Sunday 7 July 2013

More About Aeneas?

Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return is set entirely on the colonized planet, Aeneas. I summarized information about Aenean physical conditions in an earlier post entitled "Life On Aeneas" and about Aenean social conditions in an article on the Flandry series.

When rereading The Day Of Their Return, I have usually preferred to focus on the few chapters in which Chunderban Desai is the view point character. Desai is eminently likeable and his chapters are full of concentrated information about Aeneas, its sister planet Dido, their place in the Terran Empire, the Empire's enemies - the imperialistic Merseians and their Chereionite agent provocateur - and other characters in the novel.

However, the novel's main action occurs in the more numerous chapters featuring Desai's adversary, Ivar Frederiksen, who is on the run from Terran justice after leading a failed attack on Imperial marines. Ivar seeks concealment among the wandering "tinerans" and on the river and thus experiences many rich details of the life of diverse Aenean communities. Further, a correspondent informs me that events in these chapters disclose a contradiction between this novel and another installment, written earlier but set later, of Anderson's Technic Civilization History.

When writing a "prequel," the author has to ensure that, in this newly written work, the characters do not acquire or display any knowledge of which they are destined still to be ignorant at the beginning of the already written work. By and large, Anderson did a good job with the Flandry prequels, showing the central character in his teens and twenties acquiring the experience and skills that he employs to good effect later. But it seems that, in The Day Of Their Return, Imperial Intelligence gains information that it should have relayed to its agent Flandry, and that would have made a difference, before the beginning of his original series of short stories.

Whether or not this prima facie contradiction can be ironed out, it seems that The Day Of Their Return deserves to be reread in its entirety, not just for its Desai interludes, but before that I still have to make sense of the complicated situation on another colony planet, Freehold.

2 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Yes, I agree THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN deserves to be reread by either of us. I agree that besides Commissioner Desai, the Ivar Frederiksen chapters needs to be reread with care. I can see how, on a first reading, young Ivar may have seen rather callow and immature compared to Desai. Well, the lad was only only 20 standard years old in the book!

I see you alluded to the comments I gave in the combox to "Introductions II" to the regrettable inconsistency I found about Aycharaych in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN and, in terms of internal chronology, the later "Honorable Enemies." I would like to bring to your attention Chapters 9 and 20 of DAY. The former quotes a reply to Desai to inquiries he made to Terra for whatever was known about Aycharaych. The latter shows Erannath telling Ivar what he had found out from Aycharaych himself. The document quoted in Chapter 9 fits in neatly with both the original and revised forms of "Honorable Enemies." But Erannath's report to Ivar should have guided Anderson in rewriting "Honorable Enemies." Erannath's explanation would have filled out and corrected what little had been known about Aycharaych up till then.

I think it's necessary to stress that the first three stories of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE: "Tiger by the Tail," "Warriors from Nowhere," and "Honorable Enemies," were revised by Anderson to fit in better with the Technic History. By and large, I'm satisfied with how Anderson did that in "Tiger" and "Warriors." It's in "Honorable Enemies" that we find a serious inconsistency. "Honorable Enemies" shows Flandry and Aline Chang shocked and dismayed on discovering Aycharaych was a telepath. Whereas, because of the events in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, they should have already known of Aycharaych's telepatic powers.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I forgot to add a few more comments to my previous note which I now add for the sake of completeness.

I believe the simplest reason explaning the contradiction found about what was discovered about Aycharaych in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN and what we see in "Honorable Enemies" is that Anderson forgot about Chapter 20 of DAY. Because he was trying to keep the revised form of "Honorable Enemies" as close as possible to the original form, even tho that contradicted what we found out in Chapter 20 of DAY.

Sean