The Neural Network

The Stars Are Also Fire, 20.

A robot with Anson Guthrie's voice visits Dagny Beynac. The robot is a temporary vehicle for what Dagny initially thinks of as a computer. That entity scans the room not by turning the robot's turret but by transferring its own attention between pairs of lenses in a full circle around the turret.

While Guthrie was alive, an artifact called not a computer but a neural network was built as an exact analog of his individual brain. Nanoscanners entered the still living Guthrie's nervous system. Their output was used to program that neural network. Thus, the network is conscious and reproduces Guthrie's personality and memories although not his memories to the moment of death. In fact, it remembers visiting him on his deathbed. But the network is a person, a self-conscious individual, and should be referred to by a personal pronoun.

Dagny thinks:

"What was a mind, a self, a soul, anyway?" (p. 266)

If an immortal soul were necessary for consciousness or even just for reason, then a new immortal soul would have to be created ex nihilo every time a neural network was programmed but we do not need that hypothesis.

Hotel Clarke

The Stars Are Also Fire, 19.

Lilisaire's agent will:

"'...take a room at the Hotel Clarke.'" (p. 251)

Is this the single reference to Arthur C. Clarke in Poul Anderson's works? And what do we think of Clarke?  Like Heinlein and Anderson, he addressed Lunar colonization. He is supposed to have been one of the Big Three. My "Big Three" might be Heinlein, Anderson and Blish - but they came after Wells and Stapledon.

Clarke reasoned that material brains are conscious, therefore material computers can be conscious, thus not realizing the difference between a brain and a computer. Likewise, Asimov said that a robot is just a mobile computer.

I endlessly reread Anderson but not Asimov or Clarke.

The Covenant In Two Future Histories

The Stars Are Also Fire, 19.

"'I daresay somebody's wishing hard that the Covenant didn't guarantee privacy rights,' Aleka remarked.

"'It was drawn up in another era,' Kenmuir replied... 'I've seen arguments for amending it to fit new conditions.'" (p. 249)

 

This Covenant is a major echo of Robert Heinlein's Future History where Volumes III and IV show the consequences and aftermath of the Second American Revolution:

"Coventry," where Covenant contravenors are sent;

 

"Misfit," the resumption of space travel;

Methuselah's Children, the breaking of the Covenant when the Howard Families "come out."

Kenmuir's Covenant rights are violated when he is served a drink containing an artificial virus that multiplies through his bloodstream, tracks his movements and transmits everything that he hears or says to listeners elsewhere.

On A Comet

The Stars Are Also Fire, 17.

A small comet is:

"...a dark, rough lump against the galaxy's glory." (p. 235)

This single phrase presents both another description of the galaxy and another object seen against the galaxy.

Although comparatively small, this comet comprises billions of tonnes of rocks, frozen gas and ice. On the pitted surface, engineers, using robotically constructed buildings and machines, divert the comet's orbit despite quake damage to their base. Cometary ice will become Lunar rivers, lakes and interior sea.

Several bodies colliding between Mars and Jupiter generated the Asteroid Belt.

History continues:

Anson Guthrie has been downloaded, then died;

Fireball will send a probe to Alpha Centauri;

engineers at the comet detect a nickel-iron asteroid 30 a.u.'s from Sol.

Titans And Chemos

The Stars Are Also Fire, 17.

OK. I just needed to keep reading:

Titans are genetically engineered for "...strength and endurance, infantry to go where war machines could not..." (p. 226);

Chemos can survive high levels of radiation or pollution which, however, no longer occur.

Titans/giants and redundant metamorphs are common to the Harvest Of Stars future history and to Starfarers.

Do Tinies work in the small spaces inside machines?

One theme of this blog is "Remember Wells." In Chapter 16, Moon-dwellers were referred to as "Selenites," a term coined by Wells. In 17, the metamorphs remind us of Wells' Selenites whose bodies and brains are distorted from birth to specialize them for just one kind of manual or mental work. Wells did not know about the possibility of distorting genes instead of bodies.

Anderson Action

The Stars Are Also Fire, 17.

On the run from the authorities, the viewpoint character and his companion move between underground contacts and "screen" themselves from high tech surveillance. This is an Andersonian action-adventure sequence where I find little to post about. 

The contacts include a "Chemo" metamorph:

completely hairless;

obsidian-black skin;

long head and face;

pale, nordic-looking eyes;

high-pitched voice.

 

And why were Chemos created?

 

In the "Mother of the Moon" period, Edmond Beynac continues to argue that there was a large ancient asteroid (12, p. 154) and, in the World Federation period, the authorities continue to conceal a secret called "Proserpina." (15, p. 197) Some first time readers might deduce what all this means.

Historical Transition

 

The Stars Are Also Fire, 16.

The Great Jihad.

Chaos on Earth.

Collapse of UN.

A Lunar Coordinating Committee.

Fireball backs the Committee.

Lunar self-sufficiency in air, water, food and energy.

UN had prohibited extraterrestrial land property rights.

Coordinating Committee franchises Lunar territories.

Lunarian lords build castles and domains.

World Federation and Peace Authority established.

Moon cooperates with Federation but cannot control Lunarians.

 

The world described in Harvest Of Stars emerges.

Dark Mathematics

The Stars Are Also Fire, 15.

Venator reflects:

"...the human mind had its own dark mathematics, which was not that of logic or causality. It was chaotic.

"His task was to hold chaos at bay." (p. 194)

 

"...dark mathematics..." is a good poetic description of the human mind. See also Hopkins' description quoted here and here.

 

In Poul Anderson's first future history, the Psychotechnic Institute addressed the problems of the human mind but focused on primitive motivations, not on mental chaos. In Anderson's Operation Chaos, Three Hearts And Three Lions and The Shield Of Time, chaos, or "Chaos," is merely destructive whereas what Venator calls "chaos," others call "freedom."

 

Can any mathematics describe the chaotic human mind?  I spoke to two mathematicians. The first failed his University exams whereas the second did post-Doctoral research, then worked at interpreting astronomical data. The first guy claimed that mathematics can describe anything. When I suggested that, to describe some phenomena, he would need to invent a lot of new terms and to construct some very complex formulae, he accepted this but insisted that nevertheless mathematics could describe anything. I replied that I could describe anything in English if I was allowed to invent a lot of new terms and to construct some very complex sentences.

The second guy laughed at the suggestion that mathematics could describe anything and was unsurprised that the first guy had failed undergraduate exams. He, the second guy, said that mathematics was less about numbers and more about patterns. I think that there are statistical patterns in chaos.

Sweden And Freedom

The Stars Are Also Fire, 14.

"'I remember Anson Guthrie remarking once that when he was young, Sweden was what he called a nanny state, but it got rid of that and nowadays people there are more free than in most countries..." (p. 189)

I know that this seems obvious to some people but to me it is a non sequitur. People are less free if the state provides some of their needs and more free if it does not? For example, I would be freer than I am now if I were obliged to pay for the medical treatment provided free at the point of delivery by the British National Health Service? When I was unemployed, I would have been freer if I had received no Unemployment Benefit? I would be freer if I had to pay to borrow books that, in my experience, have always been lent freely by the Public Library? I am freer if I have to pay to enter museums or art galleries? University students are freer because they now receive loans instead of grants? I would be freer without my Pensioner's free bus pass? Refugees are free if they are offered no material help? And so on.

Future History Parallels

The Stars Are Also Fire, 14.

I thought that Lars Rydberg was unusually shortsighted for a Poul Anderson character when he asked:

"Aside from science and industry, how much would [space] ever mean?" (p. 181)

- as if science and industry were unimportant.

When Rydberg tells his mother, Dagny Beynac, that his marriage did not last, she responds:

"'Pilots are dreadful marriage risks.'" (p. 189)

- which is the theme of Robert Heinlein's "Space Jockey," collected in The Green Hills Of Earth.

We will probably continue to find parallels between Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's future histories. John Ezra Dahlquist preventing a Space Patrol coup parallels Dominic Flandry defeating the McCormac Rebellion except that Flandry is a series character whereas Dahlquist dies at the end of his single story, "The Long Watch," also in The Green Hills Of Earth, and is mentioned again only once in the Scribner Juvenile novel, Space Cadet.

The Future In Space

The Stars Are Also Fire, 14.

An enthusiastic tourist on the Moon says:

"'I'd be a spacer myself if I'd had a chance when I was young. The future is here.'

"Rydberg wondered. How much of mankind would ever live off Earth? Aside from science and industry, how much would it ever mean?" (p. 181)

 

But both science and industry mean a great deal! It will be a long time before most people live off Earth but, meanwhile, space science and industry will transform the planet and give everyone who remains here a high frontier.

At an sf con, a naive woman, sounding like a Trekkie, gushed, "We're going to the stars!" as if we were all about to sign up to the crew of the Enterprise. Of course, we as individuals are not going to do anything of the sort. Most of us are not even going to go to Mars which is currently being hyped. But we need some people in space just as we need some people exploring the Poles, the oceans, the depths of the Earth, the microcosm, the human mind and everywhere between.

City Hall

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, Anna Stone, Service Manager of the Luna City Community Association, has an office on the administration level of the City.

In Poul Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire, 14, Tychopolis city hall, including the office of the mayor, Dagny Beynac, comprises a few rented rooms in the Fireball Complex. The Terrestrial nations have allowed Lunar municipal government to oversee the services affecting "...the lives of the Moon's inhabitants." (p. 182) Dagny openly supports Fireball.

Earlier, we read that the surname, "Rydberg," had become the title of the Fireball Trothdom lodgemasters. Now, in this Mother of the Moon chapter set in an earlier period, we read about the original Lars Rydberg, son of Dagny Beynac, thus great-grandson of Anson Guthrie, also Fireball Pilot.

Anson Guthrie, founder of Fireball.

download Anson Guthrie, founder of the Centaurian colony.

Dagny Beynac, mayor of Tychopolis, mother of Lunarians, thus "Mother of the Moon."

Lars Rydberg, the first "Rydberg."

 

The family of the future. 

Changes In Space

On the Moon:

"In dawnwatch he boarded the monorail to Tychopolis. The system was newly completed..."

-The Stars Are Also Fire, 14, p. 180.

"On my second trip to Luna City I went over to Richardson Observatory... We went out the north tunnel, which was then being bored..."

-Robert Heinlein, "Gentlemen, Be Seated" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 50-60 AT p. 50.

In space:

"...even today Supra-New York is still rather primitive, hardly more than a fuelling point and restaurant waiting-room. It has only been the past five years that it has even been equipped to offer the comfort of one-gravity centrifuge service to passengers with queasy stomachs."

-Robert Heinlein, "Space Jockey" IN The Green Hills Of Earth, pp. 19-36 AT p. 21.

Rhysling confronts a young Captain:

"The two men did not touch in background nor spirit; space was changing."

-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN The Green Hills Of Earth, pp. 131-141 AT p. 138.

Although Heinlein goes into more detail, both the Future History and the Harvest Of Stars future history show us changes in daily life in the future on the Moon and in space.

Sea And Space

I find literary parallels in unexpected places. There is definitely a resonance between the following two passages.

 

"'When the new ships replace these, when it's a few daycycles at one g to most destinations -'

"'And the automation is so advanced that a single person is enough - Yes,' he sighed. 'I too will often miss the long voyages. But maybe before this comes to pass, we will be retired to planetside duty and living off our memories.'

"'Memories indeed.'

"'Indeed.'"

-The Stars Are Also Fire, 14, pp. 177-178.

 

First Mate Canby: I don't know what you're doing here, lad. Ships like this aren't going anywhere. Ten years time the only tall ships'll be in museums. 

 

Jim: It's too big to fit in a museum.

 

Canby: Yeah. Funny.

 

Canby: Steam ships. That's the future. Who wants to be forced to ride the wind?

 

Jim: I do. I've been on a steam ship and I didn't like it one little bit.

 

Jim: They're rust-buckets, Mr. Canby, the lot of them. All that smoke. And what's the point of being a sailor, if you're living high above the ocean, instead of cool and comfortable below decks, cooled by the water, listening to the sea going by?

 

Canby: You're a romantic.

 

Jim: Why be a sailor, if you're not?

 

Caption: This was on the fifth day out from Bombay.

-Neil Gaiman, "Hob's Leviathan" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), pp. 67-90 AT p. 72, panel 8; p. 73, panels 1-3.

More Metamorphs

The Stars Are Also Fire,  13.

In the Asilo bar:

a Titan waiter;

shrilly chattering Tinies;

Drylanders;

a Chemo;

two Aquatics, garments continually moistened by water tanks;

four well-dressed Chimpos (intelligent chimpanzees?);

a large-headed Intellect playing heisenberg against a computer set to an appropriate competence level;

a furry, tailed, female Exotic offering company to a male drinker.

 

Like the Star Wars bar but who needs aliens?

Mind And Matter II

We continue the philosophical discussion from Mind And Matter.

The objective realm is publicly accessible and detectable whereas each person's subjectivity is private. Objectively, a human being is an organism with a central nervous system and a brain. Question: Need I add "and a brain" or is the brain just the necessary coordinating organ for the central nervous system? 

Since our bodies detect and sense their environments, I think that it is safe to say that objectively discernible organisms are subjectively conscious. Some say that consciousness resides not in an organism but in an objectively existent immaterial mind or soul. But surely an invisible and undetectable object is self-contradictory? I suggest that the mind or soul is a hypostatization/reification/objectivization of private subjectivity.

The objective aspect of a human being is his body. Intersubjectively, we converse with him as a person. Holistically, body and person comprise a single psychophysical organism. That is sufficient to account for our subjective and objective experience of human beings.

Going And Returning

Throughout history, immortals avoided detection by moving around and changing their identities. Our sources for the history of immortals include The Boat Of A Million Years by Poul Anderson and The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the long-lived Howard Families avoid detection by practicing the Masquerade. There are also future periods in which longevity or immortality need no longer be concealed. Poul Anderson's Hanno and Hugh Valland and James Blish's John Amalfi use their immortality to roam the universe. Astutely, Neil Gaiman makes us aware of the predicament of immortals in periods before interstellar travel:

"And Robert Gadling contemplates building yet another identity.

"Ever since Audrey was killed, he's felt a deep wanderlust: the desire to leave, to get away, to start anew.

"The trouble with six centuries of travel, he ponders, is that there are too few places he hasn't been. He wants to go somewhere, not to return somewhere."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997), p. 32, panel 5, captions 1-3.

Two Crowded Inns

"They were many gathered this evening, to sit before the innkeeper's fire, enjoy his food and drink and regale him with their tales."

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Epilogue, p. 228.

 

A large gathering immediately suggests an important event. Important events have just been concluded in one of the many universes with access to the Old Phoenix Inn. Since the quoted sentence opens the Epilogue which we can see ends at the top of the following page, we know that we have reached the conclusion of this novel, indeed of a trilogy, the earlier volumes being Three Hearts And Three Lions and Operation Otherworld. Thus, both a large gathering and an (implied) important event seem appropriate.

 

We find all of these ingredients, a large gathering, an important event and the telling of tales in an inter-universal inn elsewhere:

 

Centaur Chiron: It is certainly an event of great moment and consequence. Something that reverberates across time and space and myth. I have never seen the Inn so full.

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), "Worlds' End," p. 3/141, panel 5.

Overlooking Central Park

Two married couples live in apartments overlooking Central Park.

"We occupied a huge flat overlooking Central Park, where we liked to stroll on mild nights."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 344.

 

"The elevator raced up sixteen levels to the top, where Mr. and Mrs. Trudeau lived in lavish splendor. Their penthouse rambled over the top two floors and looked out from its many giant windows at Central Park. They had purchased the place for $28 million shortly after their momentous wedding six years earlier, then spent another $10 million or so bringing it up to designer magazine quality. The overhead included two maids, a chef, a butler, his and hers valets, at least one nanny, and of course the obligatory personal assistant to keep Mrs. Trudeau properly organized and at lunch on time."

-John Grisham, The Appeal (London, 2011), Chapter 2, pp. 34-35.

 

Of course! The Trudeaus have no servant problem. I apologize for spending more time on Grisham's characters than on Anderson's but how could I ignore the millions and the overhead?

 

Back to the future in the next post, probably. 

In Tychopolis

The Stars Are Also Fire, 12.

Anson Guthrie visits Edmond and Dagny Beynac who live comfortably on the Moon.

Guthrie:

"'My impression was the servant problem on Luna is so intractable nobody remembers what the word means.'" (p. 162)

The servant problem! In some societies, the affluent feel entitled to domestic servants and it is a "problem" if they cannot find them.

More fiction within the fiction: in his spare time, Edmond writes deep-space adventure stories under the pen name of Jacques Croquant although we are told neither titles nor plots. In that society, such works would not count as sf. (Some earlier sf described exploration of as yet unvisited parts of this planet whereas, in Edmond's time, the outer Solar System is being explored and there is a colony at Alpha Centauri. Deep space exploration is no longer sf.)

Two young Lunarians wrote the program that generated their artificial language but Dagny's daughter Verdea adds to its vocabulary. As part of their language, Lunarians change their names. Of the Beynac children:

Anson becomes Brandir;

Gabrielle becomes Verdea;

Sigurd becomes Kaino;

Francis becomes Temerir;

Helen becomes Fia;

Carla becomes Jinann.

Edmond calls Anson Guthrie one of the enlightened super-rich, "enlightened" because they keep scientific and technological progress alive. If there are super-rich at the social apex, then previously we would have expected to find sub-poor at the base. But the issues have changed. Now the "Low World" is:

"'...the vast majority, in every land, who can find no real place in this high-technology universe you have created...'" (p. 158)

 

What is so "enlightened" about creating a technology that super-enriches its owners while leaving no place for the vast majority? And will the kind of capital-labor relationships that had previously enabled a minority to accumulate wealth continue to operate when production has become cyber-automated? Fireball continues to operate as a company with employees but for how long?

War, this time in the form of a "Jihad," is coming on Earth as at the end of the interplanetary period in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Guthrie expects the High World to win the war but to be changed. That is better than everyone being killed. This anti-Jihad War, like World Wars I and II, will change society but how? Surely the social division between a controlling ("super-rich") minority and a vast majority has to be recognized as redundant? A united humanity would be able to thank AI for stabilizing the Terrestrial environment but should otherwise retain collective control of its own social relationships and insist that from now on human and AI destinies peacefully parallel each other. 

 

However, as this future history unfolds, human divisions enable AI to extend its control over both the natural and social environments and eventually to constrain human development.

Mind And Matter

The Stars Are Also Fire, 12.

Dagny Beynac reasons that, if there is no disembodied soul, then mind has a material basis and can be produced artificially. Certainly. Just artificially produce either a human being or some other artifact that performs the same functions.

What is a material basis? If nothing existed but mechanically interacting particles with only the quantifiable properties of mass and volume, then by definition consciousness would not exist. However, philosophically, "matter" just means whatever exists independently of consciousness. Guthrie points that it is described by quantum mechanics. Hegel pointed out that quantitative changes become qualitative. Thus, I argue, naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation.

Future History Repeats

The Stars Are Also Fire, 11.

In return for helping Lilisaire, Aleka and presumably also her people, a mixed community of human beings and intelligent seals, will receive:

"'...a country of your own...'" (p. 151)

That sounds familiar. An oblique Biblical reference? But how can a Lunarian make such an offer? And will anyone have to be displaced to enable Aleka's people to take possession? From previous readings, I know that this is not the case but cannot remember any details. This is not an FTL scenario with uninhabited exo-planets to colonize. David Falkayn was able to lead fellow human beings and Ythrians out of known space in order to colonize the terrestroid planet that they renamed Avalon but Aleka's new country has to be within the Solar System and probably on Earth. I might finally remember such details better after the current rereading.

Lyudovites

The Stars Are Also Fire, 11.

The lost cause of the defeated Lyudovite Rebellion:

"Keep humanity in charge. Do not permit the making of fully conscious artificial intelligence. Stop before it is too late, and then consider how much mechanization and automation is really desirable." (p. 147)

Lyudovite = Luddite.

Although the Lyudovite Rebellion in the Harvest Of Stars future history was defeated, the Butlerian Jihad in the Dune future history succeeded, replacing computers with human calculators called Mentats.

And Frank Herbert must have named his Butlerian Jihad after Samuel Butler because the latter wrote Erewhon which introduced the idea of conscious machines long before Binder, Asimov etc.

Bleak Wind

The Stars Are Also Fire, 11.

When Aleka reflects that sophotects do not proliferate like human beings but strive for ethereal, intellectual growth, she shivers but the sentence does not end there:

"Aleka shivered in the bleak wind." (p. 144)

Right on cue, when Aleka's thoughts are bleak, the wind is bleak. The pathetic fallacy of the wind apparently commenting on the action is as much a part of Poul Anderson's prose as is his punctuation, indeed as is the full stop that ends the sentence. This ubiquity of pathetic fallacies and particularly of the sympathetic wind must have a cumulative subliminal effect on readers who neither consciously notice it nor pause to reflect. We read on without pausing in order to learn what Aleka does next but the text is richer than it would have been if her reflection on sophotects had merely been followed by the next sentence:

"She confronted the door and spoke her name." (ibid.)

Lunarian Psychology

The Stars Are Also Fire, 10.

Lunarians differ psychologically not only because they differ physiologically but also because their lifelong environment is antithetical to that which their ancestors had evolved for, not wind, waves, blue sky, clouds, rainbows or seasonal changes but:

"...the naked stone and the scornful stars and a life to make from a new beginning." (p. 140)

Responding to the permanent challenge of this eternal external enemy, Lunarians become autocratic Selenarchs or their faithful retainers, unable either to cooperate with the original species or to conform to the cybercosm.

"But how foreign were their souls?" (ibid.)

Befehl

The Stars Are Also Fire.

"'I enlisted in the French section of the United Nations forces... We were sent to the chaos in the Middle East - you know, when Europe was establishing the Befehl there.'" (6, p. 87)

"Poor Middle East, Befehl withdrawn, chaos loose, fanaticism a tide rising higher for every day that passed...." (10, p. 133)

The world is interconnected but conflictive. Is order here established at the expense of chaos elsewhere? Do military interventions alleviate or exacerbate chaos? Do they generate resentments that intensify already existing fanaticisms? Is chaos loose because Befehl was withdrawn or because of Befehl? Should human reactions to conflict be compared to natural processes? (Tides are cyclical and predictable whereas human reactions differ with circumstances.)

Questions for a future history and for now.

Early Days On The Moon

The Stars Are Also Fire, 10.

Edmond Beynac thinks that the nickel-iron mined in Tycho was part of the core of a large body that used to orbit in the Asteroid Belt region. Thus, the widely separated parts of the Solar System interacted as a single three-dimensional environment long before humanity had evolved.

Dagny Beynac supervises the construction of Tychopolis. Thus, Anderson out-Heinleins Heinlein because the latter's only reference to early days on the Moon is when Anna Stone, Service Manager of the Luna City Community Association, says:

"'I was here when Luna City was three air-sealed Quonset huts connected by tunnels you crawled through on your knees.'"

-Robert Heinlein, "'It's Great To Be Back!'" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 74-92 AT p. 74.

 

The Future History bypasses the laborious processes of prospecting, mining and building.

 

(Rhysling, Dahlquist and the Lunar Stones are three personal connections between Heinlein's Future History and his "Juvenile Future History.") 

Progress

The Stars Are Also Fire, 10, The Mother of the Moon.

Tychopolis, the University of Luna and an L-5 are being built.

The Beynacs and other couples have the first Lunarian children.

The Beynacs' children begin to devise the Elvish-sounding Lunarian language:

"ARVEN ARDEA NIO LULLUI PEYAR -" (p. 132)

Ice is gathered from the asteroids.

Edmond Beynac thinks that there was once a large body with a nickel-iron core in the region of the Asteroid Belt.

Antimatter-powered spaceships reach the orbit of Pluto in three weeks.

Next Fireball will launch interstellar probes.

There is prosperity and conflict on different parts of Earth.

Blind Rhysling

"This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways..."

-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 131-141 AT p. 131.

 

The Green Hills Of Earth is Volume II of Heinlein's Future History. Rhysling's song, "The Green Hills of Earth," is played at a crucial point in Volume IV, Methuselah's Children. Volume V, Orphans Of The Sky, mentions Rhysling as a poet. Although I do not accept Time Enough For Love as a valid Volume VI, one of its least offensive passages comes when Lazarus Long reminisces about Rhysling.

 

"There are references to Rhysling and his songs in a definitely non-Future History novel, Farmer in the Sky..."

-Alexei Panshin, Heinlein In Dimension (Chicago, 1968), V, p. 123.

 

Having read Farmer in the Sky, I can confirm this although, not having a copy to hand, I cannot quote from it. (I also think that Farmer... belongs to what I call Heinlein's Juvenile Future History.)

 

Poul Anderson's "Loser's Night" lists "blind Rhysling" as among those who have visited the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. Works of fiction by both Heinlein and Anderson accept the multiverse idea. It follows that it would be possible to travel between the Future History and the Technic History either via the Old Phoenix or directly as in Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions and Operation Luna.

 

Perhaps Rhysling is a predecessor of some other sf characters like Anderson's Verdea or his Hugh Valland. (The latter combines aspects of Rhysling and Lazarus Long.)

In Guthrie House II

The Stars Are Also Fire, 9.

The toast, "'Good liftoff,'" (p. 123) is pure Heinlein. We can imagine it uttered by Rhysling - especially when drinking in the Old Phoenix. As I always say, read Heinlein's single, comparatively short Future History - as well as his Scribner Juveniles some of which I think constitute a Juvenile Future History - then read Anderson's several future histories of diverse types and lengths.

Preserved in the grounds of Guthrie House is a spaceship:

"Kestrel, the little Falcon-class that Kyra Davis piloted, she who long and long ago rescued Guthrie from the Avantists..." (p. 119)

Thus, events recounted in Harvest Of Stars have become legends in this further volume. We also learn how spaceship maintenance routines have become an annual rite:

inspection;

cleaning;

recharging of accumulators;

a benediction ending, "'Be always ready to fly.'" (p. 119)

 

The alert reader might anticipate that this ship will indeed fly later in the narrative.

In Guthrie House

The Stars Are Also Fire, 9.

Again Poul Anderson conveys a sense of ancientness even in the future. Guthrie House is centuries old and seems older. Its stone seems to have been shaped by wind and rain, not hands. Within, there are oak panels, a dark room, antique furniture, hangings, traditions etc.

All five senses are engaged:

"Clouds lifted like snowbanks into radiant blue; a breeze blew cool, with savors of wood and salt, above summer-warm soil; waves gleamed and murmured, forest soughed; a few gulls went soaring aloft..." (p. 119)

Within:

"'Good liftoff,' Matthias toasted. The men brought vessels to lips. The tingle in his mouth gave Kenmuir impetus." (p. 123)

The Rydberg Matthias confirms that Dagny Beynac's son, Lars Rydberg, told his eldest son a secret to be preserved for a time of great need and that the titular Rydbergs have indeed preserved that secret ever since - but it remains secret.

Origin Story

Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars introduces the Lunarians, human beings genetically altered to live and breed in Lunar gravity. Alternating chapters of Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire present respectively a sequel and a prequel to Harvest Of Stars. The "Mother of the Moon" prequel chapters recount the Lunarians' origin story. Dagny Beynac, Anson Guthrie's granddaughter, miscarries on the Moon, then decides that her succeeding children will be genetically altered, thus becoming the first generation of Lunarians. This means more to readers since we have already read about the later Lunarians. We see the oak, then the acorn.

A Future Ancient Secret

The Stars Are Also Fire, 7.

A novel set in our future can still feature a mystery from long ago - from it's characters' perspective:

the Selenarch Niolente had sent several missions into deep space;

their purpose was never divulged although they seem to have given her the confidence to maintain her resistance to the World Federation;

when the Federation incorporated Luna, the Peace Authority appropriated all of Niolente's databases; 

before the contents of the databases were released, it was implausibly claimed that some files were accidentally wiped;

earlier, a son of Dagny Beynac had not returned from a deep space expedition;

Lilisaire is sure that his discovery, whatever it was, was what Niolente later investigated;

the Fireball Trothdom lodge master, called "the Rydberg," guards some secret from that period;

"'...the first Rydberg was the first child of Dagny Beynac...'" (p. 106)

OK. Here is an ancient mystery in our future. The Federation suppressed some information that might be important and that be known to the Rydberg...

Fireball And SSL

The Stars Are Also Fire, 8.

How does Anson Guthrie's Fireball differ from Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company?

Fireball offers:

exciting work;

high pay;

sympathetic management;

careers limited only by ability and luck.

 

Comments So Far

SSL also offers all that.

Both companies also offer routine work for those who do not want excitement!

 

The Difference 

"In Fireball, somehow, you belonged, you shared a spirit, as few did anywhere on Earth." (p. 110)

 

Company loyalty replaces national loyalties as the nations decline whereas, in the Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History, the multivarious sovereign nation-states have already been subsumed in the Solar Commonwealth.

 

Future histories diverge but their inhabitants can always speculate about:

 

"...some hypothetical quantum-mechanical alternative reality..." (7, p. 97)

Sociotechnic Equations

The Stars Are Also Fire, 7.

"'The sociotechnic equations foretell it.'" (p. 103)

This short sentence in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars future history summarizes the premise of Anderson's Psychotechnic History and of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, a predictive science of society, as also does another short passage:

"...we brought in sociodynamicists to extrapolate the trend for them and prove that..." (my emphasis)

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 8.

 

Psychohistory

Psychotechnics

Sociotechnics

Sociodynamics

 

Just as installments of a future history series form a linear sequence, some future histories form a conceptual sequence. The Harvest Of Stars history deals with human-AI interactions whereas Anderson's last future history, Genesis, deals with a post-human AI re-creating humanity. That summary makes Genesis sound like a sequel to Harvest Of Stars although in fact it is a distinct history and one that will take a very long time to become dated.

Superhuman Intelligence

 

The Stars Are Also Fire, 7.

"Surely sophotectic intelligence superior to the human knew what was best for humanity." (p. 102)

At the climax of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, the Machines, giant positronic brains, control the world economy for the good of humanity and outmaneuver any group of human beings that try to sabotage them. However, the sequel reveals that the Machines had regarded self-determination as the greatest human good and therefore phased themselves out.

Anderson's sophotects are not humanly programmed for the good of humanity but self-programmed for transcendent goals which they see as threatened by a free humanity. I strongly suspect that this is a false conflict and that, if such superhumanly intelligent inorganic consciousnesses ever exist, they will go their way while humanity will go its.

Four Senses Inside A Diamond

The Stars Are Also Fire, 7.

Kenmuir joins Lilisaire at the center of a giant artificial diamond:

his slightest movement causes every visible color to flash, spark, flow and shift around him;

the air carries odors of spice and honeysuckle;

a canto by Verdea, the first Lunarian poet, is barely audible;

they eat superb canapes and drink wine that is said to sing.

The Selenarch Lilisaire is about to stoop to politics, "...monkey dealings...," (p. 102) but, before she stoops, readers should pause to appreciate her giant diamond - and they might remember that Larry Niven's feline kzinti also disparage Terrestrials as "monkeys." However, human beings genetically altered to live and breed in Lunar gravity are more plausible antagonists than intelligent alien cats.

"Grandeur Long Vanished"

The Stars Are Also Fire, 6.

Nostalgic fellowships:

the Fireball Trothdom;

the Ronin;

the Swagmen;

the Believers.

A swagman sounds like an Okie or a tramp. Are the Believers what is left of Christianity? See Old Believers.

These fellowships have:

"...rituals, social gatherings, mutual helpfulness, and little else." (p. 99)

In the Trothdom, some secret lore, presumably unimportant, is said to be passed down from Rydberg to Rydberg. For the significance of this title, see Names And Titles.

The name of a powerful company survives in a mere fellowship. However, rituals, gatherings and helpfulness are a lot more than nothing.

Integrates And Languages

The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

Lilisaire to Aleka:

"'You remember me telling you about my kinswoman Mary Carfax in San Francisco Bay Integrate, don't you?'" (p. 83)

So they have Integrates in the Harvest Of Stars future history as well as in the Technic History but there is a difference. Jim Ching lives in San Francisco Integrate whereas Mary Carfax lives in San Francisco Bay Integrate. Are these identical or is the latter bigger?

Such words or phrases are sometime, though not always, used to indicate that diverse texts belong in a single series. Alternatively, a terminological difference can indicate different series: English becomes Anglic in the Technic History but Anglo in the Harvest Of Stars series. In the latter, intelligent seals speak an adapted Anglo although with non-human sounds whereas the Lunarians, genetically altered human beings, construct an artificial language to express their psychological and cultural differences from Terrans. By contrast, the Technic History features various extraterrestrial languages: Planha on Ythri and Avalon, Eriau on Merseia etc.

Oceanic Community

The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

The oceanic community of human beings and intelligent seals sounds more and more like the Avalonian community of human beings and winged Ythrians - the main difference being that, whereas Avalon is a self-sufficient planet, the seals' uncontrolled breeding and hunting brings them into conflict with the planned Terrestrial ecology. (Avalon is in conflict with the Terran Empire but that is merely a political matter.)

In one paragraph:

subtropical rain passes quickly;

the setting sun shines gold on blue and violet waves rocking a boat;

the air cools;

green odors give way to salt mist;

"...sunset glowed off the wings of an albatross..." (p. 80);

for a while, the viewpoint character is free;

she is "...lullabied..." by the waves.

Assuming that the lullaby is the sound of the waves, the paragraph addresses four senses. The albatross joins the frigate birds among our hovering birds of prey.

Frigate Birds And Intelligent Seals

The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

"Two frigate birds cruised on high, wings and split tails like drawn swords." (p. 70)

The frigate birds join our list of birds of prey while their sword-like wings and tails symbolize the inter-species conflict below them.

Among the intelligent seals, the alpha bull who grunts:

"'[So shall flow this tide.]'" (ibid.)

- and his followers are perhaps marine counterparts of Anderson's carnivorous winged Ythrians.

Rights For Robots

The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

"...sentient metamorphs had full rights under the law, whether they descended from [homo sapiens] or not. Sophotects did, which could not really be said to have any ancestors - if 'rights' in any traditional sense bore any meaning for inorganic intelligences..." (p. 67)

Of course "rights" bears a recognizable meaning in this context. A self-conscious entity, whether organic or inorganic, should at least have the right to remain in conscious existence as long as it wants to.

Remarkably, Isaac Asimov's Robot Stories never address this issue. Their robots are conscious and rational and can experience distress, yet remain property that its owners can destroy at any time. Asimov deduced every implication of the Laws of Robotics but never addressed robot rights.

Two Anderson-Gaiman Parallels

Beings from different mythologies coexist with each other in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and there is another parallel. Puck, speaking to Loki, says:

"Or ever the silver cord be loosed..."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (New York, 1996), Part Three, p. 1, panel 3.

 

Remembering this phrase from previous readings but not knowing its source, I googled and learned that it is from Ecclesiastes 12:6. Thus, the second parallel is an unexpected Biblical quotation.

My favorite myth-mix is Lucifer Morningstar and Michael Archangel discussing the Buddha and the Upanishads in Mike Carey's Lucifer, a sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman. After appreciating Anderson's Old Phoenix inn between the universes, fantasy readers might like to visit Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End.

 

Addendum: Loki warns an attacker:

 

"Kill me...and the curse of a god will...follow you down the halls of time..." (p. 13, panel 1)

 

Variations on "the corridors of time" have become a blog sub-theme.

Conflicting Duties

The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

"...her brief meeting with him had given her the idea that this was a decent man. If his task put him at odds with her, that wasn't his fault..." (p. 65)

Years ago at Lancaster University, a politically conservative student had some sort of disciplinary or monitoring role within the student body and therefore admonished a fellow student for rowdy behavior. The rowdy item complained to a left-wing Student Union officer who therefore had to contact the first guy to investigate the complaint: a perfect recipe for a first class ideological confrontation. Yet both the monitoring guy and the Student Union officer were merely doing their duties, the first by responding to rowdiness on the part of a student and the second by investigating a complaint by a Student Union member. Hopefully, the matter was resolved without further difficulties.

During military action, two antagonists do their best to kill each other, then one might take the other prisoner and treat him decently as if they had just been playing football, a bizarre combination of barbarism with civilization.

We sometimes frequent a cafe run by an armed services charity and are asked whether we have done any military service because this would entitle us to a discount. I usually reply, "We are noncombatants." Once, the guy behind me laughed and said, "In society nowadays, we are all combatants!" I afterwards thought that maybe he was right but that he and I would be on opposite sides.

Some disagreements can threaten friendships almost as if we were in a civil war. There are those who deny that there is an epidemic and who refuse to take precautions against it...

What we do now affects the immediate future and thus also the further future. I can no longer separate reading Poul Anderson's future histories or Time Patrol series from thinking about what to do next.

Guys In Two Futures

"'Tell him why you left Venus, Fatso.'

"Konski expressed dignity."

-Robert Heinlein, "Gentlemen, Be Seated" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 50-60 AT p. 54.

 

Nicholas van Rijn alleges that a competitor with the ethics of a paranoid weasel paid fifteen thousand on espionage:

"'How do you know how much he spent?' Harry asked blandly.

"Van Rijn managed to look smug and hurt at the same time."

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 280.

Two guys for whom life is a prolonged act although, unfortunately, Konski did not graduate to his own series. The Technic History is like the Future History writ large.

In the Flandry period of the Technic History, there are fictional works called Outlaw Blastman and Planet Of Sin. A boy who visits the Moon with his parents in the Future History follows a character called Tom Jeremy in The Space Troopers - ironic since Heinlein later wrote Space Cadet and Starship Troopers.

 

Life in the future - if we have a future.

Talking Animals

The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

Metamorphs, organisms with altered DNA, include:

"Talking animals." (p. 64)

I was brought up to believe that that was impossible. Reason and speech required a soul, which could not be created simply by altering DNA. This body-soul dualism was presented as a revealed Christian doctrine although in fact it had been imported from Greek philosophy where it was consistent with the idea of reincarnation whereas Biblical immortality was of a resurrected body. Belief in souls was defended by philosophical arguments, not by scriptural quotations.

By cooperatively acting on their environment, our prehuman ancestors developed the abilities to speak and think about that environment. No souls need apply. It follows that altering the DNA of other animals might generate speech and thought in them.

I encountered this philosophical disagreement at primary school. Having read Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones, which features an alien animal with limited vocabulary, I remarked that, if animals were more intelligent, then we would be able to converse with them. A teacher replied that, if animals had souls, then we would be able to converse with them. Two opposed world views opened up before me as when pictures of dinosaurs and cavemen were contrasted with pictures of Adam and Eve.

Chaos And Law And Order

In Michael Moorcock's multiverse: Lords of Law against Lords of Chaos.

In the DC Comics multiverse: Lords of Order against Lords of Chaos.

In Poul Anderson's multiverse: Law against Chaos.

In a single but mutable timeline: the Time Patrol against chaos.

"...Superman...seemed forever to be slugging it out with the forces of Chaos."

-Elliott S! Maggin, Superman: Miracle Monday (Caveat Corner Books, 2017), Chapter 8, p. 79.

More late night other but blog-relevant reading. Although a prose novel, Miracle Monday shares the continuity of the second of the three listed multiverses.

Anderson's works are as far-reaching although comparatively understated.

On The Moon In The Future

An unmanned mail rocket crashes onto a tunnel as it is being bored to the site of a proposed extension to the Richardson Observatory. Meteorites strike while a Nearside base is being built in Tycho Crater. The rocket crashes in Robert Heinlein's Future History whereas the meteorites strike in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History. Anderson adapts well to the Heinleinian territory of Lunar colonization.

Heinlein's Future History also presents an unfamiliar answer to the question: what happened in 1984? There was a Great Disaster on the Moon. Anderson's Psychotechnic History informs us that the Psychotechnic Institute was founded in 1975 and that Mars and Venus were colonized in the late 1900s but skips past 1984.

The opening story of the Future History is set in 1951 whereas the opening story of the Psychotechnic History is set in 1964 but every other Anderson future history remains in our future.