POVs In Anderson And Larsson

Because Poul Anderson controls narrative points of view so well, I want to contrast him with another author who is equally effective but who sometimes takes a different approach.

"Neither [Blomkvist] nor Berger had ever heard of Nils Bjurman, so neither of them were aware of him being there."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2009), CHAPTER 2, p. 35.

"[Wu] slipped out of the entrance door on Lundagatan less than five minutes before Blomkvist parked outside and rang her doorbell."

-ibid., CHAPTER 20, p. 331.

"[Salander] noted the names Hans Faste and Curt Anderson, but she missed Jerker Holberg altogether as his name was not mentioned in any of the articles."

-ibid., CHAPTER 21, p. 359. 

There are other examples but they carry the same message. A passage narrated from either Blomkvist's or Berger's point of view (pov) could not have told us that they were not aware of Bjurman. It could only have told us what they did notice. Neither Wu nor Blomkvist knows that they missed each other by less than five minutes. The omniscient narrator informs us of this directly, unmediated by either of these characters' povs. That Salander noted Faste's and Anderson's names can be narrated from her pov but that she missed Holberg cannot. Again, the omniscient narrator must inform us of this directly. I find this interesting which is why I comment on it.

Planets And Timelines

Poul Anderson, "The Queen of Air and Darkness" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (New York, December 1973), pp. 3-49.

Poul Anderson's "The Queen of Air and Darkness" is definitely the ninth and last instalment in his Rustum future history series whereas the same author's "Time Lag" is much more tentatively and speculatively - although I might be alone in suggesting this - the concluding instalment of a considerably shorter and diffuser "Directorate" future history series. What these two stories have in common is that each is set in a future period when enough time has elapsed that human beings, travelling in slower-than-light spaceships, have colonized several extra-solar planets and there is also some travel between the colonies although there is no longer any contact with Earth. In "Time Lag," at least in the volume of space where the action occurs, Earth is simply too far, a thousand parsecs, away whereas, in "The Queen...":

"Earth has long ago sunk into alien concerns." (p. 10)

That fits with what we are told in the Rustum stories. 

One of the reasons why people had left Earth was to preserve:

"...constitutional government..." (p. 6)

We remember the Constitutionalists on Rustum.

Eric Sherrinford says that birds big enough to carry a small child a short distance:

"'...do exist on Beowulf - and on Rustum, I've read.'" (p. 15)

This confirms that Roland and Rustum exist in the same timeline although, having said that, a fictional planet can, like Earth, Mars etc, exist in alternative timelines:

in James Blish's "A Case of Conscience," later adapted and expanded as A Case Of Conscience, Book One, the planet Lithia exists in 2049;

in Blish's "Seeding Program," near future events on Earth differ from those recounted in "A Case of Conscience" and Lithia is not mentioned;

in Blish's "Watershed," set millennia after "Seeding Program," Lithia exists;

in A Case Of Conscience, Book Two, Lithia is destroyed in 2050.

I think that this makes sense. Lithia plays a major role in A Case... and a minor role in "Watershed" and, in each case, its fate, whether imminent destruction or longer term survival, is appropriate to that narrative.

In any case, Rustum and Roland exist in a single timeline.  

Mystery

"The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Has the story been told in the wrong order? A child has been abducted. The child's mother had never believed the stories about Outlings stealing children but now is not so sure. As an alternative, she suggests a secret human cult living in the wilderness...

There are too many cases of lost children to be explained by accident and there are also:

"'...frightened stories about reappearances...'" (p. 9)

(We need to be told more.)

The police play down her story but she thinks that they too are afraid because they are recruited from country folk and their town:

"'...lies near the edge of the unknown.'" (ibid.)

An intriguing mystery - except that the opening passage has already shown us two of the Outlings and a pook carrying the stolen child! Like a Columbo episode where we see the murder before Columbo investigates and, of course, solves it.

FSF

Poul Anderson wrote fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and detective fiction. Therefore, we do not necessarily know in advance which of these genres any particular short story will belong to. One clue is what kind of magazine, anthology or collection has the story been published in? "The Queen of Air and Darkness" was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and therefore could have been either. It begins ambiguously: a pook steals a human child (fantasy?); there are two moons in the sky (an extra-solar planet? Sf?)

The apparently magical or supernatural can be scientifically rationalized. A story set in a historical or prehistorical period might turn out to involve supernatural beings, extraterrestrial visitors, mutants, immortals or time travellers.

The sky is the limit.

Laterz.

Eric Sherrinford

"The Queen of Air and Darkness."

I will quote a character called Eric Sherrinford although I will also rearrange his words into a list rather than leaving them in the continuous prose of Poul Anderson's text. Sherrinford, addressing his client, Barbro Cullen, claims:

"'...I know just a few obvious facts, such as...

"'...your being widowed rather than divorced...

"'...and you're the daughter of outwayers in Olga Ivanoff Land...

"'...who, nevertheless, kept in close telecommunication with Christmas Landing;...

"'...and you're trained in one of the biological professions;...

"'...and you had several years' hiatus in field work...

"'...until recently you started again.'" (p. 6)

Barbro gapes and asks how in cosmos he knows that. (Of course.)

Who does Sherrinford sound like?

Does he say enough to back up his claimed knowledge?

Is this just an introductory flourish or does Sherrinford maintain the same level of deductive skill throughout the story?

I am not going to answer all these questions now!

For who Sherrinford sounds like, see:

Eddies: The Private Enquiry Agent

Good night. For me, back from the Gregson, Stieg Larsson, who also quotes that private enquiry agent, then bed.

A Cosmic Accident Or A Large Satellite

Poul Anderson, "The Queen of Air and Darkness" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (New York, December 1973), pp. 3-49.

"...man exists because a cosmic accident blew away most of the gas that a body its size ought to have kept, as Venus has done." (p. 11)

Sf readers read then-current scientific ideas in sf stories. This story was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1971.

Ideas that I have read elsewhere are that:

Lunar gravity thinned the Terrestrial atmosphere (this is crucial to Larry Niven's "Wrong Way Street");

tides, also of course caused by Lunar gravity, facilitated the evolution of amphibians and the transition of life from sea to land;

the Moon maintains the Earth's magnetic field (see here).

The Earth-Moon system is a double planet and the Moon almost certainly has other effects. 

A Moment Of Realization On Sibylla

Poul Anderson, "The Alien Enemy" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (New York, December 1973), pp. 68-85.

We are reviewing the stories in the sequence that we loosely label as the Directorate future history. Rereading "The Alien Enemy," I am struck by an example of what I have called an Andersonian moment of realization:

"...at once, like a blow to the guts...I saw the face of the alien enemy." (p. 81)

The first person narrator has been told and shown evidence that alien spaceships, maybe with an FTL drive, had attacked the human colony on the inhospitable planet, Sibylla, and had nuked its only city. But no one knows who these aliens were and they have not been seen or heard of since. How can the narrator suddenly realize who they were? He can't. They don't exist. He can and does suddenly realize that an elaborate hoax has been perpetrated. But we have posted quite a lot about Sibylla before! 

It is time for me to meditate in good time before going out to the Gregson Institute this evening.

"Time Lag": Conclusion

Having reread to the end of "Time Lag," we have to check how much we have already posted about it. Quite a lot:

Resistance

The Decisive Battle

Dare And "Time Lag"

Interstellar Diversity

This single story is a miniature future history in its own right whether or not we think that we can connect it with other interstellar stories by Poul Anderson.

Anderson imagines humanity out in the universe and we want to read more. Future history will not all be as violent as this conflict between Vaynamo and Chertkoi but Anderson wrote good military sf and this story is one example.

Where to next?

AI

See:

SpaceX

What Elon Musk Said

Again, the news of the day on the blog - a once-in-a-blue moon event. AI can be beneficial or dangerous, utopian or dystopian, so why has it not been programmed with Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics? This is one sf theme on which Asimov was way ahead of everyone else - although Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History shows us technological unemployment including even the unemployment of the first humanoid robot! (A self-driving car does not need a humanoid driver etc.)

Themes From Previous SF Authors Addressed In Anderson's First Future History Series

Robert Heinlein

a future history series

a future revolution

longevity

a generation ship

Isaac Asimov

a predictive science of society

robots

Synthesis

the predictive science of society applied within the generation ship.

We are living in the twenty-first century, the future, with a potential threat from AI, Asimov's Frankenstein Complex.

Natives Of Extra-Solar Planets

Rustum has no natives.

On Roland, the natives conceal themselves and manipulate human colonists telepathically.

On Mithras, human colonists would eventually have displaced the natives but the colony is prevented.

On Vaynamo, the most intellectually developed of the Alfavala:

"...had chosen to serve man in a doglike fashion rather than keep to the forests [and] could only speak a few words and handle the simplest tools."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Lag" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (New York, December 1973), pp. 115-149 AT 522 Anno Coloniae Conditae, p. 117.

Human beings had colonized Nerthus before they discovered that it was inhabited.

Five planets.

Rustum and Roland are in the Rustum History.

Mithras and Vaynamo are in the Directorate History. (We think.)

Nerthus is in the Psychotechnic History.

Someone will remind me of other examples.