"Inside Straight"

Poul Anderson, "Inside Straight" IN Anderson, Seven Conquests (New York, 1970), pp. 95-118.

The planet, New Hermes:

two small continents;

many islands;

pleasant sunny weather;

a relaxed sybaritic population;

sprawling cities;

tinted domes;

green parks;

breeze in chiming bell-trees;

summerflits;

energy and haste at the docks;

archaic live service at a restaurant;

descent from Earth, Old Hermes and Caledonia.

The planet, Dromm:

gaunt glacial peaks;

windscoured deserts;

storm and darkness from the poles;

iron cities;

gray-clad masses;

a powerful Great Cadre;

ruling two planetary systems;

eventual galactic rule?

I think that this is a story that I cannot get into much but in any case I am finished for tonight.

Alan Moore, then Morpheus.

Collections And Introductions

About any Poul Anderson collection, we should ask:

Does it have a stated theme?

Is there an author's introduction to the volume and also to the individual stories?

The Armies Of Elfland is redundant as a collection but includes informative introductions. See:

"The Queen of Air and Darkness" And MIDSUMMER CENTURY

Notes On "House Rule"

Influences

Introducing The Old Phoenix

All the introductions need to be preserved in an Appendix to a Complete Works.

I used to regard Poul Anderson as the author of:

many series

many individual novels

many short stories, mainly to be found in collections

- but never regarded the collections themselves as literary units to be taken seriously until now.

Rereading "The Pirate" in Homeward And Beyond, then "Cold Victory" in Seven Conquests, has led us back into the temporal unity of Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

"The Queen of Air and Darkness" and MIDSUMMER CENTURY

"The Queen of Air and Darkness" by Poul Anderson and Midsummer Century by James Blish have much in common.

(i) Each was written for a special issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction published to honour the author in question.

(ii) Each is perhaps a "novella" in length.

(iii) Anderson wrote of "The Queen..." that, although it is hard sf:

"...the story embodies immemorial fantasy motifs and seeks to create an atmosphere of faery lands forlorn."

-Poul Anderson, The Armies Of Elfland (New York, May 1992), p. 1.

(iv) Blish said of ...Century that he deliberately wrote it in an old style of sf where the viewpoint character must start in the author's and readers' here and now before being whisked off to another time or place.

(v) Anderson connected "The Queen..." to his Rustum History.

(vi) Blish incorporated ...Century into his Haertel Scholium by making it a companion volume to The Quincunx Of Time, the expanded version of "Beep," which he was writing at the same time. (If the publisher had complained of the brevity of Quincunx..., then Blish would have offered ...Century to be published in the same volume.)

(vii) The two FSF covers are designed on the same model.

Not A Navy And Other Matters

"Cold Victory."

Robert Crane continues to reflect while travelling through space:

"Crane had never liked the revolutionary government of Earth, but while the Union remained and the only navy was the Guard and its only task to help any and all men, he had been reasonably content. Please God, that day would come again." (p 82)

It comes again for a while. According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Future at the end of The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3, "Cold Victory" occurs in 2180 and the Second Dark Ages, which of course involve the end of the Solar Union, begin in 2300. Then over five centuries elapse before the beginning of the Nomad culture in "Gypsy" in 2815. The Stellar Union and its Coordination Service are founded shortly after that but between installments in 2900. These dates do not appear within any of the stories so that even regular readers must consult the Chronology to get some feel for periods of time elapsed.

A navy whose only task is to help anyone and everyone has ceased to be a navy! Indeed:

"By the opening of the twenty-second century, the Psychotechnic Institute's power and prestige reached their zenith. The bright future it had planned for humanity seemed inevitable. High technology was triumphant. The blessings of the Second Industrial Revolution were available to all. No one went hungry or homeless anymore. Work had become a privilege instead of an obligation. From sophisticated Earthlings to roughneck colonial, mankind shared a common, semantically rigorous language called Basic. The space navy of the newly formed Solar Union stood guard from Venus to the Belt. The New Enlightenment bathed Sol's children in the cool radiance of reason.

"But there were shadows..."

-Sandra Miesel, Forward IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 3-5 AT p. 5.

(We think that "Forward" should be "Foreword.")

And the main shadow was that, as Freylinghausen put it:

"'Psychotechnic government had failed to solve the problems of Earth's adjustment to living on a high technological level.'" (pp. 75-76)

It was not enough that no one was hungry or homeless or that work was no longer an obligation.

Freylinghausen continues:

"'Conditions worsened until all too many people were ready to try desperate measures.'" (p. 76)

Humanism, a desperate measure, offered:

"'...a return to a less intellectualized existence...'" (ibid.)

- so its leader, Carnarvon, became planetary dictator.

Had there not been democratic institutions and government before the Humanist revolution? Yes, rival political parties and alliances are discussed in "The Sensitive Man," but there come times when such parties no longer satisfy their electorates. Like now?

Earth had too many people and too few resources to cut back on technology so the Humanists failed to keep their promises, instead causing famine, disruption and breakdown, making them unpopular and increasingly arbitrary, which caused Mars and Venus to intervene. The Solar Guard spilt into two rival navies...

We got there in the end.

See also Interplanetary War In The Psychotechnic History.

Cosmic Responsibility

I want to quote Poul Anderson's "Outpost of Empire" on intelligent organisms being produced as casually as snowflakes and the same author's Genesis on life of any kind being so rare as to seem miraculous but, of course, I have already done so. See Snowflakes And Miracles.

This issue will recur as more is learned about the universe in general and about exoplanets in particular. Whatever provisional conclusions have been reached could be overturned tomorrow.

A quotation from Brian Cox came across my computer screen yesterday. He thought that unicellular life should be common in the universe and maybe even elsewhere in the Solar System. However, a vast amount of time has to elapse between single living cells and then - consciousness, intelligence, civilization and technology. None of this is predestined to happen. If plants but not animals survive best in a particular environment, then that is all that will evolve there.

If we are alone in the observable universe, that part of reality that is observable by us, then we alone are responsible for preserving meaning and understanding in that part of the universe, a big responsibility. If we wipe ourselves out soon, then it would be good to have learned at least that we were not alone. So, while fearing that intelligence is rare, we hope that it is not. 

The Oneness Of Time In One Future History Series

"Cold Victory."

Robert Crane reminisces:

"...I went alone down the steep bluffs above the Mississippi. There I found the old man denned up under the trees, a tramp, one of many millions for whom there was no place in this new world of shining machines - but he was not embittered, he drew his citizen's allowance and tramped the planet and he had stories to tell..." (p. 82)

That would be me if we were to live into such a future. The shining machines might remind us of old sf mag covers. An allowance is the least that we could expect although we might campaign for more. Denning under trees would be a way to eke out the allowance.

The tramp takes us back to an earlier Psychotechnic History installment, "Quixote and the Windmill," which is about technological unemployment. Even the first humanoid robot is unemployed. He too walks across the Earth but he will live for centuries and cannot get drunk.

The fact that one installment reminds us of more than one earlier instalment reminds us of:

"...the great Pact, which is the heart of civilization, of society, and ultimately of life itself: the unspoken Pact between the living, the dead, and the unborn, that to the best of our poor mortal abilities they shall be kept one in the oneness of time."

-"The Pirate," p. 126.

One In Time In The Psychotechnic History

Eino Valti (who remains off-stage)

Jacques Reinach ("Marius")

Etienne Fourre

Stefan Rostomily

the Un-Men

the Sensitive Man

the first robot in the world

the Planetary Engineers

clans on Venus

the Solar Guard

the Crane brothers

the tramp

Trevelyan Micah

Braganza Diane

the Stellar Union Coordination Service

the Nomads

the native Nerthusians

the Hulduvians

the people evacuated from Earth

the Galactics

(not a complete list)

Sanity Prevails Or At Least Tries To

"Cold Victory."

Garcia and Wolf would both mutiny rather than bombard Earth and deserters leave K'ung's fleet. But the Humanists have built a hard cadre over a decade - although not living up to their name. When people say, of a particular atrocity, that it is against Islam or against Christianity etc, I reply that it is against our common humanity which is what should unite us. 

Crane reflects that Union personnel are not saints, indeed most had signed on for booty. Booty!

"...the System knew how much treasure was locked in the vaults of Earth's dictators." (p. 81)

But treasure in a physical form that can be looted by a fleet of men who arrive from space, then break military discipline to take and carry away whatever they can find? (Some of this does happen now.)

Although it is not saintliness that makes men like Garcia and Wolf reject the idea of bombardment:

"...the horror of nuclear war had been too deeply graven for anyone but a fanatic at the point of desperation to think of using it." (ibid.)

This horror is a legacy from the opening installments of the Psychotechnic History, "Marius" and "Un-Man," where Etienne Fourre was a fanatic against any further international wars. The Psychotechnic Institute has gone under but not the ideal of the United Nations/Solar Union. This future history series has a direction despite its many twists and turns. The Institute overthrown between installments and the Humanists overthrown in the next installment is two turns for the price of one.

Robert Crane's Solution

(I don't know what "Silent Victory" is but let's be having it.)

"Cold Victory."

"If the superdreadnaught Monitor could be destroyed, and K'ung with it, Earth might not be bombarded. Then if the Unionists won, Ben would go free, or he would die cleanly in battle - reason enough to ride this thing into the Humanist fleet!" (p. 81)

The fate of Ben is not the main point!

I certainly agree with killing K'ung. See Killing No Murder. (A pity about all the other guys in the Monitor, as Crane reflects later.)

Years ago, a guy in Britain wrote a book taking the title, Killing No Murder. He argued that assassinating political leaders is preferable to war as a way to conduct international conflicts. Interviewed on TV, he was asked whether there was any then current politician whom he thought it would be good to assassinate. He replied that he could not answer that question because he had been carefully warned that he could lay himself open to a charge of incitement to murder.

Correction: We do know what "Silent Victory" is. See here.

Issues In War

"Cold Victory."

Extraordinary but true: rereading a single early short story by Poul Anderson brings up descriptive passages, literary cross-references, moral and political issues, the works.

"...Dushanovitch-Alvarez, half idealist and half buccaneer, was assembling the Unionist fleet..." (p. 80)

Really? Does buccaneering work in space? (Gunnar Heim makes space privateering work in Anderson's The Star Fox.)

The Moral Problem

Lieutenant Robert Crane, fighting on the Unionist side, learns that his brother, Benjamin, is a spaceship captain on the Humanist side.

Dushnovitch-Alvarez announces that Admiral K'ung's threatened nuclear bombardment of Earth:

"...would be regarded as genocide and all officers partaking in it would be punished under Union law." (p. 81)

- assuming that the Solar Union survives this war, of course.

Robert Crane, who obviously has a personal issue here, protests that:

"...this was not a normal police operation, it was war, and executing men who merely obeyed the government they had pledged to uphold was opening the gates to a darker barbarism than the fighting itself." (ibid.)

Really? Darker than nuclear bombardment of a population? Unless the rebels surrender, K'ung will:

"...start bombing with nuclear weapons. That, of course, would kill perhaps a hundred million civilians, flatten the factories, poison the sea ranches...he'd turn the planet into a butcher shop." (p. 77)

War crime. Genocide. K'ung's men should arrest him as soon as he issues this threat. What is K'ung thinking of? What good will a murdered planet be to either side? Robert is prepared to condone this because his brother might be involved?

Too understaffed to demote Lieutenant Crane, the Unionist Navy publicly reproves him for insubordination and he earns the disapproval of his messmates. That makes him volunteer for a mission that brings him face to face with his brother, the crux of the story.

We here and now support opposed sides in current conflicts. "Cold Victory" is simultaneously escapist and highly relevant. Quite an achievement.

Would we like to fly out through the Solar System? Some of us would. Would merely doing that free us from the conflicts back on Earth? Clearly not. Certainly not while the human race continues to produce K'ungs.

Fleet

"Cold Victory."

"'...the Unionist flee under Dushanovitch-Alvarez had rendezvoused off Luna; as mixed a bunch of Martians, Venusians, and freedom-minded Earthmen as history ever saw.'" (p. 77)

Really? That sounds more like a sea fleet assembled in past history than like a space fleet assembled in future history. Sure enough, when Garcia says that he had volunteered for a mission because:

"'If Antonio Garcia of Hesperus gets his name in the history books, my whole clan will contribute to give me the biggest ranch on Venus.'" (p. 80)

- Crane reflects:

"They were an anachronism, thought Crane, a resurrection from old days when war was a wilder business." (ibid.)

In the warfare of the Psychotechnic History, psychotechs pick a team for compatibility, then weld them "...into an unbreakable brotherhood." (ibid.) But in the scramble of this Solar civil war, any volunteers are accepted. Results are haphazard, which they probably are in the best planned wars anyway.

See also Space Warfare.