Hloch's Audience

In "The Problem of Pain," an unnamed human first person narrator converses with Peter Berg who tries to understand Ythrians. In his Earth Book Introduction to "The Problem of Pain," the Ythrian Hloch tries to understand human beings:

"The value of [the story] lies in the human look on us, a look which tried to reach down into the spirit and thereby, maychance, now opens for us a glimpse into theirs.

"Hloch of the Stormgate Choth

"The Earth Book Of Stormgate"

 

Thus, Hloch adds a new layer of reflection that was not present in the originally published story.

 

Hloch is an Avalonian, is a member of a choth that has more human members than most and edits a book that might be read by any Avalonian. Despite all this, he seems specifically to address his fellow Ythrians in his own choth. However, we can vouch that the Earth Book is of interest to human readers.

Sol City

Of course, Poul Anderson wrote "The Star Plunderer" (1952) nine years before he initiated the Technic History in "A Plague of Masters" (1961). Thus, nothing in the fictional introduction to "The Star Plunderer" was originally intended to inform its readers about a future history. However, we now try to fit whatever is written in this introduction into what we know about the History of Technic Civilization. We are like Sherlockians trying to resolve inconsistencies in Conan Doyle's texts.

"The Star Plunderer" features Manuel Argos who will found the Terran Empire. In Dominic Flandry's time, the Imperial capital will be Archopolis, Terra. Donvar Ayeghen, author of the Introduction to "The Star Plunderer," tells us that the story is Chapter V of the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy, and that this book, written in the early period of the First Empire, was excavated from the ruins of Sol City, Terra.

We deduce that:

there are at least two Empires;

the capital of a later Empire will be not Archopolis but Sol City;

that city is ruined in Ayeghen's time;

Ayeghen is a long way in the future after Manuel and even after Flandry.

 

New thought: might Ayeghen be even later than the Commonalty period in "Starfog," the last episode of the Technic History?

 

References to Sol City and a First Empire link "The Star Plunderer" to "The Chapter Ends" in Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Fictional Introductions

In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, there are separate Acknowledgements for:

Introduction to "Wingless"

"Wingless"

Introduction to "Rescue on Avalon"

"Rescue on Avalon"

"The Star Plunderer" (including the Introduction)

Introduction to "Sargasso of Lost Starships"

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

The People Of The Wind

 

In an introduction properly so called, the author, an editor or someone else invited by an editor directly addresses the reader about the fictional text. Thus, the introduction is not part of the fiction. That is not the case here. These introductions are fictional and are of two types.

First, The People Of The Wind has no introduction.

Secondly, the "Introduction," so called, to "The Star Plunderer" is simply the opening passage of the fictional text. The narrative, set in our future, is "introduced" by an archaeologist living in a further future. His introduction has always been the first part of the story from its first publication.

Thirdly, the Introductions to "Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon" are also fictional but were added by Poul Anderson when the stories were collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate. Hence, their separate Acknowledgements.

Fourthly, the Introduction to "Sargasso..." is fictional and was added by the Compiler, Hank Davis, in Rise Of The Terran Empire. Hence, its separate Acknowledgement. 

 

Complicated but worth delving into. 

Companion Volumes In A Unique Way

The People Of The Wind, a novel, and The Earth Book Of Stormgate, a collection, are companion volumes in a unique way. The People Of The Wind is set mostly on the planet Avalon whereas the Earth Book is fictitiously published there. A character in the former is an author of the latter. In the novel, Governor Saracoglu summarizes events that had led to the colonization of Avalon and the Earth Book collects narratives about some of those events. Some of these accounts were previously published on Avalon or elsewhere as works of fiction although based on real events. Thus, authors put fictional conversations into the mouths of real people. Hloch, the editor of the Earth Book, wants to record the events that had led to the founding of his own choth, Stormgate, so he does not include any out and out fiction whereas, in The Technic Civilization Saga, the last Earth Book installment is followed by "The Star Plunderer," which might be historical fiction, and by "Sargasso of Lost Starships," which almost certainly is. The Technic History definitely includes different kinds of narratives. It opens with:

a tetralogy (four volumes about the Polesotechnic League);

a diptych (the two Avalonian companion volumes);

a trilogy (Young Flandry).

What The Previous Post Left Out

See The Best Future History Collection.

No post is ever comprehensive enough to do full justice to its subject matter. In the Earth Book, as discussed in the previous post (see the above link), the four Ythrian short stories and the new introductions between them cover:

the exploration of the planet Ythri and a discovery about Ythrian physiology;

the exploration of the planet Gray/Avalon, the nature of the Ythrian New Faith with some information about the Old Faith and a first mention of the planet Aeneas;

human and Ythrian colonization of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon;

joint colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon;

the aftermath of the Terran War on Avalon that is described in The People Of The Wind.

In that novel, Ekrem Saracoglu, Imperial Governor of Sector Pacis, summarizes the relevant history:

500 years ago, the same Grand Survey ship discovered Ythri and Gray;

Gray, not renamed Avalon until much later, was colonizeable, but too far from Terra;

Ythri, forty light-years further away, began to trade with Technic civilization;

350 years ago, 50 years before the collapse of the Polesotechnic League, a human company led by an old trade pioneer proposed colonization of Avalon under Ythrian protection;

Ythrians agreed and some joined the colony;

the Troubles led to the formation of the Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri;

the Avalonians, as they now were, became united in adversity.

Although Saracoglu does not know it yet, the Avalonians are determined to remain in the Domain despite his attempt to "rectify" the border.

The Best Future History Collection

The Earth Book Of Stormgate:

collects 12 of the 43 installments of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization;

adds 12 introductions and 1 afterword ingeniously derived from the background details of the Ythrian novel, The People Of The Wind;

overlaps by 7 installments with the 11 collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method;

both begins and ends with two Ythrian short stories;

completes the Polesotechnic League series in the intervening eight installments;

mentions Ythri in the third installment and places Nicholas van Rijn in an Ythrian spaceship in the tenth installment;

includes both the first short story and the first novel about Nicholas van Rijn;

introduces Adzel;

discloses important information about David Falkayn's dealings with both Merseia and Mirkheim;

even follows up on Ivanhoe, the first planet where we saw Falkayn in action.

I have said it all before but I can never get enough of the Earth Book. No other future history series that I know of has anything like it.

Three Just Men

Mark Danzig

"'...we want to get home when we're finished here. We should be in time for the Bar-Mitzvah of a great-grandson or two.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 1-73 AT I, p. 5.

 

"Once, most softly, he had offered Kaddish." (IV, p. 56)

 

Martin Schuster

He has sent David Falkayn into danger:

 

"'Oh, God. I sent him there...I should have gone myself...He was my apprentice.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Three-Cornered" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 199-261 AT VI, p. 247.

When it is pointed out to him that it is impossible to upset a religion in an afternoon:

"'Oh, sure. I know that...The goyim have been working on mine for two or three thousand years and got nowhere.'" (p. 256)

Max Abrams

"Where had young Flandry been from, and what memories did he carry to darkness?

"On a sudden impulse Abrams put down his cigar, bent his head, and inwardly recited the Kaddish."

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER TWO, p. 18.

I could have called this post "Three Jewish Men" but I thought that blog readers would prefer to find out for themselves.

Introducing The Terran Empire

 

I think that the most accurate summary of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate is one that I formulated a while back, namely that the Earth Book completes the story of the Polesotechnic League and almost completes the story of human-Ythrian interactions. By implication, this summary informs us first that there has already been information about the League (in fact, four volumes), secondly that there has already been information about human beings and Ythrians (one novel) and thirdly that there will be more about the latter. This is true as far as it goes but what it leaves out is that, if we read the Technic History in this order, with the Earth Book as Volume VI, then that novel, The People Of The Wind, introduces not only human beings and Ythrians sharing the planet Avalon but also the Terran Empire which tries to annex Avalon and, of course, most of the post-Earth Book Technic History, nine of ten volumes, is about the Empire.

In The People Of The Wind, Tabitha Falkayn tells us that:

the Empire has grown since Manuel I;

some planets, like Cynthia, willingly joined the Empire;

others were acquired by purchase, exchange or conquest;

the Empire is about 400 light-years across as against the Ythrian Domain's 80.

 

Much more information will follow. Reading the History in this order, we do not yet know that there is a short story about Manuel Argos, Founder of the Terran Empire. 

Changing Perspectives

Poul Anderson's Technic History is dynamic because its perspective keeps changing. Hloch's afterword to The Earth Book Of Stormgate was written to be read as the concluding page of a substantial volume, specifically as:

Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 434.

However, when the Technic History is collected in the seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, this afterword appears at the mid-point of Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, even thought the Earth Book is written after the events of The People Of The Wind which appears at the end of Volume III. It follows that:

Hloch also writes after the events of "The Star Plunderer" and "Sargasso of Lost Starships," both of which appear between his afterword and The People Of The Wind;

Hloch writes during the Terran Empire period although before the lifetime of Dominic Flandry.

"The Star Plunderer," in which Mauel Argos proclaims the Terran Empire, is introduced not by Hloch of Stormgate Choth but by Donvar Ayeghen of the Galactic Archaeological Society who lives not only after Hloch but so long after the Terran Empire that he refers to it as the First Empire even though we have no information about any subsequent Empires.

I hope that I have conveyed what I meant by changing perspectives.

(I am currently unable to send emails but that this will be resolved by tomorrow.)

(It is resolved.)

The Polesotechnic League In Its Glory

"Here is a story of no large import, save that it gives a picture from within of Terran society when the Polesotechnic League was in its glory..."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION HOW TO BE ETHNIC IN ONE EASY LESSON IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-176 AT p. 176.

 

"The following tale is here because it shows a little more of the philosophy and practice which once animated the Polesotechnic League. Grip well: already these were becoming archaic, if not obsolete."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION ESAU IN The Van Rijn Method, p. 517 AT p. 517.

 

(The fictional author of both introductions is Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon, writing in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.)

 

Both stories are set during the lifetime of Nicholas van Rijn and there are only a few years or at most a decade between them. Yet the League is said to have gone from glory to archaism. This is one point in the Technic History when more time was needed for events to unfold.

Creating Universes

I am reading about Mike Carey's characters creating universes in his graphic fiction series, Lucifer, and therefore also remembering how certain prose sf writers address the creation of the universe.

Keith Denison of the Time Patrol, when captured in ancient Persia, kicks his timecycle into time-drive:

"'It was only a few hours in this century, then it probably went clear back to the Beginning.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 55-112  AT 6, p. 83.

 

Reading this sentence, we might imagine that Time Patrol temporal vehicles "travel through time" by enduring either futureward or pastward time dilation. This is the kind of time travel undergone by Wells's Time Machine, by the mutant time travelers in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and by the "time projector" in Anderson's "Flight to Forever." However, Time Patrol vehicles jump directly from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another in zero subjective time. Therefore, if Denison's vehicle did go to the Beginning, then it did so without traversing all the intervening time. It follows that the Danellians and their Patrol can have instant access to the Beginning when they can directly observe the earliest events, provided that they are adequately protected from that hostile environment. But we are told nothing else about the Beginning. (In an episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor glanced into a book about the creation of the universe and said something like: "Wrong on the first page! They should have asked someone who was there!" That should have been "...someone who was then!")

 

In other works by Anderson:

 

both the time projector and a relativistic spaceship pass from the end to the beginning of the universe;

 

the Elder Race not only travels between universes but is present at the formation of a monobloc with the possibility of influencing and entering the subsequent universe;

 

time travel experiments confirm the otherwise empty philosophical speculation that the universe, complete with false memories, records, geology etc, began to exist relatively recently.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse series, consciousness, manifesting as either deities or as demons, passed from an old to a new universe.

 

In works by James Blish:

 

energy beings called "Angels" came into existence in the first twenty minutes of the universe and will last as long as it does;

New Earthmen and Hevians survive a cosmic collision long enough to become new monoblocs.

From GENESIS To GENESIS

It may be thought that the works listed in the preceding post are too dissimilar in content and quality to be anything more than a nominal sequence. However, that is kind of the point. A long odyssey goes to many places. Geoffrey of Monmouth's History Of The Kings Of Britain, a major source on Arthur and Merlin, begins by tracing the Britons back to Troy just as Virgil's Aeneid had traced the Romans back to Troy.

There are other long sequences.

A Torah scroll in a synagogue

A Bible on an eagle lectern in a church

A Koran in a mosque

A Granth in a gurdwara

Milton's Paradise Lost, retelling the Biblical narrative

fiction quoting scripture

The Bible incorporates the entire text of the Torah.

The Koran incorporates Biblical stories and the prophetic line.

Some Granth hymns were written by Muslims.

Poul Anderson frequently quotes the Bible.

James Blish quotes the Bible and, in The Triumph Of Time, the Koran.

 

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

Genesis by Poul Anderson

 

Anderson's Genesis asks whether it would be right to re-create human beings and thus, by implication, whether it would have been right to create us in the first place. Milton's Adam, quoted on the title page of Frankenstein, asks:

 

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man? did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me...?

-copied from here.

A Literary Odyssey

OK.

European literature begins with Homer's Iliad and Odyysey.

Virgil followed and imitated Homer's epics with his Aeneid.

Somewhere I read a comparison of the Time Traveler's itinerary in 802,701 A.D. with the Odyysey. (This is the weak link because I can't remember where I read it.)

James Joyce wrote Ulysses.

Stanley G. Weinbaum wrote "A Martian Odyssey."

Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry refers to "...blooded horses stamp[ing] on the ringing plains of Ilion..."

Sometimes it feel as if literature and fiction are one long series or at least sequence. 

Where To Start?

Robert Heinlein's Future History begins on Earth. An escape velocity rocket fuel is about to be developed at the end of the fourth story. The first Moon landing happens off-stage in the fifth story. People are in space from the sixth story although there is an interregnum of interplanetary travel in Volume III. The World Federation has been established in Volume II and FTL interstellar travel begins in Volume IV.

Poul Anderson's Technic History begins off Earth. We see explorers on Iapetus, on Ythri and on Gray/Avalon before seeing Nicholas van Rijn, James Ching and Adzel on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth period. FTL interstellar travel has begun in the second story. Ironically, it is Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon who informs us of the establishment of the Solar Commonwealth in his introduction to the third story.

Anderson follows and transcends Heinlein.

Between Future and Technic Histories, Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins on Earth in the aftermath of World War III, differing little as yet from the aftermath of WWII. Space travel and post-nuclear war used to be the two kinds of sf story.

Connections

The diverse installments collected in The Van Rijn Method (see previous post) are pulled together not by any single narrative thread but by multiple interconnections:

two of the eleven installments are about Ythrians;

three are about Nicholas van Rijn;

another installment, "Esau," is about a one-off character, Emil Dalmady, but shows Dalmady in conversation with his employer, van Rijn;

two are about David Falkayn;

the first Falkayn story, "The Three-Cornered Wheel," is set on the planet, Ivanhoe, which is also the setting of "The Season of Forgiveness";

in the second Falkayn story, "A Sun Invisible," Falkayn has started to work for van Rijn's company, Solar Spice & Liquors;

the first Ythrian story, "Wings of Victory," mentions Hermes, Falkayn's home planet, and also Woden, home planet of Adzel who appears in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

Thus, directly or indirectly, ten of the eleven installments are interconnected. There are even more connections with later volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga but here we are focusing only on Volume I.

Jim Ching reflects wistfully:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)"

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT 183.

We read about Cynthia, Gorzun and Ythri. So far, Jim also has only heard or read about these planets. Thus, he speaks for the readers when he wishes that he could visit them. Maybe this is a taste of metafiction.

The Richest Volume In The Technic Civilization Saga?

Is Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, the richest volume in The Technic Civilization Saga? 

First, it collects eleven installments of the Technic History, more than any other. The others are:

II, 7

III, 6

IV, 3

V, 4

VI, 6

VII, 6

The number of installments in each volume differs this much because several of the installments are novels, e.g., Volume IV, Young Flandry, collects a trilogy, three novels.

Secondly, Volume I must introduce the Technic History. Characters do not begin to recur until the seventh installment.

Thirdly, Five stories, "The Saturn Game," Wings of Victory," "The Problem of Pain," "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "The Season of Forgiveness," are about characters with problems and have no characters in common. Just one of these characters, Adzel, will return in Volumes II and III but we do not know that yet when reading Volume I. 

Parallels Between The Psychotechnic And Technic Future Histories

(i) In both histories, Earth is unified in order to end the destruction caused by warring nation-states. In the Psychotechnic History, a U.N. world government is established in 1965 and the Solar Union is founded in 2105 whereas, in the Technic History, the Solar Commonwealth is established in the twenty-second century.

(ii) In the Psychotechnic History, hyperdrive is invented in 2784 whereas, in the Technic History, it is discovered in the twenty-second century although these are different kinds of hyperdrive.

(iii) In the Psychotechnic History, the Second Dark Ages begin in 2300 and the Third in 3200 whereas, in the Technic History, the Time of Troubles is in the twenty-seventh century and the Long Night is in the mid-fourth millennium.

(iv) In the Psychotechnic History, the Second Dark Ages and the invention of hyperdrive separate the Solar Union from the Stellar Union, the latter founded in 2900, whereas, in the Technic History, the Troubles separate the Solar Commonwealth from the Terran Empire, the latter proclaimed about 2700.

(v) In the Psychotechnic History, the Third Dark Ages are followed by human evacuation of the galactic periphery and migration to the galactic center whereas, in the Technic History, the Long Night is followed by the dispersal of human civilizations through several spiral arms.

(vi) Both histories have a chronology compiled by Sandra Miesel.

Two Realizations On Iapetus

"The Saturn Game," IV.

Scobie and Broberg realize that, to escape from the game, they must kill their personae, thus permanently ending their participation in this or indeed any other psychodrama. The reader wonders whether the characters have simultaneously killed themselves in reality but, after a double paragraph space, we learn that they have not:

"'That was...a nightmare.' Broberg sounded barely awake.

"Scobie's voice shook. 'Necessary, I think, for both of us.'" (p. 70)

 

This recalls Carl Farness's realization in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" that he must play the role of Odin betraying his followers, the difference being that Carl's case causes many real deaths. 

 

Next, Broberg experiences a classic Andersonian moment of realization. She refers conversationally to "warmth," then:

"'Warmth!' she screamed, shrill as the cry of a hawk on the wing." (p. 71)

She has realized how they can use heat to make a beacon to bring help. Four explorers have been in danger, three survive and much is learned about the dangers of psychodrama.

Which Reality?

The moral of the episode summarized in the preceding post is that reality overwhelms fantasy. But it matters which reality we inhabit. When the scientist, Hess, is confronted by a powerful demon, the Sabbath Goat, that he has helped to conjure, he reverts to his former skepticism, denies that the Goat even exists and runs straight at it:

"The Sabbath Goat opened Its great mouth and gulped him down like a fly."

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT 17, p. 423.

I take that to mean that, in this (fictional) reality, the Goat does literally exist! He is not a psychological projection or "'...mushroom dream...'" (ibid.) etc.

 

The Goat swallowing Hess is the exact equivalent of the moment in "The Saturn Game" when:

 

"The ridge cracked asunder and fell in shards." (p. 37)

 

Someone denies reality. Reality intervenes.

Fantasy And Reality II

"The Saturn Game."

Whatever the three game players discover on Iapetus is interpreted in terms of their shared fantasy.

A large crater is:

"'...the Elf King's Dance Hall, which the Lord of the Dance built for him -'" (III, p. 33)

A glacier caused by a cometary impact is:

"'...the City of Ice, made with starstones out of that which a god called down from heaven...'" (II, p. 22)

A cliff too steep to climb is "...the fortress wall." (III, p. 33)

A gouge plowed by a meteorite was caused:

"...in the war between the gods and the magicians, when stones chanted down from the sky wrought havoc so accursed that none dared afterward rebuild." (ibid.)

Scobie remembers nothing of scientific significance since starting to climb the glacier which now shudders, cracks and dumps the explorers into the crater - the Elf King's Dance Hall - under an avalanche.

Poul Anderson's Many Achievements

See Dates In Future Histories.

Poul Anderson not only wrote more future histories than any other author but also created two ways to unify all future histories written by himself and others. They could be either alternative timelines accessible from the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, or divergent timelines investigated and deleted by the Time Patrol. Holmes and Watson show up both in the Old Phoenix and in a Time Patrol case.

Furthermore, multiple future histories, the Old Phoenix sequence and the unique Time Patrol series do not exhaust Anderson's achievements which also include heroic fantasy, historical fantasy, historical fiction, detective fiction, hard sf, poetry, non-fiction and time travel fiction with the alternative premise of an immutable timeline. That might be a complete list but I am not sure.

Fantasy And Reality

Usually, fantasy and realistic fiction don't mix. It would be unacceptable if magic were suddenly to work as a deus ex machina on the last page of a contemporary novel. But authors can be creative.

Characters from fictional works of different genres can meet in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix - as long as they don't meet anywhere else.

In a biographical film about CS Lewis, it would be easy to alternate scenes of real life and of Narnia provided that it was understood that Narnia remained imagination/fiction. However, in Shadowlands, a child looks into a wardrobe - and it is only a wardrobe.

In Dornford Yates's novels, characters who have visited a fantasy realm/magical country somewhere on the border between France and Spain interact with characters who have not - but any reference to the magic is confined to a single novel.

In "The Saturn Game," explorers who have just landed on Iapetus behold a glacier:

"Broberg was the first to breathe forth a word. 'The City of Ice.'

"'Magic,' said Garcilasco as low. 'My spirit could lose itself forever, wanderin' yonder. I'm not sure I'd mind. My cave is nothin' like this, nothin' -'

"'Wait a minute,' snapped Danzig in alarm." (II, p. 9)

Broberg and Garcilasco are characters in a hard sf story who are enacting a fantasy. Anderson could easily have written both the hard sf and the fantasy but this time confines himself to the former - except insofar as he tells us what the game players are imagining.

In a work that is an avowed fantasy, there is no need to rein in remarks like Garcilaso's above about a spirit losing itself forever.

"The Lapps believe that it is unwise in any way to attract the attention of the dancing northern lights, or they will carry you off into the sky to be one with them forever."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Brief Lives (New York, 1994), Chapter 4, p. 1, panel 4, caption 1.

So far, that is merely a statement about what some people believe. However, read panel 4, caption 2:

"The alderman is old enough to know..."

(Wait for it.)

"...how rarely this happens."

Dates In Future Histories

From calculations made here, we may infer that, in 2022, Jean Broberg is seven plus years of age and Mark Danzig is twenty-five plus. But this is not our 2022. "The Saturn Game" was published in 1981. Between 1981 and 2057 in the Technic History timeline, there is the Chaos and a massive space program launched by more than one country. The J. Peter Valk goes to Mars, then the Vladimir is lost en route to Mercury and a Britannic-American consortium launches the Chronos which takes eight years to reach Saturn. The Technic History timeline must diverge from ours before 2022 and probably before Danzig's birth about 1997. 2022 is the year in our timeline when I happen to be writing this post and the Technic History will have passed through its version of a 2022 but otherwise this date has no particular significance.

The Chronology for Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History has the Planetary Engineering Corps founded in 2055. 

Isaac Asimov's Susan Calvin, born in 1982, retires at age seventy-five and dies aged eighty-two and Stephen Byerley completes his second term as World Co-ordinator in 2052. 

Despite the title of its Volume III, Revolt In 2100, Robert Heinlein's Future History has the Second American Revolution occurring before 2075. Volumes I and II of the Future History cover the period 1951-2000.

However, the ends of these future histories remain a long way in the future and some other future histories go even further: Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men and Star Maker and Anderson's Genesis.

Longevity And The Unexpected

"The Saturn Game," I.

Jean Broberg:

"At her age of forty-two, despite longevity treatment, the reddish-brown hair that fell to her shoulders was becoming streaked with white, and lines were engraved around large grey eyes." (p. 4)

Mark Danzig:

"At sixty, thanks to his habits as well as to longevity, he kept springiness in a lank frame..." (ibid.)

There will be antisenescence later in the Technic History. We note that longevity treatment has already begun in this opening installment. Minamoto's report which introduces the story is published in 2057. Thus, Broberg was born sometime before 2015 and Danzig sometime before 1997.

Garcilasco defends the role playing on the grounds that they will not land on Iapetus for a while and the ship is on automatic till then but Danzig reminds him that they must always be on watch for the unexpected. This consistent theme of every story of space exploration written by Poul Anderson links the opening and closing installments of the Technic History, "The Saturn Game" and "Starfog."

Planets And People

Approaching Iapetus:

"'Are you calling Jean a liar?' he growled...

"'Please!' Broberg exclaimed. 'Not a quarrel, Colin.'"

-"The Saturn Game," I, pp. 3-4.

 

Approaching Ythri:

 

"'Mind your manners...'

"'Please.' Yukiko reached from her turret and laid a hand on either man's shoulder. 'Please don't quarrel...when we're about to meet a whole new history.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-102 AT p. 83.

 

Men go to other planets - and take themselves with them.

Strange Punctuation

"The Saturn Game," I.

After the first introductory Minamoto extract, we read a curiously punctuated dialogue that makes sense as we read on:

"'The City of Ice is now on my horizon,' Kendrick says. Its towers gleam white." (p. 2)

This first paragraph continues in this wise with Kendrick's words in inverted commas but the descriptions of him and his surroundings in italics. The words are spoken aloud by Colin Scobie who role-plays Kendrick as a small spacecraft transports him and his three companions from the solar sail ship, the Chronos, to the Saturnian moon, Iapetus.

The second paragraph begins:

"'Yes, I see the griffin,' Ricia tells him..." (ibid.)

Jean Broberg role plays Ricia, Kendrick's lover.

Third paragraph:

"'Hold there,' warns Alvarlan from his cave of arcana ten thousand leagues away." (ibid.)

Luis Garcilaso, sitting beside the others, role plays Alvarlan.

Kendrick - Sir Kendrick of the Isles - replies in the fourth paragraph, saying that he will:

"'...spy out city and castle.'" (ibid.)

Fifth paragraph:

"'I thought you were supposed to spy out Iapetus,' Mark Danzig.interrupted.

"His dry tone startled the three others into alertness." (ibid.)

 

The alert reader of Poul Anderson's text or of this blog will have gathered that Danzig does not role play, also that his three colleagues should not need to be alertened while approaching Iapetus. Their responses to Danzig's interruption indicate their characters: Broberg embarrassed; Scobie irritated; Garcilaso shrugging and grinning. But Garcilaso looks at his pilot console which surely he should have been doing in the first place. We have reached the top of page 3.

Update on other reading, remembering that Poul Anderson exists in a wider context. Solzhenitsyn's Lenin In Zurich went to the wrong Library so I haven't got it yet. I have been given an Annotated Ulysses so I might make some progress with that. Onward, Earthlings.

In The CHRONOS

I like the two passages in "The Saturn Game" that are flashbacks to life in the Chronos. In the first, Delia Ames walks out on Colin Scobie because he angrily refuses to phase out of the game. Years ago at an sf con, we heard of a fan who had attended an earlier con without his wife. When asked where she was, he replied, "She told me that I had to choose between her and fandom so here I am..."

In the second flashback, Kendrick and Ricia, the characters played by Scobie and Jean Broberg, become lovers although nothing like that happens between Scobie and Broberg. Does this sound as if it might become difficult?

Also relevant:

Ames thinks that Scobie is attracted to Broberg;

Scobie thinks that Broberg is attractive;

Broberg is married.

 

Here are complicated relationships between characters appearing only in this single story.

Troubles In The Polesotechnic League III

Satan's World, VIII, p. 409; X, p. 423.

Garver's Accusations 

Polesotechnic League merchants:

make a mockery of government

intrigue

bribe

compel

corrupt

ignore inconvenient laws

make private deals

set up private economic systems

fight private battles

act like barons but with no legal status

treat with whole civilizations

make vassals of worlds

reintroduce "raw" feudalism and capitalism

boast of "freedom" which is nothing but license to sin, gamble and indulge in vice

make large profits by supplying the means of indulgence

pay higher salaries than the state

"...thus getting technicians more skilled and reasoners more glib..." (p. 423)

 

How does this measure up to what the omniscient narrator had told us when introducing the Polesotechnic League in "Margin of Profit"?

 

"...through bribery, corruption or sheer despair, [governments] gave up the struggle..."

-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 135-173 AT p. 146 -

- to control the League.

 

"It set its own policies, made its own treaties, established its own bases, fought its own battles..." (ibid.)

 

This confirms Garver's account but from the opposite perspective. Here, the process is called not raw capitalism or feudalism but "..an exuberant capitalism..." (ibid.) From the perspective presented in the series, the League goes rotten when it cartelizes and we see that happening after Satan's World.

Troubles In The Polesotechnic League II

Two witnesses in Satan's World are David Falkayn and Edward Garver.

Falkayn...

...says that the League:

 

"'...mediates competition that might otherwise become literally cutthroat.'"

-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 329-598 AT I, p. 332.

 

That implies that the competition has not yet become cutthroat. Indeed, Falkayn continues:

 

"'Believe me, however, rival members don't use outright violence on each other's agents, but chicanery is taken for granted.'" (ibid.)

 

Chicanery might be regarded as a normal part of the running of any society and certainly of a mercantile society.

 

Reinforcing his point about no violence, Falkayn adds:

 

"'Murder, kidnapping, brainscrub...Polesotechnic League members don't indulge in such antics. They know better.'" (p. 334)

 

He does spell out some "'...nasty ways of getting what's wanted...'" (ibid.):

 

bribery;

snooping;

many kinds of pressure;

blackmail, even of the innocent.

 

Again, we might think that these antics sound like business as usual rather than a society in a bad state. Falkayn is just about to be kidnapped and brainscrubbed but by agents of an alien outfit that has infiltrated Technic civilization.

 

Garver...

...has a negative view but are we supposed to take him seriously? He is the kind of statist bureaucrat that our free enterprise hero, van Rijn, loves to thwart. However, I do not feel up to tackling Garver right now. Maybe later. I am recovering from a cold and preparing to attend an annual Holocaust Memorial ceremony this evening. Shalom. 

Troubles In The Polesotechnic League

When do internal problems of the Polesotechnic League become evident?

The Sixteen Technic History Installments About The Polesotechnic League

 

In The Van Rijn Method

"Margin of Profit"

"How To Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"

"The Three-Cornered Wheel"

"A Sun Invisible"

"The Season of Forgiveness"

The Man Who Counts

"Esau"

"Hiding Place"

 

In David Falkayn: Star Trader

"Territory"

"The Trouble Twisters"

"Day of Burning"

"The Master Key"

Satan's World

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar"

 

In Rise Of The Terran Empire

Mirkheim

 

"Margin of Profit" tells us of the League:

 

"...it had its troubles."

-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 135-173.

 

But does it show us any of the internal troubles?

 

"How To Be Ethnic..." makes it clear that there is much dissatisfaction among many young Earthlings who do not get spacemen's berths.

 

Hloch's Earth Book introduction to "Esau" states that League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic, even obsolete, but the story does not show this.

 

Poul Anderson stated in the SFWA Bulletin (Fall, 1979) that Satan's World shows a society in a bad state but does it show more than an external threat to Technic Civilization?

 

"A Little Knowledge," "Lodestar" and Mirkheim are a concentrated dose of internal problems.

A Personal Connection

Look how much future history we have covered already in considering just the first installment of Poul Anderson's Technic History. It is the single story that connects this fictional timeline back to the twentieth century. And there is a personal connection. Scobie in the Chronos has a disintegrating but signed copy of The Machinery Of Freedom. Its author is still alive. The book was published in 1973 with further editions in 1989 and 2014. Since "The Saturn Game" was published in 1981, we infer that Anderson had the first edition in mind. Scobie must have met David D. Friedman to get his signature. This is the closest that we can come to matching up the two timelines which, if they have not diverged already, soon will.

Scobie's apartment in the Chronos also contains:

furniture that he has made on board

Childe's border ballads

an 18th century family Bible

a model of a sailboat in which he had cruised

a handball trophy won on board

fencing sabers

pictures of family, places he had been on Earth, his selenological team, Thomas Jefferson and Robert the Bruce

a television

 

We get a solid picture of this one guy who is involved in events on Iapetus.

Dissenting View

"The Saturn Game."

To understand why Minamoto presents a dissenting view, we need to reread the extracts from his minority report to see what he argues against. He says:

there should be no accusations;

no one was negligent or foolish;

the people in question struggled admirably against disaster when they understand their situation;

perhaps no saner response was possible for them;

psychodrama should not be condemned;

adult psychodrama has become so unpopular that it might become extinct which would be a worse tragedy;

psychodrama has been entirely beneficial on Earth and in space;

the modern lack of experience of madness was the root of the problem;

no one blames explorers for miscalculations about the environment - the implication being that there should also be no blame for psychological miscalculations.

We may infer that the majority report says everything that Minamoto disagrees with.

The Chaos

In Minamoto's account, the Chaos separates the mid-twentieth century from his own period in the mid-twenty-first century. So what is the Chaos? In "Concerning Future Histories," (SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979), Poul Anderson does not use this term. Instead, he writes that:

there is more in his head than he will put in print;

humanity muddles through its present crises;

a more humane order emerges;

English becomes Anglic and the main international language;

there is no dark age;

the transition might involve either conversion tyrannies or scientific technology (the latter is what we see in "The Saturn Game");

the more humane order becomes Technic civilization.

Anderson then discusses Satan's World, "Lodestar" and Mirkheim as showing how people later "blew it." Thus, he moves away from discussing the immediate pre-Technic period. Sandra Miesel's Chronology tells us that:

"The Technic Civilization series...begins in the twenty-first century, with recovery from a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos. New space technologies ease Earth's demand for resources and energy permitting exploration of the Solar system."

-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 611.

Is the "violent period of global unrest" referenced in any of Anderson's texts?

Pre-Technic History II

"The Saturn Game," III.

The Minamoto extract at the beginning of this section reaches further back in time, then forward again.

Children in pre-electronic North America played house, cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians.

In Minamoto's time, mid-twenty-first century, they play dolphins or astronauts and aliens.

Role play continues in lodges, rituals and maybe society in general.

Mid-twentieth-century entertainment was dominated by television.

Adult psychodrama became a therapeutic technique, a retreat from an unhappy period and a revolt against passive entertainment.

The Chaos ended war and fantasy games.

In the 2050s, databanks and computers generate psychodramatic scenes and sounds that enhance the vivid imaginations of the players.

Psychotherapy has become a branch of applied biochemistry so that psychodrama has ceased to have any medical use. (This part of the Technic History parallels part of  Larry Niven's Known Space History.)

Less familiar than their predecessors with the human unconscious, psychologists expected only benign consequences from psychodrama in the Chronos.

Pre-Technic History

"The Saturn Game," II.

Civilization and Earth faced ruin.

Space industry offered hope.

Knowledge of other planets became necessary.

A solar sail ship took 1000 people to Mars in 6 months.

Minerals from Phobos were sent to Earth.

Auxiliary craft landed all over Mars.

A ship from Earth was lost en route to Mercury.

A Britannic-American consortium launched the Chronos.

It took 8 years to reach Saturn.

Scientists and crew formed a community.

Children were born en route.

TV tapes were limited to three hours a day to prevent passivity.

Some individuals and groups passed their time with psychodrama.

Observations

That first sentence is us.

This first story starts to link our period to the Technic History.

Technic civilization has not begun yet.

Hyperdrive, Grand Survey and Ythrians appear in the second story.

That story, "Wings of Victory," is the first collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

Therefore, "The Saturn Game" is followed by Hloch's first introductory passage.

Hloch writes much later, in the Terran Empire period.

Various Details

My idea was just to scan through Minamoto's introductions to check how much future historical information they yield and I will still do that but I might also get interested enough to reread "The Saturn Game" as well. The text of the story contains information about conditions inside the Chronos as well as on the surface of Iapetus. This story presents a cast of characters none of whom survive into any ensuing episodes. Recurring characters first appear, separately, in the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes. Similarly, the concluding four episodes of the Technic History have no characters in common either with each other or with any earlier episodes. We enjoy the prominent series characters but should also appreciate how many installments of the future history present one-off, never-to-be-seen-again characters and I certainly do not remember all of their names. Which character in "The Saturn Game" was brought up in the Jerusalem Catholic Church and which prominent characters in later episodes are members of that Church? Van Rijn is Catholic but we are not told whether he is Jerusalem Catholic. Coincidentally, both Apprentice Falkayn and Ensign Flandry have a mentor who is Jewish. Details are endless.

Francis L. Minamoto

The chronologically earliest Technic History installment, "The Saturn Game," is divided into four numbered sections, section I signed by "Francis L. Minamoto," II-IV just by "Minamoto." Francis Minamoto of Apollo University, Leyburg, Luna, is not Hloch of Stormgate Choth or Donvar Ayeghen of the Galactic Archaeological Society and indeed knows nothing of such later scholars. However, coming to our attention as recently as February, 1981, Minamoto joins Hloch and Ayeghen among the ranks of Technic historiographers.

Page 1 of Volume I of The Technic Civilization Saga consists entirely of a single-paragraph extract from Minamoto's Death Under Saturn: A Dissenting View, published by Apollo University Communications in 2057.

Under Saturn? Under the Saturnian surface? No. It will turn out that this means on a Saturnian moon with Saturn in the sky but we do not know any of that while still reading p. 1. This page informs us only that the Chronos, presumably a spaceship bound for Saturn, has encountered  some kind of tragedy, described mysteriously:

"The Chronos crossed more than an abyss, it crossed a threshold of human experience."

-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 1-73 AT I, p. 1.

 

Encountered aliens? No. This experiential threshold will turn out to be psychological. If you have not read "The Saturn Game," then appreciate the mystery. If you have read it, then remember what it was like to read this page for the first time.

Historical Sources

Accessible sources of information about the History of Technic Civilization:

the narratives of the forty-three installments of the Technic History;

the diverse introductions to some of these installments;

short expository passages within some installments;

some information given in Poul Anderson's article, "Concerning Future Histories," in the SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979;

Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, since Miesel consulted Anderson about her time chart;

anything else?

I do not list Poul Anderson's unpublished notebooks because these are, in the nature of the case, inaccessible to us.

I will maybe troll through introductions, expositions etc for any fresh details or insights.   

The Polesotechnic League And Social Revolution

Are the Polesotechnic League merchants social revolutionaries? No. Do they cause social revolutions? Yes.

Nicholas van Rijn gives a Borthudian hijacker the opportunity to:

"'...at least arrange that your ruling class loses power only, in an orderly way, and not their lives. Take your choice.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 135-173 AT p. 173.

 

On Ivanhoe, Martin Schuster introduces Newtonian astronomy and the Kaballah, knowing that these intellectual upheavals will:

 

"'...break up the Sanctuary and let some fresh air into Larsum.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Three-Cornered Wheel" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 199-261 AT VI, p. 257 -

- even though:

 

"'...the process will be bloody...'" (ibid.)

 

But Schuster's apprentice, David Falkayn, does even more. An Ivanhoan opponent of the Consecrates tells Falkayn:

 

"'...peaceful or no, you have done more harm to them than I ever could. The world will not be the same again. So simple a thing as wagons - less toil, more goods moving faster, the age-old balance upset.'" (VII, p. 259)

 

And on Neuheim, Falkayn says:

 

"'Neuheim can keep any social order it wants. Why not? If you try to maintain this wretched autarchy, you'll be depriving yourselves of so much that inside of ten years your people will throw out the Landholders and yell for us.'"

-"A Sun Invisible," VII, p. 313.

Fortunately, the League has no Prime Directive.

Unfortunately, the League does not fund change on planets where it cannot make a profit and this causes a conflict between van Rijn and Falkayn.

An Enforced Holiday

"A Sun Invisible," VII.

Falkayn, captured, becomes a house guest in Schloss Graustein, gaunt, dreary, on a high ridge, surrounded by forests with excellent hunting, with heavy but edible food, long conversations and occasional planetary guided tours in the company of his host, Landholder Graustein. Time hangs but Falkayn knows that, unbeknownst to his captors, the League is working on the problem and that he will be rescued.

He must persuade one of his captors that adjustment to League mercantilism will not be bad:

"'...even a knight must eat...'" (p. 314)

That is the entire basis of materialist philosophy. Mankind must eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, art, science or religion. Therefore, material production and economic development underlie and explain states, laws, art and religion, not vice versa. A Yellow Emperor did not initiate agriculture. Instead, agriculture generated the material surplus that eventually supported Emperors.

Falkayn continues:

"'...and our bread doesn't come from slaves or serfs or anyone who had to be killed.'" (ibid.)

Social progress occurs and can continue.

Finally, because the captor whom he is addressing is female, Falkayn invokes the romance of mercantilism:

"'Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea...'" (ibid.)

Order And Significance

Poul Anderson's "The Trouble Twisters" should be read at least twice, first in The Trouble Twisters, where it is the culmination of Volume II of the original Polesotechnic League series, and secondly in David Falkayn: Star Trader, where it is just the second of seven works of different lengths collected in Volume II of The Technic Civilization Saga. The culmination of David Falkayn's early career becomes the opening installment of a trader team series with three further installments in David Falkayn: Star Trader and a sequel, about the later reassembling of the team, in Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire. After that, there are further sequels about Falkayn's descendants and successors on Avalon. Without any textual changes, the interconnections and significations of individual stories can be altered by reading them in a different order. In the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets follow the Books of the Law and apply them to history whereas, in the Christian Bible, the Prophets precede the New Testament and prophesy the Messiah. This comparison is appropriate because The Sky Book Of Stormgate, which we do not read, and The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which has been published both as a single volume and as a paperback trilogy before being incorporated into the Saga, are the history of a people and of their exodus to a new world.