

"War is hell."

Awareness Of An Environment

"Kings Who Die."

Poul Anderson frequently appeals to at least three of the senses in descriptive passages so what does he do here?

"[Diaz's] mind was sharply aware of its environment -" (p. 20)

- and that environment is:

"...muscle play beneath his skin,..." (bodily sensation);

"...pastel bulkheads and cold fluorescence,..." (light and colour);

"...faint machine-quiver underfoot,..." (something partly felt and partly heard?);

"...gusts from ventilator grilles,..." (felt on the skin);

"...odors of foreign cooking..." (smell);

"...and always the men, with alien faces and carefully expressionless voices..." (sight and sound).

Careful rereading shows that only taste is lacking.

Angels And Devils?

"Kings Who Die."

That fanciful back cover blurb reads:

Angels Above, Devils Below...

Since the first human stood upright the stars have been a source of wonderment and inspiration. All our heavens have been placed in...the heavens, our hells in the depths of the earth. Angels above, devils below. Mankind between. 

But perhaps heaven isn't so heavenly. Perhaps those who live there are as self-interested and violence-prone as any earthbound mortal. And even if they're not, we will be there soon.

Cause enough for

CONFLICT

A Tom Doherty Associates Book

Who wrote this? By defining a theme and explaining the title, it serves the purpose of Poul Anderson's own Introductions to several of his other collections. 

The casual assumption that any earthbound mortal is violence-prone is a tired cliche. An extraterrestrial who was given the impression that my excursions into town are punctuated by routine acts of violence against other pedestrians and of rage against the drivers of motor vehicles or that I would return home to find that my property had been vandalized by my neighbours would have been seriously misinformed.

Most of the stories collected here are about intra-species conflicts.

I had set out to post about a passage in "Kings Who Die" but was distracted when I found this image of the back cover of my edition of Conflicts. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Emotional Control

"Kings Who Die."

"Emotional control, drilled into [Diaz] at the Academy and practiced at every refresher course, took over. It was essentially psychosomatic, a matter of using conditioned reflexes to bring muscles and nerves and glands back toward normal. If the fear symptoms, tension, tachycardia, sweat, decreased salivation, and the rest, were alleviated, then fear itself was." (p. 19)

But we all need that, not just Astromilitary Corpsmen with the benefit of a "satorist" trainer! 

Zazen practice is "Neither trying to think nor trying not to think, just sitting with no deliberate thought..." Thus, it is not a psychosomatic technique for controlling muscles, nerves, glands or emotions. Dogen wrote:

"The means of training are thousandfold but pure meditation must be done."

-Rules for Meditation. 

Zazen is "pure meditation" whereas Diaz's emotional control would be one of the thousandfold means of training. I sometimes wonder whether one of those means might be helpful although not as an alternative to zazen.

I also find just about everything to discuss in works by Poul Anderson.

Treated Like Kings

"Kings Who Die."

The previous post focused on a future transport system and this theme continues in Poul Anderson's text:

"'We can catch the transpolar shuttle to Paris if we hurry.'" (p. 17)

However, the main thrust of this passage is a set of social relationships. 

First, there are unpublicized parleys between the US Astromilitary Corps and their enemies. For example, when Bailey visits Asia to return a borrowed craterbug and to give them some alga-blight antibiotic:

"'They poured me full of excellent vodka.'" (p. 15)

Secondly, and even more importantly, is the way that the Corps is regarded at home:

"'The Corps can do no wrong.'" (ibid.)

When Bailey switches off an "Ugga-wugga-wugga, hugga-hugga me, do!" (p. 16) juke box to satisfy his companion, a large tourist gets heavy until Bailey shows his ID bracelet and introduces himself:

"'First Lieutenant Carl H. Bailey, United States Astromilitary Corps, at your service,' he said..." (p. 17)

Silence spreads. The tourist apologizes and buys drinks. Others buy. The spacemen are given privacy but receive smiles and waves. The proprietor, who had welcomed Diaz and had backed him against the tourist, has phoned his family and friends who arrive with castanets, guitar and more bottles. The fiesta continues until dawn.

Corps prestige has developed exponentially... They are the kings who die.

This has been a flashback. We return to Diaz in space and to something else across the Milky Way:

"Another jet splashed fire across the Milky Way." (ibid.)

Giro

 

"Kings Who Die." 

After mentioning aircars, we find a different means of transport:

two spacemen, Diaz and Bailey, catch a giro outside their hotel;

Diaz punches the name of a cantina;

the autopilot searches its directory and swings the cab onto a skyrail;

the great view through the bubble comprises blazing city, glowing ocean and full moon with a glittering Unasian (United Asian) (enemy) base;

the giro descends to the street and rolls three blocks to the cantina whose interior is then described vividly.

A one-off story but a densely realized Andersonian future.

Aircars

See:

What Elon Musk Said 

SpaceX

In many of Poul Anderson's fictional futures, it is simply taken for granted that cars fly instead of moving along roads. Indeed, the occasional ground vehicle can come as a surprise. 

Three quarters of an an hour ago, I stopped blogging to watch the TV news where I found Elon Musk demonstrating a flying car although it looked like a momentary stunt and was not yet safe enough to carry anyone inside it. Still, if the news is relevant, it can be relayed here.

It is the commitment of this blog to promote Poul Anderson, not Elon Musk, but the latter has generated some relevant publicity recently. And it is time for me to return to reading Alan Moore. Good night. (At least it is night here.)