Sunday 17 October 2021

Reading Orders II

If we read Poul Anderson's Technic History in (my slightly revised version of) its original order, then we do not start at the beginning of the History or even at the beginning of the Nicholas van Rijn sub-series but we do, with a single exception, follow a chronological sequence from the beginning of Trader To The Stars until we have read to the end of Hloch's Introduction to The Earth Book Of Stormgate. The single exception is "The Saturn Game" which (I suggest) should be collected in a new volume with "The Star Plunderer" And "Sargasso of Lost Starships" to be read between Mirkheim and The People Of The Wind.

The chronological sequence that I have just mentioned takes us from van Rijn's later career to the aftermath of the Terran War on Avalon which was recounted in The People Of The Wind. Hloch, writing during that aftermath, collects twelve stories all set much earlier than the Terran War. These start with the Grand Survey discovery of Ythri and end with the colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon. Thus, they encompass the entire period of the Polesotechnic League and some even feature van Rijn and his colleagues. What an adventure and an achievement!

The opening paragraph of the Ythrian first contact story sets the scene for the rest of this future history:

"Our part in the Grand Survey had taken us out beyond the great suns Alpha and Beta Crucis. From Earth we would have been in the constellation Lupus. But Earth was 278 light-years remote, Sol itself long dwindled to invisibility, and stars drew strange pictures across the dark."
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-102 AT p. 79.

"...great suns..." 

An Avalonian, Christopher Holm, will think it ironic that, from Earth, Laura, the sun of Avalon, is in Lupus, the Wolf, whereas, from Avalon, Sol is in the Maukh:

"'...the sign of a big, tame herd animal.'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 446.

Sector Alpha Crucis will play an important role in the Terran Empire.

11 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

While I find these discussions of how best to "package" the Technic history stories interesting, I think that, for all practical purposes, Hank Davis' arrangement for Baen Books SAGA OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION will be the standard. Unless we get a COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON, in which editors could try a different dividing up, in internal chronological order, of the stories for different volumes. I liked your suggestion, for example, that THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN and "Outpost of Empire" should form one volume called OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE.

That mention of Sector Alpha Crucis reminded me of my short article called "Sector Governors in the Terran Empire." I suggested that if 100,000 planets had formalized relations with the Imperium, the Empire might have been divided into 100 sectors, with a thousand planets each, for administrative purposes.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I am fascinated by the two equally valid reading orders:

the original order with the EARTH BOOK as the culmination of the first part of the Technic History;

Baen Books' chronological order with Hloch's introductions referring to Avalon and the Empire long before they have appeared in the stories.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And you have urged that those introductions should be preserved, even in collections where they seemed a bit "out of context."

And a COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS should include as a separate volume the four post-Imperial stories along with the original texts of the five Technic stories Anderson revised.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Note that the Ythrians don't do very well fighting the Terran Empire; this is precisely because humans are more social, more "self-domesticated" and therefore more cooperative.

Evolution proceeds by competition; but social animals such as ourselves cooperate to compete. Instead of a war of all against all for genetic predominance, we cooperate and so make our -shared- genes within the kin-group more competitively successful.

(As the old saying goes, me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousin, and me, my brother and my cousin against the world. Genetically speaking, saving two brothers or four cousins does more to preserve your genes than preserving yourself does.)

it's significant that the emergence of "behaviorally modern" human beings about 80K years ago is marked by a sharp drop in male testosterone levels (this can be detected in skeletal remains).

Less head-butting within the clan made the clan's collective head more effective at butting outsiders.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Cooperation succeeds and is basic to what we are. We don't think, "The child's ill and off his food. Good, more food for the rest of us!" We donate to charities, especially during natural disasters. We run to help someone who falls down in the street. Etc.

S.M. Stirling said...

Paul: you have to think of this in the context in which we evolved, in which the "social reference group" was small and largely composed of fairly close blood relatives. This was the settling for the overwhelming bulk of humanity's existence.

The -genes- are selfish, but that doesn't necessarily apply to their carriers. If the carrier is altruistic, in the context I described, he or she was being altruistic in a way which spread the genes of which they were carriers.

This is our evolutionary strategy, though altruism is always in tension with individual drives.

By way of contrast, look at cats. Cats are almost comically selfish compared to human beings -- even when they love you, they do it in a way which is entirely about them.

That's because in the wild the ancestors of cats the only real non-selfish interaction was between mother and kittens -- which is why, if you raise a cat from a kitten it will always regard you as its mother. That's the only emotional architecture it has for a relationship.

(Though domestic cats aren't -quite- the solitaries that their wild ancestors are; they're neotenous, like most domesticated animals, including us. Hence under some circumstances they can act like kittens who are littermates as adults.)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I agree with what you said about the Ythrians. However splendid many of them are as individuals, they are simply not that good when it came to large scale organizations, like a space navy, requiring large numbers of people to act immediately, under orders and discipline. Anderson's libertarian views and his liking for the Ytrhians tended to muffle that, in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND, unless you look carefully.

Ythrians COULD learn how to run a navy, at least well enough to repel barbarians, pirates, bandit warlords, etc., during the Time of Troubles. But fighting a really powerful civilized state like the Empire, whose armed forces were manned by people who did not find large scale cooperation difficult to learn and accept, was another matter.

Your comments about cats makes me wonder what intelligent felines would be like? Perhaps like Larry Niven's Kzin? Or would lions, far more social than cats or tigers, be more plausible as sophonts?

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Lions, yes. Lions are social -- for example, if you raise a lion and it likes you, it will recognize you with pleasure and greet you even many years later. (Though the ways lions demonstrate affection can be alarming.)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I also thought of the "Leonine" beings of the planet Ivanhoe, in Anderson's stories "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "The Season of Forgiveness." Perhaps they descended and evolved from analogs of Terrestrial lions? The Ivanhoans were certainly fierce but very social intelligent beings!

I can all too easily imagine how ALARMING an affectionate lion can be! Those claws, those fangs!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Joy Adamnson's husband (the "Born Free" couple) came to our school in Nairobi with some lion cubs once.

We played with them -- they were quite young, still spotted. It was very much like playing with kittens...

... except that they weighed around 25 pounds and had paws like plate and you had to wear leather gauntlets to do it. They weren't trying to hurt you, but he explained that they treated humans the way they'd treat an adult lion... and lions are much more claw-resistant.

They were charming little beasts, though -- very affectionate, totally self-confident, and extremely playful until they got tired, at which point they just curled up and went to sleep like a light-switch had been flipped.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

A very interesting thing to see and take part in! And I can certainly see why you would need gauntlets for protecting your hands and arms.

Ad astra! Sean