Subversive Language

Mirkheim, XIII.

Irwin Milner, commander of the planet-based Baburite occupation forces on Hermes, addresses Lady Sandra:

"'...the attack those Hermetian ships made on ours, their defiance of orders...Yes, yes, not your fault, madam. But if your navy had that many subversives in it, what about civilians? We might start getting sabotage, espionage, aid and comfort to enemy agents. That has to be guarded against, doesn't it?'" (p. 182)

Sandra does not agree. She merely asks him to continue. Milner is a master of doubletalk. Hermetians resisting invaders are "subversives." Anyone who might come from outside to resist the invasion is an "enemy agent." Well, yes, indeed, they would be enemies - of the invaders.

The regimes in 1984 go as far as they can toward destroying language. Applied to an enemy, the term "blackwhite" accuses the enemy of the absurdity of believing a contradiction whereas, applied to one's own side, the same term means loyal willingness to accept even a contradiction if it is decreed by the powers that be. 

Also relevant is a wise epigram about treason.

United Humanity

Mirkheim, XII.

Arrived on Earth, Eric receives a parcel with an envelope containing two letters. First:

"To his Excellency Eric Tamarin-Asmundsen, in appreciation of his gallant efforts, from a member of United Humanity." (p. 170)

Second:

"My son,

"Read this and destroy. Leave the other note lying about so it may satisfy the curiosity of those who have a watch on you." (ibid.)

The second letter is longer, gives very precise instructions for meeting while avoiding surveillance and is signed:

"Your father,

"[seismographic scrawl]

"N. van Rijn" (p. 171)

Eric has come from space where Old Nick is a myth and is about to meet him.

He knows that United Humanity is:

"A mildly racist association, naturally jingoistic about Babur." (p. 170)

In my experience, racist associations are not "mildly." Decades ago, in Britain, the National Union of Mineworkers began a strike. They received a cheque from the National Front to support "British Miners." That cheque was returned to the NF. Of course, Eric does not have the dilemma of whether to accept support from United Humanity because it is just an ingenious cover story concocted by his devious father, N. van Rijn, whose sign-off to his letter is:

"Long live freedom and damn the ideologies." (p. 171)

Freedom for whom to do what? I could have a long and mutually enjoyable exchange with van Rijn.

War And Chaos

Mirkheim, XII.

"'And the war will purify us,' Garver said." (p. 167)

Does anyone really say that? 

Falkayn reflects that war will give government new powers over free enterprise and that Garver, who is the Solar Commonwealth Minister of Security:

"...loathes us because we've never either joined or toadied to the coalition of cartels. politicians, and bureaucrats. To him, we represent Chaos." (pp.167-168)

We recently quoted a Coordination Service field agent complaining that the Nomads go everywhere and do anything with no regard for any consequences. See here. He ended by calling the Nomads a pain whereas a more elegant term would have been capitalized "Chaos."

Chaos is an ambiguous key concept. Some Anderson heroes fight against "Chaos" whereas others are accused of perpetrating it by their bureaucratic opponents.

My Three Favourite Van Rijn Scenes

 

"Van Rijn stood at the border of the field, holding his great-granddaughter by the hand."

-Mirkheim, XI, p. 159.

To most people, van Rijn is a public figure: merchant, competitor, employer etc. To a very few, he is family.

"It was some time before they were outside. Van Rijn got stuck in the emergency hatch and required pushing, while his anguished basso obscenities drowning the nearing thunder."

-Poul Anderson, The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December, 2009), pp. 337-515 AT III, p. 354.

(That approaching thunder is a pathetic fallacy.)

We know, or soon learn, that van Rijn can handle himself in any physical emergency. If he were alone and stuck in a hatch, then he would waste no energy in bellowing obscenities but would bend his attention to freeing himself. However, since the younger man, Eric Wace, is present to do some pushing, van Rijn can keep up his act: a man who bellows at everything and gives every impression of incompetence - although not when it matters. Sandra Tamarin has already noticed that he:

"'...is a handy man with the tools...'" (ibid., II, p. 347)

- and commented:

"'But then, he was once a common space hand.'" (ibid.)

Decades later, van Rijn to Sandra:

"'You take the Long Trail with me!... A universe where all roads lead to roaming. Life never fails us. We fail it, unless we reach out.'"

-Mirkheim, XXI, p. 287.

I have quoted this before, the perfect send-off, similar to Flandry's closing speech in The Game of Empire. With men like these, how can mankind fail?

Van Rijn's Legacy

Nicholas van Rijn's biological son will become Grand Duke of Hermes and his grandson-in-law will found Avalon. Both planets will become important later. Avalon will resist Terran aggression to remain within the Domain of Ythri and will incubate a biracial civilization whose human citizens will lose the habit of government. An Avalonian Ythrian spy will serve both Domain and Empire well against the Roidhunate. A future Hermetian Grand Duke will scheme to seize the Imperial Throne by force but will be thwarted by Dominic Flandry. Hopefully, both planets will be strong enough to remain self-sufficient during the Long Night.

Maria Crowfeather, mother of Flandry's daughter, Diana Crowfeather, came to Imhotep from Atheia which, after the Long Night:

"...was supposed to have retained or regained almost as many amenities as Old Earth knew in its glory..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708 AT p. 665.

Unfortunately, we are told nothing of Hermes, Avalon or many other civilized planets during the post-Imperial periods. In one of those periods, Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society, refers to the Terran Empire as the First Empire. Of course, anyone can use the word, "Galactic," but, if its use in this instance implies a single Galaxy-wide civilization, then that must be long after the Commonalty period when diverse human civilizations have spread through two or more spiral arms but have little mutual contact. The Commonalty is an interstellar service organization in one civilization and thus is not a government like those of the Solar Commonwealth or the Terran Empire. We are now talking about historical periods long after van Rijn or Flandry and we would like to know a lot more about them.

POV Cop

Mirkheim, X.

On pp. 152-153, there is a conversation between Eric Tamarin-Asmundsen and his mother, Sandra. Eric paces and repeats himself. Sandra replies. A single sentence informs us that this passage is narrated from her point of view (pov). After:

"She drew heavily on her cigar." (p. 153)

- we read:

"The smoke tasted harsh; she'd had too many in the past several hours." (ibid.)

Only she directly experiences that she tastes and reflects. If we had been told that she grimaced as if at a harsh taste, then the pov would have been that either of Eric or of an omniscient narrator. However, when Eric responds to something that she says:

"'What?' It blazed in Eric." (p. 154)

Surely only Eric directly experiences that a realization blazes within him? Or is it sufficient that his mother perceives his realization through his tone of voice and facial expression?

In the following passage on pp. 154-157, Sandra is off-stage as Eric in his personal spaceship catches up with the retreating Hermetian fleet which is under the command of Admiral Michael Falkayn. The pov seems to be that of Eric, not of Falkayn, and this is confirmed when we are told what Falkayn is heard to say but are then told how Eric feels and what he sees, not just that viewscreens show the stars but that:

"Around his eyes blazed the stars..." (p. 155)

As a new viewpoint character, Eric returns at the beginning of Chapter XII:

"Was this truly Earth?

"Eric could sit still no longer. The program he watched was interesting... However, he was too restless." (p. 169)

Fifteen Future Historical Details

If we have read Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic League Tetralogy followed by his novel, The People of the Wind, then his The Earth Book of Stormgate collection fills in a lot of previously undisclosed historical details:

human discovery of Ythri;

Ythrian-human exploration of Gray/Avalon;

Adzel's student days;

what Falkayn did on Merseia;

how van Rijn came to Mirkheim;

five other incidents in the League period;

two stages in the human-Ythrian colonization of Avalon.

A comprehensive and impressive list but still not complete. Three stories that have to be collected separately cover:

exploration of the outer Solar System;

Manuel Argos' slave revolt;

the early Terran Empire.

I keep saying that the Technic History is a good future history series because it is. We approach the end of a month so I might slow down with posts. 

FUTURISTIC SEX by Sean M. Brooks

 

Fair warning to the prurient minded, despite the title of my article, this essay is not pornographic, so get your minds out of the sewers!

 

Over a career in writing spanning more than half a century Poul Anderson used or touched on a vast range of topics. Here I want to note how sex might be used or abused in the future, using his Technic stories for some striking examples.

 

Two basic premises for Anderson's Technic series are (1) a FTL interstellar drive was invented; and (2) many non-human intelligent races were discovered. With these premises many, many possibilities becomes thinkable.

 

I absolutely expect humans in the future to continue using and abusing sex in all the ways we see that being done in the real world, here and now. I also expect sexual encounters between humans and non-humans to happen, especially if these species are not physically repellent to each other.

 

I should also stress that intelligent races which had independently evolved on different worlds over billions of years will not be mutually interfertile. And that will remain true no matter how much two such species resembles each other.

The text quoted below came from Chapter II of A CIRCUS OF HELLS, one of Anderson's stories about Dominic Flandry, Intelligence officer for an interstellar Terran Empire set more than 1000 years from now in the future.

 

Outside a particular joyhouse, otherwise undistinguished

from the rest, an Irumclavian used a vocalizer to chant

in Anglic: "Come one, come all, come in, no cover, no

minimum. Every type of amusement, pleasure, and thrill.

No game too exotic, no stakes too high or low. Continuous

sophisticated entertainment. Delicious food and drink,

stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers, to your

order, to your taste, to your purse. Every sex and every

technique of seventeen, yes, seventeen intelligent species

ready to serve your desires, and this does not count racial,

mutational, and biosculpt variations. Come one, come all--"

 

A little later, in the same chapter,  as Flandry left the "gravshaft" on the level where he was going to a "business" meeting with Leon Ammon, proprietor of this dubious establishment,  we read: "He was glad when Door 666 admitted him; that was on the sado-maso level, and he had glimpsed things. Further on in Chapter II, "Flandry had his suspicions about the origin of many of the subjects on the floor below. Consenting adults . . . after brain channeling and surgical disguise..."

 

The extremely disreputable business establishment Flandry had entered was a brothel, set more than a thousand years in the future. The distaste he had for the sado-maso shows readers he was not "into" the really gross and perverted types of sex. Over and over, in the Flandry stories, readers will see he was a normal male heterosexual who liked and preferred women. And, in the right circumstances, xenosophont females!

 

It's right to quote again from  A CIRCUS OF HELLS, to illustrate how kinky futuristic sex might be. The text quoted below came from the beginning paragraphs of Chapter III.  A major character, a prostitute named Djana, went to meet what she thought would be a human customer but was not.

 

Bracing herself and wetting her lips, she said, "I don't. Not with xenos--"

and in haste, fearing  offense might be taken, "I mean non-human sophonts.

It isn't right,"

 

"I suspect a large enough sum would change your mind," the other

said. "You have a reputation for avarice. However, I plan a different

kind of proposition. It moved slowly closer, a lumpy gray body on four

thin legs which brought the head at its middle about level with her

waist. One tentacle sent the single loose garment swirling about in

a sinuous gesture. Another clutched the vocalizer in boneless

fingers. The instrument was being used with considerable skill;

it actually achieved an ingratiating note. "You must know about

me in your turn. I am only Rax, harmless old Rax, the solitary

representative of my species on this world. I assure you my

reproductive pattern is sufficiently unlike yours that I find your

assumption comical."

I agree that, assuming a FTL interstellar community with thousands of intelligent races, some humans and xenosophonts will have sex. But others like Djana will believe that to be wrong or disgusting. Others, like that of Rax's species, will have reproductive patterns so different from those of other races that the idea of sex with them was merely laughable.

 

I wish to backtrack a bit  to comment about Rax, in the text quoted from Chapter III. I noted how Rax was referred to as "it," instead of either "he" or "she." That made me wonder if Rax came from a race which did not have male or female sexes, reproducing in other ways.

 

The quotes taken from A CIRCUS OF HELLS gives Anderson's readers some fascinating if speculative glimpses into the sordid, seamy underside of what an interstellar civilization could be like. And these glimpses Anderson gave us can be easily paralleled in many similar brothels and prostitutes of both sexes in the real world. The more squalid aspects of the steamy night life of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, in the US, comes to mind as two examples!

 

To be strictly fair even to Leon Ammon not everything offered at his disreputable establishment will be morally repugnant, such as his restaurant services. Or even some gambling, in moderation and only if the games are honest.

 

In Chapter 4 of ENSIGN FLANDRY, we see Dragoika, a ship captain and a very influential member of the Sisterhood of Kursoviki. She belonged to a species, the Tigeries of Starkad, physically resembling humans so closely that Dragoika found Flandry attractive.

 

"Pity you must wear that helmet," Dragoika said. "I'd like to taste your lips.

But otherwise we're not made so differently, our two kinds. Will you come

to my cabin?"

 

For an instant that whirled, Flandry was tempted. He had everything he

could do answer. It wasn't based on past lectures about taking care not

to offend native mores, nor on principle, nor, most certainly, on fastid-

iousness. If anything, her otherness made her the more piquant. But

he couldn't really predict what she might do in a close relationship,

and--

 

"I'm deeply sorry," he said. "I'd love to, but I'm under a--" what was the

word?--"a geas."

 

She was neither much offended nor much surprised. She had seen a

lot of different cultures. "Pity," she said. "Well, you know where the

forecastle is. Goodnight." She padded aft. En route, she stopped to

collect Ferok.

--and besides, those fangs were awfully intimidating.

 

This amusing quote from ENSIGN FLANDRY shows Anderson speculating that parallel evolution would make humans and some non-humans physically resemble each other closely enough to be sexually attractive. I also noted mention of those lectures stressing the need to avoid offending Tigery mores. Flandry was wise to very tactfully decline Dragoika's proposition. A thousand years and more must have taught humans and non-humans alike many hard lessons on the need for caution in such intimate matters. It was also entertaining for Flandry to be intimidated by Dragoika's fangs!

I want to touch on one more example of futuristic sex between a human and non-human from the Technic stories. Years after both ENSIGN FLANDRY and A CIRCUS OF HELLS, Captain Flandry was kidnapped by unusually humanoid aliens in "Tiger by the Tail." This quote segues into how he was able to act as he did on Scotha: "The being was remarkably humanoid. Certain differences of detail could quite likely be found beneath the clothes, and more basic ones beneath the skin. Among countless worlds, evolutionary coincidences are bound to happen now and then, but never evolutionary identities. Yet to the eye, crew member and captive resembled each other more than either resembled, say, a woman. Or an alien female? Flandry wondered. I'll bet this is a male, and equipped pretty much like me, too. (AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, revised Gregg Press edition, 1979, page 2). That last part, "equipped pretty much like me, too," was Anderson's way of alerting readers that Scothans and humans were sexually compatible.

After being taken by these xenosophonts to their home planet Flandry met the wife of their king, Queen Gunli. Because of soon becoming aware of her unhappiness, he was friendly and obliging to the queen, as part of his efforts to undermine Scotha. Another apt quote is this: "Flandry gave her an appreciative look. He had ascertained that Scothanian and human females were extremely similar in outward anatomy. Queen Gunli was a stunblast, with dark rippling hair, big violet eyes, daintily sculptured features, and a figure that a thin, clinging gown scarcely hid." (AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, page 20). Meaning humans and Scothans could be attracted to each other. 

 

Queen Gunli did not like the Frithians, the Scothan nation which conquered and unified the planet, or their plans for more aggression and war.  The text copied below came from the revised version of the story in AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE (Gregg Press: 1979), page 30.

 

"War is what they want."

"But not what the females want. Not to wait and wait and wait for the ships

to come back, never knowing whether only his sword will return. Not to rock

a baby and know that a few years hence he will be a corpse on the shores

of some alien planet. Not to--" She broke off and straightened her slim

shoulders. "Let me not whimper. Naught can I do about it."

 

"You are very brave as well as beautiful, Gunli," said Flandry. "Your kind

have changed fate ere now." And he sang, low, a stave he had made in

the Scothan bardic form:

 

"So I see you standing,

sorrowful in darkness.

But the moonlight's broken

by your eyes, tear-shining--

moonlight in the maiden's

magic net of tresses.

Gods gave many gifts, but,

Gunli, yours was greatest."

All at once she was in his arms.

 

It was danger, loneliness, common ends they both desired, as well as mutual attraction that brought Flandry and Gunli into having an affair, despite being of alien races. Anderson had too much good taste to feel any need to be sexually explicit, that was left implicit. I also appreciated the verse he wrote here, it moderated the breakneck pacing of the story, giving readers a moment for reflecting on the issues that story raised.

 

Last, near the end of "Tiger by the Tail," on page 40 of the Gregg Press edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, we read this, as Flandry and Gunli waited for the Terrans to land on Scotha:

 

She brought her left hand from beneath the cloak and took both his.

"And what will you be doing?" she asked.

He met her gaze. Loneliness was sudden within him. How beautiful

she stood there.

 

But what she meant could never endure. They were too foreign to each

other. Best he depart soon, that the memories remain untarnished in

them both. She would find someone else at last. And he--well-- "I have

my work," he said.

 

I agree with Flandry's decision, because he and Queen Gunli belonged to different intelligent species. No matter how much two such races may look like each other, billions of years of separate evolution on different planets inevitably means both races will have fundamental differences from each other. And that's going to remain true even if males and females can have sexual intercourse. Also, the genetic barrier would make it impossible for them to have children. It was right of Flandry to decide it was better, for both Gunli and him, that he soon leave Scotha, parting from each other in friendship.

 

I consulted the second edition of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. St. Martin's Press, 1993) to get some idea of how other science fiction writers handled the theme of human/alien sex. Alas, all I found on page 1090, in Nicholls' article "SEX" I thought relevant to Anderson's work was this: "A sensitive treatment of love between alien races is STRANGERS (1974, NEW DIMENSIONS; exp 1978) by Gardner DOZOIS, which draws attention to the ghastly errors that can occur from trying to understand a foreign society in terms of the assumptions of one's own."

But, when I looked up John Clute's entry for Dozois, this is what I found on page 352 of the ENCYCLOPEDIA: "...his first solo novel, STRANGERS (1974, NEW DIMENSIONS; exp 1978), an intense and well told love story between a human male and a ALIEN female, set on her home planet, in a Galaxy humans signally do not dominate, her death from bearing his child is biologically inevitable (the plot's derivation from Philip Jose FARMER'S The Lovers [1961] can be seen as homage) and stems from a mutual incomprehension rooted in culture and the intrinsic solitude of beings (see also SEX)."

 

This exasperated me! I agree it might be possible some intelligent races, human and non-human, could so strongly resemble each other that sexual attraction and desire will be likely. I also agree it's highly probable mutual alienness will breed strains, stresses, problems, and tragedies. I do not agree, given totally alien genetics and separate evolution over billions of years on different planets, that humans and aliens will be able to have children. I was disappointed that Clute and Nicholls seemed unaware of that scientific absurdity. That absurdity also discredits any stories by other SF authors who write of humans and aliens being able to have children.

Before offering some general conclusions I'll quote from Chapter III of THE REBEL WORLDS to show how some non-humans might reproduce: "I know of intelligent hermaphrodites, and sophonts with more than two sexes, and a few that regularly change sex. They all tend to look on our reproductive pattern as obscene." I can too easily imagine beings from some of these species "working" as prostitutes in Leon Ammon's "joyhouse."

 

Being, as I am, both Catholic and a conservative, I would not be at all surprised to find out brothels and sexual perversions of all kinds will exist in the far future. I believe in having no illusions about how flawed humans and xenosophont races, if they exist, are likely to be if they too have fallen.  Humans being what they are--and xenosophonts, as I suspect they will be--there will be sexual encounters between members of different species, but that will not always occur because of force and violence. I appreciated how Anderson drew out such implications without needing to be pornographic!

Appendix I: JIHANNATH

 

For the sake of completeness I am discussing here a few details which did not quite fit into the main body of this article. In Chapter V of A CIRCUS OF HELLS Djana said to Flandry: "I came up from slavery--in the Black Hole of Jihannath--what I've been through makes the worse they've thought of in Irumclaw Old Town look like a creche game--"  And in Chapter XV Djana also said: "Where were the Emperor and his law when I tried to escape from the Black Hole, fifteen years old, and my contractor caught me and turned me over to the Giggling Man for a lesson?" As far as this goes, the point  we need to keep in mind is to have no illusions about prostitution, far too many times "sex workers" did not enter that "profession" freely, but by force and are often kept obedient and in line by abuse and torture.

 

But, the complication here was that Jihannath was not part of the Empire when Djana was  a child. A few years later, in Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS, as Vice Admiral Kheraskov was briefing Flandry we read: "I'm not letting out any great secret when I tell you the latest Merseian crisis is worse than the government admits to the citizens. It could completely explode on us. I think we can defuse it. For once, the Empire acted fast and decisively. But it demands we keep more than the bulk of our fleets out on that border, till the Merseians understand we mean business about not letting them take over Jihannath." And we know from THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN that the Roidhunate was forced to back down and let go of Jihannath. 

 

What I quoted above made nonsense of Djana's complaint about the Emperor and his law, because that planet was not ruled by Terra in her childhood. It was a formerly independent border world of little interest to the Empire until Merseia tried to seize it. Terra most likely took such decisive counter measures because the location of Jihannath would make Merseian occupation of the planet a threat to the Empire. But a lengthy explanation of all this in the middle of my article would have been too disruptive!

Appendix II: L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

 

The disappointment I felt when I tried to use the second edition of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION to find out how other science fiction writers used the idea of human/alien sex irritated me. So much so that my memory was joggled into recalling how L. Sprague de Camp had some very pertinent things to say about that topic in his novel THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR (Berkley/Putnam: 1977).

 

From THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR, Chapter Nine, page 119:

 

Reith was going to explain that hybridization of species from different

worlds, no matter how superficially alike, was a biological impossibility.

On  second thought, he decided to say nothing for the present. If he

made a point of their mutual sterility, Shosti might find his presence an

embarrassment and have him pitched off the cliff. He finished lamely:

"Nought, madam. I did but hope that--ah--the key would fit the lock."

 

"Fear not, my lord. I have made trial of you Ertsuma before and find

them compatible...."

 

And from HOSTAGE, Chapter Ten, page 146, a non-human character asked if it was possible for males and females of their two species to have children: "Reith shook his head. "That were impossible, sir. Earthmen and Krishnans are as mutually sterile as-as an aya and a shomal. Professor Mulroy, among my tourists, could explain it; something to do with the tiny cells whence living things originate. The-the-our word is chromosomes-it fit not together."

If, in a book meant by de Camp to be humorous science fiction serious, even obvious points like these were made, the authors of the entries I quoted from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION should have done so as well!

Comtemporaneity

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" (Adzel)

"Margin of Profit" (van Rijn)

In these instalments, Adzel studies on Earth while van Rijn leaves the Solar System to defeat the Kossaluth of Borthu.

"A Sun Invisible" (Falkayn)

"The Season of Forgiveness"

The Man Who Counts (van Rijn)

In these instalments, Falkayn is in space, van Rijn and Sandra Tamarin are on Diomedes and there are further developments on Ivanhoe.

"Day of Burning" (trader team)

"The Master Key" (van Rijn)

In these instalments, the team is on Merseia while van Rijn, on Earth, solves the mystery of the planet, Cain.

Satan's World (van Rijn and the team)

"A Little Knowledge"

In these instalments, van Rijn and the team overcome an external threat to Technic civilization while its internal problems grow.

Mirkheim:

I (the team)

II (Sandra)

III (van Rijn)

IV-VI (the team)

VII (Sandra)

VIII (the team)

IX (van Rijn)

In these chapters, the team, van Rijn and Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen respond in their different ways to the Mirkheim crisis. They will come together in some later chapters.

Protectorate

 

Mirkheim, X.

A Baburite tells Grand Duchess Sandra that Babur must establish a protectorate over Hermes in order to prevent the Solar Commonwealth from mobilizing Hermetian resources against Babur. This argument would make sense if the Commonwealth had been the aggressor in the first place. The Baburite adds:

"'[Baburites'] ways and yours are so mutually foreign that interference of one with another is unlikely in the extreme.'" (p. 151)

Sandra tells her son, Eric:

"'We're promised internal self-government... I can't imagine any interest the Baburites might take in our local politics.'" (p. 153)

Baburites will not take any such interest but their native High Commissioner, Benoni Strang, certainly does:

"'We're going to have a revolution here, madam. I hope you and your upper classes will willingly assist it. But be that as it may, the revolution is going to happen.'" (XIII, p. 194)

What better way of uniting Hermetians, including Travers, against the proposed revolution?

Traver Uproar

Mirkheim, X.

On Hermes, this is:

"...a time of crisis - domestic as well as foreign, with more and more of the Traver class in an uproar -" (p. 145)

If the class that works but cannot vote is in an uproar, then give them the vote. What possible argument can there be against this? Remember South Africa, where neither the miners nor a bishop had a vote. The Travers are happy as they are? Then why are they in an uproar? They should be happy that, although they cannot vote, they are not taxed? But they are not happy with this. Telling someone that he should be happy, or even that he really is happy although he doesn't know it, has to be a non-starter as an argument! Benoni Strang is right to want political reforms but wrong to try to impose them through an alien invasion. To say this is, of course, neither to support nor to apologise for but to oppose the Baburite invasion of Hermes.

Again we commend Poul Anderson's creation of a complex and realistic social crisis. 

Nicholas Van Rijn's Social Life In The Hotel Universe

Mirkhem, III, IX.

For a poor old lonely fat man who does not want to be a burden on a state that is only good for overtaxing hardworking merchants, Nicholas van Rijn sure puts himself about a lot. He addresses the Council of the Polesotechnic League in Lunograd. Because he is the leading independent, his voice carries weight although he is not able to shift the votes of either cartel. The Council ends indecisively. 

In Chapter III, van Rijn entertains Hanny Lennart and Bayard Story to canapes and conversation in his Hotel Universe suite. In IX, Story entertains van Rijn to dinner in the Saturn Room of the Hotel Universe. It is here that van Rijn recommends onion soup a la Ansa and discourses on Our Lord's first miracle.

Van Rijn withstands pressure to support Story's cartel but otherwise is friendly and avuncular towards the younger man, not yet knowing what hides beneath the surface. Van Rijn and others will attack the Seven in Space militarily when Falkayn has unearthed the truth.

Van Rijn and Falkayn make a good team.

The Great Bankers Of The Solar Commonwealth

Mirkheim, IX.

We have discussed the Council of Hiawatha. The Solar Commonwealth legislation to which this Council of the Polesotechnic League acquiesced had the following effects, among others:

"Regulatory commissions soon turned into creatures of the industries they regulated - and discouraged (at first) or stifled (later) all new competition. This was much aided by a tax structure heavily weighted against the middle class. After a while, the great bankers were not just handling money, they were creating it with a vested interest in inflation." (pp. 141-142)

The three quoted sentences are part of a condensed five-page summary and need some unpacking. Does that tax structure aid that stifling of competition by discouraging new investment? Do bankers not always create money by lending money that is not theirs, by lending more than is in their possession and by charging interest on it? They were not merely "handling" other people's money before the days of the Solar Commonwealth. Why should they have a vested interest in inflation if they can make profits without it?

The omniscient narrator sees the main problem as:

"...that large percentage of mankind that had never really wanted to be free." (p. 140)

What is this statistic based on? Not everyone either can or wants to be free like van Rijn. But a greater degree of individual and collective self-determination is a realistic and maybe increasingly necessary goal.

On The Bridge II

Mirkheim, VII.

We have become used to starship bridges in screened sf!

Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen and her son, Eric, are alone on the admiral's bridge of Alpha Cygni. This bridge is described as a cave although with viewscreens showing the heavens. It throbs. Its warm air carries slight oil and chemical smells. The young, inexperienced captain of this ship communicates by intercom so he must be on the captain's bridge? The Hermetian fleet comprises:

Alpha Cygni, a spherical light battleship not meant to land on a planet;

two cruisers;

four destroyers;

"...a carrier four ten Meteor-class pursuers." (p. 113)

(Philippe Rochefort commands a Meteor with a crew of himself and two others in The People of the Wind.)

So there will be eight captain's bridges in addition to the one admiral's bridge? As admiral, Sandra issues orders to all other units in the fleet.

PL Culmination

Mirkheim, the culminating Polesotechnic League instalment, incorporates:

van Rijn;

Adzel, who had made one pre-trader team appearance;

Falkayn, who had made two pre-team appearances;

the team itself, also including Chee Lan;

Sandra Tamarin from The Man Who Counts;

Falkayn's and Sandra's home planet, Hermes;

the supermetals planet from "Lodestar";

Coya Conyon/Falkayn also from "Lodestar";

a Merseian in the aftermath of "Day of Burning";

Baburites from "Esau";

Ikranankans, Ivanhoans, Vanessans and Gorzuni from previous instalments;

a Vixenite Kittredge, ancestor of contemporaries of Flandry;

Earth of the Solar Commonwealth period;

one reference to an Ythrian;

probably more that I have not thought of.

Action!

Mirkheim, VI.

Action at last! No sooner are the team captured than they escape. Chee Lan jumps Blyndwyr and is able to hold down his gun hand. Adzel throws Wyler down and holds him with his tail, then half stuns Blyndwyr. The team appropriate their captors' weapons. Falkayn, disguised as Wyler, walks to Muddlin' Through, then returns in the ship for his companions and their prisoner, Wyler, who, however, is the single being shot dead during the escape from Babur. When requesting egress from their prison in his crude disguise, Falkayn had punched the number that he saw Wyler use to speak to a Baburite. Someone like Falkayn notices everything, not knowing in advance which data will be of practical significance. The team has learned a lot in this single brief mission and learns more while leaving the system. Adzel wants to pray for Wyler. Falkayn rightly says not nonsense but later. 

Chapter VII  is a complete change of scene to the Hermetian fleet approaching Mirkheim and that is more than I can handle this late in the evening.

Merseia And The Shenna

Mirkheim, VI.

Blyndwyr of the Vach Ruethen is the first Merseian that we see if we are reading the Polesotechnic League series in its original book publication order. Satan's World had mentioned that the trader team had been on Merseia. Now, Sheldon Wyler, explaining Blyndwyr's presence on Babur, tells David Falkayn that Merseian aristocrats had resented it when the League shunted them aside to deal instead with the Gethfennu group. Wyler knows that Falkayn is famous in League space but displays no knowledge of the fact that it was Falkayn himself who was the League agent on Merseia that took the decision to include the Gethfennu, organized crime, in the preparations to shield Merseia from the lethal radiation generated by the Valendary supernova. We, the readers, will not know this either until we read the full account in "Day of Burning" in The Earth Book of Stormgate. Wyler does remark to Falkayn that:

"'You of all people should remember the Shenna.'" (p. 99)

Thus, Wyler does display familiarity with the events recounted in the immediately preceding volume, Satan's World. The Earth Book, when we finally get to it, performs the satisfying function of recounting events that had been referred to but had not yet been described in full. 

On Babur

Mirkheim, V.

Babur is much bigger than Earth but its seas are smaller because:

"Ammonia is less plentiful than water." (p. 91)

Continents are enormous and their interiors arid with sparse black vegetation, glittering dust and no habitation. The metallic core is surrounded by strata of rock and ice, the latter hot, compressed and liable to explode when the pressure eases. Lands sink. Others, newly upheaved, shudder with quakes and are not immediately touched by life. Houses of ice are anchored against storms. Cities cannot grow high and must spread wide. Buildings are aerodynamic. Spaceships, unsafe on the surface, must touch down in silos. Nice place. Sounds more like Hell. In terms of human habitability, Babur is intermediate between Earth and Jupiter and maybe corresponds to older ideas of Jupiter, as in Poul Anderson's Three Worlds To Conquer? That Jupiter still had a solid surface and a distinction between globe and atmosphere whereas the more recently understood Jupiter, as shown in Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave," is composed of deeper layers of turbulent gas all the way down to a dense core.

Baburite Bands

My latest attempt to summarize materialist philosophy is here.

Sf writers imagine alien material conditions generating qualitatively different kinds of consciousness. In Poul Anderson's Technic History:

on Vanrijn, two animals of different species link physically to form a single intelligence;

on Dido, three animals of different species do likewise;

on Babur, many intelligent beings of a single species link by complementarity in their sexual cycles and by radio waves to form a "Band" with a single personality.

A Band does not subordinate individual Baburites who remain unique, each making a special contribution, although communing or communicating:

"...on a level deeper than consciousness."

-Mirkheim, V, p. 85.

Tradition might be neither oral nor written but perceived. The Imperial Band leads although self-regulating Baburites are not mutually conflictive and need little government.

Hydrogen-Breathers

Mirkheim, V.

Ymirites inhabit Jovoid planets and breathe hydrogen. Baburites inhabit a sub-Jovian planet and also breathe hydrogen. Human beings, Ythrians, Merseians and many other intelligent species inhabit terrestroid planets and breathe oxygen. Ymirites are as different from Baburites as Baburites are from oxygen-breathers.

Hydrogen leaks between the atoms of a spaceship hull. Two solutions:

Baburite spaceships require extra volume to carry cyrogenic tanks so that their internal atmosphere can be replenished from liquid gases;

the hull can be plated with a particular supermetal alloy.

Mirkheim, source of supermetals, had not been discovered when the Baburites built their navy so the first solution had to be used.

 

Military SF

Poul Anderson's Technic History is good sf, including some good military sf, e.g., in The People of the Wind and Ensign Flandry. I think that the military stuff is in its rightful place: part of the history but not the entire subject matter. Military sf is a recognized sub-genre. Some authors, including our blog correspondent, SM Stirling, are major contributors to it. Larry Niven, lacking military experience, franchised the Man-Kzin Wars period of his Known Space future history series. Thus, both Anderson's and Stirling's complete works include some Man-Kzin Wars instalments. 

My question is: can anyone recommend Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet series? A hero who returns from apparent death and then confronts the negative aspects of his own legend is an excellent idea and the covers show us the content but has anyone here read much of this lengthy series?

Polesotechnic League, Volume V, And A Later Collection

This inside dust jacket blurb for Poul Anderson's The Earth Book of Stormgate describes the Earth Book as the fifth volume of Anderson's Polesotechnic League series. A fuller description would be that the Earth Book is the fifth and last Polesotechnic League volume and also the second and last Ythrian volume. The Earth Book is a narrative convergence. The Ythrians have their own series comprising the novel, The People of the Wind, and four stories in the Earth Book. They also appear in one League story, "Lodestar," collected in the Earth Book, and finally a single Ythrian appears later in one Terran Empire novel, The Day Of Their Return. 

As the Earth Book completes the first part of Anderson's Technic History, another collection should complete the second part. I now suggest that that final collection should be entitled The Long Night And After. Since the nine Flandry period volumes are about delaying the Long Night, that collection title would inform readers that the Long Night will happen but will not be the end of the story. 

Talk And Action

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, the earth and every common sight to me did seem apparelled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; - turn wheresoe'er I may by night or day. The things that I have seen I now can see no more.

Sorry. Took a wrong turn there, inspired by a day trip to Lake Windermere. For my quotation from the Lake District poet, see here. Let's start again:

There was a time when what I valued in fiction and on screen was physical action. A Western film, of which there were many then, could start with a voice-over about American history but had to end with a big gun-fight. The gun-fight at the OK Corral was misrepresented and mythologized. Between action scenes, fist-fights or gun-fights, characters talked and I did not always understand what they were talking about. You can see that this was a long time ago.

Let's apply this distinction between talk and action to Poul Anderson's Mirkheim, Chapters III and IV. In III, van Rijn talks with Lennart and Story. This is obviously a talk scene. IV begins as Muddlin' Through flies under full hyperdrive from Sol to Mogul. This is a prelude to action. An equivalent scene in children's matinee cinema would have drawn a cheer from the audience. However, this entire chapter is prelude. The characters play poker, which I would not have understood in childhood and scarcely understand now, then Falkayn reflects and reminisces alone. I appreciate this. My only point here is that it differs from what I would once have wanted.

Poul Anderson liked his action scenes and sometimes included them unnecessarily in my opinion although he wrote good military sf.

Canapes

Mirkheim, III.

Correction: van Rijn does not invite Lennart and Story to dinner, just to talk. However, for Nicholas van Rijn, talk without plentiful food and drink is inconceivable. He urges his two guests to eat, drink and smoke while:

"...waving at a well-stocked portable bar, trays of intricate canapes, boxes of cigars and cigarettes." (p. 67)

If I were present, I would be tempted to find a plate and pile it with enough canapes to make a substantial meal although this would probably be socially unacceptable. 

The drinking and eating is in character for van Rijn and gives Anderson's readers vicarious pleasure alongside the dialogue. The other characters act in character. Lennart sits stiff and accepts nothing. Story drinks Scotch. Van Rijn continues to drink gin - he refills his glass. He eats a smoked eel and cold scrambled egg sandwich, then Limburger cheese and onion on pumpernickel. We wish we were there.

Who Should Control Mirkheim?

Mirkheim, II-III.

Who should control the industrial wealth of Mirkheim?

Supermetals asks Hermes to establish a protectorate.

Van Rijn favours Supermetals which would then join the Polesotechnic League.

The Home Companies favour the Solar Commonwealth which in practice would mean themselves.

The Seven in Space argue that the League should remain neutral in the struggle for control and should then deal with whoever wins that struggle even if it is the Baburites but the Seven, having secretly armed and equipped the Baburites, speak with forked tongue.

The Polesotechnic League Council is incapable of resolving the issue. Could Poul Anderson have imagined anything more like a real world conflict albeit in the fantastic context of his Technic History?

When Lennart inadvertently confirms van Rijn's suspicion that the Commonwealth has already despatched an armed force to Mirkheim, van Rijn tells St. Dismas to get busy praying for them as casually as if the saint were a fourth member of their informal discussion group.

(Barring a supernatural intervention, Mirkheim cannot be put under the control of a Heavenly hierarchy because in practice that would mean some group of clergy.)

How We Walk And Talk

Mirkheim, III.

When describing Bayard Story, the omniscient narrator presents a few small clues that we will not understand until later by which time we will have forgotten them in any case. Story's gait suggests that he has used his muscles a lot and maybe in severe conditions. Yes, he has spent much time on the sub-Jovian planet, Babur, and needs to keep that top secret. He has a slight although unidentifiable non-Terrestrial accent. It is Hermetian, Traver class, and that also must be kept secret. 

That raises another point that I had not thought of before. In The Day of Their Return, Poul Anderson shows us how Anglic phraseology varies between the diverse social groups on Aeneas and, in Mirkheim, we notice distinctive Hermetian turns of phrase. However, these planetary populations will also speak Anglic in their own peculiar accents that will differ from anything that was ever heard on Earth. Ideally, actors in Technic History films would speak in these accents so that we would instantly know from their speech alone which character was from Altai, Ramanujan, Dennitza etc. In The People of the Wind, we are told that it is impossible for Terran spies to pass themselves off as Avalonian human beings. The totality of speech, walk etc is too dissimilar. But actors ought to be able to do it. 

PL Council Delegates

Mirkheim, III.

Nicholas van Rijn, owner of the independent company, Solar Spice & Liquors, stays in a suite in the Hotel Universe in Lunograd. We know van Rijn from nine previous Technic History instalments. Two of his employees, Adzel and Chee Lan, had stayed in the Hotel Universe in the eighth of those earlier instalments, Satan's World. Van Rijn invites two other Polesotechnic League Council delegates to dinner in his suite. He had spoken with Hanny Lennart of Global Cybernetics and of the Home Companies consortium in Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 9, whereas Bayard Story of Galactic Developments and of the Seven in Space consortium is new to us (we think) as well as to van Rijn and Lennart. However, Story will turn out to be an alias of Benoni Strang who had already appeared in Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 28, Y minus 12 and Y minus 5. Complicated. A pyramidally structured future history series continually both refers and adds to background information provided by previous instalments. 

The nine-part Prologue to Mirkheim adds nine earlier layers of narrative without requiring the author to add nine earlier complete instalments! The first part of the Prologue is Y minus 500,000, a reminder that fictional histories set in our future are, like everything else, grounded in the deep past.

Peter Asmundsen

Mirkheim, II.

Sandra Tamarin married Peter Asmundsen who:

"...was Hermetian, not of the Kindred but of respectable Follower family; he had organized and personally led enterprises on sister planets of the Maian System; various deeds had made him a popular hero." (p. 57)

A popular hero! Here is yet another potential series. This passage could have been referring back to previous instalments as when Coya mentioned the adventures of the fabulous Muddlin' Through team. In fact, however, Asmundsen's only earlier appearance was in Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 24, when he proposed to Sandra. (Well, that is something.)

Sandra's return to Hermes pregnant by van Rijn - this was before she married Asmundsen - was not a major scandal because the Commonwealth and the League had influenced the Hermetian aristocracy towards easier going attitudes. This again touches on the disagreements between van Rijn and Coya. The whole Technic History hangs together as it presents both individuals and civilizations.

Van Rijn And Future Histories

Nicholas van Rijn is:

the owner of Solar Spice & Liquors, the biggest independent company in the Polesotechnic League;

father of Eric Tamarin-Asmundsen, heir apparent to the Grand Duchy of Hermes;

grandfather of Coya Falkayn;

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, t'Kela and Diomedes!"

-Poul Anderson. "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 281.

In recent posts, we have compared Poul Anderson's Technic History not only with Isaac Asimov's Foundation, James Blish's Cities in Flight and Robert Heinlein's Future History but also with Anderson's own Psychotechnic History. It is almost unique for an sf writer to contribute not just one but several future history series. In fact, Blish wrote more than one but not on the same scale as Anderson. 

Polesotechnic League Or Coordination Service

"Private enterprise, ranging over greater reaches of space than any government, frequently where no effective government whatsoever existed, and soon becoming richer than any state, took over most of the Technic economy. The companies formed the Polesotechnic League as an association for mutual help and, to a degree, mutual discipline. The Pax Mercatoria spread among the stars.

"When did it go bad? Did it succumb to the vices of its very virtues?"

-Mirkheim, II, pp. 53-54.

"'It's fantastically complex, and the problem is getting worse. It's a case of transportation outstripping communication. We've got to bring all the components of our civilization together. You need only recall what happened on Earth back around the Second Dark Ages. Nowadays it could happen between whole stellar systems!'...

"'Sure... That's what the Union was organized to prevent. That's what Cordy work consists of.'

"'...we can't coordinate as many planets as are included in our civilization-range today. And that range is still expanding.'

"'[The Nomads]'re the worst disruptive factor our civilization has... They go everywhere and do anything, with no thought of the consequences. To Earth, the Nomads are romantic wanderers; to me, they're a pain.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), CHAPTER IV, pp. 29-30.,

In the Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History:

no interstellar government;

the unrestrained League.

In the Stellar Union period of the Psychotechnic History:

an interstellar government, the Union, and its enforcement arm, the Coordination Service;

the unrestrained (except by the Cordies) Nomads.

Which system is better?

See the comment by Anonymous in the combox here.

Duke Robert

Hermetian society is aristocratic and David Falkayn is:

"A baron's son from Hermes..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Three-Cornered Wheel" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 199-261 AT II, p. 212.

Baron, OK. Young Falkayn read some ancient, i.e., twentieth century, fiction in:

"...the library of Duke Robert..."

-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 329-598 AT XIV, p. 473.

A casual reader might assume, as I did, that Duke Robert was David's father. We probably do not remember that earlier reference to a "baron" and, in any case, do not necessarily expect full consistency in such background details between instalments of a long series. However:

"(Duke Robert was then old and childless. His niece Sandra was a natural choice for the electors, since not much else could be said for any of the other possible Tamarins.)"

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 1-291 AT II, p. 56.

Thus, Duke Robert was not the head of the Falkayn family and president of their domain but the Hermetian head of state! The Falkayns must have visited the Tamarins often enough for young David to spend enough time in the Grand Duke's library to familiarize himself with a fictional character who had used the pseudonym, "Sebastian Tombs."

Hermetian Infodump

Mirkheim, II. 

Another infodump: while Grand Duchess Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen conducts her morning exercises, she watches a newscast that informs her of the Mirkheim crisis and of a Liberation Front rally at a Longstrands resort. The Grand Duchy of Hermes has both external and internal problems. Next, a memorandum from Sandra's executive secretary informs her of the arrival on Hermes of Captain Nadi of Supermetals, the company that has been secretly mining the planet Mirkheim, now claimed by the suddenly belligerent and imperialistic Baburites. The name, "the Autarky of United Babur," suggests that these hydrogen-breathers have learned by example from at least one oxygen-breathing species.

Because of its stellar proximity to both Babur and Mirkheim, Hermes becomes a pawn in the escalating conflict. The sense of troubled times is palpable.