Thieves, Bandits Or...

"Starfog."

Graydal, the Kirkasanter navigator:

"'Myself, insofar as I believe the myths have any truth, I suspect our ancestors were thieves or bandits, or-'

"'Daughter!' Demring hurried on, in a scandalized voice..." (p. 732)

What a way to speak of the ancestors! Was she about to say "rebels"? That would have been the right answer.

One man's rebel is another man's thief:

And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas. (Mt. 27: 16)

And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection. (Mk. 15: 7)

18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:

19 (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.)   (Lk. 23: 18-19)

Now Barabbas was a robber.” (Jn. 18: 40)

Whatever Barabbas was, people regarded him in different ways.

Flandry's Reply To Hauksberg

 

Blog attention moves back and forth within Poul Anderson's Technic History. It is good to be back with "Young Flandry" for a while. 

Ensign Flandry to the arch-appeaser, Hauksberg:

"'How can you say that?' Flandry choked. 'Haven't you read any history? Haven't you listened to Merseian speeches, looked at Merseian books, seen our dead and wounded come back from meeting Merseians in space? They want us out of the universe!'"

-Ensign Flandry, p. 188.

His arguments:

(i) History.

(ii) Merseian speeches.

(iii) Merseian books.

(iv) Our dead and wounded.

(i) People can and do learn every possible lesson from history in general! Or does he mean, more specifically, the history of human-Merseian relations to date? That should give a good indication of Merseian intentions.

(ii)-(iii) An even better indication, reinforcing (i).

(iv) is not an argument. Either side in any armed conflict can make an emotional case by pointing to their own dead and wounded. I remember a witness in a famous televised Inquiry throwing down a photograph of the grave of a freedom fighter as if that alone were sufficient to prove the rightness of one side and the wrongness of the other.

However, in the case of the Merseians, I think that Flandry wins three points out of four.

The readers have a privileged position. We read the private conversations of both Terrans and Merseians. The author is omniscient about his characters - or stacks the deck, depending on which way you look at it. Brechdan Ironrede, Merseian, says:

"'[The Terrans] were magnificent once. They could be again. I would love to see them our willing subjects.' His scarred features drooped a little. 'Unlikely, of course. They're not that kind of species. We may be forced to exterminate.'"

-CHAPTER TEN, p. 92.

(Brechdan should meet the Doctor Who villains, the Daleks:  "Exterminate! Exterminate!")

Hauksberg, if he heard Brechdan, would think, "What he calls 'willing subjects,' we call 'willing allies.'"

Arrogance And Complacency

Arrogance and complacency: two deadly sins or wrong thoughts and wrong actions to use Buddhist terminology.

CS Lewis's novel, That Hideous Strength, shows some of his characters inwardly deceiving themselves in subtle ways. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the first story in The Earth Book Of Stormgate and the last story in The Technic Civilization Saga both present clear examples of arrogance.

In "Wings of Victory," Webner arrogantly denies that the large winged organisms on Ythri can be intelligent. Turekian realizes not only how the larger flyers can be intelligent but also that they are about to attack and must mutiny against Webner to make his point.

In "Starfog," Vandange arrogantly denies that the Kirkasanters can have come from a "universe" such as they describe, where space is a bright fog. By going there, Laure discovers that the "Cloud Universe" is a globular cluster whose orbit takes it into the inner galaxy where it periodically collects new stars and stellar matter.

Complacency is splendidly displayed by Lord Hauksberg who, when Flandry has revealed that the Merseians had gone to great lengths to conceal the imminent destruction of the star, Saxo, and of the Terran Fleet with it, by a rogue planet, has the gall to say:

"'Ease down. I'm sure they'd no such intention. It was a weapon to use against us if we forced 'em to. Nothin' else. If we'd shown a genuine desire to cooperate, they'd've warned us in ample time.'"

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, p. 188.

Hauksberg should be summarily dismissed from any role as a diplomat or as a representative of Terra.

I recently encountered both arrogance and complacency in an Evangelical who dismissed all other spiritual philosophies without wanting to hear anything about them but I really must stop referring to those guys here.

Women And Men

"Starfog."

"...the sexes were mixed aboard the Makt for no other reason than that women were better at certain jobs than men. Every female was accompanied by an older male relative." (p. 727)

That will have to change when the Kirkasanters are in contact with civilization!

Someone once told me that, years ago, when a French nun travelled by train between convents, she had to be accompanied by another nun as a chaperone but the chaperone needed a chaperone for the return journey. Therefore, three nuns travelled out and two returned. The convents paid for five train journeys instead of just one. Eventually, both economics and common sense must have some say.

Nowadays, some governments tell Muslim women that they must wear the hijab and at least one tries to tell them that they should not. Defend women's right to choose what they wear! Support a hijab-wearing woman in France and a hijab-burning woman in Iran.

Quantum Consciousness

Consciousness and quantum mechanics are both mysterious so are they connected, especially since the observer effect is important in quantum mechanics? Since consciousness cannot be discerned on the cellular or molecular levels, might it operate on the quantum level? Are we superposed without realizing it? Do we see the dead cat without realizing that we also see the live cat and vice versa?

Poul Anderson and James Blish fictionalize quantum mechanics:

in Anderson's Technic History, hyperspace is a series of quantum jumps;

in Anderson's Time Patrol series, a time traveller arriving from a merely potential timeline is like a macroscopic quantum event;

in Blish's "Nor Iron Bars," an interstellar spaceship given negative mass collapses into the microcosm where its occupants experience quantum phenomena;

spatially distant particles interacting instantaneously become a means of interstellar travel in "Nor Iron Bars" and of instantaneous communication in Blish's "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time.

I think that Blish is ahead of Anderson in terms of quantum fiction.

Endings

Some future history series end with a short work set in a further future as a kind of culmination.

Poul Anderson

The Technic History: "Starfog," civilizations in two or three spiral arms.

The Polesotechnic League: "The Chapter Ends," humanity leaves Earth.

If "The Chapter Ends" is disputed: The Peregrine, a Coordinator joins the Nomads.

Twilight World: Epilogue, descendants of mutants terraform the outer satellites.

Robert Heinlein

The Future History: Orphans Of The Sky, the fate of the first interstellar spaceship.

James Blish

The Seedling Stars: "Watershed," Adapted Men colonize the changed Earth.

Larry Niven

Known Space: "Safe At Any Speed," a short feel-good ad when human beings are becoming genetically lucky.

It is as if an editor had asked these four authors to write short culminations for these six series.

Two Computers

"Starfog."

We are told that Daven Laure does not anthropomorphize the computer that is like the brain and central nervous system of his spaceship, Jaccavrie, but then:

"Laure had a brief, irrational vision of Jaccavrie nodding. She would be a big, calm, dark-haired woman, handsome in middle age though getting somewhat plump..." (p. 712)

So Laure does not relate to Jaccavrie as a person but sometimes visualizes her as one.

This leads to a comparison with Robert Heinlein. In Time Enough For Love, the memories of a conscious computer are transferred into a female human body so that the computer is literally anthropomorphized. But I prefer Laure and Jaccavrie. Furthermore, "Starfog" is an excellent capstone to the Technic History whereas I do not even accept Time Enough For Love as a valid addition to the Future History.

The Technic History ends with "Starfog." The Future History climaxes in Methuselah's Children with Orphans Of The Sky as a short appendix.

Consciousness

The biggest difference anywhere in the universe is between unconscious being and conscious beings. How did being become conscious and how widespread is consciousness?

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, there are many animals and intelligent beings on extra-solar planets and there are also some consciousness-level computers. In Anderson's Genesis, organic life is rare but post-organic intelligences spread throughout the galaxy and the Terrestrial intelligence, Gaia, "emulates" past human societies. "Emulation" is conscious simulation. Thus, within Gaia, entire populations of subsidiary subjects of consciousness believe that they are living on Earth in some earlier period. Processes within Gaia generate the same experiential and psychological effects as did human brains interacting with a natural and social environment. Can exactly the same experiences have completely different material bases?

This all raises the question: how did consciousness originate? We can turn from Poul Anderson's works to reading history, physics and philosophy. Philosophical literature shows us that there is as yet no answer to the question of the origin of consciousness. My best formulation is that naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation. Pleasure and pain have survival value and require consciousness. Therefore, as soon as sensitivity became conscious, consciousness was naturally selected. But intelligence can have aims other than mere survival.

Religion And Empire

I am reading a book on the New Testament, considering this relevant to Poul Anderson's works.

Our History

Christianity began in the Roman Empire. Two thousand years later, we inhabit a global pluralist society including Christians, adherents of Eastern religions and secularists.

The Technic History

In the Terran Empire, Axor seeks the Universal Incarnation. Thousands of years later, mankind occupies several spiral arms of the galaxy. The little that we see looks secularist. However, Christianity and other religions might survive in the various human civilizations.

Events in first century Jerusalem are also important in Anderson's There Will Be Time and "Star of the Sea" (Time Patrol).

Interspace-time Transference

"Starfog."

According to Daven Laure, a man called Vandange:

"'...really gets indignant. Says the notion of interspace-time transference is mathematically absurd. I don't have quite his faith in mathematics, myself, but I must admit he has one common-sense point. If a ship could somehow flip from one entire cosmos to another...why, in five thousand years of interstellar travel, haven't we gotten some record of it happening?'

"'Perhaps the ships to which it occurs never come back.'

"'Perhaps. Or perhaps the whole argument is due to misunderstanding...'" (p. 717)

In this case, it is indeed a misunderstanding. However, interspace-time transference is possible from the universe of the Technic History because Nicholas van Rijn visits the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. (Any reference to the magical universes also accessible from the Old Phoenix would be a jarring note in the hard sf narrative on "Starfog.")

Jaccavrie mentions "'...the elf castles on Jair...'" (p. 714) This opens the possibility of a story set among those elf castles, revealing only at the end that it is part of the Technic History. And there is always a place for spaceships disappearing into strange realms.

Evalyth's Revenge

"The Sharing of Flesh."

On Lokon, a small population resorted to cannibalism in early generations. A mutation that would otherwise have been eliminated spread to everyone. As a result, male gonads need an extra supply of hormones to bring on puberty. The only way to gain these hormones has been for male children to eat a male adult. The Allied Planets will provide hormone pills, then terrestroid meat animals. 

When Evalyth understands why Moru killed her husband, she does not kill him. However, she first relieves her vengeful feelings by imagining that she will not reveal the secret:

"'Moru, his children his entire race would go on being prey for centuries, maybe forever.'" (p. 708)

After half an hour of imagined revenge, she is able to think about justice. This is how she both relieves her feelings and does what is right. Unlike Gwydion, Lokon will be incorporated into interstellar civilization. Some problems are easily soluble. Others are not.

Whimpering Wind

"The Sharing of Flesh."

Evalyth waits for Captain Jonafer to bring the prisoner, Moru, whom she intends to kill because he had killed her husband. Needless to say, in an Andersonian text, Evalyth's surroundings reflect her situation:

"Where Evalyth waited, outside her door, she saw the compound reach bare to the saw-topped stockade and a crane stand above like a gibbet." (p. 706)

The compound is bare and the crane resembles an instrument of execution. The text continues:

"The air was growing cold - the planet spinning toward an autumn - and a small wind had arisen to whimper behind the dust devils that stirred across the earth. Jonafer's footfalls rang loud." (ibid.)

Everything is appropriate:

cold (of death);

autumn (an ending);

whimpering wind;

devils;

loud footsteps, making it impossible for Evalyth to evade what she is about to do.

But there is a twist in the tale.

A Later Conversation With A Conscious Computer

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

The computer in Daven Laure's spaceship, Jaccavrie, is definitely stated to be conscious. Laure does not anthropomorphize her but does think of her as a friend. He also does not anthropomorphize:

"...those nonhuman sophonts he encountered." (p. 714)

- another rare reminder that other intelligent species are still around in this latter part of the Technic History.

Some other Rangers:

"...think of their ships as elaborate tools." (ibid.)

This language is becoming ambiguous. Presumably these other Rangers do understand that their ships' computers are conscious and therefore are something more than mere tools, however elaborate. And they do not abuse or misuse these conscious entities in any way, if that is even possible. But nor do they enter into any kind of personal relationship or friendship with them. They simply take it for granted that the computers will do their jobs while they do theirs.

Conversation With A Computer

"The Sharing of Flesh."

PCs and laptops are not conscious. A different kind of artifact that not only computed but also duplicated other brain functions would be conscious. But imagine an unconscious computer that:

is voice-controlled;

answers questions;

asks follow-up questions to clarify what information is needed;

is programmed to volunteer information when appropriate;

(but does not consciously "know" when to volunteer;)

thus, can conduct a conversation (passing the Turing test?).

We would "animize" or personify this kind of computer.

When Evalyth tells the computer in her cabin that its owner/user/master was killed and eaten, it continues the conversation without any emotional response. Of course. It is neither conscious nor programmed to simulate emotions. When asked for any further advice, it says that the murderer should not be summarily killed but examined in accordance with the expedition's scientific aims. It is then that Evalyth, widow of the murdered man, reflects in anguish that she is conversing with a machine but also with one that reflects her husband's personality:

"It's designed to help research. Nothing more. But it was his. And its answer was so altogether Donli that she could no longer hold back her tears." (p. 690)

On Lokon

"The Sharing of Flesh."

On p. 687, this story confirms that Krakeners refer to the gods and that Old Earth might no longer exist. These four concluding Technic History instalments tell us nothing of Earth. The narratives are remote not only in time but also in space.

An Allied Planets expedition has descended by ferry to Lokon from the orbiting mother ship, New Dawn. The voice-operated computers in the ferry are portables linked through the master in the ferry to a data bank in New Dawn by orbiting relay units. When Evalyth asks her computer a question, that computer links to the master, thus to the nearest relay unit, thus to others, thus to a computer in New Dawn, thus to a data bank, thus to scanners. A long way around.

When Evalyth asks how to track a local who has eaten an expedition member, she is asked the origin of the expedition member and, when she replies that he was the computer's master, she is told that tracking this local may be possible. No emotion is involved as there might have been if a human servant were being asked to help.

Audio Anderson

See Yet Another Immortal.

I listen to the radio only when driving. Thus, I hear the BBC News and an interminable radio drama, The Archers. Today, I again heard an episode of Pilgrim. Fantasy is strange on radio. We hear dialogue and sound effects. The latter could mean almost anything.

How would Poul Anderson play in a purely auditory medium? We would not have to see any of the extra-terrestrials. We would hear Ythrians flapping their wings. A radio audience would have to be informed somehow of what Mereians etc look like. Their voices would have to sound alien. (In Narnia, the Talking Beasts should speak English but should nevertheless sound like the kinds of animals that they are: beavers; lions; mice etc.)

Poul Anderson's works can be read aloud on audio but can they be effectively dramatized in that medium? I would appreciate a multi-media approach but audio has obvious limits. 

The Earth Book

Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate was published both as a single volume and in three volumes. I expect that, by now, the Earth Book is not only out of print but also regarded as redundant because it has been superseded by the more comprehensive seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga from Baen Books. The Saga presents the complete History of Technic Civilization whereas the Earth Book formed the concluding volume of the first part of the History.

However, the Earth Book is worth preserving as a discrete volume despite its duplication of part of the contents of the Saga, Volumes I-III. The Earth Book is in itself a future history, covering no less than six periods:

the Grand Survey and first contact with Ythri (1 instalment);

Ythrian-human exploration of Gray/Avalon (1);

the Polesotechnic League (8);

human-Ythrian colonization of Avalon, first phase (1);

second phase (1);

the immediate aftermath of the Terran War on Avalon (Hloch's introductions).

The Saga, Volumes I-III add:

twenty-first century exploration of the Solar System (1);

the Polesotechnic League (8);

the Time of Troubles (1);

the early Terran Empire (1);

the Terran War on Avalon (1).

Volumes IV-VII:

the Flandry period ((15);

the Long Night (1);

the beginnings of recovery (2);

human civilizations in several spiral arms (1) -

- and the beginning of a new era of unprecedented wealth.

Beginning And Obsolescence

Le Matelot's Introduction to "Hiding Place" is, fictitiously, written in the early days of the Polesotechnic League:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609 AT INTRODUCTION, p. 555.

Hloch's Introduction to "Esau" informs us that, at this time, Polesotechnic League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic or even obsolete. 

Yet "Esau" precedes "Hiding Place" in The Van Rijn Method and, according to Sandra Miesel's CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION, the two stories are set in a decade when "stories overlap" (p. 613) It follows that Le Matelot's Introduction belongs much earlier, before the first two Polesotechnic League stories, "Margin of Profit" and "How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," which also overlap. 

When the stories from the earlier collections, Trader To The Stars and The Earth Book Of Stormgate, are brought together in The Technic Civilization Saga, then we gain a transhistorical perspective, becoming aware of the beginning and the end of the Polesotechnic League simultaneously.

Introducing The Polesotechnic League II

"Margin of Profit."

Cheap manufacturing because of:

automation

mineral wealth in the Solar System

Cheap energy because of:

small, clean, simple fusion units

Galactic exploitation and an exodus from Earth because of:

gravitics, leading to -

hyperdrive

No interstellar political union because:

distances too vast

cultural differences between intelligent species

Not much armed conflict because:

the risk of destruction

little to fight about

Interstellar trade because:

colonies want the luxuries of home

home wants colonial products

the older civilizations have much to exchange

imports are cheaper than synthetics or substitutes

Competing companies cooperate to:

identify mutual interests

form alliances

negotiate spheres of influence

arbitrate disputes

unite against governments

Governments

rule at most a few planetary systems

cannot control the merchants

are bribed

are coerced

despair

abandon the struggle

The Polesotechnic League:

is a loose supergovernment

sprawls from Canopus to Deneb

represents and employs beings of maybe a thousand species

cuts across political and cultural boundaries

sets policies

makes treaties

establishes bases

fights battles

milks the Milky Way

spreads a universal civilization

enforces a Pax

has its troubles

Introducing The Polesotechnic League

Today we lunched on a terrace above raging river rapids circling around the shop and cafe. Such consumption in such surroundings usually reminds me of the good life (for those who can afford it) in Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League.

An early passage in Anderson's first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," presents the Polesotechnic League and thus sets the scene for sixteen of the forty-three instalments of the Technic History. The passage begins:

"It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology."

-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 135-172 AT p. 145 -

- and ends:

"Nevertheless, [the League] had its troubles." (p. 146)

The Van Rijn Method is Volume I of Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis. In his Introduction to Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader, Davis informs us that the first story in this volume, "Territory," also about van Rijn, is preceded by an excerpt from "Margin of Profit," namely this same passage introducing the League. Having collected "Margin of Profit" in Volume I, Davis was uncertain whether to include the excerpt in Volume II but nevertheless list four sound reasons why he finally decided to do so. Thus, the League is properly introduced in Volumes I and II whereas Volume III begins with the concluding novel of the League period.

In the original publication order of the Technic History, "Margin of Profit" was included in the later collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, but the opening volume, Trader To The Stars, included "Territory." Thus, again, the League was appropriately introduced at the beginning of the series.

Humanity In The Galaxy

"The Sharing of Flesh."

Atheia inducted Kraken into the Allied Planets which explodes my idea that maybe Roan Tom's Kraken-Sassania-Nike alliance had been the basis of the Allied Planets. This story shows us an entirely human-influenced part of the galaxy. Clover has been exported to more planets than anyone knows. The Atheians informed the Krakeners that pines, gulls and rhizobacteria were not native to Kraken. Lokonese lowlanders speak a debased form of their planetary language:

"...which in turn was remotely descended from Anglic." (p. 666)

Back on Gwydion:

"'...Gwydiona stems from a rather archaic dialect of Anglic, closely related to the ancestral English.'"

-The Night Face, p. 635.

(In van Rijn's time, Shakespearean English was called Old Anglic.)

Reading "The Sharing of Flesh," it would be easy to think that there were no other intelligent species in the galaxy.

The Characters

Stories are about their characters so let's check on some of the characters introduced in the four stories mentioned here.

"Moru understood about guns."

-"The Sharing of Flesh," p. 663.

Moru, an inhabitant of Lokon, is present only in this single story, as indeed are Evalyth Sairn, whose husband Moru kills, and her colleagues.

"Adzel talks a lot about blessings in disguise, but this disguise was impenetrable."

-Poul Anderson, "How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 177.

If we have read the Technic History in its original publication order, then we know who Adzel is, a future colleague of David Falkayn. The narrator, James Ching, is present only in this single story but the The Earth Book Of Stormgate editor, Hloch, tells us about his later career.

"...Nat Falkayn rarely saw winged folk in the early part of his life."

-Poul Anderson, "Wingless" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 293-306 AT pp. 295-296.

"...winged folk...," Ythrians, visit Chartertown to conduct business with Nat's grandfather, David, or later his father, Nicholas.

When an Ythrian flies above in splendour:

"Against his will, Jack Birnam confessed the sight was beautiful."

-Poul Anderson, "Rescue on Avalon" IN Rise Of The Terran Empire, pp. 307-322 AT p. 309.

Birnam appears only in this single story but, at one point within it, converses with Ivar Holm, presumed ancestor of Daniel Holm whose son, Christopher, will marry Tabitha Falkyan, a direct descendant of David. Also, Christopher is Arinnian of Stormgate Choth, thus a chothmate of Hloch.

The Technic History is a future history that incorporates future biographies and family histories. From the student days of Falkayn's future colleague to the lifetime of one of his descendants is a long time but the Technic History is longer.

Four Short Stories In One Future History Series

 

When an sf writer has created a future history timeline, he is then free to add new instalments of any length and type and at any point along that timeline. The history can be enhanced by the addition of stories written for different markets. Asked for a story on the theme of redemption, Poul Anderson wrote "The Sharing of Flesh"/"The Dipteroid Phenomenon," set during the Long Night/Allied Planets period of his Technic History.

"How To Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," about Adzel's student days on Earth, and "Rescue on Avalon," set during the colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon, were each first published in a different anthology of juvenile short stories edited by Roger Elwood. "Wingless (on Avalon)," set during the colonization of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon, was first published in Boy's Life. Adzel will become a member of Nicholas van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew led by David Falkayn and "Wingless" features Falkayn's grandson.

The three juvenile stories enhanced the Technic History further when they were incorporated into The Earth Book Of Stormgate and therefore acquired informative introductions fictitiously written by the Earth Book editor, Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon.

We are glad that Anderson took these opportunities to enlarge his Technic History rather than to write unrelated stories. 

Kraken And Lokon

Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708.

The "...Militech of the expedition..." is:

"...from a half barbaric part of Kraken where the sexes had equal opportunities to learn arts of combat suitable to primitive environments..." (pp. 663-664)

This reference to the planet Kraken establishes that the story is an instalment of Anderson's Technic History. Kraken is a link to the earlier instalments, The Game Of Empire and "A Tragedy of Errors." Interstellar leaders have come from Kraken, both during and after the Terran Empire.

"...the inhabitants of Lokon were as cooperative with the visitors from heaven as mutual mysteriousness allowed." (p. 664)

"Lokon" is a new addition to the series. We gather that the Lokonese are primitives. This story fits the pattern of the previous instalment, The Night Face: an interstellar expedition to a colonized but isolated planet with a problem.

A local kills the Militech's husband.

Morris And Mach

 

Sometimes a name crops up in more than one context. Thus:

William Morris

utopian fiction

retellings of Norse myths

socialist politics

art & design

Ernst Mach

physics: a precursor of Einstein

philosophy: a Russian revolutionary wrote a refutation of Machism

Both crop up in Poul Anderson:

Morris is quoted at the beginning of "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," that title being a line from the quoted passage;

Mach provides a rationale for FTL.

It is good when everything comes together.

Fictions And Divergent Realities

What is fiction in one world might be real in another. Might human beings colonize a planet without realizing that it already has intelligent inhabitants? This is an implausible theory on Gwydion in Poul Anderson's Technic History but a reality on Nerthus in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. An author can develop the same idea in different directions.

A single fictional planet can exist in different fictional timelines. The planet, Lithia, explodes in 2050 in A Case Of Conscience by James Blish but still exists millennia later in The Seedling Stars by Blish - as do real planets like Earth and Mars, of course.

Gwydion is introduced in The Night Face and referred to as a sad case in "The Sharing of Flesh." A pyramidally structured future history series continues to incorporate new data until it reaches its apex.

Ultimate Reality

The Night Face.

Raven on the Gwydiona:

"'...they cover the truth with meaningless words about an ultimate reality.'" (XII, p. 654)

I would say not meaningless but misapplied words about an ultimate reality. What Elfavy says about languages or, more generally, about different ways of communicating and about the different corresponding aspects of reality, is meaningful. It just does not happen to apply to the insanity that the Gwydiona experience in Baletime.

Raven approaches a comprehensive apprehension as he and Kors jog through the forest en route to the Holy City. He sees stones and dust lit by a torch and hears:

thudding feet

rustlings

creakings

chirps

hoots

croaks

a tinkling brook

a screaming animal

He feels cool, mild air and smells:

earth

growth

water

individual flowers

unfamiliar scents

blooming baleflower

The scents evoke unidentifiable memories.

Another layer of reality is the scientifically understood physics underlying sensory experiences. Particles and forces are inexhaustible but progressively approximated by scientific theories. The Gwydiona need to be helped to understand and cope with their condition.

Dusk, Sunset And Sea

The Night Face, XI.

Raven closes the door of his cabin, emerges from the spaceship and converses with his companion. However, between the departure from the cabin and the conversation with the companion, we read the following paragraph:

"Emerging from the spaceship, Raven saw that dusk was upon the land. The sky was deeply blue-black, early stars in the east, a last sunset cloud above the western mountains like a streak of clotting blood. He thought he could hear the sea bellow beyond the dike." (p. 644)

Blue-black sky, blood-red cloud, bellowing sea: only two senses this time but it is enough. We have become used to this level of descriptive detail in Poul Anderson's works and I have also become reluctant to read any other sf writer's account of another planet in case it does not measure up.

I might shortly read A. Bertram Chandler's account of John Grimes' meeting with Dominic Flandry.

Burning Bush

 

The Night Face, X.

When discussing the Gwydiona baleflower, Tolteca refers to:

"'The Burning Bush of primitive religion.'" (p. 635)

- yet another Biblical reference. Because of that phrase, "...primitive religion...," I googled to check for any pre-Biblical burning bushes but there do not seem to have been any. The Bible would be primitive to Tolteca. He also points out that:

"'...Baal is an ancient word for a god.'" (ibid.)

The secular meanings of "bale" are full of implications:

a bundle;

a fire;

a pyre;

an evil;

a sorrow.

In religion, conclusions can contradict their premises, e.g.:

All religions are equal.

But Hinduism is the only religion that recognizes this.

Therefore, Hinduism is superior.

According to Christianity, God wills the salvation of all human beings.

But most human beings have lived before or outside of the influence of Christianity.

Therefore, God saves those human beings by means other than Christianity.

(Corollary: Non-Christian religions are clues to God's other activities.) (John Hick.)

People can pray or meditate anywhere. It helps to have access to a tradition of spiritual practice but I do not believe that any particular tradition is necessary for "salvation." However, characters like Poul Anderson's Fr. Axor do believe this. So how would Axor view the salvation of the Gwydiona who have been cut off from other traditions for twelve hundred years and whose psychology is no longer human?

Today And Van Rijn

Just back from a day trip to the Lake District, which will be repeated on Wednesday. No time this evening for analysis of the text of The Night Face. 

Nicholas van Rijn:

stars in the three short stories collected as Trader To The Stars;

cameos in the last of the three David Falkayn short stories collected as The Trouble Twisters;

co-stars with Falkayn in two novels, Satan's World and Mirkheim;

stars in two short stories and one novel collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

co-stars with Falkayn in one short story in the Earth Book;

appears in one Old Phoenix short story.

A total of eleven appearances. The first ten go somewhere and are fully integrated into the Technic History (total: forty three instalments), a long series embedded in a longer one.

One of my abiding themes is the superiority (I think) of Poul Anderson's Technic History to any other sf future history series, including Heinlein's original Future History.

Evolving Apes

The Night Face, VIII.

On Gwydion, apes that live near human settlements and have observed human beings using tools have not begun to make tools themselves and have not attacked human beings. A flock that lives farther away carries shaped bones, attacks Tolteca and Raven and ties their hands together with vines but nevertheless throws away the men's guns and even their knives.

Raven, having escaped, concludes that:

the apes are not intelligent and cannot be responsible for past violence against human beings on Gwydion;

inbreeding of a mutation may have increased intelligence in the flock that attacked him and Tolteca;

but even that flock lacks the means or persistence to break into houses, which has been done in the past.

But why do the Gwydiona resent Raven's attempts to solve this mystery?

Utopias And Exile

Alien intervention utopianizes Earth in:

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

The Galactic Milieu Trilogy by Julian May

Miracleman by Alan Moore

Earth is utopianized by cosmic influence although not by alien intervention in:

In The Days Of The Comet by HG Wells

Brain Wave by Poul Anderson

Unaided human beings utopianize Earth in:

The World Set Free by HG Wells

The Shape Of Things To Come by HG Wells

In much American sf, a better future is sought not by improving Earth but by leaving it. A few people escape from the Solar System while a dictatorship is imposed on Earth in:

They Shall Have Stars by James Blish

The Draka History by SM Stirling

But the ultimate saga of human freedom on an interstellar scale has to Poul Anderson's Technic History, especially in its accounts of the early exploration and eventual colonization of Avalon.

Utopias and dystopias are valid fictional forms. Utopians should both describe a qualitatively different society and demonstrate its feasibility. 

Apes And A Waterfall

The Night Face.

"'We've both had encounters before now with animals on the verge of intelligence, not to mention fully developed nonhuman races.'" (VIII, p. 613)

Here is one further reminder that nonhuman intelligences still exist in this post-Imperial period of the Technic History even though they do not appear. 2001: A Space Odyssey coped with the problem of what aliens look like by just not showing them. These four stories could have been written from that perspective although now CGI makes the visuals of any kind of screen aliens possible.

Chapter VII informed us that parallel evolution had made anthropoid animals, apes, common on terrestroid planets. We had not known that till now.

Chapter VII also described:

foaming water;

"...a shifting pattern of light and shadow..." (p. 604);

dancing rainbows;

swirling currents;

riverbed stones seeming to ripple;

a waterfall ringing in the cool, damp air;

a high, wheeling bird of prey.

Familiar descriptive details in new combinations.

Gods

Sorry to harp on about theology but it makes a change from politics and all of these issues come out of Poul Anderson's texts. I have found four uses for the word, "god." 

(i) Ordinary gods who may be many in number and limited in scope. Odin and others are characters in fantasy novels by Anderson.

(ii) The highest and most powerful god, in transition to being regarded as the only god.

(iii) Ultimate reality personified as "God."

(iv)  Ultimate reality intuited mystically, no longer personified but sometimes still called "God."

The Mosaic and Muslim divine name progressed through stages (i), (ii) and (iii) and can be used in sense (iv) by heretical mystics.

Clearly, (i) and (iv) are completely different in meaning but are at opposite ends of a spectrum. I buy into the meaning of (iv) but do not insist that the word, "God," continue to be used. Indeed, it simply causes endless disagreements and misunderstandings.

The Gwydiona in Anderson's The Night Face apply the word, "God," not to intuited reality but to periodic insanity. Maybe this is sense (v). 

Religions In The Technic History

Nicholas van Rijn and Admiral Cajal are Catholics. Philippe Rochefort and Fr. Axor are Jerusalem Catholics. We are not told whether these are the same church. Life would be simpler if they were but life is not always simple. Jerusalem Catholicism is mentioned in the very first Technic History instalment, "The Saturn Game," but becomes a major player when Axor seeks the Universal Incarnation in the last volume of the Flandry period, The Game Of Empire.

The third Technic History instalment, "The Problem of Pain," introduces the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter and contrasts it both with the Old Faith of bloody polytheist sacrifices and with the Christianity of Peter Berg, a human being from the planet, Aeneas. In The Day Of Their Return, we learn that Aeneans are apocalyptic, believing variously in Christianity and in the imminent return of the Ancients.

Also:

Adzel's Mahayana Buddhism;

Merseian ancient polytheism and racist monotheism;

Ikranankan demonology but standard polytheism in the Twilight Zone;

Gwydiona pantheism.

A rich mixture.

Ylem, Creation And Chaos: Scientific Oaths

The Night Face.

The Nuevamerican, Miguel Tolteca:

"'...good ylem, Commandant...'" (I, p. 547)

"'By all creation...'" (p. 549)

"To Chaos with being a gentleman..." (VII, p. 604)

Science replaces religion as a source of oaths. "...all creation..." has come to mean just the universe, not the created order as such.

There may be other examples but that is my lot for this evening. Earth Real is providing us with enough excitement and drama for several sf novels. 

A Sense Of Humour

The Night Face, VII.

"'Maybe God likes a joke now and then. But if so, Vwi has a pawky sense of humor.'" (p. 602)

For the first time, a Gwydiona refers to God as a person. 

A guy I knew hitch-hiked in the US and kept meeting Evangelicals who assured him that, if he asked Jesus for anything, it would be given. When no car would stop and he was in danger of missing a plane, he thought, "I'll try anything once," then prayed: "God, I want the next car to stop and to take me directly to the airport in good time for the plane." The next vehicle was a coach and it passed him by. He thought, "That's that." Then the coach stopped and reversed. A head stuck out and called, "Hi. We're going to a Billy Graham rally and we wondered if you would like to come with us!" He said, "No, thanks," and to God, "You and I are finished. I don't like your sense of humour." But he referred to that experience as his encounter with God and claimed to know Christians who received, as they believed, humorous responses to their prayers. 

Discussing Poul Anderson's texts opens up the whole great tapestry of human experience.

Super-Language?

The Night Face, VI.

In the Holy City, Elfavy lists what she calls "languages":

speech

mathematics

music

painting

choreography

myth

Uniquely on Gwydion, trained semanticists have developed myth as a language free from primitive confusions with science. That is why the Gydiona can always explain their mythical symbols and stories in elaborate detail. They remind me of Poul and Karen Anderson's Ysans claiming that, unlike Christians, they do not confuse their myths with facts. 

Elfavy claims that the Bale time experience of being God could be described only in a fusion of every language, including some that human beings have not yet imagined, then adds that such a super-language would be self-contradictory. Why? Aspects of reality seem paradoxical to us, as in quantum mechanics, but they cannot fundamentally contradict each other. Therefore, a super-language describing every aspect of reality should not contradict itself.

Raven asks whether, in Bale time, the Gwydiona perceive or commune with total reality. Excellent question. Raven is trying to penetrate Gwydiona evasion. My response: perception of total reality, impossible; communion with it, why not? Elfavy responds:

"'That's merely another set of words...'" (p. 599)

Of course it is but what else can he use? More evasion. Her own words have implied an apprehension, if not a comprehension, of total reality but the truth is that that is not what happens at Bale time.

Living In Myth

"'...that which was myth in one world might always be fact in another.' PERELANDRA"

-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1977), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

- a perfect recipe for several fictional multiverses like the one associated with Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse, when high tech stops working, the survivors revert to living in mythical, not historical, time. An early pivotal event becomes a defining myth. Some characters start living as if Tolkien's Middle Earth were true history, not fiction.

In Poul Anderson's The Night Face, the Gwydiona, inhabitants of the planet Gwydion, mythologize every experience. On a young planet, volcanic smoke carries deadly heavy metals. Travelers passing near a suddenly erupting volcano must run and take shelter in the Holy City which is usually entered only on an annual special occasion. However, they need not feel that this is inappropriate because, while they are running for their lives, their leader explains that, since the sudden volcanic eruption was an expression of the Night Face called Chaos, they can restore the balance by entering the Focus of God even when they are not God. In fact, by entering the City while they are merely human beings, they will enact a parable of human reason and science. This satisfies them.

National Perceptions

Growing up post-War, I "knew," when I was very young, that Germans were bad and indeed confused them with "germs." (I write this not as an attempt at humour but because that was how my childhood mentality processed verbal inputs.)

In my teens, I read:

"'...that is the way of the Boche. He's never so happy as fouling another's nest.'"

-Dornford Yates, Cost Price (London, 1949), CHAPTER I, p. 19.

"'...German hands are too filthy to finger such a treasure.'

"Be sure I agreed with him."

-(ibid., p. 20)

"'Austria is a gentleman: Germany is a cad.'"

-op. cit., CHAPTER IX, p. 277.

"'Jonathan's right,' said Jenny. 'Germany is a cad. She is the cad of Europe, as England is the peer.'"

-ibid.

(Jenny Chandos is a beautiful character but, like all of Yates's heroes and heroines, she is a mouthpiece for her author's opinions and for no others. Yates was living in France but had to get out before the Germans arrived.)

I regret to record that I did not regard these remarks as reprehensible. How was I being brought up? Two American sf writers to the rescue: first, James Blish told me that he liked many things about Germany, including the language. Secondly, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol reflects that Nazism:

"...would not, could not have come to power in the country of Bach and Goethe, except through the unique genius of Adolf Hitler."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 424.

Bach and Gothe: filthy cads?

The Concept Of Chaos

The war of Law and Chaos is waged in Poul Anderson's fantasies, Three Hearts And Three Lions and Operation Chaos.

Anderson's Time Patrol agents counteract temporal chaos.

Chaos is one of the Night Faces on the planet Gwydion in Anderson's The Night Face.

However, in some other novels by Anderson, the villains are those bureaucrats, ideologues or even artificial intelligences who regard human freedom as unpredictable and chaotic, therefore to be controlled and suppressed. 

Either way, chaos is clearly a key concept or set of concepts.

Internal Enemies

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the "protean enemy" of mankind is mankind itself, the revolt of the primitive against civilization.

The phrase, "the enemy within," is applied to subversives - or to social critics regarded as subversives. To cite an example that might not be contentious here, Putin regards Russian peace protestors as pro-US whereas probably they are just anti-war. A deeper meaning of "the enemy within" might be the conflicts that are present within a society whether or not anyone protests about them. A still deeper meaning might be the psychological conflicts within individual members of society, as in the "protean enemy."

A fictional hero like James Bond fights only external enemies, an endless succession of them. If the Bond series were to be doubled in length, that would simply double the number of successors of Rosa Klebb, Doctor No, Goldfinger etc. At first sight, Dominic Flandry is of the same stamp. External enemies abound. However, Flandry also acknowledges the self-inflicted internal problems that will bring down the civilization that he defends even if he does defeat all of its external enemies. (Fleming never got anywhere close to acknowledging such a thing.)

Earlier, the Shenna were an external threat to Technic civilization but it was the conflicts within the Polesotechnic League that eventually brought it down. In Flandry's time, the Merseians are not entirely an external threat because they acquired the hyperdrive from the League - as well as a lot of resentment of how they were treated by the League.

In The Night Face, the Gwydiona are clearly denying and repressing something. There is evidence of violence on their planet - but it cannot have been committed by them!