End And Beginning

Harvest Of Stars.

"...man does not live by reason alone, and the times to come would try men's souls." (62, p. 524)

Thus, Poul Anderson misquotes a Biblical passage, deliberately, then quotes Tom Paine accurately.

(Van Rijn referred to times that fry men's souls.)

Demeter Mother uses the map of Anson Guthrie's genome to grow a new young adult male body and downloads into its brain enough of download Guthrie's memories to reproduce Guthrie's identity. Then, since Demeter Mother incorporates downloads of Kyra and Eiko, she combines their DNAs to produce a female body into which she downloads her memories. This new being is Demeter Daughter.

In Chapter 63,  Anson and Demeter Daughter have a six-year old son, Noburu. Demetrians will be moved to Isis at 82 Eridani and to Amaterasu at Beta Hydri, some as suspends but many as downloads that will later be transferred into new living bodies. Each colonized planet will have a new Life Mother and even planets of bare rock will be terraformed: a future full of life.

82 Eridani, Beta Hydri And HD44594

Harvest Of Stars, 61.

The condensed future history continues. Robotic probes are sent to other planetary systems. The Astronomy Web in interplanetary space detects planets with atmospheric oxygen orbiting 82 Eridani, Beta Hydri and HD44594. A near light speed supership containing a copy of download Guthrie is sent to each of these systems. When, after nearly two Terrestrial centuries, the third supership has returned, the copies are downloaded into the original and terminated. Then the original seeks communion with the planetary intelligence, Demeter Mother. And all of this happens in a page and a half of text.

From Kyra To Erling Davis

In PART THREE demeter, Harvest Of Stars continues to surpass itself as a future history.

In Chapter 47, Kyra Davis aims to become pregnant before leaving Earth.

In 49, Kyra arrives at Alpha Centauri pregnant.

In 50, she has had a baby on Demeter.

In 54, her son, Hugh, is a teenager.

In 56, Ranger Hugh Davis meets Charissa.

In 59, Hugh and Charissa Davis have grandchildren.

In 60, Captain Erling Davis of the Demetrian Republic has fought in space as an ally of the Lunarian Phyle Ithar against Phyles Arcen and Yanir.

And that name, "Erling," yanks us backwards and sideways in time to Thorkild Erling, the captain of the first Nomad ship in the interstellar period of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

The Raven Of Kyra

Harvest Of Stars, 57.

See A Raven And Space. 

Eiko rests on a hill with a view. A raven, sheening black as a midnight sea, settles on a branch of a cypress tree. A low voice calls Eiko by name. Download Kyra, integrated with the planetary ecology, sees Eiko through the eyes of a robug hidden in the shrubbery or maybe through the eyes of the raven. She hears with electronic ears or maybe through the wings of some hovering bees. She speaks through a robug or some other small device. During a pause in the conversation, the breeze blows stronger. Kyra asks Eiko to download and join her. The planetary goddess grows.

Two Robots

"The first robot in the world came walking over green hills with sunlight aflash off his polished metal hide."

-Poul Anderson, "Quixote and the Windmill" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2, pp. 7-16 AT p. 7.

 

"Robot, Guthrie strode up the hill from the airstrip."

-Harvest Of Stars, 55, p. 467.

Two robots; two future histories by Poul Anderson. The first recalls I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and The Green Hills Of Earth by Robert Heinlein. I remember when I first heard of "robots," did not understand what they were and thought that they were a threat. Dan Dare's enemy, the Mekon, used robots to conquer the Solar System.

What a long way we have come with Poul Anderson from his first two future histories, the Psychotechnic and Technic Histories, to his last two, Harvest Of Stars and Genesis - and what better ending than a new beginning? 

Reality

On t'Kela, the gods are called the "Real Ones." I think that this makes sense. I believe not that gods are real but that they personify aspects of reality.

Any organism with a central nervous system senses, perceives and is conscious of an environment that is real in the sense that it is external to, and exists independently of, the organism and its inner processes. The sun is not a neuronic interaction in the visual center of a brain but an external object that causes such interactions and that preexisted all sighted organisms.

With increasing cerebral complexity, self-conscious organisms generate many inner mental processes that are self-referential as against reality-oriented. And, when reality penetrates, it is sometimes deified. Thunder, a real phenomenon, is Thor. War is the activity of Mars. Sex is the Goddess. Etc.

The Yoga Sutras teach that yoga is control of thoughts, that then man abides in his real nature and that otherwise he is identified with thoughts.

Experience reality. Don't just think about it.

Bridging Social Chasms

As sometimes happens, this post has an Andersonian point but starts from my experience. 

There is too big a gap in society. At Lancaster University, I both studied at postgraduate level, thus coming into contact with a lot of full-time professional academics, and worked part-time moving furniture from one building to another, including for the Religious Studies Department where I had studied, thus working alongside some guys who could see no point whatsoever in any expensive scientific research. Of course, they took for granted and benefited from technology that required such research plus which pure research, like Einstein's, has unpredictable practical applications but my workmates had no occasion to reflect any further on the matter. We do not need to be so polarized. The motto of Lancaster University is Patet Veritas Omnibus, "Truth lies open to all," but it is expressed in Latin so that my fellow furniture removers would not be able to understand it. (I would prefer not a ban on Latin mottos but an educational system that made their meanings more easily accessible.)

Later, when I worked full-time for a local authority, there was too big a gap not only between management and the shop floor but also between shop stewards, like me, working full-time on the shop floor and full-time union officials who were forever telling us that we had not followed correct procedures and therefore that whatever we had done had been counterproductive. (I also learned a solution to this latter problem: in another authority, one steward worked 50% of the time in his regular job and had 50% facility time for union work. Thus, he was neither cut off from the shop floor nor alienated from the union full-timers.)

If we are clear about the extent of this problem in current society, then I think that we can better appreciate HG Wells' The Time Machine where the Victorian bourgeoisie and proletariat devolve into Morlocks and Eloi and also Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars where the extra-solar colonists receive these communications from Earth:

"...an increasing percentage of superior humans and metamorphs integrate themselves with the system, but this does not transform, rather it transcends their nature. They realize their fullest potential and then go beyond it." (57, p. 486)

"It is evident from your recent communications that you and the limited artificial intelligences you employ no longer find us comprehensible. Unless you care for news of whatever unintegrated humans are left on Earth, and we project that that would be of no more significance to you than to us, further contact is pointless and probably, for you, inadvisable." (61, pp. 507-508)

Superior human beings can realize and transcend their potential whereas unintegrated human beings are insignificant? Then why not terminate them? We know of a twentieth-century political movement that would agree with that.

In fact, it is the extra-solar colonists who, eventually, learn how to use technology not to negate but to enhance organic human life.

Guthrie In The Bionet

Harvest Of Stars, 54.

Nero Valencia has rescued Kyra Davis's son, Hugh, from drowning and awaits rescue in their wrecked boat. A new voice addresses and advises Valencia on the radio. Download Anson Guthrie, spending time in the bionet, had been in tune with a nearby tree when he heard Valencia's emergency call. Guthrie has been a man, then a personality downloaded into an artificial neural network using robot bodies and now experiences life in a new way. The Demetrian ecology has become a single organism sometimes directed by consciousnesses like Guthrie's. He has moved even further away from his human origins. Some sf characters live indefinitely in their original bodies whereas others, like Guthrie, find alternative ways to survive.

Music In Future Histories

 

"...at one point in the following pages [Flandry] is whistling an unnamed waltz tune while piloting a ship in a scene that might be Poul Anderson's sly nod at 2001: A Space Odyssey."

-Hank Davis, ENTER A HERO, SOMEWHAT FLAWED IN Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. vii-xi AT p. viii.

"Magnifying and amplifying, [Kyra] saw vehicles, robots, spacesuited technicians flit motelike through and around, a dance that evoked music in her head, Mozart, Strauss, Nielsen."

-Harvest Of Stars, 52, p. 449.

 

Aycharaych:

 

"'Ah, the orchestra has begun a Strauss waltz. Very good. Though of course Johann is not to be compared to Richard, who will always be the Strauss.'

"'Oh?' Flandry's interest in ancient music was only slightly greater than his interest in committing suicide. 'I wouldn't know.'

"'You should, my friend. Not even excepting Xingu, Strauss is the most misunderstood composer of known galactic history.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT II, p. 160.

 

(In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a Klingon quotes a lot of Shakespeare.)

Extra-Solar Interplanetary Travel

Harvest Of Stars, 52.

In sf, we distinguish between interplanetary and interstellar space travel but another variation is interplanetary travel in another planetary system. The Merseians have only local interplanetary travel when they are contacted by the Polesotechnic League. Also, interplanetary travel can be travel between planets or travel in interplanetary space between other kinds of bodies like asteroids, space stations and orbiting spacecraft. Thus, in the Alpha Centaurian system, Kyra Davis observes another interstellar ship under construction, then visits Rinndalir in a Lunarian base on the asteroid, Perun. She and he will explore the planet, Phaeton.

Until now, Demetrians and Lunarians have developed separately at Alpha Centauri. Kyra learns that Rinndalir remains a Selenarch but has yet to learn whether he reigns over all his people or just one settlement.

Rinndalir, having quoted the Bible twice, now misquotes Shakespeare when contrasting his quarters in Perun with his former stronghold on Luna:

"'A poor thing, but mine own.'" (p. 454)

See here.

Rudbeck At Lifthrasir Tor

Harvest Of Stars, 51.

Basil Rudbeck is the Director of the biocybernetic laboratory at Lifthrasir Tor on Demeter and:

"Rudbeck was a descendant of Guthrie's living self." (p. 441)

Rudbeck converses with download Guthrie whose braincase is carried by download Kyra who is in one of her robot bodies. The continuity of characters like Guthrie and Kyra conceals the narrative's future historical timescale. However, when download Guthrie converses with one of his own descendants, we are reminded that the original organic Anson Guthrie has been dead for a long time.

Lifthrasir is an appropriate mythological name for the location of the biocybernetic laboratory. Life will continue in ways that would once have been regarded as mythical.

Other Posts

Sometimes, I reread a passage and think of posting about it but first search the blog and find that I have already posted about that passage. Other times, I post without checking first and the result is duplication, e.g., see:

Glutted With Nanotech

Demetrian Economics And Ecology 

Nanotech On Demeter 

 

Sometimes also I post on another blog and link to that post from this blog, e.g.:

 

The Universal Soldier

 

- but page view counts indicate that not many readers of Poul Anderson Appreciation follow the links to other blogs.

 

I think that my The Universal Soldier idea is relevant to military sf by Poul Anderson and others so I hope that some PA fans will check it out. 

Glutted With Nanotech

Harvest Of Stars, 50.

"A phone chimed. Every room had one; the colony was glutted with nanotech and assembly-complex wares, including robot workers. Kyra sometimes wondered if any commercial enterprise would evolve on Demeter." (p. 437)

Why should it? Means of production an distribution change with technology. Sf writers either project the past into the future or imagine genuinely different futures. Poul Anderson, of course, does both.

"To Those Who Read, Good Flight."

"To those who read, good flight."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION WINGS OF VICTORY IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-77 AT p. 75.

 

Good flight.

 

Either the pageview calculator is malfunctioning (I think it must be) or so far today there have been 1016 pageviews on this blog as against 220 yesterday. Let us assume that there are some new people even if this number is inaccurate. Please say "Hello," "Kaor," "Good flight" or whatever you want in the combox. Please also say something else if you want. I will probably be back here tomorrow.

Good night.

Global Population

Harvest Of Stars, 50.

Part of a message from the Solar System to Demeter:

"...global population continues to decline at a satisfactory rate..." (p.  433)

My understanding is that there is no need for governments to encourage population decrease. The problem is never too many people but always failure to utilize resources to meet human needs. If there are five people in a car but four picnic boxes, do we say that there are too many people or that there are too few picnic boxes? Every extra mouth to feed is an extra pair of hands to produce food or something else to exchange for food. An affluent population regulates its reproduction without needing governmental encouragement but the high tech in this future history would support a much larger world population with every individual enjoying the benefits of the technology.

Downloads On Demeter

Harvest Of Stars, 47-48.

At last, Harvest Of Stars soars. On p. 422, Chapter 47 ends and 48 begins. In 47, the organic Kyra Davis says goodbye to friends on Earth. In 48, download Kyra, integral with an aircraft on Demeter, transports download Gabriel Berecz in his body with caterpillar treads, telescopic sensors, many arms and diverse hands. Gabriel, assisted by robugs, communicates with Kyra by radio, not by sound.

Nanomachines reduce rock to mineral grains, then synthesized humus is worked into the grains. Earthworms, introduced on Demeter, lack natural enemies and multiply explosively, causing a landslide. Seeded Terrestrial moss and grass wither because the loosening of the substrate and accompanying chemical changes cause a leaching out of alkalis until the pH of the soil becomes too high. Because such problems are inherent, the colonists need to remain active within the ecology that they aim to create.

Adzel

Adzel appears in:

the third of the three stories in the second Polesotechnic League collection, Trader To The Stars;

two PL novels, Satan's World and Mirkheim;

three of the twelve works collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

thus, six works in four volumes.

However, his chronologically earliest appearance is in the first of his three Earth Book stories and the last is in Mirkheim.

The Technic History:

presents eight PL installments in its first four volumes;

adds a sequel about human beings and Ythrians in The People of The Wind;

in the Earth Book, surrounded by stories and interstitial passages about Ythrians, presents a further eight PL installments, including one novel, most of them featuring the familiar characters.

What a series.

The Cosmic Web

Last night, in the first episode of a new TV series about the universe, Brian Cox said that the early universe was a void filled with a web of filaments of dark matter and that atoms of hydrogen and helium gathered at the intersections of the filaments where they condensed into galaxies. I never heard that before. The void sounds like the beginning of Norse mythology.

Cox described the nova and supernova process, recalling Poul Anderson's "Lodestar" and Mirkheim. He also said that, after all the stars are extinguished, the dark, dead universe will continue to expand forever. Nothing was said of any grandiose schemes for consciousness to survive within slow energy processes in that epoch. But I think that Anderson's Danellians might import energy and set up bases or habitats in an expanding quiescent universe.

Four Senses Under Mauna Kea

Harvest Of Stars, 47.

"Mauna Kea loomed black against gold. The light washed over forest, setting leaves aglow, and roused fragrances from the garden under the rail. A breeze wandered by, still warm. Somewhere, an iiwi trilled." (pp. 420-421)

There are words here that I would usually google but I can sometimes leave it to blog readers to do this if they want.

Colors

black

gold

glowing leaves

 

Scent

fragrances

 

Sensation

breeze

warmth

 

Sound

iiwi (?) trills

 

Kyra also mentions eating, thus indirectly a fifth sense.

 

The organic Kyra, who will travel to Alpha Centauri in suspended animation, is saying goodbye to everyone and everything that she will leave behind.

Two Kyras

This post will loop back to an Andersonian issue although it kicks off elsewhere.

A Romany fortune teller told me that I will live for another twenty-three years. (Given my present age, that is not bad.) However, despite her apparent certainty in this matter, I cannot be sure that I will live longer even than the next twenty-four hours. But of one thing I am certain. If I do survive for any length of time, then I will do so as a single spatiotemporally continuous self-conscious individual. In other words, there will be only one person tomorrow (or the day after) who will remember having been me today. Obvious, you might think.

But suppose that there were going to be two people, A and B, each equally possessing all of my memories and sense of identity. (Either I split in two or I am perfectly duplicated so that there is no detectable difference between the original and the duplicate.) Would it make sense for me now to ask, "Which will I be, A or B?" No. I would become both although neither would be the other. If A and B inhabit divergent parallel universes, then there is no problem whereas, if they coexist in the same universe, then some issues arise.

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, the organic Kyra Davis living on Earth:

knows that her personality will be recorded and downloaded into an artificial neural network;

knows that, after the downloading, she will continue to live on Earth while at the same time a self-conscious artificial intelligence with her memories and sense of identity will begin an interstellar voyage;

illogically thinks that there is a fifty-fifty chance that she, the pre-download Kyra, will be the version of Kyra that remains on Earth, knowing that she has done something worthwhile by donating her download to an extra-solar colony.

There is not a fifty-fifty chance but a 100% certainty that the Kyra who is on Earth will be the version of Kyra that remains on Earth. However, the download in the spaceship remembers thinking that there was a fifty-fifty chance... She, the download, is not the one who did something worthwhile but the one who must fulfill the vow to remain in existence long enough to help found the extra-solar colony.

From The Caves

Harvest Of Stars, 47.

"If people were losing violence and cruelty, was that because they were losing an uncouth energy that had driven them from the caves to the ends of the Solar System? Could this evolution go on, or might it lash back in some new mania?" (p. 417)

This is a false dichotomy. Human beings can build and explore without being violent or cruel. New manias will arise only as long as we do not understand our own motives.

Patet veritas omnibus: "Truth lies open to all." (The motto of Lancaster University.)

Meanwhile, in Lancaster, it is raining and I must walk into town to meet a friend for lunch. An evening engagement, the sf group meeting at the Gregson Institute, has been cancelled for covid reasons.

Download Kyra

Harvest Of Stars, 46.

Kyra Davis continues to live in the Solar System while her download travels to Alpha Centauri. Before downloading, Kyra knew that she, her current organic self, would continue to live as before while at the same time an inorganic copy of her consciousness would begin an interstellar journey. It made no sense beforehand to wonder, "Which one will I be? The organic Kyra on Earth or the download in the spaceship?" Both will exist and both will remember having lived as Kyra in the Solar System. Nevertheless, the download inevitably thinks something like, "So I am the one that wound up as the download."

She reflects:

"I knew quite well what I was letting myself in for. Or imagined I did. It seemed like a toss-up, a fifty-fifty chance that I could go on in my life, proud that I'd done a service necessary but beyond the call of duty. And of course I won the toss. The I who's on Earth did. This I is bound to the vows. Somehow, I didn't understand. Too late now." (p. 414)

Too late now? Would she not have done it if she had understood?

Termination

Harvest Of Stars, 45.

A downloaded consciousness that has completed its tasks does not fear termination because it no longer has any flesh "'...clinging to existence.'" (p. 409)

It is difficult to imagine a consciousness that is as unconcerned about its own termination as it is about the switching off of a light that is no longer needed.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the City Fathers computers announce:

"'ZERO MINUS FIFTEEN MINUTES.'"

-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 594.

Since zero will be the end of the universe, Mayor Amalfi asks the computers whether they understand what is about to happen to them and they reply:

"'YES, MR. MAYOR. WE ARE TO BE TURNED OFF AT ZERO.'" (ibid.)

Of course. And we will all be turned off someday. Amalfi wonders whether the City Fathers think that they will ever be turned on again but he also knows that they do not experience:

"...anything even vaguely resembling an emotion..." (ibid.)

 

In Michael Moorcock's The Dancers At The End Of Time, the announcement of the imminent end of the universe is an anticlimax because everyone by then has full control of their emotions.

Guthries, Computers And A Psalm

Harvest Of Stars, 44.

Two full copies of download Guthrie cooperate with each other and unite with the net. Thus, what is left of Guthrie has gone far beyond its original humanity. The hypercomputers are not aware but we are told that that will change soon. How? Computers will not become conscious by calculating more quickly. They will have to be combined with artificial neural networks like the ones into which Guthrie has been downloaded.

"To the hypercomputers, a thousand years were as a day and a day was as a thousand years..." (p. 402)

See Psalm 90: 4 and 2 Peter 3: 8.

Biblical allusions are becoming like part of the grammar.

Endings

Life and literature are about endings.

Rinndalir:

"'We also, we of Luna, see before us the end of the life that was ours...'"

-Harvest Of Stars, 43, p. 402.

 

An Ythrian addressing a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League:

 

"'In the end, God the Hunter strikes every being and everything which beings have made. Upon your way of life I see His shadow. Let the new come to birth in peace.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 631-680 AT p. 680.

In this case, the new, the Terran Empire, does not come to birth in peace but an Ythrian of the New Faith does not entreat God. He merely advises the being whose way of life is ending.

Back to Rinndalir: his life has become:

"'Pleasures, illusions, intrigues, games -'" (ibid.)

He wants to "'...escape into reality.'" (ibid.)

Amen, brother.

No Gods

 

Phrases resonate between timelines. I have found a beaut.

An unnamed Danellian says:

"'In a reality forever liable to chaos, the Patrol is the stabilizing element, holding time to a single course. Perhaps it is not the best course, but we are no gods to impose anything different when we know that it does at last take us beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 435.

 

Rinndalir, a Lunarian and a Selenarch, says:

 

"'We are no gods, to guide history - if indeed the very gods have any foresight over chaos.'"

-Harvest Of Stars, 43, p. 401.

 

So, by their own avowal, neither Danellians nor Lunarians are gods. Neither seeks to change the course of history. Both refer to chaos but Danellians regard chaos as destructive whereas Rinndalir regards it as both destructive and creative, like the god Shiva.

 

We have it on good authority that human beings, the ancestors both of Danellians and of Lunarians, are gods:

 

"I have said, Ye are gods..."

After Avantism

Harvest Of Stars, 42.

The Avantist government is gone but times continue to change:

Peace Authority squads are on North American streets;

the Liberation Army is organized but small;

the Chaotics, no longer united by hate, are factionalizing;

some citizens did have a stake in the Avantist order;

the economy is wrecked;

society is being rationalized not by ideology but by demand;

some people appreciate Fireball's intervention but others do not;

most have not decided;

Fireball consortes are uncomfortable on Earth;

Fireball itself is confused and feels empty;

Kyra's friend, Robert Lee, spends a lot of time in a virtual reality.

 

Needless to say:

 

"Wind blew keen with approaching autumn." (p. 397)

 

It always does. We feel society changing on Hermes in Mirkheim and on Earth in Harvest Of Stars.

Kyra, The Bible And The Wind

Harvest Of Stars, 40.

Kyra reflects that, in the Solar System, there is:

"...nowhere a place for the son of man to lay his head or the daughter hers." (p. 387)

- and asks:

"...what shall it profit?" (ibid.)

- if various parts of the System are colonized.

I leave it to the reader to note which Biblical passages are quoted here. (Well, the first is in the attached image.)

Kyra catalogues the uninhabitability of the Solar System:

barren wastes

crematorium heat

tomb cold

lethal radiation

unbreathable air

or no air

Quite a list. We are adapted to only a single environment.

Kyra ends this chapter by asking the wind, "'...who knows?'" (p. 390) The wind has commented so often that perhaps it is appropriate that for once instead it is questioned.

Power And Civilization

Harvest Of Stars, 41.

The World President tells download Guthrie:

"'...your standards, your whole raison d'etre are no longer admissible in civilization as it has developed. Such a concentration of powers in so few hands, devoid of every social control, is no more tolerable than a pathogen in the bloodstream.'" (p. 393)

I agree with her but because I want power to be democratized, not simply transferred from corporations like Fireball to a World Federation or, after that, to post-organic intelligences. Does Guthrie's response make sense? If he is unable to continue to operate as before, then he will invest all his remaining wealth in leaving the Solar System forever and in colonizing a doomed Centaurian planet. We are used to such responses in American sf - although a colony planet is not usually doomed - but would it make sense in reality? Would these be the only two alternatives? Would it not have been possible to stay and to help to build a future for human freedom within the Solar System? Guthrie's idea of freedom is him or someone like him wielding unlimited economic power. That is a major conceptual limitation.

The technicalities of the interstellar crossing are of interest. There is a limit to how long human beings can survive in suspended animation so a minimum of one-tenth light-speed will be necessary but braking at the destination will not be necessary because von Neumann machines can be sent ahead and will construct sun-powered lasers to slow the arriving ships.

Two Consummations

Harvest Of Stars, 38-40.

When Fireball intervenes decisively in the North American civil war, Rinndalir comments:

"'Consummatum est.'" (38, p. 377)

- the Latin translation of "It is finished."  (John 19:30.) Need I say more?

When I wrote Kyra Versus Anti-Guthrie, I had forgotten that anti-Guthrie is revived and does indeed have an appropriate concluding dialogue with the authentic Guthrie. He requests and receives termination. Yet again, consummatum est.

"Nothing will ever be the same again..." (39, p. 381)

All the ducking and diving with Sepo is over. The transcendent future begins on p. 384 with PART THREE demeter and another Biblical quotation:

"And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour." (40, p. 384)

And that is a good place to end this evening.

Confusing The AI Issue

Harvest Of Stars, 38.

Guthrie has said that Fireball might attack Earth by diving ships "'...on robot.'" (p. 372)

"[Kyra] had shuddered. First that robot must be programmed for suicide.

"But it wasn't like reprogramming a captive Guthrie. Was it? Machines didn't really have consciousness or free will or a wish to live. Did they?" (pp. 372-373)

 

Kyra should know the answers to all these questions yet she totally re-confuses the AI issue. A machine like a spaceship on autopilot does not have consciousness, free will or a wish to survive whereas a machine like an Asimovian robot with an artificial ("positronic") brain would be conscious. The robotic spaceships to which Guthrie refers are clearly in the first, not the second, of these two categories and Kyra should not be in any doubt on the matter. On the other hand, if there really were any doubt, then it would be morally wrong to program the ships for suicide dives - not just something to shudder about.

Rinndalir And Chaos

Harvest Of Stars, 38.

Rinndalir describes chaos as:

"'...the liberator, that annihilates the old and engenders the new.'" (p. 371)

His idea of chaos is drawn from:

"'...the quantum heart of things.'" (p. 372)

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, quantum chaos changes history for the worse and the surviving Patrol agents change it back again. But imagine that another quantum fluctuation changes history for the better, generating what we would regard as a utopian timeline, e.g., a twentieth century without the World Wars and all their consequences, a genuine liberation. Then I think that it would be the duty of any surviving Patrol agents to guard that timeline, not to restore their remembered history. Of course, they would disagree about this. And there might be a Patrol that had originated in that yet, to quote a strange phrase used by Guion in The Shield Of Time.

Social Issues

Harvest Of Stars.

Kyra contrasts "...lives computerized in the name of order or social justice or whatever they called it..." with the idea that "...governments and machines ought to be instruments people used, not ends in themselves." (38, p. 370) 

Should there be social order? Yes, not at the expense of freedom or justice but as their necessary basis.

Should there be social justice? Yes.

Should governments, as long as they exist, and machines be instruments, not ends? Yes.

One of many problems is that some people's idea of justice contradicts other people's idea of freedom and vice versa but such issues can be resolved. We are only at the beginning of industrial civilization - although potentially also at its end.

"...the noble words: 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal -'" (36, pp. 330-331)

Gathering Together Blog References To Royal Purple

Lord Byron In SF

Purple

Tyrian Purple

Purple 

Purple And Gold

Time, Tyre And Fire

 

There may be more. I forget what I have written.
 

Purple And Gold

Harvest Of Stars, 38.

"Rinnaldir waited in purple and gold." (p. 368)

See the second line of Lord Byron's poem here. The poem recounts an incident described in 2 Kings 18-19 and Isaiah 36-37. Thus, "purple and gold" is both a literary reference and an indirect Biblical reference, fully appropriate to the lord Rinndalir who, on p. 364, quoted Pontius Pilate.

These many literally colorful details slow down any careful rereading of Poul Anderson's works.

Demands And Denunciations

Harvest Of Stars, 38.

Yet again Poul Anderson captures the feel of troubled times:

Fireball won't attack, wouldn't dare, Terrestrial governments would seize all their property!;

alliance with double-dealing Selenarchs? there may be no choice;

God's judgment;

no compromise;

why does Guthrie not call on the Chaotics to halt their rebellion?;

why does Fireball not help the Peace Authority against the Chaotics?

One thing that concerns me during troubled times is people who speak as if they know exactly what is happening somewhere else. Also, people are not asked what they think about a violent incident but told to denounce it and accused of supporting it if they don't denounce it. Hearing what someone else has to say goes out the window. Chaotics who surrender will be worked on by "...Sepo and the corrective psychotechnicians...," (p. 366) not something that Guthrie wants to support.

The psychotechnicians in the Psychotechnic History worked to prevent dictatorships, not to condition populations to accept them. Poul Anderson is the only sf writer whose works include so many alternative future histories that readers can compare and contrast with each other.

"What Is Reality?"

Harvest Of Stars, 38.

When Kyra Davis asks, "'Is this real?'":

"'"What is reality?' said jesting Pilate," Rinndalir answered." (p. 364)

Pilate has been quoted before but as saying, "What is truth?" Rinndalir's version is yet another understated Biblical reference and proves that even the Lunarians, like the Devil, can cite scripture for their purpose.

Anderson's Biblical references are too numerous to count. I have obviously missed this one before.

Kyra Versus Anti-Guthrie

Harvest Of Stars, 36.

It is not download Guthrie but Kyra Davis that fights the last space battle against anti-Guthrie. This feels like an anti-climax to her and maybe to the reader. I would have found a philosophical confrontation more satisfying than a physical conflict. But there is more. Kyra, puzzled by how easily she has defeated her antagonist, wonders whether, even in his inorganic state, the reprogrammed download has succumbed to rage or recklessness. Or should we conclude that he has suddenly realized his own inauthenticity and just given up? And is this too convenient a resolution of the problem of the anti-Guthrie?

Marches

In Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, Merseians living on the human colony planet, Dennitza, march to and into the tricameral planetary parliament so that Kossara Vymezal, hidden among them, can emerge and address the three houses assembled to denounce a conspiratorial deception.

In Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, Fireball employees in the orbiting L-5 colony march to the space dock so that the wanted Kyra Davis, hidden among them, can emerge and depart in her torchship for Earth, carrying the word of a North American governmental deception.

Sometimes not only individual heroism but also collective action is necessary.

Faked Broadcasts

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the revolutionary Cabal fakes a broadcast by the First Prophet returned from Heaven calling on the faithful to overthrow the current regime. Congregations in churches see the broadcast and attack their clergy.

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, the Selenarchs fake a broadcast by Anson Guthrie calling on Fireball Enterprises to assist the revolutionary Chaotics if they rise against the Avantist regime in North America.

In Doctor Who, the Doctor's granddaughter grabbed a mike and ordered the robomen to attack the Daleks, forcing the Daleks to kill all their robomen.

In Dan Dare, Cadet Flamer Spry grabbed the Mekon's mike and, imitating the Mekon's voice, ordered the Elektrobots to attack the Treens, forcing the Treens to destroy all their Elektrobots.

Similar situations in four timelines.

Guthrie Versus Guthrie

Harvest Of Stars, 33, p. 318.

The Guthries have clashed in space and I have not found a lot to write about it.

Original download Guthrie says:

"'They really got to you, didn't they? Wouldn't you like a reprogramming job? Be your own man again.'"

Anti-Guthrie replies:

"'Man? Hah.'"

Each has a part of the truth which is what we should expect.

How can we be our own man? I think that we must at least question whatever beliefs and values we were brought up in even if we later reason our way back to those same beliefs and values. I questioned and reasoned my way to different beliefs and values but cannot set myself up as the measure of all things. Don't just rationalize received beliefs. Consider alternatives. We can buy translations of all the scriptures and philosophies in a good bookshop and can visit many different places of worship. On an evening walk in Liverpool, I passed a parish church, a mosque, a Latin Rite Catholic church and a Krishna temple and then returned to my apartment to practice zazen. In my childhood, we passed three other churches to get to ours and never went into any of the others.

I am glad that I have a conscience but, if my conscience were somehow removed, then I would become a person who was glad not to be constrained by a conscience.

"I Died"

Harvest Of Stars, 30.

Download Guthrie says:

"'...I died.'" (p. 289)

Is this proposition self-contradictory? Someone who has died and has not been revived cannot speak. Download Guthrie means that the original Anson Guthrie died. But Guthrie's personality had been downloaded before the original died. Thus, these were two different copies of an individual. Their memories diverged from the moment of downloading. If an individual's memories until the moment of death could be downloaded into one and only one neural network, then it would seem to the consciousness in that network that it was the individual who had died although legally it would neither own the same property nor be guilty of the same crimes but should have the human right of continued existence.

Neither Bored Nor Waiting

Harvest Of Stars, 30.

Eiko has had to conceal download Guthrie in the upper branches of the Tree. She asks:

"How have you been?'

"'Bored.'

"'I am sorry,' she repeated, while thinking that she would not have been. To rest without hunger or thirst or any need of motion, amidst sky and Tree!" (p. 287)

 

Eiko shares the perspective of an extraterrestrial/supernatural being imagined by CS Lewis (author). When Lewis (character) asks whether that being:

 

"'...has been waiting in the next room all these hours?'"

 

- Ransom replies:

 

"'Not waiting. They never have that experience. You and I are conscious of waiting, because we have a body that grows tired or restless, and therefore a sense of cumulative duration. Also we can distinguish duties and spare time and therefore have a conception of leisure. It is not like that with him. He has been here all this time, but you can no more call it waiting than you can call the whole of his existence waiting. You might as well say that a tree in a wood was waiting, or the sunlight waiting on the side of a hill.'"

-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), 2, p. 168.

 

Then Lewis is:

 

"...made to stand before the featureless flame which did not wait but just was..." (ibid.)

 

And we practice being, not waiting, in zazen.

 

(Eiko experiences the Tree and Lewis mentions "...a tree in a wood...")

Metaphorical Gods

Harvest Of Stars, 29.

Gods and other beings continue to be referenced metaphorically. Kyra reflects that Rinndalir is:

"...more Faust than Mephistopheles..." (p. 282)

He says:

"'I do not think that once this is over we can return to our familiar universe. Siva is the Destroyer. But he is, as well, the Creator Anew." (p. 283)

She wonders:

"...if he truly was Faust. If not, what? A trickster god, Raven, Coyote? Or Loki?" (ibid.)

Finally, when he has told her that she is remarkable and has suggested that they be simply themselves:

"If you wanted a mythic likening, how about Krishna?" (p. 284)

Knowing Krishna's reputation, we know what this means. 

Moving West

 

The following passage is relevant to Americans and to much American sf including several works by Poul Anderson:

"'Everybody wants to run, Karl. At some point in life, everybody thinks about walking away. Life's always better on the beach or in the mountains. Problems can be left behind. It's inbred in us. We're the products of immigrants who left miserable conditions and came here in search of a better life. And they kept moving west, packing up and leaving, always looking for the pot of gold. Now, there's no place to go.'

"'Wow. I hadn't thought of it through a historical perspective.'"

-John Grisham, The Partner (London, 2010), FORTY-TWO, pp. 394-395.

No place to go but up. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, people from Earth settle on Hermes, Aeneas, Dennitza, Vixen, Avalon, New Vixen etc. Even if exo-planets are not that easily accessible or habitable, we can do a lot in space, as Anderson also shows.

(New Vixen is a good example of "Flandry's Legacy." Flandy rescued the colonized planet, Vixen, from alien conquest. Millennia later, there is a "New Vixen.")

Temporal Chasm

The internal structure of Poul Anderson's Technic History is so intricate, interesting and intriguing that I frequently try yet again to summarize that structure and its contents both clearly and comprehensively but must now be approaching the limit of my ability to do this. However, if at this stage we focus on the fact that the history commences with interplanetary exploration in "The Saturn Game" and ends with the exploration of the Cloud Universe globular cluster beyond the Dragon's Head Nebula in another spiral arm of the galaxy in "Starfog," then it sounds like a different history. From the point of view of "Starfog," all the intervening events have served only to bridge the temporal chasm between local Solar interplanetary exploration and human civilizations spread through several spiral arms. From this perspective, we have left the Polesotechnic League, Avalon and the Terran Empire far behind although we must always return to them in order to appreciate the Technic History as a whole.

The Long View

In the Earth Book, Hloch tells us that Nicholas van Rijn is known in folk memory as hero or rogue on many planets. The first of the four post-Imperial stories begins by telling us that Roan Tom became a myth in later ages. These are similar characters in dissimilar contexts with different imperatives: if you live in the Solar Commonwealth before the Terran Empire, then get rich, whereas, if instead you live during the Long Night after the Empire, then just survive.

Hloch does not mention Dominic Flandry because Flandry had not been born yet and the post-Imperial stories do not mention him because in their periods he was long dead although the alert reader notices some evidence of "Flandry's Legacy." Not only was Flandry long dead but so was the Anglic language that he had spoken and human civilizations had spread from a four-hundred-light-year-diameter sphere into several spiral arms of the galaxy. We must stand back a long way to view the Technic History as a whole from a Saturnian moon in 2055 to the edge of another spiral arm in 7100.

The reasons for a conflict of long ago:

"...had dropped into the bottom of the millennia between then and now. (A commentary on the importance of any such reasons.)"

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 728.

Such reasons are unimportant to the characters in "Starfog" but the readers know that Flandry was centrally involved.

The Dog At Night

Harvest Of Stars, 28.

Anti-Guthrie:

"'My boys didn't accomplish much except observe what the dog did in the night time.'

"'What?'

"'The dog did nothing in the night time. Never mind.'" (p. 265)

 

"The strange thing about the dog is that it did not bark, my dear Watson."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2010), CHAPTER 15, p. 251.

 

Both Anderson and Larsson refer to Sherlock Holmes without having to name him. The dog did not bark so it must have known whoever entered the stable at night.

 

 “Before deciding that question I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog, for one true inference invariably suggests others. The Simpson incident had shown me that a dog was kept in the stables, and yet, though some one had been in and had fetched out a horse, he had not barked enough to arouse the two lads in the loft. Obviously the midnight visitor was some one whom the dog knew well.

-copied from here.

Selenarchs

Harvest Of Stars, 26.

We are informed that the declaration of Lunar independence, which is described in one of the Mother of the Moon prequel chapters in The Stars Are Also Fire, occurred half a century before the events recounted in this part of Harvest Of Stars and we also remember from previous readings of Harvest... that the Selenarchy will have come to an end long before the end of the current volume. Much future history occurs in these two volumes.

Each of Rinndalir's ancillaries wears:

"...a medallion, a black circle ringed by irregular pearliness, the Eclipse of power." (p. 243)

This contrasts with, and even contradicts, both the Sunburst of Empire in the Technic History and the spaceship-and-sun of Empire in Asimov's future history: not a sun but an eclipse.

The Selenarchs have no capital city and do not exchange diplomats. Terrestrial envoys go where they are told to go and speak to whichever Selenarch chooses to listen. Lunarians spurn every tradition and expectation of their parent race. The only way that we will meet aliens in the Solar System is to create them. This is a big difference from Heinlein's Future History.

Kyra And Lunarians

Harvest Of Stars, 26.

Kyra Davis, arriving at Port Bowen on Luna, is arrested by North American Sepo but immediately removed from their custody by Arren and his associate, Isabu, two ancillaries of the Lord Rinndalir. The contract delegated to Fireball Enterprises does not affect Selenarchic sovereignty and a Selenarch's messengers are not obliged to show any warrant. We, or at least I, welcome this development. We want to get away from dodging the Sepo and prefer to read about those artificial aliens, the Lunarians. We saw Rinndalir's head and upper torso in a previous chapter when he overrode the multiceiver in a Lunar bar to speak to one man drinking there.

Download Guthrie had anticipated Kyra's arrest by alerting "'...my lord Rinndalir..." (24, p. 231) Guthrie, a capitalist, respects the Lunarians' feudal titles and terminology.