Future History Background Details

Because Ansa is a planet in a story in Poul Anderson's Technic History, we appreciate later references in that History to Ansan vermouth, onion soup etc. See here. Also,"livewell" is an Avalonian flower imported to Earth. 

Early in Jerry Pournelle's The Mercenary (London, 1977), there are references to:

"...badges of the dark rich bronze alloys found on Kendicott, berets made from some reptile that swam in Tanith's seas."

-I, p. 30.

However, we have not been shown either Kendicott or Sparta yet. (At least, I do not think that we have. The publication history of this series is complicated. I have not read it all and there is much of what I have read that I do not remember.)

When Falkenberg and his men arrive on the planet Hadley, something large and black rises from the water but immediately sinks back. A local seems not to notice it whereas Falkenberg's Marines shout excitedly. Readers need to be shown more of native life.

What does Pournelle do well? He shows us a large number of plausible individuals in believable economic and political predicaments and conveys a strong sense of important events occurring both on- and off-stage. I am committed to rereading The Mercenary at least until the plot development which has been the subject of recent combox discussion. Whether I stay with the text after that depends on whether it is able to hold my attention.

Let's democratize the CoDominium instead of building an old-style Empire... Too late! That is what is going to happen.

Six Future Historians

In recent posts, we have referred to the four Campbell future historians:

Heinlein

Asimov

Blish

Anderson

- and two successors:

Niven

Pournelle

- a tight-knit literary group.

Anderson modelled his Psychotechnic History on Heinlein's Future History and contributed:

one story to the Robots sub-series of Asimov's Foundation and Empire future history;

three stories to the Man-Kzin Wars sub-series of Niven's Known Space future history;

one story to the War World sub-series of Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Blish adapted Star Trek: The Original Series scripts as prose short stories and wrote an original Star Trek novel whereas Niven adapted one of his own Known Space stories as an animated Star Trek episode.

Niven and Pournelle collaborated on several novels, including two volumes of Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Pournelle and SM Stirling collaborated on at least two Man-Kzin Wars stories.

I have probably missed something.

Colonizable Planets?

Like Isaac Asimov and unlike Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle introduced uninhabited terrestroid planets only so that his human characters would be able to build empires and wage wars on and between those planets as well as on Earth. Pournelle has Great Patriotic Wars on Earth, then Formation Wars and Secession Wars in the galaxy. 

Contrast Asimov's and Pournelle's sketchily described extra-solar planets with the details that Anderson provides about Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza, Aeneas etc.

For further discussion of this issue, see also:

Aldiss, Amis, Anderson, Asimov, Lewis

The question currently in my mind is not whether exo-planets have life but whether they have multi-cellular organisms.

See:

The Improbability Of Complex Organisms

The discussion is good even if not all the works discussed are.

Starward.

Another Comparison

Comparing future histories takes us temporarily away from Poul Anderson's works although we soon return to them. He wrote eight whereas sf writers usually write one at most.

In Pournelle's CoDominium History, the US and the USSR become the CoDominium whereas, in James Blish's Cities In Flight, the USSR incorporates the US. In both these histories, life is bad on Earth but no one knows how to improve it - but some can escape out of the Solar System. The CoDominium is succeeded by Empires whereas, in Cities In Flight, the Bureaucratic State is succeeded by interstellar trade and peripheral empires although the trade is more important - as it is in Anderson's Polesotechnic League and Kith series.

Like sf in general, future histories are a dialogue.

Addendum: The CoDominium suppresses scientific research. In Cities In Flight, security stifles research.  

Five Future Histories

OK. We are juggling five future history series here, by Heinlein, Anderson (2), Niven and Pournelle. That is plenty.

How do these futures begin?

Heinlein: technological innovations on Earth and the first rocket to the Moon.

Anderson, Psychotechnic History: recovery from nuclear war and early application of psychotechnics.

Anderson, Technic History: exploration of Iapetus, Ythri and Avalon.

Niven: exploration of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto.

Pournelle: use of a recently invented faster than light drive to forcibly relocate Welfare recipients to newly discovered extrasolar planets! (A down-to-Earth future, almost.)

The Chronology in Pournelle's The Mercenary (1977) covers the period, 1969-2060. The three parts of the book were originally published in 1971, 1972 and 1973. The "future" begins immediately after the publication date of any given story. Rereading The Mercenary in 2026, we notice that only four years in this Chronology remain in our future:

2030

2040

2043

2060

2030 will soon be with us.

Comparing Future Histories

Today: day trip to Manchester.

This morning over breakfast: starting to reread Jerry Pournelle, The Mercenary.

Purpose: to reassess Pournelle's future history, especially in comparison with Heinlein's and Anderson's.

General impression so far: Anderson wrote about future civilizations, including their wars, whereas Pournelle wrote about future wars.

Continuing to reread: Poul Anderson, The Peregrine.

Continuing to read: Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels ( a welcome return to recent Britain).

Got to go: a coach to catch.

Back here laterz. 

Details Of Interstellar Economics

The Peregrine, CHAPTER VI.

Solarians are economically self-sufficient and do not trade with the extra-solar colonies.

"A small but brisk trade went on between the stars of any given sector,..." (p. 38)

(Small, within each sector.)

"...carried by merchant ships or by such Nomads as weren't heading out into the depthless yonder." (ibid.)

(So some Nomads still do that.)

Despite the opening sentence of this post, some goods from Sol and other civilized systems reach the frontier where the need for spaceports, warehouses, depots, services, repairs, shops, factories, entertainment and administration means that there are cities although only one per planet or system: on Nerthus, Stellamont, the only physically realized extra-solar city in the Psychotechnic History.

Trevelyan Micah meets and (almost) "infiltrates" the Nomads of the Peregrine there. 

Why An Interstellar Civilization Might Be Unstable

The Peregrine.

See:

Why Should An Interstellar Civilization Be Unstable?

We receive some answers.

The Shar of Barjaz-Kaui on Davenigo/Ettalume IV has started to tax traders. The Nomads cannot overthrow him by force because the Coordination Service knows of Davenigo. (Otherwise, the Nomads would have overthrown the Shar by force...?) Next best thing, the Nomad ship, Adventurer, and maybe also Bedouin, will try to subvert the Shar's government and to replace him with someone friendlier. If that is what some Nomads get up to, then no wonder the Cordies have to work overtime. And some Nomads have strayed a long way from their original "...undying voyage..." (CHAPTER II, p. 7)

Even more blatantly, the Stroller has sold guns to a race deemed unready for such technology and the Cordies have found out. Other Nomads do not condemn the Stroller but learn to watch their step with the Cordies for a while. Nomads are indeed disruptive.

More generally, Trevelyan Micah explains to Braganza Diane that:

human beings have visited a million stars and this number continually increases;

many visited stars have one or even more planets inhabited by intelligent beings with alien psychologies;

these beings' responses to an interstellar civilization are unpredictable and could be catastrophic.

The Cordies, unlike the Nomads, are concerned about the interests of all intelligent species.

This One

Poul Anderson captures slight differences in modes of speech. On Aeneas, Nords speak Anglic without the articles, "a" and "the," e.g.:

"'Do I have choice?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 7, p. 121.

"'I don't think "supernatural" is right word... I'd call Cosmenosis philosophy rather than religion.'" (p. 128)

- although I have found one instance of the indefinite article:

"'What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin' universe whose creation was meanin'less accident?'" (p. 129)

Aenean Riverfolk replace "a" with "one":

"'That was one coffin.'" (12, p. 169)

In the Psychotechnic History, Nomads sometimes replace "I" with "this one." Peregrine Joachim Henry says of himself:

"'This one has been sort of curious for the last few years...and he's been keeping his eyes open.'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER II, p. 9.

However, Joachim immediately reverts to the first person pronoun:

"'You might think I was a Cordy, the way I've been reconstructing the crime.'" (ibid.)

In spiritual practice, "this one" might be more appropriate than "I." Who or what is present in all experience and thus also in meditation? First, an individual subject of consciousness. Second, the universe conscious of itself through the individual. I usually call these the individual self and the universal self but "this one" and "the One" would be simpler. This one is not separate from the One which is much more than this one. This one exists by responding to others and must also respond to the One which is experienced as transcendent other. That other is personified but persons are self-conscious individuals, thus individual subjects, not the universal subject. 

City

The Peregrine, CHAPTER III.

Flying soundlessly over western North America, Trevelyan Micah sees:

vastness

greenness

forest

rivers

grass

isolated houses

small villages

reflected sunlight -

- and reflects that transportation, communication and socioeconomic unity have made Earth a single city.

Are vastness and greenness a "city"? It all depends on how we use words. Lancaster City District encompasses not only streets and buildings but also fields and countryside. As the train hastens through the village of Galgate, then between more fields with the University on a hill to the right, a recorded voice announces that we are now approaching Lancaster whereas all that we are really approaching is Lancaster Railway Station. We are already well within the boundaries of the city.

Cities include parks and the planet-wide city on Terra in the Terran Empire period of Poul Anderson's Technic History includes massive landed estates.

Future cities are big in sf.