Two Alien Perspectives On Humanity

"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies....Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness."

-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 520.

"Above all, O people of Arvel, never pity the beings on Earth. If you do, then sorrow will drown you. They know so little of love. They cannot ever know more."

-Poul Anderson, "The Ways of Love" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, November 1981), pp. 117-147 AT p. 147.

Each of these quoted passages completes its text. The Didonian says, "...pity...," whereas the Arvelian says, "...never pity..."! We can never know oneness, at least not the Didonian kind. We know little of love according to the Arvelians because they are naturally monogamous. We are not. 

But we are homo sapiens, not either of these extra-solar intelligent species imagined by Anderson.

Fictional Letters

I have identified one literary form that is marginal, if not non-existent, in Poul Anderson's works: the fictional letter.

The framing passages of "The Problem of Pain" are part of a private correspondence. Might a first person short story like "The Bitter Bread" be read as a letter from its narrator? The third Maurai story, "Windmill," is, if not a letter, then a report to an admiralty.

Closely related to private correspondences are private journals. (Indeed, some journal writers might begin: "Dear Diary...") Anderson's "Wings of Victory" and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy" are extracts from private journals.

BOOK THREE of James Blish's They Shall Have Stars is introduced by a letter from one character to another, dated 4th January 2020 - in the future.

Dracula is related through letters, diary entries and newspaper reports.

Fitzwilliam Darcy writes an explanatory letter to Elizabeth Bennet.

One master of the fictional correspondence is CS Lewis:

The Screwtape Letters

Letters To Malcolm:Chiefly On Prayer

Out Of The Silent Planet: Post-Script

Screwtape writes to Wormwood.

Lewis writes to Malcolm.

Ransom writes to Lewis.

I plan to reread Malcolm in order to compare Lewis' account of prayer with my practice of meditation and his philosophical idealism with my materialism.

Future Historical Parallels

Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History and Olaf Stapledon's Last Men History both establish exotic settings for later volumes. See Sequels By Stapledon And Anderson.

Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History and Starfarers present slower than light space drives. See Two Space Drives.

Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History and Genesis present different evolutions of artificial intelligence. See Quantum Consciousness.

The Harvest Of Stars History and World Without Stars present different orbiting habitats. See City And Zamok Sabely'.

Cities on extra-solar colony planets in Anderson's Technic History are compared with a small town on an extra-solar colony planet in a Harvest Of Stars novel in Port Kestrel.

Also:

Martian invasion of earth in a novel by Wells, a novel by Anderson and a fictional historical text by Stapledon.

Human devolution into Morlocks and Eloi in The Time Machine contrasts with evolution into Danellians in Time Patrol.

Two Space Drives

The main practical advantage of a field-drive is:

"...no more need for jets and their horrible wastefulness..."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 3, p. 37.

See also the post on The Tahirian Field-Drive.

However, the field-drive is not to be confused with The Quantum Gate Field Drive, nicknamed the "zero-zero drive." See also here.

Although a c-ship is a small field-drive ship able to approach light-speed, it has to approach c by acceleration, unlike a "zero-zero" ship which jumps straight to light-speed, then back down to the normal state, without needing to accelerate, then decelerate.

When download Guthrie travels from Beta Hydri to Alpha Centauri in a c-ship, a laser beam transmitted  shortly before his departure arrives three Earth-years before him whereas he makes the crossing from Alpha Centauri to Sol in a larger, therefore slower, field-drive cruiser, taking thirty five years to traverse four light-years.

Thinking about all this, it is very easy to get times and distances wrong.  

Death And A Download

I find it difficult first to remember, then to summarize, some of the complicated information that is presented in a highly condensed form in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, then find that I have done this already in any case, e.g.:

End And Beginning

Assimilating Memories

Download Guthrie answers a question that I asked recently in Interstellar Crossings. When a mind is downloaded before an interstellar crossing, the body is asleep and does not wake up. But that is the suicide option. Some people believe that suicide is a grave sin and some of us at least find it distasteful. But there are other options: either remain alive and awake and accept the approach of a sudden death in the planetary collision or pass into cold sleep shortly before the collision. In the latter case, you will, of course, die - that is inevitable - but you will not have taken your own life. To some of us, that makes a difference.

They Knew That He Was Coming

The Fleet Of Stars.

When download Guthrie arrives in the Alpha Centaurian system thirty years after leaving Beta Hydri:

"They were expecting him. The laser beam bearing the word had left Amaterasu shortly before he did, and would have arrived about three Earth-years ago. He wasn't much off his ETA, either; and till just lately, his speed had raised a shout in the interplanetary medium. The ship wasn't big, and her mass tanks were nearly empty, but probably optics were registering her, and maybe, by now, gravitics." (p. 26)

The laser beam should have been detected three years previously and, even if it was not, he should have become visible and possibly also gravitationally detectable by now. And, indeed, he is immediately greeted.

When Guthrie remarks that:

"'Dialogue's kind of slow and awkward across light-years.'" (3, p. 32)

- Jendaire responds:

"'Truly the waiting for you grew long... Also to me, who am not young.'" (ibid.)

So the Centaurian Lunarians did receive that laser message. But the waiting was for three years, not for thirty. They could not possibly have known that he was en route before they had received the message.

Similarly when, after another thirty-five years, he arrives at Sol:

"By agreement, the Centaurians had beamed an encrypted update to overtake Dagny a little earlier than now." (17, p. 211)

Again, he is greeted on arrival and asked who he is. He replies:

"'Come off it, amigo. You know damn well who I am. I'd guess your honchos have been expecting me since before you were born.'" (p. 212)

Two observations:

(i) The update seems to have been aimed at Guthrie himself. First, it is "encrypted." Secondly, we are told that its news is, of necessity, "...four and a third years old..." (p. 211)

(ii) Even if the arrival of the update had alerted the Proserpinans to Guthrie's approach, it could have given them only very short notice of his arrival so why does he claimed that he must have been expected for decades? 

The Proserpinans know that Guthrie led the exodus and that, if anyone were to come back some time, then it would probably be him. But that's it.

The Extra-Solar Colonies In The HARVEST OF STARS Tetralogy

See:

Alpha Centauri (Wikipedia article)

The Centaurian System

The History Of Alpha Centauri

Interstellar Exploration

Phaethon

Phaethon And Demeter

Zamok Sabyel'

A Future Large Moon

Arrival At Alpha Centauri

The Fleet Of Stars II

Morning Star On Demeter

Some Details In The Centaurian System

Extra-Solar Colonies

The Farthest Star

The Tetralogy

This is an attempt to pull together the information about extra-solar colonies in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy. A planet referred to as "Kwan-Yin" in Volume I, Harvest Of Stars, is referred to as "Hestia" in Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars.

(I completely forget having posted much of this information so a lot of it is just as much a revelation to me as to anyone else.)

Guthrie's Journey

The Fleet Of Stars.

We want to stay with Guthrie - or at least I do - but the book won't let us. After his conversation with Jendaire in Chapter 3, the download does not come back on-stage, as far as I can ascertain by scanning ahead, until his arrival in the Solar System at the beginning of Chapter 17:

"GUTHRIE WOKE." (p. 210)

The intervening chapters are concerned with characters and events in the Solar System which I cannot help but regard as mundane by comparison! But they deserve our respect, nonetheless. But not tonight. I am reading the book in which I know that Inspector Morse will die before the end. And maybe it is a welcome escape back to twentieth century Britain. But that is in our past now and already seems dated. We are always at the mid-point between historical fiction and futuristic science fiction.

Guthrie remarks that the Proserpinans who greet him must have been expecting him since before they were born. Individual lives are short by comparison with interstellar journeys. Guthrie's journey so far has been thirty years from Amaterasu to Alpha Centauri and another thirty from there to the outer Solar System. He is going to deal with people who are younger than that.

A Short Silence

The Fleet Of Stars, 3.

When Guthrie and Jendaire have conversed for a while and he has stated what he wants from her:

"She stood quiet for a while. He could guess how she was calculating. A thrush trilled, a butterfly zigzagged on gorgeous wings, a breeze bore scent of jasmine, the stars passed frostily by." (pp. 40-41)

These pauses can become crowded: thrush, butterfly, breeze, jasmine, stars. The conversation continues but we were grateful for that pause. 

One of the things that Jendaire has told Guthrie is that, although the Proserpinans make some attempt to spy on the inner Solar System, they are more interested in using their field-drive ships to expand through the Oort Cloud whose fringes mingle with the cometary clouds of others stars. A slow, steady route to the stars suitable for a species at home in low gravity and in enclosed but spacious environments.

Field-Drive

If the characters in a particular future history series never find a means of faster-than-light travel, is that just because they do not find the means or because no such means are to be found in their timeline? Because a premise of the series is that the physics of that fictional universe are Einsteinian? Maybe this does not make any practical difference. However, a discovery of FTL right at the end of Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy would have been a deus ex machina just as much as if it had happened at the end of a contemporary novel.

Although limited to relativistic speeds, the interstellar colonists in The Fleet Of Stars invent a field-drive. (For a field-drive in another Poul Anderson work, see here.) The Centaurian Lunarians share the field-drive specs with the Proserpinans who in turn observe evidence that the cybercosm also has such a drive. Centaurians have detected cybercosm spy robots, destroyed three and captured one.

Guthrie calls a small field-drive ship with minimal payload that can come near light speed because of its small mass a c-ship and claims that he took the name from a boyhood hero of his. Which hero? I am at a loss.