Controversial As Ever

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 2.

Anson Guthrie distinguishes between schools that teach facts and how to think for yourself and those that teach a party line. (p. 25) There are facts, like the dates of the World Wars, but, beyond that, in subjects like history and sociology, neutral "facts" are hard to find. Nevertheless, as long as that is recognized, facts should be sought and thinking for yourself should be the main aim of education. (I once discussed whether Britain had a right to the Falklands with school pupils during the Falklands War.) I favor secular school education with religious instruction, if any, received in another building on another day of the week. However, it would be dictatorial to impose that. In practice, parents must decide whether to send children to denominational schools.

Guthrie denounces "environment" and "social justice" as "dreary dreck" and quotes Churchill on "equality of misery." (p. 23) If Churchill meant that some should remain in misery, then I disagree! No doubt the fictional Renewal can be shown to impose environmentalism and justice in a deadening and dictatorial way. Nevertheless, I submit that environmental concerns and the dictates of "natural justice" (a legal term) should be part of any social arrangements. Words are treacherous. If I wrote not "environmental concerns" but "environmentalism," then I might seem to be advocating a particular view of environmental issues.

(This might be the last post for this month, depending on what happens later.) 

The Stars Are Also Fire, Chapter 3

This chapter has a rich vocabulary, some of it invented. I might not get through it all tonight.

A character is called "Venator," Latin for "hunter," as in Canes Venatici, "the hunter's dogs."

"Teramind" (p. 32) does not mean "Terra-mind."

Venator travels on a fahrweg. (p. 42)

A "sophotect" (p. 39) is an Artificial Intelligence.

Luna has not only bistros but also bagnios. (p. 30)

Venator is a "synnoiont" (p. 37), capable of "Synnoiosis" (p.34), partial or complete union with the cybercosm of which the highest point is the Teramind.

The two levels of virtual reality are "vivifer" (p. 39) and quivira.

In Tychopolis on Luna, there is a Tsiolkovsky Prospect. (p. 29)

That is most of it. I might round up some further points tomorrow.

Other Authors' Characters

Poul Anderson contributed to several other authors' series and, in at least one volume (see "Multiverse: The Contributors," here), other authors have contributed to his. Can one author write another author's character well? It can be done.

Anderson wrote detective fiction and also Catholic characters, including clergy, so it is not wandering too far off the reservation to cite the current British Father Brown series with original scripts about Chesterton's characters. (Sheila was at University with one of the actors in this image.)

In one episode, Flambeau morally blackmails Brown to help him steal a jeweled cross that is a Coronation present from the Pope to the Queen of England but all's well that ends well. A very dramatic Brown-Flambeau story not written by Chesterton.

The next post will, or at least should, return to Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire.

Salerianus

Poul Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995) begins with a quotation attributed to:

"-Salerianus,
"Quaestiones, II, i, 1-16"

Googling "Salerianus Quaestiones," I found only references to the text of The Stars Are Also Fire.

Salerianus begins:

"What did you see, Proserpina,
"When you were down in the dark?"

These lines perfectly blend poetry, mythology and philosophy:

poetry because the form is poetic;
mythology because Proserpina is mythological;
philosophy because the question is about the reality underlying and encompassing life.

Death is:

"The undiscovered country from whose bourn
"No traveler returns..." (see here)

Our ancestors might have believed that Proserpina literally descended and returned but we can easily differentiate the mythological story from the philosophical question.

Flashback

In Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars Tetralogy, one kind of virtual reality is called a "quivira."

In Volume II of the Tetralogy, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995), Ian Kenmuir contemplates "...Dagny Beynac, centuries dead...." (1, p. 16) and imagines her when young.

Chapter 2, entitled "The Mother of the Moon" for reasons yet to be explained, is an extended flashback to when Anson Guthrie was still alive, seven years after he had founded Fireball. Guthrie walks along a beach with young Dagny Ebbesen and reveals that he is her grandfather. Important events occur on beaches. See On The Beach. (Also, a Danellian tells Everard and Wanda the meaning of the Time Patrol on a beach at the end of The Shield Of Time.)

Although this is at least the third time that I have read The Stars Are Also Fire, I have no memories of this beach walk and conversation. It is as if these were new and fresh events. Meanwhile, in Kenmuir's present, his employer, the Lunarian Lilisaire, has urgently recalled him from mining in the asteroid belt but for what purpose? The plot thickens.

We are glad that Anderson wrote sequels to The Guardians Of Time and also to Harvest Of Stars.

AI As Alien

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995), 1.

Having established a future background in Harvest Of Stars, Anderson constructs a new narrative set against that same background in The Stars Are Also Fire: Demeter, the cybercosm, Lunarians etc.

Valanndray is a Lunarian whose name sounds like "Valenderay." There are at least two languages in the Solar System: Anglo and Lunarian.

"An inorganic intelligence - a machine with consciousness, if you wanted to think of it in those terms - was too alien to them both." (pp. 8-9)

("Them both" are members of two different human species.)

I do not want to think of an "inorganic intelligence" in any particular terms. I want to know what it is. Either it is a conscious artifact or it is not. I substitute "artifact" for "machine" because the latter term might imply an artifact with merely mechanical, therefore unconscious, internal processes.
 
When Dr. Richard Slaughter suggested to Isaac Asimov that Artificial Intelligences would be the real aliens, Asimov replied, "I might get a story out of that..." Asimov's robots are conscious because they have artificial, "positronic," brains. However, Asimov wrongly said that a robot is merely a mobile computer. A computer is programmed to manipulate symbols according to rules but is not conscious of:

the meanings of the symbols;
the fact that the symbols have meanings;
the fact that conscious beings input data and interpret outputs;
its environment;
itself;
in fact, anything.

A brain is conscious, at least of sensory inputs, and therefore is more or other than an organic computer. Anderson's ambiguous phrase, "...if you wanted to think of it in those terms...," merely obscures the issue. We judge that an animal is conscious whereas an inanimate object is not. This is a matter of evidence, not just of how we want to think about them.

"Long afterward..."

My criterion has become that, if my memories of rereading and posting about a work by Poul Anderson have receded sufficiently far into the past, then it is time to revisit that work. However several titles meet this criterion and compete for attention. The present winners are Volumes II and III of the Harvest of Stars Tetralogy.

Since Volume III, The Stars Are Also Fire, has 562 pages, we are likely to be here for some time. An unentitled introductory passage begins:

"Long afterward, there came to Alpha Centauri news of what had happened on Earth and around Sol."
-Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995), p. 1.

This sentence combines two opposite narrative techniques. First, it evokes a remote past: once upon a time; long ago... Secondly, it locates the narrative in our future at a time when colonists in the Centaurian system look back at Earth and even at the entire Solar System. Poul Anderson moves us backwards and forwards in time in a few words. I did not expect to make these remarks on reopening the book. We must always re-approach Poul Anderson's texts expecting depth and detail.

I am reasonably pleased with recent posts on James Blish Appreciation although that blog continues to receive less page views. Think of Anderson and Blish as two sides of a single coin.

Commentary

I have checked. See Pro-Space Propaganda. "Commentary" in Space Folk is not the same text as "Introduction" in Explorations but they argue the same case and both tell us to look up.

I have found something that I thought that I had read. I had thought that Poul Anderson argued somewhere that a successful liberal politician must be dishonest because, if he is successful, then he is intelligent and, if he is intelligent, then he knows that liberal values are falsehoods. This is clearly the passage that I had in mind although its targets are not, as I had thought, liberal politicians but "demagogues":

"'Appropriate technology' is a slogan by which a few demagogues, some of whom must know better and are therefore consciously lying, rouse hordes of ignoramuses who who can't be bothered to learn a little elementary science."
-Poul Anderson, "Commentary" IN Anderson, Space Folk (New York, 1989), pp. 257-260 AT p. 258.

Across The Sky

This is another post for the Milky Way thread although the galaxy is not named in the relevant passage. The Arvelans, visiting aliens, are on Taiwan at night. They see:

a mountain rising to the right and plunging to the left;

downward, yellow windows and a twinkling seashore village;

"...the ocean, like living obsidian, bridged by a moonglade." (p. 133) (In this linked Wiktionary article, notice the quotation from Mirkheim);

"Across the sky glimmered the galaxy." (ibid.);

there are many individual stars.

We have encountered this use of the word "glade" three times before:

Rain And Words
Glades And The Dead
Four Senses On St. Li In Oronesia

Pro-Space Propaganda

Poul Anderson, Introduction IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, 1981), pp. 7-11.

This Introduction is pro-space propaganda. Is it the same text as an article in the same author's Space Folk? I will check.

Anderson lists "...nearly unlimited economic returns..." from "...a permanent human presence in space..." (p. 10):

inexhaustible, free, clean, solar energy;
abundant raw materials;
industries that cannot pollute Earth;
entire new industries;
abolition of all Terrestrial poverty;
from this last, incalculable spiritual benefits.

Questions
Why is this not happening?
Is the initial capital expenditure prohibitive?
Even if solar energy is free at the point of production, will the controllers of the solar collectors try to profit by charging for it or, alternatively, divert their investments to profitable activities elsewhere?
Will pollution recur on a larger scale in space?
Is abolition of poverty compatible with a market economy where wealth is concentrated in fewer hands?

Meanwhile, let's get out into space and see what does result.

The Differences II

When Voah-and-Rero realize that one of them is to be killed, they go berserk, attacking and killing their kidnappers. When Maclaren joins the fight on their behalf, they are not grateful but appalled because, in order to help them, Maclaren has left his own wife in danger. Maclaren and Tamara were thinking of the greater good.

Voah-and-Rero recommend a pact with mankind but nevertheless remain convinced that human beings know too little of love. Thus, Poul Anderson clarifies the difference between the two species.

The Differences

An Arvelan female carries a fetus for a much shorter time than a human woman, then gives the newly born baby to the male who puts it in his pouch but must stay near the female to hand the baby over for feeding. Males are large and strong whereas females are small and agile. Work has always been done by mated couples. The animal ancestors had hunted in male-female teams. Personalities blend. Remarriage would mean becoming a different person. Usually, Arvelans do not want that. Monogamy is not a moral obligation but a psychological necessity. Voah-and-Rero are surprised and shocked that Tamara Ryerson has become Tamara Maclaren so soon after being widowed.

Anderson very cleverly develops this sequel from the way things had been left between the human characters at the end of The Enemy Stars. Maclaren, struggling to survive in space with his friend, Ryerson, had become focused on Tamara before he had even met her, then returned to Earth to find her with her newly born son, named after his father. That Maclaren and Tamara should marry seems very natural to other human beings.

Control And Controversy

I googled for images of British Sikhs and found this image of some of them protesting against Modi.

I had wanted images of Sikhs to illustrate a parallel between my experience and that of Poul Anderson's Terangi Maclaren whom we are pleased to meet again, having first encountered him in The Enemy Stars. Maclaren knows that he should address an Arvelan couple as "'...Voah-and-Rero.'" ("The Ways of Love," p. 132. See here.) When I visited the house of Daljit Singh in Manchester, I knew that I should not address his wife as "Mrs. Singh." That is all. But the details help. I once offended a Jewish man by pronouncing the Tetragrammaton and will avoid that mistake in future.

In "The Ways of Love," the Citadel is busy controlling humanity, including the extrasolar colonies where there is disaffection, subversion and rebellion. Then grant the colonies their independence and treat them as equals! Has no one learned anything from history? The Arvelans have no government so some human beings ask whether humanity needs the Citadel. Good question. Arvelans are different but such questions need to be asked. Merging human and Arvelan matter transmission systems will double the space and planets accessible to humanity, thus making the human race ungovernable, causing it to expand unpredictably in many directions. The Protectorate will not survive. Then it does not deserve to. We are back to earlier Arguments.

Alien Views Of Mankind II

See Alien Views Of Mankind.

Poul Anderson's own view of governments becomes evident when he articulates alien viewpoints. Having read an Ythrian account of "nations" in the above-linked post, we learn how an Arvelan defines "Officials":

"Not parents, not tribal elders, not Speakers for an Alliance or their executive servants - no, agents of that huge bloodless organization called a "government," which claims the right to slay whomever resists the will of its dominators."
-"The Ways of Love," (p. 126) (see the above link).

Apart from being slain, we can be fined, imprisoned or given community service but usually we just vote, pay taxes and observe laws. However, the state does indeed claim a monopoly on violence and is capable of waging wars that are far more destructive than the crimes committed by some of its terrorist opponents. A bomb in our capital city? A terrorist atrocity. The bombing of a foreign city? An act of war.

We will get beyond it (I think).

Scientific Survival

In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, a guillotined head immediately attached to scientific apparatus is kept alive and able to speak although it later transpires that the entity speaking through the "Head" is not the executed man but a demon. In addition, Lewis assumes souls.

In James Blish's Midsummer Century, a brain is kept alive and able to speak indefinitely in a case in a museum. In addition, a personality is a semistable electromagnetic field that fades away when it loses its computing apparatus and energy source.

In Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, although brains die with their bodies, some personalities with their memories are incorporated into artificial, post-organic intelligences and thus survive indefinitely. There is no other means of survival.

This is a tripartite conceptual progression:

a brain kept alive in its skull;
a brain kept alive in a case;
a personality preserved in an AI.

Apprehensions Of Feelings

The Arvelan couple are called Voah and Rero. Rero's:

"...smells, vapor cloud, color-change cells gone black..." ("The Ways of Love," p. 121) (see here)

show Voah that she is horrified - immediate olfactory and visual apprehension of his partner's emotions, almost as direct as mental apprehension by telepathy.

Can the Arvelans conceal their emotions, dissemble - or act? They watch "...choreodramas..." (p. 118)

Voah wonders how human beings express their deepest feelings to each other. (p. 119) Good question. Well, we do not do it by emitting strong smells and vapors and changing skin color - although a woman friend once instantly went deep red in the face when unexpectedly approached from behind by a guy that she liked. (Not me.)

I recognize that the Arvelans are the way they are, that we are the way we are and that the two ways are different but this is fiction. Are there any extrasolar races out there, do any of them correspond to sf writers' imaginings and will there be First Contact in our lifetimes? If and when First Contact does occur, it will initiate a new and unpredictable period of history.

Posting on James Blish Appreciation continues here and here.

The Citadel

Poul Anderson mentions the Citadel in The Enemy Stars, then describes it in "The Ways of Love." This is good future historical writing even though only in a single novel and short story, set only a decade apart.

The Citadel is an Alpine fortress, "...remodeled and enlarged to hold the masters of the globe..." ("The Ways of Love," see here.)

From a parapet, the visiting Arvelian couple see:

steeps and cliffs tumbling into a valley;
heights beyond;
a waterfall;
white peaks.

The narrator explains that, on Earth, water often freezes and that the sun appears slightly larger than Sarnir. Wind booms hollowly while his wife non-verbally expresses her wish to experience the Terrestrial environment directly without having to wear a spacesuit to protect her from its oxygen.

More On The Arvelian View Of Humanity

"We looked upon him - not then aware that he was male, for the human genitals are as peculiar as the human psyche...
"He looked grotesquely like us and unlike us...
"...with five digits to a hand, no part truly resembling anything of ours...
"Most striking, perhaps, was the skin. Save for patches of hair and a scattering of it everywhere else, that skin was smooth, yellowish-white, devoid of color-change cells and vapor vents. I wondered how such a folk expressed themselves, their deepest feelings, to each other. (I still do.)"
-"The Ways of Love." (see here.)

The narrator goes on to say that the eyes were the eeriest: white around blue in a weirdly convoluted face without any tendrils.

No color-change cells, vapor vents or tendrils: alien indeed!

Having recounted how Dave Ryerson had died in an alien ship in The Enemy Stars, it was a stroke of genius next to describe exactly that same event from the other point of view and, of course, Anderson was free to create the Arvelians de novo and ex nihilo, having merely indicated something of their physical appearance in the previous text.

Alien Views Of Mankind

"...pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 520.

"Above all, O people of Arvel, never pity the beings on Earth. If you do, then sorrow will drown you. They know so little of love. They cannot ever know more."
-Poul Anderson, "The Ways of Love" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, 1981), pp. 117-147 AT p. 147.

"'They were magnificent once. They could be again. I would love to see them our willing subjects...Unlikely, of course. They're not that kind of species. We may be forced to exterminate.'"
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry, pp. 1-192 AT p. 92.

"To explain the concept 'nation' is stiffly upwind...Law and mutual obligation are maintained less by usage and pride than by physical violence or the threat thereof on the part of that institution called the government. It is as if a single group could permanently cry Oherran against the entire rest of society, bring death and devastation wherever it chose, and claimed this as an exclusive right."
-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 24.

We make an impression, right?

A Narrative Technique

I have finished rereading Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars and find that I have discussed its sequel in two previous posts:

The Ways Of Love
The Ways Of Love II

However, this is a story that I have read only once five years ago and therefore will reread soon.

I have continued to post on the companion blog, James Blish Appreciation, and have listed the posts for this month here. The most recent post, Old And New, highlights a narrative technique used by earlier sf writers, including Wells, and revived by Blish in Midsummer Century. How many of Poul Anderson's works follow that earlier pattern by beginning their narratives in the here and now before launching their protagonists into fabulous realms? Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn and Dominic Flandry begin their adventures already living in our future whereas we first encounter Manse Everard in the "here and now" of New York, 1955 - although Everard is not abruptly precipitated into the far past. He joins an organization for which time travel is routine. A more appropriate example might be Holger Carlsen in Three Hearts And Three Lions although he disappears from a beach in World War II, not from the narrator's here and now.

At the end of "Old And New," there is an unexpected comparison of a passage in Wells' "A Story of the Days to Come" with already-compared passages in The Time Machine and in Anderson's There Will Be Time. Both Anderson and Blish are Wellsian. In some works, like these, the connection is clear.

Resonance

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 16.

"...the transmitter was emitting the carrier pattern of a functioning receiver: the 'resonance' or 'awareness' effect which beat the inverse-square law, a development of Einstein's great truth that the entire cosmos is shaped by what momentarily happens to each of its material parts." (p. 124)

"'...a positron in motion through a crystal lattice is accompanied by de Broglie waves which are transforms of the waves of an electron in motion somewhere else in the universe. Thus if we control the frequency and path of the positron, we control the placement of the electron - we cause it to appear, so to speak, in the circuits of a communicator elsewhere. After that, reception is just a matter of amplifying the bursts and reading the signal.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), CHAPTER SIX, p. 59.

Firmly grounded in physics, Anderson's characters use resonance for interstellar teleportation and Blish's use it for instantaneous communication.

"With A Host Of Furious Fancies"

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 16.

Exhausted, Maclaren sleeps for thirteen hours. Shambling through the ship, he thinks:

"With a host of furious fancies -" (p. 123)
-see Tom O'Bedlam.

The full stanza reads:

"With a host of furious fancies
"Whereof I am commander
"With a burning spear and a horse of air.
"To the wilderness I wander.
"By a knight of ghosts and shadows
"I summoned am to tourney
"Ten leagues beyond the wide worlds end:
"Methinks it is no journey."

We recognize the knight. A burning spear and a horse of air could be a laser gun and a hovercraft? I first read the concluding three lines quoted at the beginning of The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester and identified with the phrase:

"Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end..."

Doomsday And Wine

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 15.

David Ryerson says that:

God seemed to be scourging him;
he believed that all creation was under wrath;
however, now he has "'...been on the other side of Doomsday. Here, in nightmare land.'" (p. 120);
the same God made "'...wine for the wedding at Cana.'" (ibid.)

We note that:

Ryerson echoes the Anderson title, After Doomsday;
like van Rijn, he refers to the first miracle;
he remains within Christian belief but interprets it more benignly.

Before leaving Earth, Ryerson was newly married whereas Maclaren lived for pleasure. Now, Maclaren focuses on Ryerson's wife, whom he has never met, and eats less of his rations so that Ryerson can have more - as a gift to her.

Less posts here today means more happening in what we laughingly call "real life" and also a few more posts on James Blish Appreciation. Three chapters remain to be reread in The Enemy Stars.

The Sea

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 15.

Ryerson says that:

"'...the sea is the most inhuman thing on our planet...'" (p. 118)

The Ysans, who worshiped Lir, would agree. Ryerson's sea is the North Atlantic whereas Maclaren, from New Zealand, had associated the sea with hope and life. However, he has come to agree with Ryerson that any ocean is too big, old, blind and beautiful for humanity. Looking at "...the million suns of the Milky Way...," he adds:

"'Even this black ocean we are wrecked in.'" (ibid.)

Yet again, space as sea.

A Dark Planet Of A Dead Star

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 15.

What could be darker or drearier? Two survivors of a crew of four with a limited food supply land on an airless planet of a dead star to mine for germanium in the hope that they will be able to repair their matter transmitter and return to civilization a hundred light-years away?

The "...iron plains..." (p. 114) of this sterile world contrast sharply with the beautiful environments of colonized planets like, in Anderson's Technic History, Hermes, Avalon and Dennitza although that future history series also presents the lethal surfaces of the rogue planet, Satan, the radioactive Mirkheim and the many barren rocks in the Cloud Universe. Most of the universe is uninhabitable, maybe all of it beyond the Terrestrial atmosphere. I am finding it increasingly difficult to continue rereading this depressing narrative while surrounded by more cheerful texts.

Currently, there is more activity on James Blish Appreciation although page view counts indicate that not everyone who comes here also goes there. Anderson fans might recognize that Blish's description, in The Quincunx Of Time, of the Three Ghosts system could have been written by Anderson. The system comprises:

a red giant star;
a dwarf companion;
a barely substellar gas giant (see the search result for "brown dwarf");
a colonized moon of the gas giant (see Connections With Fiction).

Columbus' Egg And The Milky Way.

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 14-15.

"With her drive and her unharmed transceiver web aimed at the sky, the ship rested like Columbus' egg." (14, p. 113)

OK. I had not known about Columbus' egg. Meanwhile, two of the four crew members have died.

"A chopped off Milky Way and a rising constellation...told him that a horizon existed, but his animal instinct did not believe it." (15, p. 114)

Our instincts expect the Terrestrial environment and horizon. See also here.

 Poul Anderson has got me back into rereading James Blish. Recent posts on James Blish Appreciation are listed here.

Some Parallels

See Mortality And Fear.

A relevant passage in James Blish's Mission To The Heart Stars (London, 1980), CHAPTER ELEVEN:

"'If you have an unstable culture and a short lifetime, you gain more than just personal freedom and the right to put up an argument. You gain a creativity, such as that mankind has been pouring out in torrents for most of its recorded history. The Heart Stars have lost it. I think they will never get it back.'" (p. 123)

Also comparable:

"...this was Old Wilwidh, before the machine came to impose universal sameness. It was the well-spring of Merseia. You had to see a place like this to understand, in your bones, that Merseians would never be kin to you."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 141.

and:

"'Were the peoples of the Hegemony of Malis to survive to the last moment of the heat death, they could never be brother creatures to us.'"
-Blish, op. cit., p. 125.

Finally:

"'The sea people and the land people are now to live side by side in amity and partnership, although they differ so sharply from each other that they might as easily inhabit different planets. Having made this accomodation, they are now both in a position to understand and live with other races of like mind elsewhere.'"
-Blish, p. 126.

These sea people and land people are dolphins and Earthmen but they could equally be Poul Anderson's two races of Starkadians especially when members of these latter races have to be evacuated to Imhotep.

For previous comparisons, see here.

The Man Who Counts

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 14.

Nakamura thanks Maclaren:

"'...do you remember how disorganised and noisy we were at first, and how we have grown so quiet since and work together so well? It is your doing. The highest interhuman art is to make it possible for others to use their arts.'" (p. 111)

An earlier post with the same title as this one summarizes how Poul Anderson makes this same point both in The Man Who Counts and in Tau Zero. See also here.

There might come a time when I have found every interesting interconnection between works by Poul Anderson but that time is not yet. Nor will I finish rereading The Enemy Stars this evening but tomorrow beckons.

The Milky Way And The Promised Land

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 14.

The crew of the Southern Cross find their planet. (See Planet-Seeking.)

"Against strewn constellations there lay a gigantic black outline with wan streaks and edgings of gray. As he watched, Ryerson saw it march across the Milky Way...
"I stand on Mount Nebo, he thought, and down there is my Promised Land." (p. 105)

Two points of interest:

yet another object seen across the Milky Way;

yet more dramatically relevant Biblical imagery although this time not in a direct quotation.

We approach the climax of this novel and must soon decide which work to reread next. (I have already decided but I like to maintain some suspense.)

HABA

I unapologetically advertise James Blish on Poul Anderson Appreciation because of the strong affinities between the two authors. They are two of the four Campbell future historians, HABA:

Heinlein
Asimov
Blish
Anderson

Heinlein
The future history series and generation ship ideas;
twelve Scribner Juveniles;
controversy (Starship Troopers);
not time travel in general but certainly the circular causality paradox.

Asimov
Robotics - embedded in an implausible future history series.

Blish
Divergent future history series;
a theological trilogy.

Anderson
Several future history series;
every aspect of time travel (successor of Twain, Wells and de Camp);
twentieth century culminations of themes from Mary Shelley, HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Robert Heinlein.

(When I get tired of summarizing this literary history, I'll tell y'all.)

Recent Posts On James Blish Appreciation
Future Historical References
Another Summary
Communication
A Thematic Trilogy
Angels And Demons
Darkness And Optimism
Darkness And Optimism II
Recounting The Future
Unity
A Few Details
Scriptural Passages
Freedom In Two Haertel Overdrive Futures
Four Main Bodies Of Work
The Two Tetralogies
Interstellar Travel
Interstellar Communicators
Every Option
Judgment
Old And New
Arriving In The Future
1985
Continuous Creation
Gathering The Haertel Scholium
Facing A Wall
Sooner And Later
Fleeting And Wayward
Reversing The Effect?
Wise As Serpents And...
Haertel And Wald
Six Narratives 

Emergency Measures

Relevant Other Late Night Reading

"[Stalin] still believed that the emergency measures the government took were only temporary."
Tony Cliff, Trotsky: The Darker The Night The Brighter The Star (London, 1993), p. 26.

Compare this with the title and concluding line of Poul Anderson's "For the Duration." (See More Latin.)

Note also the Latin phrase used in "For the Duration": "Primus inter pares," first among equals. Of course, a dictator has the power to call himself whatever he wants...

Such changes in the uses of words are the theme of Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors." (See The Long Night.)

And the point of reading something else was to get me away from blogging at this time of night, not back into it.

Planet-Seeking

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 13.

In how many works by Poul Anderson do space travelers go outside their ship to make repairs in space?

Searching for a planet in the system of the dead star, the crew of the Southern Cross follow a particular orbit for a while, then check whether their path has been perturbed. They will then "'...do a Leverrier...'" (p. 102) to find the planet whose gravity has perturbed them. If an entire circumference proves unproductive, then they "'...move outward and try a bigger circle.'" (ibid.)

Planetary-formation theory and data on stellar types enable Maclaren to predict that the planets would have been in the equatorial plane. Their masses, angular momenta and magnetic fields "'...determine the Bode's Law constants...'" (ibid.) When the star went supernova, its inner planets were destroyed and the outer giants were damaged and their orbits altered. Further, gas from the explosion shortens orbits. Unknown relevant data are the date of the explosion and the density of the nebula. The ship follows estimated orbits for the surviving planets. They hope to mine for germanium.

Maclaren explains the search procedure to Ryerson for our benefit.

A reduced rate of post production reflects more activity here, like friends calling for lunch. I am still reading graphic fiction and twentieth century history.

Hiss And Mutter

Space is silent except when astronauts switch on their radios:

"Hitherto they had talked a little when working outside, not real conversation but a trivial remark now and then, a grunt for response...just enough to drown out the hissing of the stars."
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 11, p. 83.

"Nakamura's voice crackled above the mutter of stars." (p. 85)

Descriptions of cosmic noise, as of the Milky Way, have become collectible items.

Meanwhile, I remain fascinated by the complexities of James Blish's overlapping After Such Knowledge Trilogy and Haertel Scholium. See Another Summary.

Common Conceptual Space

Even a one-off novel not part of any series remains conceptually linked to its author's other works and also to those of other authors in the same milieu. A. Bertram Chandler symbolized this common conceptual space by positing that a space traveler returning from between galaxies might enter the alternative galaxy of a parallel universe. Thus, his John Grimes meets Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry. Also, the Grimes series closely connects spacefaring to seafaring.

Anderson's The Enemy Stars was written as a one-off novel although it later acquired a short sequel, "The Ways of Love." In recent posts, this novel's references to the Blackett magnetic effect and to germanium recalled James Blish's Cities In Flight whereas its instantaneous teleportation recalled two works in Blish's Haertel Scholium. Summarizing both this Scholium and the same author's overlapping After Such Knowledge Trilogy led to a comparison with the relationships between Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys and Anderson's Technic History.

These diverse interconnections stemmed from rereading The Enemy Stars to which I must shortly return.

Historical Fictions And Future Histories

In James Blish's Doctor Mirabilis, a demon possibly interacts with Roger Bacon, the precursor of all later scientists, including several scientific pioneers in Blish's futuristic sf. Blish's Black Easter and Cities In Flight refer back to Bacon.

In Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, Gods definitely interact with Gratillonius, a military officer and political representative of that Roman Empire that is the precursor of Anderson's future Terran Empire. One of the Nine Witch-Queens of Ys mystically senses interstellar distances.

Thus, historical fictions and future histories interconnect. However, I think that Blish more effectively integrates historical fiction with fantasy and sf. The fabulous crossover between his After Such Knowledge Trilogy and his Haertel Scholium is summarized here.  

Multi-Blogging

Recent mention of Zen on this blog inspired a new post on the Religion And Philosophy blog, here.

Recent discussion of James Blish on this blog inspired a new post on James Blish Appreciation, here.

Although I aspire to a multi-blog future, the main action remains here, on Poul Anderson Appreciation. In particular, this blog absorbs discussions that would otherwise have appeared on:

Science Fiction
Logic Of Time Travel

My next post, when I have reread more of The Enemy Stars, will be here.

Cosmic Noise And Sailing

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 11.

Sverdlov asks Ryerson whether he never feels violent with frustration at their predicament:

"Ryerson's tone came gnat-like in his earphones, almost lost in an endless crackling of cosmic noise. 'It doesn't do any good. My father taught me that much. We sailed a lot at home.'
"'So?'
"'The sea never forgives you.'" (p. 79)

Another description of cosmic radio noise (see here) and a confirmation that the spacemen who lived on an island did sail the sea also.

Teleportation And Instantaneity

Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars recalls not only James Blish's Cities In Flight but also two of his Haertel Scholium works, "Nor Iron Bars" and "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time. The common concepts are teleportation and instantaneity.

In The Enemy Stars, teleportation is instantaneous because the carrier wave is gravitational, not electromagnetic. In "Nor Iron Bars," when a spaceship assumes negative mass in order to make an FTL interstellar crossing, the ship collapses into the microcosm which is the only realm where mass can be negative and where it also turns out that parapsychological phenomena like telepathy and teleportation occur. Negative mass gives the ship some of the properties of a Dirac hole, meaning that it has to be echoed somewhere else in the universe by an electron and can be in two places simultaneously. Reverting to positive mass, it returns to the macrocosm but in the other location and thus has made an interstellar crossing of eight hundred light-years. However, the process weakens molecular bonds, making the ship's hull permeable to oxygen so that it cannot be reused.

In "Beep"/Quincunx, as in Cities In Flight, the above mentioned property of a Dirac hole is used to develop an instantaneous interstellar communicator. See The Dirac Transmitter.

Mortality And Fear

Aycharaych asks whether an immortal Bach could have composed the St. Matthew Passion. See here.

Maclaren asks:

"'Could Bach have loved his God so magnificently without being inwardly afraid of Him?'"
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 10, p. 76.

So are both mortality and fear necessary for creativity? If you are on the same part of Earth as me, then sleep on it.

Anderson And Blish II

Poul Anderson's main future history series, the History of Technic Civilization, is complete in seven omnibus volumes whereas James Blish's main future history series, the Okie history, is complete in a single omnibus volume, Cities In Flight.

Anderson wrote five volumes of "straight" historical fiction, without any admixture of sf or fantasy, whereas Blish wrote one historical novel, Doctor Mirabilis - incorporating ambiguity as to whether Roger Bacon's inner voice was literally demonic.

Anderson wrote four novels of historical (Correction: heroic) fantasy whereas Blish wrote two volumes of contemporary fantasy, retroactively united as a single work.

Anderson addressed theological issues in different works whereas Blish wrote a theological trilogy comprising his historical novel, his contemporary fantasy and one futuristic sf novel.

Anderson's output was much bigger which is at least one reason why this Poul Anderson Appreciation blog is much longer than the James Blish Appreciation blog.

Passing The Time In Space

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 10.

Maclaren:

plays chess with Sverdlov;
argues No versus Kabuki with Nakamura;
shocks Ryerson with limericks;
shaves regularly;
dresses fastidiously.

Nakamura contemplates paradoxes;
Ryerson quotes the Bible;
Sverdlov looks at photographs of past mistresses.

All human life is there.

Once, meditating in the "quiet room" of a Youth Hostel, I was joined by a Japanese man who seemed to be reading his Bible!

I cannot understand the value of contemplating the sound of one hand clapping. We know that there is not meant to be any answer so how can we look for an answer? Fortunately for us, the "ancestors" have formulated every possible practice so we are able to test which of the various ways or paths makes sense to us.

The Bible And Neo-Heathenism

(An odd compilation.)

See A Note On Anderson's Use Of The Bible.

David Ryerson reflects:

"'"The heavens declare the glory of God...and the firmament showeth his handiwork."....It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 6, p. 47.

"So this is how it feels, when the God of Hosts lays His hand upon a man..." (9, p. 66)

"Thou, God, watchest me, with the cold ashen eyes of wrath." (p. 67)

David's doctrinaire father, Magnus, prefers heathens to atheists. (2, p. 15) We infer that there are heathens on the future Earth. Does the opening of an interstellar frontier re-awaken ancient awe? James Blish's Okie swear by the gods of all stars. See here.

Anderson And Blish

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars.

A Poul Anderson novel set in interstellar space is bound to be rich in descriptions of stars and galaxies, e.g.:

"The farther stars blended into the Milky Way, a single clotted swoop around the sky, the coldest color in all reality. And yet farther away, beyond a million light-years, you could see more suns - a few billions at a time, formed into the tiny blue-white coils of other galaxies." (9, p. 63)

This galactic setting and also some technical details recall James Blish. Maclaren, explaining conditions around the dead star, says:

"'Blackett effect...Magnetic field is directly related to angular velocity.'" (8, p. 58)

In Cities In Flight, Blish rationalizes antigravitic FTL with:

"...the Blackett-Dirac equations, which as early as 1948 had proposed a direct relationship between magnetism, gravity, and the rate of spin of any mass."
-James Blish Cities In Flight (London, 1981), p. 237.

When spaceship repairs are necessary, Ryerson complains:

"'...we don't have four spare kilos of germanium aboard.'" (9, p. 65)

Blish's Acreff-Monales explains:

"Long before flight into deep space became a fact, [germanium] had assumed a fantastic value on Earth. The opening of the interstellar frontier drove its price down to a manageable level, and gradually it emerged as the basic, stable monetary standard of space trade. Nothing else could have kept the nomads in business."
-op. cit., p. 240.

Anderson has interstellar Nomads in his Psychotechnic History and the opening of an interstellar frontier early in his Technic History.

Cities In Flight addresses many familiar Andersonian themes:

Jovian surface conditions
power politics
a rationalization of FTL
anti-agathic drugs
an interstellar frontier
economic decline on Earth
one installment with a juvenile protagonist
extrasolar colonies
interstellar trade
interstellar empires
hostility between the authorities and the nomads
battles in space
a future history
references to a theory of history
the rise and fall of a civilization
a problem-solving hero
theological questions
intergalactic travel
other universes
cosmic destruction and creation
a cosmic climax

In other works:

historical fiction
theological fantasy

Anderson and Blish: read both.

Blaze Of Stars, Milky Way And Meditation

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars.

"...the sole outside illumination was a wintry blaze of stars." (6, p. 44)

Ryerson lifted:

"'...a heavy head to the foreign stars. The Milky Way formed a cold halo about his tangled hair." (p. 47)

Nakamura says that:

"'Space is a good place to meditate...'" (ibid.)

- and adds that Zen meditation is an attempt to identify with the universe. Not in my experience but oneness with the universe is there in the background, nevertheless.

Nakamura:

"...saw the dead sun through a viewscreen, when his ship swung so that it transitted the Milky Way." (p. 48)

Gravitics Man

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars.

Although Poul Anderson links Seafarers And Spacefarers, the contrast becomes sharp when Magnus, the retired captain living on a sea-battered island, tells his son, David:

"'Maclaren needs a gravitics man to help him take his data. The post is yours if you wish it.'" (2, p. 17)

It becomes clear that they are discussing science, not seafaring. As a younger and non-technical reader, I just accepted that there were four men in a spaceship but it matters what they do:

Seiichi Nakamura from Sarai, pilot/captain;
Terangi Maclaren from Earth, chief scientist;
David Ryerson from Earth, gravitics man;
Chang Sverdlov from Krasna, engineer/second in command.

The ship had been on a pre-set interstellar course to Alpha Crucis (important in Anderson's Technic History) but has been diverted toward a newly detected dead star and will be maneuvered around this nearer target by its newly arrived teleported crew.

We know of social and political differences between these four individuals. How will they interact not only with the physical universe as represented by a dead star but also with each other? And will any alien intelligences become involved? (One cover illustration answers that second question.)

How The Matter Transmitter Works

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 5.

Teleportation is too expensive for anything but interstellar travel so there are still interplanetary spaceships.

The millions of molecules in each of the 10 to the power of 14 cells in a human body must be simultaneously scanned and structurally identified and their momentary energy levels and relationships to every other molecule noted although they cannot be permanently recorded. The scanning beam, modified by every scanned atom, sends the modifications into the transmitter matrix while reducing the scanned organism to gas. The modulated, and relayed, carrier wave is gravitational, therefore instantaneous.

If permanent recordings were possible, then they would lead to molecular duplication but that is another issue.

Poul Anderson's Premises

In several works, James Blish's Adolph Haertel is a successor of Einstein. In Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars, Sugimoto and Yuen are later interpreters of the Schrodinger equation.

Anderson deploys an extraordinarily broad range of premises from which to construct fictional narratives and social settings. I will now try to summarize several such premises as briefly as possible:

interstellar teleportation and a dead star;
a predictive science of society;
cyclical history and hyperspace as quantum jumps;
an "irrelevant" warp drive;
the Mach drive (and here);
gyrogravitics;
superlight, civilization clusters and global genocide;
an accelerating Bussard ramjet;
the antithanatic, the space jump and an intergalactic planetary system;
mutant immortals;
a legendary city veiled from history by its gods (with Karen Anderson);
magic as technology and parallel Earths;
instantaneous time travel in a variable reality;
time-consuming time travel in an invariable reality (time corridors or mutant time travelers);
human-AI interactions;
post-organic intelligences.

Neutrons

In a neutron star, electrons and protons combine to form neutrons. Thus, the star is composed almost entirely of neutrons, therefore almost entirely of neutronium. But has a neutron star ever been described as:

"'One gigantic neutron?'"?
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 5, p. 35.

Are Maclaren and his colleagues investigating some other kind of hypothetical object or did they not yet know about neutron stars in their timeline?

1932 discovery of neutrons
1933 proposal of neutron stars
1958 publication of "We Have Fed Our Sea"/The Enemy Stars
1962 discovery of the Scorpius X-1 radio source
1965 discovery of the Crab Pulsar
1967 proposal that spinning neutron stars would emit radiation
1967 realization that Scorpius X-1 was an accreting neutron star