Galaxy Eater?

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTERs 9, 14 and 15.

With her selectors readjusted, the endlessly accelerating Leonora Christine consumes not only hydrogen atoms but also gas, dust and meteoroids. If she circles indefinitely - becoming ever more massive - within the galaxy, will she eventually consume it?

Apparently not. The cyclical universe of this fictional timeline will collapse long before that happens and, meanwhile, the ship remains astronomically unlikely to collide with any significant mass.

The Leonora Christine traverses the galactic center in twenty thousand years, mere hours for the crew.

Addendum, later the same evening: This is the time of month when I pause this blog and post on another. See here. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow at the beginning of a new financial year and of the eighth year of my retirement.

Relativistic And Non-Relativistic Spaces

Relativity precludes FTL - except that the quantum jump hyperspace of Poul Anderson's Technic History and the T machine jumps of his The Avatar are supposed to be compatible with relativistic physics. Usually, I think, "hyperspace" means a non-relativistic space somehow coterminous with the relativistic universe whereas other fictional FTL drives (see here) simply contradict relativity, e.g., James Blish's "spindizzy."

Are T machine jumps FTL? The spaceships are STL and the jumps that they make resemble cosmic versions of the space-time jumps made by the timecycles in Anderson's Time Patrol series.

How much STL intergalactic travel is there in sf? Not a lot.

Into Deepest Space by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
Genesis by Poul Anderson
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

How To Find A Colonizable Planet In A New Galaxy

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 14.

Finding the 1%:

rule out red dwarfs, blue giants etc;

observe many Sol-type stars simultaneously;

utilizing time dilation, observe them over a long cosmic period;

maybe find ways to use relativity effects to gain information;

identify stars with planets with terrestroid masses and orbits;

cruise close by promising systems;

aided by automation and electronics, use spectroscopy, thermoscopy, photography and magnetography to scan for biological, thermodynamic, chlorophyllic and polarization conditions on planetary surfaces;

return to the system with the most suitable planet;

before then, while en route to the new galaxy, employ the entire crew to devise the necessary instrumentation.

Thus:

a chemist and a molecular biologist design a device to detect and analyze life at a distance;

physicists, electronicians etc build and test the device;

meanwhile, an astronomer leads a group to make tools for remote planetography;

the program employs every assistant, draftsman and manual worker, thus saving the crew's sanity. 

1%?

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 14.

"'Think of the requirements. Mass, temperature, irradiation, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere...the best estimate is that 1 per cent of the stars may have planets which are any approximation to Earth." (p. 120)

1%?
May have?
Approximations?

How approximate does it have to be? My intuitive guess is that no planets will be suitable for human beings to colonize in the way that they colonized new continents on Earth.

We evolved in this single environment and are adapted only to it. No other planet will exactly reproduce all the flora and fauna of Earth. At best, Terrestrial crops will have to be planted in soil that will have to be chemically persuaded to accept them. But surely one ecological change would require others until a whole terraforming job became necessary? Within the Solar System, Mars or even the Moon might eventually be terraformed but that is a very different proposition from finding a habitable planet in the first place.

I think that there is a big problem here. However, anyone who crosses an interstellar distance will have to carry their environment with them and therefore will not be dependent on finding a habitable environment on a planetary surface in a new system.

One More Moment Of Realization

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 13.

Only fifty years until the chemical and ecological systems break down! A woman who had wanted a large family refuses to take antisenescence. Two men discuss what Reymont might do about this:

"'Oh...I don't know. Something unsentimental. For instance, he might co-opt a research and development team to improve the biosystems and organocycles - make the ship indefinitely habitable - so she could be allowed two children, at least -'
"His words trailed off. The men stared gape-mouthed at each other. It blazed between them:
"Why not?" (pp. 115-116)

Optical Effects

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 13.

From the time dilated Leonora Christine:

only nearby stars can be individually differentiated and they are seen to stream past;

the contracted galaxies fore and aft are shifted to blue and red, then to invisible wavelengths;

space is not black but a deep, bright, shimmering purple because interacting force fields and interstellar medium release quanta.

The viewscope, increasingly unable to compensate, is disassembled and rebuilt to avoid flying blind.

Dream Boxes

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 12.

Because the human mind is meant to deal with a data flow, total sensory deprivation causes hallucinations, irrationality and lunacy while prolonged sensory impoverishment has slower, subtler but even more destructive effects. In an interstellar spaceship, direct electronic stimulation of encephalic centers generates long, intense dreams that become a necessary substitute for real experience.

This clarifies that the "dream boxes" generate dreams, not the virtual realities that are to be found in some other speculative works by Anderson. However, the text does not describe the dream box dreams of any of the characters.

Kayaking

The image is from Lancaster Kayak and Canoe Club where my daughter, Aileen, trained for a while.

Back in 2016, I summarized information from Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children about kayaks and similar items. See here. After the post was published, I was asked to link to a site about kayaking so the link was attached as an addendum and is here again.

Now I have been asked to link to another site about buying kayaks so here it is.

This blog is not about water sports but I am willing to help anyone who thinks that a link might be useful. Another requested link was to information about Van Gogh.

The Virgo Cluster Of Galaxies

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 10.

The Virgo cluster comes on-stage at the end of this chapter and has previously appeared twice on the blog:

Tau Zero, Chapters 3-10
The Avatar VII: the jumps 5-11

The Leonora Christine will fly to the Virgo cluster. The 10th T machine jump has transported the Chinook to a future cosmic period when the Virgo cluster has receded beyond visibility. Until I searched the blog for "Virgo cluster," I had not realized that Anderson's intergalactic sf makes these two very different references to that particular cluster. What other information is buried in the blog? Some scholarly excavation might be feasible.

Earlier posts have summarized the plot of Tau Zero so I need not repeat that information here but will continue to reread the novel in search of other interesting details.

The Disaster

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 9.

"'We can't stop.'" (p. 79)

"'...we must continue accelerating or die.'
"'Accelerating forever...'" (p. 81)

"'I imagine we can get fifty years out of our gadgets.'" (ibid.)

"'We might see billions of years go by. That could be quite wonderful.'" (p. 83)

Reymont tautens and exclaims:

"'Hoy!...I've gotten an idea...We have a bit of figuring to do...fast!'" (ibid.)

Thus, an irresistible force meets an immovable object or at least time dilation meets an Andersonian moment of realization. To find out what that realization is, stay tuned for CHAPTER 10...

Nichevo

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 9.

"A trickle of blood ran over his mouth, tasting salty. Or was that sweat? Nichevo. He was operational." (p. 77)

Here is another strange word that I might have passed by. It turns out not only to be famous but even to have an anecdote about Bismarck attached to it. See here.

We never know what we are going to find inside a book by Poul Anderson. Nichevo.

Passage Through The Nebulina

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 8.

"Velocity had flattened the cloud longitudinally, it was thin, [the ship] tore through in minutes." (p. 76)

"During the hour of [the ship's] passage, it bored a tunnel through the nebulina." (ibid.)

Minutes is ship's time whereas the hour is cosmic time. Leonora Christine begins her cosmic journey.

Neuroses And Shipwreck

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 8.

Reymont refers to "neuroses" on p. 74 but I find that I have posted about them before.

Four posts:

Emotion And Intelligence In Four Universes
Inner Conflict
Tau Zero, Chapter 8
Non-Human Races

- are collected here in one blog search result.

"The ship struck." (p. 75)

It strikes not a rock but a small nebula which, at the ship's speed, is:

"...a well-nigh solid wall." (p. 76)

Despite their many differences, we cannot avoid the comparison between spacefaring and seafaring. Poul Anderson adds "timefaring." The time dilated spaceship is perhaps at a crossroads between spacefaring and timefaring.

Another Understated Biblical Reference In A Poul Anderson Novel

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 7.

I nearly read past this:

"The basic Mene, Mene stood unchanged on the panel." (p. 65)

What is "Mene" and why is it repeated? Since nowadays we can google, the answer is easily found. See Belshazzar's Feast. This is yet another Biblical reference and it would have been extremely remiss of me to read past it. Check everything in an Anderson text. Then reread the entire text and check everything that you missed the first time.

Breakfast is over and real life beckons. For each and all of us, the writing is on the wall. Every insect on Earth is on track to be wiped out and half of life could be gone by 2050. We are living in the Chaos.

Frosty Cataract

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 7.

The omniscient narrator tells us that no one was watching the Leonora Christine in interstellar space:

"...there was no watcher anyhow: only night, bestrewn with multitudinous remote suns, the frosty cataract of the Milky Way and the rare phantom glimmer of a nebula or sister galaxy. Nine light-years from Sol, the ship was illimitably alone." (p. 64)

Until 1925, it was thought that sister galaxies were nebulae within this one galaxy. See Significant Dates, here. Again, in this text, sister galaxies are more than mere background. The Leonora Christine will soon accelerate between them.

Nine light years from home, in the tenth year of their journey but only the third year of ship's time, the crew have already celebrated two Christmases. Will the Leonora Christine become a "generation ship"? (I know the answer but part of the idea is to (re)read the book as if for the first time.)

Onward and outward.

Another Prayer

See Two Concluding Prayers.

I compared two prayers in works by Poul Anderson.

As Anderson's "Star Of the Sea" ends with a prayer for a safe return home from across the sea, the opening paragraph of COMING TO AMERICA 813 AD in Neil Gaiman's American Gods (London, 2001), pp. 58-60, ends with the same prayer but addressed to a different deity:

"They navigated the green sea by the stars and by the shore, and when the shore was only a memory and the night sky was overcast and dark they navigated by faith, and they called on the all-father to bring them safely to land once more." (p. 58)

Prayers for safety are probably the oldest.

Time Dilation And More Latin

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 6.

"The twin paradox does not arise." (p. 55)

I thought that it did but I did not understand what the twin paradox was. It would be the contradiction of each twin being younger than the other.

Because the Leonora Christine crew celebrates Christmas, yet more Latin appears in an Anderson text:

"Adeste, fideles,
"Laeti, triumphantes,
"Venite, venite, in Bethlehem.
"-Iesu, tibi sit gloria." (p. 57)

And, on that note, I will return to reading about other gods in a novel by Neil Gaiman.

Fedoroff's Problem

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 5.

Now we summarize some of the future history of the Swedish timeline:

there was a world war;

in Boris Fedoroff's childhood, most of the war damage had been repaired;

population growth and civil disorder were now under control;

there were new projects on Earth and in space (this sounds like the early period of the Psychotechnic History);

there was a common spirit of dedication and hard work;

but, when Fedoroff returned after forty three years, that common spirit was gone;

his response was to work in space for five years to improve the Bussard ramjet and to gain his post on the Leonora Christine, never to return;

he hopes "'...for a fresh beginning on Beta Three.'" (p. 50)

Ingrid Lindgren tells him that, "'...mores change.'" (ibid.), echoing a Time Patrol member who says, "'Fashions come and go.'" (See here.) There have been, successively:

a libertinism before Fedoroff's time;
the puritanism of his childhood;
a rationalistic classicism;
the current neo-romanticism.

She concludes that the universe is too wide for the freezing of later generations into an earlier mold. Wise words since, as they speak, they are bound out into that wider universe.

More On Fedoroff

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 5.

OK. I am learning something, I think:

the Kazan (scroll down), or Cauldron, is an astrobleme on the planet Dennitza in Poul Anderson's Technic History;

Kazan is a Russian city;

Kazan Cathedral is in St Petersburg;

but there is also a reconstructed Kazan Cathedral in Moscow.

When Fedoroff returned from Delta Pavonis, he had experienced twelve years although forty three had elapsed on Earth. He was pleased still to recognize:

Kazan Cathedral (the one in St Petersburg);
Alexander and Bucephalus over the Nevsky Prospect bridge;
the Hermitage.

More From Fedoroff

The Tau Zero Foundation.

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 5.

See "Communication In The Big Deep," here.

To continue:

"Though days might go by without a break in the silence, he persevered. He was rewarded with success. But the quality of reception was poorer, the interval of it shorter, the time till the next longer, as Leonora Christine entered the Big Deep." (p. 47)

Next we read Fedoroff's own words. He describes the fading of the signals and also articulates a personal response to the content of the very last message:

"'...that final cast we received...upset me.'
"'The music?'
"'Yes. Music. Signal-to-noise ratio too low for television. Almost too low for sound. The last we will get, Ingrid Gunnar's daughter, before we reach goal and start receiving messages a generation old. I am certain it was the last. Those few minutes, wavering, fading in and out, scarcely to hear through the firecrackle of stars and cosmic rays - when we lost that music, I knew we would get no more...
"'It happened to be a Russian cradle song...My mother sang me to sleep with it.'" (p. 49)

Here is yet another description of the sound of space. (See also Three Senses In Space.) After this detailed account of the physical difficulty of communication, we suddenly learn the content of that last message - which understandably incapacitates Fedoroff for a while.

For recent discussion of a Russian prayer offered during a battle, see Raduysya Mariye.

Suspension And Dilation

HG Wells wrote about time travel and suspended animation but not about time dilation.

Robert Heinlein combined time travel and suspended animation in The Door Into Summer and wrote about time dilation in Time For The Stars.

For a British TV treatment of suspended animation, see Adam Adamant Lives! and This Blog This Month and please excuse a shameless plug for a less-read blog. British TV, of course, has a well known treatment of time travel. See here.

I am rereading and posting about Poul Anderson's time dilation novel, Tau Zero. Of course we are familiar with Anderson's massive body of work on time travel. In some of Anderson's works about slower than light interstellar travel, there is not only time dilation but also "coldsleep." We usually find that Anderson covers every angle.

Communication In The Big Deep

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 5.

See "Navigation And Communication In The Big Deep," here.

Anderson connects the physics of interstellar communication with the sociology of future history and we learn much more about the Swedish timeline.

Physics
"Aberration and Doppler shift affect radio too. Eventually the transmissions from Luna would enter on frequencies that nothing aboard the vessel could receive. Well before then, however, through one unforeseeable factor or another, when travel time between maser projector and ship stretched into months, the beam was sure to lose her." (p. 47)

I try to avoid excessively lengthy quotations but this is difficult when Anderson's text continues to summarize information in such a condensed form that I am unable to summarize it any further. This passage continues:

"Federoff, who was also the communications officer, tinkered with detectors and amplifiers. He strengthened the signals which he punched Solward, hoping they would give clues to his future location." (ibid.)

The people on Luna receive a message, calculate where it is from, deduce where the ship will be months later and aim their next beam there: an inexact science.

Since this is a breakfast post and since I have things to do and places to be, this communication breaks off here. However, we have neither exhausted the physics nor started the sociology.

Three Science Fiction Classics

Comparing Poul Anderson's Technic History and Tau Zero and HG Wells' The Time Machine (see the previous post): it doesn't get any better than this! At least, I don't think it does.

The Time Machine: a Victorian inventor visits the dying Earth and returns;

The Technic History: human civilizations spread through several spiral arms;

Tau Zero: a human spaceship survives into the next universe.

The blog is interesting to read - I think and hope - because it summarizes and discusses such interesting texts. Wells takes us to the end of life on Earth. Anderson takes us beyond that - and beyond that. Physically, we remain safely at home while, imaginatively, we traverse the cosmos.

Tomorrow, I will continue to accompany the Leonora Christine through interstellar space but, before turning in, will reread more of either Neil Gaiman or Stieg Larsson.

Good night.

Contrasting Timelines And Distant Futures

See Heroes And A Drunk.

The interstellar exploration period of the Swedish timeline and the Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History timeline are diametrically opposed in governance and ethos. Poul Anderson shows us different futures.

The political disagreements between the drunk and the Swedes generate some character conflict but they also do something else. They give us one last look at such conflicts. The crew of the Leonora Christine will travel through spaces and ages when all such Terrestrial disagreements have become meaningless.

HG Wells' Time Traveler travels first to 802,701 AD when Victorian social classes have "speciated," i.e., have become two distinct species. Thus, he has not yet traveled far enough into the future to leave behind him the consequences of the conflicts of his own period. However, he does do this when he sees the "Further Vision" of a dying Earth. The Leonora Christine goes further.

Navigation And Communication In The Big Deep

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 5.

Navigation Officer Auguste Boudreau uses the primary beacons of distant galaxies, statistical analysis of stellar observations and successive mathematical approximations to check the position and velocity of the Leonora Christine. Captain Telander computes and orders, and Chief Engineer, also communications officer, Fedoroff executes, course changes which have become necessary because the ship's speed and direction vary with variations in the interstellar medium. Because of distance and the ship's varying position, maser communication with Luna cannot be maintained indefinitely and at last Fedoroff thinks that it has been lost.

Heroes And A Drunk

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 4 (of 23).

The perfect Heinleinian or Andersonian hero excels in a free enterprise economy and leads extra-solar colonization. This is a sweeping but unprejudicial generalization. The most perfect of all Andersonian heroes is David Falkayn. Dominic Flandry wishes that he had lived in the era of the merchant princes. I was going to add "Pournellean" to "Heinleinian" and "Andersonian" but maybe the perfect Pournellean hero is the man who applies military solutions to social problems? Free enterprise and interstellar travel are two American ideals of freedom.

In Tau Zero, Norbert Williams, the American chemist in the Leonora Christine crew:

celebrates American Independence Day by getting drunk;
becomes aggressive to a Swede;
denounces "'Goddam welfare state bureaucracy...'" (p. 43);
is accused of dreaming about imperialism, fantasizing about free enterprise and dabbling "'...in reactionary politics.'" (pp. 43-44);
is described as a romantic nationalist and advised to satisfy himself "'...with historical fiction and bad epic poetry.'" (p. 44);
shouts about, "''Nother star. New world. Chance t' be free. Even if I do have to travel with a pack o' Swedes.'" (ibid.)

Williams is not Falkayn material but would certainly enjoy The Trouble Twisters and Satan's World.

Elof Nilsson

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 4.

Elof Nilsson, astronomer on the Leonora Christine bound for Beta Virginis thirty two light years away:

is from Uppsala;
refers to Grona Lund;
made observations that proved the oscillating universe (p. 42) -

- which, in our timeline, has been disproved. Cosmic expansion is accelerating.

Observations
References to Sweden and Stockholm continue as the ship leaves the Solar System.

This casual reference to the oscillating universe will be very important later - a very long time later.

Garden In Space

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTERS 3 and 4.

In Chapter 3: ion drive; free fall and EVA; ramjet.

In Chapter 4:

a garden with a view of space and stars described as "Sable and diamonds..." (p. 34);

ferns, orchids etc;

a glittering, tinkling fountain;

warm, moist, perfumed air;

whispering, shivering, vibrating energies of the Bussard system.

Four senses?

Does that spaceship look like the Enterprise?

Extra Vehicular Activity

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 3.

We are moving at a snail's pace through Tau Zero because the purpose is to savor it. Would everyone have understood if this post had just been called EVA? Van Rijn, Flandry, characters in Twilight World and Tau Zero and probably others go EVA. Is Anderson's account in Tau Zero based on astronauts' experience? It was probably written too early for that.

First, he makes the point that seeing would be difficult:

"Lighting was poor: unshielded glare in the sun, ink blackness in shadow..." (p. 33)

The last thing that we should imagine is ordinary Terrestrial daylight.

Secondly:

"Hearing was no better..." (ibid.)

Each astronaut hears his own breath and blood beat in his spacesuit and also "...the cosmic seething in radio earplugs." (ibid.) We have begun to collect descriptions of the sound of space.

Thirdly, sweat, vapor, carbon dioxide etc accumulate while men labor to adjust and rearrange external equipment.

Fourthly, spin nauseates when feet lose their grip and a man floats off to the end of his lifeline.

Fifthly, maneuvering massive modules, as hard both to move and to stop, is difficult and dangerous.

Unpleasant working conditions.

Questions About The Time Patrol

For interesting discussions relevant to this blog, see the comboxes for:

Communicating Through Time
Who Makes History?

- on the Logic of Time Travel blog.

How is the Time Patrol organized and how often might individuals or small groups affect the course of history?

The Big Deep

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 3.

Reading Dan Dare, between the ages of seven and eleven, I was vaguely aware of the distinction between interplanetary space and interstellar space but thought that they were called "space" and "outer space." (I was seven in 1956 when Poul Anderson's first Nicholas van Rijn story was published.)

No one taught me this but, by reading books on astronomy, I learned for myself that:

planets are millions of miles apart whereas stars are millions of millions of miles apart;

no extra-solar planets are or can be visible at such distances so they might not even exist (big surprise and disappointment!).

In Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, as the Leonora Christine leaves the Solar System, the first officer is bothered by idiotic beamcasts from Luna asking how things are going. She will be glad when they "'...get out into the Big Deep.'" (p. 29)

Does she mean when they are far enough away that the time lag will make such radio inquiries impracticable? Or does radio become difficult/impossible to detect and respond to when the ship has accelerated to Bussard ramjet speeds? Calling interstellar space "the Big Deep" makes it sound like the Atlantic or Pacific explored in a submarine, thus not quite as far away from home and our habitable environment as it really is.

Organizations

We compare Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry to Ian Fleming's James Bond and recognize The Man (really Men) From UNCLE as a successor of Bond. Thus, in order of earliest publication:

Flandry
Bond
Solo and Kuryakin

To rearrange them into a fictional chronological order:

Bond, Cold War and detente;

UNCLE, detente and the beginning of a global technological future;

Flandry, an interstellar technological future.

Flandry fights impressive villains, not only Aycharaych but also A'u. However, these are individual agents of the intelligence service of a foreign power. There is no sense of an organization as a recurring collective villain in the Flandry series. By contrast, Bond gives us SMERSH, SPECTRE and several criminal gangs while UNCLE gives us Thrush. I have been posting about these organizations on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog where I will shortly add "The Search for Thrush Central." Later: See here.

To Beta Virginis

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 3.

The Leonora Christine is bound for the third planet of Beta Virginis, not that it will arrive there. A probe has beamed data back to Earth. The blog also has images for Beta Centauri (scroll down) (for the image, see here) and Beta Crucis (scroll down) (for images, see here, here, here, here and here).

The Leonora Christine operates herself but men find it necessary to stand by. How will we feel about traveling in self-driving cars?

"There was no space to spare in space." (p. 27)

A beautiful sentence:

eight words of one syllable each;
two meanings of "space";
three words, "space," "spare" and "space," differing by a single letter;
the remaining words serving to connect these three.

An approving tick if such a sentence appeared in an essay at school.

Chapter 1 was Stockholm. Chapter 2 was arrival in the ship. Chapter 3 is departure.

Link To Golden Apples Of The West

Golden Apples Of The West: Tau Zero

Potentialities And Symbols

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 2.

Telander, begining his third interstellar expedition, has learned from experience:

psychoprofiling tests miss potentialities, for good or bad, that develop in people when they traverse interstellar distances;

symbols, like officers living in officer country, are important as Ingrid will learn on a five year voyage.

Right. Poul Anderson has invested a lot of thought into the human dynamics of interstellar travel. We know that we are going somewhere with these characters. We just don't yet know where.

Gods

I watched and Ketlan rewatched American Gods, Season 1, Episode 1. I am reminded of the many parallels between Neil Gaiman and Poul Anderson, including:

Odin adapted as a fictional character;

ancient gods still existing and interacting with personified/deified information technology;

gods existing because they are believed in and retiring when they are no longer believed in. (See Where Do Gods Go?)

For the second and third points, see Poul and Karen Anderson's "A Feast For The Gods," discussed in Gods Stories.

At the same time, Anderson's hard sf and speculations about interstellar travel do not overlap with anything in Gaiman's works.

Lars Telander

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero does not give any year dates. The following improvised chronology begins with Lars Telanders' birth as time zero. Bracketed numbers are his time dilated age.

0          Telander born in Dalarna.
3           Alpha Centauri expedition leaves.
6           Maser messages from expedition.
25        Telander on Epsilon Eridani expedition.
54 (36) Return from Epsilon Eridani.
55 (37) Telander on Tau Ceti expedition.
86 (50) Return from Tau Ceti.
89 (53) Leonora Christine leaves.

Telander is:

a crew member to Epsilon Eridani;

first officer to Tau Ceti but becomes commander when the captain dies;

captain of the Leonora Christine.

At age 53, he has adolescent great-grandnephews in Dalarna.

Blish And Shaw On Tau Zero

Whereas the image here quotes James Blish praising Poul Anderson's Tau Zero in the highest possible terms, the British sf author, Bob Shaw, said in conversation that, in the second half of the novel, cosmological and interpersonal narratives alternate without being integrated so which of these two critics is right? Blish extravagantly implies that, as cosmological hard sf, Tau Zero cannot be improved upon whereas Shaw suggests one way in which it might be improved. I have not kept up with more recent sf so has any of Anderson's successors done a better job with this kind of sf?

Stars Seen From Space

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 2.

Stars throng space. They show their colors: Vega blue; Capella golden; Betelgeuse red. We remember Vegans in James Blish's Cities In Flight and Betelgeuseans in Anderson's Technic History. Stars invisible from Earth hide the constellations from untrained eyes.

"The night was wild with suns." (p. 18)

We remember Anderson's phrase, "A wilderness of suns...," see here.

The Milky way belts heaven but we have already quoted this. See The Milky Way Thread. The Magellanic Clouds glow and the Andromeda galaxy gleams. In the Technic History, other galaxies are mere background but Tau Zero will go intergalactic.

Beginning Tau Zero, Chapter 2

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), CHAPTER 2.

Is Blish right?

"...Leonora Christine resembled a dagger pointing at the stars." (p. 17)

A threat of human aggression exported from the Solar System although that does not happen in this novel.

"The time since the basic idea of [a Bussard ramjet] was first conceived, in the middle twentieth century..." (p. 18)

An acknowledgment that this idea is not original with the author.

"...had included perhaps a million man-years of thought and work directed toward achieving the reality; and some of those men had possessed intellects equal to any that had ever existed." (ibid.)

A reminder that this Bussard ramjet will not be like earlier ideas of Bussard ramjets.

I think that I will continue to find enough in Tau Zero to make it worthwhile to read through it again. The present blog focus is on Anderson's accounts of interstellar travel and there are many of those in short stories as well as in novels.

Men And Women

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 1.

Twenty five men and twenty five women will take five years to reach another planetary system. They have antisenescence treatments as in some other Anderson futures. They will explore the third planet. If it is uninhabitable, then they will take five years to travel back to Earth. If habitable, they will colonize.

Since the crew are going to pair off, Lindgren stops saying goodbye to her family and spends a day and an evening, then a night, with Reymont to check with him whether he and she can make a couple. I cannot remember from previous readings of the novel whether they stay together throughout what becomes a very long intergalactic, and even intercosmic, voyage.

Unfortunately, we bid farewell to Stockholm at the end of CHAPTER 1 but Anderson has given us way more information about that city than we had any right to expect. Stockholm has become special to me because of Stieg Larsson and it is good to find so much about the city also in Anderson.

Ingrid Lindgren

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, Chapter 1.

Ingrid Lindgren grew up near Drottningholm.

She reflects that St. John's Eve balfires:

"...had once been lit to welcome Baldr home from the underworld..." (p. 15)

Were they? I thought that he was not due to return until after the Ragnarok - which Reymont mentions on p. 14.

Lindgren also thinks that:

"...it would be a joy to believe in some kind of religion, since that would perfect the world by giving it purpose, but in the absence of convincing proof she could still do her best to help supply that meaning, help mankind move toward something loftier -" (p. 16)

Purpose and meaning are not identical. The world has value most of the time because it sustains life and consciousness but it cannot have a purpose because only consciousnesses, existing within the world, are purposive. It is the European religious tradition that has sought intellectual proof of its doctrines. Other traditions express contemplative experience.

A character's views are not necessarily those of the author but they can be. Sean M. Brooks thinks that Anderson at least wanted to believe.

Pulp And Philosophy II

See Pulp And Philosophy.

These reflections on the philosophical implications of the defeat of fictional villains were prompted by at last reading about the destruction of that recurring fictional villain of the 1960s, Thrush. See recent posts on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog, e.g., here.

Here is another philosophical issue. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, founder and director of Thrush's literary predecessor, SPECTRE:

"...had decided that fast and accurate communication lay, in a contracting world, at the very heart of power. Knowledge of the truth before the next man, in peace or war, lay, he thought, behind every correct decision in history and was the source of all great reputations."
-Ian Fleming, Thunderball (London, 1961), 5, pp. 39-40.

That is why Thrush pioneered information technology and was eventually coordinated by three Ultimate Computers and why one of its surviving members reflects that the value in the Hierarchy was information which can be lost for a while but generated anew. Historical knowledge can be lost irretrievably but practicable information can be generated anew until entropy ends everything. But how did the energy that runs downhill get up the hill? Apparently, energy and virtual particles are created in a vacuum so is there a technologically accessible source of endlessly renewable energy as at the end of Poul Anderson's The Avatar?

Pulp And Philosophy

Even pulp fiction conventions can generate philosophical questions. Poul Anderson identified issues even while writing action-adventure stories. In series fiction, the defeat of one villain is followed either by the return of that villain or by the advent of another similar villain. James Bond defeats SMERSH, then SPECTRE, then fights KGB...

Is there an end to an apparently endless succession of external enemies? Is the enemy only external? The Prisoner TV series and Anderson's "Un-Man" say no. The Un-Man reflects that one gang has been destroyed but another will emerge because the real enemy is man himself. What can man do about man? How can we change self when it is the as yet unchanged self that tries to make the change?

O wearisome condition of humanity!

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick, commanded to be sound.

What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?

Passion and reason, self-division cause.
-copied from here.

Stockholm Old Town

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, Chapter 1.

We have been in Gamla Stan, Old Town, with Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist. Now Poul Anderson's Charles Reymont and Ingrid Lindgren go there:

Reymont docks in Strommen;

they cross the bridge to Old Town;

passing the royal palace, they walk along narrow streets between high, centuries-old buildings;

Lindgren mentions -

Birger Jarl's Tower
the Riddarholm Church
the House of Nobles
"'...the Golden Peace where Bellman drank and sang...'" (p. 14)

A Poul Anderson text is nothing if not fact-packed.

How Easy Is It To Write Fiction?

Those who cannot write fiction can appreciate and analyze it. Those who can do not find it equally easy. Poul Anderson wrote very fast non-stop for over fifty years whereas James Blish, finding the writing process difficult, had a much smaller output and wrote prose adaptations of Star Trek episodes for financial reasons.

Ian Fleming, thinking after only the fourth James Bond novel that he had nothing further to write at least about this character, planned to kill Bond at the end of the fifth novel. He was persuaded not only to continue but also to try to make something more of the character but then settled into writing formulaically for the remainder of the series.

Anderson did not write formulaically about his Bond equivalent. Dominic Flandry graduated from a pulp defender of a stock Terran Empire into a well-informed commentator on imperial decline and then was superseded by speculative fiction not about interstellar empires but about artificial intelligences.

Readers appreciate Bond and Flandry and also Anderson's wider perspective.

Alternative Histories

I know that I should not apologize for this but I really have got sidetracked from rereading Poul Anderson today by a vigil, a goodwill visit to a mosque, a visit to a friend in hospital and interest in another shared fictional history. See also here and here. In addition to future or alternative histories, authors can also present alternative accounts of what was happening in our timeline but behind the scenes in the late nineteenth century, WWI, WWII, the Cold War etc. And Anderson applied this retro-history approach to his own Technic History so I have found a connection with Poul Anderson after all.

Maybe a return to the Swedish timeline of Tau Zero tomorrow - after I have driven Aileen and Yossi to Leighton Moss (scroll down) and back.

Other Matters

OK. I have got past reading the feel-good novel, The Final Affair. See also here.)

This morning, Hope Church, Lancaster, held a really good vigil for Christchurch in Market Square. A black pastor from a church in Heysham read a passage from a sermon by Martin Luther King on "Love thy neighbor." A blind black guy whom we see walking around town spoke and sang. Afterwards, some of us took flowers to the mosque and handed them in to an imam who was teaching immigrant children from African countries.

Back to Poul Anderson's Tau Zero:

"They had emerged on an esplanade by the water. Across it, Stockholm's lights were kindling, one by one, as night grew upward among houses and trees."
-Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), CHAPTER 1, p. 9.

"Lindgren and he had spent the morning in a cruise around the Archipelago - a few hours amidst greenness, homes like parts of the islands where they grew, sails and gulls and sun-glitter across waves."
-op. cit., p. 10.

"...homes like parts of the islands..." is good. Anderson meets Larsson with the Stockholm setting although a few centuries later.

Evil Motivations

My current project of rereading and posting about at least part of Poul Anderson's Tau Zero has been temporarily interrupted by reading David McDaniel's The Final Affair. See two posts ago here. But this will not take long.

In The Gang, I said that Un-Men penetrating the gang's undersea HQ was like UNCLE agents penetrating Thrush Central. In The Final Affair, they do. But this highlights a motivational contrast between Thrush and the gang. Thrush wants to unite the world in order to rule it whereas the gang wants to overthrow a UN world government in order to restore all the old divisions. In fact, the gang is such a discordant alliance that it is questionable whether it can even exist.

Fictional villains are united in their villainy but not in their reasons for it. In fact, during the twentieth century, the villains of popular fiction changed as international conflicts progressed from the Great War onwards.

The Time In Which They Moved

Time is a function of motion. Paradoxically, static art atemporally represents motion. A picture or statue captures a single moment of a running man, a leaping dolphin or a soaring eagle. We imagine the before and after. In an imagined, fictional realm, the man, dolphin and eagle live, move and eventually die.

Poul Anderson expresses this better:

"But when the sun went down, the garden seemed abruptly to come still more alive. It was as if the dolphins were tumbling through their waters, Pegasus storming skyward, Folke Filbyter peering after his lost grandson while his horse stumbled in the ford, Orpheus listening, the young sisters embracing in their resurrection - all unheard, because this was a single instant perceived, but the time in which these figures actually moved was no less real than the time which carried men.
"'As if they were alive, bound for the stars, and we must stay behind and grow old,' Ingrid Lindgren murmured."
-Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), CHAPTER 1, p. 7.

Overlapping Ideas Inside A Notional Venn Diagram

In Mysterious Villains, I linked to search results for The Prisoner on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog. Then, after rereading the opening sections of the post, "Bond, UNCLE and The Prisoner," I googled David McDaniel and learned that his unpublished UNCLE novel, The Final Affair, is on-line. See here.

This generated reflection on three issues addressed by Anderson and others. Such issues occupy the AB section of a Venn diagram. For present purposes, A = Anderson whereas B = Bond and others.

Three Common Issues

understated Holmesian references;
fictional collective villains;
the question, "Who is the ultimate enemy?"

Major Collective Villains In Twentieth Century Fiction
SMERSH in the early James Bond novels;
SPECTRE in the later James Bond novels;
SPECTRE in the early, and one later, James Bond films;
Thrush in The Man From UNCLE TV series;
Thrush in David McDaniel's UNCLE novels where the Technological Hierarchy was founded by former lieutenants of the criminal genius, the Professor, and is now coordinated by three Ultimate Computers;
the Village in The Prisoner TV series.

The two SPECTREs are different whereas the two presentations of Thrush are meant to be compatible. This gives us five classic villainous organizations. Poul Anderson's equivalent organization is "the gang," with its undersea HQ. See also What We Expect.

Four Questions
Who was the Professor? McDaniel does not tell us...
Who is Number One? In the cinematic SPECTRE, Blofeld. In the Village, the Prisoner.
Where is Thrush Central? McDaniel tells us that it is triple and mobile.
Who is the ultimate enemy? The Prisoner realizes that it is himself. Anderson's UN-Man realizes that it is "man himself."

Action-adventure fiction meets philosophy.

In The Millesgarden

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), CHAPTER 1.

"'Look - there - rising over the Hand of God. Is it?'
"'Yes, I think so. Our ship.'
"They were the last to go as Millesgarden was closed." (p. 1) (See Wiki, which refers to Tau Zero, here.)

The two astronauts see:

dolphins;
Pegasus;
Folke Filbyter; (See Wiki here.)
Orpheus;
"...young sisters embracing in their resurrection..." (p. 7)

They also see sunlight and shadows, feel breezes and hear fountains.

On p. 9, Reymont compares the world-governing Swedes to Pilate, yet another Biblical reference. It has proved to be fruitful to stay with the Swedish timeline.