Narrative Structures

Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 15-32.

The first person narrator of this story has a curious status. First, she is not named in the story. It is the Earth Book compiler, Hloch of Stormgate, who afterwards informs us that her name is Maeve Downey, that she is a planetologist and that this story is an extract from her autobiography, Far Adventure. (An evocative title.)

Secondly, she is not involved in the action that she recounts. Three explorers descend to the surface of the newly discovered terrestroid planet. They are a xenologist, a pilot and a gunner and therefore do not include the planetologist.

Thirdly, her narrative uses the techniques of fiction, describing events from the point of view of the pilot and informing us of his reactions and feelings. This does not surprise us because we know that we are reading a short story written by Poul Anderson but Hloch's Avalonian audience does not know that!

The story presents information about several members of the Olga crew and I propose to outline and discuss this information but that will have to wait until after a visit to the gym. Life continues in Lancaster as well as on Ythri.

First Contact

The two most recent posts have shown the position of Ythrians in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Their first story is about first contact when initially nothing was known about this species. Indeed, initially, it was difficult even to identify the dominant species on an obviously inhabited planet.

A Star Trek-parallel scenario: 

the (first) Grand Survey;

the starship, Olga, under Captain Gray, on a five-year mission beyond Alpha and Beta Crucis in the constellation Lupus, 278 light-years from Sol;

a golden G9 dwarf star of half Solar luminosity;

a terrestroid planet, smaller than Earth, with 0.75 G, a thin, dry but humanly breathable atmosphere, some small oceans and two small moons.

The Olga:

verifies by neutrino analysis that there is no artificial atomic energy anywhere in this planetary system;

enters orbit around the terrestroid planet;

gains every possible datum by remote observation before dispatching robot probes to uninhabited regions where the probes establish that life is chemically similar to Earth's and that microorganisms are safe.

There are woods, lakes, plains, mountains, clusters of buildings without defensive walls or streets, primitive mines and evidence of both Stone Age and Iron Age cultures.

This planet will later wage interstellar war against Terra. But not yet.

Other References To Ythrians

"Wild wings above Ythri!"

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70 AT p. 61.

"...the splendor of an Ythrian on the wing..." 

-see Flying Away From Babur.

In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, some disaffected Diomedeans hope in vain for help from Ythri. See Diomedean Demands. 

In A Stone In Heaven, Dominic Flandry refers favourably to Avalon. See Settling Avalon II.

I think that that is all. The Ythrians remain an important power in the background.

Ythrian Instalments

Technic History Instalments Featuring Ythrians

"Wings of Victory" (ASF, April, 1972)

"The Problem of Pain" (FSF, February, 1973)

"Lodestar" (Astounding Anthology, 1973)

"Wingless" (Boy's Life, July, 1973)

"Rescue on Avalon" (Children of Infinity, 1973)

The People Of The Wind (ASF, February-April, NAL, 1973)

The Day Of Their Return (NAL, 1973)

The Earth Book Of Stormgate (Berkley, 1978)

Observations

The Ythrians are entirely of the 1970's, mainly '73.

The Earth Book includes the five short stories with new introductions written by an Ythrian.

Thus, there is an Ythrian Trilogy (two novels and one collection):

The People Of The Wind

The Earth Book Of Stormgate

The Day Of Their Return

- which is:

preceded by and overlapping in content with the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy (two collections and two novels);

interrupted by the Young Flandry Trilogy (three novels);

followed by the Captain Flandry Trilogy (two collections and one novel) and the Flandry's Legacy Trilogy (two novels and one collection).

Far out. I didn't realize all that. 

Future Historiography

From the beginning of Poul Anderson's Technic History, its readers are closely engaged not only with fictional future events but also with the historiography of those events.

"The Saturn Game" presents four extracts from a report published by Apollo University Communications, Leyburg, Luna, 2057.

"Wings of Victory" is preceded by the introduction to the much-cited (on this blog) The Earth Book Of Stormgate, published many centuries later on the Lauran planet, Avalon.

"Wings of Victory" itself is an extract from an autobiography.

Other narratives in the Earth Book comprise correspondence, a journal or even previously published works of fiction although every text in this third category is based on some biographical or historical material.

The Earth Book rivals the Bible in the diversity of its sources. It does not include any Ythrian myths although perhaps some such had been included in the earlier companion volume, The Sky Book Of Stormgate.

Relevance In The Technic History And The Time Patrol

Poul Anderson's Technic History suddenly became more immediately relevant to its current readers with the late (1981) addition of "The Saturn Game," set much closer to our present and featuring interplanetary although not yet any interstellar space travel. Before this belated addition, the Technic History had begun with "Wings of Victory," (1972) set some time, maybe, in the twenty-second century and featuring the interstellar Grand Survey, a very different kind of science fictional scenario although one that was familiar enough to Anderson's readers from sf in general and from, e.g., Star Trek in particular. ("Wings..." even mentions a planned comparison of experiences by different Survey crews after five years.) The first four stories collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, beginning with "Wings...," were the first four instalments of the Technic History but then the first five stories in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, beginning with "The Saturn Game," became the first five instalments.

Sf that addresses important issues periodically regains relevance depending on what is currently happening in the real world. Thus, Simon Bolivar is discussed in the Time Patrol story, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," and Venezuela is currently in the news or at least competing for space in the news with several other major conflicts! 

"Ivory..." also mentions Solomon and shows us Hiram of Tyre. (For both, see here.) "Brave To Be A King" shows us Cyrus the Great. It may be thought that none of these three ancient rulers is currently relevant but it occurs to me that they might be regarded as perennially relevant by regular Bible readers? Sf readers spend a lot of their time in speculative futures. Bible readers spend perhaps even more time in a theologically interpreted past. And we all meet in the present.

Our Century In Two Timelines

"The Technic Civilization series...begins in the twenty-first century, with recovery from a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos. New space technologies ease Earth's demand for resources and energy permitting exploration of the Solar system."

-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 487-492 AT p. 487.

"...early industrial operations in space offered the hope of rescuing civilization, and Earth, from ruin..."

-"The Saturn Game," p. 17.

Meanwhile, in our twenty-first century, the established world order is breaking down, competition is intensifying at every level, and accelerating the ecological crisis especially in the southern hemisphere, while there is also a transition to new ways of organizing and managing the global economic system but no prospect of any space-based industries.

Disappearances And Appearances

In the opening paragraph of "The Problem of Thor Bridge," Dr. Watson refers to:

James Phillmore who stepped back into his house for his umbrella and was never seen again;

the ship, Alicia, which sailed into a patch of mist and was never seen again;

Isadora Persano who was found insane in front of a matchbox containing a worm unknown to science.

These seem to me to be cases not for Manse Everard of the Time Patrol but for Valeria Matuchek, explorer of the multiverse. Phillimore and the Alicia departed into other universes. The worm came from another universe. There are few imaginary or speculative scenarios that cannot find an explanation in Poul Anderson's multiverse. Phillimore might have passed through the Old Phoenix either into a very different universe or into one so similar that he was not aware of any difference.

Those who leave Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End return to the world of their origin or to one very similar.

Praise And Violations

Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), pp. 115-159.

"We fell into each other's arms and praised God with many loud violations of His third commandment." (pp. 116-117)

This, of course, is another Biblical reference. Some of us might think that we know what the Ten Commandments are until we are required to recite them. Which is the third? Fortunately nowadays we can google and possibly find that the subject is more complicated than we had expected. 

Where should we look for ultimate truth? Apart from philosophical enquiry and reflection, I now resort to meditation and to what is said by some of its practitioners, not to a scriptural account of a revelation to Moses.

Nicholas van Rijn is content to leave it to theologians to say whether aliens have souls because:

"'They get paid to decide.'" (p. 129)

I pay someone to fix my car engine but not to answer philosophical or spiritual questions. Each of us surely must engage with questions about "souls"? Every human being is a subject of consciousness.

"Get Thee Behind Me..."

I thought that I had read the phrase, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" in Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn story, "Territory," or maybe early in the next story, "The Master Key," but now cannot find that phrase in either of these stories. I mention this because it is a common reading experience. I have been doing other reading so maybe the phrase was somewhere in a work by, e.g., Conan Doyle. But the blog can be a collective effort. Can any blog reader either locate this phrase in one of these van Rijn stories or alternatively confirm that it is not there?

I wanted to quote the phrase because it would have been yet another Biblical quotation. Searching the blog, we find that we have previously quoted "Get thee behind me, Satan," but from a Psychotechnic History story, "The Big Rain," not from a Technic History story. See "A Missed Biblical Reference" etc here. (Scroll down.)

The Bible on the blog.