Terra During The Polesotechnic League III

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

Jim Ching is a student within:

"'...the educational complex of San Francisco Integrate.'" (p. 179)

There is an:

"'...upcoming Festival of Man.'" (ibid.)

The political set-up is called:

"'...the Solar Commonwealth...'" (p. 180)

A Wodenite, Adzel, from a race of primitive hunters, has come to Earth to learn planetology and has converted to Buddhism.

Jim communicates with his counsellor, Feeman Simon Snyder, and with his girlfriend, Betty Riefenstahl, by holovid. He researches for his Festival of Man project by getting Library Central to screen information about the former San Francisco district of Chinatown where there had been a Lunar New Year festival:

"...with fireworks and a parade." (p. 183)

We barely notice all this background to a story about Jim and Adzel but in fact it conveys a great deal of information about life on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth.

Terra During The Polesotechnic League II

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

Jim Ching can set his phone to pass calls only from certain people. Jim mentions the possibility of:

"...a rogue planet on a collision course." (p.177)

- not that there is one in this story but his remark sets the scene for some later instalments. 

A hundred young Earth people contend for each of the few annual spaceman's berths. Although only sixteen, Jim can fly above the ocean in his car. He has also made:

"...occasional trips to Luna..." (p. 178)

He must cope with tensor calculus problems projected onto his screen by the Education Central computer.

League apprenticeships are scarce and:

"...mostly filled by relatives." (p. 179)

Jim hopes to attend the Academy, serve on a regular run and maybe become a captain. His principle counsellor consults Jim's psychoprofile whereas a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League would just tell Ching what to do and learn.

This story is full of information about life on Terra if we read it right.

Terra During The Polesotechnic League

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

Nicholas van Rijn's Reception Hall

an anachronistic armed human receptionist

lucent plastic

winking, talking machines

jade columns

vaulted dimness

guards checking and disarming visitors in the lobby below

Van Rijn's Office

large

an entire transparent wall showing Djakarta and the Java Sea

extraterrestrial curios on shelves

thousands of worn, leather-bound books

a large, littered desk

a Martian sandroot St. Dismas

tobacco smoke haze and reek

One of van Rijn's Mansions

on the peak of Kilimanjaro

among undying snows

easily defensible

a favoured conference venue

high turrets

glowing lights

armed, liveried staff greeting his aircar

corridors paneled in extrasolar woods

janie scent

Mozart

conference table with a datacom terminal for each colleague

(We are seeing only one side of Terra.)

Lost Youth in Different Periods And Timelines

At the ends of their respective sub-series of Poul Anderson's Technic History, Chee Lan and Miriam Abrams make essentislly the same remark: their youth is gone. See here. There are other literary echoes. Chee Lan's shipmate, Adzel, says that those were good years just as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot says that those were good days. We remember and agree. Anderson's Manse Everard cannot recapture the experience of his boyhood before the war even though he is a time traveller! He can, of corse, space-time travel to the Midwest pre-1942... but he is not the same, as Chee Lan says.

This experience is common to all of literature. Poul Anderson expresses it in science fiction.

"Bid time return..."

More From The High Sierra

A Stone in Heaven, XIV, tells us two things about Terra in Dominic Flandry's lifetime. The first is how the High Sierra looks in autumn which presumably is the same as it looks in ours:

comes early;

frosty days;

frozen nights;

its fairest time;

clear air;

smoking breath;

cold breeze;

smell of firs;

darkling trees;

trembling, rustling, golden aspen;

across a canyon, steep, blue rock;

snowy heights;

cloudless sky;

bright sun;

hovering hawk, wings glowing;

soughing forest;

booming wind.

The second thing is that the Imperium controls the media:

the Cairncross conspiracy to rebel and usurp is too embarrassing and dangerous to publicize;

however, it is too big to be covered up;

but it can be extremely underplayed, even made boring to hear about;

more entertaining events can be manufactured.

Flandry refers disparagingly to:

"'...what passes for the public consciousness.'" (p. 185)

He knows that he is living in times that are far from ideal but to what extent does he want to be associated with such manipulations and distortions?

Philosophical Problems

Science fiction can be philosophical fiction. Philosophical analysis is necessary to unravel what HG Wells writes about "Time" in The Time Machine and, of course, from there we proceed directly to several works by Poul Anderson. CS Lewis expounds his philosophy of mind and mankind when he replies to Wells and Stapledon in his third Ransom novel, That Hideous Strength. Anderson continues this discussion of the relationship between mankind and technology in his Harvest of Stars Tetralogy and in Genesis. Man remakes himself with technology in Wells' The Shape of Things to Come and in Stapledon's Last and First Men but declines and becomes extinct because of technology in The Time Machine and Genesis and would have been destroyed if not for supernatural intervention in That Hideous Strength.

I think that the most fundamental philosophical problem is the relationship between being and consciousness. The Time Machine and James Blish's The Quincunx of Time describe immaterial consciousnesses moving inexorably along a Fourth Dimension identified with Time, a notion fraught with philosophical problems that I have addressed elsewhere. A basic part of this philosophical problem is the mind-body question. Neurologists study brains. Psychologists study minds. Philosophers study the relationship between minds and brains. None of us is able to perceive a psychophysical organism as a totality in all its aspects. It is as if we see a circle, knowing that the circle is a flat cross-section of a sphere, but we are unable to perceive the whole sphere in all its three dimensions. Would a sufficiently powerful deity be able to perceive body and mind as a single entity? Is this what Aycharaych, the universal telepath, can do?

What can Aycharaych do that we cannot? We perceive the body and behaviour of an animal or a human being and infer its/his/her consciousness. We think that a cat is conscious of a bird when we see the cat stalking the bird whereas we do not think, except in imagination, that a wound-up clockwork toy soldier is consciously obeying the order, "Forward march!" when we see it perambulating across the floor. However, we do not normally perceive any of the inner workings either of the organism or of the mechanism. Nor does Aycharaych. All that he does that we do not is to sense and interpret neural emissions. (I think that we are told somewhere that they are very long-wave.) Aycharaych literally has a sixth sense. Beyond that, the mystery of the mind-brain relationship remains unsolved.

Terra Or Not In The Early Technic History

The first five instalments:

(i) a story set entirely in the outer Solar System but imparting some information about Earth from the mid-20th to the mid-21st centuries;

(ii) and (iii) two stories, each set on a different extra-solar planet while also imparting information on several other such planets;

(iv) and (v) two contemporaneous stories, one commencing on Earth, the other set entirely within San Francisco Integrate.

And this would be a good point at which to start extracting information from (iv) and (v) but that is not going to happen tonight.

Starward.

Earth In "The Saturn Game"

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

Section III refers to:

children playacting "...in pre-electronic North America..." (p. 24);

passive entertainment, mainly television, in the mid-twentieth century;

also "...the restrictions and menaces of that unhappy period..." (p. 25);

adult psychodrama as therapy and as a retreat from restrictions, menaces and TV etc;

the Chaos ending such activities;

their revival in the mid-twenty first century.

Section II had informed us of:

minerals from Phobos launched to Earth;

a Britannic-American consortium launching the Chronos on an eight year journey to Saturn after the Vladimir had somehow been lost en route to Mercury.

On p. 30, we learn that Jerusalem Catholics are strict about some things and maybe archaistic. I am trying to isolate information relating specifically to Earth.

Terra In THE GAME OF EMPIRE

We were looking for information about Terra during Dominic Flandry's lifetime. The most comprehensive account was in A Stone in Heaven. The Game of Empire imparts nearly nothing. Flandry meets Miriam at debarkation, gets her waved through inspection and hurries her to their apartment in a single sentence. While in the apartment, he looks through the transparency:

"Through a light rain and an early dusk, the city flashed hectic, as far as vision could fare."

-The Game of Empire, CHAPTER TWELVE, p. 320.

That is all unless we also include the apartment's interior: an odour of roses and a Mozart concerto. Flandry's hectic but undescribed Archopolis might remind us of Manse Everard's fleetingly described New York: sky hectic as lights flame against it; streets crawling with automobiles and a hurrying, faceless crowd; arrogant Manhattan towers. If the Flandrys live in the same appartment that Flandry had before he remet Miriam, then it is surrounded by graceful two hundred year old towers. Information is to be found in the texts if we look for it.

Maybe we should next look for information about Terra in pre-Flandry periods. The opening instalment of the Technic History, "The Saturn Game," is set entirely off Earth but its introductory passages impart some relevant information and indicate how our history transitions into the future history.

Whatever Happened To Chives - And To Aycharaych?

An outcome of a fictional narrative may be implied rather than stated. Thus, at the end of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, it is inferred that the villain, Stapleton, has perished in the Grimpen Mire. Because this outcome is merely inferred, it would be possible without inconsistency to write a sequel in which Stapleton turns out after all to have survived his panicked flight through the Mire. However, one of the many film dramatizations of The Hound... shows Stapleton sinking into the Mire, thus precluding any sequel to that film with Stapleton surviving.

In Poul Anderson's A Stone in Heaven, Dominic Flandry is sixty-one and expects to have his servant, Chives, for another ten years with luck. In The Game of Empire, Flandry is nearly seventy and there is no mention of Chives even when Flandry welcomes his wife, Miriam, back to their Archopolis apartment. I think that it is implied that Chives has died. This conclusion could have been contradicted by a later novel or story showing Chives still alive but there was no further instalment set during Flandry's lifetime. In a sense, therefore, the question whether Chives is still alive by then remains open but it becomes inceasingly unlikely. In our timeline, the mere passage of time means that anyone who was active during World War II either is dead by now or soon will be.

Almost certainly Aycharaych died when Flandry had ordered the bombardment of Chereion in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. In The Game of Empire, Tachwyr speculates about Aycharaych's possible survival:

"...Aycharaych died when the Dennitzans bombarded his planet. At least, he vanished; you could never be sure of anything about the Chereionite."

-Poul Anderson, The Game of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER SIX, p. 267.

Tachwyr goes on to assure Aycharaych's ghost that the (Merseian) Race will seek the destiny that the God has set for it. We know, although Tachwyr does not, that, even if Aycharaych has survived, he will no longer have any motivation to serve the Roidhunate - unless his motivation became simply revenge against Flandry and the Terran Empire? I would prefer to imagine him seeking other goals like maybe assisting Axor's researches into the Ancients/Elders/Chereionites.

Terra In A STONE IN HEAVEN

A Stone In Heaven.

In Chapter IV, Miriam "Banner" Abrams arrives among the towers of Archopolis and stays at the Fatima Caravanserai.

In V, Emperor Gerhart receives the Grand Duke of Hermes in the Coral Palace.

In VI, Flandry, Banner and Chives leave Terra in Flandry's private spaceship, the Hooligan...

In XIV, they are back on Terra in Flandry's cabin in the High Sierra. When Flandry and Banner hike, Poul Anderson describes the scenery. Our last sight ever of Chives is when he takes a fishing rod, "...promising trout meuniere for dinner." (p. 184)

Our last sight in this novel of Flandry and Banner is in the concluding sentence:

"They walked on into the autumn." (p. 188)

And we do at last get a more rounded sense of Terra as a planet.

Flandry In Archopolis

A Stone In Heaven is the jackpot volume for information about Terra in Flandry's lifetime. Its Chapter I ends:

"'...have you ever perchance heard of Admiral Flandry?'"

-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 1-188 AT I, p. 16.

Regular readers of Anderson's Technic History have read of Flandry but not until now of Admiral Flandry. Chapter III begins:

"Vice Admiral Sir Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Corps, Imperial Terran Navy, maintained three retreats in different areas that he liked. None was as sybaritic as his home base in Archopolis..." (p. 28)

Was Archopolis, capital city of the Terran Empire, named any earlier in the series? We are about to learn about it. Flandry rises, swims, exercises, showers, dresses, eats a souffle prepared and served by Chives and smokes beside the fountain in the roof garden where a brightly plumed Cynthian yaoti sings in an orange tree. They are surrounded by towers under white clouds and sparkling aircars in a blue sky. There is a cool breeze and muted machine sounds.

Andersonian description at its best, summarized here.

Trianon

The Coral Palace in three Dominic Flandry novels has:

an antechamber with fountains;

a ballroom with a waist-high transparent dome;

a grav shaft to a secret, sealed office beneath the ballroom;

towers, the highest with a waist-high transparent dome;

a cantilevered garden above a fountain;

trianons -

- so I imagine that one trianon is an exact one-to-one miniature of the Palace, lived in by the Emperor when not entertaining.

However, having been out all day and about to go out again this evening, I do not really have time for much more imagination today.

High is heaven and holy.

In The Coral Palace

In Ensign Flandry, Markus Hauksberg meets the seven critical members of the Policy Board in a secret, sealed office beneath the ballroom of the Coral Palace. Before joining them, he sees through the ballroom dome that:

"The darkness enclosed by the Lunar crescent was pinpointed with city lights."

-Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER ONE, p. 10.

- which confirms again that those metrocenters are on Luna.

In A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Dominic Flandry meets Emperor Hans in a room at the top of a tower with a domed roof transparent from waist height. There is a dolchzahn skin rug and a model of a corvette.

In A Stone In Heaven, Emperor Gerhart and Edwin Cairncross converse in a suite in the highest tower. They are under a clear dome. There is a dolchzahn skin rug and a model of a corvette. Presumably the same room where Gerhart's father had received Flandry.

There is always more but maybe that is all for tonight.

(We want to see more on Terra than - mostly - Admiralty buildings and the Coral Palace. But there is some more to come.)

Metrocenters

I had some difficulty understanding this sentence:

"Tonight, while the planet turned, its dark side was so radiant as to drown the very metro-centers seen from Luna."

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ONE Evening on Terra -, p. 5.

Metro-centers on Terra can be seen from Luna?

"A crescent moon stood high to westward; metrocenter starpoints glinted across its dark side."

-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT III, p. 372.

The second quotation makes clear that the "metrocenters," no longer hyphenated, are on Luna and seen from Terra, not vice versa. Thus, here is another feature of Terra in Flandry's time: visible Lunar urbanization.

Meanwhile, checking on metrocenters, we find that the Coral Palace is featured no less than three times and each time in the reign of a different Emperor, so we should give this extraordinary edifice some attention. 

Flandry And Kossara On Terra

In Dominic Flandry's time:

Vanrijn is a planet;

there is an Adzel Square in the University of Virgil in Nova Roma on Aeneas in the Virgilian System in Sector Alpha Crucis of the Terran Empire;

Chateau Falkayn '35 is a red wine but we are not told to which century the "'35" refers.

In the post-Flandry instalments collected in Flandry's Legacy, Flandry's name is not mentioned although we nevertheless discern his influence and legacy.

As we continue our survey of Terra in Flandry's time:

Flandry enjoys the multi-sensory view on Catalina;

Kossara experiences the inside of a slave depot, then city and ocean as seen from an aircar, then finally the inside of an ornate house on Catalina;

Flandry, attending a bon voyage party for Emperor Hans at the Coral Palace, converses successively with the Duke of Mars, the Emperor and Chunderban Desai;

Flandry and Desai, sitting in a garden cantilevered from a wall above a courtyard with a fluorescent fountain, hear splashing water, smell sweet flowers, feel cool air and see gleaming stars and the glowing ocean.

Farewell to Terra until the next volume. Flandry does not lack quiet contexts for the contemplation of Imperial conflicts.

Five Cold Planets

"Every planet in the story is cold -"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT I, p. 342.

After an unheaded, italicized prologue, Chapter I begins as above. The planets in the story are:

Terra (we know it by now)

Diomedes (van Rijn was there)

Talwin (Flandry was there)

Dennitza (Kosarra, the new heroine, is from there)

Chereion (Aycharaych, the continuing villain, is from there)

The opening paragraph continues:

"- even Terra, though Flandry came home on a warm evening of northern summer. There the chill was in the spirit." (ibid.)

This continues the theme of evening and autumn on Terra which had been introduced and developed earlier in the Flandry sub-series of the Technic History. Our first sight of Terra in this novel is:

"Summer evening around Catalina deepened into night. Flandry sat on a terrace of the lodge which the island's owner, his friend the Mayor Palatine of Britain, had built on its heights and had lent to him." (I, p. 355)

Flandry has the opportunity to reflect while evening becomes night.

Terra In "Hunters of the Sky Cave" II

"Hunters of the Sky Cave," VII.

Flandry describes the Terran Empire founded by Manuel Argos as the Indian summer of Technic civilization and his own period as its advanced autumn. Anderson's elegiac future vision follows Wells'. Terran aristocrats and their autumn echo the Eloi and the Sunset of Mankind just as Chereion with its dying sun recalls the Time Traveller's Further Vision.

The rest of "Hunters..." is set far away from Terra, mostly on the colony planet, Vixen. Flandry tells the Vixenite, Kit, that her frontier people will still be around:

"'...long after the Empire is a fireside legend.'" (p. 206)

It sounds as though the Empire is well on its way to that legendary status already.

Terra In "Hunters of the Sky Cave"

In "Hunters of the Sky Cave, " III, Flandry again visits Admiralty Center. Chives illegally dives a borrowed space yacht through the traffic lanes, then Flandry, diving from the airlock, rides a grav repulsor to the 40th flange of the Intelligence tower where, lacking a pass, he blackmails the marine guard to let him enter. We learn about Madame Cepheid's Go board. Some heroes clash with their superiors: Flandry with Admiral Fenross and Inspector Montalbano with His Honour the Commissioner.

In VI, we see Flandry's office in Intelligence for the first and only time. Its clear wall shows the soft-coloured spires of Admiralty Center under the Terran spring sky. After completing a report, Flandry smokes with his feet on the desk and reflects that policy makers, scientists, engineers, strategists, tacticians, coordinators, clerks and their families need food, clothing, houses, schools and amusements so that Center becomes a city which will inevitably be sacked by barbarians - like Trantor in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.

Fenross says that, if he did not oblige the peerage, then he would be begging his bread in Underground. This is a whole side of Terran society that Anderson does not show us. Is there a literally subterranean underclass?

VII is set in Flandry's private space speedster, the Hooligan, leaving the Solar System but nevertheless imparts some information about Terra:

"...meanwhile rhododendrons bloomed like cool fire in Terra's parks, and the laughing youth of Terra's aristocracy flew past on their way to some newly opened pleasure house."

-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 149-301 AT VII, p. 197.

Terra In "The Game of Glory"

In "The Game of Glory," I, Dominic Flandry has leave on Terra where he spends three months at the perpetual banquet of the Lyonid family and fights a duel with someone's husband but that does not exhaust the information on Terra in this story. In II, we learn that the widow of the murdered Terran resident on Nyanza, Lady Varvara, was born an Ayres of Antarctica and that some of her bodily features also show the Chinese strain in the Ayres pedigree. She welcomes Flandry because he is straight from Terra and informs him that associating only with an inferior class has rubbed off on her and made her soul greasy. An interesting social throwback.

(An unfamiliar and inappropriate cover image. Commander Flandry is an alternative title of The Rebel Worlds. Flandry is a Captain in "The Game of Glory.")

Admiralty Center

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER TWO, describes Admiralty Center which we have discussed before:

a metropolis in its own right;

towering above the Rockies;

many-tinted walls;

fluoro-panels permanently necessary on the lower levels;

looping, tangled, elevated ways;

pinnacles among clouds and sunlight;

swarming, glittering, electronically controlled air traffic;

tunnels and chambers beneath the foundations;

slideways;

beehive-like humming;

underground growling.

Flandry's aircab lands on the fiftieth-level parking flange of Intelligence headquarters where a marine guard admits him to the building which has internal slideways and upbound negagrav fields. Flandry moves through crowds of different ranks and species and ascends to the ninety-seventh level and Admiral Kheraskov's office where the entire rear wall shows an animation of Jupiter seen from an approaching ship. In CHAPTER SIXTEEN, the animation is of Saturn.

Terra In Flandry's Time

Our current task is to learn as much as possible about Terra in Flandry's time. For this purpose, our sources are:

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER ONE Evening on Terra -

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTERs TWO and SIXTEEN

"The Game of Glory," I

"Hunters of the Sky Cave," III, VI and VII

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, I, II and III

A Stone in Heaven, III, IV, V and XIV

The Game of Empire, CHAPTER TWELVE

These fifteen chapters present our last sights of Earth, renamed Terra, in Poul Anderson's Technic History. The four post-Flandry instalments are set far away not only in time but also in space.

In Ensign Flandry, Terra holds carnival for the Emperor's birthday. The sky is luminous with fireworks, the night side is radiant, near riotous crowds fill pleasure houses and towers are festively decorated. Crown Prince Josip receives guests in the Coral Palace, built on an atoll, with tall water-spout columns in its antechamber. The ballroom, under a clear dome, is lit only by ultraviolet and everything is fluorescent. Since Josip wears black, his green hands and face, the latter bearing red lenses, seem disembodied. 

Lord Hauksberg wonders what will become of the Empire when that creature mounts the throne. We will find out. Unsurprisingly, we are informed that Emperor Georgios will be buried in a tomb.

Captain Flandry

Captain Flandry deserves to be a single omnibus volume incorporating the contents of two collections and one novel. That would leave Outposts of Empire " ("Outpost of Empire" plus The Day Of Their Return) as a shorter volume intermediate between Young Flandry and Captain Flandry. We would like it if there were more "Outposts" but we can't have everything.

The contents of the proposed Captain Flandry, not to be confused with the already existing Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire, divide conveniently into four pairs:

"Tiger by the Tail"

"Honorable Enemies"

"A Message in Secret"

"The Plague of Masters"

"The Game of Glory"

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

"The Warriors from Nowhere"

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

We discern an Aycharaych trilogy:

in "Honorable Enemies," Flandry first meets and defeats Aycharaych;

in "Hunters of the Sky Cave," Flandry captures Aycharaych;

in A Knight..., Flandry kills or at least neutralizes Aycharaych.

We also notice that Chives and the Hooligan come on-stage in the last three instalments and that Flandry's superior, Fenross, is in "Hunters..." and "The Warriors..."

Knowing Oneness III

The Rebel Worlds.

On Dido, the Thunderstone communion learns of the vaster universe: beyond jungle and mountains, there are sea, stars and strangers with single bodies.

"How shall we achieve oneness with the whole world unless we understand it?" (p. 519)

Suggestion: oneness is not to be achieved because it already exists but remains to be realized.

Didonian units make oneness by uniting into a single self-conscious Didonian. Oneness with the world is something else but Kathryn mentions ceremonies, contemplation and hallucinogens. A Didonian concludes that understanding is also necessary. On Earth, previous generations have been able to intuit oneness while believing that myths were real but now we can combine meditation with scientific understanding. The Didonians are on their way.

Dualism or Pluralism versus Monism

Are there two or more independent but interacting realities or is there a single reality with multiple aspects?

Idealism versus Materialism (in the philosophical sense)

Is consciousness perennial or emergent? Does matter interact with mind or develop a mental aspect?

Philosophical objective idealists like Hegel think that reality is mental because it comprises concepts but that these concepts are not subjectively conscious: a contradictory theory transitional to materialism.

See Three Indian Philosophical Systems.

Compare the Thunderstone communion on Dido with the Stormgate Choth on Avalon.

One Day's Work For Dominic Flandry

The Rebel Worlds.

Flandry's men on Dido that we missed before:

Lieutenant Valencia will assume command if Flandry fails to return from reconnaisence;

Mitsui and Petrovic will prepare Kathryn's hiding place.

Flandry makes it all seem easy:

secretly hijack a rebel ship, thus acquiring the rebel code and ensuring the defeat of the rebellion;

conceal the prisoner, Kathryn McCormac;

leave her guarded by a single Didonian registered as three space hands to satisfy regulations;

lure her tormentor, Governor Snelund, on board;

help Kathryn to assassinate Snelund;

return Kathryn to her husband, Hugh McCormac;

persuade McCormac to lead his fleet out of known space and never return;

devise an implausible narrative to account for all these mysterious comings and goings;

get away with it because the Intelligence Service needs able men who get results;

go far (or die trying).

Two Major Volumes

Although I have never seen a copy, I understand that the omnibus volume, The Imperial Stars, has the same contents as The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume IV, Young Flandry, but, of course, a much better and more appropriate cover.

The Imperial Stars is the immediate sequel to The Earth Book of Stormgate. The Earth Book "spans, illuminates and completes" (front cover blurb) all that has gone before about the Polesotechnic League, the Ythrians and the early Terran Empire whereas The Imperial Stars prepares for all that is to follow about the later Empire and its long aftermath. Thus, these two volumes are a major turning point in the Technic History. They collect fifteen, just over a third, of the forty three instalments of the History.

After The Rebellion

After the Young Flandry/The Imperial Stars Trilogy:

the story of John Ridenour, whom Flandry had met on Starkad in Ensign Flandry, continues in "Outpost of Empire";

the aftermath of the McCormac Rebellion, which had occurred in The Rebel Worlds, is described in The Day Of Their Return;

the life and career of Dominic Flandry continue in most, although not all, of what is left of the Technic History. 

The Day Of Their Return begins with Job 4:12-16.

Its opening chapter, 1, less than a page in length, ends:

"Above them paled Dido, the morning star."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 1, p. 76.

This tells us that 1 is set on Aeneas.

 2 begins:

"East of Windhome..." (ibid.)

This tells us that 2 is also set on Aeneas. In fact, the whole novel is.

"...Kathryn McCormac, his father's sister..." (4, p. 104)

- tells us that our new viewpoint character, Ivar Frederiksen, is Kathryn's nephew. Although Kathryn's maiden name was mentioned in The Rebel Worlds - an ancestor had founded the research base, Port Frederiksen, on Dido - the change of surname makes it easy to forget these Aenean family relationships between books. Kathryn's brother and his family were not mentioned in The Rebel Worlds. The McCormacs have fled before the beginning of The Day Of Their Return. It is all one solid future history.

Kathryn McCormac

 

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER TWELVE.

I hope that the attached image of the British paperback back cover blurb is legible.

The barbarians are at the edge not of the galaxy but of known space. They do not expect the Empire to fall yet. The description of McCormac and of Flandry is accurate. The number of suns affected by Kathryn McCormac is exaggerated. But her single word could decide many fates. Flandry would support Hugh McCormac's revolution if he could be with Kathryn even for a while. Flandry changing his loyalty even temporarily would drastically alter the outcome of the Rebellion whether or not it led to McCormac becoming Emperor. Maybe Sector Alpha Crucis would become independent. The rebels would not have gone into exile. The remainder of Flandry's life and career would have been very different. But Djana's geas preventing Flandry from getting the woman that he really wants is still operating.

Hatred Of Terra

A tavern song on Ansa:

"Comrades, hear the battle tiding,

"hear the ships that rise and yell

"faring outward, standard rising -

"Kick the Terrans back to hell!"

-Poul Anderson, "Sargasso of Lost Starships" IN Anderson, Rise of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 367-436 AT I, p. 369.

Draun of Highsky on Avalon:

"'We've many new-made dead this night. The more Terrans for hell-wind to blow ahead of them, the better.'"

-Poul Anderson, The People of the Wind IN Rise of the Terran Empire, pp. 437-662 AT IX, p. 547.

"'Cast them onto hell-wind!' The slug-thrower stuttered in Draun's grasp."

-ibid., XVII, p. 640.

"A platoon trotted toward Draun. He stood above [his dying son] and fired as long as he was able."

-ibid., p. 641.

Hugh McCormac's son on Aeneas:

"'Save death for the Terries, hey?' asked Bob."

-The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SIX, p. 422.

An Arulian on Freehold:

"'...what can your law mean to us, Terran - ?'"

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 12.

Ivar Frederiksen on Aeneas:

"'...too many of us are dead in war, while Impies tell us to change ways of our forefathers.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day of Their Return IN Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire, pp. 74-240 AT 10, p. 154.

A Nyanzan on Brae:

"'Ai! 'List nay, they said. Nay let recruiters 'list you...damned Empire...even to gain warskill, don't 'list...shall freedom come from slave-masters...'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire, pp. 303-339 AT I, p. 305.

The phrases, "Terrans," "Terries," "Impies" and "...damned Empire...," all refer to human beings. Some of us have to accept that the nationality to which we belong is hated in other parts of the world. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, members of our species are hated in other parts of the known galaxy both by members of other species and by human beings who have settled elsewhere.

Philippe Rochefort has a simple response:

"He straightened in his chair. Man is my race."

-The People of the Wind, IV, p. 487.

Knowing Oneness II

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

In Knowing Oneness, we compared Didonian and Upanishadic onenesses. The novel addresses this issue:

"'Oneness is the ideal in this culture, I'm learnin', as 'tis in a lot of others,' she told Flandry. 'They consider the whole world to be potenti'ly a single entity. By ceremonies, mystic contemplation, hallucinogenic foods, or whatever, they try to merge with it. An everyday method is to make frequent new interconnections. The matin' season, 'round the autumnal equinox, is their high point of the year, mainly 'cause of the ecstatic transcendental 'speriences that then become possible.'" (p. 472)

The whole world is a single unity but not even potentially a single entity in the Didonian sense. Their "entity" is a single self-consciousness generated by an interconnection between three units of different species. My disagreement with Vedanta is precisely that I say that the universe is one and conscious but not one consciousness. It is conscious of itself through many individual conscious organisms. Of these, many experience only animal sensation. Some, human beings, are self-conscious and linguistic, able to abstract and conceptualize. Of these, many experience only alienation and separation, not oneness. Some intuit and realize oneness. The universe itself is not a single self-conscious individual but the totality of subjects and objects, selves and others.

Flandry asks whether pantheism is not natural to Didonians. Kathryn replies that pantheism is no more natural to Didonians than monotheism is to men. Some Didonians, exalting their own communion as distinct from everything and everyone else, resemble human mobs supporting a warring state. Yes, Didonian oneness might well stop short at that point.

Other Planets

The Rebel Worlds recounts actions on Terra, Shalmu, Llynathawr, Aeneas and Dido and presents an overview of Satan whereas, in The Day Of Their Return, all the action takes place on the surface of the single planet, Aeneas. However, they all grow toward the same sun as Hloch says of the diverse narratives collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate. In both cases, "the same sun" is metaphorical. In The Rebel Worlds, most of these planets are in orbit around different suns. However, they all belong in the same future history.

Meanwhile, in our timeline, planets that might be habitable continue to be detected. If the Webb Telescope were to discover advanced civilizations within several light years of Sol, then that might help to unite some of mankind and direct their attention outward.

"Do we want to remain big people in a tiny world or to become a little people in a vaster world? That is the ultimate climax towards which I have directed my narrative.

"J. B.

"17 January 2021"

-Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1965), EPILOGUE, p. 219.

Knowing Oneness

The Rebel Worlds.

"Make oneness." (p. 369)

"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies. Terrible are their powers, but those We can someday learn to wield like them if we choose. Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness." (p. 520)

Thus begins and ends The Rebel Worlds. Thus also, a Didonian first becomes self-conscious, then reflects on humanity.

"Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.

"When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?"

-Juan Mascaro (trans.), Isa Upanishad IN The Upanishads (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1984), p. 49.

"'An invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Truth. THOU ART THAT.'"

-Chandogya Upanishad IN op. cit., p. 118.

Human beings can know a greater unity than that of the Didonians. 

I have one philosophical disagreement with Vedanta: sages realize their identity with the essence of the universe but that essence is conscious of itself only through human beings and other conscious organisms. Before the evolution of such organisms, THAT was pre-conscious. I think.

(I might be having computer problems so don't be surprised if I am off-line for a while.)

On Satan

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER TEN.

The rogue planet, Satan, recedes from Beta Crucis on its hyperbolic orbit:

a sphere blurred by gas

vaguely shimmering clouds and oceans

lands seen as blacknesses

desolation

raw mountains

gashed valleys

naked stone plains

chill, stagnant seas

unrelieved night

rare lamps

blue phosphorescence

dreary wind-skirl

rushing sterile waters

still-toiling robots, computers and automata

a dragon's hoard of wealth for the first Imperial aristocrat to send down a self-piloting freighter

Dido, Vanrijn And Barsoom

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER NINE.

Flandry compares the tripartite Didonians to the bipartite Togru-Kon-Tanakh of Vanrijn whom we saw in the very first story if we read the collected Technic History in its original order, starting not with The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, but with Trader To The Stars, the "trader" in question being van Rijn, of course. There was a similar bipartite race on Barsoom in ERB's The Chessmen of Mars.

It is impossible to remember the details of the Didonians between rereadings of The Rebel Worlds.

"...stalls for nogas, perches for krippos, benches for rukas." (p. 459)

Rhinoceros-like nogas, winged krippos and chimpanzee-like rukas link their nervous systems to generate intelligent Didonians.

"Cubs, calves, and chicks, too small for education, bumbled about like the pet animals they were." (ibid.)

Noga calves, ruka cubs and krippo chicks.

But we have to keep reminding ourselves while reading.

Speech is contrapuntal with droning, fluting and coughing sounds. Pidgin is necessary to communicate with human beings.

Didonians cannot conceive of privacy but what else might they conceive of?

Mythological Names

The Rebel Worlds.

Maybe it is appropriate that the Virgilian planets, Aeneas and Dido, resemble earlier fictional versions of Mars and Venus? Mars, the god of war, had a relationship with Venus, the goddess of love. Aeneas, a warrior and a son of Venus, had a relationship with Dido, Queen of Carthage. Thus, Aeneas and Dido parallel Mars and Venus. Dido's resentment at her abandonment by Aeneas caused (mythologically speaking) the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage, featured in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Delenda Est," because Aeneas was an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. 

Virgil wrote the Aeneid about Aeneas. Lavinia, the outer moon of Aeneas, is named after Aeneas' last wife. Thus, the mythology is ever-present even if usually forgotten.

David Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, is named after the Greek equivalent of Mercury. Adzel's and Axor's home planet, Woden, is named after the Germanic god who became Odin. Chee Lan's home planet, Cynthia, is named after its human discoverer's mistress, thus an incarnation of Venus if we see it that way.

Flandry's Men On Dido

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER EIGHT.

Citizen Willig, boat pilot (but we don't know whether he survives).

O'Brien dies during the descent to Dido.

Ensign Thomas Havelock is trained in emergency procedure.

Saavedra is the communications officer.

Felipe Kapunan is the medical officer.

Chief Petty Officer Robbins.

Two first names: Yuan; Christopher.

Others.

How Dido got to be the way it is is similar to other such stories in the Technic History. Probably:

Dido began like Venus;

a large asteroid hit it;

most atmosphere was blown off;

the thinner atmosphere allowed evolution of photosynthesis etc;

although amino acids are dextro-, not levo-;

the collision also caused the extreme axial tilt and rapid rotation;

turbulent oceans despite no moon;

much tectonic activity;

droughts;

no ice ages.

One of several freak planets in this future history.

Aeneas And Dido

The Rebel Worlds.

Dido and Aeneas are the third and fourth planets in the Virgilian System. They are like the Venus and Mars of early twentieth century sf: hot and cold, respectively, but habitable. CHAPTER SIX, which has been our source on Aeneas, adds that the Aenean day is twenty hours long.

Ensign Flandry begins with a page-long quote from a Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris on Starkad. That Manual was for the Cis-Betelgeusean Orionis Sector. The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SEVEN, quoting the equivalent Manual for this region of Sector Alpha Crucis, informs us that Dido:

has an eccentric orbit;

averages one astronomical unit from Virgil;

is slightly smaller and less massive than Terra;

rotates once in eight hours and forty-seven minutes;

has an axis tilted at thirty-eight degrees;

has a hot and dense but breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere;

has a biochemistry neither poisonous nor nourishing to human beings.

Dido is inhabited but uncomfortable for human beings who colonized Aeneas in order to study the Didonians. There is a research base, Port Frederiksen, on Dido. 

Aenean Night

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SIX.

Windhome, battlemented ancestral stronghold of the Firstman of Ilion, stands on a former cape, now a cliff towering above the Antonine Seabed. The Wildfoss River cataracts past. Windhome has a courtyard and an old Firstman's office now full of modern communication equipment. From a balcony off the office, McCormac, Firstman and Admiral, watches the rise of the inner moon, Creusa, which moves visibly, its shadows moving and phases changing noticeably. It looks as if waves again move across the Antonine and surf hits Windhome ness. He also sees Dido, the evening star, where Kathryn had worked as a xenologist in the jungles. She had always loved best the moments when Creusa moved above the Antonine. He wonders whether she will ever see them again. She will not.

One More Summary

Technic History: League; Ythrians; Empire.

Opening tetralogy: League.

Two short stories: Empire.

The People of the Wind: Ythrians and Empire.

Earth Book: all three.

The rest: Empire and after; one more Ythrian.

This summary omits the opening story, "The Saturn Game."

The Empire does not appear in any of the twelve works collected in the Earth Book but the introductions and afterword are fictitiously written by an Ythrian in the aftermath of the events of The People of the Wind.

The opening tetralogy contains eight League instalments, including two novels, whereas the Earth Book collects another eight League instalments, including one novel. The Earth Book also both begins and ends with two Ythrian short stories. Thus, the Earth Book is a perfect summation of the Technic History, a perfectly constructed future history series.

Aenean Sunset

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SIX.

Virgil sets. There is no twilight. Alpha and Beta Crucis, the Milky Way and thousands of other stars are immediately visible. The Ilian continental shelf becomes utterly black. Lavinian moonlight silvers the Antonine Seabed.

"A tadmouse piped into the mordant wind." (p. 424)

In The Day Of Their Return, Tatiana Thane has a pet tadmouse.

Despite its subject matter, this is a hasty breakfast post but dig the details. We remember Aeneas although we have never been there. 

On Aeneas

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SIX, is a Prologue to The Day Of Their Return, because it is set entirely on Aeneas:

the continental shelf of Ilion rises above the Antonine Seabed;

the outer moon, Lavinia, is small but visible;

Hugh McCormac and his three sons by his first wife ride not green, six-legged stathas but Aenean horses adapted to low gravity, both species imported;

fire trava, sword trava and plume trava cover the ground and curl up, conserving heat for the night;

trees are both native and imported, including oak and cedar from Terra and rasmin from Llynathawr;

a tineran caravan has set up before Windhome.

We are destined to learn a very great deal about both tinerans and Windhome in the sequel.

Virgil And Aeneas

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SIX.

Virgil is half again as luminous as Sol with more ultraviolet.

Aeneas, the fourth planet, orbits in 1.73 standard years at a distance of 1.5 astronomical units and receives two-thirds the radiation of Terra. Its mass is 0.45 Terran and surface gravity 0.635. The Terran diameter is 12,742 kilometers; Aenean 10,700. The Aenean atmosphere is humanly breathable, comparable to Denver at the lowest level and to the Peruvian altiplano at the highest. The density gradient is small and mountains are low. Water molecules have ascended and been cracked open by cosmic radiation. Hydrogen has escaped and oxygen has united with minerals. Oceans have shrunk, deserts grown. 

Scientists settled Aeneas to study the natives on the sister planet, Dido. Others came but the intellectuals dominated. Aeneans respect learning like their remote descendants, the Kirkasanters. Students and scholar travel vast distances to the University of Virgil in Nova Roma on Aeneas. A heritage of the Troubles is universal military training. Baronial families hold strongholds and lands. Aeneas supplies many men to the Terran armed services.

One thing is certain: if the Terran Empire becomes oppressive, then Aeneans will resist.

(The woman in the attached cover image could be either Kathryn or Kossara.)

Flandry And Rovian

Flandry and his executive officer, Rovian, who lacks human morality, on the Asieneuve remind us or at least me of Kirk and his first officer, Spock, who lacks human emotions, on the Enterprise. But neither Rovian nor the Asieneuve survives Flandry's first mission. We had seen a member of Rovian's species, Ferran, in the Polesotechnic League period. 

Star Trek should be a lead-in to sf:

from the TV series to James Blish's adaptations to Blish's Cities in Flight;

from Larry Niven's adaptation of a Known Space story in the animated series to his Known Space series;

thus, from Poul Anderson's Man-Kzin Wars (Known Space sub-series) stories to Anderson's own future history series.

Flandry and Aycharaych also resemble Kirk and Spock to a certain extent apart from the important difference of being on opposite sides. Aycharaych speculates about Flandry serving Merseia if history had gone differently.

To Star Trek fans: everything that you like in Star Trek is better in the Technic History.

Minor Planets

Let's give attention to some planets that are mentioned only once and about which we are told almost nothing. They too are part of the fabric of the Technic History. And there are meant to be many such planets.

Vorida is a rogue in the Betelgeuse sector with a Merseian base. (It is mentioned early in Ensign Flandry so that readers are well prepared when another rogue plays a major role later.)

We are not told the name of the fourth planet in the same system as Irumclaw. It has a mine, a floating population, an unbreathable atmosphere, a rusty desert and a purple sky.

Ysabeau is an urbanized Imperial transfer point.

Ardeche is a human colony planet with a land mass called Asieneuve which lends its name to the Continent-class escort destroyer that Flandry commands.

Starport and New Indra are human-colonized planets that the Asieneuve visits en route to Llynathawr.

Six minor planets but there are plenty more. These are just in the Young Flandry Trilogy.