Wind, What Else?

"Un-Man."

The wind continues its dual role of background description and commentary on the action.

"Jean shivered in the chill breeze and crept against Naysmith. (VIII, p. 57)

"The island was a low sandy swell in the immensity of ocean. There was harsh grass on it, and a few trees gnarled by the great winds, and a tiny village." (X, pp. 70-71)

"They sat without talking for a while. The cigarette smoke blew away in ragged streamers. Rosenberg could hear the wind whistling and piping far up the canyon." (XII, p. 85)

"The wind was chill on his body as he was led toward the cabin." (XIII, p. 92)

"The wind blew her dress and hair about her, fluttering them against the great clean expanse of sea and forest and sky." (XIV, p. 100)

Chill and gnarling winds are threatening. Whistling and piping winds are unsettling. The wind that flutters Jeanne's hair and dress against the clean sea and sky is at last friendly and nurturing as the story ends.

Happy New Year to all blog readers. May 2023 bring peace and joy to all.

Dawn Like Roses

"Un-Man," X.

"The mountains were a shadowy looming. Dawn lay like roses on their peaks. The air was fresh and chill, strong with the smell of pines, and there was dew underfoot and alarmed birds clamoring into the sky. Far below him, the river thundered and brawled." (pp. 75-76)

What is my point here? My point is just enjoy that description. It could have been from almost any work by Poul Anderson between the fight and chase scenes. Since the Rostomily Brothers habitually quote Shakespeare, we should compare:

"But, look, the morn, in russet mantel clad,

"Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill."

- from Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, which caught my attention when we were shown the Laurence Olivier Hamlet at school in the 1960s. I was then reading Poul Anderson and never suspected that, in the twenty-first century, I would compare Shakespeare and Anderson on a world-wide computer network.

V For Villain

A future history series is not about particular heroes and villains but about all of mankind, also alien-kind. However, an individual instalment or sub-series may feature a villain if it is that kind of narrative. The second instalment of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "Un-Man," displays a long list but the "protean enemy" behind them all is man himself. In The Prisoner TV series, when the title character unmasks the ultimate villain, Number One, he sees his own face. Thus, "Un-Man" and The Prisoner make the same point. At the climax of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, Evy does not unmask and identify the dead V but dons one of his masks. She is the hero.

One kind of villain wants to conquer the world, thus to unite it under him. However, in "Un-Man," the UN has united the world and the villains aim to re-divide it. Heroes often race against time to save the world and succeed. In Moore's Watchmen, they race against time to prevent the world from being saved and fail. In James Blish's Black Easter, demons win Armageddon. In the sequel, Satan becomes God. Insightful authors reverse stereotypes and examine the consequences. In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Lucifer Morningstar retires as Lord of Hell, thus generating new problems. In Anderson's Technic History, the Merseian Roidhunate aims to conquer the galaxy but we learn that there would be autonomous realms, not a unified state. Other intelligent races and Merseians from outside the Roidhunate have no such ambition. Thus, a future history is more than a heroes and villains routine. Indeed, Dominic Flandry prevents Hugh McCormac from seizing the Imperial Throne by force but later works for the successful usurper, Hans Molitor. Fiction reflects complex reality.

Masquerade

"Un-Man."

The word "masquerade" is used both of the Howard Families in Robert Heinlein's Future History and of the Rostomily Brotherhood in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. The Howards capitalize the word, thus: "Masquerade." Reading one future history series, we are sometimes conscious of its parallels with others. Their Chronologies could be displayed in parallel columns. Heinlein's "If This Goes On" refers to a World War III but presents no further information about it. Both series have a Revolution.

Surely Jeanne Donner should realize that the masquerading Naysmith is not her husband? As I understand it, clones develop differently from birth although Anderson could not have known that when writing this. The Brothers should not be so similar that they all quote Shakespeare. 

We have got experience of people who look very similar. My friend, Fran, knew that he had a double walking around in the Republic of Ireland. A woman ran toward him, embraced and kissed him and said, "All is forgiven!" He replied, "I am not who you think I am but I know about him." I once shouted "Mary" at a woman who looked very like a Mary that I knew. I later learned that she was another woman also called "Mary." I approached another guy asking doubtfully, "You're not John?" As soon as he said, "No," I realized that he had a different voice and personality. I was recently questioned twice by police and a security man followed me into our bank and enquired as to my identity. I closely resembled a wanted guy. The police put his image on Facebook and some people were asking if it was me. Clergymen in their uniform clerical garb can be mistaken for each other at a distance. I think that this explains a real life ghost story that I heard from a Catholic parish priest.

What Samsey Sees And Says

"Un-Man."

"'What I can't understand,' said a fifth man - Donner recognized him as Colonel Samsey of the American Guard - 'is why, if the U.N. Secret Services does have a corps of - uh - supermen, it should bother to disguise them to look all alike. So that we'll think we're dealing with an immortal?' He chuckled grimly. 'Surely they don't expect us to be rattled by that!'" (11, p. 26)

Yet, later, when Naysmith lifts his mask in front of Samsey:

"'Who am I, Samsey?' he asked quietly.

"A sob rattled in the throat. 'Donner - but you're dead. We killed you in Chicago. You died, you're dead.'" (VIII, p. 61)

Samsey is rattled. Maybe the fact that he has been injected with a truth drug that damps:

"...those higher brain centers..." (p. 62)

- affects his response?

The Anti-UN Gang

"Un-Man."

An alliance of convenience between:

nationalists of different nationalities

militarists

industrialists

politicians

financiers

trade unionists

religionists

Syndics

Neocommunists

Pilgrims

Hedonists

people with individual grievances

It reads like the list of enemies of the Polesotechnic League in the Technic History.

I am not sure why all of these people are on this list. Some of them can prosper under the UN world government. For example, Naysmith says that:

"'There are labor leaders who want a return of the old strife which means power and profit for them.'" (VII, p. 54)

But there are big employers with many employees, therefore a role for trade union negotiators and bureaucrats, in the UN regime. On the other hand, some of the industrialists dislike regulation.

How to overthrow the UN world government:

agents of the gang within the UN will perpetrate corruption, inefficiency and illegality that will then be publicized; 

embarrassing government secrets, like the assassination of the secessionist Chinese leader, will be leaked;

some nations will secede;

there will be military revolutions in key nations;

ground troops from a nearby colony will seize the Moon bases;

every Un-man will be hunted down;

a return to international anarchy, dictatorship and war.

(A Space Patrol unit tried to seize the Moon base in Robert Heinlein's Future History.) 

Kinds Of Contradictions

"Un-Man."

Real societies contain conflicts, unevennesses and anachronisms. One word for social contrasts and conflicts is "contradictions." These cannot be logical contractions because contradictions in that sense cannot exist. In symbolic logic: not (p and not-p).  However, we can talk about a contradiction between the interests of an employer who must cut costs because of economic competition and an employee who must secure a wage increase to pay his mortgage. Such conflicts or contradictions are inherent in a particular kind of economy.

When Poul Anderson shows us contradictory aspects of post-World War III society, are these logical inconsistencies, i.e., impossibilities, or plausible social conflicts? On the one hand, there seems to be an attempt to house the entire population in high-tech "colonies," not only the large apartment buildings but also floating oceanic colonies. On the other hand, the need for highly trained personnel leads to a selective, stratified educational system generating social friction. Egalitarianism versus elitism.

But not everyone (yet) lives in a "colony":

"Murderers lurked in the slums around Manhattan Crater while a technician could buy a house and furniture for six month's pay." (VI, p. 48)

(There is crime around a Crater in Anderson's Shield.)

The recent past of nuclear conflict is acknowledged, "...Crater...," and there are still slums. Globally, Hindu peasants living in mud huts still cultivate small fields while natives of the Congo drum at rain-clouds.

My provisional assessment: Either the large agricultural and other combines cooperate to satisfy needs or they still compete to accumulate profits. If the latter, then there will continue be a contradiction between wealth and poverty. There will also continue to be environmental destruction because environmental preservation, although a need, is not a priority for profit-seeking organizations.

You And We

"Un-Man."

VI, pp. 47-48 interestingly analyse post-World War III society. One sentence reads:

"Modern technology had no use for the pick-and-shovel laborer or for the routine intellectual; so you were faced with a huge class of people not fit for anything else, and what were you going to do about it?" (p. 47)

Who are "you"? Sometimes the pronoun used is "we." "What should we do with the unemployed? "We" means different things in different contexts. In "How can we compete with the Japanese?," "we" means this country considered as a competitive economic unit. In "Are we inherently evil?," "we" means the whole human race. In "What should we do with the unemployed?," "we" means a minority of social administrators - or maybe the electorate choosing between contesting political parties proposing alternative policies about unemployment. If "we" means the whole of society, then it includes the unemployed who surely are able to articulate what they want to do.

There was an earlier reference to a free-marriage group. Now we realize that that was not just an esoteric futuristic allusion. Poul Anderson has thought through the implications of technology and of his post-World War III society. The family no longer has an economic or social basis. Different social patterns are emerging. We recognize the origins of the individualism of the later Solar Union period.

More Daily Life

"Un-man."

After landing in a side lane, Naysmith drives the care manually, presumably on the road, to the Donners' house. Donner had been an engineer by training. His wife, Jeanne, works from home:

"...as a mail-consultant semantic linguist - correcting manuscripts of various kinds..." (VI, p. 45)

Semantics has become big business and is one of the sciences or disciplines that had fed into psychotechnics. The house is prefab with:

"...severe modern lines and curves..." (ibid.)

Jeanne Donner gardens which Naysmith knows that his Brother, Martin Donner, would not. So the world still has room for family homes surrounded by colourful gardens but can all this exist so soon after nuclear devastation?

I am milking the text for details of daily life but we will soon be back into fight and flight scenes.

A young girl skipping across the road might be a UN agent:

"...the biological laboratories could do strange things..." (ibid.)

That is a bit too strange for my liking. Technological resources are being channelled not into conflicts between nations but into attempts either to preserve or to destroy a new international regime. This must still be a transitional phase in the Psychotechnic future history series.

More Daily Life In The Twenty First Century

"Un-Man."

We are told that Brigham City is not a "colony" because it pre-existed post-war resettlements. However, it has almost completely adapted to post-war layout and architecture. OK. So the bulk of the population has been resettled in large apartment buildings and even pre-existing towns have been reorganized. For example, houses are half underground and pedestrians move on slideways. Even when local plantations remain privately owned, they must cooperate to compete against the massive governmentally regulated agricultural combines. People commute by airbus to jobs for example in the Pacific Colony project. Naysmith's boat flies on autopilot at a thousand miles an hour. Local traffic control takes over as he approaches Brigham City but allows him to land inconspicuously in a side lane. The no longer used highway crumbles. We get some hints of daily life even though our attention is on cloak-and-dagger.

Life And Work In The Twenty First Century

"Un-man."

Although the text focuses on the plot, background details that we usually read past give clues to the daily life of the future. I wondered how the flying boats moved: "...jets." (IV, p. 36)

A single enormous multi-storey building contains, on different levels:

shops

offices

services

schools

entertainment

residences

There are express lifts and miles-long slideways.

Sofie is an engineer on the Pacific Colony project so the rebuilding of the environment continues.

Naysmith's job is described as:

cybernetic epistemologist

cybernetic analyst

basic-theoretical consultant

troubleshooter of ideas

Epistemology and semantics are close to integrating synthesis. Anderson shows new disciplines joining existing ones.

Some Questions

"Un-Man."

OK. I have been getting some details wrong. "Un-Men" is spelled "Un-men" and not all "Un-men" are Brothers (genetic copies of Stefan Rostomily) although this story about a Brother is entitled "Un-Man."

Donner had snatched an Americanist and interrogated him under truth drugs:

"Naysmith didn't ask what had happened to the victim; the struggle was utterly ruthless, with all history at stake." (V, p. 42)

Is all history ever at stake? Maybe sometimes. Although Naysmith does not ask, there is a major moral issue there. Do we just accept the characters' morality while reading the story?

Here is another moral question. Naysmith, who exactly resembles Donner, is ordered to take Donner's wife to safety by pretending to be Donner. If, while they are together, they have sex, then Naysmith is guilty of rape. Jeanne Donner would have consented to sex with her husband who Naysmith is not.

Darkness And Night

"Un-Man."

At the end of Chapter II, Martin Donner dies. At the beginning of III, a shrilling and a voice in his head inform Robert Naysmith that Donner has disappeared and that he, Naysmith, must pick up Donner's job. The Un-Man dies. The Un-Man continues. In a screen adaptation, a single actor should play both of these characters and some others that are all clones of Stefan Rostomily. The same actor should also have played Rostomily in the previous instalment, "Marius."

Naysmith reflects on Donner:

"...his brain darkened, withdrawn into the great night..." (IV, p. 35)

An accurate description of death. In Donner's brain, neurons have stopped firing electrically and interacting electrochemically in ways that generate consciousness, including the perception of light. We experience night when we are awake after sunset but "the great night" refers to a time when we are in a deep, dreamless sleep.

The Un-Men tend to quote Shakespeare:

"In that sleep of death, what dreams may come..."

But how can dreams come when neurons have stopped firing?

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

Three Potential Sub-Series

"Un-Man."

A character addressed as "Stefan" comes on-stage on the last page of "Marius." Sandra Miesel's following interstitial passage refers to him as "Stefan Rostomily." A character called "Stef" had died five years before the beginning of "Un-Man." On p. 34, he is referred to a "Stefan Rostomily." Rostomily was the genetic template for the Brotherhood of Un-Men. We see several Un-Men in this story and another later in "Brake." These characters were a potential series. Successive Un-Men could have played the role of a single unstoppable Un-Man.

There are two other potential sub-series later in the Psychotechnic History -

"Gypsy": the first Nomad ship, the Traveler;

"The Pirate": Coordination Service agent, Trevelyan Micah;

The Peregrine: Trevelyan joins the Nomad ship, the Peregrine.

Instead of extending, these two potential series converge. According to Miesel:

"...as Trevelyan had foreseen decades earlier, the self-sufficient, enterprising Nomads bore seeds of knowledge safely through the Third Dark Ages."

-The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3, p. 194.

The knowledge carried by the Nomads would have been increased when Coordinators became Nomads. If "The Chapter Ends" is part of this future history series, then that knowledge included psychotechnics so that the promise of Valti in "Marius" was at last fulfilled.

Future Historical Sources II

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History presents a much shorter list of cited sources:

Enrico Yamatsu, Starward!, described by Sandra Miesel as a "classic history" (Volume 3);

Pilot's Manual, Argus 293 Region;

General Encyclopedic Dictionary;

Diary of Yamagata Tetsuo, Chief of Coordination Service, Argus 293 Region, Stellamont, Nerthus;

the history of the Nomad ships, beginning with the memoirs of Thorkild Erling, Captain of the first Nomad ship, the Traveler.

We read the story of the Traveler both in the short story, "Gypsy," and in a summary when Trevelyan Micah, field agent of the Stellar Union Coordination Service, reads the Nomad history in the library of the Peregrine.

We value Anderson's Technic History as a longer future history series and his Psychotechnic History as a shorter one.

Starward!

Future Historical Sources

Reading history is a good complement to reading a future history series. Historical sources include periodicals, newspapers, journals, memoirs, reports etc whereas a future historian has no such sources outside his own imagination although Poul Anderson successfully fakes them in his Technic History:

Francis Minamoto, Apollo University, Leyburg, Luna, 2057;

Far Adventure, the autobiography of the planetologist, Maeve Downey;

the archives on the University of Fleurville on Esperance;

Tales of the Great Frontier by A.A. Craig;

James Ching's notebooks;

Vance Hall, Commentaries on the Philosophy of Noah Arkwright;

Noah Arkwright, An Introduction to Sophontology;

stories by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren published in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana;

a historical novel about Nicholas van Rijn;

Le Matelot;

the diary of Urwain the Wide-Faring;

data units transferred from the Solar System to the care of the Hermetian Grand Ducal house by van Rijn and Falkayn;

the xenologist, Fluoch of the Mistwood Choth;

the ship's log of the Ythrian spaceship, Gaiian;

letters from Coya Conyon to David Falkayn;

the private journal of Hirharouk of the Wryfields Choth, Captain of the Gaiian;

the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy;

the Galactic Archaeological Society;

Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris, Cis-Betelgeusean Orionis Sectot, 53rd rd., Reel III, frame 28;

Andrei Semich, Dennitzan poet;

an unattributed quotation about Chistopher Wren.

This list shows that such sources become sparser as the Technic History proceeds.

Addendum: See the combox for some further sources.

Thirty Years On Mars

Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), pp. 21-100.

(This volume was published in 2018. James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume I: They Shall Have Stars, was alternatively titled Year 2018!)

In 2004, human beings have been on Mars for thirty years. In that time, they have built cities, mined, smelted and ranched. On this Mars, there are bogs at the poles, woods at the equator, animals and even a few secretive natives left. Martian organisms can sleep through drought and cold. Human beings might derive suspended animation from this but there is no further development of that idea later in the series.

The Martian natives are dying out, of course.

Earlier sf: Martians.

Later sf: no Martians.

Intermediate stages: Martians dying out; Martians extinct; extra-solar colonists of Mars in Anderson's Technic History.

Retro-sf: Martians in alternative timelines.

In 2004

See Forty Years.

In 2004, the rebuilding is not yet complete. Maybe this adds a note of verisimilitude? In Chicago, miles of ruined buildings surround the inhabited sections of what is described as a dying city. Does this mean that everyone is to be relocated? The ruined section has grass-covered streets, creaking joists, pattering, glaring rats, bare rooms full of dust and cobwebs and dust-covered windows that daylight cannot penetrate. Quite a description. And a safe and appropriate place for the interrogation of a secret service agent by anti-government conspirators. We learn that the nationalists of a dozen countries cooperate against world government. They could argue for a federation instead of an enforced union but we gather that what they want is a return to international conflict.

Eventually, an agricultural organization will buy the ruined section of Chicago and the remaking of the world will continue. So progress continues but must be defended.

Formative Events

Some nations and societies have what they regard as founding events, e.g., the United States and the War of Independence. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the establishment of orbiting colonies and space-based industries facilitates recovery from the Chaos and transition from Western to Technic civilization. In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Fourre's coup against Reinach is necessary to prevent a second nuclear war that the human race might not have survived. Thus, the events of "The Saturn Game" in the Technic History and of "Marius" in the Psychotechnic History will be regarded as formative or foundational by all succeeding generations in their respective interstellar histories. In particular, "Marius," with its decisive conflict in the unlit streets and bombed buildings of post-war Europe, contrasts sharply with the technological renewal on display in the following instalment, "Un-Man," to which we must shortly return.

"Spans, Illuminates And Completes ..."

More about how the Earth Book "spans, illuminates and completes...":

the Earth Book  introductions and afterword are fictitiously written in the aftermath of the Terran-Ythrian War that is described in The People of the Wind;

the introductions impart further information about the characters and also about some fictional authors;

we first see Falkayn when he is an apprentice on Ivanhoe in The Trouble Twisters and there is more on Ivanhoe in the Earth Book;

the trader team is founded by van Rijn and has its first mission in The Trouble Twisters, then the Earth Book shows us the team's later mission to Merseia with no reference to van Rijn;

"A Little Knowledge" in the Earth Book features characters to whom van Rijn is a public figure seen on television;

the Earth Book also refers to the Terran Empire and to the planet Aeneas, both important later in the next major period of the Technic History.

The Earth Book

The front cover blurb on my copy of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book of Stormgate proclaims that this volume "Spans, illuminates and completes the magnificent future history of the Polesotechnic League." It does. In the earlier novel, Mirkheim, the Baburites seized Mirkheim so Nicholas van Rijn reassembled his trader team of Hermetian David Falkayn, Wodenite Adzel and Cynthian Chee Lan. The Baburite navy included disaffected Merseians. Falkayn was married to van Rijn's granddaughter, Coya Conyon, and, on one occasion, reminisced about an Ythrian in flight.

Of the twelve works collected in the Earth Book:

five recount human-Ythrian interactions;

two introduce van Rijn;

two refer to Cynthia;

one introduces Adzel;

one introduces the Baburites;

one describes the trader team mission to Merseia and explains Merseian disaffection;

one explains how Falkayn discovered Mirkheim and got together with Coya.

There is more but that is all that I am up for this morning!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all blog readers. See here.

Only 82 pageviews yesterday when there were no new posts but so far 7922 today: what is going on? - unless it is just that the counting mechanism is malfunctioning.

I have finished proofreading a novel but have yet to email my suggested minor corrections etc. It is good to read a feel-good novel at Christmas especially in the current climate. After Christmas, we should get back to rereading Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and, after that, who knows?

I hope that the world will be in better shape this time next year but it will take longer than that to sort out. To conflate two periods of Anderson's Technic History, the Chaos continues and the shadow of God the Hunter is over all.

Time Travel Or Not

I am again focusing on what is or is not time travel. I am mainly thinking of an up-coming novel by SM Stirling but there are previously published works to which we can refer:

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp

Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore

"Delenda Est" by Poul Anderson

Let me present a line of argument. The main difficulty is to clarify the argument enough to avoid ambiguity.

(i) A time traveller is someone who disappears from his "present" and who either has already appeared at an earlier time, eg., Twain's Connecticut Yankee in the Arthurian period, or will reappear at a later time, e.g., Wells' Time Traveller in 802,701 AD.

(ii) A fictional character with memories of having disappeared from his "present" appears in what he thinks is the past during a Roman Empire indistinguishable from the empire of that name that existed in our historical past.

(iii) In this character's remembered history, the Roman Empire fell as it did in ours.

(iv) However, he now prevents the Fall of the Empire.

(v) Therefore, he has not appeared in the past of his remembered history.

(vi) Therefore, he is not a time traveller.

We can discuss where and when he has appeared but, in any case, he has not appeared in the past of his remembered history because, in that history, the Roman Empire fell. If his memories are entirely fallacious, then his remembered history has not first existed, then ceased to exist, but has never existed. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series inconsistently alternates between these two different ways of describing a situation.

If the character's remembered history has never existed, then his appearance in the Roman Empire period is creation ex nihilo. Such creation is counterintuitive but logically possible and is not time travel.

Sol City And The First Empire

Both "The Chapter Ends," allegedly part of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, and "The Star Plunderer," which was definitely incorporated into Anderson's Technic History, refer to Sol City and the First Empire even though, as the Technic History developed, its Imperial capital came to be called Archopolis, not Sol City. In both cases, Anderson projected an empire with slaves into the future although the concepts later diverged. In the Technic History, slaves came to be rationalized as convicted criminals coerced to do useful work or to provide personal services whereas, in "The Chapter Ends," slaves were clearly, like those in the Roman Empire, prisoners from conquered territories forced into life-long servitude:

"...here the slaves had lived and worked and sometimes wept..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League (Riverdale, NY, July 2018, pp. 195-215 AT pp. 209-210.

Different future histories: different concepts.

What Would it Be Like To Live Then?

Dominic Flandry says that, by prolonging the Terran Empire, he gains extra time for people to live in. Each future history series should convey some impression of what it would be like to live in that future, not just the exploits of special cases operating beyond the boundaries of civilization like Falkayn or Flandry.

Robert Heinlein was commended for giving the future a daily life. In "It's Great To Be Back," a couple finish their spell in Luna City, thankfully return home to Earth but then realize that they really belong on the Moon and wind up going back there. Thus, we see something of ordinary life on Earth and Moon in the "Green Hills of Earth" period of the Future History between Harriman's first Moon rocket and the US theocracy.

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" shows domestic life in San Francisco Integrate during the Solar Commonwealth period of Poul Anderson's Technic History. At the end of "The Master Key," Nicholas van Rijn gestures scornfully at:

"'...the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet."

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 275-327 AT p. 27.

This city is Chicago Integrate. Van Rijn asks whether:

"'...they yonder is free?'" (ibid.)

We would like to see some of them and make our own judgment.

The opening passage of "Un-Man" in Anderson's Psychotechnic History informs us that many people have been housed in an apartment building two miles long and three hundred stories high. We want to see inside some of the apartments that are not hideouts for conspirators or secret agents.

Current Matters

I am proofreading a novel on the computer. More about this later. Proofreading, Christmas and other current matters make less time for blogging. 

The blogging agenda, when I can get back to it, is:

How many and how plausible are the technological advances in the early part of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History?

What are the motivations of the enemies of the UN world government in that period?

The Psychotechnic History is worthy of appreciation as a future history series. We, or at least I, appreciate the early period of the UN world government and the much later period of the Nomads even though these two periods are entirely dissimilar and could even have comprised two unrelated series. A good future history series is precisely one that links together different generations, centuries and epochs. We appreciate time passed and distance travelled.

Onward, Earthlings!

Trans-National Organizations

This is a list of successive trans-national organizations. It is obvious at which point Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History diverges from Earth Real history.

League of Nations from 1920

United Nations (UN) from 1945

UN world government from 1965

Solar Union from 2105

Stellar Union from 2900

First Empire, some time after 3200

subsequent interstellar Empire(s)

Galactic civilization, fifty or sixty thousand years after the First Empire

The Empires are at odds with the politics of the rest of this future history series but are definitely stated to have existed in what is presented as the concluding instalment, "The Chapter Ends." The aims of the Psychotechnic Institute (founded 1975; suppressed 2170), lost for many millennia, were eventually retrieved by Galactic psychotechnicians.

Forty Years

According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology, based in part on an earlier chart compiled by Poul Anderson, "Marius," set in the ruins after a nuclear war, happens in 1964 and the next instalment, "Un-Man," in 2004. (This has become what I call a past future.)

Progress in forty years:

Donner spies on men who depart not in a ground vehicle called a car or an automobile but in a flying vehicle called a boat, also described as a shell;

they depart from a landing flange on an apartment building three hundred stories high and two miles long, effectively a single-structure city, maintained by continually audible machines;

from his balcony, Donner sees the park surrounding the building, farm land to the horizon, an old (i.e., no longer used?) highway and airboats overhead.

That is a lot of progress and the text will soon introduce space travel and a well-established Martian colony. Progress was rapid in our version of the twentieth century despite two World Wars but not an all-out nuclear exchange. Maybe the periods between Psychotechnic History instalments should have been longer?

Good Guys, Bad Guys

A school teacher, asked by a pupil for an opinion on the then recent unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Pope, replied, "There are some good people in the world and some bad people in the world and the bad people don't like the good people." Well, yes. I used to think that there were good guys and bad guys such that, if they were asked which side they were on, they would reply, "Good" or "Bad," respectively. It came as a surprise to learn that the "Bad Guys" thought that they were doing good.

"Unfortunately, these happy developments were not to everyone's liking."

-Sandra Miesel, p. 19.

So not everyone thought that these developments were happy. So who are these unhappy people? They are listed later in "Un-Man." We will come across the list when rereading. They include militarists and nationalists unhappy about international peace. We are reminded of a passage in Mirkheim where it is pointed out how many enemies the Polesotechnic League has made for itself. The enemies have comprehensible grievances. They are not just motivated by "badness."

Quieter Times

"The Plague of Masters" ends appropriately:

"[Flandry] stood for a time under the stars, breathing the night wind. Then faintly across ten kilometers, he heard the crash and saw the flare of guns." (XVI, p. 147)

Time, stars, wind and guns: basic themes.

Nias Warouw, who had wanted to remain a big man on a small planet, has no alternative but to seek his fortune elsewhere - yet another story that we would like to see continued.

The next instalment should be not "Hunters of the Sky Cave" but "The Game of Glory" but is it time to consider another future history for a while?

In the Psychotechnic History, we are interested in the, admittedly implausible, descriptions of technological progress so soon after World War III. That conflict occurred in a single year, 1958, when I was nine and attending a boarding school in Scotland. After that, everything diverged. One man's death matters. A different President matters. Hungary, Suez and Berlin have different outcomes. I am summarizing not Poul Anderson's texts but Sandra Miesel's italicized introduction. Miesel becomes the Hloch of the Psychotechnic History:

"1958, the year the H-bombs fell, set human history careening in a new direction. So obvious is this nexus, an entire genre of fantastic fiction asks the question, 'What if World War III had not happened?' Although romantics prefer to imagine alternative twentieth centuries as lost paradises of peace and plenty, the opposite is likelier to be true."

-Sandra Miesel, The Psychotechnic League IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Vollume 1 (New York, October 1017), pp. 3-4 AT p. 3.

"Nexus" is a key concept in Anderson's Time Patrol series. Miesel comments on our reality through a character in another reality, as Anderson does in "Eutopia." (And, in Alan Moore's Watchmen, a superhero comments that the US would have gone mad as nation if it had lost in Vietnam.)

Still citing Miesel:

Fourre struggles against "Chaos" (p. 19) although not "the Chaos" of the Technic History;

famine, plague, want and radioactivity are slowly conquered (well, not very slowly);

the Years of Hunger are followed by the Years of Madness - which sound like Heinlein's Crazy Years;

there are quieter times, global peace, prosperity, space exploration, the Psychotechnic Institute, happy developments...

Space and psyches are external and internal frontiers - or are they? Does this word apply to both? Physically, all that is inside our brains is interacting neurons but they somehow cause consciousness. Mobile organisms interacting with their environments become increasingly sensitive, then conscious, through neuronic interactions. If we understood this process, then we would understand ourselves.

The Twentieth Century

Future histories have to recover from the twentieth century. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, there is mass psychosis in the 1960s, the "Crazy Years," eventually leading to religious dictatorship in the US in the early twenty first century. The Cold War leads to a world Bureaucratic State in James Blish's Cities in Flight and to the CoDominium in Jerry Pournelle's future history. In Isaac Asimov's future history, a radioactive Earth implied that there had been a nuclear war although an alternative explanation had to be concocted when the Robots and Foundation series were combined. Earth recovers from nuclear war at the beginning of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and in his Maurai History and from the Chaos at the beginning of his Technic History. On Earth Real, we have avoided nuclear war so far but are now in the Chaos. By contrast, Larry Niven's Known Space future history shows life becoming more prosperous and comfortable for a considerable period. That is a reasonably comprehensive list of future histories. There are further nuances in other works by Blish and Anderson.

Now I understand why Baen Books' The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volumes 1-3, is so entitled. Sandra Miesel had coined the phrase, "The Psychotechnic League," as a title not just for Volume I of the Psychotechnic History but for that entire History. However, "League" is inappropriate and "Complete" is inaccurate. Maybe we can get a genuinely Complete Psychotechnic History in two volumes with Volume I collecting the eleven pre-FTL instalments and II collecting the eleven FTL, assuming that we agree that all of these instalments really do belong in this future history of course. 

Building The Future

See the Wikipedia article, "The Psychotechnic League," here.

Apparently, Sandra Miesel coined the term, "The Psychotechnic League," as a title for Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History although her new coinage wound up as the title only of Volume I of the collected Psychotechnic History. Since there is no fictional organization called the Psychotechnic League but there is a Polesotechnic League in the Technic History and a Psychotechnic Institute in the Psychotechnic History, the phrase, "Psychotechnic League," can only cause confusion.

Vincent Carter was right to argue that an Earth devastated by nuclear war would not have been able to colonize Mars within a generation. Nevertheless, and despite Anderson's own later disillusionment with this series, I appreciate the sense that it conveys of a united effort to rebuild and progress. This future history is American in form but also Wellsian in theme:

"...the normal human individual...will become generation by generation a new species, differing more widely from that weedy, tragic, pathetic, cruel, fantastic, absurd and sometimes sheerly horrible being who christened himself in a mood of oafish arrogance Homo sapiens."

-HG Wells, The Shape of Things to Come (London, 1974), BOOK THE FIFTH, p. 488.

The Psychotechnic Institute should not try to engineer society but should help individuals to remake themselves.

Parallel Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Technic History is so long, complex and comprehensive that it holds our attention for a considerable period. Comparing it with even one other future history series broadens our mental horizons to a certain extent.

(i) The Technic History passes directly from interplanetary travel to FTL interstellar travel whereas Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History has an intermediate STL period. In both cases, FTL is via a (different) version of hyperspace.

(ii) The Second and Third Dark Ages in the Psychotechnic History correspond to the Time of Troubles and the Long Night in the Technic History. 

(iii) In the Technic History, the First/Terran Empire spans the period from Troubles to Long Night whereas, in the Psychotechnic History, the First and subsequent Empires exist between the Third Dark Ages and the later Galactic civilization. (Here I accept that "The Chapter Ends" is a part of the Psychotechnic History. Its psychotechnicians can be seen as a remote fulfilment of the aims of the originally supressed Psychotechnic Institute. Otherwise, this story becomes a separate piece of future historical writing.)

(iv) Both series culminate in a single work describing mankind more widely distributed in space. In the Technic History, human civilizations have spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy and some populations are ceasing to be human whereas, in "The Chapter Ends," mankind, mentally controlling cosmic energy, migrates to the Galactic Centre, leaving the periphery to the gas-giant-inhabiting Hulduvians. This is also a parallel with some other future histories. In "Watershed," at the end of James Blish's pantropy series, Adapted Men have spread through the galaxy and will even recolonize the now desert planet Earth. In "Safe At Any Speed," at the end of Larry Niven's Known Space series, known space has become the Thousand Worlds and human beings have become genetically lucky.

An Imaginative Novelist

Before I sign off for this evening, here is another imaginative novelist comparing his own narrative to the work of an imaginative novelist:

"The girl gasped. It was a perfect story. As an explanation of the whole mystery, it was the only possible one that was convincing at the same time - and even then it read like the creation of some imaginative novelist's brain. It wanted some digesting."

-Leslie Charteris, "The Policeman With Wings" IN Charteris, Enter The Saint (London, 1968), pp. 75-131 AT 6, pp. 105-106.

This leads us back to Camilleri who leads us back to Anderson.

Good night.

The Shrine

"The Plague of Masters," XIII.

On a branch of a Tree of Ranau, there is a peak-roofed shrine. Djuanda tells Flandry:

"'The gods are there, and a tunnel cut deep into the wood. When a boy is grown, he enters that tunnel for a night. I may not say more.'" (p. 126)

Djuanda's father visibly changes the subject.

I enjoy and benefit from philosophical discussions about whether the gods literally exist but that is not the only question here. If I were a Ranauan youth, then I would want to spend my night in that tunnel. Give the gods an opportunity to manifest themselves if they are going to. Meanwhile, I would meditate in any case.

This should be the last post from Pine Lake. Back to Lancaster tomoz, then the week leading into Christmas with several festivities planned.

Gods be with us.

The Saint

The original Simon Templar, from 1929, is like Dominic Flandry:

flippant;

physically fit;

working tirelessly and ingeniously to subvert his enemies.

Flandry's enemies are external, Merseians and barbarians, whereas Templar's enemies are internal, criminals within British society. However, Flandry also comes into conflict with internals, appeasers like Lord Hauksberg, and the corrupt Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis, Aaron Snelund.

Having just read the first story in Enter The Saint, I wrote the above paragraphs before checking Hank Davis's Introduction to Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire. Davis informs us that Anderson had thought of Flandry as an sf version of the Saint. I spotted the similarity before remembering that it had already been pointed out.

Revolution

"The Plague of Masters," XIII.

Dominic Flandry reflects:

"...revolutions don't originate with slaves or starveling proletarians, but with men who have enough liberty and material well-being to realize how much more they ought to have." (p. 125)

Yes. But maybe their well-being and liberty must be threatened before they are motivated to demand more? But well-being and liberty are periodically threatened. And such men and women can give a lead to slaves and starvelings if there are any such. We do not expect to find an informed discussion of the conditions for revolution in American sf but we find everything somewhere in Poul Anderson's works.

If Biocontrol is not overthrown, then eventually it will fail and everyone on Unan Besar will die. And, until then, everyone must pay hard-earned silvers for antitoxin pills that really cost just half a copper. Anderson has imagined a situation where TINA becomes TIARA.

TINA = There Is No Alternative.

TIARA = There Is A Revolutionary Alternative.

Two Roles Of Future History Series

Isaac Asimov's future history shows us three levels of behind-the-scenes manipulators of civilizations whereas Poul Andesron's Technic History merely shows us civilizations. We get a real sense of life and society on Earth, Hermes, Avalon, Aeneas, Dennitza and Merseia and witness the rise, fall, rise, fall and rise of human interstellar civilizations and the participation of Wodenites, Cynthians and many other species in Technic civilization. I do not really want to get into how Daneel Olivaw and other immortal telepathic robots manipulate the planetary organism, Gaia, which manipulates the Second Foundation which manipulates the Foundation Federation but might be threatened by reclusive Solarians and unknown extra-galactics.

Somebody said that Asimov was alright as long as he stayed with robots. Indeed, Asimov ingeniously deduced every possible consequence of his Laws of Robotics. By contrast, Anderson wrote well about everything, including one story about a redundant robot in his Psychotechnic History. This highlights two different roles of future history series:

the broad sweep of history, with successive generations living in successive periods;

a common background for the re-examination of familiar sfnal ideas.

In some early Psychotechnic History episodes, Anderson reassessed:

Heinleinian Ideas

longevity/immortality (Future History, Volume IV)

generation ship (Vol. V)

Asimovian Ideas

robots (I, Robot etc)

a predictive science of society (Foundation etc)

Combined

the application of a predictive science of society to the crew of a generation ship

Other Psychotechnic History themes are:

recovery from nuclear war

the attempt to build a utopian society

interplanetary colonization

faster than light interstellar travel

interstellar and Galactic civilization

non-humanoid aliens

mental powers 

When Does A Story Begin?

(This post will get to Dominic Flandry after some other examples.)

 Genesis begins with creation but how did God begin? Indian mythologies tell us that there was no beginning.

When Inspector Montalbano asks Sergeant Fazio to research a suspect, Fazio takes a sheet of paper from his pocket and begins with the dates of births of the suspect's parents, to Montalbano's annoyance. A Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, would always find an Anglican Bishop somewhere in the ancestry of a philosopher that he wanted to discuss.

By contrast, Leslie Charteris begins his narrative long after the beginning of the Saint's criminal/crime-fighting career. In Enter The Saint, Templar already has an organization, has had many adventures and is supremely confident of his ability to beat six thugs in a fist fight.

Ensign Flandry looks like a reasonable beginning. Nineteen year old Flandry transfers to Intelligence, has his first encounter with the Merseians and learns something that costs him his youth. However, he transferred from a flying unit. We did not see his recruitment, let alone his childhood. Persis d'Io learns that she was not his first and that he knew exactly what he was doing with her. Young Dominic must have learned all this somewhere. An earlier story remains to be told.

Addendum: I have now read that some even earlier Saint stories were collected later after being rewritten.

In The Enemy Stronghold

"The Plague of Masters," XII.

The vast sweep of history is composed of milliards of details such as a Terran Intelligence officer completing a mission on the isolated planet, Unan Besar. Now we come to the kind of scene that I used to enjoy in action-adventure films. Our heroes, in this case Flandry and Kemul, walk, disguised and unchallenged, through an enemy stronghold, in this case Biocontrol Central. As Flandry reflects, that they can do this demonstrates the long-term decadent sloppiness of Biocontrol. 

In UNCLE HQ, two men wearing security badges walked along a corridor toward a third man seated behind a desk. Suddenly alarms sounded. They had not known that they needed a different colour of badge to penetrate above a certain level in the building. Knowing that the alarms must apply to them, they pulled out guns and ran towards the man behind the desk who also took some measures which I don't remember. In another episode, a THRUSH double of Solo walked right into Waverley's office but did not kill him because he was after something else. I used to live for such stuff but nowadays would not value the Flandry series if it consisted only of this kind of suspense followed by fights, flights and escapes - which Anderson writes well here.

The Further Future

The previous post shows that Poul Anderson's Technic History is a future history of more than one species. We can trace the activities of Terrans, Ythrians and Merseians over several centuries. However, the four post-Imperial instalments present the further future only of humanity. Human beings are no longer called "Terrans" because they have left Terra far behind and it might not even still exist. We are informed that human beings still interact with other intelligent species but that all happens off-stage. The stories focus on communicational and other problems between the dispersed branches of humanity. Some planetary populations are differentiating into distinct species.

What has become of Ythrians, Merseians, Wodenites, Cynthians etc? Do the Ymirites carry on as before, unaffected by the comings and goings of oxygen-breathers? Dominic Flandry had said that the dual species planet, Avalon, showed promise and Erinnian had said that Avalonian human beings no longer maintained the institution of government. We would like to know what has happened on Avalon and also on Dennitza with its human and Merseian populations. Avalon was in the Domain, not in the Empire, and Dennitza was well prepared to survive the Empire.

As some Star Trek film publicity said, "The adventure continues..."

Interstellar Realms

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, many planets bear intelligent species. Usually, although not always, only one such species originates on any given planet. Tigeries and Seadwellers are native to Starkad. In the Patrician System, Imhotep has been settled by human beings and by both Starkadian species whereas Patricius has been settled by human beings and Donarrians. In the Zorian System, Dennitza has been settled by human beings and Merseians.

Many species become spacefarers. A few spacefaring species build interstellar realms, a long-drawn-out process that we see happen three times. The Terran Empire is proclaimed in "The Star Plunderer," grows in "Sargasso of Lost Starships" and The People of the Wind, is defended by Dominic Flandry in thirteen works and has fallen by "A Tragedy of Errors." Ythrians are planet-bound when first contacted by the Grand Survey in "Wings of Victory," have become interstellar travellers in "The Problem of Pain" and "Lodestar" and have built the Domain of Ythri by the time of The People of the Wind. Merseians are planet-bound when first contacted by the Grand Survey, have become interplanetary travellers in "Day of Burning," have become a growing threat in The People of the Wind and are an actual threat in Flandry's time. (The People of the Wind emerges as a major turning point which it is also on other grounds.)

Interstellar realms interact. Terran Empire and Ythrian Domain wage war in The People of the Wind but unite against Merseia in The Day of Their Return. The Dispersal of Ymir overlaps with the realms of oxygen breathing species because the Ymirites are hydrogen breathers who need Jovoid, not terrestroid, planets. In the Solar System, Jupiter is colonized by Ymirites and becomes part of the Dispersal whereas Mars is colonized by "Martians" and remains in the Solar Commonwealth, then the Terran Empire.

Gorzun/Gorrazan, part of the Baldic League which sacked Earth, builds a Realm that Chunderban Desai in the Imperial period dismisses as a mere remnant. Betelgeuse, a buffer state between Terra and Merseia, holds only a few nearby planetary systems for defensive purposes.

I think that that is a comprehensive report.

Rewrites

If an author writes a series over a long period of time, should he rewrite earlier instalments when they are republished? In Tales of Known Space, Larry Niven judged that his audience would prefer to read the unchanged texts. Leslie Charteris decided against revising Enter The Saint (1930) when it was republished in 1963. (After 1963, the next Saint novel was really written by Harry Harrison.)

Both Niven and Charteris are relevant to Poul Anderson, Niven because he is a fellow future historian, Charteris because both Charteris' Simon Templar, the Saint, and Anderson's David Falkayn used the alias, Sebastian Tombs, i.e., Anderson acknowledged Charteris.

In Anderson's Technic History, the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," had to be rewritten to make it consistent with the series whereas I think that the early Dominic Flandry stories were rewritten merely as an improvement exercise. In any case, we value both the changed and the unchanged versions as long as we can continue to have access to both.

The two ways to read the Technic History are both with different reading orders and with different versions of some of the texts. Either way, the original version of "Margin of Profit" is outside the History. This story had already been rewritten when it was collected for the first time in The Earth Book of Stormgate.

Coincidences

The following quotation is uncannily relevant to a recent discussion on this blog:

"...he was contemplating this string of coincidences of the sort that one finds both in second-rate detective novels and in the tritest everyday reality..."

-Andrea Camilleri, The Scent of the Night (London, 2007), FIVE, p. 61.

See Wind And Stereodrama + combox.

Now I really am trying to read Camilleri and not to blog again until tomoz.

From "Tiger By The Tail" To "The Saturn Game" II

I forgot to mention that, after Argos but before Flandry, the Terran Empire tried to annex Falkayn's colony planet, Avalon, which was successfully defended by, among many others, Tabitha Falkayn, a direct descendant of David, and that, during Flandry's lifetime, an Avalonian Ythrian of Stormgate Choth helped to defend the Empire against the Merseians, the continuing villains who had been introduced in that second Flandry story, "Honorable Enemies." We have discussed these details and more before but the point that I am always trying to make is the amazing degree of interconnectedness between the different narrative strands of the Technic History and the way to make this point is to summarize the relevant narratives yet again. Aycharaych, the Chereionite telepath working with the Merseians and introduced in "Honorable Enemies," is the title character of the culminating Captain Flandry instalment, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, which is the fourth last volume in the original publication order of the Technic History. Our attention as readers passes back and forth along the fictional chronology, tracing every detail and connection.

Two Ythrian-employed human explorers of the planet Gray, the future Avalon, in "The Problem of Pain" are from Aeneas, the planet where Erinnian of Stormgate later helps to thwart Aycharaych.

Tabitha Falkayn, brought up by Ythrians on Avalon, is Hrill of Highsky Choth but marries Christopher Holm, who is Arinnian of Stormgate. Tabitha's experience partly parallels that of Flandry's daughter, Diana Crowfeather, who grows up spending time among Tigeries on Imhotep at a time when the last scheme of Aycharaych, now deceased or disappeared, reaches fruition.