A Tavern Keeper

(Oslo.)

After interesting digressions (see recent posts), Poul Anderson's Murder Bound gets back on track with Yamamura's investigation of a man overboard:

"'- He was born in Oslo. His father was a tavern keeper, not very successful. Maybe that was what turned him fascist. When the Germans came, they soon found the Benrud's inn was one of the few places they were welcome. Naturally, this made the family still more isolated and dependent on the Nazis. So young Herman was ripe for a Gestapo offer that he be trained to do important secret service work for the 'lawful Quisling government.'" (iv, pp. 36-37)

All too plausible. After a successful invasion, what is the "lawful government"? Sooner or later, de facto becomes de jure. British monarchs are listed as "since the Conquest" and our present Constitution with its constitutional monarchy is a Revolutionary Settlement! - although you wouldn't know it. But Benrud is dealing with the Ge-sta-po, "Secret State Police"!

As I understand it, the class basis of fascism is the petite bourgeoisie, self-employed shop keepers and small businessmen, threatened alike by big capital and by organized labor. One fascist theory to account for (alleged) unity between millionaires and revolutionaries is that both of these apparent opposites are in fact Jewish. When I challenged a man marching with the British National Party by telling him that, if he works for a living, then he should seek common cause with his fellow workers irrespective of race or nationality, he replied, "Been reading your Jew papers, have you? Been reading your Jew papers?" A genuine Nazi.

As I often say near the end of a month, this might be the last post until next month, tomorrow. Have a good weekend.

Continuities

(The one that we here call "the nice Miss Marple.")

When an author's works are set in a single period, they can cross-refer. I have been told that, although Poirot and Marple never meet, they share supporting characters. This is at least feasible whether or not my informant is correct. Most of Dornford Yates' thirty four volumes are linked by overlapping characters.

When an author's works are set in successive historical periods, some characters might refer to their predecessors and even, in certain circumstances, prophesy their successors. Thus, Christians regard the prophets as not only applying the Law but also foretelling the Messiah.

When an sf author sets his works not only in different future periods but also in mutually incompatible fictional futures, his characters cannot cross-refer - unless, of course, parallel timelines are introduced.

Poul Anderson's works (thank you for your patience, blog readers) presents:

many fictional futures;
many past and future historical periods;
some contemporary novels;
several alternative timelines;
an inter-cosmic meeting place.

Now we can link this post to its predecessor, Eras End: whereas Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn is located between universes, Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End is located at the end of all worlds and is sustained by their endings.

Eras End

The Eddas: Ragnarok.

Tolkien: the End of the Third Age of Middle Earth.

Poul and Karen Anderson: the Fall of the Roman Empire and the drowning of Ys.

Tennyson: Morte D'Arthur.

Dornford Yates: the post-War end of Merrie England (forgetting the Chartists and Peterloo).

Fleming, le Carre etc: the end of the Cold War.

Poul Anderson: the last days of the Polesotechnic League, then of the Terran Empire.

James Blish's Earthman, Come Home: the end of the Okie era.

Blish's The Triumph Of Time and Anderson's Tau Zero: the end of a universe.

POVs In Murder Bound

OK. While writing this post, I am checking the povs (points of view) of successive chapters in Poul Anderson's Murder Bound. I do not know what I will find.

i, Conrad Lauring;
ii, Trygve Yamamura;
iii, Lauring;
iv, Yamamura;
v, Lauring;
vi, Yamamura;
vii, Lauring, then Yamamura;
viii, Yamamura;
ix, Yamamura;
x, Lauring;
xi, Yamamura;
xii, Lauring;
xiii, Lauring;
xiv, Yamamura;
xv, Yamamura;
xvi, Yamamura;
xvii, Lauring;
xviii, Yamamura;
xix, Lauring;
xx, Yamamura;
xxi, Yamamura.

Totals
Lauring 8
Yamamura 12
Both 1

- unless I find any more pov changes within chapters as I reread the chapters although I do not think so. So Yamamura gets more but not as many more as we would expect. As I noted in Conrad Lauring's POV, the omniscient narrator comes on-stage in half a sentence of Chapter iii. Will the text disclose any further subtleties?

You have had me for tonight, folks. Tomorrow and Sunday: Vintage Festival. Next week: various other social activities. Blogging has to fight for air space. What a relief that for some of us work is a thing of the past. It comes to us all if we live long enough.

Fools And Knaves

See:

"Commentary"
Commentary

I quoted Poul Anderson who accuses some demagogues of rousing ignorant hordes by consciously lying. I have now found a similar passage in Dornford Yates:

"...of her wisdom, she knew that the truth was being denied. False prophets were spouting the praises of the new order of life. She tried to believe they were fools: she knew in her heart they were knaves. But their doctrines were hailed with delight by millions of dupes."
-Dornford Yates, Lower Than Vermin (London, 1950), PART THREE, p. 308.

When disagreeing with what someone has said, we can either accept him as honest or accuse him of dishonesty but must have good grounds for that latter assessment. Mere mind reading is unacceptable.

I have seen someone fail to understand a point, then refuse to understand it, indeed to deny that there was a point. This was face saving. He did not want to acknowledge that he had misunderstood in the first place. I base this judgment on my reading of his words and manner, not on telepathy.

Years ago, an acquaintance told me that:

she would never live on our, racially mixed, street;
it was a terrible environment in which to bring up a child;
we were patronizing Asians by living next door to them!

The economic reality was that we had moved to Blades St. because its houses were half the price of similar houses in other parts of town but, being racist, my acquaintance knew that our motivation could only have been based on inverted racism.

I read authors with whom I disagree because they write well but a welcome by-product is the broadening of perspectives gained by imaginatively entering into very different world views. I do not accuse the sometimes arrogant Yates of knavery. Poul Anderson was a fellow pilgrim and seeker of the truth that makes us free.

Time And Place: Chinatown And Pub Crawling

Murder Bound, iii, pp. 30-31.

See:

Time And Place: A Tagline
Time And Place: Steam Beer
Time And Place: Bar Hopping
Time And Place: Eating In San Francisco

A two-hour dinner in a Chinatown restaurant where Chinese eat and the menu is in Chinese script;

a beer joint/pool hall where most customers play Go (as some do in the Gregson);

costumed Scotch pipers striding through a tavern;

a drunk Portuguese fisherman dancing with Diana and Judith in a smoky jazz club;

a string quartet playing Brahms in a candle-lit taproom;

others blurred in memory;

Lauring and Judith imagining a Danish-ruled world (like the Swedish-ruled world in Tau Zero).

Scandinavian Culture

Murder Bound, iii.

Neither horse nor pig is kosher. Judith wonders why Christians eat the latter but not the former. Lauring explains:

"'Horse feasts were part of the ancient Nordic religion. So they were banned as pagan.'" (p. 29)

As with the sf references, the text of this mystery novel touches on another matter of interest to Poul Anderson and his readers.

I was told about the Christian horse taboo at a moot by a scholarly neo-Pagan. (Hi, Jez.) It is strange how deeply rooted food taboos are. Even when I ate meat, I regarded horse as unacceptable although we were never taught that it was taboo.

Lauring explains that Scandinavian culture is more than Ibsen or Andersen. Which Andersen?

Tryggve Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Not Vidar H. Andersen

I follow a Poul Anderson text wherever it leads. Chapter iii of Murder Bound has led us away from detective fiction into a brief discussion of Scandinavian culture. I do not know where this is taking us because I do not remember the details from previous readings and am blogging as I reread, a page or so at a time, but Anderson's texts are dense enough to warrant such close attention.

This weekend might be busy with other activities:

the Vintage Festival (and see previous references here) (scroll down);

it might be readily imagined that there is considerable political campaigning in Britain at present.

Murder Bound, Chapter iii

Murder Bound.

Yamamura investigates not as yet a murder but a man overboard. However, Chapter iii follows:

Conrad Lauring, who had been the single passenger on the Valborg;
Oddvar Finsen, the radioman;
Diana Lestrange, a girlfriend of Finsen;
Judith Mendel, Diana's roommate, introduced to Lauring.

Someone has tried to contact Lauring:

"Probably the detective whom [Captain] Matthiesen had expected the company would hire..." (p. 26)

- so Yamamura is decidedly off-stage for the time being.

Finsen's pre-date advice to Lauring:

"'Hint that if she really wants, you'll also show her the knife scar you got fighting that hashish-crazed lascar in mysterious Oojasquong. Works like magic.'" (p. 27)

I have googled "lascar" because we might need to know what it is and "hashish" because we might want to know more about it. "Oojasquong" is too mysterious for Google!

Evocative place names abound:

Marseilles (Finsen pretends to be American when there)
North Beach (Finsen describes it as the Bohemian quarter)
Ocean Beach
Golden Gate Park
Lincoln Park
Geary Street
40th

Conrad Lauring's POV

In Perish By The Sword: Stefanik.
In Murder In Black Letter: Kintyre.
In Murder Bound: Lauring. (Scroll down.)

In each of these mystery novels by Poul Anderson, the character named above is a more prominent viewpoint character than the detective, Trygve Yamamura.

At least, currently rereading the third novel, I have not yet looked ahead but, so far:

Chapter i, Conrad Lauring's point of view;
ii, Yamamura's pov;
iii, Lauring.

Yamamura seems to be squeezed out of his own books.

The opening paragraph of iii informs us that Lauring:

spends Saturday "...shopping for a used car..." (p 25);
buys a Citroen;
is "...still under the delusion that ten thousand dollars to his name made him wealthy." (ibid.)

POV Cop
That entire paragraph is narrated from Lauring's pov except for the second half of the concluding sentence. Lauring cannot know that he is under a delusion. Therefore, it is the omniscient narrator who comments by using the word "delusion." To remain within the character's pov, the text would have had to read something like: "The car was expensive but he was still well off with his ten thousand dollars," with the readers hopefully well informed enough to know that this is not the case.

The Mixed Ecology

The Hammer, CHAPTER NINE.

Winged Creatures (p. 465)
dactosauroids
bird-like gliders
Terrestrial birds

Battlefield Scavengers (p. 467)
dactosauroids
gulls
knee-high, fanged carnosauroids

Probably a picture of the Bellevuean ecology can be built up from background details although the foreground action remains men killing each other. The human race survives as long as new generations continue to be born, whether men die old at home or young in battle.

Risk

SM Stirling's and David Drake's General Raj Whitehall risks his life in battle. Should a supreme commander do this? We have already asked this question in:

1805-1815
War In History And Future History

- where our examples were taken from past history guarded by the Time Patrol and future history as recounted in the History of Technic Civilization. Both previous posts are illustrated by the death of Nelson.

(Look at that dog on the cover of Conqueror.)

Spoken English In Print

I suspect that English is more distorted in speech than any other language. A lorry driver that I worked with said, "T'aul' lad...," meaning "The old man..."

"The" was abbreviated to "T'";
"o" was mispronounced "au";
"auld" was abbreviated to "aul'";
"man" was replaced by a word meaning "boy."

Novelists must reproduce the sounds of spoken English in their texts. Vowels are mispronounced and words are run together.

"'Ahm tahd,' said the thick-set man in the mackintosh."
-Ian Fleming, Live And Let Die (London, 2004), 5, p. 39.

(This chapter has an unfortunate title.)

Denis Waller, speaking to Trygve Yamamura, says:

"'...aren'tchu?'"
"'A accident.'"
"'...hunnerds ah miles...'"
"'...awright.'"
"'You hearda Hugo Heiss, haven'tchu?'"
"'...wantchu...'"
-Murder Bound, ii, p. 24.

I have carefully reproduced Poul Anderson's spelling and punctuation.

I was amused by one cartoonist's deliberate miss-spellings of words but find that I have already discussed this in A Comedy Of Meanings.

Yamamura and Walling know each other's names because they read them off the registry cards on their steering columns. How many car owners display registry cards in this way?

Fictional Falkayns And Falcons

Since Poul Anderson has a David Falkayn and Dornford Yates has a Richard Falcon, I wondered whether these surnames might be connected. My assumption was that I would be able to find the derivation of the surname, "Falkayn." Instead, I have not been able to find any real life Falkayns anywhere.

In Fiction
(i) Two different characters might have the same name. (It has happened.)

(ii) Different characters might have very similar names. Britain has had John Steed and John Steel and the US has had John Steele.

(iii) Different versions of a single character might have only their name in common. The British, not the American, Falcon lost the flying suit (see image) and became an ordinary investigator, more like Yates' Falcon - although there is no direct connection between these two investigative Falcons.

Thus, fiction is a sort of spectrum encompassing many similar characters but with vast dissimilarities at either end. And, if I can think of any more bizarre comparisons to make, then I will let you know.

Places

Murder Bound, ii.

Yamamura parks in front of the Embarcadero. Beyond is Telegraph Hill. To his left is Fisherman's Wharf where the Balclutha is visible.

"'Tramp' had suggested a rusty hulk crewed by Eugene O'Neill bit players. But the Valborg was long and slim..." (p. 17)

She was:

"'Built in Goteborg in 1950...'" (p. 18)

A fact-packed text.

Piet Van Sarawak

"Piet Van Sarawak (Dutch-Indonesian-Venusian, early twenty-fourth A.D.)..."
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est " IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 1, p. 174.

The blog search for "Piet van Rijn" found "Piet van Rinnoken" but not "Piet Van Sarawak" probably because the latter's surname begins "Van S...," not "van Ri..."

Nicholas van Rijn and Piet Van Sarawak live in alternative timelines. Does either of them inhabit the future of Trygve Yamamura and Piet van Rijn? Both might. Alternative futures that diverge, e.g., in the early twenty first century, assume a common past until the end of the twentieth century. Einstein is common to diverse fictional futures so Yamamura might be also.

Time to visit Ketlan who is back out of hospital.

Piet Van Rijn

In Murder Bound, the Valborg crew include Piet van Rijn from Holland! Poul Anderson fans are bound to ask: ancestor of Nicholas? But surely I have posted about this before? Searching the blog for "Piet van Rijn," I found only WORLDWEEK, which refers to:

Admiral Piet van Rinnekom;
van Rijn -

- but not to "Piet van Rijn."

I probably did notice Piet van Rijn on a previous reading but did not then think to post about him. And now I come across his name as if for the first time. We do not know a text if we have read it only once.

Predictably, violence occurs in Chapter i, and our series detective character, Trygve Yamamura, is called in at the beginning of Chapter ii. The opening paragraphs of ii resound with significant place names:

the Bay
San Francisco
Treasure Island
Alcatraz
the Golden Gate

We are on our way.

Lauring, Ellegard And Torvald

Conrad Lauring notices that Jonas Ellegard walks as if marching on parade but tells himself to stop imagining things. This has to be significant. (For both these characters, see here.)

Arne Torvald, second mate on the Valborg, is from the Lofoten Islands. (See image.) He tells the story of the draug and also mentions the fylgje/Doppelganger/fetch.

Referring to previous arguments between himself and Torvald, Lauring says:

"'If you looked around you just once, you'd see the Depression is over. The things that were wrong have been corrected, or can be, and without making men into g-g-government property. Uh, uh -'"
-Poul Anderson, Murder Bound (New York, 1962), i, p. 6.

Lauring stutters when excited. I agree with his "...can be..." but we are still waiting. After seeming to avoid the argument, Torvald returns to it:

"'I suppose you think a clerk in an office is a free man? Or even the manager in company headquarters? I can -'" (pp. 6-7)

He is interrupted.

OK. Do we have a Nazi and a Communist on board the Valborg? With a hint (but only a hint) of the draug...

Angels

We see more demons than angels in works of fantasy although demons are meant to be fallen angels. Both Poul Anderson and James Blish give us demons and the Heavenly messenger in Anderson's Operation Chaos is not an angel but a sainted soul. Angels were big in the Bible, Dante and Milton but have moved to the fringe.

Reflecting on his guiding computer, SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall wonders:

"...how an angel came to be condemned to the cislunary sphere of Fallen corruption."
-The Hammer, CHAPTER NINE, p. 455.

CS Lewis' Ransom rose above that sphere:

"When I attempted to give Oyarsa some idea of our own Christian angelology, he certainly seemed to regard our 'angels' as different in some way from himself. But whether he meant that they were a different species, or only that they were some special military caste...I don't know."
-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 1-144 AT Postscript, p. 142.

And neither do we!

Motives And Mathematics

I suppose that, when we begin to read a mystery novel, we should be on the alert for possible murder motives among the characters. In the opening chapter of Poul Anderson's Murder Bound (New York, 1962), set on board the Norwegian ship, the Valborg, we learn that there has been a coldness between the chief steward, Jonas Ellegard, and the passenger, Conrad Lauring, "...since the Perlmutter episode." (i, p. 3)

However, Ellegard seems to want "...to end their unspoken feud." (ibid.) Unused to good humor, he rather heavily describes Lauring, who is a mathematician, as:

"'Another Niels Henrik Abel, eh?'" (ibid.)

This is good characterization. We all recognize: coldness between two guys because of an incident (as yet unspecified); a clumsy, although hopefully well meant, attempt to end the coldness. But this is a mystery novel. Will one of the characters go overboard in the the fog and the darkness before the ship reaches San Francisco? Read on.

Four Or Five Hot Drinks

Coffee, tea, rax (?), jaine, kave.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol agents and SM Stirling's temporal exiles miss coffee in the past (see "Tea Or Coffee, Sir?") although Julian May's temporal exiles serve it (see Coffee And Creativity). Rax and jaine are served in futures imagined by James Blish and Poul Anderson, respectively. See Corridors Of Power.

SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall thinks:

"If the Azanians ever cut off our supply of kave beans, the Army high command is doomed."
-The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 451.

But we don't really need hot drinks, do we? My grandmother said, "Have you ever been in someone's house in the afternoon and you've wanted them to offer you tea and they haven't? Ooh, It's awful!" but would have been horrified if you had told her that she was a drug addict.

The One Who Sees In Highest Heaven

the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.
-copied from here.

This post applies to all fiction but, in particular, to the works of Poul Anderson.

After, for my part today, a two-hour river walk followed by a canal-side church Flower Festival on the theme of  "Stories from the Bible," let us imagine that a deity creates, then contemplates, several distinct universes. Although, as a conscious being, he cannot be atemporal, or timeless, he can, in relation to each of his creations, be transtemporal. Thus, the temporal dimension of each universe corresponds to one of his spatial dimensions. Thus also, he is able to contemplate discrete moments as often as he wants to and in whatever order he chooses. He or, to improve the analogy even further, a pantheon of creators resembles the authors and readers of every work of fiction. When we are familiar with a novel, we can reread it from cover to cover but can also dip in and out of favorite chapters. We can skip past a Prologue that delays the beginning of the main narrative. In Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, I like to reread the few chapters that are narrated from the point of view of Chunderban Desai.

From Anderson's inter-cosmic inn, the Old Phoenix, it is possible to enter any universe in any period of its history. Thus, the inn shares this transtemporal perspective. For me, currently reading or rereading several novels:

Poul Anderson's Conrad Lauring approaches San Francisco in the Valborg;
SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall prepares for battle;
Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist arrives on Hedeby Island;
Dornford Yates' Pleydells and Mansel reminisce in the late 1950s, just a few years before I started to read about them.

But, at any time in our temporal dimension, other Anderson fans will instead be focusing on:

Manse Everard in New York;
Nicholas van Rijn on the Winged Cross;
David Falkayn on Ivanhoe;
Dominic Flandry on Starkad;
Gratillonius seeing the towers of Ys for the first time...

The characters live when they are read and they are read more than once.

The Pleydells, lamenting changing times, live during the Chaos that - precedes Technic civilization? Leads to an irreversible catastrophe? (We are currently on track for the latter.)

Valborg

(Swedish Valborg.)

While the name Walpurgis is taken from the eighth-century English Christian missionary Saint Walburga, Valborg, as it is called in Swedish, also marks the arrival of spring.
-copied from here.

"Two days from San Francisco, they encountered a fog bank. When the early November night had fallen, there was no visibility beyond the rail, and the Valborg made her way at reduced speed."
-Poul Anderson, Murder Bound (New York, 1962), i, p. 1.

There are several evocative/atmospheric words and phrases:

San Francisco, with its many connotations but also the by now familiar setting of Anderson's detective novels;

fog and November night, both appropriate for Chapter One, page 1, of a mystery novel;

Valborg, suggesting Valhalla and turning out to mean Walpurgis.

The scene is set.

The bow lookout wears a pea jacket, in fact "huddles" in it. On the deck, there is "murk," hatch covers crouch and king posts are "gaunt." (p. 2) Is the viewpoint character about to see a ghost? Read on.

Fighting For Families And Fathers (And A Flower Festival)

One author either directly quotes another or deploys recognizable phraseology:

"'They'll have all the unit formation of a street brawl after a racetrack meeting - but don't forget. They're fighting on the doorsteps of their homes, for their families and Church and the graves of their fathers.'"
-The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 449.

See previous Horatius references.

This enemy lacks organization but not motivation.

It is a Bank Holiday (scroll down) weekend with a Flower Festival in the church at Glasson and a BBQ at a friend's house near the canal. I will post about Poul Anderson's Murder Bound but there is no hurry.

Bowls Of New Potatoes

Vicariously enjoyed meals can be one of the pleasures of reading fiction  - depending on who wrote it.

Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn is a gourmet. See:

Dinner At The Winged Cross...
What Van Rijn Eats During Business Meetings
In The Saturn Room...

Anderson's Chives is a chef. See:

Open Sandwiches
Captain's Dinner
In The Hooligan

Chives' employer, Dominic Flandry, learned to dine well earlier in life. See:

From The Lavishly Stocked...
Two Rijstaffels

Visitors to Poul and Karen Anderson's Ys ate well. See:

Faith, Food And Freedom

However, SM Stirling surpasses Poul Anderson in two respects: alternative histories and food. Most of the posts on our Food Thread are Stirlingian, not Andersonian.

Would you eat the flesh of a man-sized biped or might that feel like getting a bit too close to home? It might not taste like "long pig." In fact, it wouldn't if the animal were reptilian rather than mammalian:

the white meat of a local, man-sized, sheep-headed, slightly feathered, grazing sauroid baked with bacon in an earth-oven;
new potatoes in butter;
fresh flatbread;
olives;
green salad;
fruit;
cheese;
local wine -

- plundered or bought with plundered goods.
- The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 438.

I would manage quite well on the potatoes, bread, salad, fruit and cheese, thank you, sir.

Vandals And Goths

Vandals were a tribe or are perpetrators of vandalism.

See Vandal blog search result. (Scroll down.)

SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall thinks:

"Van-dals..."
-The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 444 -

- when a fountain is used as a watering trough.

Goths were a people or are a fashion/subculture.

See Goths blog search result. (Scroll down.)

When I asked Nygel, the great-grandfather of all the Goths in Lancaster, to write for the blog about Goths, he texted:

"They r miserable. That was easy :). I await ur nxt challenge :)"

Words have fascinating histories, carried from history through current usage into future histories.

Goths fight Vandals in some of the linked posts.

Boy Pleydell's Moment Of Realization

Concentrated doses of Poul Anderson's prose have sensitized me to recognizable tricks of the trade in other authors' works, one being descriptions of natural scenery that appeal to three or more of the senses, another being dramatic ways to tell us that a character has suddenly realized something important.

Boy Pleydell and Jonathan Mansel, in the Pyrenees, are trying to trace the movements of a murderer:

"There was another silence. Jonah had his eyes shut and a hand to his head. And I stared up at the cliffs which were looking down on Echelle. The sun was...
"And there, as I looked upon them, the contact was made.
"I must, I think, have cried out, but I cannot be sure. But Jonah was shaking me and crying, 'What do you know?'"
-Dornford Yates, The House That Berry Built (London, 1945), CHAPTER XVI, p. 249.

Your Blogger's Observations
(i) Of course, Boy enlightens Jonah immediately whereas Anderson's characters keep us waiting.

(ii) Nevertheless, an Anderson fan, at least one who reads this blog, should immediately feel at home when Boy makes "contact" and Jonah urgently shakes him.

(iii) I turn to other reading only to find something relevant blog-wise. The Andersonian perspective permeates other reading just as meditation is supposed to permeate daily life.

(iv) Am I making too much of this? No doubt.

"What if You're Wrong?"

Fictional heroes like Poul Anderson's David Falkayn and Dominic Flandry risk their lives but do not die - usually. If we are reading an eight-volume Dominic Flandry series, then we know that Flandry is not going to die except just possibly at the very end of the last volume. In fact, I did think that he was going to die near the end of A Stone in Heaven but there was a conventional rescue after all. In some sub-genres, it is a given that the hero always survives. ERB was not going to write about the death of Tarzan or John Carter. Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming did try, unsuccessfully, to dispose of their signature characters.

Having explained his military strategy, SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall is asked:

"'Sir - what if you're wrong?'"
-All That Fall, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 437 -

- and replies:

"'This isn't a safe profession, you know. If I'm wrong, we all die. And now, Messers, I think we should attend to the men.'" (ibid.)

An excellent answer, especially that last sentence, suggesting immediate practical action.

But I have heard that question before. An Evangelical asked Richard Dawkins, "What if you're wrong?" He replied in part, "What if you're wrong about the Great Ju-Ju under the sea?" (See here.) An excellent answer. Here would be two more:

"You ask me what would be the consequences for me if your belief were true but it is your belief so you know the answer."

"My world-view is based on evidence and reason. I cannot change it by an act of will as Evangelicals seem to expect."

Have I gone off the point? Not really. In any situation, each of us can only make his best judgment, then act on it. Does anyone claim to be infallible? Well, yes, as a matter of fact...

Conceptual Contributions

See Comprehensive Comparisons And Contrasts.

Neil Gaiman is another fantasy writer who has several parallels with Poul Anderson. Both Poul Anderson and James Blish have characters who travel between galaxies and survive beyond the end of the current universe.

We discuss authors from three periods:

before our time;
in living memory;
still alive and active -

- although it is really a single living tradition. Each generation becomes part of the background of its successors. Sf writers have coined the terms and/or contributed the concepts:

Frankenstein monster;
time machine;
time travel;
robot;
robotics;
future history;
alternate history;
waldo;
waterbed;
communications satellite;
gas giant -

- and probably more.

Poul Anderson's contributions to such themes have not impacted public consciousness in the same way as some others (I don't think) but we here know that they are substantial. 

Comprehensive Comparisons And Contrasts

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus and Poul Anderson's Genesis ask whether it is right to create human life.

Anderson's mass produced, streamlined Time Patrol timecycles are like later models of Wells' elaborate nineteenth century contraption whereas Anderson's evolved Danellians contrast with Wells' devolved Eloi.

Anderson updates Stapledonian cosmic sf and succeeds but also surpasses Heinlein.

Tolkien and Anderson independently adapted Norse mythology as modern fiction.

Anderson surpasses Asimov at nearly everything but the latter excels at robots.

Anderson alone addresses time travel comprehensively.

SM Stirling surpasses Anderson in alternative histories.

Anderson wrote three standard mystery novels whereas Alan Moore wrote a graphic fictionalized account of real murders. See A Murder.

Dornford Yates not only wrote a standard mystery novel, Ne'er-Do-Well, but also incorporated accounts of the Crippen case into two other novels, having, as a barrister, worked on the prosecution of Crippen who, being a real life murderer, not only did not practice any elaborate deceptions but also made several serious mistakes.

Probabilities

See Computer Predictions And Simulations.

The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT.

"probability of serious epidemic 80% +or-, 6%, Center said, probability of city surrendering to siege before return of Stern Island force 6% +or- 2%. probability of decisive results from siege operations, too low to calculate meaningfully." (p. 436)

Could a "teela" (see Luck) succeed against overwhelming odds? Maybe. Or maybe it is her genes that are lucky so that her descendants will prosper long term even though she loses short term.

Apparently, Raj is up against barbarians who, like Larry Niven's kzinti during the Wars Against Men, can be guaranteed to attack when they are unready because the experience of defeat has not yet naturally selected them for caution or common sense whereas both Poul Anderson's Merseian Roidhunate and SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka pursue millennial strategies toward global, then galactic, hegemony. Know your enemy.

Anderson And Others

("Ander" is a name but "anders" also means "other.")

As you know, I hope, the main focus of this blog always remains Poul Anderson. Other authors, notably SM Stirling, are discussed because they are both relevant and of interest. (EE Smith would be relevant as a writer of space opera but of less interest to me as a reader.)

The dilemma for the Poul Anderson Appreciation blogger is: which work by Poul Anderson to reread next? A scan through the collections should disclose some short stories that have not been reread recently. However, surprises are also possible. Ali Romer's review of Anderson's first detective novel prompted me to reread that work in order first to appreciate Anderson's evocation of "time and place," as commended by Ali, and secondly to assess the novel specifically as detective fiction, an aspect that had not really interested me before. On previous readings, I had not even tried to deduce who the murderer was and in any case had by now forgotten! This time I guessed right but certainly had not deduced any of the ramifications of the complicated plot - in two senses of the word, "plot."

So should Anderson's Murder Bound be reread next? (I do not have a copy of Murder In Black Letter and had to read it online.) Will I make some attempt to deduce who did it? Again, I do not remember. What do I remember from the book?-

sympathetic treatment of a Communist character;
an interesting use of the word, "environmentalism";
hints at supernaturalism, as with the cursed sword in Perish By The Sword;
thus, relevance of Anderson's fantasy, "The Tale of Hauk";
relevance of the fact that San Francisco is a port;
passages clearly reminding us that Anderson also wrote sf.

But there will be much that I have totally forgotten.

Making Them Come To Us

The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT.

"'I'm giving them enough time to mobilize some of their strength, and not enough to gather all of it. Making them come to us in bite-sized chunks, as it were." (p. 435)

Who was that Roman? He had to fight three guys who together were too much for him so he ran away. They gave chase but at different speeds. When they were widely enough spaced, he stopped running, stood his ground and killed each of the three as they caught up with him.

I suppose that, if the enemy realize what Raj is doing, then they will avoid falling into his trap? Any human activity, even mutual mass slaughter, becomes a science when practiced full time.

An Oblique Late (K)Night Association

The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT.

I am just back from the Gregson Centre and should not be blogging at this time of night.

"The Cuirassiers had a little polished ceremonial breastplate on their tunics, a reminder of the time when they had worn back-and-breast armor. To Raj it had always seemed a curious habit in a combat zone - rather like hanging a shoot me here sign on your chest - but Dalhouse swore by the tradition." (p. 434)

The original Batman wore all-dark garb. Later, he gained a bright yellow circle on his chest. Frank Miller explains: when Wayne is shot in the chest, the bullet-proof plate holds... That is why he wore a target on his chest. After that, he returns to all-dark garb.

How much combat activity is practical and how much for show or morale? (I have no idea.) I prefer the covert activities of Bond or Flandry to the battlefield heroics of some other characters but also await the military climax of The Hammer with interest. Some time tomorrow...

Future Conflicts

The Hammer, CHAPTER SEVEN.

Readers of military fiction need to realize that, in addition to directing combat, generals do a lot of organizing and managing. That is the point of the several non-combat chapters in this novel.

"A gong was ringing from the little church of the Spirit of Man of This Earth; by far the minority congregation in the village, but by law the only one allowed to have bell or signal." (p. 425)

We had those kinds of laws in these islands until comparatively recently. In my childhood, in the 1950s, Catholics in England and Scotland were still conscious of being social outsiders and there were particular problems in Northern Ireland. Will mankind reproduce all such conflicts on extra-solar planets in future millennia? I would like to be confident that our descendants will at least be there even if they are repeating all our mistakes.

Twistgrass And Feathers

The Hammer, CHAPTERs FIVE-SIX.

In military sf, I am more interested in the sf than in the military, especially when the action has not started yet. Most of the organisms on Bellevue, men, dogs and plants, are imported but we also find:

"...twistgrass pasture..." (FIVE, p. 390)

"...chicken-sized sauroids with short horns on their noses and lines of feathers down their forearms..." (SIX, p. 396)

It is difficult to imagine alien organisms without merely reassembling parts of familiar organisms:

chicken-sized;
lizard-like;
horns;
noses;
feathers;
arms.

If human beings had not arrived, would some of the sauroids eventually have become tool- and language-using bipeds? Not necessarily. As I understand it, there is no inevitability about the direction of natural selection. Organisms and their environments interact. If unintelligence has higher survival value, then that is what will be selected. However, if only by random processes, evolution moves in every direction it can. According to Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds?, overspecialized animals, entirely dependent on a single ecological niche, become extinct when the environment changes whereas a different kind of species able to adapt its behavior might not only survive but also eventually become intelligent. And these sauroids sound as if some of then might start to manipulate their environments. 

Outputs

(Regular blog readers will understand when I say that Ketlan, my son-in-law and technical assistant, is again in hospital. We hope to have better news tomorrow.)

Authors' outputs vary enormously. In my teens, James Blish was my favorite sf writer. This Poul Anderson Appreciation blog has wound up as big as it is first because my appreciation of Anderson's works has progressively increased and secondly because Anderson's output is considerably vaster than Blish's. Does anyone have a figure for the number of novels, let alone short stories, published under Anderson's name? I am not going to try to count them at this time of night. The number of collections is meaningless because their contents overlap too much.

Dornford Yates, whom I also appreciated in my teens, wrote thirty four volumes, either novels or collections, with many overlapping characters but no overlapping contents. Stieg Larsson, who was not around in my teens or indeed as an author in the twentieth century, wrote three volumes although he had planned another seven.

Quality matters more than quantity. These four guys have quality and Anderson also has quantity.

Can anyone identify the titles in the attached image?

More On The Mixed Ecology II

The Hammer, CHAPTER FIVE.

Bellevuean dactosauroids:

are the size of a man's hand;

have fangs, jewel-like scales, skin wings and long tails with diamond-shaped rudders;

live in nests;

hiss;

fly near a man's face;

bank and glide;

eat insects;

are eaten by red-tailed hawks.

(Google has pictures of red-tailed hawks but not of dactosauroids.)

See Mixed Ecology.

I admit to being less interested in the close details of military life and organization but nevertheless can unreservedly recommend SM Stirling's and David Drake's The General series, of which The Hammer is Volume II, to fans of military sf.

Science As Threat?

Thesis
In HG Wells' and Olaf Stapledon's future histories, mankind remakes itself with science.

In Poul Anderson's first future history, the Psychotechnic Institute fails to remake mankind but eventually Galactic human beings mentally control cosmic forces.

Antithesis
In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, some men, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiment, proclaim a Wellsian-Stapledonian future while trying to use science as an instrument to control the rest of mankind.

Synthesis/New Thesis
In much sf, e.g., in Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's second future history, unchanged human beings live with continued scientific advances, e.g., they lead everyday lives on colonized extra-solar planets and also wage war on and between those planets.

New Antithesis
In Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, intelligent technology threatens to supersede its creators.

In Anderson's Genesis, intelligent technology does supersede its creators but the Terrestrial post-organic intelligence re-creates humanity...

New Synthesis?

More On The Mixed Ecology

The Hammer, CHAPTER FIVE.

Returning from Poul Anderson's 1950s San Francisco to SM Stirling's and David Drake's colonized planet, Bellevue, we find more evidence of the mixed ecology. A mountain forest contains:

"...reddish-brown native whipstick and featherfrond..." (p. 379)

- alongside imported beech and fir.

Lower down, there are "russet grass," olives, cork-oak, coconut, sisal plantations, cotton, indigo, sugar and rice. Is the "russet grass" native or Terrestrial?

Further on, we read that:

"...tall reddish-tawny three-leafed native grass rippled, under the twisted little cork-oaks and silver-leafed olives men had brought here a millennium and a half ago." (p. 388)

We remember Poul Anderson's mixed ecologies and many local equivalents of grass. Will there really be any extra-solar planets that can accomodate human colonists and Terrestrial organisms as easily as this? 

A Sunset

Before leaving Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword for a while, it seems appropriate to savor one last sunset:

"A few thin clouds in the west were briefly red. Then daylight drained from the sky. Stefanik continued to sit on his couch and look empty-eyed out the window." (15, p. 140)

Sunsets are a regular blog feature. Here we are also given a human reaction. Stefanik has thought so long about his troubles that his intelligence is giving up just as the sun, the source of light, declines. (But he will have a happy ending at the end of the concluding chapter, 19, and I will now return to other reading.)

A Murder

(A building in Dalton Square, Lancaster. Bear with me.)

Perish By The Sword.

OK. I guessed the murderer right but was not sure and was misled when suspicion seemed to fall on another character. I find the detailed and complicated explanation of the solution the least interesting part to read in a detective novel.

A fictional murderer has not just killed someone. He has also practiced an ingenious and intricate deception which the fictional detective is clever enough to unravel, then to explain to his fellow characters and, incidentally, to the (intrigued?) readers. The deception in Perish By The Sword involves:

psychological manipulation, as in Poirot's last case;
a ladder at a window;
a tape recorder connected to an intercom;
a samurai sword stolen, then hidden inside laboratory equipment;
a scene acted out at a window by the murderer and a prostitute;
the simulation of a ghost...

In an interview, Alan Moore explained that:

he wanted to write graphic fiction about a murder as a human event with complicated causes and consequences, not as an Agatha Christie/Cluedo parlor game ("Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick");

he though that the Whitechapel Murders ("Jack the Ripper") were too old hat;

therefore, he considered Buck Ruxton, whose former house is in the image (we would have read an Alan Moore graphic novel set in Lancaster, not in London);

however, the Ripper Anniversary came around, sparking a lot of new literature and speculation;

thus, it became easier to research the Ripper;

the result was From Hell.

For one recent human consequence of Ruxton's murders, read:

Ms Rogerson’s family still live in the area and were seriously unamused when a city centre pub round the corner from the Ruxton house decided it would be fun to retheme itself as ‘Ruxton’s’ back in the ’80s. The change didn’t stick (neither did the two themes after that) and the pub is currently called The Boar’s Head.
-copied from here.

(A short comic strip by Alan Moore tells exactly the same story about a London pub that briefly called itself "Jack the Ripper.")

I cite the fictional treatment of real murders to contrast with the novelistic treatment of fictional murders.

Please remember these names:

"Polly" Nichols;
Annie Chapman;
Kate Eddows;
"Long Liz" Stride;
Marie Jeanette Kelly.

We do not know his name. We do know theirs.

Now back to Poul Anderson's fictional murderer and a question for blog readers. Given all that has been said, what would be an appropriate fate for this sword-stealing and -wielding villain?

Science As Threat And Two Other Genres Implied

Perish By The Sword, 18.

Yamamura and two companions enter a laboratory at night:

"...the corners were full of murk, and the larger pieces of apparatus - furnaces, switchboards, pumps - seemed not so much scientific as inhuman." (p. 171)

Inhuman? Alien? Threatening? How do some people perceive science? And a future supposedly dominated by it?

In the laboratory, automatic processes continue:

plating qualities are tested;
an acid bath devours a sample;
spring steel is endlessly bent.

"Sometimes [Yamamura] wondered if such robots were not as mortally dangerous, in the long run, as the [samurai sword] he carried." (p. 172)

He has just summarized an entire science fiction tradition from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through Isaac Asimov's "Frankenstein complex" to Anderson's own Genesis.

Needing to know where the murderer had hidden the sword that had been his murder weapon, one of the companions asks:

"'If only it could talk, huh?'" (ibid.)

Yamamura replies:

"'Don't wish for that!...You wouldn't like what you heard.'" (ibid.)

In Anderson's fantasy novel, Operation Luna, a magical sword speaks to comical effect! - which takes us in precisely the opposite direction from dangerous automatic machinery.

If Poul Anderson is not comprehensive, then I do not know who is. Check out the range of issues that we have to discuss when appreciating his texts.

Yamamura's Ideal?

Perish By The Sword, 15-16.

As I approach the climax of a Poul Anderson novel, the text resists and delays my arrival at its conclusion by increasing the number of noteworthy features that it presents. Anyone reading Poul Anderson's first detective novel simultaneously with following this Poul Anderson Appreciation blog must immediately recognize that I focus neither on plot nor on action but on what others might regard as peripheral aspects. We will soon know how the narrative ends but, for me, not tonight. I want to finish this post, then watch some of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.

Our alternating viewpoint characters have been Mike Stefanik and the private detective, Trygve Yamamura. Stefanik:

"...let content pervade each cell until he almost understood that ideal Trig Yamamura spoke of." (15, p. 145)

So what is this "ideal"?

Yamamura, sprawling with feet on desk after some fresh air and a few knee bends, reflects:

"Relax. Give the nervous system a rest, as well as the thews. Unstop the senses, let street clangor and smells and chill flow through, make yourself a part of existence. That was what Nirvana meant, not oblivion as much as oneness. The ideal of the Zen sect was to stop speculating about the other side of mortality and try to become integral here, now, with this world where all things were beautiful and holy.
"The phone rang." (16, p. 151)

Yamamura swears in Norwegian! (At least, it looks like swearing.)

True story: I read these passages this evening immediately after returning home from Lancaster Serene Reflection (Soto Zen) Meditation Group where we sat facing the wall, then heard a talk from a monk. So what would the monk have said about Anderson's text? Mainly, find some word other than "ideal." An ideal is neither a practice nor an awareness but an idea. Also: do not make yourself part of existence but sit with whatever comes up; do not try to become integral but let your essential integration show itself in its own time, at its own pace. Any particular meditation session might be full of mental turmoil but, if so, sit with that, let it go and maintain the practice for decades and life-times. (Philosophically, I do not accept rebirth but am quoting the tradition.)

My typing of the last unbracketed sentence of the preceding paragraph was interrupted by a Buddhist friend texting: "we are willing to be with whatever arises."