Making Myths

(29 February is the birthday of Superman, a modern myth.)

This post refers to Olaf Stapledon's Preface to his Last And First Men and also to both The Game Of Empire and The Night Face by Poul Anderson, thus to two, very different, future histories.

"A wall displayed a mural which puzzled her. It depicted a male and female human, nude, of the variant she had heard called 'Mongoloid,' emerging from clouds wherein drifted hints of stars, like a galaxy a-borning. 'An ancestral creation myth,' the man told her. 'To us it symbolizes - '"
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, pp. 370-371.

The speaker is interrupted before he can explain the symbolism. However, we understand that his community comprehends scientific cosmogony but also displays an artistic representation of an ancestral myth for its symbolic significance.

On Gwydion, Elfavy describes speech, mathematics, music, painting, choreography and myth as "languages." (The Night Face, p. 598) I would not call all of these activities "languages" but we take her point that they are means of expression and communication, thus, at least metaphorically, "languages."

She continues:

"'...Gwydion seems to be the only planet where myth was also developed, deliberately and systematically, as still a different language  - not by primitives who confused it with the concepts of science or common sense, but by people trained in semantics, who knew that each language describes one single facet of reality, and wanted myth to help them talk about something for which the others are inadequate.'" (ibid.)

But can myths be developed systematically? Are they not more organic, growing in the collective consciousness? Superman, in all his manifestations, transcends the character as he appeared in his introductory episode. Also, the Gwydiona frequently recount a myth, then explain its symbolism. Thus, it is questionable whether these myths express anything that cannot be communicated through ordinary speech.

Elfavy claims that the Bale time experience would be describable only "'...by a fusion of every language...'" (ibid.) but we eventually learn that it is describable simply as insanity.

Lastly, for now, Stapledon claims that his future history:

"...is an essay in myth creation."
-Olaf Stapledon, Preface IN Stapledon, Last And First Men/Last Men In London (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), pp. 11-13 AT p. 12.

For previous discussions, see here.

Living In Mythical Time

In SM Stirling's Emberverse series, after the loss of advanced technology and mass deaths in the Change, the handful of survivors reverts to living in mythical time. Thus, before the Change, the heroic killing of a bear would have been an event of biographical, or even possibly of historical, significance but would not have become a seminal myth as it does post-Change.

Poul Anderson's Gwydiona combine scientific knowledge with perpetual mythologizing of events. Thus, astrophysics coexists with a stellar creation myth. Those who must shelter from dangerous volcanic dust by entering a Holy City outside Bale time must first invent a myth to justify their presence in such a place at what would otherwise have been an inappropriate time.

The Gwydiona recount myths, then immediately recite text book explanations of their meanings which, to my mind, destroys the power of a myth. However, their social psychology turns out to be based on a massive collective self-deception. Some questions are met with evasions.

"More Tea, Sir?"

See "Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

In some film that I saw, a US Army officer says, "My orderly is the last surviving member of the Mottisa tribe." The orderly appears with a tea pot and asks, "Mo' tea, sir?"

There is more tea in the Technic History. A Gwydiona likes the tea stuff that has come with the expedition and Raven says that no one should come between an Oakenshaw and his tea: a rare moment of relaxation with the ever-vigilant Commandant. Tea will still be growing at that time in the former Merseian Roidhunate.

Brit or no Brit, I really do prefer coffee.

The Gwydiona "God"

On Gwydion, "God" means an:

"...eternal and infinite Oneness..."
-The Night Face, IV, p. 582.

Thus, it is the Hindu Brahman, not the Biblical Creator. So why apply the word "God" to both? For the sake of precision, we may indeed avoid using any term that has become ambiguous. However, verbal usage is not always precise. A dictionary lists every way in which a word is used.

"God" can mean "the transcendent" or "the object of religious experience." Apart from culturally conditioned visions of Jesus, Mary, Krishna, Kali etc, religious experiences are either of an awesome presence or of an immense oneness and both can be seen as aspects of a single reality. So far, I can accept Gwydiona ideas. However, their supposedly transcendent experience of "God" turns out to be sub-, not trans-, rational. See The Gwydiona Experience.

"God"

"God was rising in the west..."
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), I, p. 5.

"'I saw [Enherrian] and others dancing, high in the air, swoops, glides, hoverings, sunshine molten on their plumes; I asked what they did, and was told they were honoring God.'
"He sighed. 'Or that's how I translated the Planha phrase, rightly or wrongly...'"
-"The Problem of Pain," p. 114.

"'God comes to us.'
"'We are God.'"
-The Night Face, III, p. 576.

In World Without Stars, we read the pov of an inhabitant of an extragalactic planet where our galaxy is identified with the transcendent.

In "The Problem of Pain," an Aenean Christian translates from Planha into Anglic.

In The Night Face, a Gwydiona woman speaks a language derived from Anglic.

In all three passages, we read the English word, "God," but very far removed from its Biblical meaning.

Myths

Can there be rational beings without myths? I think not. Every positive proposition, e.g., "the sky is blue," entails negatives, e.g., "the sky is not red, green etc." But that implies questions: "What if the sky were red?" "Why is it one color and not another?" Science requires hypotheses, therefore imagination. Explanatory stories preceded empirical explanations. Rational beings whose libraries contained only historical and scientific facts without any fiction would not be human and, arguably, cannot exist.

But they can have different kinds of myths:

"'So you don't believe the spirit outlives the body?'
"'How could it?' Enherrian snapped. 'Why should it?'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 122.

"'But the dead don't speak. They are dead!'
"'Of course. It was only a fantasy. Don't you have myths?'
"'Not like that. The dead go into the Night...'"
-The Night Face, III, pp. 575-576.

Poul Anderson understood. New Faith Ythrians and Gwydiona may or may not be right but they are different, alien.

Why Is Raven Suspicious?

The Night Face, I-III.

As the Commandant of the guard on an interstellar spaceship, Raven is responsible for the safety of everyone on board, including his own men and himself, and therefore is professionally suspicious in every new, unfamiliar planetary environment. The very fact that the Gwydiona are so pacific makes them unusual and therefore unpredictable:

"'If this Gwydion were remotely like any other lost colony I've ever heard of, there would be small reason for worry. Common sense alone, the knowledge that overwhelming power exists to avenge any treachery toward us, would stay them. But don't you see, when there is no evidence of internecine strife, even of crime - and yet they are obviously not simple children of nature - I can't guess what their common sense is like.'" (I, p. 550)

Raven's man, Kors, says that the Gwydiona are not to be worried about, harmless loonies with "'...no weapon more dangerous than a bow and arrow.'" (III, p. 566) Raven agrees that, according to the first expedition, the Gwydiona rarely hunt and then only for practical reasons, but adds:

"'That's what makes me afraid...,'" (ibid.)

Kors thinks that the Gwydiona are gutless but Raven notices that they take open sailboats onto dangerous oceans and that a Gwydiona girl is able to overcome her shock, to face him and ask questions. "...they were no weaklings on Gwydion..." (p. 571) so what were they?

The Time Traveler meets the Eloi but must learn about the Morlocks. The Namerican expedition meets the Gwydiona but must learn about their Night Face.

Conversation On A Dike

See:

Different Reading Experiences

Literary Geography (blog search result)

"'At the crossroad of the elements, greeting,' she said. Her husky voice sang the language, even more than most Gwydiona voices."
-The Night Face, III, p. 568.

What am I getting at with this? - you may well ask.

First, the conversation takes place on a dike, hence "'...the crossroad of the elements...'"

Secondly, in the post, "Different Reading Experiences," (see the first link above) I referred to a young woman's "singsong Liverpudlian accent." (Indeed, were I a composer, it could have inspired a musical.)

Thirdly, since "Different Reading Experiences" addresses the significance of where and when we first read a book, I have also linked to posts about ""Literary Associations" and "Literary Geography," which I found interesting to reread so I hope that others will as well.

Interstellar Culture Shock

The Night Face, III.

Gwydiona think that Lochlanna must carry weapons to deal with wild animals. However, Elfavy, troubled, remembers that members of the first expedition had "'...said something about men fighting other men.'" (p. 570) When Raven replies that this is his profession, she does not understand "profession." When he says instead that it is his calling, she is horrified. The men that are to be killed cannot be bad men because "bad" means that something has gone wrong and "'How can men go wrong?'" (p. 571) If they get sick, then a physician heals them.

Trying to explain, Raven asks her to imagine a sickness that makes some men want to hurt others. When, horrified again, she asks what germ causes that, he realizes that she cannot "...even visualize homicidal mania..." (ibid.) and therefore cannot possibly understand that sane and honorable men sometimes find reasons to kill each other.

But which of them is sane in this conversation? Is Anderson's text at this point a very understated Swiftian satire on our acceptance of the waging of war as an honorable profession?

Cultural Comparisons

The Night Face, III.

Raven discusses three cultures, Namerican, Lochlanna and Gwydiona. According to him:

a Namerican, given a job to do, just tries to get it done, whether or not it is really worth doing, then tries to get his recreation done, "'...both with maximum bustle.'" (p. 565);

a Lochlanna tries to work and play to some sort of ideal and tends to give up completely if he fails;

the Gwydiona do not separate work, play, art, private life or life in general but see everything as "'...one harmonious whole.'" (p. 566)

This third group combines food-gathering, pleasure and art as follows:

fishing boats have "'...elaborately carved figureheads and painted designs...'" (ibid.);

every detail is multiply symbolic;

fishers are accompanied by musicians!

For other Andersonian comparisons of fictional cultures, see:

Solarians, Nomads, Erulani and Alori in The Peregrine II;
a fifth culture, Stellamont, in Conflicting Cultures;
Solarian, Nomadic and Alorian arts in Arts.

Andersonian scholarship now includes future historical cultural studies. This post represents the Technic History whereas the three linked posts represent the earlier Psychotechnic History.

The Grand Alliance And The Argo Astrographical Company

(No exclamation mark after the title in this edition!)

The Night Face.

When the action of a novel moves down to a planetary surface and stays there, I do not expect to receive any further information about interstellar conditions. However, the characters continue to converse. Raven says that:

Lochlann had invaded Nuevamerica and divided it into fiefs over a century before the Namericans rebelled against Lochlanna rule;

fortunately for the Namericans, Lochlann was at war with the Grand Alliance at the time of their revolution.

Thus, we have now been informed about three post-Imperial interstellar alliances:

Roan Tom allied Kraken, Sassania and Nike;
a "Grand Alliance" waged war against Lochlann;
later, the Allied Planets rediscover and re-civilize isolated planets, including Kraken.

Although we learn nothing more about the Grand Alliance, we already know that, fifty years after independence and contrary to Lochlanna custom or practice, the Namerican Astrographical Company explores and makes treaties as a private, commercial enterprise. The Company, needing bases for refueling, repairs and recreation, investigates Gwydion for this purpose.

Thus, there is regular interstellar travel between a growing number of civilized planets. This is no longer the disorganized "Long Night" period experienced by Roan Tom. Violence takes the form of wars between sovereign planets and alliances. It has ceased to be mere piracy practiced by unscrupulous individuals monopolizing a handful of remaining working spaceships.

"Wasn't There A STAR TREK Like This?"

See Invaders.

In Poul Anderson's The Night Face, the Gwydiona are usually peaceful but go insane and become potentially violent once a local year. The Commandant of the military unit on a visiting spaceship is rightly suspicious that all is not as it seems.

In the Star Trek episode, "The Return of the Archons," a planetary population is usually peaceful but becomes violent during "festival." (See here.)

Star Trek informs TV audiences of some sf ideas but, needless to say, prose authors like Poul Anderson do it better.

Time

(Clocks are clouds?)

See:

The Horn Of Time

Time the Destroyer and Regenerator

Lion-Headed Time (Scroll down)

There Will Be Time

The Corridors Of Time

Time Patrol

The Shield Of Time

No one can possibly read or reread all that! But my point is the importance of time as shown in some of Poul Anderson's titles and in a few powerful phrases like "the horn of time" and "Lion-Headed Time."

OK. It is late and I am thinking about time.

Languages

In Poul Anderson's Technic History:

English becomes Anglic;

French becomes Fransai;

Spanish becomes Ispanyo on Nuevamerica;

Polesotechnic League merchants speak "League Latin";

Gwydiona and Lochlanna are derived from Anglic;

the Kirkasanter language has remote affinities with a few known languages, including ancient Anglic;

on Avalon, human choth members are bilingual in Anglic and Planha although they lack feathers;

Olaf Magnusson is fluent in Eriau and two other Merseian languages;

no one speaks Temporal or Exaltationist, which belong to a different timeline;

Flandry, like Everard in the Time Patrol timeline, acquires other languages electronically as needed and is trained to learn quickly;

Aycharaych is a universal telepath.

Narnia, Nicholas van Rijn And The Shield Of Time

Alliteration, assonance and an attention-grabbing post title, I hope. Let us remember reading these three imaginative series and also find some connections between them. (In fact, the mere title of this post evokes many other such works, for example, SM Stirling's Conquistador with its Gates between parallel Earths.)

The Chronicles of Narnia...
...comprise seven juvenile novels by CS Lewis about magic and visits to other worlds - as in some other works by Poul Anderson, even including one that cameos van Rijn! The first four Narnia books form a linear sequence whereas the last three add a beginning, a middle and an end to the series. More on this below.

Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn series...
...is incorporated into the first three of the seven omnibus collections that comprise The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I being entitled The Van Rijn Method.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series...
...is complete in one omnibus collection and one long novel.

Reading Orders
Since these two Anderson series have been omnibused, which would be the best way to omnibus Narnia: a single volume collecting all seven novels (they are reasonably short) in the chronological order of fictitious events or two volumes, the first collecting the linear sequence, Volumes I-IV in the original order of publication, and the second collecting the additional beginning, middle and end, Volumes V-VII in the original order?

My point is that a series can have two "first" installments, depending on how we read it. Of course we can read any series in any order but I mean that there can be more than one equally valid starting point. Thus, anyone reading Narnia now can choose between the original order of publication, beginning with The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, and the chronological order of fictitious events, beginning with The Magician's Nephew. The opening passage of that second "first" installment assumes the reader's familiarity with Narnia and also treats Sherlock Holmes as a real person as does the Time Patrol series which has only one starting point, "Time Patrol." Everything else follows from Manse Everard's recruitment into the Patrol in that original story.

The first magazine-published Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," was quoted but not included in the first Nicholas van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars, so that, for those of us who followed van Rijn not in the magazines but in books, the first of his stories that we read was "Hiding Place." "Margin of Profit" had to be revised in order to be incorporated into the Technic History and it now appears before any of the others in the Saga.

Addendum, later that evening: Googling discloses a Complete Chronicles Of Narnia.

Old Earth

Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012).

"Elsewhere glittered the remoter stars, multitudinous and many-colored in their high night. Tom's gaze circled among them. Yes, yonder was Capella. Old Earth lay on the far side, a couple of hundred light-years from here."
-"A Tragedy of Errors," pp. 455-540 AT p. 460.

"Sol, of course, was hidden from telescopes as well as from eyes, an insignificant yellow dwarf two hundred parsecs beyond that veil, which its light would never pierce. I wonder what's happening there, thought Tolteca. It's long since we had any word from Old Earth."
-The Night Face, I, p. 553.

"Clover was another of those life forms that man had brought with him from Old Earth, to more planets than anyone now remembered before the Long Night fell."
-"The Sharing of Flesh," pp. 661-708 AT pp. 665-666.

"But Laure's gaze strayed beyond, toward the deeps and then, as if in search of comfort, the other way, toward Old Earth. There was no comfort, though. They still named her Home, but she lay in the spiral arm behind this one, and Laure had never seen her. He had never met anyone who had. None of his ancestors had, for longer than their family chronicles ran. Home was a half-remembered myth; reality was here, these stars on the fringes of this civilization."
-"Starfog," pp. 709-794 AT p. 713.

See also:

Distant Earth
The Quiet Earth
Earth Abides
Between The Dark Ages

Provisional Chronologies

For an interesting but non-canonical account of the death of John Amalfi in James Blish's Cities In Flight, see 4004 Or 4104.

For a provisional entry in the Chronology of Technic Civilization, see below:

"3047  A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows...

"4444  /story on Flandry's old age planned/"
-Sandra Miesel, A CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. ix-xii AT p. xii.

"4444" is wrong, surely?

There were two subsequent novels with Flandry but he is not really old-aged, is he? In his sixties or seventies but still active and working, thanks to antisenescence, and possibly going to have more children? "Old age" would mean retired, no longer active and physically failing. Anderson never shows us his heroes like that.

His best bon voyage is that of van Rijn:

"'...maybe we will lead a little expedition quite outside of known space, for whatever we may find.'
"'...why you not come too?'
"'You take the Long Trail with me!'
"'A universe where all roads lead to roaming. Life never fails us. We fail it, unless we reach out.'"
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XXI, p. 287.

A Newer Planet With Heavier Atoms

The Night Face, I.

"While the first expedition had reported Gwydion to be terrestroid in astonishing detail, it was about ten percent smaller and denser than Old Earth - to be expected of a younger world, formed when there were more heavy atoms in the universe..." (p. 552)

Even when a novel is going to be set almost entirely on the surface of a single planet, the circumstances of the formation of that planet are shown to be relevant to the plot of the novel. This is more Cosmic SF.

Sol III was given its Latin name, "Terra," during the Terran Empire, which was inspired by the Roman Empire, but is called "Old Earth" by people living long after the Empire who no longer have any contact with the Solar System.

Ynis, the sun of Gwydion, spreads its corona and zodiacal light "...like nacre across the stars." (p. 552) Ynis is near a Nebula that hides Sol, two hundred parsecs away. Also, "...the Nebula's immense cloud of dust and gas..." (p. 553) pales visible stars like Rho Ophiuchi. This is the cosmic setting.

Deeper Into The Galactic Sector II

The Night Face, I.

See Deeper Into The Galactic Sector.

Immediately after the sentence quoted in the previous post (see the second link above), we read:

"The hazards were unpredictable, and an armed guard on every vessel was in itself a good idea... The guard had to be soldiers born and bred. In these days of spreading peace, more and more Lochlanna units found themselves at loose ends and hired out to foreigners." (p. 551)

I was wrong to write, in During The Long Night II, that the mission to Gwydion was a joint Namerican-Lochlanna expedition. It is a Namerican expedition employing a Lochlanna military unit. In the kind of historical irony with which we are all too familiar, the Namericans, having won their independence from Lochlann fifty years previously, now hire Lochlanna guards.

In matters of safety and security, final authority lies not with the engineer who is the chief of the expedition but, in space, with the captain and, after planetfall, with the Lochlanna Commandant. For this reason, among others, there is tension between the Namerican engineer, Miguel Tolteca, and Commandant Raven.

Although Anderson, in his Introduction, describes the editorially imposed Let The Spacemen Beware! as a ridiculous title, it does make sense as a blurb slogan for the novel both because of the unpredictable hazards and because of the specific conditions on Gwydion.

Deeper Into The Galactic Sector

(I have made this image extra large because some of you might be able to read the blurb.)

The Night Face, I.

I have read this novel more than once but had completely forgotten the following passage:

"The Company's operations took men and valuable ships ever deeper into this galactic sector, places where humans had seldom or never been even at the height of the empire." (p. 551)

This is no longer the Long Night. At least, it is no longer that early stage of the Long Night when there was almost no interstellar travel and most of that was piracy. Perhaps we should make some distinctions.

(i) To some Imperials, anything and everything after the Fall of the Empire would be the "Long Night" and they would not think beyond that.

(ii) There was "that early stage," as described above.

(iii) There is the period when this "Company," or, later, the Allied Planets are exploring, recontacting and re-civilizing. This period is transitional between the earliest post-Imperial stage and an interstellar civilization comparable to, or even greater than, the fallen Empire.

(iv) There is a much later stage when human civilizations with support organizations like the Commonalty have spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy. Such a period can no longer be called any kind of "Night."

A Standard Year

The Night Face, I.

The concluding line of "A Twelvemonth and a Day"/Let The Spacemen Beware!/The Night Face is barely discernible in the attached image:

"And not remember." (XII, p. 660)

However, our, or at least my, current rereading of the novel is still in its opening chapter, I.

I have quoted separate sentences from an early piece of dialogue by Commandant Raven but should now quote this paragraph in full:

"'[The Gwydiona]'ve had almost one standard year to think over what the first expedition told them. We're a long way from home in space, and even longer in time. It's been twelve hundred years since the breakup of the Commonwealth isolated them. The whole Empire rose and fell while they were alone on that one planet. Genetic and cultural evolution have done strange work in shorter periods.'" (I, p. 549)

See Twelve Hundred Years and its combox.

If those "'...twelve hundred years...'" had been local Lochlanna or Namerican planetary years, then they would not have impacted the Chronology of Technic Civilization. However, Raven explicitly refers to "'...one standard year...'" so his twelve hundred years are almost certainly standard/Terran as well. On the other hand, we are very probably giving the text even more detailed attention than its meticulous author did.

Lochlann II

The Night Face, I.

How much do we know about Lochlann? See some information here. Also:

the Lochlanna are small with thick bones and muscles because their planet has 1.25 standard gravity;

their social formations include "Ethnos";

genetic drift has eliminated male beards.

On a second or subsequent reading, this early mention of genetic drift reads like a warning of what is to come. Rogue planets and naval codes are mentioned early in novels where they will prove to be significant so - to what extent might an isolated human population have diverged from the psychophysical norm?

Indeed, the Lochlanna Commandant, Raven, referring to the twelve centuries since the breakup of the Solar Commonwealth, makes the point that:

"'Genetic and cultural evolution have done strange work in shorter periods.'" (p. 549)

The text begins to prepare its readers for a horrific revelation about the peaceful Gwydiona. This has taken us away from my question about Lochlann. However, I do not think that there is much more information to be had about that obscure planet.

During The Long Night II

See During The Long Night.

According to Poul Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors," Roan Tom, a star rover of the Long Night, had a Lochlanna father and forged alliances between Kraken, Sassania and Nike. Thus, four planets are named.

According to Poul Anderson's Introduction to his The Night Face, this work is set during the Long Night after the Fall of the Terran Empire. The opening chapter confirms that the Empire has fallen and informs us that, fifty years after the Nuevamerican democrats had successfully rebelled against the Lochlanna aristocrats, Nuevamerica and Lochlann sent a joint exploratory expedition to Gwydion. Thus, three planets, including Lochlann, are named.

The Long Night period of the Technic History is covered by these two stories which are connected by references to planets and events but not by any common characters. They are followed by one story set during the Allied Planets period and another set during the Commonalty period. A very few stories can constitute a "future history," as happens elsewhere in Anderson's canon. Fortunately, the Long Night period is preceded by thirty nine works covering Technic civilization from its beginnings in the Solar System to the decline of the Terran Empire.

Ylem

"'By all creation,' whispered Tolteca..."
-The Night Face, I, p. 549.

He also says:

"'...good ylem, Commandant...'"
-op. cit., I, p. 547.

Read hard sf and learn:

"'The most probable event is immediate extinction, and a re-birth of both universes from the primordial ylem.'
"'Ylem?' Amalfi said. 'What's that? I've never heard the word before.'
"'The ylem was the primordial flux of neutrons out of which all else emerged,' Dr. Schloss said. 'I'm not surprised that you hadn't heard it before. It's the ABC of cosmogony, the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow premise. Ylem in cosmogony is an assumption like "zero" in mathematics - something so old and fundamental that it would never occur to you that somebody had to invent it.'"
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 579.

The earliest cosmogonists did not know enough to assume a primordial flux of neutrons and Roman mathematics lacked "zero." Such assumptions are not old and fundamental but newer and more sophisticated.

The Earth Book And The Night Face

This post reiterates information that has already been iterated many times - although I think with different nuances and emphases? - on the blog, partly because I am continually reclarifying it to myself and partly because I remain endlessly fascinated by an sf series with such a dynamic structure that it seems to move and change while we try to comprehend it.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

each of the forty-three novels or short stories is both enjoyable and substantial;

their interesting chronological relationships, some concurrent, others millennial, generate detailed discussions (see here);

the various editions and collections of parts of the series are also of interest, presenting as they do two alternative reading orders.

Before Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, collected this entire future history series for the first time in chronological order of fictitious events:

there were two collections and two novels about the Polesotechnic League and one novel about Ythrians before The Earth Book Of Stormgate rounded up twelve remaining League or Ythrian installments (with new introductions), thus almost completing the earlier periods of the History;

there were seven novels and two collections about the Terran Empire during the lifetime of Dominic Flandry before The Night Face and other stories rounded up four post-Imperial installments, thus almost completing the later periods of the History;

(this makes the Earth Book and The Night Face... sound like companion volumes);

this still left four short stories unaccounted for.

I have discussed previously how the four remaining works might have been incorporated into the pre-Saga reading order, thus generating a seventeen-volume future history series written entirely by a single author without the franchising of historical periods to other authors that became a feature of Isaac Asimov's, Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's future history series.

Addendum: Those other authors included Anderson (see the combox), who contributed to:

the US Robots period in Asimov's Robots and Empire future history;
the Man-Kzin Wars period in Niven's Known Space future history;
the War World period in Pournelle's CoDominium future history. 

A Long Way In Space And Time

I was drawn back into rereading Poul Anderson's Technic History this time by my admiration for his paragraph beginning:

"Where the mighty Sagittarius flows into the Gulf of Centaurs..."
-see here.

This led to - among many other things - a consideration of the Ythrians. However, we have left the Domain of Ythri a long way behind now that we are rereading the Long Night period of the Technic History. But Ythri, Avalon and other Ythrian planets must still exist. It is just that our focus has shifted in space as well as in time, as two of the characters point out:

"'We're a long way from home in space, and even longer in time.'"
-The Night Face, I, p. 549.

"'... - behind us. In space and time alike.'"
-see Future Medievalism.

Avalon is mentioned in A Stone In Heaven, the last novel with Dominic Flandry as its central character, which is collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, Flandry's Legacy, shortly before the Long Night installments. In humanly known space, there is a single interstellar history but many planetary histories which part company during periods like the Long Night. I would have preferred an even longer Technic History even at the expense of other later works by Anderson.

The Technic History shows us history, albeit in a fantastic futuristic form, and history shows us "emptiness" in the Buddhist sense, meaning not "nothingness" but absence of permanent underlying substance. All phenomena are interdependent and transient. Compounds that are gasses or liquids in terrestroid environments are solids in Jovoid environments. (At the time of the Commonalty, are there still human beings on Earth, "Martians" on Mars and Ymirites on Jupiter?) Humanity changes in extra-solar environments.

(Next week, our Buddhist group will celebrate its fortieth anniversary with a meal in the Pizza Margherita.)

Twelve Hundred Years

Poul Anderson, The Night Face IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 541-658.

On the spaceship, the Quetzal, Miguel Tolteca puts:

"...Castellani's Symphony No. 2 in D minor with Subsonics on the tapester..." (I, p. 545)

I deduce that Anderson has invented this composer and symphony.

Raven, who shortly confronts Tolteca, is a Lochlanna aristocrat. (p. 547) Remembering first that Roan Tom's father was from Lochlann and secondly that, much earlier, Lochlann was a member planet of the Supermetals Company, we begin to see how this new story fits into the Technic History. Then Raven spells it out for us:

"'It's been twelve hundred years since the breakup of the Commonwealth isolated [the planet, Gwydion]. The whole Empire rose and fell while they were alone on that one planet.'" (p. 549)

Some characters refer to League and Empire whereas Raven refers to Commonwealth and Empire. Basically: Solar Commonwealth, politics; Polesotechnic League, economics. The Technic History has brought us a very long way and is not finished yet. There are two more installments, each presenting a new set of political and economic arrangements, after this one.

One reason why Daven Laure of the Commonalty did not mention the Allied Planers (see Future Medievalism) is that Laure's story, "Starfog," was published in 1967 whereas the story about the Allied Planets, "The Sharing of Flesh," was published in 1968.

Contradictions In The Technic History?

Readers are invited to search the blog for answers to these questions:

Are Merseians mammals?

To which Vach does Tachwyr the Dark belong?

Why is Dominic Flandry surprised to learn that Aycharaych is a universal telepath when Terran Intelligence had already acquired that information?

For a discussion of the third question and also for a "saving of the appearances" answer to it, see An Unexpected Contradiction by Sean M. Brooks.

We know that stories can exist in different versions but do not expect to find mutually incompatible accounts of a single incident within a series that is presented to us as a linear narrative sequence. See Contradictions In Future Histories.

Texts In Contexts

A single text can bear different meanings not only to different readers but also to a single reader when read in a different context. Despite dissimilar contents, texts in differing contexts include the following:

in the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets immediately follow the Law and apply it to history, whereas, in the Christian Bible, they immediately precede the New Testament and prophesy the Messiah;

The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion can be read either as a factual account of a secret meeting or as an insight into the mental processes of a conspiracy theorist;

I first read Poul Anderson's "The Game of Glory" without as yet any knowledge either that this story was part of a Dominic Flandry series or that that series was part of a future history series.

As I have said before, a prequel might not only be written later but also be meant to be read later. Readers like to be told what happened before. Thus:

having read about visits to Narnia, now we read about how such visits began;

having read an account of She, ending in her death, now we read Allan Quatermain's account of his earlier meeting with her;

having read Watson's accounts of Holmes' cases while they were together, now we read about Holmes' initiatory case before he met Watson;

having read about Nicholas van Rijn's trade pioneer crew, now we read about one team member's student days.

One text in three contexts:

"Adzel talks a lot about blessing in disguise, but this disguise was impenetrable."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic" IN Roger Elwood (Ed.), Future Quest (Avon Books, 1974).

"Adzel talks a lot about blessings in disguise, but this disguise was impenetrable."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 49-67 AT p. 51.

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

If we just read Future Quest, then "How To Be Ethnic" is just a one-off story.

If we are reading Anderson's Technic History in its original order of publication, then we have read about the trade pioneer crew, including Adzel, in "The Trouble Twisters," Satan's World and Mirkheim before reading "Adzel talks...," the opening words of "How To Be Ethnic...," whereas, if instead we are reading the Technic History in chronological order of fictitious events as presented in Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, of which The Van Rijn Method is Volume I, then Adzel means nothing to us as yet when we read his name at the beginning of "How To Be Ethnic..." We will read about the trade pioneer crew later, in Volumes II and III, although only in the first of the six works collected in Vol III. History is bigger than organizations or civilizations.

So which is the better way to read it? Search me.

Contradictions In Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Technic History is remarkably free of internal contradictions. We have found one or two. By contrast, James Blish's Cities In Flight was revised more than once in an unsuccessful attempt to remove its contradictions. I have just found one.

"The first Okie city Thor V ever saw had been an outfit which had dropped its city name and taken to calling itself the Interstellar Master Traders. By the time it had left Thor V again, it had earned itself another appellation: the Mad Dogs." (p. 246)

"'Most notorious of these recrudescences of imperialism was the reduction of Thor Five, the work of one of the earliest of the Okies, a heavily militarized city which had already earned itself the popular nickname of "the Mad Dogs." The epithet, current among Okies as well as planetary populations, of course referred primarily...'" (p. 440)

The speaker is interrupted but was about to give some other explanation of the "Mad Dogs" nickname.

The Last Misunderstanding

Yasmin has solved the problem. Nikean weather can be predicted and sporadic destruction of crops and other wealth prevented if it is understood that Nike's sun is not young as was thought but so old that is is starting to become a red giant although that will still take a long time to happen. Tom will depart and return with meteorologists who will be able to apply the correct mathematical model and thus to make accurate weather forecasts. He must leave Yasmin as a hostage and she will pass the time by making arrangements with many men...

When Tom returns, she has indeed made arrangements - political, not personal. Several feudal lords will help to restore her father, the deposed Shah, to the throne of Sassania if the Krakeners will provide weapons, training and transport.

Thus, Tom and Yasmin have forged a strong tri-planetary alliance although this is not as yet the basis for the Allied Planets because we read later that it was Atheia that inducted Kraken into that alliance.

The Technic History feels like a different series when it is studied as it deserves to be.

Addendum, 24 Feb, 2020: Yasmin's father was not the deposed Shah but "...Nadjaf Kuli, the deputy governor." (p. 462). See the combox.

More Nikean Scenery II - And The Wind

Roan Tom flies the captured Nikean aircraft with his two wives as passengers:

"He paid scant attention to the beauties of the landscape sliding below, though they were considerable - mist-magical delta, broad sweep of valley, river's sinuous glow, all white under the moons. He must be one with the wind that blew across this sleeping land."
-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 526.

For previous blog references to oneness "...with the man in the wind and the west moon...," see:

A Vast, Multi-Faceted Fictitious Universe
Relevant Readings And Recitations

For the Wanderer in the wind, see:

The Wind II 

- but the wind and its significance have recurred many times. This time, it means unexpected danger. The passage continues:

"And blew.
"Harder.
"The plane bucked. The noise around it shrilled more and more clamorous." (ibid.)

The distant clouds approach impossibly fast. Tom thinks:

"East wind! Couldn't be!" (ibid.)

Before setting off, Tom had known that a storm was approaching but had expected to remain in its fringes. He thought:

"Who ever heard of weather moving very far west, on the western seacoast of a planet with rotation like this?" (p. 525)

OK. Not only the lack of metal but also the chaotic weather is a mystery of Nike.

Future Medievalism

The two previous posts, Progress And Regression and Distance And History, were occasioned by rereading a passage in Poul Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors." Roan Tom and his Nikean "slave"/prisoner, Aran, are waiting in Orgino's Cave (Castle). Aran has explained:

"'Orgino was a war chief of three hundred years agone. They said he was so wicked he must have been in pact with the Wanderer, and to this day the commons think he walks the ruins of his cave.'"
-"A Tragedy of Errors," pp. 520-521.

Anderson does not write a ghost story about the wicked war chief walking through the ruins of his castle but would such a story have fitted in the Technic History?

How long is a year?

"...Nike circled its sun in 591 days of 25.5 hours each, as near as made no difference." (p. 499)

So how long three Nikean centuries are is an exercise for blog readers.

"[Tom] left the crumbling flagstones for a walk around the walls. Pseudo-moss grew damp and slippery on the parapet. Once mail-clad spearmen had tramped their rounds here, and the same starlight sheened on their helmets as tonight, or as in the still more ancient, vanished glory of the Empire, or the League before it, or - And what of the nights yet to come? Tom shied from the thought and loaded his pipe." (p. 522)

It was this paragraph that inspired thoughts of social regression and of different historical stages on different planets. Nike had revived, or reverted to, medievalism.

Unlike Tom, we do not shy away from the thought of nights yet to come. In fact, we are reading this future history. Tom refers, either explicitly or implicitly, to at least five periods:

the League;
the Empire;
Orgino's reign, early in the Long Night;
his own period, later in the Long Night;
later periods.

Millennia later, Dave Laure will say:

"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 722.

Yet another succinct summary although Laure skips over the Allied Planets between the Long Night and the Commonalty. We, the readers, also know of three pre-League periods:

the Chaos;
the beginning of Technic civilization;
the Grand Survey.

Perhaps a single word to describe the Technic History is "grandeur." 

Distance And History

A future history series can show different stages of history existing simultaneously on different planets. In James Blish's Cities In Flight:

"Nearly every major political wave after space flight had its vestige somewhere in the inhabited part of the galaxy."
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 249 -

- like the colony planets in Poul Anderson's Technic History trying to preserve distinctive cultures and ways of life.

An Okie explains:

"'Traveling away from Earth for us is very like traveling in time: different distances from the home planet have different year-dates. Stars remote from Earth, like yours, are historical backwaters. And the situation becomes complicated when the historical periods interpenetrate, as your Hamiltonian era and the Hruntan Empire have interpenetrated. The two cultures freeze each other the moment they come in conflict, and when history catches up with them - well, naturally it's a shock.'"
-op. cit., p. 252.

Thus, Hamiltonian republicans and Hruntan imperialists wage war while an Okie city wants to trade with either and the Earth cops want to incorporate both.

My next blog task is to relate this point to Anderson's Technic History but there are some domestic and spiritual tasks to complete first.

Progress And Regression

A future history series can show progress in some periods but regression in others. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volumes I and II show technological progress on Earth and in space whereas Volume III shows not loss of technology but restoration of theocracy with repressive applications of communications technology, including the Voice of God broadcasting station faking an "Incarnation." (In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Christ in TV ads tells true believers which products to buy. In George Orwell's 1984, there is ubiquitous surveillance through two-way telescreens and the proles would even be allowed religion if they wanted it.) In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the Bureaucratic State bans space travel but not before some colonials have escaped from the Solar System and, back on Earth, scientific knowledge cannot be suppressed indefinitely. Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History has a Second and a Third Dark Ages, the latter eventually to be succeeded by multi-species galactic civilizations, whereas his Technic History has a Time of Troubles and a Long Night, the latter eventually to be followed by a flowering of human civilizations through several spiral arms of the galaxy.

So our authoritative authors anticipate future rises and falls modeled on those in the past.

Battlements Against The Milky Way

"A Tragedy of Errors."

"The headland loomed before him, and battlements against the Milky Way. Tom made a vertical landing in the courtyard." (p. 522)

Another of our many objects seen against the Milky Way (see here) and also an appropriate image for it.

Sometimes it feels as if someone else is writing this blog and I am merely transcribing it.

Sunset On Nike

"Sunset rays turned the hilltop fiery. Farther down, the land was already blue with a dusk through which river, bay, and distant sea glimmered argent. Cloud banks towered in the east, blood-colored, dwarfing the Sawtooth Mountains that marked Hanno's frontier."
-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 518.

Poul Anderson's works are full of such scenic descriptions that can often be reread afresh as if for the first time. Place names give a sense of place. Colors are vivid and varied. We remember such scenes on Avalon and Dennitza and we, changing the meaning of the word "we," are about to walk inland along the River Lune. (Scroll down.) Back here later.

Recovery From Defeat

(This is kind of appropriate. I mentioned our local living legend, Tyson Fury, here, and this morning I read that he has regained the world heavyweight championship title. See here.)

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, how can the Nikeans recover from their defeat by the "friends" who killed millions and:

"'...destroyed the last great cities that we had left from the Terran Empire days...'"
-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 511?

Roan Tom surmises that the friends, too few to conquer a planet, destroyed the cities to prevent anyone else from using Nike as a base against them and adds:

"''Course, I wouldn't go startin' major industries and such again without husky space defenses.'" (p. 515)

But how can space defenses be built without major industries being started first? In any case, Nikean policy is the opposite:

"'We hide instead... Most leaders dare allow naught that might draw other friends. Radio a bare minimum: no rebuilding of cities; yes, we crawl back to our dark age and cower.'" (ibid.)

To enforce this policy, planetary leaders have fought wars, e.g., against the Prester of Silva to prevent him from building an atomic power plant. However, the solution to the Nikeans' problems will be interstellar alliances forged by Roan Tom.

Mad Dogs And... Friends

With FTL and many colonized extra-solar planets, it would be all too easy for bandits to sack a planet and disappear back into space.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Interstellar Master Traders (IMT), also known as "the Mad Dogs," sack the planet, Thor V, then migrate to the Greater Magellanic Cloud where they are eventually destroyed by Earth cops in the mistaken belief that IMT is New York.

In Poul Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors," raiders calling themselves "friends" sack the planet, Nike, but, more plausibly, are never identified or apprehended - as far as we know. Maybe the eventual fate of the "friends" should join our list of unanswered questions about Poul Anderson's Technic History?

The Cause Of The Communication Problem

The isolated Nikeans had stopped talking about doing business with friends and had come to speak instead of "changing" (goods and services) with "camarados."

Human beings speaking another dialect of Anglic landed, plundered, raped, tortured, burned, sacked a major city, destroyed it with missiles and described themselves as friends doing business. Their phraseology was sarcastic, contemptuous or hypocritical or possibly resulted from some other linguistic change.

Roan Tom, needing help and prepared to pay for it, arrives, describes himself as a friend and offers to do business...

He is threatened with tommics, which he understands as "nukes," and ordered to land. To compound the problem, he is also ordered to "slave" himself, another word that has changed its meaning.

The Tower of Babel revisited...

Anti-Grav

"A Tragedy of Errors."

Roan Tom's first sight of a Nikean aircraft:

"It was a one- or two-man job, a delta wing whose contrail betrayed the energy source as chemical rather than atomic or electric. However, instruments reported it as applying that power to a gravity drive." (p. 472)

I think that, even to us, chemical energy seems inappropriately primitive for an engine advanced enough to control gravity.

We would not be surprised to see wings on an aircraft but Dagny is contemptuous:

"'...gravmotors so weak they need wings!'" (p. 488)

Well, if you can control gravity, then you do not need wings. But what would happen if gravity control went out of control? In a TV adaptation of HG Wells' The First Men In The Moon, a sheet of Cavorite is held in position just above the Lunar surface, causing the Lunar atmosphere to shoot into space, which explains why the Moon was airless when Armstrong and Aldrin arrived - a neat idea, to use Wells' idea to make his novel a prequel to Apollo. (A blog motto: always remember Wells.)

Maybe Tom is more understanding than Dagny:

"Given a gravity drive, however weak, airfoils were mainly for auxiliary lift and control." (p. 509)

At the same time, Tom makes his own observations on the prevalent theme of metal shortage. After he has forced a local aircraft down with a tractor beam:

"The wingtips were crumpled, the fuselage punctured. (The covering was mostly some fluorosynthetic. What a metal shortage they must have here!)" (pp. 508-509)

We know that the planetary metal shortage is taking us somewhere even if we do not know where.

Tractor And Pressor Beams

See:

Gadgets
James Blish On Poul Anderson IV
search result for Gantok (Scroll down) 

In Poul Anderson's "Margin of Profit":

the Borthudian frigate, Gantok, having matched phase with the merchant ship, Mercury, then issued a radio warning, seizes the Mercury with a tractor beam and pulls herself closer;

Mercury responds with a repellent pressor beam five times stronger than the Borthudian tractor;

Gantok is repulsed but returns and reapplies the tractor;

within Mercury, deckplate buckles and metal shears;

the pressor again repels Gantok;

van Rijn, piloting Mercury, pursues and applies both a tractor and a pressor, balances them, then changes phase;

the phase change does not sever the gravitic forces linking the ships because their masses remain unchanged but does render Gantok's weapons useless against Mercury unless the Borthudian pilot re-matches phase;

Mercury begins random phase variations;

when Gantok begins to accelerate away, van Rijn equalizes his beams, thus welding the ships together, then reverses, dragging Gantok with him;

varying the linkage to avoid being torn apart, he meanwhile shortens the distance between the two ships;

when an outer plate bursts, van Rijn hands control of Mercury to Torres and goes EVA for the repair job;

Gantok continues to spurt and fire at random but then stops because otherwise it will be torn apart first;

the Borthudian captain, Rentharik, returns to normal state, knowing that such an abrupt withdrawal will stress the linking force-beams enough to destroy both ships;

however, Mercury has a detector and an automatic cutoff to counteract this maneuver;

Torres narrowly avoids a collision, then holds Mercury where Gantok's weapons cannot be brought to bear;

any Borthudians attempting to board can be flicked away with a smaller pressor beam;

enveloping Gantok in her more powerful hyperfield, Mercury takes her prisoner to the nearest League base.

In "A Tragedy of Errors," Roan Tom, in the landed Firedrake, focuses a tractor beam on an attacking fighter aircraft, which tries unsuccessfully to escape, then pulls it down under nearby trees and holds it there. Next, he uses a combined tractor-pressor beam to clear away the undergrowth so that he can see the captured craft although it is concealed from above.

Both van Rijn and Tom think of themselves as fishing.