Occupations Of Nodes

"Nodes" (see recent posts):

develop new realms of mathematics;
create art;
observe organic life on planets orbiting different stars;
fabricate life in order to observe its development;
engage in myriad other matters, some transcending human concepts;
communicate continuously, thus generating the galactic brain whose viewpoint we do not see;
eventually remember Earth and decide to investigate;
transmit this decision to the settlement nearest to Sol.

Poul Anderson's Two AI Future Histories

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars future history, the Artificial Intelligences in the Solar System find that all new phenomena conform to their Theory of Everything so they lose interest in the external universe and turn within whereas the galactic nodes in Anderson's Genesis contemplate not only "...an infinity of virtualities and abstract creations..." but also "...a cosmos of realities..." (Part Two, I, p. 101)

Yet again, Anderson almost systematically examines every conceivable alternative. In Harvest Of Stars, humanity declines in the Solar System although technology enables it to thrive elsewhere whereas, in Genesis, human beings, unable to cross interstellar distances at sub-light speeds, become extinct on Earth but are re-created by the Terrestrial node.

Genesis is such a compact text that it bears more rereading than other works by Anderson.

Organic Nodes

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, I, pp. 101-102.

Although I have been describing the members or "nodes" of the galactic brain as inorganic intelligences, the omniscient narrator of Genesis describes each member as:

"...a local complex of organisms, machines, and their interrelationships." (p. 101)

He explains his use of the term "organisms." These units maintain themselves, reproduce at need and are conscious in a range from rudimentary to transcendent. Thus, they are not mechanistic but organic even though very little of their material substance comprises carbon compounds and most of their processes are quantum mechanical. They number in the many millions and the number increases steeply because the nodes reproduce as soon as they arrive at new destinations anywhere in the Milky Way and beyond. Any node can split into new minds with whatever bodies and sensors it needs. Thus, a node can be more than one mind.

The Future of GENESIS II

See The Future of GENESIS.

An emulation within Gaia inhabits an incomplete model of Earth but might an emulation within a trans-galactic brain inhabit a complete model of the universe and, if so, would there be any empirical difference between an emulation inhabiting a complete model of the universe and an organism inhabiting the universe? The trans-galactic brain would know the difference between the original and the model but, if the model were complete, then the emulations would be unable to detect any difference.

Whereas human beings imagine interventions by an extra-cosmic deity, emulations might experience interventions by the trans-galactic brain. However, unless the brain were to initiate a coherent dialogue, the emulations would be unable to repeat the interventions and therefore would be unable to analyze them scientifically. If a miracle happened once centuries ago, then we cannot now repeat or verify it. If there are reported interventions by a deity, might they in fact be interventions by the extra-galactic brain on the hypothesis that we are not organisms in the universe but emulations in a model of the universe?

Progress towards a trans-galactic brain is slow by our standards. The brain of a single galaxy is still in its infancy or even still being born. Nodes have spread through the spiral arms, into the halo, nearby clusters and Magellanic Clouds and some have reached the Andromeda galaxy.

The Future Of GENESIS

See "Nodes, Minds And Aspects II" here and earlier linked posts.

To reiterate:

aspects exist within minds;
minds and aspects exist within nodes;
nodes exist within the galactic brain;
organic brains and the galactic brain exist within the universe.

What will happen next?

The galaxy must have developed, or at least be developing, self-consciousness. Otherwise, it would not be described as having a brain. In fact:

"...the nodes were in continuous communication over the light-years, communication on tremendous bandwiths of every possible medium. This was the galactic brain. That unity, that selfhood that was slowly coalescing, might spend millions of years contemplating a thought; but the thought would be as vast as the thinker, in whose sight an eon was as a day and a day was as an eon.
"Already now, in its nascence, it affected the course of the universe."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, I, p. 103)

We are not told how one galaxy affects the universe.

Far from being absorbed into a single self, the nodes, or individual inorganic intelligences, are more unique than is possible for organisms:

chaos and quantum fluctuation prevent complete resemblance;
environment shapes personality;
environments are diverse and not just planetary surfaces;
each node can divide into multiple bodies and minds.

Something else is happening:

"The stars were also evolving." (Part One, IX, p. 97)

We are not told how. And:

"'If awareness is to survive the mortality of the stars, it must make the universe over. That work of billions or trillions of years will begin with some small, experimental undertaking.'" (Part Two, I, pp. 107-108.

Like maybe saving post-human Terrestrial life from extinction?

Also:

"Gaia lacked both the data and the capability necessary to model the entire universe, or even the entire Earth. Likewise did any other node, and the galactic brain. Powers of that order lay immensely far in the future, if they would ever be realized." (Part Two, V, p. 145)

So which will come first: modeling the universe or surviving it?

Genesis: Miscellaneous Points

"...the vatic utterances of prophets..."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, III, p. 125.

"...always the trend was ineluctable." (ibid.) (And here.)

I never knew what either of those words meant before googling them.

The thoughts of an inorganic intelligence are:

"...a progression of quantum flickerings..." (op. cit., p. 103)

So could these "flickerings" change their rhythm, thus generating an alternative timeline? See Temporal Models.

"When did the last human foot tread this world?" (p. 125)

Since "this world" is Earth, Anderson's "In Memoriam" and "The Chapter Ends" present alternative answers to the question.

That is all for tonight but there should be more about Genesis.

Nodes, Minds And Aspects II

See Nodes, Minds And Aspects.

Each of us experiences dialogue with others and can also experience:

"...the dialogue of a mind with itself..." (p. 103)

One of Anderson's powerful inorganic minds had a literal internal dialogue because it:

"...raised aspects of itself to interact like persons until it drew them back into its wholeness..." (ibid.)

The universe does that with us except that it, the universe, is not conscious either before or after the existence of its "aspects," individual organisms, whereas Anderson's inorganic minds are.

Again:

"...a node was not a single mind. It was as many as it chose to be..." (p. 102)

These minds are projected into bodies that gather experiences for as long as necessary before re-merging with the node. Because inorganic intelligences retain their individuality, they are called nodes, not cells, of the galactic brain.

Nodes, Minds And Aspects

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, I, pp. 102-103.

In Gaia And The Universe II, we compared emulations within Gaia to organisms within the universe. Now we can add:

minds within nodes (p. 102);
aspects within minds (p. 103).

First, let me summarize how I see consciousness within the universe:

reality is a single being, not homogeneous but internally differentiated;

being becomes conscious of itself;

thus, it becomes both a subject and an object of consciousness;

a subject of consciousness is a self;

however, self and other are interdependent like in-out, up-down, left-right etc;

thus, the one being becomes conscious of itself only by appearing to itself as other;

the processes that generate consciousness occur within organisms interacting with their environments;

therefore, a conscious organism becomes a "self" and its environment is "other" although the reality is that they are differentiations of a single being;

human beings can realize this unity, transcending alienation from the other;

thus, consciousness involves many selves within a single being;

however, since the single being is the subject and object of all consciousness, it is the one universal self transcending the many individual selves which are particular organisms;

the separate self is an illusion;

among human beings, each individual self can realize its identity with the universal self and can thus dispel the illusory separate self;

Buddhist "no soul" teaching is a denial of the separate self and Vedanta Brahman-Atman teaching is an identification of the individual self with the universal self.

And how that connects with Anderson's nodes, minds and aspects will have to be the subject-matter of a further post.

Regenerations

"'Treatments, therapies, regenerations, the whole kit of somatics, can only hold off aging for so long.'"
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part One, V, p. 39.

This is the equivalent of antiagathics, antisenescence, the antithanatic etc. See Immortality.

In Genesis, immortality is not of the body but by incorporation into AI.

In Doctor Who, Time Lords periodically "regenerate," combining rejuvenation with change of appearance/actor. Thus, Whovians would be amused to read this reference to "regenerations."

Was I mistaken in thinking that Genesis refers to the Anthropocene?

Visiting Laurinda Ashcroft

How will people greet each other in the future? See Angels And Service. In Laurinda's period of the Genesis future history, people bow briefly over bridged fingers - not an Anglo-Saxon gesture.

In Part One, V, Laurinda quotes what we recognize as Shakespeare and explains that she reads a lot. Fictional characters redeem her humanness which she might otherwise have lost while interfacing with Terra Central.

Characters are listed:

Hamlet;
Anne Elliot;
Wilkins Micawber;
Vidal Benzaguen.

I thought that Vidal would turn out to be a future fictional character. However, googling indicates that he is a Rudyard Kipling character. I found a link to a text although I know that such links do not work for all blog readers.

Finally (for tonight):

"Chairs shaped themselves to bodies with fluid, unnoticed sensuality." (p. 39)

More Future Furniture.

Haven't Future Histories Come A Long Way?

Copied from here.

"The Man Who Sold The Moon" is the title story of the first volume of Robert Heinlein's Future History. Genesis, a late novel by Poul Anderson, is a single volume future history. D.D. Harriman, the entrepreneur who "sold the Moon," lived underground because, despite its suitably comfortable interior, his dwelling was an elaborate nuclear air raid shelter. Laurinda Ashcroft, a human-AI interface in Genesis, lives underground because the ecology is planned. Thus, these works reflect the concerns of the different periods in which they were written.

When Laurinda receives a visitor in her underground home, there is, for me, a faint echo of Delos Harriman's conversation with his wife in their underground home but the most notable feature of these works is the many differences between them. Harriman and Laurinda inhabit earlier and later periods of different fictitious timelines so they cannot meet except in the imagination of a reader who sees some tenuous connection between them.

Another measure of the distance travelled by future histories is simply the vast difference in scope and scale between Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's much longer History of Technic Civilisation. In the Future History, capitalism develops the Solar System but becomes oppressive. Social disorder on Earth leads to an American theocracy. This is followed by the Covenant which, after some further troubles, leads to a "mature culture." In the Technic History, capitalism develops a vast volume of interstellar space but becomes monopolistic. Social breakdown in the Solar System leads to an Empire which lasts for several centuries and volumes and is followed, after the barbarism of the "Long Night" period, by bigger and stabler civilisations in several spiral arms.

 

"If This Goes On -" is the first of only two novels in Heinlein's Future History. Ringworld's Children is the fourth novel in Larry Niven's Ringworld Tetralogy and maybe the eleventh novel in his Known Space future history depending on how we count them. (There are works written by Niven, co-written by Niven and written by others.) "If This Goes On -" occupies partly familiar territory. All the action is on Earth and Americans still go to church. If anything, sociologically, they have moved backwards to a form of medievalism with the Prophetic priesthood misusing modern communications technology until they are overthrown by the Second American Revolution. By contrast, Ringworld's Children is set not only much further in the future but also not even on a planetary surface. 

Several intelligent species contend in the space around the Ringworld, sometimes using anti-matter as a weapon. A ghoul protector uses nanotech to move the Ringworld out of Known Space through hyper-space. At least three terms here require explanation: Ringworld; ghoul; protector. But my point is simply the vast distance travelled conceptually and technologically from "If This Goes On -" to Ringworld's Children.

However, both Anderson and Niven have written in an American future historical tradition initiated by Heinlein. Without Harriman and the Prophets, there might never have been a Technic Civilisation, a Laurinda or a Ringworld. 

The Anthropocene

Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers visit many historical periods but also:

the Oligocene period;
the Pleistocene Epoch;
the Miocene Epoch.

I thought that I had first read of the Anthropocene in Anderson's Genesis but cannot find any reference to this epoch on the blog. (However, all that this proves is that I have not posted about it yet.) I will reread the chapters where it is most likely to have been mentioned.

I thought that the Anthropocene should date from the agricultural revolution because hunters and gatherers were not yet changing their environment but merely surviving within it like other animal species. However, some scientists date this epoch from the beginning of catastrophic human impact on the environment - very recently. The data are scientific but their interpretation is embedded in politics and ideology.

However, inspired by Poul Anderson, we tackle all the big issues here.

Tools And Languages II

See Tools And Languages.

In Poul Anderson's first, "Psychotechnic," future history, technology causes mass unemployment. In his last future history, Genesis:

"Automation made traditional skills useless, raising resentment and despair side by side with new wealth and new hopes."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part One, II, p. 9.

However, in this passage, the author is not projecting a speculative future but summarizing the twentieth century before moving his narrative into the future. Only the last two developments summarized in this chapter are speculative:

"Artificial intelligence" (ibid.);
AI systems enhancing AI - soon without any human input.

Genesis begins where I, Robot ended. Everything about this late Anderson novel is appropriate: its title; its copyright and first publication date, 2000; its first mass market edition date, 2001.

Anderson summarizes technology:

gunpowder brought down societies;
steam engines changed civilizations;
internal combustion engines made Earth one neighborhood;
agriculture fed billions but starved nature;
computers undermined liberty but the Internet curbed tyrannies;
computers transformed industry, economics and everyday life;
the Internet revolutionized communication and access to knowledge;
(an earlier knowledge revolution was movable type);
automation and AI (see above).

One word: dynamic. It can be good to be alive now, if we are not on the receiving end of the considerable grief, but it is also necessary to think - and act - about the future.

Gaia And The Universe II

See Gaia And The Universe.

(Upanishadic rishis (seers) realized oneness, expressed as "Thou art that.")

A human being can intuit his oneness with the universe. This intuition is a realization, not an illusion, because each of us is in fact the universe conscious of itself at a particular place and time. We can understand this proposition intellectually even if we continue to feel separate.

Gaia can emulate a human being intuiting his oneness with the universe. This intuition also is a realization, not an illusion, because the emulated person is Gaia conscious of an emulated environment and Gaia is the universe conscious of itself at a particular place and time. The emulated person mistakenly thinks that he is a material organism, not an AI program. Thus, he does not understand the real basis of his consciousness but neither do most human beings. We do not understand our cerebral/cognitive/psychological processes any more than an emulation understands processes inside Gaia. However, lacking intellectual understanding, we remain capable of intuitive realization.

Hal Clement

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Adzel studies at the Clement Institute of Planetology on Earth and, in Anderson's Genesis, Christian Brannock works in Clement Base on Mercury.

Poul Anderson referred to:

"...Hal Clement's marvelously detailed and believable fictional worlds."
-Poul Anderson, Afterword to The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 513-515 AT p. 513.

In his SFWA Bulletin article, Anderson described The Man Who Counts as a Hal Clement-style novel and stated that Clement's works brilliantly hinted at the variety, strangeness and wonder of the universe.

Clement is to fictional planetology what Harry Turtledove is to alternative histories or Asimov is to robots. Anderson excels at all these themes. I read Mission Of Gravity once in the 1960s but have gone no further with Clement.

Gaia And The Universe

In Poul Anderson's Genesis:

Gaia is a powerful self-conscious inorganic intelligence;

within herself, Gaia runs many self-conscious programs which think that they are human beings living in particular periods of Terrestrial history;

each program perceives a simulated/"emulated" Terrestrial environment including what looks like his or her own body;

the programs remain unaware of their true nature as terminable "emulations" within Gaia.

In the real universe:

the universe becomes conscious of itself in many animal and human organisms;

each organism perceives both itself and an environment that is a small part of the universe;

we perceive real objects although an object as perceived is not the total object (our eyes detect a small cross-section of the electromagnetic spectrum and only on a particular spatiotemporal scale etc);

some human beings either intellectually understand or intuitively realize their oneness with the universe.

Similarities
Each program is Gaia perceiving a particular emulated environment.
Each organism is the universe perceiving a particular environment.

Differences
Gaia as a whole is conscious.
The universe [as a whole] is not. (Addendum: "as a whole" added. See comments.)

Venus

Wells' Martians invade Earth and Venus.

Stapledon's Martians invade Earth. His Terrestrials invade Venus, then Neptune.

Lewis' Ransom visits Mars and Venus. Other Lewis characters visit a different version of Mars.

ERB wrote about Mars. Otis Adelbert Kline imitated ERB by writing about Mars and Venus, then ERB imitated OAK by writing about Venus. ERB's Moon Men invade Earth and His Jovians plan to invade Mars.

Mars and Venus are colonized in Heinlein's Future History and in Anderson's Time Patrol series. Mars and Venus are terraformed and colonized in Anderson's Psychotechnic History whereas, in his Technic History, Venus is colonized after incomplete terraformation and Mars is settled by extrasolars. Anderson also has Martians who invade Earth.

A dictatorship is overthrown on Venus in Anderson's Psychotechnic History and in Blish's and Lowndes' The Duplicated Man.

Venus and Mars are explored in Niven's Known Space future history.

The already terraformed Venus and Mars are colonized in Stirling's Lords of Creation series.

Earlier blog references to Venus. (I forgot Bradbury who has a Mars, of course, but also a Venus. See here.)

What Can Happen In Thousands Of Years?

The previous post, about Poul Anderson's first future history, was linked to posts about his last future history. And how different they are.

In the linked post, "Reflections On History" (see here), we said that Laurinda Ashcroft summarized some history. Now let us consider that history in slightly greater detail.

The Neolithic Revolution:

tamed wilderness;
fed larger populations;
founded towns;
built smithies;
changed hunters into peasants under god-kings.

The Pharaohs were buried and their tombs were plundered;
the Persian Empire split, then fell to Alexander, who died young;
his empire disintegrated into a long bloodbath;
four centuries after Jesus, Christians killed each other;
in Japan, peace gave way to incessant conflicts;
in China, dynasties bloodily succeeded each other;
Mongols ruled half a continent for a few generations;
one remnant became Tsardom;
another bore Islam into India;
Spaniards conquered Aztec and Inca;
trans-Atlantic wealth energized northern Europe but Spain became tyrannical and corrupt;
the French Revolution produced Napoleon;
Sun Yat-sen led to Chiang Kai-shek and Mao;
modern weapons destroyed four empires, tens of millions of lives and the spiritual foundations of Western civilization;
there was a Second World War, a Cold War and wars between new nations;
science and superstition coexisted;
global communication speeded social fragmentation;
new technologies rehabilitated the environment;
we do not know what will happen next.

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, V, 2, pp. 50-51.

The Past Through The Future

A serious future history reflects on, and is informed by, past history, e.g., see:

Reflections On History
Tools And Language

In Poul Anderson's The Snows Of Ganymede, a Planetary Engineer, reflecting on what has become of the Psychotechnic Institute, comments that:

groups and organizations forget their original purposes;
means become ends;
the Christian Church started with the ideal of a universal brotherhood;
later, it burned those who disputed its authority.

The Church began with the proclamation of the Resurrection. Since this claim could be verified neither empirically nor rationally, the organization had to resort to authority and force. Jesus' original teaching:

"The kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe the good news." Mark 1:15 -

- I think did mean that a universal brotherhood was imminent. However, Jesus tried to initiate the kingdom or brotherhood by his own vicarious suffering and, after his execution, Peter proclaimed the Resurrection, which had not been Jesus' message.

Issues In The Early Psychotechnic History

(Ganymede and Callisto.)

The Institute, absorbing all similar groups, formulated fundamental equations about human relations with a field dynamics approach, made discoveries about individual psychometrics and brought about economic recovery through:

strengthened world government;
withering of nationalism;
education fitting the needs of the individual and society;
population decline;
conservation;
rational economics;
sane penology;
psychiatry;
critical thinking.

However, progress broke down because of:

Asiatic cultural resistance to technology;
general human resistance to rationality;
mass unemployment;
failure of the field equations to offer any solution.
-copied from here.

For my responses on "mass unemployment" and related social issues, see:

Mass Unemployment
Mass Unemployment II
The Solar Union: Unemployment
The Solar Union: Unemployment II
The Solar Union: Unemployment III
Causes Of The Humanist Revolution
The Solar Union
The Solar Union: Physics And Politics 

Can there be "rational economics" as long as there are employers and employed? In Mass Unemployment II" (see above), I discuss how the economy of the Solar Union seems to differ from economics as known to us. In familiar economics, competitive reinvestment causes the rate of profit to decline. See "The Economy Of The Solar Commonwealth" here and "Paramathematical Theory II" here. An employer, however "rational" or well intentioned, is economically pressured to lay off workers and/or hold down pay. Conflicts of economic interests are built into such economic arrangements. However, it may be that the Solar Union has gone beyond such economics in which case I think that it should be able to solve its problems.

Fiction And News

We read an installment of a future history series, then a newspaper article, but some of the same issues are addressed, e.g., should Europe, Earth or the Solar System be united? With the benefit of instantaneous communication, some of James Blish's characters federate the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds.

People living in Poul Anderson's Solar Union or Solar Commonwealth must read newspapers or their equivalent. In the Solar Union, they know that the Jovian System is a separate state but also that there is little direct contact with it. In the Solar Commonwealth, they know that Polesotechnic League companies sell many of the goods that they want but also that the League is an interstellar power defying governments limited to single planets or planetary systems.

Where is the line between the news and fiction? See "A Newspaper And A Novel" here. In my hearing, one hospital porter showed another a tabloid headline. The second man smiled in appreciation of the "story," whatever it was, then asked this crucial question, "Wha'? In real life or in t'soap?" First, he appreciated the "story" (news or fiction?), then he checked which of the two parallel narratives it belonged to.

The Psychotechnic Institute And The Psychotechnicians

We must always distinguish between people and an organization. Thus, on British television, a young person confronting a Government Minister and advocating "Communism" was immediately taken by the Minister to be speaking for the Communist Party although he was clearly completely independent of that organization - but he had to use some word for what he meant.

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnc History, we must distinguish between psychotechnicians and the Psychotechnic Institute. The reasons for the overthrow of the Institute are summarized here. However, when the Institute had been outlawed:

"'Tame' Psychotechnicians could not be dispensed with, but their powers were rigidly limited."
-Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 5, p. 51.

This explains how the Planetary Engineers continued to receive psychotechnic training. Their Order, based on the Moon, and armed and prepared for foreseeable times of trouble, would survive the Second Dark Ages on Earth and is one reason why there were still psychotechnicians in the much later Galactic civilization.

Future Histories Without Space Travel

Ragnarok
the future Buddha
Prophecy Of Merlin by John of Cornwall
Prophetiae Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth
The Shape Of Things To Come by HG Wells
Beyond Thirty by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan
the original Maurai History by Poul Anderson
the Emberverse History by SM Stirling

Not the Biblical Armageddon because, in that, a city flies down from heaven. See here.

Poul Anderson and SM Stirling are, of course, on the list.

ERB's main future history is a Moon trilogy and a sequel to his Martian series.

The Moon

For the view that no attempt should be made to give the Moon an atmosphere, read Future Historical Writing whereas, for a scheme to terraform the Moon, read Terraforming. Considering every aspect of an issue and every answer to a question is one feature of Poul Anderson's sf. For a summary of his Technic History account of the Moon, read "The Lunar Surface In Science Fiction" here.

In Wells' The First Men In The Moon, the lunar surface has a breathable atmosphere by day but it freezes at night. In ERB's The Moon Maid, there is a breathable atmosphere on the Moon's inner surface. Like the ERBian Earth (see here), the Moon is a hollow sphere, internally inhabited. Increased scientific knowledge has made such stories impossible except in the recent sub-genre of retro-sf.

Colonizing The Solar System

Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 4, pp. 30-32.

When a Planetary Engineer begins to lecture on terraforming, I search the blog for a key phrase, "special bacteria strains," and find a relevant earlier post.

For colonization of Ganymede in Heinlein's Juvenile Future History and also in an independent novel by Anderson, see:

Echoes Of Heinlein
Ganymede And Jupiter

The rings of Saturn are mined for water for a colony on Mars in Anderson's Psychotechnic History and also in Asimov's "The Martian Way."

In Niven's Known Space future history, human beings colonize not the Solar planets, apart from Luna, but the Asteroid Belt. However, a human protector diverts a water asteroid onto Mars not for the benefit of human beings but in order to exterminate the Martians. Becoming extinct on their home planet, Martians survive on the Ringworld.

Comparing future histories, e.g., here, is a fascinating subsidiary discipline within sf scholarship.

Future Religions

The Atlanteans expected "Father" to strike people down so that was a fragment of Christian belief! (See here.) The White American Church warns:

"'Rouse not the anger o' the Lord...'"
-The Snows Of Ganymede, Chapter 4, p. 29.

Heinlein's Future History has the puritanical Angels of the Lord. In Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, has "Believers," called "Witnesses" in some editions and clearly identical with Jehovah's Witnesses, whereas Volume IV, The Triumph Of Time, has the fundamentalist Warriors of God. Ironically, the Believers proclaim that millions now living will never die just as the antiagathics are being developed. Later, the Warriors oppose any human intervention in the coming cosmic collision on the ground that this will jeopardize their salvation.

In these future histories, such religious beliefs are seen as obstacles to human progress whereas CS Lewis' anti-Wellsian sf shows literal divine intervention in the Solar System.

Angels And Service

In Robert Heinlein's Future History:

the theocratic followers of the Prophets Incarnate are "Angels of the Lord";

in post-Revolutionary society, it is polite to ask others if you can do them a service and this is abbreviated to "Service" (maybe because there was a successful pre-Revolutionary company called "General Services").

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, in the White American Church colony on Ganymede, a man is introduced as "'Angel-three Garson'" and the visiting Planetary Engineers are asked:

"'Can we do y'all a service?'"
-The Snows Of Ganymede, Chapter 4, p. 24.

2100 In Three Histories

"By Twenty-one hundred A.D., the Jovial colonists found themselves without a sponsor, no ties to Earth, almost completely cut off by the expense of travel to their system."
-Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 3, p. 15.

Volume III of Robert Heinlein's Future History is Revolt In 2100 although the Time Chart puts "If This Goes On -," about the Second American Revolution, before 2075. "The Barrier," which encloses the post-Revolutionary Coventry, is dated 2100.

In James Blish's Chronology of Cities In Flight:

2105 Fall of the West (an agreed arbitrary date).

Very "arbitrary." Why not just cite the round number, 2100?

Anderson has colonials in the Jovian System whereas Blish has:

2021 Escape of the "Colonials" from the Jovian system.

Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), pp. 6-7.
James Blish, Year 2018! (London, 1964), pp. 157-159.

Martial And Jovial

An inflected Latin noun has both a root and an ending. Thus, the accusative case of Mars is Martem.

Mart- = root;
-em = ending. 

Since the nominative case does not always give the root, both nominative and genitive cases are cited. Thus: Mars, Martis.

The root, Mart-, generated the English adjectives, "martial" and "Martian." The root, Jov-, generated "jovial" and "Jovian." The root, Vener-, generated "venerate," "venerable," "venereal" and "Venerian" (not "Venusian").

ERB's John Carter, a soldier, regards Mars as his god of war and finds that the Martians are martial. Robert Heinlein once wrote:

"...the sharp, bright stars of the Martial sky..."
-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 131-140 at p. 135.

Poul Anderson once wrote:

"...the Jovial colonists..."
-Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 3, p. 15.

Jovians And Inner Planetarians

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Solmen live on Solar planets, not on Sol. Earlier, Jovians, contrasted with "inner planetarians" (The Snows Of Ganymede, Chapter 2, p. 13), lived on Jovian moons, not on Jupiter. There were then only two states in the Solar System, the Solar Union and Jupiter. The Jovians wanted the Planetary Engineers to terraform Ganymede and Callisto.

Sometimes an author of a future history summarizes by quoting from a fictional history book, e.g., de la Garde's Short History Of Interplanetary Colonization is quoted on pp. 14-16 of Chapter 3 in The Snows Of Ganymede. The Years of Madness (see here) are called "...the lunatic years..." (p. 14) We knew from "Un-Man" that the Pilgrim Church had emigrated to Mars. Now we learn that the White American Church had emigrated to Ganymede in the Jovian System. The psychotechs secretly encouraged the emigration and the government covertly funded it in order to bankrupt the anti-technological movement back on Earth. The plot thickens.

Cosmic Interference

"He beamed a call, but there was no answer. Only the dry whisper of cosmic interference."
-Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 4.

Compare the "...dismal universal hiss..." in John Milton and James Blish here. I had thought that Blish mentioned not a "hiss" but the music of the spheres"! See:

Song Of Earth
Cosmic Questions
Contact Re-Established (Out Of The Silent City)

Blish wrote that no one had ever heard "...the sound of the stars..." (The Star Dwellers, Chapter 12, p. 117) "...until two centuries after [Milton] but nobody has ever described it better." (ibid.) Maybe Anderson's "...dry whisper..." is a good attempt?

(I must have misremembered "the sound of the stars" as "the music of the spheres.")

Callistite And Psychotechnicians

Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 2.

Someone about to travel to the Jovian system is asked to bring back some "'...green callistite.'" (p. 10) What is that?

Krypton: Kryptonite: green Kryptonite;

Callisto: callistite: green callistite?

Cadets in the Order of Planetary Engineers receive:

"...mind training under some of the most skilled psychotechnicians in the Solar System..." (p. 11)

How is this possible since the Psychotechnic Institute was outlawed and the Engineers will soon learn that psychotechnicians hiding in the Jovian system plot a violent return?

The outer Solar System is slightly closer to interstellar travel. Later Anderson characters will go further than the outer planets into the cometary halo.

Explorers And Engineers

In Star Trek: Discovery, a Star Fleet spaceship crew member does not want to fight, claiming that he and his colleagues are explorers, not soldiers. Nevertheless, their ships are armed because the galaxy contains nasty surprises like the Klingon Empire.

In Poul Anderson's The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), the politically neutral Order of Planetary Engineers are soldiers only:

"...in man's finest war, the fight of all men against a blind and indifferent nature which had brought their kind forth without caring." (Chapter 1, p. 6)

Nevertheless, in their Archimedes Academy (the "Abbey") on the Moon:

"There were also guns and arsenals and launching racks for guided missiles, but they were hidden, and nothing was said about them. They had been stocked against a day of trouble which might or might not come." (Chapter 2, p. 9)

When human civilization does face an interstellar threat, it is from the anti-technological Alori, very different from the militaristic Klingons.

Adzel And Technic Civilization

"'A word to the right men - that does appear to be how your Technic civilization operates, no? Zothkh.'"
(The Van Rijn Method, p. 191)

This remark is made by Adzel. "Zothkh" is an untranslated Wodenite syllable like the Eriau "Kraich." Here a Wodenite comments perceptively on a human-dominated society. How do Wodenite and other societies operate? Merely by putting these words into the mouth of an extraterrestrial, Anderson offers us an external slant on humanity. Adzel's knowledge is practical: on Jim's behalf, he contacts a League Master Merchant who needs an apprentice...

Telephones have screens but there are no mobile phones so Betty has had to leave with her father numbers where she might be contactable, like Adzel's. Later in the Technic History, Flandry does have a pocket phone (here).

Simon Snyder has both "...computers..." and "...information retrievers." (p. 194) See discussion of infotrieves.

Why is "Gotterdammerung" rendered as "G...tterdammerung..."? (p. 193)

(Notes taken while sitting in a cafe.)

Tech Or Trek

A visit to Andrea always generates material for blogging. Today, we watched the first two episodes of the sixth Star Trek live action TV series, Discovery.

(i) "How To Be Ethnic..." was written as a prequel to the trader team stories;
the Young Flandry Trilogy was written as a prequel to the Captain Flandry series;
Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Discovery were written as prequels to Star Trek.

(ii) Poul Anderson describes space battles whereas Star Trek shows them.

(iii) Vulcans and Chereionites are telepathic.

(iv) Klingons and Roidhunate Merseians are racial supremacists.

I advise Star Trek fans to read Anderson.

Dissatisfaction

See here.

James Ching tells us:

"League apprenticeships are scarcer than hair on a neutron, and mostly filled by relatives. (That's less nepotism for its own sake than a belief that kin of survivor types are more likely to be the same than chance-met groundhugger kids.) (p. 179)

A splendid rationalization! I was the complete opposite of my father, a successful businessman.We begin to understand why there is social disaffection in the Solar Commonwealth.

"How To Be Ethnic..." III

See "How To Be Ethnic..." II here.

James Ching tells us:

"I eased my muscles, let the lounger mold itself around me..." (p. 179)

See Future Furniture.

"Not many regular spaceman's berths become available annually, and a hundred young Earthlings clamor for each of them." (p. 174)

The unsuccessful try to get work that will send them outsystem or save and go as tourists. The Technic History recounts the adventures of the successful but also tells us that there there is a lot of dissatisfaction. There will be problems later.

"How To Be Ethnic..." II

See "How To Be Ethnic..." here.

For an earlier account of life in the future in this story, see "Living In The Future" here.

When James Ching visits Betty Riefenstahl:

"A full-wall transparency framed her where she continued standing, in city glitter and shimmer, a sickle moon with a couple of pinpoint cities visible on its dark side, a few of the brightest stars." (p. 184)

In Heinlein's Future History, a common sight is the stratospheric rocket passing overhead. Here, cities are visible on the moon.

James knows Adzel and knows of both Cynthia and Ythri. Adzel and the Cynthian, Chee Lan, will work with David Falkayn who will lead the joint human-Ythrian colonization of Avalon. The future is already here. It just needs time to unfold.

"How To Be Ethnic..."

The image shows the back cover blurb of Roger Elwood, Ed., Future Quest (Avon, 1974).

Poul Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" was originally published in this anthology where it would have been read as one of several juvenile short stories, each with a different teenage protagonist. Anyone familiar with Anderson's Psychotechnic League stories would recognize the name, "Adzel," which opens the story although here it appears in a completely different context. A first person narrator refers to his friend or acquaintance:

"Adzel talks a lot about blessings in disguise..."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 177.

In this edition, pp. 175-176 are Hloch's informative Introduction from The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

Anyone reading the Technic History for the very first time in this edition will not recognize Adzel's name because this story is a prequel to the earlier published installments.

The narrator, James Ching, uses the verb, "arbite." (p. 178) (?)

James confirms that Adzel was converted to Buddhism while on Earth. (p. 181) (See here.)

I will continue to reread "How To Be Ethnic..." for its details of life in the Solar Commonwealth.

A Final Pathetic Fallacy

After a lot of fighting, Davis Bertram has finally been accepted and welcomed as a Man so what happens? Women lay their weapons at his feet and:

"'Welcome,' said a voice. 'Welcome, Man.'
"The sun swung from behind Minos and day burned across watery wastes and the far eastern mountains."
-Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (London, 1966), Chapter XIX, p. 147.

At the exact moment when the fighting ends and he is welcomed, the eclipse ends; the wastes and the world are lit. The figurative day burns not the Atlanteans - who have just been threatened with a blaster gun - but the problems that had been caused by their planetary isolation.

Where other authors would give us just a full stop, Anderson follows it with an appropriate Pathetic Fallacy which we momentarily notice before reading on to find out what happens next.

Peaceful Coexistence

I am not a fan of military sf. However, Poul Anderson wrote very good military sf. See Battle In Space II and All The Traps Of Avalon.

Covering every angle, Anderson also presented many cases of peaceful cooperation between rational species:

the Solar Commonwealth allowed extra-solar aliens to colonize Mars;

the Terran Empire made Mars, with these "Martians," a Duchy;

the Empire sold Jupiter to the Domain of Ymir;

many species cooperated in the Polesotechnic League and later in the Terran Empire;

Ythrian and human colonists amicably divided Avalon between them, many human beings joined choths and some Ythrians adopted the human life-style of individuals in a global community;

immigrants from Merseia lived on Dennitza, contributed to Dennitzan society and retained Vachs while also sending representatives to a third House of the legislature;

members of some species adopted and practiced the religions of others;

in the Psychotechnic History, dwellers on terrestroid planets and dwellers on Jovoids amicably divided the galaxy between them.

So it is not all war and strife.

The Golden Gate Revisited

See The Golden Gate and The Golden Gate Bridge.

I began to draft a post on peaceful cooperation between diverse intelligent species in Poul Anderson's works as against his (also very good) military sf. It occurred to me that perhaps the highest form of cooperation was conversion to each other's religions. Although we know that members of the Galilean Order converted Axor to Jerusalem Catholicism on Woden, I think that Adzel, also a Wodenite, was converted to Mahayana Buddhism while studying on Earth. However, I began to reread "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" in order to confirm whether Adzel was or was not already Buddhist before coming to Earth. Instead, I found a previously unnoticed reference to the Golden Gate:

"The Riefenstahl's apartment overlooked the Golden Gate. I saw lights twinkle and flare, heard distant clangor and hissing, where crews worked around the clock to replicate an ancient bridge."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 184.

Robert Heinlein's Future History was praised for giving the future a daily life. Some passages in Anderson's Technic History convey a sense of what it might be like to live in the Solar Commonwealth or the later Terran Empire.

Now Here Or Nowhere?

If a priesthood teaches that a god will return and the god does return, then the priests, to avoid redundancy, might denounce the god as an impostor. This is the message of Samuel Butler's Erewhon Revisited as also of Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet although, in the latter case, we must say not "god" but "Man."

To preserve their power, the Doctors/priests who control the parthenogenesis machine on the women-only colony planet of Atlantis denounce Davis Bertram as not a Man but a Monster. Another group that tries to turn the new situation to its advantage is the Burkes of Burketown who plan to keep the Man and his sons when he has had some for their own use, thus becoming independent of the Doctors!

Inevitably, Davis' advent makes him a pawn in planetary power politics. All will be resolved, no doubt.

Further Visions

It is good when a future history series has an episode set in a further future, giving us a hint of  "what happened later" or "how it all turned out." Counting The Time Machine as a miniature future history, we can take our examples from:

HG Wells;
Robert Heinlein;
James Blish (2);
Poul Anderson (2);
Larry Niven.

After spending a few days with the Morlocks and Eloi, the Time Traveler has his "Further Vision" of the end of life on Earth.

Volume V of Heinlein's Future History shows us what became of the original generation ship.

In Volume IV of Blish's Cities In Flight:

the Web of Hercules has replaced Earthman culture in the Milky Way;
Earthmen have settled the Greater Magellanic Cloud;
the planet He returns from intergalactic space;
before a cosmic collision, Herculeans and human beings contend to occupy the Metagalactic Center;
after the collision, Hevians and New Earthmen create new universes from their own bodies while the Herculeans leave a record that will be read in a subsequent universe.

In Book Four of Blish's The Seedling Stars, Adapted Men have spread through the galaxy and will recolonize a changed Earth.

In Anderson's "The Chapter Ends," human civilization has moved to the Galactic Center, leaving the periphery to gas giant dwellers.

In Anderson's "Starfog":

human civilizations have spread through several spiral arms;
the no longer human descendants of earlier exiles are encountered;
mining the Cloud Universe will generate immense wealth.

In Niven's "Safe At Any Speed":

Known Space has become the Thousand Worlds;
technology is at its peak;
a gene for luck has become dominant.

We celebrate creative imagination!

Regions And Gobblies

Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (London, 1966).

The orspers always look dreadful.

"Judging from the names and the fragments of Christian belief, [the Ship's] complements had been purely North American; regional distinctions had still been considered important in those days."
-Chapter IX, pp. 68-69.

In the days of Solmen, North America is regarded as a mere region!

The only Christian fragment that I can see is the reference to "Father," which could have a more general significance and makes sense in terms of women having to use parthenogenesis.

I asked about "Cobblies." Now we get:

"...Critters and Gobblies."
-Chapter X, p. 74.

Was "Cobblies" (p. 38) a misprint for "Gobblies" (p. 74)?

James Blish once said that I read his works very closely. I think that I am going even further with Anderson. The blogging format helps. It is possible to pause and comment on any word or phrase and, with some writers, it turns out to be worthwhile to do this.

Expect The Unexpected

Although sf is about the unexpected, some of its features become familiar.

Davis Bertram:

exercises in double gravity, like Dominic Flandry;
misses coffee, like Time Patrollers;
must not disrupt the societies that he visits, like the Enterprise, Okies and Time Patrollers;
becomes involved in local wars, like a lot of space and time travelers.

In some ways, we learn what to expect, even though we seek the unexpected. Entirely predictable sf fails. Poul Anderson succeeds.

The Evolution Of Future Histories

Extrasolar colonists and interstellar traders are complementary, not contradictory. Thus, James Blish's Okies could have traded with his Adapted Men. However, the logic of the pantropy series took it into a remote future when Earth had changed enough to be recolonized by Adapted Men whereas the logic of the Okies with their antiagathics had some of them surviving until the end of the universe which, for narrative purposes, came sooner than expected with a cosmic collision. The two series, having acquired incompatible endings, also acquired different although parallel beginnings. References to Oc dollars, the ultraphone and "gods of all stars" in The Seedling Stars suggest a stage in their composition when the two series could have been one.

Poul Anderson's Technic History features a Terran Empire ruled from Archopolis whereas both his "The Star Plunderer" and his "The Chapter Ends" refer to a First Empire ruled from Sol City. However, "The Star Plunderer" became a pivotal story in the Technic History whereas "The Chapter Ends" became the culmination of the Psychotechnic History.

In Robert Heinlein's works, Dahlquist, the Space Patrol, Rhysling, a Stone Family in Luna City and particular versions of Martians and Venerians link five early Scribner Juveniles to The Green Hills Of Earth, Volume II of the Future History, but the Juveniles are incompatible with the Future History as a whole. Thus, Heinlein wrote what I call a Juvenile Future History.

So far, this post has referred to three sf authors each writing two future histories but the real situation is more complicated. Anderson wrote several future histories (see here). Blish gave his Okies the instantaneous Dirac communicator but then had to develop the full implications of this communicator in a third future history. My advice: read them all.