Poul Anderson likes to give readers some idea of the over all size of the Terran Empire in many of his stories. Because he believed it gives us some idea of the sheer vastness of the background setting before he focuses on "smaller" scenes. THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN was no exception and this is what I found in Chapter 3: "The vaguely defined, roughly spherical volume over which Terra claimed suzerainty had a diameter of some 400 light-years; it held an estimated four million stars, whereof half were believed to have been visited at least once; approximately 100,000 planets had formalized relations with the Imperium, but for most of them it amounted to no more than acknowledgment of subordination and modest taxes, or merely the obligation to make labor and resources available should the Empire ever have need."
A sector governor ruled regions of the Empire analogous to the jurisdictions held by the viceroys and governor generals of the former Spanish and British Empires on Earth. On an interstellar scale, the territory over which he held authority was almost inconceivably vast, as this quote from the opening paragraph of Chapter III of THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN indicates: "A sector governor oversaw such vastness that to him it became a set of abstractions." And I found a rare indication of how large a sector was in THE REBEL WORLDS, Chapter I: "...a sector governor, viceroy for His Majesty throughout some 50,000 cubic light years surrounding Alpha Crucis." I am sure this is the only text in the stories where a specific figure was given indicating the SIZE of a sector.
As we already know, there were 100,000 planets owning formal allegiance to the Imperium. These planets included both worlds colonized by humans and planets inhabited by non human rational beings. It is my guess that, on average, a sector had 1000 of these planets. The evidence on which I based this is the following quote from Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS, from the passages describing Admiralty Center: "Crowds moved by and overflowed the offices. Their members ranged from junior technicians to admirals on whose heads might rest the security of a thousand worlds.." I understood this to mean that the military defense of the border sectors of the Empire entrusted to these admirals averaged a thousand worlds. And it is reasonable to think the sectors of the inner Empire also averaged a thousand planets. Therefore, I argue the Empire was divided into 100 sectors for administrative purposes.
How important were sector governorships? Important enough that the persons chosen for them were matters of intense interest to the Throne and the Policy Board. Here's a bit from Admiral Kheraskov's briefing of Dominic Flandry in Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS: "Elevation [of Aaron Snelund] to a higher rank would have kicked up a storm, but viscounts are a millo a thousand. However, it's sufficient for a major governorship. Many sectors would be too rich, powerful, close to home, or otherwise important. The Policy Board would not tolerate a man in charge of them who couldn't be trusted."
Moreover, to do their jobs, sector governors HAD to have wide powers, despite this also allowing the risk of abuse of those powers occurring. As Flandry said in Chapter III of THE REBEL WORLDS: "We have *got *to give our proconsuls wide discretion. We've *got *to let them recruit auxiliaries, and hope those auxiliaries will know the local scene better than Imperial regulars." THE REBEL WORLDS takes its plot from a bad governor's abuse of his office and powers.
In his Terran Empire stories Poul Anderson named the sectors not after planets but for either astronomically prominent stars or stars orbited by politically influential planets. Examples being Sector Aldebaran, Sector Alpha Crucis, Sector Pacis, Sector Spica, etc.
33 comments:
Hi, Paul and Ketlan!
Many thanks for putting my own little effort again at the head of the line. I was not offended about it slipping so quickly out of "sight." In fact, I admired how prolific Paul was commenting on the works of Poul Anderson.
Sean
Interestingly, Wikipedia describes Alpha Crucis as being 321 light years from Earth, give or take 20 light years. I presume this means the other border of the Empire is only some 80 light years from Earth. Possibly the term "some 400 light years" is a loose definition or the Alpha Crucis Sector is a minor colonial possession that lies outside the main Empire.
Bob Hutchinson
Good thinking, Bob.
Dear Mr. Hutchinson:
Many thanks for your comments. Actually, from many comments Anderson made, he has Terra claiming overlordship of interstellar space 200 light years in all directions from Terra. It seems you have discovered another inconsistency in Anderson's work. Hmmm, I can imagine Anderson arguing, if this had been brought to his attention, that there might be exceptions to the 200 light years average. For instance, the priceless industrial rogue planet Satan in the Alpha Crucis region would be a good reason for Terra extending her domain 100 lightyears further out than she might have otherwise preferred. Or Anderson might have argued that 400 light years from end to end of Terra's Empire was only a vague average.
Thanks for bringing up something Anderson, Paul Shackley, and I all seemed to have missed! (Smiles)
Sean M. Brooks
A 400 ly Dia sphere centering on Sol would include less than 100,000 stars. To get the 4 million stars requires a 1600 ly Dia sphere.
Actually, I'm pretty confident P. Anderson meant a 400 LY RADIUS from Sol, not a 400 LY diameter centered on Sol.
Such a globe would contain 3-4 million stars, which corresponds to the 4 million mentioned.
In people of the Wind, the Imperium aims to expand its border to take control of (among other things) the Krakoan Beta Centauri system - which is 397 LY from Sol.
The Empire has an Antares-sector, in which Hermes, Babur and Mirkheim are to be found. Antares is around 600 LY from Sol, but older sources give the distance to about 400 LY.
As mentioned, there is an Alpha Crucis-sector. Alpha Crucis is 321 LY from Sol.
Betelgeuse is a "buffer state" between Earth and Merseia. Betelgeuse is 640 LY from Sol. Merseias home sun Korych is "between Betelgeuse and Rigel" (the star Wasp 82 looks lika likely candidate, BTW). There cant reasonably be a 440 LY gap between the Imperiums border and the buffer against an encroaching Merseia.
However, all the locations and figures I've read fit with a 400 LY radius Terran Empire.
Johan,
Thank you. We need more galactography in discussing PA's works.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Ortiz,
I second what Paul said! And I'm fascinated by your comments. Because if true, that would make the Empire even more vaster than I had thought.
And thanks as well to "Anonymous," for making similar comments.
Many thanks! Sean
Thank you Paul and Sean!
Unfortunately, however much I love his stories, some times Anderson’s astronomy does not make a lot of sense.
Take for example the Syrax star cluster fought over in ”Hunters of the Sky Cave”.
According to Aycharaych, if they captured it the Merseians could ”use them as a valuable base, outflanking Antares”. It follows that Antares is an Imperial bastion, blocking Merseia. Antares, as mentioned before is about 600 LY from Sol, even if Poul Anderson (and everyone else at the time) thought it was more like 400 LY. Also, as mentioned before, the Merseians are beyond Betelgeuse in the direction of Rigel. That’s 642 LY from Sol.
But the distance between Betelgeuse and Antares is 1 214 LY, because Sol is all but smack in the middle, virtually half way between Betelgeuse and Antares. The Merseians thus threaten Antares AND Betelgeuse, two stars on either end of the Terran (rather elongated) sphere, 1200 odd LY apart, as the starship flies. Unless the Merseians threaten Syrax from some distant exclave, their front curving along the Terran periphery must be at least 3 800 LY long. No wonder the Terran Empire is doomed – the Merseian Empire looks gargantuan in comparison!
Dear Mr. Ortiz,
Again, I'm fascinated by your comments! You have a far deeper knowledge of astronomy than I do. And, it's plain you found some galactographic errors by Anderson. I could plead in defense of him that Anderson had to go by the knowledge of astronomy known by him at the time he wrote and pub. WE CLAIM THESE STARS (1959). Obviously, astronomers of that time made errors, errors which Anderson accepted because he thought it was true. It would be good if a future edition of WE CLAIM THESE STARS included a note discussing these facts.
I'm sure I can speak for Paul as well as myself, but I hope we see more comments by you on this blog!
Sean
Right on.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm glad. Thanks!
Sean
Thank you both!
I have no deep knowledge of astronomy, but I do have an easy access to Internet resources and astronomical data that P. Andersson could only have dreamt about in 1959. For example, calculating the distance from Betelgeuse to Antares, and from both to Sol is child's play today. I used this resource:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/view.jsp?id=44de56319fcd82a53ce95dad2894784f
Having said that, I doubt that he could have missed that Antares and Betelgeuse are in opposite directions from Sol.
On the other hand, however hard the science in his ficition Poul Andersson was above all a great writer, and perhaps some of these "lapses" are simply a case of artistic licence. For example, the star Antares appears again and again in his stories. It's the namer of a sector. It's where Van Rijn met Lady Sandra Tamarin. And it's the Terran bastion the Merseian are trying to bypass. I'm guessing mr Andersson simply liked the sound of the name of that star. Also, by reusing it he creates a familiarity with the universe in the mind of the reader, a bit like Tolkien did. Given that there are 100.000 inhabited planets in the Terran sphere, we do hear an inordinate amount about a mere handful of them - Hermes, Vixen, Aeneas, Avalon, Diomedes, Ivanhoe, Beta Centauri... it seems more common that a world or star should be reused than not. Which might statistically make no sense but makes perfect litterary sense!
There are more examples, for example in PEOPLE OF THE WIND, Governor Saracoglou mentions that the Ythrians have annexed Dathyna, the alien world from SATAN'S WORLD. I need to research this more, but I have a feeling Dathyna is supposed to be not too far from Beta Crucis, which is nowhere near Beta Centarui (which Saracoglou fearead Ythrian intentions on). But we have heard of Dathyna, it causes us to go "Ah, THAT world!" when we read it. And the writer could reasonably expect to hurt the reader's suspension of disbelief, few people walk around with a Galactic map in their heads!
By the way, when i first started researching the probable size of the Terran Empire, I had missed the reference to a 400 LY diametre globe. My first assumption was actually a 600+ LY radius sphere (to touch both Antares and Betelgeuse). An alternative possiblity to Poul Andersson mistaking radius and diametre (which, frankly, sounds very unlikely)is that he originally wrote "a sphere with a diametre of 400 parsecs", but then decided that LY was a more well-known measure of interstellar distances and changed the unit but not the number.
A spehre with a diametre of 400 parsecs with Sol in it's centre would include Antares and reach almost exactly as far as Betelgeuse, where it is supposed to touch Merseia. Also, even with a 400 LY radius from Sol, you would be hard pressed to encompass 4 million stars, even counting the tiniest brown dwarfs. With a 650 LY radius, it's far easier to reach that number.
Given that the normal travel time from Sol to Beta Crucis is "two weeks" according to Van Rijn, we can conclude that even with such an enormous Imperium, the travel time from Sol to periphery would be on average around 30 days. That is nothing compared to historical Empires like the Roman or British, where it could take months to reach outlying provinces. With a 400 LY globe, it would take just 10 days. It begs the question "why stop there?", especially if there were no powerful alien empires to stop the Terrans.
So again, I would suspect what might look like errors is simply questions of style.
Dear Mr. Ortiz,
Again, you made points I had never thought of before! Points I agree are very reasonable and strongly suspect Poul Anderson would have agreed with. Esp. your comment about knowledge and resources Anderson could only have dreamed of in 1959. I also it't very probable that what seemed to be errors may have been, in some cases, artistic license on Anderson's part.
I don't think it's too implausible that we see only a rather small sampling of the planets within the Technic sphere. Because, however energetic and far ranging Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, and Dominic Flandry were, there were only so many worlds they couuld reasonably expect to visit.
Thanks! Sean
Mr Ortiz,
And none of this would ever have occurred to me. I just accepted that distances were as PA said. I did not know that parallax had limited accuracy. I did know that calculation of intergalactic distances was variable.
Paul.
I think I finally understand what the problem is with the Technic Civilization galactography. The main method of gauging stellar distances is by parallax. The method has its limitations, to quote wikipedia:
Even with 21st-century techniques in astrometry, the limits of accurate measurement make distances farther away than about 100 parsecs (or roughly 300 light years) too approximate to be useful when obtained by this technique.
Even so, the technique made great strides in the XX century:
Automated plate-measuring machines and more sophisticated computer technology of the 1960s allowed more efficient compilation of star catalogues. In the 1980s, charge-coupled devices (CCDs) replaced photographic plates and reduced optical uncertainties to one milliarcsecond.
At the time Poul Anderson wrote many of his Technic civilization stories, it would seem he simply had less accurate data on the distance from Sol to the distant stars he places at the periphery of Empire - Antares, Alpha Crucis, Betelgeuse and others.
Reading his stories today, one would either
1) have to ignore his description on the size of the Imperial sphere, or
2) assume that the stories happen in a fictional universe, where stellar distances are shorter than in ours
Which one you pick is entirely one of taste, although personally, since Anderson sometimes uses parsecs rather than light years in his stories, I prefer to read the description of the Terran sphere as being 400 parsecs across, rather than light years. With that changing of one word, everything else falls into place in our real universe - Antares as an Imperial bastion close to the border, Betelgeuse as buffer system, the border smack up against Ythri in the vicinity of Beta Centauri (somewhat closer to Sol than 200 parsecs, but hey, it's a rough globe) and both Alpha and Beta Crucis within the sphere.
That leaves of course the Terran Empire colossal, spanning roughly 1200 lightyears across at its widest, but still encompassing close to 4 million stars (depending on what you count as a star)just as P. Anderson wrote.
Ah, sorry Mr Shackley, I discovered an error in my post (having written Beta Crucis where I meant Beta Centauri) and since I could not edit it, I deleted and reposted.
Than you for your comment!
Hi,
And thank you for your attention to details! Can we move to first name terms? I am "Paul" to blog commentators. Following the example of my polite regular contributor, Sean, I tend to address newbies as "Mr. -" but maybe we don't need to be so formal?
Paul.
Absolutely Paul, I merely wished to be no less courteous than you. Johan it is.
If it could be of interest, I'm currently trying to track down the whereabouts of Ythri. The best lead I have so far is a line in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, where it's said to be "100 light years in the direction of Beta Centauri", with this being said on Aeneas. However, I haven't found where Aeneas star Virgo is, except that it is in the Beta Crucis sector (THE REBEL WORLDS). If the sector is, as mentioned in this thread, 50 000 cubic LY, then its radius would be around 23 LY, so Aeneas must be no much farther than say 25 LY from Beta Crucis. And that star in turn is 124 LY from Beta Centauri. Virgo and Aeneas would have to be around that distance from Beta Crucis in the direction of Beta Centauri, otherwise Ythri would be placed short of Beta Centauri and thus in Imperial space - unless it is a really uneven "sphere", which of course is entirely possible.
Johan,
Without looking it up (it's late here), I think that the sun of Aeneas is called "Virgil," not "Virgo." I thought that it was in Sector Alpha Crucis? The star having been named after Virgil, its two main planets were named after the hero and heroine of Virgil's AENEID, Aeneas and Dido. I soon lose track of your calculations of relative distances and directions. There is much scope here for massive revision of the background of the Technic History although, of course, the publishers have no authority to alter the texts.
Paul.
Yes, it's Virgil, not Virgo, and Sector Alpha Crucis, I stand corrected on both accounts.
Since I'm not a native English speaker, I didn't immediately make the connection between Aeneas and its star Virgil. In my native Swedish, the poet is called Vergilius. :)
Johan
Kaor, Johan!
Many thanks, again, for your fascinating galactographic comments. I'm inclined to agree with you and to think the Empire was far vaster than I had hitherto thought it was. And that the mistakes Anderson made was due to the inadequate methods of calculating interstellar distances available to him at the time he wrote his Terran Empire stories.
I would hope a COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON would include essays and commentaries discussing points like the ones you have raised. Perhaps including a galactographic essay by you!
Sean
Johan,
I second Sean's sentiments. I hope that PA's publishers read and heed this blog.
Swedish? Wow! I love Stieg Larsson's books and have discussed them on my blogs. Both Stieg, whom I did not know, and my son-in-law, who is my technical assistant for this blog, worked with the British anti-fascist magazine, SEARCHLIGHT, but unfortunately never met.
Paul.
I dig how Stieg Larsson's characters are always switching on their coffee machines.
Thank you both for your kind comments!
The love of coffe is indeed a national trait, if there ever was one. As a Swedish state bureaucrat, I can tell you that the Swedish machinery of state is driven by that most precious black fuel - coffe!
Johan,
The British drink tea but I drink coffee except in our meditation group where they serve tea. James Bond said, "Tea is mud."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Well, the Merseians would not agree with Bond's low view of tea! As we know, tea became very popular, along with chess, among the Merseians. (Smiles)
Sean
@ Johan: I'd enjoy working with you on an Andersonian/Technic Galactography...
I agree that many problems with size/distance could be solved by changing "200 ly to 200 pc".
Cheers, Keith Halperin kdhalperin@sbcglobal.net
Hi Keith,
Sounds interesting! I have sent you a mail so you can contact me directly.
I think it would be easier to find the current best estimates for stellar distances that have been found by the Gaia project than what they were at the times Anderson wrote stories that mention a given star & its distance from the sun.
https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia
What that project is doing is amazing.
Kaor, Jim!
Of course! Anderson had to go by the knowledge and means available to him at the time he was writing these stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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