Responses II

"Lodestar."

I left out Coya. Held defensively by Falkayn, she begs van Rijn to befriend Supermetals. Van Rijn watches his chief trade pioneer/troubletwister and his granddaughter standing together while the eyes of Chee Lan, Adzel and Hirharouk are on him. After a pregnant pause, he agrees. It is this coming together of these six characters in this way that seals the deal. We already knew the four merchants. We already knew Ythrians if not Hirharouk personally. Coya alone is new. A future history series grows by building on earlier instalments while also introducing new information in subsequent instalments. Coya will join the trader team between volumes and will play the important role of the mother of Juanita and Nicholas Falkayn in Mirkheim and unfortunately these are her only two appearances in the Technic History. Each character's significance is immensely greater than the handful of appearances that even the most prominent of them makes in this future history series.  

Tomorrow will be New Year's Eve and a rest from posting although not from commenting.

Responses

"Lodestar."

We learn the responses of different species and of individuals within those species. The pride of the Ythrian, Hirharouk, meets the patience of the Wodenite, Nadi. Ythrians do not make tumultuous greetings. However, when the trade pioneer crew boards Gaiian, Captain Hirharouk at least feels that he must represent his choth so it is he that meets Falkayn and the others while his crew remains at rest.

When van Rijn, who perceives that he has been betrayed, must respond to Falkayn and Supermetals, the Cynthian, Chee Lan, arches her back, the Wodenite, Adzel, becomes totally still, Falkayn looks straight at van Rijn and Hirharouk the carnivore watches intently. It is appropriate that an Ythrian is present at this confrontation between van Rijn and his first trader team. The scene brings together the Polesotechnic League series and the Ythrian series. "Lodestar" is the last League story in The Earth Book of Stormgate where it is followed only by two short stories about human beings and Ythrians on Avalon.

It is a real relief for characters and readers alike when van Rijn concedes:

"'Hokay... I keep my mouth shut. Always.'" (p. 680)

The conflict between these two major characters, van Rijn and Falkayn, has come to a head and has been resolved. The remaining consequences of the mining of Mirkheim are in Mirkheim.

Stars And Their Planets

"Lodestar."

"'I was taught that giant stars, able to become supernovae, do not have [planets].'

"'Well, they is still scratching their heads to account for Betelgeuse,' van Rijn remarked." (p. 666)

In other words, Poul Anderson wrote about Betelgeuse having many planets, then learned that it should not have had any. Van Rijn's remark is an effective incorporation of this new knowledge into the Technic History. Scientists are always scratching their heads about currently inexplicable phenomena.

Elsewhere in the Technic History, David Falkayn discovers that, although Beta Centauri should not have had any planets, it had captured an entire rogue planetary system. Until Falkayn made this discovery, the inhabitants of that system had a perfect hiding place. No one would look for them there.

Brutes And Prudes

"Lodestar."

In political conflicts, each side blames the other. Van Rijn says that companies and governments become more brutish because youngsters become more prudish. Coya says the reverse. This is an authentic disagreement about a plausible social development. We live with present disagreements and see them reflected in Poul Anderson's fiction, in fact far more so in the Solar Commonwealth period of his Technic History than in its later Terran Empire period. Anderson focused as much as possible into the dialogue and inner reflections of van Rijn and Coya in this short story but later elaborated in greater detail and at much greater length in the full length novel, Mirkheim, where we learn who the monopolists are and why the Pax Mercatoria is breaking down. "Lodestar" would have been incomplete without Mirkheim. Both titles refer to the same fictional planet.

Coya's Life So Far

"Lodestar."

Although we want to learn more about Coya Conyon's life in the Solar Commonwealth, we are told less about her in this respect than we are about James Ching. 

Coya:

is 25;

grew up on Earth in her parents' home where they were regularly visited by van Rijn;

is now an astrophysicist, working at Luna Astrocenter;

has been far enough, often enough, in space to enable her to identify the brightest stars and to locate their present position as about a hundred parsecs from Sol;

privately promoted David Falkayn to "...god (j.g.)..." (p. 651) when she learned of his role in the Shenn affair;

has since had some outings with him.

There is such a vast difference in meaning between "god" and "God" that is unfortunate that they sound the same.

Are there gods? Empirically, no.

Is there God? My answer: yes, there is an object of numinous and mystical experience but no, It is not a transcendent person. But society incorporates different points of view.

Van Rijn And Coya In Space

"Lodestar."

Van Rijn continues to make remarks in questionable taste at which Coya does not smile. He continually complains about how moralistic her generation is:

"Yet she could not hate an old man who loved her." (p. 654)

Personal and family relationships can overcome a lot of disagreements. 

"'...in the Quetlan System we transferred to this vessel, and the yacht proceeded as if we were still aboard, and won't make any port for weeks -'" (p. 650)

The text states that money is needed to mount the kind of search that van Rijn is making. Indeed. Van Rijn can afford to cover his tracks by sending his luxurious interstellar yacht and her crew out of their way for weeks just so that his competitors will not know where he really is. That crew can loaf, relax and party for all those weeks relieved of their employer's overbearing presence and continual demands. Meanwhile van Rijn pays Ythrians to take him where he really wants to go, to a source of even greater wealth.

The quantity of material wealth that accumulates in Poul Anderson's fictional interstellar civilizations is astronomical both literally and metaphorically. 

Hope And Pray

"Lodestar."

If anyone asks me to pray in public, they might be surprised. My sincerest prayer would be: "All gods, we ask your help. But, if not, we'll do it ourselves! Thank you." Van Rijn tells Coya:

"'You better hope, you heathen, and I better pray, the supermetals what the agents of Supermetals is peddling do not come out of a furnace run by anybody except God Himself.'" (p. 655)

Petitionary prayer focuses hopes and wishes by addressing them to a deity or a "higher power," as some say. A Lancaster street vendor told me that the whole Muslim world was hoping and praying for peace. Some leftists would have argued that praying is futile. Such an argument is a divisive digression. My response was to add: "...and act." That can unite us - if we have clear common objectives, of course. 

How do we know that praying is futile? Some people claim from their experience that it is not. We need both empathy and continued dialogue. There is one small political group that asks any enquirer whether they have any religious beliefs and refuses them membership if they say yes. This is the perfect way to remain a small and ineffective group.

Forms Of Social Organization

Dig the details in Poul Anderson's Technic History:

choths on Ythri and Avalon;

Vachs on Merseia and Dennitza;

also a Parliament of Man on Avalon and a tri-cameral Parliament, including a House of the Zmayi, on Dennitza;

trade-routes on Cynthia;

tribes on Woden;

communions on Dido;

scholars, landfolk, townfolk, tri-cameral Parliament, tinerans, Riverfolk, Orcans and Highlanders on Aeneas;

something incomprehensible on Sphinx;

Imperial rule but also the independent community of Zacharia on Daedalus.

Does any other future history series present this amount of detail? We can name some that do not.

Cynthia, Ythri And Merseia

Ythri and Merseia were discovered during the first Grand Survey, Cynthia apparently even earlier because Vaughn Webner, chief xenologist in the Olga, a ship of the first Grand Survey, had studied Cynthian trade-routes in his youth.

Cynthians, Ythrians and Merseians became interstellar space travellers because of their contacts with Technic civilization. One Cynthian trade-route joined Technic civilization immediately. Others later joined the Supermetals company.

Some members of Hirharouk's crew do not belong to any choth because:

"'Ythrians got as much variation as the Commonwealth - no, more, because they not had time yet for technology to make them into homogeneouses.'"

-"Lodestar," p. 650.

(We apologise for van Rijn's Anglic.)

Linguistic and cultural unification have not gone as far on Merseia as on Terra. 

Coya And Van Rijn

"Lodestar."

Coya Conyon's mixed - Dutch, Malay, Mexican, Chinese, Scottish/Hermetian and African/Nyanzan - ancestry and her more restrained lifestyle make her "...a typical modern human..." (pp. 643-644) but she also sounds as if she would belong in the twentieth century when this story was written. When referring to a comrade called Yunus Bakhsh, I was asked where he was from. I replied, "He is from the North East of England. His ancestry is elsewhere." (I am not sure where.)

The gulf between Coya and her grandfather is shown when he offers her a choice of:

beer

gin

whisky

cognac

vodka

arrack

akvavit

wines

liqueurs

ansa

totipot

slumthunder

maryjane

ops

gait

Xanadu radium

a soft drink (he winces)

- but she prefers coffee and does not smoke.

Van Rijn: "Ah, they don't put the kind of stuff in youngsters like when I was your age." (p. 648)

Coya: "A few of us try to exercise some forethought as well as our consciences..." (ibid.)

Coya: "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to sound self-righteous." (ibid.)

Van Rijn: "But you did." (ibid.)

Just before that, he had thought it a shame that "'Customs has changed.'" (ibid.) An earlier "custom" would have been for a young woman like Coya to appear half naked in company. She reddens at his remarks. It is good to read about a generation gap working the other way. (I was certainly alienated from my parents but not from my daughter. We crossed a threshold in our lifetimes.)

Human-Alien Interaction

"Lodestar."

Coya Conyon befriends Ythrians. She learns about their psychologies and individual differences. They "...trade music, memories, and myths..." (p. 641) She sees aerial dances. They see ballet. Ythrians are awkward walking but graceful flying. Will inter-species communication be that easy? The British sf author, Bob Shaw, thought not and never showed different species in conversation. 

Theoretically, it could begin in our lifetimes at least at long distance. Contact not just with another civilization - like European explorers or missionaries arriving in India or China - but with another rational species, the product of an entirely separate evolution in another environment, will surely be the biggest ever external input to human consciousness. Its content is entirely unpredictable and I expect it to be completely unlike what anyone has imagined. However, I would like to be proved right or wrong soon.

Draught In A Spaceship And Wind From Mountains

The wind is a pervasive presence in some of Poul Anderson's texts. It punctuates dialogue, functions as a pathetic fallacy and sometimes becomes almost a participant in the action as when it whips Dahut in Ys. There is no wind in a spaceship but there might be draughts and:

"A ventilator murmured not only with draft but with a barely heard rustle, the distance-muffled sound of wingbeats from crewfolk off duty cavorting in an enormous hold intended for it."

-"Lodestar," p. 641.

Ythrian wings move a lot of air. They are The People of the Wind.

Anderson has sensitized me to interventions by the wind in the works of other authors, e.g.:

"Then the wind came in with Bart and blew the vase of roses from the table. I stood and stared down at the crystal pieces and the petals scattered about. Why was the wind always trying to tell me something? Something I didn't want to hear!"

-Virginia Andrew, Petals On The Wind (London, 2011), p. 435.

"How strange the wind wasn't blowing when I stepped out the door..."

-ibid., p. 443.

"...I can hear the cold wind blowing from the blue-misted mountains so far away."

-ibid., p. 486.

I noticed these three references only because of reading Poul Anderson.

Among Aliens

There has been a revolution in astronomical knowledge in our lifetimes. In my childhood and teens, there were no known extra-solar planets. Now there are thousands. This greatly increases the chances of extra-terrestrial intelligence, maybe some of it close enough to contact. Which is the nearby star that seems to be orbited by large asymmetrical objects? 

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, there is faster than light interstellar travel (FTL) and many aliens whereas, in his much later single-volume future history, Genesis, there is slower than light interstellar travel (STL) and no aliens. The truth might be STL and some aliens.

Coya Conyon does not mind being alone among winged, feathered Ythrians, apart from her grandfather. Much later, her remote descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, grows up among Ythrians. I would welcome alien contact but would also find the close proximity of large partly bird-like bodies covered with feathers unsettling and unpleasant. Coya enjoys communicating with the Ythrians as we might see when I return from a walk along Lancaster Canal and the Lune River.

Age And Youth

Throughout Poul Anderson's Technic History, there is continual contradiction and intense interaction between endings and beginnings, age and youth:

Dominic Flandry and later his daughter are young in the old Terran Empire;

in her high old age, Judith Dalmady/Lundgren draws on fresh memories and a youthful hoverpoint for her last story in Morgana;

Coya Conyon is young when the Polesotechnic League no longer is.

"At first she had revelled in adventure. Everything was an excitement; every day offered a million discoveries to be made."

-"Lodestar," p. 641. 

There is a generation gap between Coya and her grandfather. His generation seldom married. Her father's did. Hers is reviving patrilineal surnames. At the very end of the story:

"...Coya saw that [van Rijn] was indeed old." (p. 680)

He personifies the great days of the League which are gone. 

Introducing Coya Conyon

Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 631-680.

Reflecting on personal relationships in works of fiction, I am drawn back to one of my favourite passages in Poul Anderson's Technic History, the one that introduces Coya Conyon. (Another favourite passage is the italicized conclusion to A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. Kossara Vymezal, introduced earlier in this novel, has become a saint.)

"Lodestar" is a very condensed text, originally regarded as the conclusion of the Polesotechnic League sub-series of the Technic History although, fortunately, Mirkheim, was added and completely expanded the themes of "Lodestar." 

Pp. 631-632 are Hloch's Earth Book introduction to "Lodestar";

pp. 633-639 are a trade pioneer crew episode with serious discussion of inequalities in Technic civilization;

pp. 639-640 summarize van Rijn's quiet ten years between his discovery of Satan and his arrival at Mirkheim;

pp. 640-641 introduce Coya, revealing that she and van Rijn are traveling into unexplored space in an Ythrian ship! 

All the strands of the Technic History to date are coming together. Van Rijn:

"...meant to take Coya Conyon, his favorite granddaughter, on an extended cruise..." (p. 640)

Of course we accept that Coya is a granddaughter of van Rijn although we have never read about her before. This is her first appearance and was expected to be her last. Thus, this story combines:

the trader team (familiar);

van Rijn (familiar);

Ythrians (familiar);

Coya Conyon (new and extremely important - she will marry David Falkayn).

Central Park

See:

Evening In New York: Everard And Bond

Fictional Representations Of New York

New York In Space And Time

- my point here being that New York is a major venue in works of fiction. It is one point of contact between Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and Virginia Andrew's Dollanganger series. In both of these series, some of the characters live close to or even overlook Central Park and stroll in the Park. But there the resemblance ends. The second Dollanganger novel, Petals On The Wind, is set in the early 1960s but makes no reference to any historical events of that period. It is only about the ways that individual human beings can find to be vile to one another. The Time Patrol series covers all of human history. A character who strolls in Central Park has spent generations among the Goths and reflects on how World War II could have been prevented.

Interest in the fates of the characters will keep me reading until the end of Petals On The Wind but I will probably not follow through with the remaining three Dollanganger novels, let alone the same author's five-volume Casteel Family Saga. Poul Anderson's characters deal with the universe and with each other, not just with each other.

Human Arts And Aliens

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts ends with a chapter on "Zen in the Arts." We remember:

the haiku in Poul Anderson's Genesis;

Adzel's hanging scrolls of a landscape and of the Compassionate Buddha and his tea ceremony in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson";

Aycharaych's appreciation of Tu Fu:

"'...the poet of dead leaves flying amidst snow, cranes departing, or an old parrot shabby in its cage...'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2021), pp. 339-606, AT IX, p. 460.

(Aycharaych's telepathic insight into human beings enables him to understand and empathise with their arts.)

Recapitulating Future Histories

We have said it before but to summarize again, in Poul Anderson's Technic History:

16 Polesotechnic League instalments, 10 featuring Nicholas van Rijn, 2 others referring to van Rijn;

15 Flandry Period instalments, 13 featuring Dominic Flandry, 1 other referring to Flandry;

12 other instalments, 3 pre-League, 5 between the League and Flandry, 4 post-Flandry/post-Empire;

1 new introduction in the van Rijn collection, Trader To The Star;

3 new introductions in the David Falkayn collection, The Trouble Twisters;

12 new introductions and 1 afterword in the omnibus collection, The Earth Book of Stormgate.

To appreciate this massive future history series appropriately, contrast it with the comparative simplicity of:

Robert Heinlein's five-volume Future History, the original future history series on which subsequent series have been modelled;

Poul Anderson's five-volume Psychotechnic History, which was modelled directly on the Future History whereas the Technic History was unplanned and grew spontaneously like real history.

Zen And Technic History

I am reading an illuminating book about Zen received as a present. Zen is a rich blend of Indian, Chinese and Japanese traditions now Westernized. Adzel from Woden is converted to Mahayana Buddhism in San Francisco during the Solar Commonwealth period. 

In Satan's World, the threat to Technic civilization is external, not internal, although maybe the ease with which the Shenna are able to infiltrate that civilization highlights one of its weaknesses. Technic merchants sell arms to barbarians in "A Little Knowledge." In "Lodestar," conflicts within Technic civilization even cause conflict between van Rijn and Falkayn: a pivotal story. In Mirkheim, the Technic conflicts become a civil war when an apparently external threat is shown to be essentially internal. One of the two League cartels has backed and exploited what looks like the external threat of an alien imperialism.

The following stories show the longer term consequences: the colonization of Avalon; the collapse of the Solar Commonwealth; the founding and expansion of the Terran Empire; its war with the Domain of Ythri; the later history of the Empire and the even longer term consequences of its eventual Fall.

Today I might be mainly reading Alan Watts.

Hopes And Fears

(We are experiencing a periodic problem with downloading images.)

""The Season of Forgiveness" concludes:

"'The hopes and fears of all the years

"'Are met in thee tonight.'" (p. 336)

Evocative lines in a carol. I think that hopes and fears meet every night if we can see it. Carols express belief in immortality:

"And man will live forever more..."

I certainly do not buy that. We have discussed the nature of consciousness which overlaps with the question of whether individual consciousness can continue indefinitely. As an Ythrian of the New Faith asked: "How could it? Why should it?"

Surely the evidence indicates that consciousness is a property of organisms with central nervous systems and that it plays an evolutionary role? If there is any evidence to the contrary, e.g., from Spiritualism, then that evidence needs to be scientifically investigated.

If there is a hereafter, then people are entering it all the time, especially now, whereas, if there is no hereafter, then no one will ever know. I am sceptical first that there is a hereafter and, secondly, that, if there is, then it is anything like what anyone believes. Are Muslims currently learning that Christians were right or vice versa? Surely it cannot be that simple? In The Great Divorce, CS Lewis, a Christian, imagined a hereafter in which many people remain as confused after death as they were before it. That sounds plausible as far as it goes. But:

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
     One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

-copied from here.

We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on: and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.

-copied from here.

It is appropriate to reflect on life and death at the Midwinter Festival.

Decline

The sixteen Polesotechnic League instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History begin with the fourth of the eleven instalments collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, and end with the first of the six instalments collected in Volume III. Hloch's Earth Book introduction to the tenth instalment in Volume I, "Esau," indicates that by the time of that story the League is past its prime. However, only the last three of the sixteen League instalments display any internal problems or conflicts within the League so Hloch's intimations of decline could have been withheld until then. However, all of these stories are set within the lifetimes of a single set of characters so the beginning of the terminal decline was not far off whatever way we look at it. Meanwhile, we are still living through the Chaos. What will happen in 2024?

Happy Christmas. Peace on Earth.

Mainstream And SF III

I am reading Petals On The Wind by Virginia Andrews, the sequel to her Flowers In The Attic. The characters talk for page after page about their relationships but all of these conversations happen in a vacuum. The novel begins in 1960 but the plot is not set against the background of world affairs in that decade, still less against the background of the universe. Maybe I am beginning to understand why someone might prefer sf to mainstream fiction.

Fran Cobden, a fellow sf reader, thought that sf could only be described as "escapism." However, he laughed and did not disagree when I replied that sf deals with mankind's place in the universe and with the challenge of the future which, whatever else it is going to be, will be different from the past because of science and technology. Therefore, I concluded, sf is the most realistic fiction.

Fran remembered with affection David Falkayn's "merry crew" and that van Rijn was "a good guy" because he made profits but not as an arms merchant.

Eleven Instalments

In The Van Rijn Method:

the first three stories are pre-League;

the contemporaneous "Margin of Profit" and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" introduce the League, van Rijn and Adzel;

"The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "A Sun Invisible" outline Falkayn's career before van Rijn appoints him to lead the first trade pioneer crew;

"The Season of Forgiveness" is a classic Christmas story;

the last three instalments are about van Rijn and Hloch's introduction to "Esau" states that the philosophy and practice of the League were becoming archaic or even obsolete.

Thus, the League has arisen and begun its decline. A lot of the Technic History is in this first of the seven volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga. 

Writers And Readers

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

Following the style of Robert Heinlein's Future History, Jim Ching addresses his readers as if they were his contemporaries. Referring to the then-recent Festival of Man, he writes:

"Doubtless you remember the line of argument the promoters used..." (p. 180)

That Ching is writing soon after the events that he describes in this story is made clear by his concluding sentence. The story has culminated with him being offered a Polesotechnic League apprenticeship and:

"I collapsed into Betty's arms. She says she'll find a way to follow me." (p. 197)

His acceptance of the apprenticeship and his departure from Earth are still in the future not only of the events of the story but also of his narration of the story. 

Hloch, the editor of The Earth Book of Stormgate, informs us that this story is an extract from Ching's life-long reminiscences. That does not quite fit with Ching, as first person narrator, addressing an audience in the second person - or do some diarists address their reminiscences to an imaginary audience?

Centuries later, Hloch as editor also addresses his contemporaries:

"To screen a glossary of obscure terms, punch Library Central 254-0691.

"Hloch of the Stormgate Choth

"The Earth Book of Stormgate"

Names

"The Season of Forgiveness."

Further to the preceding post, are Earthlings or even just Christians wiser at Christmas time? Realistic answer: obviously not. Aspirational answer: we can hope and aspire toward wisdom at any time.

Hernandez must remember the naming system used in the desert:

"'I am Juan Sancho's-child, called Hernandez, pledged follower of the merchant Thomas William's-child, called Overbeck, and am come in peace.'" (p. 328)

That is a lot longer than just "Juan Hernandez" or even just "Juan Hernandez, apprenticed to Thomas Overbeck"!

The Ivanhoan replies:

"'I am Tokennon Undassa's-child, chief of the Elassi Clan..." (ibid.)

Tokennon has no surname to be explained away but does have a rank to proclaim. A chief among the People of the Black Tents challenges a follower among the Terrans, a race that seems to be motivated only by material gain and that has not yet demonstrated any recognition of sacredness.

Trees

"The Season of Forgiveness."

Ivanhoans gather to look at Christmas decorations and a Nativity scene erected outside the trading base:

"A tree had been erected on the flagstones." (p. 333)

A couple of weeks ago, I explained to a Muslim neighbour that we were walking across town to a church with an annual display of decorated Christmas trees, where we would also meet our daughter and granddaughter: celebration, family and sharing of traditions. The church also had a screen displaying information about current conditions in Bethlehem.

"'[The Earthlings] should have special wisdom, now in the season of their Prince of Peace.'" (p. 334)

Any paganism can accept Christ as another god.

"'Raielli, Erratan!'

"Halt, Earthling!" (pp. 327-328)

On another planet, Ikranaka, Earthlings are "Ershoka." The land-dwellers on Starkad call them "the vaz-Terran." There will be many adaptations of terms like "Earthling" and "Terran" throughout the volume of space covered by Technic civilization.

The apprentices who decorate the base:

"...had no common faith." (p. 322)

- although maybe their organizer, Hernandez, is a Christian. When I was at College, 1988-'89, several of the students were keen enough to organise a carol service complete with Gospel readings which they rehearsed. There was a core of Christian commitment among the organizers. I said that I would meditate in my room at the time of the service. I am not up for singing anything let alone carols! - although people draw this line in different places. I know that I should not accept communion in a church but should accept food in a Gurdwara or a Krishna Temple. 

Character Interactions

Usually, introducing one character involves introducing several others that the central character interacts with. See Four Men And A Wodenite.

James Ching...

...is a student and is answerable to his principal counsellor, Simon Snyder. Ching has a girlfriend who has a father but Ching's main role as a first person narrator is to introduce the series character, Adzel.

David Falkayn...

...is an apprentice, answerable to Master Polesotechnician Martin Schuster, but also interacts with other human beings and with Ivanhoans.

Juan Hernandez...

...is an apprentice, answerable to Master Trader Thomas Overbeck, but also interacts with other human beings and with Ivanhoans.

Emil Dalmady...

...was a factor for Solar Spice & Liquors and is answerable to Nicolas van Rijn! Dalmady describes his interactions with colleagues and with two alien species.

At last we work our way towards the great van Rijn. Adzel, Falkayn and van Rijn are introduced independently but converge eventually.

In "The Master Key," as previously outlined, character interactions are more complicated:

the narrator

the narrator's friend

the friend's son

the son's ensign

the son's and ensign's employer, Nicholas van Rijn

other human beings and enigmatic aliens

We usually, although not always, see van Rijn as others see him.

Four Men And A Wodenite

Four young men begin their careers in the Polesotechnic League in the pages of The Van Rijn Method:

James Ching

David Falkayn

Juan Hernandez

Emil Dalmady

If we change "men" to "beings," we can add Adzel to this list.

Falkayn and Adzel become series characters. Hloch presents some information about the later lives of Ching and Dalmady. We know:

about Falkayn's children, one grandson and one later descendant on Avalon;

about one of Dalmady's daughters on Avalon;

that Ching has descendants on Llynathawr, where he settled. 

Hernandez, the central character of "The Season of Forgiveness," is the only one that departs into obscurity.

A well-rounded future history series. 

"The Season of Forgiveness"

Poul Anderson, "The Season of Forgiveness" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 317-336.

I am following my own advice and rereading Poul Anderson's Christmas story. It is one of several short stories, published in different magazines or anthologies, that give body to a future history series. Fictitiously, it was written by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren and published in the Avalonian magazine, Morgana. Since Judith is a daughter of Emil Dalmady, hero of "Esau," which she also "wrote," "The Season of Forgiveness" is extremely well integrated into The Earth Book of Stormgate although we currently reread it in The Van Rijn Method.

We soon learn that the protagonist, Juan Hernandez, a Polesotechnic League apprentice and one-off Technic History character, is quick-witted, hardworking and eager and had graduated early from the Academy. Anderson's characters are the successful. We ought to see more ordinary people as well.

For those who read the Technic History in its original publication order, the Earth Book comes as a good summation at the end of the first major period of the History. This collection informs us:

how Ythri was contacted;

how Avalon was explored, then later colonized in two phases;

what Adzel did on Earth;

what the League did on Merseia - and the trader team's role in that transaction;

how van Rijn came to Mirkheim;

what happened later on Ivanhoe where we had first seen David Falkayn as an apprentice.

It is "The Season of Forgiveness" that imparts further information about Ivanhoe as seen through the eyes of another apprentice, Hernandez.

Eriau Names And Nicknames

"Ychani" means "seekers" in Eriau. Ydwyr's nickname is "the Seeker." Therefore, his full name in Eriau must be "Ydwyr Ychan Vach Urdiolch" - although Dennitzan Eriau is archaic and mutated so there might be some difference.

Dominic Flandry converses with Broch/Second Mate Tryntaf the Tall, Vach unknown. David Falkayn had conversed with Captain Tryntaf Fangryf-Tamer, Vach also unknown. As on Earth, a personal name alone is insufficient to identify an individual. Nicknames vary. They can describe an individual's physical characteristics, psychological disposition or something notable that he has done.

The greenskin cinc on Starkad is Fodaich/Commandant Runei. When Lannawar Belgis says that he had transferred to the Bedh-Ivrich whose skipper was Runei the Wanderer, Flandry asks whether that was the same Runei. Lannawar believes so. Flandry had known the personal name but maybe not the nickname.

Yqan/CPO Lannawar Belgis has a personal name and a surname with no nickname or Vach.

Roidhun

A Circus of Hells, CHAPTER TWELVE.

The "'...Almighty Roidhun...'" (pp. 281-282) of Merseia is elected from the landless Vach Urdiolch by the Hands of the Vachs and by the heads of other Merseian states, e.g., by any Presidents of Republics etc. Thus, the Roidhun stands for planetary and racial unity. When Ydwyr discloses that the reigning Roidhun is his uncle, Flandry, who had been sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, leaps up, pulls Djana up beside him and instructs her how to salute. Following Poul Anderson's texts, film-makers would have to visualize many salutes, rituals, deferences, gestures, words and steppings aside that the Merseians practice:

"...with the smoothness of centuried tradition." (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 268)

Flandry thanks the broch in Eriau with salute of gratitude. (ibid.)

Filming the Technic History accurately looks harder and harder.

Eriau

A Circus of Hells, CHAPTER TWELVE.

Flandry and Djana listen while Ydwyr the Seeker and Morioch Sun-in-eye converse although, of the two human beings, only Flandry understands Eriau. Morioch addresses Ydwyr as datholch, a title unknown to Flandry, and uses:

"...the aristocratic-deferential form of address." (p. 276) 

Ydwyr addresses Morioch as qanryf, naval commandant, using:

"...the merely polite verbal construction." (ibid.)

This and a few similar passages provide nowhere near enough information to enable linguists to construct a vocabulary and grammar for Eriau although film script writers should be able to concoct some sounds that we would hear with the accompaniment of sub-titles.

We are told that q equals more or less kdh where dh equals th in which case why not write it like that? James Blish pulls similar stunts with the Lithian language in A Case of Conscience.

The Platonic Idea of the Technic History would include Tolkien treatment of Eriau, Planha and Anglic. But, unlike Tolkien's friend, CS Lewis, I am not a Platonist.

Humour

A Circus of Hells, CHAPTER ELEVEN. 

Sf writers imagine alien psychologies as well as physiologies:

"Most Merseians had [a sense of humor], sometimes gusty, sometimes cruel, often incomprehensible to men." (pp. 270-271)

Thus, Poul Anderson's Merseians resemble ERB's green Martians not only in skin colour but also in the nature of their sense of humour. Tars Tarkas laughs when he sees his friend, John Carter, covered in blood after a sword fight.

Merseians and green Martians differ physically in that the former are tailed whereas the latter are twelve foot tall and six-limbed. Also six-limbed are the Ferrans in Anderson's Technic History. How many fictional aliens are humanoid forms with extra limbs or other additions: pointed ears; feline facial features etc? Nothing, when discovered, is ever as it had been imagined.

Happy Christmas

 

OK. Too busy to blog. My advice, read or reread:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

"The Blue Carbuncle" by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Shepherd by Frederik Forsyth

"The Season of Forgiveness" by Poul Anderson

Anderson's story is both a Christmas story in the Dickensian tradition and an instalment of Anderson's main future history series. The best of two worlds.

Prisoner

Poul Anderson, A Circus of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 193-365.

"The Merseians treated him correctly if coolly." (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 267)

Thus, Flandry begins his experience not as a guest but as a prisoner of the Merseians. He is not bound and is checked by a doctor with experience of other species. He is given the opportunity to clean himself. His belongings are returned except for weapons. A small space on the warship is curtained off for him and his female companion. They are fed and the toilet facilities explained. They are guarded but not molested. After reading thus far, we look forward to some interesting exchanges between Flandry and his captors during the rest of the journey and after they have reached their destination. The Technic History shows the Merseians from nearly every angle although it does not include a scene with the Roidhun.

Flandry On Merseia

Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192.

Diplomatic language:

"...an invitation arrived. In the name of better understanding between races, as well as hospitality, would Ensign Flandry like to tour the planet in company with some young Merseians whose rank corresponded more or less to his?" (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 103)

Max Abrams has whisked Flandry from the barely habitable Starkad to the eminently terrestroid Merseia. Now Merseians offer a tour of the planet. Of course he would like it. However, Flandry is Abrams' aide. Abrams' interpretation of Merseian diplomatese is:

"'This is a baldpated ruse to cripple me still worse.'" (ibid.)

But Abrams lets Flandry go in the hope of learning something. After spending time with Tachwyr and others, Flandry:

"...believed they were honest, most of them, in their friendliness toward him and their expressed wish that today's discord could be resolved. They were good chaps. He felt more akin to them than to many humans.

"In spite of which, they served the enemy, the real enemy. Brechdan Ironrede and his Grand Council, who had put something monstrous in motion." (p. 108)

As in many situations on Earth, the problem is not the individuals on the other side but the regime that they serve.

Two observations about Abrams. First:

"...he felt he'd have been proud to have Dominic Flandry for a son." (p. 104)

If Abrams had lived long enough, then he would have had Flandry for a son-in-law.

Secondly, Abrams later thinks that:

"You had to see a place like this if you would understand, in your bones, that Merseians would never be kin to you." (CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 141)

Abrams has not shared Flandry's experience of drinking with Tachwyr the Dark and Lannawar Belgis.

Flandry Among Merseians

We are human by species and Terrestrial/Terran by planet of origin/residence although some of our still-human descendants might be not Terran but, e.g., Hermetian and there might also be post-human descendants, e.g., the Kirkasanters. In the case of the Merseians, we lack a convenient terminology to distinguish between species and planet of origin or residence. However, those beings who are Merseian by species but Dennitzan by planet of residence are called ychani ("seekers") in Eriau and zmayi ("dragons") in Serbic. Referring to them all by species alone, we find that Dominic Flandry spends time among "Merseians":

on Merseia in Ensign Flandry;

on Talwin in A Circus of Hells;

on Dennitza in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.

He is a guest on Merseia, a prisoner on Talwin and a fellow citizen of the Terran Empire on Dennitza and therefore is treated differently in each case. 

Some Mainstream And An Unexpected SF Novel

The results of the recent literary experiment (see Mainstream And SF):

I have read to the end of Flowers In The Attic and have made a library request for its sequel, Petals On The Wind;

googling the author reveals that she also wrote one sf novel, Gods of Green Mountain, about humanoid beings on a planet with two suns where there are gods or at least beings regarded as such. (That sounds like early Poul Anderson.)

The experiment has given me something different and interesting to read that I had not previously known about.

Information Lag And Inference

The Game of Empire, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Some people do not understand about information lag. They assume that, if an important event has occurred, then everyone simultaneously knows that, why, how etc it has occurred. The event is like a visible object that everyone perceives and from the same angle. No inference or interpretation, let alone ignorance, is involved.

Tachwyr knows that the Terrans have learned that Magnusson was a Merseian agent. He does not know how the Terrans have learned this. Tachwyr infers that, as soon as the news broke, Magnusson's crew mutinied and killed him quickly. He infers that Magnusson's partisans are deserting his cause and that, if they do not surrender immediately, this is only because they are holding out for pardons. Tachwyr's colleagues agree with the inferences while recognizing that they are inferences. 

Other possibilities include Magnusson's arrest, trial, conviction and execution or, alternatively, his escape to Merseia where, according to Tachwyr, he would wind up:

"'...dragging out a useless existence as a pensioner...'" (p. 446)

He would not. Or, at least, he would if he himself saw it that way. As long as a self-conscious being is alive, then he is capable of contemplating and transcending his own past actions. Prisoners make religious conversions maybe because, deprived of everything else, they latch onto an ultimate escapism but it does not have to be that way. As long as they are alive and aware, their existence is not useless unless they think that it is.

Yesterday And Today

The present and even the future get left behind. Contemporary and even futuristic sf becomes de facto alternative histories, which is why SM Stirling writes them that way in the first place. Sandra Miesel's introductions explicitate that Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic future history series is now an alternative history diverging from the world as we know it in 1958.

Contemporary series become stretched or elongated if their characters remain active in the present while their origins recede further into the past. I disagree with any series that keeps its hero unaging while everything else changes around him. Authors can play tricks with chronology and age but should not just ignore it because it is the most important aspect of life and should therefore be reflected in fiction, however this is done. Over the course of a decade or more, the Matt Helm series stopped referring to Helm's involvement in World War II. The James Bond (book) series changed what it said about Bond's involvement in that war. Bond has two biographies, the first relegated to a fiction within the fiction. Fleming knew how to do it.

Even futuristic series must show change in their characters' lives. Antiagathics or antisenescence will not prevent eventual death by violence or accident or just by living until the end of the universe, as in James Blish's The Triumph of Time. Poul Anderson's Technic History presents complete biographies of David Falkayn and Dominic Flandry and even Nicholas van Rijn, already old at the beginning of his series, becomes older and less active except in emergencies.

Today And Tomorrow

Sf can be set in the past, present or future, on or off Earth, whereas mainstream fiction has to be contemporary and on Earth. However, if an author sets a novel at the time of writing, then, on a regular writing schedule, adds sequels in which the original characters' children and grandchildren grow to adulthood, then, over perhaps three years of writing, that series has grown perhaps four decades into the future. This could be one point of transition from contemporary to futuristic fiction. The present is so transient.

An sf future can be "day after tomorrow," i.e., the world is as we know it but with just one change or innovation. CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, published in 1945 and set vaguely after the war, presents one tangential technological innovation but many behind-the-scenes supernatural and extra-terrestrial interventions - this written by a man who did believe in regular divine, angelic and demonic interventions. Poul Anderson's Brain Wave begins in the 1950s USA - when a cosmic force increases animal and human intelligence and changes human motivations, a Wellsian premise.

Imagine a futuristic series that avoids cliches like FTL or humanoid aliens but traces ecological and human developments through a finite future period. Poul Anderson did write different kinds of future history series, changing from FTL with aliens to STL without aliens. His Technic History begins with a possible near future scenario. His Genesis summarizes past history, accelerates through the writer's present and reaches a remote post-human future that will not be counterfactualized for a very long time.

Mainstream And SF II

Contemporary fiction regularly refers to communications technology that would have been sf through  most of the twentieth century. James Bond received telegrams from M. Matt Helm had to find a public phone to contact Mac. The Man from UNCLE was ahead of his time with his hand-held satellite communicator. A character has a mobile phone in her handbag in Robert Heinlein's Future History. Nowadays an author setting a scene a few years ago has to check the state of technology then to prevent anachronism. A contemporary novel might have an epilogue about its characters in old age a few decades hence. That epilogue might feature some speculative future tech without the novel becoming sf. Some future tech, like FTL drives, has become sf cliches. Poul Anderson managed to write creatively while also becoming a master of the cliches. For example, he varied his means of FTL and his Technic History version seems almost plausible: quantum mechanics circumvents relativity. It might be possible to work towards less of a split between mainstream and sf.

Morning And Night

We first see Brechdan Ironrede when it is morning at Castle Dhanghodan on Merseia whereas we last see Tachwyr the Dark when:

"Winter night lay over the South Wilwidh Ocean."

-The Game of Empire, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 445.

Brechdan stands and salutes the dazzling light of the sun Korych whereas Tachwyr sits in a stony room beneath the flying moon Neihevin, the lurid light of the Valenderay nebula, the speeding glints of satellites generating forcefields to guard against supernova radiation and a few forlorn stars.

Brechdan from his terrace sees morning mists, distant glaciers and a wheeling fangryf whereas Tachwyr in his islet stronghold hears crashing seas and shrilling wind.

Pathetic fallacy gone mad!  

Aycharaych

The Game of Empire, CHAPTER SIX.

"[The Terran Empire] must be nullified before the Race could be fully free to seek the destiny the God had set. We shall, ghost of Aycharaych, we shall. During those selfsame years of our misery, your scheme was coming to fruition. This is the year when victory begins." (p. 268)

Tachwyr addresses the ghost of Aycharaych on the apparent assumption that, if Aycharaych were still around, he would still support Merseia. It would be good to read the response of a surviving Aycharaych, especially since Axor was meanwhile studying the Chereionites. Aycharaych's understanding of individual minds and of mental processes in any species should cast some light on questions asked by Christians and Buddhists about morality and spirituality. Aycharaych should be closer to any evidence for or against rebirth or survival and should also be able to advise on contemplative practices to resolve inner conflicts.

The Merseians have had years of misery and will have more when their expected victory is so abruptly sabotaged. Some will question the existence of the God. Others will reinterpret destiny as involving inter-species equality. A few, like Larry Niven's kzinti Kdaptist heretics, might even become human supremacists.

The Technic History was only just beginning.

Merseians In THE GAME OF EMPIRE

We find Merseians in four places in The Game of Empire:

two passages narrated from Tachwyr's pov;

the Merseian that Targovi kills and beheads as evidence on the island of Zacharia;

the words spoken to Olaf Magnusson by "...the envoy in the hidden place." (CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, p. 439)

In that last case, we read only the words in an italicized dialogue. There is no description of persons or place. But we see right inside the Roidhunate ideology.

Flandry tells Magnusson that lasting peace is impossible:

"'...unless and until the civilization that dominates [the Merseians] goes under or changes its character completely. The Roidhun could make a personal appearance singing 'Jesus loves me' and I'd still want us to keep our warheads armed.'" (CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, p. 396)

Normally, I disagree with keeping warheads armed but, of course, Poul Anderson writes the Roidunate in such a way that no other response is viable.

Both civilizations go under. 

Ancestors

The Game of Empire, CHAPTER SIX.

Tachwyr addresses the Grand Council whose faces he sees on a multi-screened communication set that he:

"...had had brought out onto a towertop of his castle. At this tremendous moment he wanted to stand overlooking the lands of his Vach, while its ancient battle banners snapped above him in the wind." (p. 264)

When Brechdan Ironrede chooses to receive the Terrans in Castle Afon, Max Abrams reflects:

"He's shaken... He's rallying quick, but he needs the help of his ancestors."

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 141.

Tachwyr wants ancestral lands and banners when he is triumphant. Brechdan wants his ancestors when he is shaken. Abrams thinks:

"I wish my ancestors were around." (ibid.)

Whether our ancestors are around is largely a matter of how we see it. In the Roman Empire, displaced slaves left their gods behind - unless they came to believe in a single omnipresent god. Abrams rallies himself by remembering his home planet, Dayan, then:

"I too have a place in the cosmos. Let me not forget." (ibid.)

"If I forget thee..."

Mainstream And SF

We (editorially speaking) are conducting a minor literary experiment. A regular blog commentator explained once or twice why he preferred sf to mainstream fiction. I requested an example of the mainstream fiction being referred to so that I could make the same comparison. Of course I have read some mainstream novels but that is a broad category... The title suggested was Flowers In The Attic by Virginia Andrews which I am now reading. It turns out to be the first of a series. I am interested enough to read at least to the end of this volume.

I am reminded that, in such a novel, the narrative focuses entirely on the characters and their interactions. The setting is contemporary, equally familiar to author and readers, therefore not needing elucidation. The author need not create a future society or an extra-terrestrial environment. 

In this novel, the children isolated and concealed in the attic of a large house for an indefinite period have something in common with characters in an sf novel cut off from the rest of mankind by their enclosure in an interstellar spaceship. The way the children are treated borders on horror. People living or working on lower floors of the house might hear voices or other sounds and imagine ghosts. Indeed, the children's imaginations might run riot in the enormous, cluttered, cobwebbed attic. 

Poul Anderson could easily have handled a novel on such a theme. Indeed, his contemporary novel, The Devil's Game, has just one fantastic - or maybe psychological? - premise and thereafter presents the interactions of a diverse group of characters.

So far, I think just that sf and mainstream are different, not that either is better.