Memories Of Kirkasant

"Starfog."

Daven Laure reflects:

"He belonged to a civilization of travelers; to him, no one planet could be the land of lost content." (p. 768)

Anderson's Nomads; Blish's Okies.

He contrasts the Kirkasanters:

"But in them would always stand a certain ridge purple against sunset, marsh at dawn, ice cloud walking over wind-gnawed desert crags, ancient castle, wingbeat in heaven..." (ibid.)

- and unique bright nights.

Here are six scenes that could be shown on screen while Laure reflects. A vivid panorama of Kirkasant could be built up despite the characters never reaching the planet before the end of the narrative.

Variable And Emotionally Charged

"Starfog."

"Laure recollected that, throughout the human species, sexual customs are among the most variable. And the most emotionally charged." (p. 763)

Too right. Earlier in Poul Anderson's Technic History, generational differences in sexual mores are mentioned in "Lodestar." In Anderson's Time Patrol series, such differences are discussed in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," where Carl Farness has a wife in the twentieth century and a leman in the fifth. Elsewhere, Anderson imagines a naturally monogamous rational species and how different that is.

The difference between my parents' generation and mine has been total but I had better not get into discussing that here.

In the Kirkasanter spaceship:

"Every female was accompanied by an older male relative." (p. 727)

Ye gods! Neither my daughter nor I would accept such an arrangement.

Plasma

"Starfog."

I have tried in earlier posts to summarize conditions inside the Cloud Universe. One factor is as follows:

"'...irradiation keeps a goodly fraction of the interstellar medium in the plasma state. Thus we get electromagnetic action of every sort...'" (p. 759)

Plasma is one of the four states of matter. Electromagnetism is one of the four forces of nature. That is an unusual symmetry, now that I have googled and become aware of it. I do not understand what plasma is. I gather from its Wikipedia article that plasma is common inside stars and throughout space but apparently it is even commoner inside the Cloud Universe. What this amounts to is that space inside the Cloud Universe is full of matter and energy in a dynamic and turbulent state that is qualitatively completely dissimilar to any of the solids, liquids or gasses that we encounter on a planetary surface. 

More Multiverses

Maybe the multiverse idea is more widespread in imaginative fiction than it appears?

HG Wells' Men Like Gods involves travel to an alternative Earth.

Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker presents multiple universes. 

We have recently considered CS Lewis as occupying a pivotal position between Wells and Stapledon earlier in the twentieth century and Blish and Anderson later in the century.

Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia feature parallel universes.

In Lewis' Ransom Trilogy, Volume I, Ransom visits an inhabited Mars with a breathable atmosphere called Malacandra.

In Lewis' "Ministering Angels," other characters visit an uninhabited Mars with an unbreathable atmosphere.

In Lewis' "The Dark Tower," an acquaintance of Ransom visits an alternative Earth.

Thus, Malacandra and the more authentic Mars can be alternative versions of that planet in the multiverse.

"Starfog" In The Multiverse

While reading a story like Poul Anderson's "Starfog," we focus on the details of the story and on its place in the Technic History but do not usually consider the possibility that it might belong to a multiverse also encompassing magic and mythical pantheons. However, Nicholas van Rijn, who lives earlier in the Technic History, does visit the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. Furthermore, the Kirkasanters think that their planetary system is in:

"...another universe." (p. 711)

- and this hypothesis, although it will later turn out to be unnecessary, has to be taken seriously:

"'If a ship could somehow flip from one entire cosmos to another...why, in five thousand years of interstellar travel, haven't we got some record of it happening?'

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

"'Perhaps.'" (p. 717)

But ships should arrive here from elsewhere? But maybe it happens extremely rarely? Conspiracy theorists would assume that the various planetary governments conspire to cover it up for no particular reason.

Years ago, I read a comic strip about Martians who kept reporting sightings of flying saucers from Earth until what we, the readers, recognized as a genuine NASA (or equivalent) expedition did arrive.

We would like more stories set after "Starfog" but maybe not ones about inter-universal travel.

Dominic Flandry And Time Travel

Dominic Flandry would be able to get into the Time Patrol timeline only if he were taken far enough into the past, then brought forward into the other timeline. Such transferences must be rare.

I do not think that the Time Patrol has access to the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. The Time Patrol series presupposes a single mutable timeline whereas the Old Phoenix stories presuppose many parallel timelines. On the face of it, these two metaphysical systems are incompatible although maybe there can be a megamultiverse where a few beings are able to enter any universe but most space-time travellers operate by a single set of laws that excludes other such sets. Thus, in Anderson's There Will Be Time, Jack Havig's experience is confined within a single immutable timeline. All these worlds exist in Poul Anderson's imagination.

Everard And Flandry

According to the temporal physics of the Time Patrol series, Manse Everard can meet Dominic Flandry. All that is necessary is that Everard, starting from sufficiently far back in history, travels forward in time and through a quantum fluctuation that replaces the Time Patrol timeline with the Technic History timeline. The Time Patrol timeline is the same as ours, except for its hidden history, until at least 8 March 1990. Returning from 11 October 1307 and proceeding for some reason into the twenty-first century or further, Everard would pass through a quantum fluctuation, then through the Chaos, and into the beginnings of Technic civilization. Exploring the further future of this divergent timeline, he could come into the period of the Terran Empire and thus meet Flandry. Of course we like to think that Everard would be able to travel pastward, then futureward again, back into the late twentieth century of his home timeline. However, Time Patrol agents sometimes do wind up stranded in the wrong timeline. In my opinion, they do not cease to exist but that is an old disagreement between my analysis and the way that the issue is discussed in the series.

The Two Rainbow Deserts

"Starfog." 

There is a Rainbow Desert on Hermes and another on Kirkasant (also here).

Observing the Cloud Universe cluster from the surface of a lifeless planet, Graydal describes Kirkasanter scenes to Laure. In a film, we should see the characters on the lifeless planet and also each scene as Graydal alludes to it. Is the Rainbow Desert a desert beneath rainbows or a rainbow-coloured desert? When the sun sets on the Desert, night is sudden and there are auroras above the hills so are they the source of the name? The other three scenes are flying flocks rising, battlements over the banners of Ey and a new year folk dance. The story never takes us to Kirkasant but there are several opportunities to show us such scenes - as well as the colourful, crowded Cloud Universe and the surfaces of some of its other planets.

Infertile Planet

"Starfog."

"...while Kirkasant was not a very fertile planet, and today its population strained its resources, no one had considered reducing the birthrate. When someone on Serieve had asked why, Demring's folk had reacted strongly. The idea struck them as obscene." (p. 744)

Pro-survival attitudes and behaviours can become contra-survival in changed conditions. 

Every extra mouth to feed represents an extra pair of hands to do work to produce food or something else to exchange for food. Kirkasant is in a high-radiation star cluster but Kirkasanters have reinvented faster-than-light interstellar travel. Some can continue to have large families whereas others might learn that they do not need not to, in which case they will begin to question their inherited ideas of obscenity. The single certainty is continued social change, especially in response to drastically changed circumstances.

Stronger

"Starfog."

"'...evolution [on Kirkasant] worked fast. But you must have gained as well as atrophied. I know you have more physical strength, for instance, than your ancestors could've had.'" (p. 739)

Here is the germ of the transition from sf to the superheroes genre. Imagine a planet, X, where natural selection makes human beings stronger, faster, keener sighted. Think of some other abilities that might be enhanced. Then imagine that an X-man comes to Earth, dons a mask and costume and uses his enhanced powers to fight crime... 

Other sfnal sources of super powers include advanced technology and mutations and such sources can also be magical or supernatural because superheroes combine sf with fantasy.

In a few sentences, we have come a long way from Poul Anderson's prose to another genre in other media but they are connected. Some of Anderson's characters are super-powered, particularly his mutant time travellers, and he could have written good superhero novels or scripts if he had wanted to.

Time Patrol Uniforms

Uniforms in Poul Anderson's Technic History remind us of what is said about uniforms in Anderson's Time Patrol series: first, that Patrol uniforms are rarely worn; secondly, that they bear the Patrol symbol, an hour glass in a shield.

Unfortunately, Anderson describes the symbol only near the end of the series and then only because it plays a role in the plot at that point. Any visual adaptation of the series would have to display the symbol up front from the beginning in the opening instalment, "Time Patrol." Dramatizations can enhance and improve on an original text although we are more used to them doing the opposite.

Civilization In The Commonalty Period

"Starfog."

See Obsolete Uniform and combox. Will an advanced technological civilization in a remote future still have vast accumulations of wealth and property protected by laws so that there is still "crime," i.e., the breaking of those laws. In my opinion, not necessarily. However, do these familiar economic and social conditions still exist in the future period of Poul Anderson's "Starfog"? Yes:

"'No individual quadrillionaire, no foundation, no government, no consortium could pay the cost...'" (p. 771)

Apparently, governments are merely planetary in scope. Foundations remind us of Asimov and of how far Poul Anderson's future histories go beyond his. That single word, "quadrillionaire," means a money economy with currencies, wages, salaries, commodities, investments, banks, financial institutions, speculation etc. We want to see how this works for people living in it but it is all implied and off-stage. The narrative action is all adventure at the galactic frontier.

For previous discussion, see here. (Scroll down.)

Obsolete Uniform

"Starfog."

"She was in uniform - another obsolete aspect of her society - but it shimmered gold and molded itself to her." (p. 737)

The Kirkasanters, isolated for millennia from the mainstream of humanity, retain the ancient tradition of uniforms that has become obsolete in the civilizations of the Commonalty. The Rangers do not wear uniforms. The civilizations that they serve do not have uniformed armies or police forces. Maybe they do have some sort of armies or police forces but not uniformed ones. That is a big difference from what we are used to and take for granted. Small cultural differences can have big significances. 

When Neil Gaiman succeeded Alan Moore as the author of Miracleman, his characters attended Carnival in London. One couple sought directions from a man wearing a Metropolitan Police uniform who explained that he was a member of a Historical Re-enactment Society. Right. His appearance had been a surprise.

(I have probably mentioned that I got the fright of my life when I saw a man in a black uniform with a swastika armband standing to attention outside a room in a Trade Union Centre. Then someone said two words that made everything OK: "Drama group.")

What We Want From Time Travel II

(III) Narratives about what it is like for a time traveller to be in the past. 

Jack Finney does this very well in parts of his novel, Time And Again.

"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" and "Star of the Sea" are two long instalments of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. These two instalments, both about Northern European mythology, could be collected as The Gods of Time. Another two instalments, "The Year of the Ransom" and "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," both about Neldorian time criminals, could be collected as The Thieves of Time. Gods and Thieves could then become Volumes II and III of a four-volume boxed set. However, this takes us away from our current focus on some of the contents of the two Gods instalments.

In both instalments, some entire narrative sections are entirely about the lives of people living in the past. 

"Wind gusted out of twilight as the door opened."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 372, p. 333.

"Winter descended..."

-ibid., 300-302, p. 362.

"Seen from the ramparts of Old Camp, nature was terrifying enough."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Time Patrol, pp. 467-640 AT 1, p. 469.

"Winter brought rain..."

-ibid., 3, p. 494.

"Wind rushed bitter..."

-ibid., 5, p. 518.

"Suddenly spring billowed over the land."

-ibid., 7, p. 530.

In "The Sorrow...," the fifth century Goths do not know that their mysterious visitor, the Wanderer, is a time traveller. The events in these sections unfold as they would have done if he had been their contemporary or, as they believe, Wodan.

In the opening story, "Time Patrol," in a passage that I have quoted more than once before, we read:

"This was the first moment that the reality of time travel struck home to Everard."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Time Patrol, pp. 1-53 AT 4, p. 24.

He is in a hansom cab in Victorian London. A long paragraph spells out the implications.

Novels could be written about:

a time traveller who gets a job in the bar of the Cavern Club shortly before the Beatles begin their career there;

a Time Patrol Specialist who lives for a decade in the town where he grew up and sees his four year old self accompanying his parents to church on Sunday;

many other such scenarios.

These time travellers do not need to participate in major events or in causal paradoxes. It would be sufficient if they experienced and learned from the past. They would compile detailed histories of previously unknown events. Their author would be able to imagine what had really happened in history. 

What We Want From Time Travel

I might well not finish reading A. Bertram Chandler's The Coils of Time. I cannot get interested in the conflict between the Committee and the Council in the alternative timeline. But it has made me think about what I do want in genuine time travel fiction. There might be three kinds of preferred stories.

(I) Stories set in a single immutable timeline where the characters act freely and might seem to have "changed the past" but in fact turn out just to have caused it. Need I give examples? Relevant works by Poul Anderson and others have been listed and discussed on this blog before.

(II) I feel that stories about "changing the past" are not really about time travel. As soon as he either deliberately or accidentally "changes the past," the time traveller is no longer in the past of the timeline that he had started out from. The equivalent in space travel fiction would be an astronaut landing on the surface of an astronomically accurate Mars, then immediately transitioning to an alternative Mars with a breathable atmosphere, like ERB's Barsoom or Lewis' Malacandra. However, Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series takes the "changing the past" idea seriously. Guion tells Wanda Tamberly that sometimes the world-lines are disturbed but that the cause of the disturbance might not be in our "yet." The Patrol can only trace the disturbance back toward its source - which is a quantum fluctuation possibly taking the form of a temporal vehicle that appears from nowhere and nowhen as if arriving from a prevented future... Alternative timelines have to be considered and somehow taken into account even if they are also and at the same time regarded as entirely non-existent. Thus, a mutable timeline introduces an element of mystery that the author has to be able to convey to his audience. Guion does this. (But I cannot help continuing to argue the case. If Timeline A simply does not exist and has never existed, then it has not changed into Timeline B. All that does exist and has ever existed is a single discontinuous timeline.)

To be continued.

SF In General

 

It has a sequel! I have not yet finished The Coils of Time but I am getting the picture. An intriguing idea: an object sent (apparently) through time returns with our hero's dead wife's fingerprint on it so it has been to a time when she is alive. He follows...

But the setting is the sf cliche of a scientific base on Venus. There is some kind of conflict going on and the characters point guns at each other. He has travelled into a parallel timeline, not into the past, so the paradoxes of time travel are side-stepped.

My points, if I have them:

I would once have welcomed this kind of narrative but not any more;

Poul Anderson did write this kind of narrative but I still reread his works because he always did more with the extra-terrestrial settings and sf cliches.

I remain a fan of Anderson but am not getting into Chandler.

Anderson And Chandler

My favourite two kinds of sf are future histories and time travel. Poul Anderson excels at both.

We (at least some of us) recently agreed that A. Bertram Chandler's version of Anderson's future historical character, Dominic Flandry, was not authentic. This version of Flandry appeared in an instalment of Chandler's Rim World series - not a future history but a major futuristic series by Chandler.

I find that for years I have owned but not read a copy of The Coils of Time, a time travel novel by Chandler, originally published by Ace Books. My British Bridbooks Publishers paperback edition is undated but cost only £0.20.

Theoretically, I have an interest in reading anything about time travel to check for any new developments of the idea - and there can be new developments. For this reason, I will now read this Chandler novel and particularly to compare it with Anderson's several different treatments of time travel. My expectations are low but you never know.

The Culmination Of A Conceptual Sequence

The conceptual sequence that I propound here from Wells and Stapledon via Lewis to Blish and Anderson culminates in Anderson's Genesis, appropriately published in 2000, the year before Anderson died.

Genesis has:

a Stapledonian cosmic timescale;

the Miltonic/Frankensteinian question whether it is right to create human life.

Lewis had written:

A Preface to Paradise Lost;

Perelandra in which God/Maleldil creates a second Adam and Eve on Venus.

Frankenstein's monster quotes Milton' Adam. This is quite a literary sequence since it traces back to the original Genesis. "Go with God," in the words of Blish's Jorn the Apostle.

My God

"'In the name of God -'

"'Your God.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708 AT p. 700.

Maybe people should stop using that word in public discourse? They appeal to a transcendent and ultimate authority, then express contradictory personal opinions as to the nature of that authority. "God says..." means "I think...," "No, I think..." I have heard the word used aggressively, judgementally - in vain?

There is one Christian sf writer who I think contributes to this debate. HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon wrote anthropocentric future histories. CS Lewis presented a theocentric response. James Blish and Poul Anderson were Welsian-Stapledonian sf authors who took theology seriously, Blish explicitly referring to Lewis.

Wells and Stapledon: man remakes himself with science.

Lewis: such a project is literally diabolical.

Blish: After Such Knowledge.

Anderson: "The Problem of Pain"; The Game of Empire.

Quoting from memory because a copy of Lewis' collection, The Dark Tower and other stories, is not to hand, when the fictional Lewis inadvertently enters the mind of a former student's fiancee, he walks through her dreary inner landscape, the "Shoddy Lands" of the story's title, then hears a knocking and a voice that says, "'Child, child, child, let me in before the night comes.'" In this sentence, reality, personified and focused through the author's faith and imagination, directly addresses the reader. It, or He if you prefer, speaks to me. 

Morning And Evening Stars

More from "Star of the Sea":

"Upon [Naerdha's] brow a star burned white as the fire's heart." (II, p. 557)

"In the end [Naerdha] found [Wotan's] spear floating beneath the evening star." (II, pp. 560-561)

Poul Anderson imaginatively recreates earlier stages of Northern European mythology and the goddess's name changes appropriately.

The following passage brings together the morning and evening stars and is quoted at greater length because of its beauty:

"Mindful of thanks he owed, [Gutherius] raised an altar to Nehalennia, where after each voyage he made generous offering; and whenever he saw the evening star or the morning star shine forth, he bowed low, for they too are Nehalennia's.

"Hers are the trees, the vine, and the fruits thereof. Hers are the sea and the ships that plow it. Hers are the well-being of mortals and peace among them." (III, p. 628)

And this passage shows why some of us appreciate an imaginative polytheism.

Sunrise And Morning Star

Travelling south in a coach on the M6 Motorway yesterday, we saw light appear above the horizon beneath the morning star. Then the sun arose. I know that it happens every day although I do not usually see it. Inwardly, I recite a prayer to the sun god, Savitri. (I have just learned that this verse is an important mantra in Hinduism. See here.)

As a Poul Anderson fan, I remember appropriate passages. On further reflection, some of these passages refer to the evening star. However, morning star and evening star are the same planet: Venus in the Solar System; Dido in the Virgilian System.

"...often [Niaerdh] rose early, long before the sun, to watch over her sea. Upon her brow shone the morning star."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 467.

Addressed to Mary, mother of God:

"Pure as yourself, your evenstar shines above the sunset."

-ibid., IV, p. 640.

Thus, this narrative opens with a goddess in the morning and closes with the mother of God in the evening.

"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. 74-238 AT 1, p. 76.

There ought to be more but that is all for now.

Early Vessels

"Starfog."

"Crude as they were, those early vessels could have made the trip..." (p. 728)

The trade pioneer crew's Muddlin' Through and Dominic Flandry's Hooligan were "crude" compared with Daven Laure's Jaccavrie. Well, there should have been some technological progress in all those intervening millennia after the Long Night although it would be difficult for an author, having imagined a technology and a civilization advanced beyond ours, to continue to imagine further advances into an indefinite future. Jaccavrie is certainly a more sophisticated conscious artificial intelligence than Muddlehead in Muddlin' Through. What changes will a further five millennia bring? The immortals in Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years agree to reconvene after a further million years but the author cannot possibly take us that far ahead - although he does tackle such Stapledonian time scales with post-organic intelligences in his last sf novel, Genesis.

Kirkasanters

"Starfog."

Kirkasanters:

tall

robust

broad-chested

broad-shouldered

slim-waisted

dark coppery reddish skin

blue-black wavy hair

neatly trimmed beards and moustaches on men

dolichocephlic skulls

disharmonically wide faces

straight, thin noses

long lashes

large, luminous, grey, green or yellow eyes

handsome (?)

We cannot remember all that while reading but it would have to be in front of us all the time in a visual adaptation. Different media do different things and can complement each other. We would have to demand the very highest standards of any Poul Anderson dramatizations.

Pelogard

"Starfog."

Pelogard is a city:

"...on an island off the Branzan mainland, above Serieve's arctic circle..." (p. 718)

- and an industrial centre with tall, crowded buildings. From an office high in one such building, off-planet visitor, Daven Laure, sees:

soaring metal, concrete, glass and plastic blocks;

interlinking traffic ways and freight cables;

the waterfront;

sea mineral extractor plants;

warehouses;

sky-docks;

automated cargo craft;

the grey ocean brightened by spring sunshine and rumpled by the wind;

immense flocks of steel-blue fliers, dipping and wheeling;

a wan sky...

We would like more such description but this much is quite satisfactory. Also on Serieve, see:

Walking On Serieve

Four Senses On Serieve

A Few Stars Gleamed

Serieve III

Tomorrow will be another day-trip to London so almost certainly no new posts on this blog. Have a good weekend.

Outside The Galaxy

Reading about the edge of the galaxy, we want to go beyond it but must step outside Poul Anderson's Technic History to do so. While two men drink cocktails on a porch:

"Space dropped dizzily from the viewport, thin starred black here on the rim. Huge and shapeless - we still being more or less within it - the galaxy streamed past and was lost to sight; we looked toward remoteness."

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 12.

They go further:

"'There are stars between the galaxies, you know.'" (p. 13)

In fact, the spaceships of this civilization travel between galaxies but, unfortunately, we see only the rim of our galaxy and a single planetary system in intergalactic space.

In Anderson's Tau Zero, the Leonora Christina travels at relativistic speeds through the vast spaces between clusters of clusters of galaxies. In his Genesis, some post-organic intelligences, travelling at sub-light speeds, have reached the Andromeda galaxy although the narrative remains within the Milky Way.

Three steps beyond the Technic History.

Serieve And Space

 

"Starfog."

Poul Anderson conveys the sense not only of a planetary environment but also of the position of that planet in space. Despite having an entire planetary surface to colonize, the Serievans have built high on an arctic island where they can extract minerals from "'...upswelling ocean currents...'" (p. 719) This is necessary because their sun and its planets have few heavy metals since they are near the northern edge of their spiral arm of the galaxy where the thin interstellar gas has not been enriched with elements fused in earlier stellar generations. Daven Laure, Ranger of the Commonalty, looks out from Ozer Vandange's high-storey office across the city of Pelogard while they discuss this and other cosmological matters. Similarly, we need to have a sense of Earth's position in the Solar System in its part of the galaxy.

Five Thousand Years

"'...five thousand years of interstellar travel...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 717.

Interstellar travel has not yet started around 2055 in "The Saturn Game" but must start not too long after that. Call 2100 a round figure - in which case 7100 as the date for "Starfog" in Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization is spot on. The Technic History covers just over five thousand years from the exploration of the Solar System in the twenty-first century to the exploration of the Cloud Universe star cluster at the far end of another spiral arm of the galaxy in the seventy-second century. Often we focus on environmental details in a particular period but sometimes we contemplate the history in its entirety.

The Price?

"Afterword: The Price of Buying Time."

Dominic Flandry bought time for the Terran Empire but I am not sure that he paid any particular price for doing it. Sandra Miesel says that his main fault was not understanding women. This had bad consequences for him and them, at least.

"...he callously exploited a courtesan's devotion and thus sowed the seed of future personal tragedy." (p. 245)

Was Persis d'Io devoted to Flandry and, if so, did he exploit her devotion? That future personal tragedy involved their son who later acted as an individual in his own right. His defection to Merseia is hardly down to what had happened between his parents.

"If Flandry had treated his first two mistresses with greater consideration, he would not have lost his last chance for happiness." (p. 251)

Maybe, but that loss of happiness was not caused by Flandry's buying time for the Empire.

Although this article is an Afterword specifically to A Stone in Heaven, it also refers to future events as far as "Starfog." Miesel incorrectly states that:

"...Kraken had never been part of the Empire." (p. 250)

Sassanians And Someone Else

Merseians resemble Sassanians and someone else:

"'I have already ordered the appropriate agencies to start planning what to feed the Imperial academies, religions, and news media.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 447.

This remark by Tachwyr gives a very twentieth century/Cold War feel to the Terran-Merseian conflict. Insidious: the idea of Terran academics, clergy and journos "fed" by Merseian agencies. Might a phrase used in a lecture, sermon or news report have been written in Ardaig/Moscow? It is a relief no longer to read a stream of propaganda trying to persuade us that all was sweetness and light on the other side of the Iron Curtain. (This critique can come from the left as well as the right.)

Apart from this single point, I do not think that there is any other parallel between Terra-Merseia and US-USSR? In American future histories, the old Terrestrial issues are usually left behind in the twentieth century although the West falls in James Blish's Cities in Flight and the US and USSR merge into the CoDominium in Jerry Pournelle's future history.

Another Summary V

"Aftermath: The Price of Buying Time."

Avalon fights off the Terran Empire whereas Merseia just fights it: two legacies of David Falkayn, arguably more influential than van Rijn and Flandry combined.

The Terran Empire and the Merseian Roidhunate are compared to the Eastern and Sassanid Empires. 

"Key factors in [the Eastern Empire's] survival were devious intelligence agents and military officers who were hedonists in the capital but heroes in the marches." (p. 244)

Dominic Flandry!

"[The Sassanid's] obsession with hunting and their fiercely romantic masculinity were uncannily Merseian in flavor." (ibid.)

This strikes us as uncanny for a moment until we realize that Sandra Miesel has played a trick on us. The Merseians are fictional beings created many centuries after the Sassanids so there is nothing uncanny about a resemblance between them!

At last, we approach the story of Flandry "buying time."

Another Summary IV

"Afterword: The Price of Buying Time."

A pivotal bead on the string is "The Star Plunderer." Sandra Miesel accurately describes Manuel Argos as both charismatic and pragmatic and as a "...leader of enormous energy." (p. 240) This is one of those times when history could have taken a very different path.

The Terran Empire sprang from chaos whereas the Solar Commonwealth had arisen after a century of redevelopment following a period called the Chaos. Miesel describes the Empire as "...parochial and protective..." but the Polesotechnic League as "...ecumenical and expansionist..." (pp. 241-242): a succinct summary. I think that Poul Anderson would have appreciated this Afterword. And now I want to eat and turn to alternative evening reading but no way have we finished with Sandra Miesel's discussion of the Technic History.

Another Summary III

"Afterword: The Price of Buying Time."

As Sandra Miesel's summary proceeds, we realize how much of the history happens between stories. Miesel's comparison of the merchants of the Polesotechnic League to their counterparts during the European Age of Exploration owes something to the "Le Matelot" Introduction to Trader To The Stars. Her account of the Council of Hiawatha is based on a passage in Mirkheim which itself was a summary of earlier history. 

Miesel demonstrates how it is possible to refer to an historical event while avoiding any mention of its underlying conflicts:

"With van Rijn's consent [my emphasis], Falkayn helped underdeveloped planets acquire essential capital which proved to be their margin of survival later on." (p. 239)

That is one way of putting it. 

When Falkayn withdraws from Technic civilization to found Avalon, another two beads appear on the string of the history: "Wingless on Avalon" and "Rescue on Avalon."

We still have not reached the point of Miesel's title but she rightly claims that a thousand years of history must be summarized first.

Another Summary II

"Afterword: The Price of Buying Time."

Sandra Miesel presents a comprehensive list of motives for extra-solar colonization:

adventure

profit

advancement

social and political experimentation

preservation of cultural heritage

She adds that the cultural motivation was paramount in the cases of:

Russo-Mongol Altai

African Nyanza

Slavic Dennitza

I think that, in the case of Nyanza, Miesel goes beyond what Anderson's texts tell us but nevertheless, in this context, her extrapolation is legitimate as when she discusses alien influences on humanity:

"These exotic stimuli sparked the creative energies of Technic civilization to new peaks of excellence because they broadened the range of options available to each individual." (p. 238)

In "How To Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the Festival of Man is a reaction against alien influences. Later, in The People of the Wind, human beings on Avalon are strongly influenced by their fellow colonists from Ythri to such an extent that many young people join choths and adopt an entirely Ythrian lifestyle. 

Another Summary

 

I do not have access to everything that Sandra Miesel has written about Poul Anderson's Technic History but here is one other piece:

Sandra Miesel, "Afterword: The Price of Buying Time" IN Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven (New York, 1979), pp. 237-251.

Again, Miesel summarizes the Technic History, making it seem real and fresh in the process. Someone with appropriate creative skills would be able to write an entire Wellsian-Stapledonian fictitious historical text book based on this series by Anderson. Miesel goes a short way beyond what Anderson had written but just enough to make us feel that this is how it must have happened. How did the twentieth century that was known to us grow into the future history created by Anderson? This account still rings true. War, famine and disaster caused social upheavals that obliterated some societies but also produced a freer international order. Miesel writes without the additional information and insights later provided by "The Saturn Game" (1981) As in Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History:

"Rational solutions were found to old problems like energy and population." (p. 237)

English, simplified and enriched with loan words, becomes Anglic. A technologically based synthesis of Western and other cultures becomes Technic civilization. Poul Anderson discussed such transitional details in his SFWA Bulletin article on future histories. The Solar System is explored - as described later in "The Saturn Game." Orbital, Lunar and other colonies are established although the terraforming of Venus is not fully successful as mentioned by Anderson in The Rebel Worlds. The Solar Commonwealth is established. Extra-solar exploration and colonization begin as described in "Wings of Victory" and "The Problem of Pain." Individual stories are like beads on the string of the history.

New Vixen And The Exiles

The Long Night.

In her interstitial note between "The Sharing of Flesh" and "Starfog," Sandra Miesel draws out and spells out details that are understated or implicit in the text of "Starfog." The planet Vixen, wrecked by invasion in Flandry's time, recovered, survived the Empire and founded a colony, New Vixen, which was still flourishing millennia later when descendants of rebels banished by Flandry re-contacted interstellar civilization. These two appropriate references to Dominic Flandry help to solidify the historical continuity.

Miesel adds her own poignant note to the narrative:

"Was any beacon bright enough to guide the exiles home?" (p. 241)

Turning the page, we begin to read "Starfog," set in a completely new phase of (post-)Technic history. 

Miesel concludes the volume with the familiar reflection that, just as the League and Empire have passed, so will the Commonalty.

Historical Links

The Long Night.

In her next interstitial note, Sandra Miesel pulls the narrative together as much as possible. Thus, she refers to Sassania, Nike, Roan Tom, Lochlann and Kraken and adds that these latter two planets took part in rediscovery expeditions. Tom was born in a spaceship with a Lochlanna father and a Hermetian-descended mother although Miesel refers to Lochlann as his birthworld. Kraken was his adopted planet. That alone links him back to Olaf Magnusson in the Imperial period and forward to the Allied Planets which will incorporate Kraken. Tom's mother's Hermetian descent is the only post-Imperial link back to David Falkayn's home planet. 

These comments by Miesel precede "The Sharing of Flesh" which we have just reread in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII.

Long Afternoon

The Long Night.

Sandra Miesel interprets the Freeholder rebellion as:

"...a signal that the Empire's long afternoon was drawing to a close." (p. 132)

Thus, she unifies the current volume as much as possible. The long afternoon will be followed by the Long Night. Various peoples, including the Freeholders, plan to survive the Empire which however will still endure for generations thanks to men like Flandry. 

After the long afternoon comes "...sunset..." (ibid.) Terra and Merseia wear each other down, each devastated by internal rebellions and external attacks. At last the Long Night falls and this introduces "A Tragedy of Errors." So the book does work its way to the titular Long Night.

Miesel's Summary From Troubles To Empire

The Long Night. 

Sandra Miesel's interstitial notes refer to:

Nicholas van Rijn

Manuel Argos

Dominic Flandry

Roan Tom

- even though, of these four, only Argos and Tom appear in the current volume. Miesel summarizes the Imperial period that follows the Troubles:

from slavery to imperium;

interstellar peace;

protection;

security;

local autonomy;

size and complexity;

collision with Merseia;

decadence;

injustices;

tyranny;

Freeholder resistance.

Again, Miesel summarizes the entire Technic History, not just the concluding Long Night.

Bright Noontide

Poul Anderson, The Long Night (New York, 1983).

Sandra Miesel's Prologue begins not in the Long Night but:

"In the bright noontide of the Polesotechnic League..." (p. 9)

She enthusiastically summarizes the activities of "...bold merchant-adventurers..." (ibid.) which allegedly spread:

"...across a whole spiral arm of Earth's galaxy and beyond." (ibid.)

Surely not that far? This is an example of different versions of a story differing in their details. Miesel mentions:

"The long lifespan of the era's greatest merchant prince, Nicholas van Rijn..." (pp. 9-10);

"...the shadows of institutional mortality..." (p. 10);

cartelization;

protectionism;

government corruption;

extra-terrestrial policies dictated by intervention, exploitation and expedience;

withering profits;

waning trade;

disrupted communications;

growing anarchy;

collapse of the Polesotechnic League;

the Time of Troubles;

the Baldic League;

the sack of Earth.

The Troubles are a precursor of the Long Night.

Miesel is not as free to extend the History as Hloch does but she more than adequately summarizes it.

Chance Or Change II And Another Collection

 

The combox to Chance Or Change reminded me that I possess a fourth edition of "The Sharing of Flesh":

"True, the captives had been getting a balanced diet for a change..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Winners (New York, 1981), pp. 143-188 AT p. 182.

I also have a Technic History collection, The Long Night, which is inaccurately entitled because it excludes "The Night Face" and includes "The Star Plunderer" and "Outpost of Empire." However, Sandra Miesel's Prologue and interstitial material make this book a single-volume summary of the Technic History as we will see.

Long Night and New Dawn!

Killings On Two Planets

At the end of Poul Anderson's The Night Face, inhabitants of the planet Gwydion are killing each other. At the beginning of the following instalment in Anderson's Technic History, "The Sharing of Flesh," Moru kills Donli Sairn. Is this series all about violence and killing? That would be a superficial impression. There are different reasons for the killings: psychological reasons on Gwydion; biological reasons on Lokon. Poul Anderson favoured action fiction but there was always more beneath the surface. People acted the way they did for reasons and problems could, usually, be addressed and solved. After these two instalments, the History takes us into a further future when:

"'The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 709-794 AT p. 722.

Chance Or Change

"True, the captives had been getting a balanced diet for a chance..."

-"The Sharing of Flesh," p. 702.

That looks wrong to me. Let's check another edition:

"True, the captives had been getting a balanced diet for a chance..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, The Long Night (New York, 1983), pp. 203-240 AT p. 235.

Still not right. Try another:

"True the captives had been getting a balanced diet for a change..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Dipteroid Phenomenon" IN Harry Harrison (Ed.), Four For The Future (London, 1974), pp. 60-90 AT p. 86.

Yes. That was the original version of the story. There is also a slight grammatical difference.

The lowlander, Moru, killed Donli Sairn to feed his sons. Immediately after this, the sons begin to mature physically. Evalyth investigates further.

"Knowledge"

We need some new words.

It is true that the world was divided into three warring super-states, Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, in 1984 - if we know that we are talking about the plot of Orwell's 1984.

Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry exist in the same timeline - although, of course, neither of them really exists.

Gods and Buddhas co-exist - although I think that both kinds of beings are mythological.

Growing up in the post-War 1950s, I "knew" that germs and Germans were bad.

It is in this quotation marks sense of "know" that an Allied Planet cultural anthropologist says of the Lokonese:

"'They know a boy won't become a man unless he has eaten part of a man.'"

-"The Sharing of Flesh," p. 684.

Ironically, of course, it turns out that they do know this in the ordinary sense. Biologically, Lokonese boys cannot mature without cannibalism. When this is realized, something can be done about it.

Anticipations Of Intentions

I am really getting with S.M. Stirling's suggestion that human intelligence has mainly evolved in response to human behaviour. For survival purposes, members of a human community must cope with:

inanimate objects;

plants that they gather or grow;

animals that they hunt or herd;

other people.

Another person might walk, run or creep forward. He might smile in friendship, smile in contempt, snarl in hostility, conceal his feelings, speak, whisper or shout. Two people might speak different languages or have other communication problems. Each of us must continually deduce everyone else's intentions and decide how to respond. This requires more thought than many other inputs. 

And then we have to cope with our own states of mind. Evalyth knows that her failure to comprehend her husband's death:

"...was the effect of the psycho-drugs..."

-"The Sharing of Flesh," p. 671.

Consequently, she:

"...damned the kindliness of the medic.

"She felt almost glad to feel a slow rising anger. By evening she would be able to weep." (ibid.)

Not just anger but a second-order feeling: gladness at anger. Not yet grief but anticipation of grief. We must learn how to cope with shocks that disrupt the capacity to cope. A Larry Niven character reflected, "I've got to get over this some time. Why not now?" Most of the eventualities that we worry about do not happen and the few that do happen would have happened anyway. Maybe knowing this makes it easier to cope.

Apparitions III

"The Sharing of Flesh."

I made a mistake when I cut short a quotation in Apparitions. The full passage runs:

"She could not entirely comprehend the fact that Donli was gone. It seemed as if at any instant yonder doorway would fill with him, sunlight across his shoulders, and he would call to her, laughing, and console her for a meaningless nightmare she had had." (p. 671)

She imagines in detail that her just murdered husband enters, calls, laughs and consoles her. His murder was just a nightmare. It is easy to see that Evalyth could vividly imagine such an occurrence, then think that it had happened. Although I do not suggest that Poul Anderson had this in mind when he wrote the passage, nevertheless I do think that the passage itself reflects the psychological processes that can generate an experience as of meeting the dead. Works of fiction can describe such experiences ambiguously.

Barbarians And Savages

"The Sharing of Flesh."

When a receiver is activated:

"...the image formed, three-dimensional in the air..." (p. 665)

That is some communication technology they have there.

On Lokon, some members of the Allied Planets expeditionary force are with the highland barbarians whereas others have gone down among the jungle savages. The highlander leader pronounces:

"'The savages are our enemies too. They are vermin. Our ancestors caught some and made them slaves, but they are good for nothing else.'" (p. 676)

A fine objective assessment! The "vermin" are fellow human beings living in even more impoverished conditions.

I grew up in a provincial town in the 1950s where it was put into my head that manual workers living on public housing estates were almost the enemies of professional people - us - living in big, privately owned  houses up the hill. Fortunately, I also received an education that broadened my perspective.

Apparitions II

Of course there was not going to be an apparition on Lokon (see Apparitions) because "The Sharing of Flesh" is sf, not fantasy. However, Poul Anderson accurately describes a bereaved state of mind that can project apparitions. On Nike, commoners think that a warlord dead three hundred years still walks the ruins of his "cave" (castle). Stories told on Nike could include apparitions.

Ydwyr, a Merseian in A Circus of Hells, has studied paranormal phenomena among primitive races so I checked whether he had investigated any of their attempts to communicate with their dead but I had been thinking of an alien in a Larry Niven story:

"'When I thought to talk to their ghosts, there was nothing, though I used their own techniques.'"

-Larry Niven, "Cautionary Tales" IN Niven, Convergent Series (New York, 1979), pp. 177-181 AT p. 180. 

Maybe ghosts only speak with living members of their own species?

We have mentioned more than once that Dominic Flandry asks his murdered fiancee for a sign.

Contact with the dead is possible in the goetic universe which, like the Technic History timeline, has access to the Old Phoenix.

Apparitions

Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 66-708.

"She could not entirely comprehend the fact that Donli was gone. It seemed as if at any instant yonder doorway would fill with him..." (p. 671)

My mother said this after my father's death. I am convinced that:

apparitions of the dead occur;

one explanation is that the bereaved project the apparitions;

this is not necessarily the only explanation.

When the recently deceased C.S. Lewis appeared to J.B. Phillips (see here), the latter's wife, although present during the apparition, neither saw nor heard Lewis but did see and hear her husband speaking as if conversing with someone. This confirms that the apparition happened but was subjective to Phillips, not objective. Apparitions are one of half a dozen phenomena that I think warrant objective investigation although they might indefinitely remain on the border-line of knowledge. What can be done other than to catalogue reports and attestations?

Super Powers

When Dave Gibbons was working on Watchmen with Alan Moore, he suddenly realized that the series was not conventional superhero fiction but an sf alternative history in which some costumed adventurers fought crime and one man gained superhuman powers. The artwork and colouring were toned down to reflect this changed perspective. 

Superheroes have their roots in sf. Superman is extra-terrestrial. We can find sf characters with extraordinary powers. Wells wrote The Invisible Man. Stapledon wrote Odd John. Poul Anderson has mutant immortals, mutant time travellers and a universal telepath. There are similar characters in works by Larry Niven and Julian May.

Superheroes have become a separate cinematic phenomenon but do not forget their sf roots.