"'Has not the king called on the gods?' asked Hadding.
"'Indeed he has, again and again, with mighty offerings,' Ivar said. 'Nothing has come of it. No wizard, no spaewife, no dream has been able to tell anybody why Thor won't make an end of this monster.'"
-Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), XVIII, p. 152.
We imagine a time when the gods sometimes intervened. Such historical fantasies can have two possible sequels.
First, works like:
The Ring Of The Nibelung by Richard Wagner;
The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien;
The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson;
"The Magic Goes Away" by Larry Niven -
- explain that supernatural beings have withdrawn, giving way to the present age of men. That is plausible and fits the facts.
Another possible sequel would be an alternative present in which the gods still intervene, e.g., maybe the Germans did attempt to invade Britain but their fleet was sunk by Aegir or Poseidon? As it is, if the gods are still around, then they no longer intervene publicly. (See Gods Stories.)
In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, authentic versions of Odin and Thor, and of all the others, still operate but behind the scenes whereas, in Mark Millar's The Ultimates, a modernized, hippified Thor intervenes openly. See here.
How do Terrestrial gods cope with an interstellar setting? Not very well. They are too Terrocentric.
Creative imagination encompasses every conceivable option and Poul Anderson's works cover a lot of them.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Tolkien's treatment of God and the angelic beings called the "Valar" in THE SILMARILLION and THE LORD OF THE RINGS is complex and not to be quickly unraveled in a hasty combox comment. But I would it goes back to Tolkien's belief as a Catholic that God respects the free choices of the beings he created, both Earthly and angelic. Only rarely will we see Eru Iluvatar openly intervening in the Middle Earth mythos. The assistance Eru gives to those who combat the fallen Vala Morgoth and his servants (such as Sauron) will be indirect.
And I recall as well how one of the follies of Morgoth and later Sauron was their insistence on being worshiped as gods. Sauron, for example, in his campaign to corrupt the Numenoreans, taught them and their last king Ar- Pharazon the worship of Morgoth. Including the human sacrifice of those of the Numenoreans who remained faitfhul to Eru. And in the Dark Years of Middle Earth during the Second Age, Sauron was worshiped as a god.
We even see hints, in a story featuring a debate between Finrod Felagund (the "Friend of Men") in MORGOTH'S RING, that there was a tradition in Beor's house that Eru Himself would someday, somehow, personally intervene to heal the Marring of Arda and mankind.
I don't think Catholic Christianity, at least, will fare that badly in an interstellar setting! Unlike many Evangelical Protestants, Catholics learned from the Galileo affair not to make such fools of themselves when it comes to the "secular" sciences. It took the Catholic Church 91 years of pondering evolution and its implications before the Holy See would even mention evolution in any authoritative way. It was in 1950 that Pius XII declared in his encyclical HUMANI GENERIS that some forms of evolutionary thought and theories were not contrary to revealed truths. Plus, John Paul II declared in the mid 1990's that so much evidence had been found supporting evolution that it could no longer be called a mere theory.
And most of the Christians we see in Anderson's Technic series seem to be Catholics (most prominently Nicholas van Rijn and Fr. Axor). Which would seem to indicate Anderson thought Catholicism could adapt to both an interstellar setting and accept non-human converts. An issue which I discussed in greater detail in my article "God and Alien in Anderson's Technic Civilization."
Ad astra! Sean
A correction to my third paragraph above. I meant to write this: "...in a story featuring a debate betweem Finrod Felagund (the "Friend of Men") AND A LADY OF BEOR'S LINE in MORGOTH'S RING..."
More drats for me being too hasty!
Ad astra! Sean
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