Human Superiority In Fantasy?

The Broken Sword, V.

Sometimes, in sf, human beings are noticeably superior to other intelligent species. See a blog search result for human superiority. (Scroll down.) But see also More Ishtarian Superiority.

Can this also happen in fantasy? A dwarf tells Skafloc:

"'Let me tell you, boy, that you humans, weak and short-lived and unwitting, are nonetheless more strong than elves and trolls, aye, than giants and gods. And that you can touch cold iron is only one reason...'" (p. 33)

So what are the other reasons? Maybe we will be told. More generally, human beings ourselves are aware of our ambiguous status, weak and short-lived but able to reason and comprehend. In Indian philosophies, neither animals nor gods but only human beings can practice the way to liberation. The Buddha teaches gods and men.

What will come of this theme that human beings are stronger even than gods in Anderson's narrative about Skafloc?

(BTW, I have returned to rereading Stieg Larsson later in the evening when I want to stop blogging. Anderson and Larsson: what a combo! Larsson shows us how much can be done without venturing into history, the future or alternative histories. Here and now can be enough.)

Skafloc At Sea

The Broken Sword, V. 

Imric raises a wind for his black longship whose warrior crew will deal with any trolls or kraken. Skafloc, who has been given witch-sight, sees, whether by night or day:

porpoises;

an old bull seal acquaintance;

a broaching whale;

sea maidens;

"...the drowned tower of Ys..." (p. 31) (see Versions);

a gleam of Valkyries overhead.

There are also sounds. First, there is a hawk-scream from the Valkyries.

Secondly, because the voyage goes well:

"Wind sang in the rigging..." (ibid.)

- although, also:

"...and waves roared at the strakes." (ibid.)

Roaring wind would have conveyed a different message from singing wind although maybe the roaring waves should be seen not as a threat but just as one of the natural elements easily mastered by Imric's magic.

When the elves reach land, they visit dwarves and we are told that:

"The bandy-legged men scarce came to Skafloc's waist..." (p. 32)

The height difference between men and dwarves generated some minor comedy in one of the The Lord Of The Rings films although not in Tolkien's texts. Despite their shortness, Anderson's dwarves are broad-shouldered and long-armed with dark, bearded, angry faces. No comedy here, either.

Blog readers might be forgiven for thinking that my attention is not always on the text. Indeed. Life continues here. Today is a Bank Holiday Monday which meant that the gym was closed although that did not prevent me from walking to it! It also meant that the Friends' Meeting House was closed. Therefore, there was no Zen group. However, there was, in a nearby Methodist Community Centre, a launch meeting for a new book to mark the centenary of the British General Strike. All of this means that I can't just stay here and blog! Nevertheless, we will persevere with the tale of Skafloc.

The Edge Of The World

The Broken Sword, V.

Skafloc, the human boy raised by elves, hunts stags and boars and:

"There was other and trickier game, chased crazily through the woods and across the crags, unicorns and griffins which Imric [the elf-earl] had brought from the edge of the world for his pleasure." (p. 29)

So there is an "edge of the world" from which even more exotic creatures can be brought. 

"Ah, there must be terrible queer creatures at the latter end of the world."

-James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. (On the last page.)

"...he heard the wind at the edge of the world forever calling."

For that third quotation, see:

Wind, World's Edge And Time

- where we find that we have already connected the Time Patrol with The Broken Sword through wind and time.

Aesir And Others

The Broken Sword.

The Aesir are the Norse pantheon. As As is a god. "Aesir" is the plural: "gods." Asgard is the enclosure of the gods. Thus, a dweller in Asgard is an As, not an "Asgardian," as in Marvel Comics.

Imric the elf-earl:

hears Thor ("Thunder...great wheels across the sky...," III, p. 23);

sees Odin ("...long gray beard...shadowing hat...spear...single eye...," p. 24);

receives Skirnir ("...messenger of the Aesir...," IV, p. 25).

Although I did not remember Skirnir's name, Wikipedia reminds us that he is in both Eddas.

Odin will reappear in this novel.

The omniscient narrator informs us that gods, giants and trolls are "...others..." (ibid.) of the same sort as elves, whatever sort that is. This sort has in common that they do not age and have:

"...few children, centuries apart..." (ibid.)

The text proceeds to mention dwarves, sprites, gnomes, goblins, a faun, Pan, the new god, dryads, nymphs and Olympians. For some of these beings, see:

Out In The Weather

Autumn Leaves, Snow, Life And Gods

The Broken Sword, III.

Rereading a novel by Poul Anderson, we notice not macro-features like the plot but micro-features like anything interesting in the text and we always find the latter although we must remember to check whether we have posted about any particular detail before. Thus, we appreciate a troll woman's summary of life, beginning:

"'Hurry and hurry...'" (p. 22)

See:

A Changeling In Elfland

She says that:

autumn leaves hurry on rainy wind;

snow hurries out of the sky;

life hurries to death;

gods hurry to oblivion.

Autumn leaves mean change and death. Snow symbolizes transience. ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?") Gods personify life. It is all about life and the imminence of death.

Our old friend, the wind, is ever present. When Imric rides to change the child, a storm is mountainous, lightning is runes and:

"Wind hooted and howled." (p. 23)

What else was it going to do?

Brythons And Goidels

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), II.

An sf writer can extend a list into the future. See:

From An Odyssey To An Elegy

Can a fantasy writer extend a list into the past? 

When:

"Imric the elf-earl rode out by night to see what had happened in the lands of men." (p. 18)

- a witch told him that the Danes had come to eastern England to kill, loot, burn and seize. Imric replied that that was not bad because several groups had done likewise earlier. 

Imric's list:

Angles and Saxons;

Picts and Scots;

Romans;

Brythons and Goidels;

still others before.

Brythons and Goidels?

However:

Brythons are Celtic Britons - in Welsh, Brythoniaid;

Goidels are Gaels.

So Imric was using unfamiliar (to me) terminology, not referring to fictional populations like Robert E. Howard's Cimmerians.

THE BROKEN SWORD

Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages was published in 1952.

Anderson's Brain Wave was serialized in 1953 and novelized in 1954 by Ballantine Books.

His The Broken Sword was published in November 1954 by the obscure Abelard-Schuman and republished by Ballantine in 1971 with an introduction by Lin Carter entitled "A CHANGELING IN ELFLAND."

This introduction begins with two paragraphs that summarize the plot before Carter discusses the author who was then of course a very much younger man than when we knew of him later. (My only contact with Anderson was when he apologized for squeezing past me at a party during the Worldcon in Brighton in 1987.)

The second paragraph of Carter's introduction ends by informing us that the character named Skafloc:

"...was reared to manhood in the twilight fields and whispering woods of timeless and shadowy Faerie...."

-Lin Carter, "A CHANGELING IN ELFLAND" IN Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), pp. 5-9 AT p. 5.

I am unsure of the status of this passage. Is Carter just writing lyrically or quoting the blurb from the original edition? (There are no quotation marks.)

Got to go. Things to do. Busy weekend. May Day and Wesak. Back here some time later.

From Aliens To Elves

Poul Anderson presents a scientific rationale for why Ythrians, winged extra-solar aliens, can have bodies heavy enough for intelligence and yet be able fly in terrestroid environments and also explains that the elf-like Lunarians are human being genetically modified to live in Lunar gravity although not on the Lunar surface but there is no need to explain the elves and trolls in The Broken Sword because such beings are simply assumed to exist in works of fantasy. However, to our surprise, in his FOREWORD, Anderson suggests that:

magic is control of external phenomena by means not yet known to science but maybe coming under "parapsychology";

an alien metabolism able to live indefinitely, change shape etc might be vulnerable to actinic light or to electrochemical reactions with iron;

such immortals might resort to nonferrous metal and alloys and, e.g., sail like the wind in almost frictionless ships;

they might have built castles earlier than human beings but would not have developed science, e.g., gunpowder or steam engines, in their long-living, aristocratic, conservative, warrior culture.

However, I don't think that any of these rationalizations appear in the text of the novel?

A Joke And An End

 

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 14.

"'Would you please fill me in?' the download requested.

"Falaire's look suggested she would like to fill him with concentrated sulfuric acid." (p. 187)

I think that that counts as humour. I am rereading a recent novel by Alan Moore whose prose is rich in similar turns of phrase.

Jesse Nicol has completed the anti-matter hijack, has the Lunarians who had duped him at gunpoint and has freed their prisoner, the Federation intelligence agent, Venator, so he could return to the Federation in triumph with the rescued anti-matter and two prisoners but instead opts to accompany the Lunarians to Proserpina where it is always night because theirs:

"'...is a new world, in a heroic age.'" (p. 190)

- where he might become a poet. 

Homer: the Trojan age;

Shakespeare: Cleopatra, Macbeth etc;

Fitzgerald: Omar Khayyam;

Kipling: India;

Nicol: stars, comets, unknowing universe but humans there.

(Observation: the universe knows through us.)

Linking Quotations

Something said by Venator in Harvest The Fire reminds us of something said by Manse Everard in "Time Patrol." However, searching this blog reveals that we have already connected these two passages not only with each other but also with something said by Nicholas van Rijn in Mirkheim. See:

Venator, Everard and Van Rijn On Misery

Opinions expressed by characters are not necessarily those of the author. However, sometimes they are and usually we can tell. Anderson also gives sympathetic treatment to characters that he clearly does not agree with in Mirkheim, The Devil's Game and Murder Bound.

Everard's saying could be included in "The Quotable Time Patrol." See Quotations which links to quotations both from the Time Patrol series and from The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson). The Anderson multiverse is vast, encompassing both "scientific" and "supernatural" non-human intelligences (see Blurring A Distinction) as we might soon see depending on which direction this blog takes next.