End Of March

We approach the end of a month and this will be the last post for March but I expect to be back here some time tomorrow.

I have found a lot to post about in just the opening short story of Poul Anderson's  Psychotechnic History so we might be facing a change of focus from Anderson's Technic History to his earlier Psychotechnic History. However, I will continue to post about the former as appropriate.

Good night.
Glory to the Emperor.
Fair winds forever.
High is heaven and holy.
Tempora mutantur...

In The Twentieth Century

The Technic History begins by referring to television versus psychodrama in the mid-twentieth century whereas the Psychotechnic History begins in the aftermath of a World War III that did not occur in our timeline. However, that World War III is so close in time to World War II that Fourre and Reinach, who decide the fate of Europe and the world after WWIII, are veterans of World War II and even reminisce about it and its aftermath:

"'Do you remember that night soon after the Second War, we were boys, freshly out of the Maquis...'"
-"Marius," p. 15.

Thus, both of these future history series are firmly grounded in common memories of the twentieth century.

Fourre Versus Reinach

"Marius."

Because, in his private discussion with the disarmed Fourre, Reinach does not agree to resign, Fourre does not blow his whistle and the planned mutiny goes ahead. We are to understand that the longer term future of mankind is secured.

Fourre has maneuvered Reinach's supporters out of town:

Brevoort to establish relations with the Ukraanian revolutionary government;

Ferenczi to collect merchant ships from Genoa;

Janosek fighting the bandits in Schleswig.

We read the argument between Fourre and Reinach and are also told that Valti's equations support Fourre but I think that we are persuaded by Fourre's arguments in any case?

The Disagreement Between Valti And Reinach

"Marius."

Reinach, like the Roman general, Marius, is good at war but not at peace. He improvises instead of planning long term, e.g., Pappas, dictator of the Macedonian Free State, wants a seat on the Council in exchange for the services of his efficient rat-extermination force. Reinach wants to accept which will mean:

recognizing a warlord's right to loot;

taking a dangerous man onto the Council;

accepting the existence of an ideological dictatorship;

thus provoking a retaliatory claim from Greece and also wars with Arabs for oil.

Fourre says let's hit Pappas now and exterminate the rats ourselves later.

Because there had just been a neofascist coup in Corsica, Reinach rushed the decision to send only two European representatives to the Rio conference to establish a world government although further debate and more representation might have been necessary to prevent an exacerbation of nationalism: "'...the fatally outmoded principle of unlimited national sovereignty...'" (p. 13) can only lead to further wars.

World War III

Poul Anderson's The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-VII, and his The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volumes 1-3, comprise ten solid volumes of future history. The two series are consistent neither with each other nor with the actual course of events but they are "future histories" because Robert Heinlein gave us that phrase.

There is an entire future history just of World War III and its aftermath in "Marius," the opening story of the Psychotechnic History:

the Anglo-Saxon countries, weakened by missile attacks and needing to concentrate their remaining forces on Asia, were unable to invade Europe which had been occupied by the Red Army whose own country was wrecked;

Europe was able to liberate itself because Reinach executed Valti's plan;

however, Valti, predicting another nuclear war in about fifty years, persuades Fourre of France, Helgesen of the Nordic Alliance, Totti of Italy and others that they must -

- "...establish a world peace authority..." (p. 11);

recognize that Europe is crucial to the task of reconstituting the United Nations with real powers and also with a charter favoting civilization over "equality" because there are now only "howling cannibals" north of the Himalayas and east of the Don;

replace Reinach as chairman with Valti who will formally promise a constitutional convention and the ending of military government.

So what is Reinach doing wrong?

The New Mathematics

"A wry notion, that the feudal principle of personal loyalty to a chief should have to be invoked to enforce the decrees of a new mathematics that only some thousand minds in the world understood."
-"Marius," p. 6.

If so few understand it as yet, then more must be taught and the accuracy of the new mathematics must be demonstrated to everyone else.

"...you wouldn't expect the Norman peasant Astier or the Parisian apache Renault to bend the scanty spare time of a year to learning the operations of symbolic sociology."
-ibid.

Nor do they understand nuclear physics but they know the results.

"...Valti's matrices...simply told you you that given such and such conditions,this and that would probably happen." (p. 7)

Only probably? (OK. If a motor mechanic tells me that my car will probably explode, then I do not conclude that it is safe to drive.)

When Fourre is not only disarmed but also frisked before meeting the Commandant/chairman of the Supreme Council of United Free Europe, he chokes his anger:

"...thinking that Valti had predicted as much." (p. 8)

Military and political historians could probably have predicted it but Valti uses mathematics.

"'If we hadn't had Professor Valti and his sociosymbolic logic to plan our strategy for us, we would still be locked with the Russians.'" (p. 10)

OK. It sounds as if Valti's equations work. I am checking for how they impact on the narrative and also for what kind of terminology is used to describe them.

Thunder And Night From The East

"Night rolled out of the east, like a message from Soviet lands plunged into chaos and murder."
-Poul Anderson, "Marius" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (Riverdale, NY, 2017), pp. 5-17 AT p. 6.

"The last thing he heard was thunder. It sounded like the hoofs of horses bearing westward the Hunnish midnight."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 374, p. 465.

In 1964 of a future history that has become an alternative history, night brings a message of chaos and murder whereas, in 374 A.D. of the Time Patrol timeline, thunder brings the Hunnish midnight. Sometimes, passages in different works resonate. I can think of some previous examples on the blog...but will not search for them just now.

Alien And Futuristic Settings

Morning on Alfzar in the Betelgeusean System:

"Dawn here was an alien thing, too. Mist tinged blood-red drifted in dankness through the open windows of [Flandry's] bedroom. It smelled like wet iron. Someone was blowing a horn somewhere..."
-Poul Anderson, "Honorable Enemies" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 277-302 AT p. 283.

The combination of red mist through the windows with references to iron and a horn suggests that Flandry is a guest not of extraterrestrials in an sf story but of elves in a heroic fantasy.

In the immediately following story, Flandry arrives on Nyanza:

"The spaceport was like ten thousand minor harbors: little more than a grav-grid, a field, and some ancillary buildings, well out of town."
-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Captain Flandry..., pp. 303-339 AT II, p. 308.

Here, we are clearly in sf-land, even in a futuristic version of our own experience of approaching an airport.

"Honorable Enemies" (1951) and "The Game of Glory" (1958) represent different stages of Anderson's composition of this future history series but also are inter-connected:

"Two years went by. He was sent to Betelgeuse and discovered how to lie to a telepath."
-"The Game of Glory," I, p. 303.

Narrative Perspectives

Writers convey most of the necessary information about their fictional worlds through individual characters' perceptions and reflections, not through lectures delivered directly to the reader by an omniscient narrator. Thus, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, many very dissimilar characters reflect, in almost identical phraseology, that this single volume of explored space at one end of a spiral arm of this galaxy is minute in relation to the entire galaxy, let alone to the "galaxies like grains of sand," to borrow a phrase from a Brian W. Aldiss title. Obviously, we accept that all these reflections are factually accurate. Already knowing that galaxies are big and many, we are now being indirectly informed of the extent of interstellar civilization at this stage of the Technic History.

I had thought that Hauksberg's put-down of the Terran Empire (see Terran Imperialism) was just another of these individual reflections meant to be understood as factually accurate. However, Hauksberg's assessment of the Merseian regime is hopelessly unrealistic so why should his assessment of Terra be any more reliable?

I think that it is fair to say that the author approves of Max Abrams' view:

"'Sure, the Empire is sick. But she's ours. She's all we've got. Son, the height of irresponsibility is to spread your love and loyalty so thin that you haven't got enough left for the few beings and the few institutions which rate it from you.'"
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER FIVE, p. 49. 

Metamorphosing Series

The content or theme of a series can change as the series progresses.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series
Initial premise: world-lines like tough rubber bands, difficult to distort.
Later installments: continual quantum changes, sometimes manifesting macroscopically.

Anderson's Dominic Flandry Series
Earlier: sword fights in alien castles.
Later: more plausible humanly colonized planets.

(Such scenarios might coexist in different parts of one galaxy. However, imaginatively and conceptually, they are different kinds of fiction.)

Does the nature of the Terran Empire change as the Flandry series progresses? See Terran Imperialism. This question will generate some discussion of narrative points of view, either today or tomorrow.

Terran Imperialism

In "The Game of Glory" (1958), Dominic Flandry is Chief of Intelligence in the Terran force that brutally conquers the planet, Brae. Reading this story in the 1960s, I understood it to mean that such brutal conquests were typical of the Empire that Flandry willingly served. In fact we read that Flandry:

"...was lonesome among his fellow conquerors..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010),, pp. 303-339 AT I, p. 306.

In The Rebel Worlds (1969), written later but set earlier, we learn that such atrocities, indeed even worse ones, began when the degenerate Josip became Emperor. Thus, retroactively, Terran Imperial history is revised. In fact, apart from these aberrations during Josip's reign, it is, generally speaking, safer and more beneficial for a planet to be inside, rather than outside, the Empire.

But is this view consistent? In Ensign Flandry (1966), when Josip is still Crown Prince, Lord Hauksberg thinks:

"...Everybody knows the Empire was won and is maintained by naked power, the central government is corrupt and the frontier is brutal and the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 6.

And this contradicts Tabitha Falkyan's account in The People Of The Wind (1973). See Empires.

Different people say different things about empires and one author can think different things at different times when writing a series.

Where It Begins

Those six opening stories (see An Intermediate Period) introduce considerably more than stated, although I have itemized all this in previous posts:

although Falkayn's and Adzel's later partner, Chee Lan, has not appeared yet, her home planet, Cynthia, is mentioned twice;

Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, and Adzel's home planet, Woden, are mentioned even before they are;

there are references to Gorzun and to an Alfzarian;

we are introduced to the idea of metropolitan "Integrates" on Earth;

the planet Ivanhoe, where we first see Falkayn, will reappear;

other significant planets will turn out to have been discovered during the Grand Survey.

There may be more. I doubt whether any other future history series has such a substantial foundation.

An Intermediate Period

Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization tells us that, in the twenty-third century:

the Polesotechnic League is founded;
the planet Aeneas is colonized;
the planet Altai is colonized -

- and that the third installment of Poul Anderson's Technic History, "The Problem of Pain," is set in the twenty-fourth century.

Of the three events that Miesel locates in the twenty-third century, the only one that directly impacts "The Problem of Pain" is the colonization of Aeneas. In "The Problem of Pain," the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas attracts extra-planetary students, including Ythrians, whose planet had been discovered during the Grand Survey in the second story, "Wings of Victory."

The League is not mentioned until the chronologically overlapping four and fifth stories, "Margin of Profit," introducing Nicholas van Rijn, and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," introducing Adzel. Altai is not mentioned until the tenth story (the third about van Rijn), "Esau." Of course, the League must have been founded and Altai colonized much earlier than these first appearances. Nevertheless, since the League is mentioned nowhere in "The Problem of Pain," I do not think of this story as belonging to the Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History. Instead, it is in an intermediate period when the Ythrians, having acquired hyperspace travel from human beings, are learning, e.g., by attending Nova Roma University, and exploring, e.g., in this story, the planet that will later be named Avalon.

Thus, these first five stories introduce Jerusalem Catholicism, Ythri, Avalon, Aeneas, the League, van Rijn and Adzel, and the sixth introduces Falkayn, all important later.

Present, Immediate Future And Further Future

"The Saturn Game" refers to:

"...war and fantasy games..." (p. 25)

- as:

"...a revolt of the mind against the inactive entertainment, notably television, which had come to dominate recreation..." (ibid.)

"...during the middle twentieth century..." (ibid.)

Thus, this one story links the period during which Poul Anderson wrote the Technic History, 1951-1985, his "present," to the future periods described in the History. The story also presents the only account of the first of these fictional periods, the recovery from the Chaos during the twenty-first century.

The second story, "Wings of Victory," leaps to the period of the Grand Survey during the twenty-second century. However, the introduction to "Wings of Victory" leaps several centuries further to the aftermath of the Terran War on Avalon. Anyone reading Anderson's Technic History for the first time in The Technic Civilization Saga finishes the opening story, "The Saturn Game," then reads two pages of references to the Stormgate Choth, Ythri, Avalon and the Empire - references that lack any context as yet. In fact, they will not be fully elucidated until the end of Volume III of the Saga.

However, far from being any kind of flaw in the narrative, this early preview of later developments provides an excellent introduction to a future history series. Readers do not understand everything that they read as yet but also know that all that they need to do is to continue reading.

Journeys End At World's End Or Worlds' End

Another parallel between Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman is these two titles:

"Journeys End" by Poul Anderson; (Scroll down)
Worlds' End by Neil Gaiman.

Anderson's "End" is a verb whereas Gaiman's is a noun. "Journeys" lacks an expected apostrophe whereas Worlds' has an unusually placed apostrophe.

The more familiar phrase, "world's end," is also relevant to Anderson:

 With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end:
Methinks it is no journey.
-copied from here.

The Two Reading Orders

(Maybe my favorite Anderson cover because of what it says as well as what it shows.)

I think that every Poul Anderson reader should have copies both of The Technic Civilization Saga and of earlier editions of the Technic History novels and collections, particularly The Earth Book Of Stormgate, even though the Earth Book's entire contents are reproduced in Saga, Volumes I-III. This is a series that can be read two ways and the ways can be compared and contrasted. The Earth Book installments are presented in two different orders.

Earth Book
"Wings of Victory"
"The Problem of Pain"
"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"
"Margin of Profit"
"Esau"
"The Season of Forgiveness"
The Man who Counts
"A Little Knowledge"
"Day of Burning"
"Lodestar"
"Wingless"
"Rescue on Avalon"

In Saga, Volume I
"Wings of Victory"
"The Problem of Pain"
"Margin of Profit"
"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"
"The Season of Forgiveness"
The Man Who Counts
"Esau"

In Saga, Volume II

"Day of Burning"
"A Little Knowledge"
"Lodestar"

In Saga, Volume III
"Wingless"
"Rescue on Avalon"

The Chronology lists "Margin of Profit" and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," which have no common characters, as occurring in the same year. I prefer the Earth Book order as slightly delaying the introduction of Nicholas van Rijn. Four entire other stories can be read first.

Hloch's Earth Book introductions to the stories are reproduced in Saga without acknowledging that their reading order has been changed. Thus:

the introduction to "Esau" informs us that this story's central character, Emil Dalmady, had children who moved to Avalon with Falkayn and that one of them, Judith, wrote "Esau";

the introduction to "The Season of Forgiveness" informs us that Judith Dalmady/Lundgren also wrote this story;

the introduction to "A Little Knowledge" informs us that Arinnian of Stormgate, whose human name is Christopher Holm, wrote the story;

the introduction to "Day of Burning" merely informs us that Hloch and Arinnian collaborated on the story without, this time, telling us who Arinnian is.

Minamoto And Laure

Both the seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga and the single-volume collection, Explorations, begin with "The Saturn Game" and end with "Starfog." "The Saturn Game" is about exploration of the outer Solar System in the twenty-first century whereas "Starfog" is about exploration of a nebular cluster in another spiral arm of the galaxy several millennia in the future.

In "The Saturn Game," Minamoto writes:

"No reasonable person will blame any interplanetary explorer for miscalculations about the actual environment...
"If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it." (IV, p. 50)

In "Starfog":

"The sky exploded."
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, 1981), pp. 241-317 AT p. 304.

In other words, an unexpected event threatens the life of the explorer, Daven Laure.

Exactly this happens to several Andersonian explorers of space. A blog exercise would be to list them all.

Real And Virtual Books

Three Men

(i) In the Chronos, en route to Saturn, Scobie of necessity screens most of what he wants to read from the data banks but also has a few old books on a shelf, including, despite his agnosticism, an eighteenth century family Bible and also a signed copy of a modern work. See the link.

(ii) The narrator of "The Problem of Pain" takes a "reel" of the Bible with him wherever he goes:

"...for the grandeur of its language if nothing else..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 103.

(iii) In Harvest The Fire, Jesse Nicol meets an AI reproduction of Jorge Luis Borges who signs and gives him a copy of El libro de arena although there is no book in Nicol's hand when he leaves the AI machine. A more creative AI technology would have been able to print the book with a facsimile signature on the title page.

Journeys End

Feste:
"Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know."
Twelfth Night (II, iii, 44-45) 

-copied from here.

"Journeys End" by Poul Anderson. (Scroll down.)

Dialogue between the hero, heroine and villain of a novel:

"'My dear Adele,' [Mansel] said, 'I'm delighted to hear your voice.'
"'Same here,' said Adele, cheerfully.
"'Rose' Noble laughed.
"'"Journeys end in lovers meeting,'" he said."
-Dornford Yates, Perishable Goods (London, 1938), CHAPTER VI, p. 154.

Sometimes everything comes together and now this day's blogging must end.

Yukon University

"The Saturn Game."

Before her marriage, Jean Broberg was a "'...faculty member of Yukon University...'" (III, p. 30) which is scheduled to open this year. See here.

Future history.

From "The Saturn Game" To Mirkheim

Poul Anderson's Technic History begins with "The Saturn Game," the opening installment in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, and the trader team sub-series ends with "Lodestar," the closing installment in Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader. Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, begins with Mirkheim, the sequel to "Lodestar."

In "The Saturn Game," Jean Almyer adopts Tom Broberg's surname when she marries him although that practice has become:

"'...rather unusual these days...'" (III, p. 30)

She explains her conformity to the traditional custom by referring to her strict, "archaistic" Jerusalem Catholic upbringing.

In "Lodestar," Coya Conyon thinks:

"My grandfather's generation seldom bothered to get married. My father's did. And mine, why, we're reviving patrilineal surnames."
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 631-680 AT p. 644.

(Coya's grandfather is Nicholas van Rijn.)

In Mirkheim:

"Coya Conyon, who proudly followed a custom growing in her generation and now called herself Coya Falkayn, was tall and slender in a scarlet slack-suit."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Prologue, Y minus 9, p. 14.

"Fashions come and go," as we are told in Anderson's Time Patrol series. See here.

Conversation In The Chronos

"The Saturn Game."

Not only Minamoto's "Dissenting View" but also conversation in the Chronos tells us something about life on Earth after the Chaos.

Jean Broberg says:

"'My family was well-to-do, but they were - are - Jerusalem Catholics. Strict about certain things; archaistic, you might say.' She lifted her wine and sipped. 'Oh, yes, I've left the Church, but in several ways the Church will never leave me.'" (p. 30)

Sipping wine after mentioning Catholicism is symbolic. If we first read Poul Anderson's Technic History in this The Technic Civilization Saga edition, then we encounter Jerusalem Catholicism in this opening installment whereas, if we have previously read the stories in order of publication, then we already knew that there is a Jerusalem Catholic Church, and no mention of a Roman Catholic Church, much later in the Terran Empire period. One complicating factor is that, in the intervening Solar Commonwealth/Polesotechnic League period, Nicholas van Rijn is Catholic but we are not told what kind.

Now we learn that the Jerusalem Catholic Church existed in the early twenty-first century. Of course there are, in the real world, small splinter groups like Old Catholics and Liberal Catholics but Jerusalem Catholicism does not sound like another of those. If it starts out as that, then it certainly grows later in the Technic History. Jean refers to it as if it is already well known and established. My theory, expressed somewhere else on the blog, is that, during the Chaos, the Vatican was destroyed, maybe even nuked, and that the Papacy and Curia relocated to Jerusalem  - with historical appropriateness and/or seeking common cause with a besieged State of Israel? We may surmise that the Chaos includes Crusades, Jihads, Reformations, Revolutions and God knows what else, including expectations of Rapture, Tribulation, Return and Thousand Year Reich. (In Cities In Flight, Volume I, They Shall Have Stars, James Blish has Witnesses/Believers proclaiming that thousands now living will never die just as the anti-agathics are discovered.)

Conversation on the Chronos also reveals that two scientists who qualify to join the expedition can make their recruitment even more likely by marrying each other.

Is There Intelligent Life On Other Planets?

A Martian is our brother as an intelligent being even if he is a murderous Thark or Warhoon.

See:

Non-Fiction
Is There Life On Other Worlds?
STL Interstellar Warfare
A Populated Galaxy?

Is this argument valid?  - The universe is so big that it must contain more than one intelligent species.

The universe is expanding so its size is a function of its age. It had to reach quite an advanced age, with a lot of Population II stars and their planetary systems, before any life could commence and evolve. Then it is hit-and-miss whether and how quickly life becomes intelligent, let alone civilized and industrialized.

Therefore, it is possible that we are the first - or, alternatively, that intelligent species are so widely separated in space and time that they will never encounter each other. So far, the evidence is consistent with either of these propositions.

Psychodrama And Psychology

"The Saturn Game," III.

During the mid-twentieth century and before the Chaos, psychodrama was used therapeutically while war and fantasy games grew as a revolt against passive entertainment like television;

the Chaos ended recreational psychodrama which, however, has since been revived and enhanced by projecting three-dimensional scenes and accompanying sounds from data banks or by programming computers to produce such scenes and sounds to order;

but, more recently, adult psychodrama has become unpopular and might even become extinct because of the news beamed from Saturn;

psychodrama is no longer used therapeutically because psychotherapy is now one branch of applied biochemistry (as in Larry Niven's Known Space future history);

lacking experience in the treatment of insanity, psychologists did not anticipate any detrimental effects of the psychodrama that was to be practiced during the trip to Saturn.

I am trying to concentrate on what we are told about life on Earth but will also make one comment about the trip to Saturn. Minamoto claims that:

sailing time to Saturn is twice that to Jupiter;

scientists in the Zeus, bound for Jupiter, had studied the interplanetary medium in the outer Solar System;

therefore, scientists on the Chronos did not need to duplicate that research;

therefore, some of them had even more time to fill with psychodrama.

Surely there would be more to learn about the interplanetary medium as well as about the cosmos all around the Chronos?

Notice that the Technic History seamlessly blends our collective experience into that of its fictional future populations.

Rescuing Civilization

"The Saturn Game."

"...early industrial operations in space offered the hope of rescuing civilization, and Earth, from ruin..." (II, p. 6)

OK. This does not tell us a lot but it does tell us something. Although civilization and even its physical environment were on the verge of ruin, someone somehow started industrial operations in space and this offered enough hope that it was supported and indeed succeeded. A solar-powered fleet with a crew of a thousand flies to Mars and sends minerals from Phobos back to Earth. Even to compete to join that crew and not succeed but then to follow the progress of the expedition would change many lives.

After there have been expeditions to Jupiter and Mercury, the Britannic-American consortium launches the Chronos to the Saturnian System. That phrase "Britannic-American" implies some information about events on Earth as does the fact that a ship called the Vladimir is lost en route to Mercury. The remainder of this passage describes life in the Chronos during its eight year outward journey but at present we are searching the text for any clues about life back on Earth. There are a few.

Leyburg

Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 1-73.

This is the first of forty-three installments in a future history series, many of them full length novels. Information about life on Earth is indirectly provided on p. 1 because the short introduction to the story is signed by:

"Francis L. Minamoto, Death Under Saturn: A Dissenting View (Apollo University Communications, Leyburg, Luna, 2057)"

"...Under Saturn..." means not "beneath the Saturnian surface" but "on a Saturnian moon with the ringed planet overhead."

There is a city or town with a University on the Moon in 2057. This alone must have an enormous impact on Earth. How many people have left Earth to live and work on the Moon? How many people travel between them? A University must have many students and visiting academics coming and going. There must be regular communication between Apollo University and Terrestrial schools, universities, governments and news media. Above all, anyone on Earth will look up at the Moon and know that it is now inhabited. The extract also tells us that the outer Solar System is being explored.

Even for those who never leave Earth, their horizons are expanded by the knowledge that human beings live on the Moon and have traveled as far as one of the Saturnian moons.

World War III And The Chaos

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins in the second half of the twentieth century with recovery from World War III whereas his Technic History:

"..begins in the twenty-first century, with recovery from a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos."
-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 611.

In our timeline, we have evaded World War III, as yet, but not the Chaos.

In both of these future history series:

"New space technologies ease Earth's demand for resources and energy permitting exploration of the Solar system." (ibid.)

The current blog agenda is to reread the opening installment of the Technic History, "The Saturn Game," in search of clues as to how life is lived on post-Chaos Earth. Such clues will be few because this story is set entirely off Earth. Our first sight of life on Earth in this future history is San Francisco Integrate in the Solar Commonwealth several centuries later. Series about interstellar explorers and traders or, later, an interstellar secret agent, assume a vast civilization that such individuals serve but impart almost no information about the inner workings of that civilization. Thus, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" presents a welcome insight into the daily life of the future, an issue that Robert Heinlein had addressed in the opening volumes of his Future History.

Primitive And Advanced Spaceships

"A Little Knowledge.", p. 616.

Like the Kirkasanters later in the Technic History, the Trillians know that faster than light interstellar travel is possible but must build their spaceships without the benefit of any higher technology.

They use:

large, clumsy fission units;

vacuum tubes;

glass rectifiers;

kilometers of wire;

data stored on tape, not in single molecules, retrieved with cathode-ray scanners, not with quantum-field pulses;

computers composed of miniaturized gas-filled units reacting in microseconds, not of photon interplays reacting in a single nanosecond.

By contrast, a Technic spaceship is an integrated system of:

a thermonuclear power plant;
initiative-grade navigation and engineering computers;
full-cycle life support;
solid-state circuits;
molecular- and nuclear-level transitions;
not moving parts but forcefields;
more energy than matter;
an organism rather than a mechanism.

Sounds good. Will it ever exist? Does it exist elsewhere already? Will we ever know?

Another reference to gravanol. (p. 627)

"A Little Knowledge"

"A Little Knowledge."

"He had no need for recapitulating except the need to gloat..." (p. 613)

- and the need to inform the readers of what he has been doing, of course.

Trillians are just under a meter in height so a man can pat one on the head. Three human brigands have hijacked a primitive Trillian spaceship. When their leader, Harker, informs the Trillian pilot, Witweet, that he will remain their prisoner for years while they sell his ship and its design to barbarians and help them to build a space navy:

"The head rose beneath his palm as the slight form straightened. 'Very well,' Witweet declared.
"That fast? jarred through Harker. He is nonhuman, yes, but -..." (p. 621)

Harker thinks that Witweet has instantly acquiesced. Instead, the Trillian, suddenly understanding his predicament, has immediately decided how to turn the tables on his captors. That rising of the head and straightening of the form is an understated Andersonian moment of realization. First, Witweet will divert the brigands from their immediate destination:

"'Have you heard of a planet named, by its human discovers, Paradox?'" (ibid.)

- he asks.

Two Cyclical Histories

The Psychotechnic History includes the Second and Third Dark Ages but ends with a Galactic civilization while the Technic History includes the Chaos, the Time of Troubles and the Long Night but ends with human civilizations spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy so both of these future histories are cyclical.

In both, also, there is an attempt to understand and direct historical processes. Whereas psychotechnics is a predictive science, Chunderban Desai applies a theory based on the study of many past Terrestrial civilizations. Then, informed by Desai's understanding, Flandry strengthens several planets to equip them to cope with the coming Long Night.

Meanwhile, our history enters the Chaos.

Why Does Freedom Not Last?

Why do free societies not endure? Dalgetty in the Psychotechnic History gives one answer here whereas van Rijn in the Technic History gives another answer here. Is it that most people are not intelligent, alert and tough enough to defend freedom or that most do not even want to defend it? What are the essential narratives of these two future history series? Do they present a common, fundamentally cyclical, interpretation of history or alternative views that could be debated? Which is the better series? (I think that the answer to that is obvious but someone might argue the other way. In fact, knowing people, someone will argue the other way.) I have argued here that the Psychotechnic History presents a number of interesting ideas some of which could be reconsidered and developed into an alternative series. By contrast, I cannot think of any way to improve the Technic History except to make it even longer.

Blogging tip: late at night, write a post that is mainly questions. They are easier than answers.

Paradox

Poul Anderson, "A Little Knowledge" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 599-630.

A subjovian planet should retain a large quantity of hydrogen and helium. However, the extra-solar subjovian, Paradox, captured an asteroid which became a moon with an eccentric orbit. Passing through the Paradoxical atmosphere, the moon blew large numbers of lighter molecules into space before breaking up and crashing onto the surface. Metallic atoms spread across the planet might have combined with any remaining hydrogen. The atmosphere became early terrestroid: carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, ammonia etc, except for more helium than usual. Life and photosynthesis began, generating an oxynitrogen atmosphere. Despite fifteen Terrestrial masses, Paradox is solid with a humanly breathable atmosphere.

Another large planet that loses its hydrogen and helium, gaining an inhabited solid surface, is Ramnu. (Scroll down.)

Mankind In The Psychotechnic And Technic Histories

The Psychotechnic History and the Technic History are Poul Anderson's first two future history series. Each contains a statement about mankind.

Psychotechnic
"The enemy was old and strong and crafty, it took a million forms and it could never quite be slain. For it was man himself - the madness and sorrow of the human soul, the revolt of a primitive against the unnatural state called civilization and freedom."
-Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 AT XIV, p. 97.

Technic
In "The Master Key," Per Stenvik says that human beings are not wild animals and Manuel Palomares replies that they are whereas Nicholas van Rijn argues that only some are. Van Rijn's criterion of wildness is:

"'We do what we do because we want to or because it is right.'" (p. 326)

But wild animals do only what they want to and never what is right because they have no conception of right or wrong. In fact, it is reason and morality that differentiate human beings from animals. However, van Rijn's point is that only a few human beings are not domesticated animals. He continues:

"'...how many people today is domestic animals at heart? Wanting somebody else should tell them what to do, and take care of their needfuls, and protect them not just against their fellow men but against themselves? Why has every free human society been so shortlived? Is this not because the wild-animal men are born so heartbreakingly seldom?'" (p. 327)

Comparing the two statements:

in the Psychotechnic History, primitives want neither to be civilized nor to be free;

according to van Rijn, domesticated human beings want to be civilized but not to be free.

If both statements are true, then society has two problems, the primitives and the domesticateds.

Diverse Introductions

We do not know what is coming next as we read through The Technic Civilization Saga, Baen Books' seven volume complete edition of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, because there is no uniformity as to how the collected works are introduced or afterworded.

Each volume is introduced by the Compiler, Hank Davis, and ends with Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization.

Volume I
"The Saturn Game," fictional introduction by Francis L. Minamoto, dated 2057.

"Wings of Victory," fictional introduction by Hloch of Stormgate Choth.

"The Problem of Pain," Hloch.

"Margin of Profit," Hloch.

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," Hloch.

"The Three-Cornered Wheel," fictional introduction by Vance Hall, commenting on Noah Arkwright.

"A Sun Invisible," fictional introduction by Noah Arkwright.

"The Season Of Forgiveness," Hloch.

The Man Who Counts, Hloch - plus a real world afterword, originally an introduction, by Poul Anderson.

"Esua," Hloch.

"Hiding Place," fictional introduction by Le Matelot.

Volume II
"Territory," an extract from "Margin of Profit."

"The Trouble Twisters," fictional introduction by Urwain the Wide-Fairing, reminiscing about Noah Arkwright.

"Day of Burning," Hloch.

"The Master Key," six lines from "Hellas" by Percy Shelley.

Satan's World, no introduction - we pass directly from the end of "The Master Key" to the beginning of this novel.

"A Little Knowledge," Hloch.

"Lodestar," Hloch, and an Afterword by Poul Anderson.

Volume III
Mirkheim, no introduction, although there is a multi-part Prologue.

"Wingless," Hloch.

"Rescue on Avalon," Hloch, both introduction and afterword.

"The Star Plunderer," fictional introduction by Donvar Ayeghen.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships," fictional introduction by Michael Karageorge (real author, not Poul Anderson but Hank Davis.)

The People Of The Wind, no introduction.

Volume IV
Ensign Flandry, excerpts from a Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris.

A Circus Of Hells, no introduction.

The Rebel Worlds, introduction and afterword from a tripartite Didonian perspective.

Volumes V-VI
No introductions.

Volume VII
A Stone In Heaven, no introduction.

The Game Of Empire, a real world introduction by Poul Anderson.

"A Tragedy of Errors," a short italicized introduction and afterword about Christopher Wren.

The Night Face, a real world introduction by Poul Anderson.

"Starfog," no introduction.

In fact, very un-uniform.

Conversational Narration

"The Master Key."

"The Master Key" remains a five-sided conversation with two men recounting events on Cain while three listen and comment. There is no transition to a multi-page first person narrative, therefore no need for the reverse transition back to dialogue. At the end, van Rijn, Poirot-like, solves the case, deploying several malapropisms:

"'A man with a superiority complexion...'" (p. 323);

"'Recapitalize.'" (ibid.)

"'In puncture of fact...'" (ibid.)

"'I make no blasfuming...'" (ibid.)

As blog correspondent, David Birr, once argued in the combox, van Rijn proves his mastery of languages when necessary, which demonstrates that his Manglic (mangled Anglic) is an act, to make opponents underestimate him.

We approach the end of a rereading of "The Master Key." However, the story concludes with an anthropological observation requiring further discussion.

Hostages

"The Master Key."

"'The Cainites don't have our kind of group solidarity. If Kochihir and his buddy came to grief at our hands, that was their hard luck. But Shivaru and some of the others had read our psychology shrewdly enough to know what a hold on us their three prisoners gave.'" (p. 305)

Know your enemy. Understand alien psychology. Coincidentally, I have just started to reread Dornford Yates' second Chandos book in which Mansel's cousin's wife is kidnapped. That is not her hard luck.

In Niven and Pournelle's Football, the aliens know only one way to deal with humanity:

attack;
either conquer or be conquered;
fully embrace either outcome;
if captured, immediately switch your loyalty to your captors.

Aliens, indeed.

When Does The Future Begin? II

American
Heinlein's "Life-Line," published in 1939, is set in 1952 in an as yet unchanged world. The single new invention is destroyed although further technological advances occur in succeeding stories.

Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins in an aftermath of World War III that is indistinguishable from the aftermath of World War II but futuristic urbanization has occurred by the time of the second story.

Anderson's Technic History begins with solar, then extra-solar, exploration. The fourth and fifth stories are set on a future Earth.

James Blish's Cities In Flight begins with regular interplanetary flight and speculation about interstellar flight in the early twenty-first century.

Larry Niven's Known Space series begins with exploration of the Solar System in the concluding quarter of the twentieth century.

The Chronology of Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history begins with Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon in 1969.

Future histories have advanced since Stapledon.

When Does The Future Begin?

I thought of this question in relation to what I call the "Future History Triad":

Heinlein's Technic History;
Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
Anderson's Technic History -

- but, of course, every other future history that I have read came to mind so we wind up with a complicated list.

British
Stapledon's Last And First Men begins after "the European War";

Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come begins "today," in 1933;

CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, not a future history but its author's reply to Stapledon and Wells, begins after World War II, with Jane Studdock remembering the words of the marriage service;

RC Churchill's A Short History Of The Future begins with a discussion of many well-known sf works on the fictional assumption that they are histories of the future;

Brian Aldiss' Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand begins with a future war and a commentary explaining that war in terms of instincts, fears and racial adolescence (Poul Anderson's "protean enemy" yet again).

OK. Maybe the Americans can have another post.

Manse And Mansel

(Mansel and Chandos hold up Punter and Ellis.)

I found a Poul Anderson character in a Dornford Yates' novel - or seemed to have. Mansel's name was at the end of a line with its last letter missing. I am probably the only person ever to read Blind Corner and to think of Time Patrol. Manson ("Manse") Everard and Jonathan ("Jonah") Mansel will never meet, except in the imaginations of their readers, and they inhabit such different conceptual universes that we can only marvel at human diversity. In fact, it is a privilege to be able to enter into the world-views of authors from such different social milieus. Yates' heroes are always accompanied by their man servants so that a band of three men automatically becomes six - and the servants are good with cars and guns. Manse Everard lives in a New York apartment. I live on a terrace street where, a hundred years ago, the occupants would have had domestic servants whereas now the houses are occupied either by Asian families or by University students.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.

Generations And Nostalgia

(A stirring blurb.)

I am still rereading Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" but will not extract any more posts from its text this evening. Dornford Yates beckons. Some of his villains are in the same league as Ian Fleming's or SM Stirling's:

"The last was addressed by his companions as 'Rose' - Mansel told us later that he was undoubtedly 'Rose' Noble - a man of some position among thieves -..."
-Dornford Yates, Blind Corner (London, 1947, originally published 1927), CHAP III, p. 92.

(British understatement.)

In his Author's Note at the end of The Psychotechnic League (New York, 1981), Poul Anderson summarizes Robert Heinlein's Future History, then refers to his own:

"...new future history quite unlike the first." (p. 284)

Here in one Note is what I call the Future History Triad:

(i) the Future History;
(ii) the Psychotechnic History, modelled on (i);
(iii) the Technic History, unplanned, growing organically, but taking a similar form to (i) although on a vaster spatio-temporal scale.

Anderson ends his Note by saying that these stories might "... now evoke pleasant memories of youth..." (p. 285) in readers of his age or be new to readers of his daughter's age and:

"These stories were not seminal like Heinlein's, but they were a noticeable part of the field a generation ago. We've all come a long way since then, but sometimes we do well to look back and see where we have been." (ibid.)

Looking back at early future histories in 1981! Two more generations have passed since then and we have come an even longer way. I am able to express my appreciation with this science fictional device, a laptop computer.

The Hypothetical Psychotechnic Institute Series

See:

Conceptual Changes In Fiction II
A Debate About The Future
Comments On A Debate About The Future
Comments On A Debate II

I would be interested in a future history series on this basis:

the UN government continues to fight the "protean enemy";

the UN-, then Solar Union-, sponsored Psychotechnic Institute produces a growing nucleus of saner individuals and influences education and public opinion;

the government and the Institute are honest about their inability to predict or prevent social crises;

they are opposed by "Humanists" and others but not overthrown in a Revolution;

Planetary Engineers terraform solar planets;

generation ships, built around comfortable internal ecologies, are not psychotechnically engineered to generate social divisions and conflicts;

we eventually read about "...the end of human adolescence, and beginning of first mature culture," as mentioned at the end of Robert Heinlein's Future History Time Chart.

Cainite Culture

"The Master Key."

On Cain, there are two intelligent species of the same genus. The more numerous Lugals are completely loyal and trustworthy subordinates of the Yildivans who live as independent families in forest huts or caves with no tribes, nations or communities. However, the Lugals, whom the Yildivans breed and trade, carry messages, goods and news and frequently gather to converse independently. More intelligent Lugals boss their own species, teach the Yildivan young and are sometimes consulted by their owners. Thus, wider social interaction is through the Lugals. Further, the Yildivans in at least one area communicate long-range with drums. Thus, their apparent isolation is merely apparent.

Godless Aliens

People might either not believe in God or have no concept of God in the first place. Jain belief in uncreated, beginningless matter and souls is pre-, not a- or anti-, theist.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Ythrians, Merseians and Christians all have different concepts of God whereas Cainites have no such concept. Godless aliens can cause problems for some human beings.

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, a Jesuit thinks that the good but Godless Lithians must be a diabolical trick to mislead mankind.

In Harry Harrison's "The Streets of Ashkelon"/"An Alien Agony," the literal-minded Weskers, having learned scientific method from an atheist trader and the story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection from a missionary priest, empirically test the priest's story by crucifying him to see whether he will rise and save them. Thus, they learn guilt.

In Anderson's "The Master Key," when a human being speaks of "God" but does not serve him, the Cainites deduce that human beings are domesticated animals that have gone wild and therefore should be killed.

Thus, these are three thought experiments about misunderstanding and conflict.

A Case Of Conscience is part of Blish's Haertel Scholium and Volume III of his After Such Knowledge Trilogy.

"The Streets of Ashkelon" is a one-off story that could fit into many futuristic, interstellar scenarios, e.g., it could be adapted for Star Trek, and Paul Cook said that it gives credence to the Prime Directive.

"The Master Key" is part of the Nicholas van Rijn series which is part of the Technic History which is one of Poul Anderson's several future history series.

Conceptual Changes In Fiction II

See Conceptual Changes In Fiction.

In a possible update/revision/adaptation of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, these features would be retained:

World War III;
recovery;
UN world government;
UN-men;
food and other resources from the sea;
resources from space;
urbanization;
aircars;
colonization of the Moon, Mars, the asteroids and the outer Solar System;
a science of humanity covering both physiology and individual and social psychology;
automation;
technological unemployment;
economic abundance;
the "protean enemy";
the Psychotechnic Institute advising the government;
Planetary Engineers;
the launching of a generation ship.

The series would lose:

The Psychotechnic League as a title (Volume I should be The Psychotechnic Institute);
the colonization of Venus;
a predictive science of society;
psychotechnicians falsifying data;
the Humanist Revolution;
social fragmentation leading to the Second Dark Ages;
FTL.

This is just a blueprint. I think that there is enough in this future history without the additional and questionable premises of a predictive social science and FTL. I might discuss the idea further although no way am I up to writing any fanfic.

Bird Of Prey On Cain

"The Master Key."

"'Far, far overhead a bird of prey (scroll down) would wheel, then suddenly stoop - in the thick air I could hear the whistle through its wing feathers - and vanish into the treetops down in the valley. Those leaves had a million different shades of color, like an endless autumn.'" (p. 289)

This passage contributes to our Andersonian birds of prey theme. Often, the author or narrator points out that flying organisms on other planets are not really birds. The autumnal leaves present another colorful detail.

Our changeable weather is currently summery so I expect another long walk today.

Conceptual Changes In Fiction

In sf, and maybe in reality, time dilation can enable astronauts to return to Earth millennia after they left it. So far, this is like the equivalent of the Time Traveler's outward journey except that he remained on the Earth's surface and, of course, was able to return to the nineteenth century. Temporal stasis and suspended animation are another two sf one-way trips to the future. Poul Anderson covered time dilation, temporal stasis and time travel. Anderson's works have not yet been adapted into other media. When this happens, stories can be revised in interesting ways. Thus:

In Pierre Boulle's La Planete de Singes, space travel with time dilation got astronauts to an extra-solar "planet of the apes," then returned them to Earth which had meanwhile become another "planet of the apes";

in the first film, time dilation got the astronauts to what they thought was an extra-solar "planet of the apes" but turned out to be the future Earth;

since Earth was destroyed at the end of the second film, time travel got some apes to twentieth-century Earth in the third film;

the fourth and fifth films were about the transformation of Earth into the "planet of the apes";

the recent film trilogy dispenses with space travel, time dilation and time travel and proceeds directly to the theme of the fourth and fifth films above.

That is an interesting conceptual sequence and raises the question of what might happen to Poul Anderson's works if they were adapted in similar ways.