Fraud

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Tabitha Falkayn is a direct descendant of David Falkayn and, later, Max Abrams is from the planet Dayan whereas, in Anderson's Starfarers, Hanny Dayan is a direct descendant of Moshe Dayan. The Psychotechnic History has a Cosmic religion, the Technic History has Cosmenosists and Starfarers has Cosmosophists. (And Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama has the Church of Christ, Cosmonaut.)

In Starfarers, on a future colonized Mars:

Philo Pryor claimed to have found a device in a cave on Ascraeus Mons;

the Galactics had left the device to be found by a genius able to use it;

in Pryor's brain, quantum resonances pulsed, bringing forth manifestations from the Ones;

he received doctrines which the Synod of Interpreters of the Order of Received Cosmosophy translated into practical commandments;

Pryor was translated to a higher existence;

no other genius has yet come forward;

the device was placed in his tomb;

at the Martian northern summer solstice, the Order carries the device in procession for ceremonies in the Temple of Truth;

one year, as the procession passes, Hanny Dayan examines the device with scientific instruments;

she publishes her finding that the circuits in the device never did anything;

devout believers call her a liar.

Poul Anderson understood belief and self-deception.

The Tale Of The Cat And A Real World Flying Car

Starfarers, 17.

Is it really possible to track an animal as small as a cat through a forest and to find it after many false leads? Would a cat bend twigs? And how would a tracker know which twig had been bent by a cat and not by something else? Would the cat leave enough noticeable "pug marks in the duff"? (p. 136) (And what meaning of "duff" are we using here?)

Valdi Ronen claims to have tracked and found a cat lost in a dangerous Aerian forest and the outcome is that a Kith ship adopts him. When the ship has left the system, Valdi can safely admit to his superior that he had abducted the cat and kept it safe. The moral of the story is that someone that determined is considered worthy.

Unlike characters in some other Anderson futures, Valdi uses a "satphone" (ibid) but this is easily explained by the fact this story was published in 1998. Sf writers can at least keep track of current tech!

I heard on the radio that a flying car has been tested but does not have VTOL. The future is now, sort of.

The First Part Of The Technic History

Consider yet again:

The Polesotechnic League Tetralogy

Trader To The Stars

The Trouble Twisters

Satan's World

Mirkheim

 

The Ythrian Volumes

The People Of The Wind

The Earth Book Of Stormgate

 

Apart from three stories that could be collected as an additional volume to be read between the Tetralogy and The People Of The Wind, these six volumes comprise the first of the two main parts of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. As recently stated, the Earth Book completes the story of the Polesotechnic League and almost completes the story of human-Ythrian interactions.

 

David Falkayn first appears as a teenage apprentice in the first of the three installments collected as The Trouble Twisters and is last mentioned as an off-stage grandfather in the eleventh of the twelve installments collected as the Earth Book. However, The People Of The Wind, set centuries later, refers back to Falkayn as the historical Founder of the human-Ythrian colony on Avalon and as a remote ancestor of the heroine, Tabitha Falkayn. Thus, even more so than his employer, Nicholas van Rijn, the title character of Trader To The Stars, Falkayn dominates this first part of the Technic History just as Dominic Flandry, defender of the Terran Empire successfully resisted by Avalon, dominates the second. Falkayn saves the Merseians from supernova radiation and Flandry saves the Empire from the Merseians.

Another important figure, Christopher Holm:

is a viewpoint character in The People Of The Wind;

marries Tabitha Falkayn;

translates Ythrian works from Planha into Anglic;

fictitiously writes three of the twelve Earth Book installments.

It is appropriate that we remember our roots and the Technic History is where it's at.

Night On Aerie

Starfarers, 17.

"The evening star glowed in western heaven. The rings were a banded blend of pallid hues, around them the true stars and beyond those the galactic belt, as chill as the airs that sent mists aswirl about our ankles. Afar, some animal howled."  (p. 135)

We note that:

Aerie has an evening star, like Earth and some other Andersonian planets;

like the colonized planet, Altai, in the Technic History, it has rings;

"the galactic belt" is yet another description of the Milky Way;

the howling animal fits the mood at this point in the narrative;

the description appeals to three senses, colors, chill and howling.

The Goddess

Writing of the Indus Valley civilization, Ninian Smart refers to:

"...the Goddess from whom the earth and the prosperities of the farming life emanated. From her too, no doubt, came domestic animals, and she gave protection against the tigers and snakes who lurked on the earth and on the fringes of the villages."

-Ninian Smart, The World's Religions (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p 52.

 

This reminded me of Poul Anderson's description of a goddess:

 

"Hers are the trees, the vine, and the fruits thereof. Hers are the sea and the ships that plow it. Hers are the well-being of mortals and peace among them."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT III, p. 628.

 

Some passages in "Star of the Sea" are neither sf nor historical fiction but mythological writing. Both authors convey a sense of devotion to the goddess even to readers who do not believe in such a being.

India

I am rereading Ninian Smart's The World's Religions, having come to Lancaster to be supervised by Ninian many years ago. A Poul Anderson fan is bound to think that there must have been much work for the Time Patrol in India from the beginning of the Indus Valley civilization in about 3000 B.C.E. However, there is scant mention of India in the Time Patrol series because one man cannot cover everything. As Bob Shaw once said, how far a time traveler penetrates back into the past depends on several factors including which period the author has been mugging up on.

These are the only references that I remember. First, when Everard and Denison don luminous robes with halos and wings of light in Persia, Everard explains:

"'I had the boys in the Middle Mohenjodaro office fix 'em up to my specs. Their situation is such that they often need this type of disguise for themselves.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 9, p. 108.

Secondly, when Everard is on the run from the Exaltationists in Bactra in 209 B.C., he reflects that the Patrol kept stations in several cities in that era, including Palipushtra.

Anomalies In The Old Phoenix

 

We are used to two levels of narrative: real world and fictional. In Lancaster, a hospital porter showed his work-mate a tabloid newspaper headline. The second man smiled in appreciation of the story, whatever it was, then asked, "Wha'? In real life or in t'soap?" First, he appreciated the "story" - the same word is used for news and for fiction - then he checked which of the two parallel narratives it belonged to: celebrity news or popular TV drama. It was (almost) as if both narratives were equally real and valid. Either, after all, could be reported in a newspaper headline.

Of course, there are also subtly different levels within fiction and metafiction. Writers can create a space in which fictional characters comment on fiction. When, in Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End, one character comments that a "reality storm...sounds like something out of Star Trek," we realize that our world is one of the many represented by the visitors in the inn. In Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn between the universes, Valeria Matuchek learns of a world where Shakespeare is not the Great Dramatist but the Great Historian. All the soap operas and feature films can exist in parallel with the Shakespearean universe but here an anomaly arises.

At a certain stage in his career, the cinematic James Bond, as opposed to the literary one(s), ceases to resemble Sean Connery and begins to resemble George Lazenby (etc). No one in that universe notices because all of their memories and records change accordingly. But anyone looking into that universe from outside does notice. If that Bond were to visit the Old Phoenix, then Taverner and his wife would be puzzled unless of course they already understand such phenomena.

In a series of Dominic Flandry films, the actor should change just once, when Flandry has had his single biosculp. A cinema audience will notice that the actor has changed and might then be surprised when Kheraskov remarks that Flandry has changed his face! If it were necessary for external reasons to change the actor again later in the series, then a second biosculp could be invented even though there was only one in the books.

Forty Or Fifty Years

Starfarers, 17.

"'...we can give Earth forty or fifty years more to mellow further before we show our noses there again. The boys'll be disappointed, like I said. But, what they gyre, learning how to wait things out is part of becoming a Kithman.'" (p. 122)

I could adjust to that kind of timescale. Imagine leaving Earth in 1939 and returning in 1989. We need a novel about a Kith or other STL trading ship completing two circuits from Earth to several extra-solar colonies and back. We would see Earth at the beginning, middle and end and each of the other planets twice: maximum change in several societies.

The Kith Village On Harbor

Starfarers, 17.

The springy turf street smells like rosemary in the cooling air. (Three senses.) There is a lyre tree and a web-spreading arachnae. The archaic houses have lawns, flowerbeds, pastel walls and red-tiled roofs. (I think that red-tiled roofs occur more than once in Poul Anderson's works.) Most of these houses are owned by starfaring Kith who leave machines to tend their property. (Starfaring immortals do the same on Earth in Anderson's World Without Stars.) There are also a few permanent residents. Everyone currently staying in the village has gone to the Fair.

Beyond the houses are:

water;

the white cliffs of Belderland;

red, ocher and gold native forest.

 

The village is on the Isle of Weyan, deeded to the Kith and retaining much wilderness.

Harbor

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), 17, pp. 120-138.

Tau Ceti is eleven and a half light years from Sol and there is a Kith village on its planet, Harbor. Kith stop at Harbor before returning to Earth which has been hostile to Kith. Spanning interstellar distances at sub-light speeds, Kith ships are rarely able to make rendezvous whereas, in the Psychotechnic History, Nomads, traveling FTL, meet at a planet outside known space which they have named "Rendezvous." Kith garb, including kilt and bonnet, sounds Nomad.

When the Kith ships, Fleetwing, Argosy and Eagle, orbit Harbor simultaneously, they delay departure to conduct a Fair. Kith must marry out of their ship. Four ships have developed the art of yarn-spinning with bardic accompaniment. IIRC, we are about to read a story within the story.

If some Kith remain permanently in the village or in Kith Town on Earth, do they cease to be Kith?

The Kith Future Histories

I am staying with the Kith for a while.

"Ghetto," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1954.

"Homo Aquaticus," Amazing Stories, September 1963.

"The Tale of the Cat," Analog Science Fiction and Fact, February 1998.

 

"Ghetto" and "Homo Aquaticus," the latter re-entitled "The Horn of Time the Hunter," form the short Kith future history in Maurai And Kith, 1982.

 

"Ghetto" and "The Tale of the Cat," both revised, form Chapters XXI and XVII, respectively, of Starfarers, 1998.

 

I have not read the original version of "The Tale of the Cat."

Maurai And Kith should be split into Maurai and Kith. Kith and Starfarers are two alternative Kith Histories whereas Maurai is the opening volume of a trilogy, the remaining volumes being Orion Shall Rise and There Will Be Time.

The Horn II

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

The second time Jong hears the horn, he is running to help one of his companions on the beach. The sound is louder than before so it seems that it is real. On the other hand, Jong remembers where he has heard it before. On a frontier planet, mounted huntsmen pursued a wounded, weeping animal and their leader blew just such a call from a bugle so how can Jong be hearing it again on another planet? The islands have no large animals to be hunted. Four male natives have come ashore to check that the breeding ground is in order but they are in front of Jong killing Mons Rainart, not beyond the cliffs where the sound seems to come from. Is the hearing of the horn how Jong's prescience operates, warning him of danger? It sounded faint when the natives were approaching the island and louder when their scouts were killing Mons.

Finally, as the spaceboat leaves the planet:

"I wonder what that sound was, [Jong] thought vaguely. A wind noise, no doubt, as Mons said. But I'll never be sure. For a moment it seemed to him that he heard it again, in the thrum of energy and metal, in the beat of his own blood, the horn of a hunter pursuing a quarry that wept as it ran." (p. 26)

OK. A sound heard in energy, metal and blood in a spaceboat is not a horn blown on the planet. Only the story's title connects the horn with time but that is sufficient explanation. The horn is time and we are its weeping quarry.

The Horn

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

Let's see what is happening with this horn. Four Kithmen are together on an island of the oceanic planet. Of the four, only Jong Errifans thinks that he hears a distant horn. He is younger than the others and the sound is barely audible to him.

"'Some trick of the wind, off in the cliffs yonder,' Mons Rainart suggested. He shivered. 'the damned wind is always hunting here.'" (p. 11)

Yet again the wind is mentioned as if it were a protagonist. So is it remotely possible that Jong does hear a horn? But there is no one else on the island. Thousands of the sea-dwelling inhabitants are swimming toward the island for their mating season but, at this stage, none of them are there yet - and, even if any of them were there ahead of schedule, they do not blow horns. Or might some of them?

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

-copied from here.

A Corridor Of Time

Before I return April's Grave (London, 1974) by Susan Howatch to the Public Library, I will highlight the following phrase:

"...night had come, and suddenly dawn seemed intolerably distant, as if it lay at the far end of an interminable corridor of time." (CHAPTER SEVEN, I, p. 154)

Mainstream authors sometimes refer to sf. We have seen that Howatch refers to clones and triffids. Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time was published before April's Grave although I doubt that Howatch was alluding to that particular sf novel. Sometimes mainstream authors unknowingly echo sf ideas.

In The Corridors Of Time, spatial corridors are rotated onto the temporal axis so that it becomes possible literally to walk from one time to another. We might imagine night as a tunnel or corridor from evening to morning but, of course, in reality we do not move anywhere. We lie in bed while our part of the Earth's surface moves back towards the sun.

Everything extends and moves through space and endures through time. Motion through space takes time. Nothing moves through time, unless Anderson's time corridors could be constructed.

Planets And Civilizations II

In Poul Anderson's Technic History:

in "Wings of Victory," the Olga, which explores Ythri, is part of the first Grand Survey during the pre-Solar Commonwealth period of Technic civilization;

in "A Tragedy of Errors," Roan Tom seeks spaceship repairs on the planet Nike during the Long Night;

in The Night Face, a joint Nuevamerican-Lochlanna expedition in the ship, Quetzal, investigates Gwydion;

in "The Sharing of Flesh," An Allied Planet team in the spaceship, New Dawn, surveys Lokon.

In other Anderson futures:

in "The Horn of Time the Hunter," a Kith ship, the Golden Flyer, visits the unnamed oceanic planet;

in "The High Ones," the spaceship, Rurik, representing a global soviet dictatorship, visits an extra-solar planet.

The same basic narrative structure in six scenarios.

Planets And Civilizations

In a particular kind of sf scenario, an exploratory spaceship arrives at an extra-solar planet and the crew must deduce what is going down on the planet, which species, if any, are intelligent etc. The author must inform us of planetary conditions and must also tell us something about the civilization that sent the spaceship. Thus, there are two complementary creative processes:

in Star Trek, the Enterprise represents the United Federation of Planets;

in James Blish's "This Earth of Hours," the Terrestrial Matriarchy sends a fleet to investigate the planet Calle which turns out to be an outpost of the telepathic Central Empire.

In an upcoming post, we will consider several examples among Poul Anderson's works but right now I must go out for the evening.

Homo Aquaticus II

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

Did the finned humanoids on the oceanic planet kill the human colonists?

These humanoids sound suspiciously like evolved or devolved human beings:

air-breathing mammals;

finger and toe nails that have grown to be as thick and sharp as claws;

omnivores evolving towards carnivores;

large, pointed teeth;

human-type vision but probably less acute because used underwater;

maybe able to remain underwater for many minutes but not as long as cetaceans;

inefficient fins indicate that they are not yet far evolved from their land-dwelling ancestors.

Such animals could not have evolved on any of the islands of the oceanic planet. The only explanation is not that they killed the colonists but that they are the colonists.

Homo Aquaticus

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

Kith guns are called fulgurators.

The inhabitants of the oceanic planet:

manlike;

a meter taller than a Kith;

naked;

white-skinned;

completely hairless;

domed head;

feet and fingers long and webbed;

a fin on head and back and at each elbow and heel;

bony faces;

sunken eyes;

no external ears;

a skin flap connecting nose and mouth;

wooden spears with flint tips;

metal tridents;

knives. slung at waists.

The blurb wrongly implies that this collection presents a single narrative of nuclear war followed by interstellar travel.

Knowledge And Wisdom

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

"The sentence was just: to go exploring to the fringes of the galactic nucleus. Perhaps they would find the Elder Races that must dwell somewhere; perhaps they would bring back the knowledge and wisdom that could heal man's inborn lunacies. Well, they hadn't..." (p. 16)

Knowledge and wisdom are to be found where we are. In our meditation group, we recite a text that includes the line:

"It is futile to travel to other dusty countries, thus forsaking your own seat."

(This was written by Dogen who did travel from Japan to China in search of authentic Buddhism.)

A man from England went to Tibet only to be told that the place that he sought was in his own country. Returning home, he settled in Glastonbury, believing that this was the place that was meant. Someone said to me, "Wasn't it amazing that that Tibetan described Glastonbury to him?" He didn't. He just told him to go home! In Angus MacVicker's The Atom Chasers In Tibet, the titular characters go to Tibet in search of a document which, it is said, will bring peace to the world. The mysterious document, when found, turns out to be a Biblical passage with which they are familiar.

We should travel to the galactic center for scientific knowledge, not for wisdom or peace.

Oceanic Planet

"The Horn of Time the Hunter." 

There are no herds of large animals on the islands but the ocean swarms with schools of fish in their hundreds of thousands. Fish as large as whales graze the weed mats. (We remember Avalon.) The single large moon raises tides of two or three meters and shells litter a beach below high-water mark. The colonists must have gathered most of their food from the ocean. Are we beginning to guess where the colonists have gone? (I didn't, on the first reading.)

A cliff overlooks a circular bay, kilometers across, with a river flowing in from the highlands and only a narrow passage out to the ocean. Rocks, boulders and shells cover the long, wide, sandy beach. The spaceboat lands on the cliff so that the Kithmen can explore the highlands for signs of farming or mining - they might also encounter whatever killed the colonists. The cool air smells of salt, iodine and decay.

Read quickly, the story races past like a short film or TV episode whereas, if we press the pause button, then we appreciate scenes like the empty city and the placid bay.

The Deserted Planet

"The Horn of Time the Hunter."

The Kith ship, the Golden Flyer, has returned from a twenty thousand year round trip at near light speed to the galactic center. The viewpoint character, Jong Errifans, is twenty years old and has apparently experienced the entire trip:

"...in his own life he had seen the flower and the fall of an empire." (p. 12)

Planetary civilizations are transitory to the Kith.

The ship has stopped in a planetary system:

"...three hundred light-years from Sol's calculated present position." (p. 14)

The position of the Solar System has to be calculated and the calculation might be wrong!

The third planet:

is of Earth mass;

has islands scattered on a global ocean with no continents;

is uniformly warm;

has a terrestroid atmosphere sustained by weed mats, hundreds of square kilometers in extent;

was colonized and civilized although its islands and cities have long been deserted.

A Scene On An Extra-Solar Planet

Poul Anderson, "The Horn of Time the Hunter" IN Anderson, The Horn Of Time (New York, 1968), pp. 11-26.

An empty, towered city;

unbroken glasit windows;

white, fluting seabirds;

skirling wind;

rolling surf;

reefs;

a large, patrolling, tiger-striped fish;

streets filled with sand and grass;

toppled colonnades around a square;

polished stone blocks thrusting up; 

machines corroded beneath dunes;

four Kith explorers making a fire at night;

their leader radioing the orbiting Golden Flyer;

Jong Errifans alone thinking that he hears:

 

"...the distant blowing of a horn." (p. 11)

Three Culminations

 

"The Chapter Ends" is presented as the concluding story of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

"Starfog" is definitely the concluding story of his Technic History.

"The Horn of Time the Hunter"/"Homo Aquaticus" is definitely the concluding story of the earlier version of his much shorter Kith History.

Having recently reread "The Chapter Ends" and "Starfog," we are now drawn back toward "The Horn..." because it exemplifies our newfound theme of Anderson's marine sf and fantasy.

Each of these three stories transports its readers much further into the future than the rest of its future history series. In each case, old narratives have been completed and a new narrative is about to begin. We have previously drawn parallels with the concluding installments of future histories by James Blish and Larry Niven.

Marine SF And Fantasy

Godfrey-Smith discusses how octopuses might live longer. Longer lifespans might start them on the line of evolution described by Poul Anderson in "In Memoriam," which in turn raises the wider question of human and other intelligent beings in marine environments in Anderson's sf and fantasy:

the octopedidae;

seabed colonization in the Psychotechnic History and The Byworlder;

the planets Nyanza and Kraken in the Technic History;

"The Horn of Time the Hunter" in the Kith History;

Dahut in The King Of Ys;

The Merman's Children.

This generates an agenda for some future posts.

Natural Philosophers

"Starfog."

On Kirkasant:

"..the natural philosophers knew certain things were possible, even if they didn't know how, and this was half the battle." (p. 730)

Consequently:

 "Once the scientific method had been created afresh, Laure thought, progress must have been more rapid than on Earth." (ibid.)

Natural philosophy: thought about nature;

conceptual philosophy: thought about thought;

natural science: experiments on nature.

Thus, philosophy split into "philosophy" and science. Thus also, Kirkasanters reverted to "natural philosophy" before reinventing science.

 

Laure expects several new sciences to emerge from discoveries made in the Cloud Universe.

Age

Like Hanno and his fellow immortals in Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, Lazarus Long in Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children is an unaging mutant so is it just a coincidence that he is born in an early generation of a group that is being bred for longevity? Why do organisms age and to different ages?

"Why do hummingbirds live till they are ten, rockfish till they are two hundred, bristlecone pines till they are thousands of years old, and octopuses till they are two?"

-Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (London, 2018), 7, p. 164.

 

Godfrey-Smith summarizes two theories of aging. Because these theories are relevant to sf by Heinlein, Anderson, Blish and Niven, I will try to paraphrase them here.

 

Peter Medawar's Argument

Any animals that did not die of old age would eventually die from some external cause. A mutation that was harmful only at an advanced age would not be selected out because most animals would die from other causes before reaching that advanced age. Therefore, the mutated genes would become common so that individuals that did reach an advanced age would then die of "old age."

 

George Williams' Similar Argument

Mutations that are beneficial early in life but harmful later in life will be naturally selected until an entire population bears the mutated genes and every individual who survives long enough then suffers from the harmful later effects.

According to these theories, Lazarus Long and Hanno etc are individuals born without the gene that is harmful later in life.

I have also encountered the theory that, in primitive society, when nearly everyone died young from external causes, it was not yet known that there was any death from old age so it was thought that immortality was the natural state that had been lost with an expulsion from Eden. Of the sf works mentioned here, this theory is most relevant to Larry Niven's Protector.

What Rangers Learn

"Starfog."

Laure:

"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, the fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'" (p. 722)

Later:

"The sky exploded.

"He was on his belly, faceplate buried in arms against the flash, before his conscious mind knew what had happened. Rangers learned about nuclear weapons. When, after a minute, no shock wave had hit him, no sound other than a rising wind, he dared sit up and look." (p 780)

Why do they learn about nuclear weapons if there are no wars? Historical learning would not give Laure a trained response. Are there local planetary wars or wars outside the Commonalty? And does the wind comment yet again?

Laure And Graydal

"Starfog."

Jaccavrie, the consciousness-level ship's computer, seems to be opposed to Laure's friendship with the Kirkasanter woman, Graydal, but surely personal jealousy is impossible? Laure reflects that:

"...[Jaccavrie's] judgments were always conditioned by the fact that she was a Ranger vessel, built for Ranger work." (p. 762)

OK. She wants him to stop helping the Kirkasanters so that he can do something more productive for the Commonalty.

Graydal's father tells Laure:

"...I must warn you that close ties between members of radically different societies can prove disastrous to everyone involved.'" (p. 763)

But barriers must be overcome. Two individuals need to have a clear understanding between them, particularly about the upbringing of children, but, when they have done that, no one else from either of the two "radically different societies" needs to interfere! Speaking personally, there was no way that I was ever going to marry the eldest daughter of Catholic friends of my parents with a general expectation that our children were going to be brought up as Catholics.

As it happens, the question of children is what comes between Laure and Graydal, not how to bring them up but the fact that they cannot have any.

Between Universes

Between stars in the Cloud Universe, there are multiple navigational hazards and lethal radiation whereas, between universes, there is the tap room of the Old Phoenix! - at least in our imaginations. Also in imagination, John Rolfe steps through a shimmering surface on the wall of his basement onto a parallel Earth in SM Stirling's Conquistador.

We envisage two kinds of ways to travel to other worlds:

by traversing interplanetary or interstellar space;

by stepping through a wardrobe, painting or mirror, falling down a rabbit hole or entering an inn that is not usually there (etc).

Unfortunately, the easier way is also impossible. As I understand it, any theory that allows for parallel universes also disallows any travel between them. However, human beings have always imagined more than they experienced and now we learn that the universe that we experience is stranger than we can imagine.

Navigational Hazards

"Starfog."

It is impossible to navigate in the Cloud Universe global cluster because:

the quarter million plus closely packed stars make space too bright;

supergiant stars cannot be used as beacons because their light is diffused and absorbed;

although the supergiants are powerful neutrino sources, this effect is smothered by too many neutrinos from too many other sources;

stellar closeness generates too many magnetic effects;

many stars are rapidly revolving multiples, orbiting each other on incalculably complex paths;

radiation keeps much of the interstellar medium in the plasma state, generating every kind of electromagnetic action;

there is synchroton and betatron radiation and nuclear collision;

rapid changes of gravitational potential cause uncontrollable precession and nutation;

cosmic radiation increases as Jaccavrie proceeds into the cluster;

the enormous production rate of novae and supernovae causes large numbers of undetectable neutron stars, rogue planets large meteoroids and thick dust banks.

But it is always possible to return to clear space by following a straight line.

Theoretically, it is easy to return from anywhere in London to Lancaster:

drive in any direction until you hit the M25;

drive in either direction until you hit the M1;

M1, M6, home.

 

I compare London to the Cloud Universe because I don't want to drive in either.

Night And Day

A famous couple ascend to a bedroom in the Old Phoenix:

"'Leonardo cast his goblet on the floor Glass flew outward, wine fountained red. 'Heloise and Abelard!' he roared. 'They will have had their night!'"

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 20.

 

Just before dying, the heroine of Anthony Horowitz's Forever And A Day tells James Bond that they did not have forever but they did have their day.

 

"'We've had our day,' I said.

"'Yes,' said Mansel, and smiled. 'But what a day, William!'"

-Dornford Yates, Ne'er-Do-Well (Kelly Bray, Cornwall, 2001), p. 5.

 

Good nights and days; not forever.

Versions

We know that alternative versions of historical figures and fictional characters can visit free houses like Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End and Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix. Thus, the Sherlock Holmes who visits the Old Phoenix is not necessarily identical with the Holmes who lives in the Time Patrol timeline. Indeed, the Patrol guarding a single mutable timeline and the Old Phoenix existing between many immutable timelines do not seem to belong in the same multiverse - although I postulate a megamultiverse with discrete zones that are not equally accessible.

Unlike Holmes, James Bond receives minimal treatment in Poul Anderson's works. He is mentioned just once as a fictional character in The Corridors Of Time although this would not prevent him from showing up in the Old Phoenix.

In other reading, I have discovered that there are not two but at least three versions of Bond:

the Bond of novels by Ian Fleming, Anthony Horowitz and maybe one or two others;

the Bond of the films plus some film novelizations;

the Bond of other additional novels that are more akin to the films.

I recommend Horowitz.

Multidimensional Explanations

"Starfog."

The Kirkasanter physicist, Hirn Oran's son, postulates a multidimensional framework to explain the coexistence of the small Cloud Universe and the larger darker universe but this is unnecessary. However, such a framework is necessary to explain Nicholas van Rijn's visit to the Old Phoenix - but neither Hirn nor Laure knows or even suspects anything about such an extra-cosmic visit. It is irrelevant to "Starfog."

I told someone recently that characters from different books can meet in the Old Phoenix so let's confirm that:

Holger Danske from Three Hearts And Three Lions and Valeria Matuchek from Operation Otherworld meet in the Old Phoenix in A Midsummer Tempest, Chapters xi-xii;

Sancho Panza from Don Quixote and Nicholas van Rijn from the Solar Commonwealth period of the Technic History meet in the Old Phoenix in "House Rule";

Sherlock Holmes and Huckleberry Finn, each with a recognizable companion, are present in the Old Phoenix in A Midsummer Tempest, Epilogue.

Poul Anderson delivers the goods. 

Machine Technology On Millions Of Planets

"Starfog."

(Dialogue synopsized.)

Graydal: A large enough fleet of ships would find Kirkasant quickly.

Laure: Too expensive

Graydal: In the Commonalty, honor, adventure and charity come second to cost and profit.

Laure: Cost equals labor, skills and resources. Other people would suffer if such a large fleet were diverted to seek Kirkasant.

Graydal: Such a big and productive civilization should be able to "'...spare that much effort for a while without risking disaster...'" (p. 755)

Laure's inner response:

"She's quick on the uptake... Knowing what machine technology can do on her single impoverished world, she can well guess what it's capable of with millions of planets to draw on. But how can I make her realize that matters aren't that simple?" (ibid.)

Why are matters not that simple? Laure explains later. See No Quadrillionaire...

Graydal is right in theory. If the economies of interstellar civilizations were organized for a common purpose and if there were both a rapid (instantaneous?) communications technology and an efficient decision-making process, then it would be possible to consider a search for Kirkasant. Further, such a search would be both worthwhile and mutually beneficial - as in fact turns out to be the case. However, there is not and cannot be coordination on such a scale. In addition, the reference to individual quadrillionaires demonstrates that at least some of the human economies are still organized not for any common purpose but for continued competitive accumulation. Technology must make such accumulation redundant eventually:

"'...a technology that could make every last livin' bein' rich...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 349.

Flandry's Legacy comes to seem more of a conceptual unit. 

An Old Proverb

"Starfog."

Daven Laure:

"'We have a proverb - so old that it's reputed to have originated on Earth - "It is a capital offense to theorize in advance of the data."'" (p. 750)

"'What do you think you might find?'

"Targovi shrugged with his tendrils. "It is a capital offense to theorize in advance of the data. I have my suspicions, naturally."

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 354.

This saying appears twice in Flandry's Legacy and, on its first appearance, Targovi does not acknowledge that it is a quotation but who originally said it?

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” — "A Scandal in Bohemia" (1891)

This quote from the short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” was published in the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. While sometimes Holmes’s steadfast application of logic can come off a bit impractical, this is one of his more sensible principles. Hope and the desire to be right can be dangerous things when assumptions come into play, and Holmes’s detached approach provides a quicker and less painful path to the truth.

-copied from here.

Octopodidae

 

Poul Anderson, "In Memoriam" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 57-67.

See In Memoriam: Summary:

"intelligent octopodidae lasted for twelve million years, longer than man;"

Let us expand on that summary:

some octopodidae began to outlive their procreation (don't they, already?);

they cared for their young;

their lifespan lengthened;

their descendants, still tentacled, worked rock, shell, bone and coral, communicated linguistically, using gestures and color changes, and "...practiced religious rites and subtle arts..." (p. 65);

however, confined to salt water, they never advanced beyond the Stone Age and adapted so well that they ceased to innovate;

caste societies predetermined individual lives in elaborate detail;

"...intelligence atrophied..." (ibid.);

unable to cope with change, the species became extinct.

I have started to read:

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (London, 2018).

Other reading illuminates Anderson's works.

At Home

"Starfog."

"She'd spoken of Kirkasant so often that he felt he had almost been there himself." (p. 749)

See:

On Kirkasant 

I Remember Hermes 

Nostalgia For Ys 

 

Some people are familiar with Dublin from reading James Joyce's Ulysses.

 

"Doubtless [Kirkasant] had its glories, but by his standards it was a grim, dry, storm-scoured world where he would not care to stay for long at a time. Of course, to her it was beloved home..." (ibid.)

 

Exactly. Human beings have made themselves at home on every part of Earth so no doubt they can do it even on Kirkasant, especially after a lot of mortality, mutation and natural selection:

 

"Evolution galloped. Population exploded. In one or two millennia, man was at home on Kirkasant." (p. 730)

 

Love those two-word sentences. So much summarized in so few words.

The Next Stage

Organisms cannot exist in vacuum and hard radiation. See Cosmic Processes. They need to take their environment with them. See On Board Jaccavrie. However, although organisms exist in only a very small part of the universe, stellar processes are necessary to fuse the elements necessary for life. Thus, it is as if the whole universe had been designed to generate life.

Next question: Since life has emerged from the sea onto land, might its next stage be to emerge from a planetary environment into interplanetary space? This might not be possible by natural selection but nor need it be. Three intermediate stages:

human beings in orbiting self-sustaining habitats, as in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars;

intelligent beings at home in their natural environment, needing neither clothes nor buildings, like Anderson's Ythrians;

the space-traveling post-organic intelligences of Anderson's Genesis.

Might beings more akin to organic intelligences be able to exist in space or is that asking too much?

Cosmic Processes

"Starfog."

In the outer region of the "Cloud Universe" globular cluster, a subjovian planet had orbited a star at a distance of 1.5 billion kilometers. Its atmosphere was hydrohelium and methane while ice and frozen gases surrounded its core. Infalling matter caused the star to swell and to consume its inner planets. On the subjovian, stellar pulsations melted ice and boiled oceans, leaving an airless, Earth-sized metal and rock globe. Released tectonic forced raised mountains from the cratered stone plain. Meteorites and heat have eroded the older mountains although newer peaks remain sharp. Even at minimal size, the still pulsating sun, with its tenuous red atmosphere surrounding a blue core, remains immense, covering seven degrees of the former subjovian's sky. A newly condensed blue star as bright as a hundred Sols passes close and, from the planet's surface, the cluster is visible as a spherical glowing cloud of light containing thousands of individually discernible stars, mostly red but also golden, emerald and sapphire.

On Board Jaccavrie

"Starfog."

Viewscreens can show either the exterior view or flowing color compositions. Knowing that his guest, the Kirkasanter woman, Graydal, dislikes the view of open space, Laure chooses a color composition but, when she requests the exterior view, the ship responds to Laure's rueful spreading of hands by granting the request. Next, the ship serves drinks on a tray extended from the side. She, Jaccavrie, the ship, offers a considerable choice of wines and is an excellent cook although Graydal must use a Kirkasanter salt-shaker because Commonalty food is bland to her whereas her salt contains too much arsenic for (ordinary) human beings.

A future history series is built on imaginative details whether in Robert Heinlein's Luna City or at the northern edge of a spiral arm with a Ranger of the Commonalty.

Betrayal II

See Betrayal and Henri Dericourt.

It has been alleged that the issue addressed by Flandry arose during World War II. Did British Intelligence betray some of its agents in order to protect the secret of the date of D-Day and, if so, were they right to do this? My answers are: I don't know and I don't think so.

Flandry thinks that Kit is brave enough to sacrifice twenty people for her planet but is this bravery? I think that the most likely outcome is demoralization and confusion about the right course of action.

Marriage In Genre Fiction

Traditionally,  a hero and heroine married at the end of a novel and lived happily ever after in subsequent volumes, if any, to be separated only by death, which could happen. Dornford Yates's Richard Chandos was widowed and remarried. However, Yates's Boy Pleydell, reflecting the author's experience, was divorced and remarried but the divorce occurred discretely between volumes and was never discussed or explained.

Some heroes are unsuited to the combination of marriage and continued adventures so their authors arrange their fictional biographies accordingly. In the case of Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry:

Kathryn McCormac would not leave her husband even for Flandry;

Kossara Vymezal was murdered;

Flandry and Miriam Abrams did marry but later.

Would Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly have married if Anderson had continued the Time Patrol series? They were moving in that direction but almost inperceptibly. SM Stirling assumes their marriage in his sequel, "A Slip in Time."

In adventure fiction, the characters, even if married, would escape the mundane fate that might be explored in a mainstream novel:

 

"'Isn't that how marriages work? The days go by and you settle into a routine and piece by piece everything is taken away from you until there are two complete strangers sitting in the same room.'"

-Anthony Horowitz, Forever And A Day (London, 2018), 14, p. 158.

Hardships And Endurance

"Starfog."

Daven Laure of the Commonalty: "There's no virtue in suffering hardships.'" (p. 738)

Graydal of Kirkasant: "But there is in the ability to endure them.'" (ibid.)

Laure: "'Think I can't?'" (ibid.)

This dialogue is occasioned by the fact that the saloon of Laure's spaceship is sybaritic with draperies, music, perfumes, animations and form-fitting furniture. They drink before eating. (Five senses.)

I think that the peak of civilization must be a population that enjoys the benefits of technology and can cope if the technology fails. We are a long way from being fully civilized.

Prequels Sometimes Work

We compare Flandry with Bond so here is another comparison.

"Tiger By The Tail" (1951) introduced Captain Dominic Flandry. Ensign Flandry (1966) explained how Flandry had got into Intelligence.

Casino Royale (1953) by Ian Fleming introduced Commander James Bond and summarized how Bond had acquired his 00 number. Forever And A Day (2018) by Anthony Horowitz expands on the acquisition of the 00 number, then recounts Bond's first 00 assignment.

Two worthwhile prequels, albeit with obvious differences. 

Fortunately, additions to Anderson by other authors are few. Unfortunately, additions to Fleming by other authors are numerous and often as pointless as the films.

There is a "whatever else I am reading at the same time" aspect to this blog but I hope that that aspect sustains interest and helps to locate Poul Anderson in a wider literary context.

(Look out for a brilliant opening line in Forever And A Day.)

"Starfog": Miscellania

"Starfog."

The Kirkasanter Graydal describes Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty, as "'...a king's man...'" (p. 726) Maybe that is her nearest cultural equivalent? And maybe some of the governments that hire the services of the Commonalty are monarchical? I do not anticipate monarchies that far in the future but, as Greg Bear wrote:

"..give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson, but you are most likely not."

-Greg Bear, "Tomorrow Through The Past" IN SFWA Bulletin (Fall, 1979), pp. 38-41 AT pp. 40-41.

Laure points out that the Kirkasanters' ancestors might have set out not from Homeland/Earth but from "'...one of the first colonies.'" (p. 728) Too right. An Aenean was involved in the exploration of Gray/Avalon.

The Kirkasanters' advantages make it:

"...not too surprising that they leaped in a single lifetime from the first moon rockets to the first hyperdrive craft..." (p. 730)

But we should be able to do that, assuming that hyperdrive craft are possible, of course. (Poul Anderson's mother was alive for both Kitty Hawk and the first Moon landing.)

Danivar And Turning Points

Twilight World, Epilogue.

"'There aren't any turning points in history, except those we arbitrarily chose long afterward.'" (p. 179)

No turning points? The Time Patrol recognizes nexuses when it does matter more than usual what happens. Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men describes the early twentieth century as a turning point. Someone commented that every age would regard itself as a turning point. I don't think so. Some ages regarded their regimes as changeless. But maybe we have been in a continual turning point or succession of turning points since the Industrial Revolution? What the human race needs is change without the continual threat of annihilation. 

"'...the ecological restoration program. Earth too shall bloom.'" (p. 179)

And, in "Watershed" at the end of James Blish's The Seedling Stars, Adapted Men are about to reseed the desert planet, Earth. Sf writers envisage remote future turning points.

Danivar And The Wind

An old friend, sort of, comes back on stage in the Epilogue of Twilight World. Danivar describes his visit to the desert planet, Earth:

"'...a few primitive plants tried in their distorted fashion to live. And the wind blew around those old, old snags of wall and the sunlight of Earth spilled over us with a horrible brilliant indifference.'" (p. 179)

He describes the sunlight as horrible and indifferent but says of the wind only that it blew so why do I feel that the wind also comments? Partly because it does in so many other Andersonian works. Partly because it  blows over ruined walls that are reminders of the Final War and of the collapse of the terrestrial biosphere. But, in any case, over the page, Danivar continues:

"'...I stood with the wind gibing at me, there on the old broken planet...'" (p. 180)

That is comment enough.

When Orna describes Ganymede as the frontier, Danivar responds:

"'What a beautiful word that is... Frontier. And yet...I don't know. The ancestors survived, enough of them, and now we are pleased to call ourselves Homo Superior, but we'll never know what might have lived in our place.'

"'A bit too late for that sort of speculation,' said Orna.

"'Yes,' Danivar shivered. 'I think I would like to go back inside now.'" (ibid.)

And there ends the text. What might have lived in their place is our descendants (if any) because we did not have the Final War in the twentieth century!

Toward The Best?

 

Last night, when reflecting on life, I remembered this relevant passage. A Homo Superior Martian called Danivar, visiting Ganymede during its centuries-long terraforming project, says:

"'The trend of events must ever seem toward the best, since it is toward the one observing the trend.'"

-Poul Anderson, Twilight World (London, 1984), Epilogue, p. 179.

Not if the observer is suffering greatly! This question is imponderable. Recently, I spoke to someone who thought that life involves so much animal and human suffering that it would have been better if the Big Bang had not happened. Fortunately, we do not have to decide whether or not a universe exists.

 

If I had inherited a different genetic combination of dispositions and aptitudes, then my life would have been very different and, in some scenarios, much better but then the present version of me would not have been here to say this. The twentieth century would have been better without the Holocaust but, in that case, subsequent history would have been so different that neither you nor I would have been here to discuss it. (In fact, I value my daughter's and granddaughter's existences more than my own.)

Just before the sentence quoted above, Danivar had said:

"'...I do not blandly consider that all worked out for the best. Had it not been for that damned war and its aftermath, we might stand here amidst flowering gardens and know that our people had already reached the stars.'" (ibid.)

 

His host, Orna of Nildo, replied:

 

"'We would not exist...'" (ibid.)

 

- and it was this reply that prompted Danivar's remark about the trend of events seeming to be toward the best.

Is it?

In another Anderson series, the Time Patrol has a lot to answer for.