Diaspora

The Long Way Home.

Ed Langley, like HG Wells' Time Traveller, has passed into the future and must learn what has become of mankind. However, the Time Traveller contends only with the class division - and species division - between Morlocks and Eloi whereas Langley faces a galactic diaspora.

Interstellar emigration began slowly in the twenty-first century. During later periods of trouble, successive waves of malcontents and refugees went far from Sol to avoid recapture. Lost colonies are presumably scattered throughout the galaxy. 

The Technate resumed colonization as a safety valve and tried to retain control of nearby colonies although this became impossible so that there are now about a dozen independent states still in contact with Sol. Sol and Centauri contend for the mineral resources of Sirius where the government is weak. Valti of the Commercial Society is from Ammon in the Tau Ceti system. There may be more info.

Addenda after an afternoon out: 

The Tau Ceti system also includes the inhabited planets, Osiris and Horus.

Langley's companion, Marin, observes that, among the thousands of lost colonies:

"'Surely one of them, somewhere, has become something different.'" (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 103)

She means something better than any of the known civilizations. Surely... This is one of many sf scenarios that could be extended indefinitely with additional speculations about utopias, dystopias etc.

Meanwhile, on another blog...

Progress, Pessimism, Peace And Freedom

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER ELEVEN (of TWENTY).

After jumping five thousand years into the future, Edward Langley reflects:

"'What price progress?...I've gotten pessimistic about change for the sake of change; a petrified civilization may be the only final answer for man, provided it's reasonably humane. I don't see much to choose between either of the great powers today.'" (p. 102)

Human beings are capable of dynamism and creativity, not just petrification!

Langley continues:

"'There will never be peace and freedom till every individual man out of a majority, at least, is prepared to think for himself and act accordingly; and I'm becoming afraid that day will never come.'" (p. 103)

That day will not come spontaneously but individuals and society interact. Major social movements can oblige more individuals to think for themselves. While we breathe, there is hope.

Populations

The Long Way Home.

We have to remember that:

the Solar Technarcy rules the populations of Earth, Mars, Venus and the Jovian moons;

the Council of the League of Alpha Centauri rules the populations of five Centaurian planets;

the bureaucracy of the Commercial Society rules entire populations inhabiting a fleet of large interstellar spaceships.

What do we see of these populations apart from a few individuals? We are shown a Commons street scene on Earth. The Centaurian ambassador to Sol reminisces about his life on the planet, Thor. We do not see inside any Society ship - as far as I have reread and as far as I can remember - but maybe they would be similar to the Nomad and Kith ships that we see in other Andersonian future histories?

"...the Society...really was a nomad culture, patriarchal and polygamous..." (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 102)

A few phrases convey compact information.

The Commercial Society

The Long Way Home.

See Interesting Reading And The Commercial Society. 

Additional information:

Each Society spaceship handles ordinary affairs and files reports and pays taxes at a planetary office but neither the spaceship crews nor the office workers know where the reports or the taxes go. Special orders come through a sealed circuit from a secret cell-type bureaucracy. Valti, current chief of the Solar offices, says:

"'...promotion to the bureaucracy involves complete disappearance, probably surgical disguise; I will gladly accept the offer if it is ever made to me.'" (CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 81)

At least one of Valti's superiors must be present on Earth despite being completely unknown to him. Valti passes all this off as a necessary security measure. The Society has prospered for a thousand years, its members conditioned by rituals and oaths. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Supermetals Company of necessity protects itself with strict secrecy but cannot maintain that for a thousand years. The source of the company's wealth is revealed in the lifetime of its founder.

A sinister pattern has emerged:

the location of the Solar Technon is secret;

the location and identities of the Commercial Society bureaucrats are secret;

the Council of the League of Alpha Centauri comprises human Thorians but also the mysterious, telepathic, gas-giant-dwelling Thrymans.

So who is really in charge anywhere and what are their aims?

The Solar Technarchy

The Long Way Home.

The paramathematical theory of man predicts the outcomes of plans for production and distribution. Thus, civilization is stable with high negative feedback and adjusts to changed conditions.

The Technon is a very large sociomathematical computer. Its location is unknown except to the highest ranks of the Technon Servants, a lifelong priesthood conditioned to die rather than reveal their secrets.

Every agency continuously feeds all available data into the Technon. Many agents work only to gather data.

The Technon makes "'...basic policy decisions...'" (CHAPTER THREE, p. 31) It cannot be bribed and is, if not infallible, then at least less fallible than any human being.

The hereditary Minister class executes policies, makes daily decisions and sometimes recruits from the Commons who work but have no political power. Genetic engineering makes heredity less chancy than before. 

The Survival Of Monotheism

 

Sean Brooks rightly pointed out here that Poul Anderson wrote as if he understood religious believers whereas Isaac Asimov wrote as if he didn't, at least in the Foundation series. I think that Asimov later wrote some insightful Biblical commentaries.

In Anderson's The Long Way Home:

"...a rather cheerful, indulgent family life in a temple, where a crowd swaying and chanting its hymns to Father reminded [Langley] of an old-time camp meeting..." (CHAPTER SIX, p. 65)

"'...Father knows there's enough to do in our own system...'" (CHAPTER NINE, p. 92)

"Father" is an object of popular devotion and part of the language. Thus, monotheism has survived for another five millennia. In Anderson's Technic History, polytheism revives on the planet Kraken during the civilizational breakdown of the Long Night. Will these kinds of religion survive that long into the future? Yes, unless some other major changes happen.

There is an analysis of religion according to which:

(i) people personified and placated natural forces like weather and thunder that they could neither understand nor control (nature polytheism);

(ii) next, they personified social forces like war and justice that they could neither understand nor control (social polytheism) (although a social event like a war or an economic slump is a large number of human actions, it confronts each individual with the apparent externality and inevitability of a natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake);

(iii) next, they unified the personified external forces (monotheism);

(iv) next, beginning to understand and control external forces, they cease to personify them (atheism) (if your roof leaks, then you ask, "What caused the leak? Am I insured? Can I sue anyone?," not "Have I or my fathers sinned that this has happened to me?");

(v) however, many forces remain uncontrolled, many are not yet understood and people respond with different levels of understanding, therefore society remains divided between different kinds of believers and sceptics;

(vi) a possible future society is one in which all these forces are understood and controlled and scientific understanding is synthesized with contemplation of the totality. 

The Interstellar Regimes

The Long Way Home.

Valti's offer to Langely includes:

"'...you can be set up on some human-colonized planet beyond the region known to Sol and Centauri. There are many lovely worlds out there, a wide cultural variety, places where you can feel at home again. Your monetary reward will give you a good start.'" (CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 82)

Brannoch's offer:

"'I'm prepared to offer a very generous payment, protection, and transportation to a world of your choice...'" (CHAPTER NINE, p. 91)

Despite the light-speed limit, despite also the many farther away civilizations that have become what I call "beyond contact," there is nevertheless a large number of inhabited planetary systems that are in regular contact with each other. And there are both human colonials and "Eties."

Alpha Centauri A has two humanly colonized planets, Thor and Freyja. Alpha B has two planets being gradually terraformed. The red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, also part of the triple star system, Alpha, has an inhabited gas giant, Thrym. The League of Alpha Centauri comprises Thorians and Thrymans with the latter possibly more powerful. A Thryman is a six-foot disc with six legs, head and sense organs in bulges at the centre of the disc. They are telepathic.

We have yet to summarize the set-up either in the Solar Technarchy or in the Commercial Society.

Complications

The Long Way Home.

Chanthavar says:

"'I'm on the track of a ring which is trying to stir up the Commons and arm them. It's - Brannoch's work, of course.'" (CHAPTER TEN, p. 100)

What did I say a few posts ago? (I did not remember this from previous readings.)

This novel just became more complicated with more information both about the League of Alpha Centauri and about the Commercial Society which will require some additional thought. It is worth remembering that a civilization is not a conspiracy. There is not some small secret group that somehow manipulates everyone else although it can seem like that in some works of sf and this work leans in that direction.

Good night.

No Words

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER EIGHT.

"'Who says you're a race of -' [Langley] paused, realized that there was no word for saint or angel..." (p. 80)

"Scudamour's next remark failed. He had meant to say, 'Thank God you don't,' but presumably there were no words for this in the language he was using." 

-CS Lewis, "The Dark Tower" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 15-98 AT p. 65.

In 1984, the limited and simplified vocabulary of Newspeak is an attempt to limit, and ultimately to prevent, thought.

Goethe's Faust corrected "In the beginning was the Word" to "In the beginning was the Deed." Perhaps we can go further and say "In the beginning was no word"?

Holatans And Commons

I had not rated The Long Way Home as a significant novel by Poul Anderson and have reread and blogged about it at least once before but look how much we can still out of it:

the peculiarities of the interstellar superdrive

the two theories of how it functions

the "beyond contact" civilizations that it generates

the planet, Thor

the Holatans

the Solar Technarchy

the Commercial Society

the Commons

the paramathematical theory of man

A crucial point is reached when it is acknowledged that man has not been liberated. Why not and how might he have been?

Holatan life is grounded in family rites and pantheism. Commons families chant hymns to Father in a temple. Could there be some common ground between them? Holatans and Commons do have a single creator: Poul Anderson. 

The Commons II

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER SIX.

Chanthavar says that, as long as the Commons work and do not make trouble, they are left to their own devices - like the proles in 1984. City-owned slave police control them if necessary. They lack weapons and education. Their schooling emphasizes their place in the system. In other words, a vast human potential remains undeveloped.

Chantavar, like ruling groups closer to home, arrogantly dismisses any ability of the Commons to resist. Some of the Commons who organize businesses or guilds will resent Minister rule and some of those in turn will plan accordingly. They might be armed by the Centaurians or by some of Chanthavar's enemies within his own caste. 

Whatever else happens, society will not remain static. We are told that the paramathematical theory of man is not fully predictive.

The Commons

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER SIX.

The Commons are confined to roof-covered corridors on the lowest level of the city, physically a different world. 

"The disorderly mass reminded [Langley] of cities he had seen in Asia." (p. 63)

This is another of the kinds of scenes that Poul Anderson likes to describe: vibrant street life with poverty, crime, commerce and some casual violence but also much liveliness. I will not on this occasion list all the kinds of people in the corridors but they are to be found on p. 63. They include a vendor:

"...crying his wares in a singsong older than civilization." (ibid.)

That links the future city back to Anderson's works set in ancient times - as does the wealthy man whose servants clear his way. One of Anderson's time travellers, Jack Havig, described the past as Asiatic. 

Chanthavar takes his guests to some kind of virtual reality, not fully explained, where two of them are violently kidnapped: an Andersonian action scene. And that is a sufficient change of tone for me to revert to other rereading at this time of the evening.

Starward!

Chanthavar's Argument

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER SIX.

On pp. 64-65, Chanthavar, spokesperson for the Technate, presents the exact opposite of my argument in the previous post. However, he argues not only against (my idea of) "liberation" but also against any kind of democracy so I hope that blog readers who disagree with me will not fully agree with him.

He argues:

throughout history, giving everyone a vote has always failed because, within a few generations, the worse politicians drove out the better;

this happened because half the population is below average intelligence and the average is low;

the Commons, "'...these apes..,.'" (p. 65) as he calls them, are not fit to decide public policy;

war, poverty and tyranny are the human condition;

golden ages are transient freaks;

they collapse because they do not fit recent descendants of cavemen;

life is too short to change the laws of nature;

natural law is "'Ruthless use of strength...'" (ibid.)

Well... 

Intelligence can be encouraged and increased. The Commons are not "apes." Chanthavar's class is not fit to decide public policy if it thinks like that. Chanthavar is always accompanied by slave guards to protect him from his peers. This is regarded as a good way to keep the ruling class on its toes! Technology can certainly eliminate poverty. Life is long enough to make some changes, both shorter and longer term. Even if I became sceptical of "liberation," I would certainly oppose Chanthavar's contempt for his own species.

The Ordinary Man

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER SIX.

First read the previous post.

Has subservience been inculcated in the ordinary man since the Industrial Revolution? Where is this ordinary man? The world is full of extraordinary people!

Of course we must rely on technical experts. We cannot all be motor mechanics, computer technicians, plumbers or brain surgeons. But we soon complain when the experts get it wrong. There is a general distrust of professional politicians although not yet any general recognition of an alternative. In adversarial political systems, each of two major parties spends all of its time denouncing the other and encouraging its supporters to do the same. This does not inculcate much subservience. In dictatorial systems, there is dissent and opposition despite repression. Some people are unfortunately in prison or dead but not subservient.

There have been political upheavals since the Industrial Revolution. There are frequent mass expressions of discontent. In London alone, there have been ten national mass demonstrations on a single issue in the last five months and there will be another the day after tomorrow. Of course we can make an artificial distinction between "ordinary people" who watch television and "extremists" who demonstrate but governments know better than this. The "extremists" are a sometimes smaller, sometimes larger, subset of "ordinary people." These are not two different populations. On any large demonstration, many people are demonstrating for their first time and, of course, a large demonstration also represents a larger although indeterminate number of people in agreement with it. "Ordinary people" can play some role in shifting governments and in changing the conditions in which they live.

So, again, what would liberation be? There is no need for genetically engineered slaves, however efficient or contented. There is plenty of scope for robots and automatic production. A liberated population would, at least:

be technologically liberated from drudgery;

be engaged in activities transcending the distinction that we still have to make between fulfilling work on the one hand and meaningful recreation on the other;

be informed, educated and involved enough to participate in public discussion, elections and referenda on common issues, all this facilitated by the widespread use of information and communications  technology;

at the same time, enjoy full privacy and autonomy as individuals.

On the second point above, I am a pensioner. This means, in effect, that the state and my previous employer (also the state!) pay me to live, breathe, exercise, socialize, philosophize, meditate, read books, lobby the City Council and blog about Poul Anderson. I could try to make some of these activities a source of further income but don't need to. We can build a culture more amenable to people and their needs. The Solar Technate in The Long Way Home certainly has the capacity to start moving in that direction but is ruled by "the strong" and by professional psychotechnicians. Surely some of the latter group can see a better way forward?

Liberation

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER SIX.

"The means of sound social organization had not been used to liberate man, but to clamp the yoke more tightly..." (p. 58)

For means of social organization, see here.

What would liberation have been? This page of the novel refers once to "...the common man..." and twice to "..the ordinary man..." 

Scientific and historical texts are all written for specialists. There is:

"'No popularization at all; guess nobody but the specialists care what makes things tick.'" (p. 57)

"Nothing for the common man, if that much misunderstood animal still existed." (p. 58)

Of course he does not still exist after five thousand years of change. Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis." (Times change and we change with them.)

"It was, after all, logical that the strong and the intelligent should rule - the ordinary man was simply not capable of deciding issues in a day when whole planets could be wiped clean of life." (ibid.)

The ordinary man is perfectly capable of deciding that he does not want to be ruled by anyone, however strong or intelligent, who would want to wipe his planet clean of life! We have some criteria for measuring intelligence but who are "the strong"? If this just means those who currently wield power, then "the strong rule" is a tautology.

When selective breeding and psychological training produce an efficient and contented slave class:

"The ordinary man had not objected to such arrangements, indeed he had accepted them eagerly, because the concentration and centralization of authority which had by and large been increasing since the Industrial Revolution had inculcated him with a tradition of subservience. He wouldn't have known what to do with liberty if you gave it to him." (pp. 58-59)

Which returns us to the question: what would liberty be? The text continues:

"Langley wondered with a certain glumness whether any other outcome would have been possible in the long run." (p. 59)

Another outcome certainly would have been possible but this has become a very fundamental discussion. To be continued.

Holatans II

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER FIVE.

Holatans use bone or flint tools, walk or sail, hunt and fish but also semi-domesticate meat herds telethymically. Holatan society is based in family, ceremony, harmony, oneness and pantheism. Talented artists, musicians and thinkers are supported.

At university, Saris, specializing in physical sciences, herded, made tools and swept floors in return for learning received from philosophers, artists and woodworkers. Books are hand-copied. Astronomy, physics and chemistry are less developed than Terrestrial, biology is at least equal and mathematics is superior. Cubs learn non-Euclidean geometry and functions. Philosophers of various schools have developed logic and semantics and one suggests an improvement in the Explorer's circuits. Saris became a wandering scholar, then taught at the University of Sundance-Through-Rain. He expects death to be:

"...dissolution, darkness forever.'" (p. 53)

My philosophical observation:

Death is not even darkness. Sensory deprivation plus perpetually renewed amnesia would mean no experience, memory or thought. If there is no "I see -," "I hear -," "I remember -" or "I think -," then there is no "I -."

(Since the Holatans are philosophers, I imagine philosophizing with them.)

Holatans

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER FIVE.

Poul Anderson imagines genuine aliens. The Holatans have never had a war. Saris Hronna does not expect Holat to have changed much in two thousand years - provided that there has been no further extraplanetary interference, of course. (But what of another two thousand years, which would be necessary for a return journey?) Holatan progress is continual but is an evolutionary growth in harmony with their environment. Holatan philosophers think that infinity is a mathematical abstraction, not a material reality, but they welcome the new knowledge brought by the human explorers. On Earth, Saris directly detects electrons emitted by an aircraft searching for him. We expect to learn more about the Holatans as we read succeeding chapters of The Long Way Home.

Pacifism And Future Weapons

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER FOUR.

Blausten, one of the Explorer crew, had been what he calls "'...a pacifist...'" (p. 40) That word can have different meanings and he qualifies it by adding, "'...intellectual pacifist...'" (ibid.) He saw war as a farce and thought that the solution was easy:

"'It stares you right in the face. A universal government with teeth. That's all. No more war. No more men getting shot and resources plundered and little children burned alive.'" (ibid.)

He is in the wrong future history. That solution was tried, unsuccessfully, in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. But this brings us to different meanings of "pacifist." "...with teeth..." means preparedness to use force, a monopoly on violence. In fact, "universal government" definitely means a monopoly on violence. However, the purest, arguably the only fully consistent, meaning of "pacifist" is a rejection of any use of force or violence. Thus, pacifism has to mean anarchism: no government.

Besides, a universal government addresses only the political organization of society. Would the economy continue to be organized in a way that generated conflicts which sometimes became violent?

Blaustein had hoped that the human race would have learned after five thousand years. The cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations might continue, as described, over that long a time although maybe not - how can life and its environment survive the use of such devastating weapons as are described? 

"'Did you know they can disintegrate any kind of matter completely now? Nine times ten to the twentieth ergs per gram. And there are things like synthetic virus and radioactive dust.'" (p. 41)

Beyond Contact

The Long Way Home.

A spaceship or even a space fleet of fugitives from the Solar System can make a subjectively instantaneous but objectively light-speed jump across any distance, let us imagine twenty thousand light-years. Thus, they effectively put themselves beyond any further contact. First, they will almost certainly have ensured that no one else knows which way or how far they have gone. Secondly, even if it were known, a pursuit fleet sent to take any kind of action against them would not be able to return to the Solar System for another twenty thousand years. I suppose that a fanatical suicide mission is just about imaginable - but then no one back home would know whether that mission had succeeded. And the fugitives, if they survive, cannot retaliate for another twenty thousand years.

In Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, there was a superlight drive and a million civilization-clusters in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds with very little inter-cluster contact simply because they were too many. The Long Way Home invites us to imagine an unknown number of colony planets and civilizations at different distances with no contact because of the light-speed limitation. Solar civilization does have contact, whether direct or indirect, with only about a dozen now independent human states within about two hundred light-years. Is that a diameter or a radius? Either way, it seems vast in the circumstances.

The Sensations Of Earth

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER FIVE.

Saris Hronna, a naked but fur-covered alien, is a hunter but hunted on Earth. We find four references to wind. First, a wet wind is:

"...blowing off the canal with a thousand odors of strangeness." (p. 49)

Secondly:

"...the very wind blew with another voice." (ibid.)

The wind often comments and here has a "voice." It tells Saris that he is not at home.

He sees:

high, clear stars;

a pulsing, glowing city on the horizon;

darkness but enough grey light for his vision;

a straight canal;

wind-rustling grain;

a darkened hut.

He hears:

the wind;

a honking bird;

a booming airship.

He smells:

cool dank air;

green growth;

warm wildlife.

He senses:

what other beings are sensing.

He feels:

the weeds and mud in which he lies;

fear;

sorrow for the loss of his folk and kin;

aloneness and loneliness.

Our senses are saturated.

Interesting Reading And The Commercial Society

A character is walking somewhere but we have not yet been told where he is walking to. While he walks, several pages recount his inner thoughts. Does this make us feel that the novel is not going anywhere? I am not describing any work written by Poul Anderson. But I am re-encountering problems with reading through Frank Herbert's Dune series. Last night, I broke off from rereading Dune Messiah and returned to rereading Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy where the characters are many and the action is always fast.

Returning to Anderson's The Long Way Home, we continue to find points of interest. The interstellar Commercial Society resembles in different ways the Polesotechnic League, the Nomads and the Kith. Goltam Valti of the Society bears a surname familiar from Anderson's Psychotechnic History but resembles Nicholas van Rijn physically and in feigned self-pity. He is "'...a lonely old man.'" (CHAPTER FOUR , p. 44) Like the League of the Technic History, the Society deals in luxuries, recruits non-humans and is a horizontal community cutting across planetary aristocracies. Like the Nomads of the Psychotechnic History and the Kith who have their own future history series, Society personnel spend their lives in their great spaceships.

Next up is a sensorial feast when an alien hunter experiences the Terrestrial environment.

To the stars.

Different Laws Of Physics

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER THREE.

"'Time travel isn't even a theoretical possibility.'" (p. 29)

Not even theoretically possible? But different kinds of time travel occur in several other parts of the Anderson multiverse. The laws of physics differ between universes. Some laws of physics do not allow faster than light travel. In some universes, gods exist and magic works. In one universe, everything written in the works of William Shakespeare is literally true and some individuals speak in blank verse or conclude a dialogue with a rhyming couplet. As readers, we just have to accept the stated premises of any given narrative, e.g.:

only slower than light travel is possible;

faster than light travel is possible but by different means;

time travel is possible but by diverse means;

the past is mutable or it is not;

etc.

Anderson takes every premise, then does different things with them.

5000 Years

The Long Way Home.

Effectively, this is a time dilation novel. If a spaceship approaches light speed, then its mass increases while its internal duration decreases significantly. When this spaceship, the Explorer, reaches light speed by ceasing to be a mass and becoming, temporarily, a wave, its internal duration decreases to zero: the same effect but more so.

How does a modern man cope when transported into the past by time travel? Novels by Mark Twain and L. Sprague de Camp and two short stories by Poul Anderson.

How does a modern man cope when transported into the future by suspended animation, temporal stasis, time dilation or time travel? Too many works to list, including several by Anderson, including this one.

The adjustment begins when Captain Langely of the Explorer is interviewed by the:

"'...chief field officer of the Solar militechnic intelligence corps...'" (p. 28)

Langely has been hypnotically interrogated and educated in Solar. He learns some history:

overpopulation

declining resources

war

famine

depopulation

collapse

cycle resumed

gravity control

genetic engineering

terraforming of Mars, Venus and Jovian moons

post-World War XXVIII reconstruction

the Technate

extra-solar colonization

war of colonial independence

the League of Alpha Centauri and other such states

Thor, The Planet

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER TWO.

The Alpha Centaurian ambassador to the Solar Technate reminisces about his home planet, Thor. Regular readers recognize this as a familiar kind of Andersonian colony planet:

steep, windy mountains;

whistling, stormy skies;

heaths;

forests;

broad plains;

grey seas pulled by three moons;

higher gravity;

an ancestral hall;

stone;

timber;

smoky rafters;

ancient battle flags;

horses;

hounds;

hunting;

proud nobles;

solid yeomen;

winter snow;

green spring.

Will human beings be able to reproduce their history like this on an extra-solar planet? Doubt it.

Tracker

The Long Way Home, CHAPTER TWO.

When the alien who has accompanied the Explorer crew to Earth escapes arrest, it becomes evident that he has telekinetic powers. Weapons used against him do not work, a closed gate opens for him and:

"'One man nearby focused a neutral tracker on him as he went into the woods, but it didn't work till he was out of its range.'" (p. 22)

My question is: should "neutral" in this sentence really be "neural"? "Neural tracker" might make some sense, surely more than "neutral tracker"? Sometimes I am able to compare different editions of an Anderson text but, in this case, I possess only one copy of The Long Way Home. Maybe someone out there can help? Sf authors' works are probably not often subjected to such detailed analysis. Anderson's works at least merit such close reading and rereading. 

Zuriat The Bright

I was wrong about Ikrananka here. What I was remembering was that one Ikranankan religion has a dying and rising god, not that it has a Divine Incarnation. It is easy to make such mistakes when comparing Christianity with other religions because Christ synthesizes so many originally distinct concepts:

an Incarnation;

a member of a Trinity;

a son of a god;

a perfect sacrificial victim;

the dying and rising god;

a Greek philosophical concept, the Logos;

the Davidic monarch;

a supernatural humanoid being. (Dan. 7: 13-14)

Have I missed any? Other terms would have been applied if they had been known. 

This might seem like a digression. However, the contents of Terrestrial scriptures, both Hebrew and Mahayanist, are living issues to some characters in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

"All Men Will Find Him"

In The Game of Empire, Adzel seeks evidence of a Divine Incarnation off Earth. How will he distinguish between evidence of an Incarnation and evidence of a belief in an Incarnation? There is something like that on Ikrananka. I will check details later.

In Dune Messiah, Stilgar says that Muad'dib will not be found yet all men will find him. Obviously, all men will not literally find Muad'dib but Stilgar has identified his departed Mahdi with that which all men must find. In this sense, Muad'dib has becomee an avatar. Does the Dune series additionally imply that Muad'dib literally is a Divine Incarnation? I have heard this but do not see it.

More later.

Astronautical Organizations

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded in 1958 when it replaced the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home is copyright 1955 and therefore does not refer to NASA. In this novel, the United States Department of Astronautics launches the United States Interplanetary Ship, Explorer, in 2047. The captain and pilot, Edward Langley, is a graduate of Goddard Academy and a captain in the Astronautic Service. The Department, the Academy and the Service do not exist in 2024 and are unlikely to come into existence by 2047 but we appreciate past fictional futures.

In the 1950's British TV series, Quatermass, there was a (British) Experimental Rocket Group. In a 1979 sequel, the ERG was said to have preceded NASA and Apollo. In the 1950's Dan Dare comic strip, the Interplanetary Space Fleet and Astral College were based in London at the end of the twentieth century. No doubt there are other examples.

Superdrive

Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER ONE.

A graduate in physics, Poul Anderson was able to devise several alternative rationalizations for faster than light space travel. In this novel, it is theorized that:

there are eight dimensions;

this is "...a modification of the old wave-mechanical hypothesis of one other universe co-existing with ours." (p. 10);

matter that goes "...through this 'hyperspace'..." (ibid.) goes "...from point to point instantaneously..." (ibid.) in our space. 

This does not add up to a coherent account. How does the other universe come into it? How can motion through other dimensions be instantaneous? 

Anderson presents an ingenious quantum jump "hyperspace" in his Technic History but here he uses the term in its more usual meaning of a kind of space distinct from familiar space-time.

This interstellar drive is called not a hyperdrive but a "superdrive" (p. 5) and turns out not to be faster than light after all. It is instantaneous for the travellers but light-speed for the external universe and a more accurate formulation of its theory is that:

the spaceship is projected as a wave pattern;

it re-forms on arrival;

harmonics in the electronic wave trains must be set up so that they can reconstitute the original relationship (between molecules and energy states?) at another set of spatiotemporal coordinates.

The original theoreticians were mistaken with their eight dimensional framework. It seems that the ship remains in ordinary space-time where it teleports.

Coming Back Home

In the opening chapter, an American exploratory faster than light interstellar spaceship returns to the Solar System bringing one alien with it and finds that something is wrong. Which sf novel by Poul Anderson am I describing? In fact, two:

After Doomsday

The Long Way Home

Earth has been sterilized.

Six thousand years have elapsed.

Thus, in neither case is the crew able to return "home," to the Earth that they had left.

Several works of sf address two questions: not only what will interstellar explorers find out there but also what will have happened on Earth and in the Solar System in their absence? See also A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven. Not only natural events but also large scale technology can play a role, e.g., Earth moved into orbit around Jupiter.

The Molitor Victory

"'I was there for the feast celebrating the Molitor victory.'"

-Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah (London, 1975), p. 40.

See "Molitor Victory" in List of Dune terminology.

It is clear that the only source for "Molitor Victory" is this single sentence in Dune Messiah.

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows by Poul Anderson, introducing Emperor Hans Molitor and the Molitor dynasty into Anderson's Technic History, was published in 1974. Although my edition of Dune Messiah is dated 1975, the work is copyright 1969. Thus, Anderson might either consciously or unconsciously have borrowed "Molitor" from Dune Messiah.

See also Molitor on Wikipedia.

Addendum: See also the explanation of "Molitor" in the combox.

Wind And Lorenzen

Question And Answer.

OK. I am rounding up no less than three remaining references to the wind. Maybe some such references do just describe the weather and nothing else?

"A few wounded aliens crawled out of sight, a few dead lay emptily where they had fallen. There was a sharp reek of smoke in the chill windless air." (CHAPTER XVI, p. 132)

A pause in hostilities is marked by a pause in the wind.

"A low little wind sighed through the grove and rustled the leaves." (CHAPTER XVII, p. 136)

The pause in hostilities continues while men must think about what to do next. Appropriately, the wind now sighs rather than roaring, raging etc.

"'I think I see,' murmured Lorenzen. The wind wove around his voice, and a moonbeam flitted across his eyes." (p. 141)

He sees, helped by a moonbeam. The wind supports his articulation of what he sees... OK. That is it with the wind in this novel (I think).

We have to think about what Lorenzen and Avery say and not necessarily just agree with either of them.

Lorenzen:

"'I claim that with all our failures and all our sins, we've still done damn well for an animal that was running around in the jungle only two hundred lifetimes ago.'" (p. 145)

I agree with that but what follows from it? I think that it means that we have changed our condition and can change it again, indeed are changing it now. Lorenzen goes on to say:

"'I like man how he is...'" (ibid.)

How man is: he is changing his environment and himself in the process. Does Lorenzen want to take a snapshot and hold us indefinitely just where we are now?

This sentence concludes:

"'...not man as a bunch of theorists thinks he ought to be.'" (ibid.)

We need some theoretical understanding! We need to consider how we think we ought to be, not just affirm how we are! Of course Avery's "bunch of theorists" is doing it wrong, manipulating instead of advising.

Avery wants to use:

"'...the hidden interplay of economics and religion and technology - to evolve the culture we want.'" (CHAPTER XVI, p. 140)

Nothing should be hidden. Everyone should understand economics, religion and technology.

Avery wants restraint, dignity, contentment and thought as opposed to blindness, greed and ruthless animality. That sounds like an irreconcilable antithesis. Restraint and contentment could be mere passivity. We need the energy that was expressed through greed although shared technological wealth should certainly make greed as such redundant.

If an author sets up an irreconcilable antithesis, then indeed it remains irreconcilable.

Conclusion

Question And Answer, CHAPTER XVIII.

A disappointing gun fight between human beings and aliens is ended by an even less appointing argument between the psychman, Avery, and his fellow human beings. Avery claims that a mature civilization can be built only by:

"'...a thousand years of slow, subtle, secret direction...'" (p. 140)

Not secret. People have to be consciously and actively involved in their own maturation. A thousand years? Someone proposes to operate in secret for that long a time? Is that even possible?

Lorenzen:

"'Personally, I believe that no small group has the right to impose its own will on everybody else.'" (p. 146)

No, they haven't. And that is what they would be doing if they worked in secret for a millennium.

Lorenzen on the previous page:

"'I claim that man crawling into his own little shell to think pure thoughts and contemplate his navel is no longer man.'" (p. 145)

That is a parody. We can improve our thinking and contemplate a lot more than our navels. But some self-knowledge is surely necessary? 

Arguments like this tend to be expressed in extreme terms and in antitheses instead of in syntheses. We need the psychmen involved in interstellar exploration, not trying to sabotage it as they do here.

Thornton And The Wind

Question And Answer, CHAPTER XII.

This chapter begins with dialogue between von Osten and Thornton. The former speaks first but, to our surprise, we learn at the top of the third page that Thornton is the viewpoint character:

"Thornton rubbed his chin;..." (p. 89)

- so far, that is merely an objective description of Thornton but then:

"...the unshaven bristles felt scratchy." (pp. 89-90)

We are being told what Thornton feels. He is our viewpoint character for this chapter.

Having presented Thornton as an unpleasant sectarian as seen by others in CHAPTER II, Anderson now gives us a sympathetic treatment of Thornton's point of view. Trapped in a pothole, he kneels and prays but does not ask for help because that is God's will. Later, he cannot pray, feels cursed and forgotten. Later again, maybe God has tired of man and the aliens, the Rorvan, are his new chosen people? - as Djana imagines about the Merseians in A Circus Of Hells. Finally:

"'Thy will be done.'" (p. 97)

The main enemy in the pothole is cold and, of course, Thornton and von Osten:

"...could hear the thin cold harrying of the wind up around the edge of the hole." (p. 95)

When the Rorvan arrive and look down into the pit:

"Wind ruffled their fur, but their masked faces were utterly impassive and they said nothing." (p. 97)

Scary.

Language And Again Wind

Question And Answer. 

Communication problems with aliens are all too plausible but these problems seem so intractable that some of the characters begin to suspect duplicity.

Here we go again with the wind. While Lorenzen ponders the problems and the pervasive sense of threat:

"He lay in his sleeping bag, feeling the hardness of the ground beneath it, listening to the wind and the rushing river, and the hooting of some unknown animal." (CHAPTER XI, p. 85)

The phrases of this sentence have a cumulative effect. The ground is hard, the river is one of the obstacles on their course, a hooting animal represents the unknown and the wind, it seems, is always there, this time in cahoots with the rushing river.

"'It iss murder, I say!'

"The wind whined about von Osten's words, blowing them raggedly from his beard. He stamped cold feet, and the ringing rock gave the noise back." (CHAPTER XII, p. 88)

When von Osten accuses, the wind appropriately whines and blows his words away. His environment is hostile: blowing, ragged, cold and returning his noise to him. Rushing river and ringing rock. Von Osten thinks that the aliens, the Rorvan:

"'...are giffing us a royal runaround.'" (p. 89)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Points Of View And Thoughts

Poul Anderson verbalizes and italicizes the thoughts of a viewpoint character, e.g., Manse Everard of the Time Patrol, while that viewpoint character converses with other characters in the usual way in unitalicized dialogue enclosed within inverted commas. I always found this perfectly clear although one fellow pupil at boarding school had to ask me, "Who is saying this?" while pointing at one of Everard's italicized thoughts. In Dune, Frank Herbert verbalizes and italicizes the thoughts of two characters, the Baron and his nephew, while those two characters are conversing with each other. Most authors accept that you just cannot do this. What would be a more appropriate or elegant way to do what Herbert tries to do? Two parallel columns, the first presenting the dialogue plus the Baron's thoughts, the second presenting the same dialogue but with the nephew's thoughts? That sounds cumbersome but Herbert's existing texts just come over as wrong at least to some readers. There must be some way to resolve this.

Reflections At Night

Question And Answer, CHAPTER X.

On Troas at night, the explorers hear:

"...the wind talking in the trees." (p. 79)

As we know, the wind often seems to comment on the action but what is it saying this time?

The environment is visibly not that of Earth and Lorenzen reflects:

"A long way home, a long way for the soul of Miguel Fernandez to wander before it found the green dales of earth." (ibid.)

The Long Way Home is title of an sf novel by Poul Anderson. The Green Hills Of Earth is the title of an sf collection by Robert Heinlein. I doubt that anyone believes that Fernandez's soul will literally travel across space but this is indeed a poignant way to say that he has died a long way from home.

"(What have we ever given each other, of kindness and help and love, in all the long nights of man? What can we ever give each other?)" (p. 80)

Maybe we have given more than Lorenzen seems to think and can give still more? We note "the long nights" as a significant phrase in Anderson's works.

The Bible And The Shah-Nama

Characters in fictional narratives carry older and longer narratives with them into their futures. Thus:

"...Thornton read his Bible by the dim red flicker of light..."

-Question And Answer, CHAPTER X, p. 78)

We already know Thornton for a Bible-reading man so we think no more of it. It tells us something about this man that he reads that book in the evening. We categorize him as such. But reflect on what he is reading: a continuous narrative from the creation of light and the separation of the waters at the beginning of Genesis to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth where the sea (representing chaos) is no more at the end of the New Testament. That is quite something. How it squares with the universe as disclosed by their physics, astronomy and other sciences is a question for Thornton and his fellow Noachian Dissenters in their Martian colony to ponder but meanwhile, and whatever the rest of us think about it, the Bible remains a complete cosmic narrative contained within a single volume.

"'...It is written in the Shah-Nama that water was the first of all things created.'"

-Dune, p. 296.

Here is another group of human beings going out into space and taking with them an ancient, lengthy, written narrative regarded as somehow authoritative. Water is merely separated in Genesis but created in the Shah-Nama. It is two thirds hydrogen, the lightest and commonest element.

("Noachian" turns out to be a term with not only Biblical but also Martian significance.)

Futures

In Frank Herbert's Dune, Paul Atreides foresees a jihad which, initially at least, he wants to prevent. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Djana has a vision of a man like Dominic Flandry, maybe a descendant:

"...striding in the van of an army which followed the Merseian Christ."

-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, p. 331.

Of course, Djana's vision does not come to pass but could it have been a possible although prevented future like the jihad that is (only just) headed off in The Day Of Their Return? The psychic powers exercised in the Technic History do not include prescience although they might have done. In fact, there could have been speculative instalments about alternative outcomes of Chunderban Desai's analyses. Desai tells Flandry:

"'There is no absolute inevitability.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT III, p. 389.

With no absolute inevitability, there is scope for mutually incompatible previsions.

In James Blish's works, the planet Lithia explodes in 2050 in one future timeline but still exists millennia later in another. We study futures, not the future.

Trinities And Duels

Creator Preserver Destroyer

Father Son Spirit

Maiden Mother Crone

Male Female Neuter

Also, some gods come in threes:

Indra, Vayu and Agni

Odin, Vili and Ve

Odin, Lodurr and Hoenir

In The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson, the Three of Ys are a god, a goddess and a sea monster. 

In Dune:

"...the male-female-neuter trinity is accepted as Supreme Being by many religions within the Imperium." (p. 494)

In that Imperium, and among the Fremen, duelling is a regular practice. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Ythrians duel and Flandry fights a duel on Terra. Future archaisms.

Awe And Destiny

Question And Answer, CHAPTER X.

Avery, the psychman, asks Thornton, the Dissenter, whether he would like to say a few words over the grave of Fernandez, a Papist. Thornton responds as well as he is able:

"'If you wish,' said the Martian. 'But he wasn't of my faith, you know, and we haven't anyone of his along. I will only say that he was a good man.'" (p. 78)

It might also be appropriate at least to recite the Lord's Prayer? 

Lorenzen wonders whether the burial involves hypocrisy. Five men stand around the grave of a sixth whom they variously disliked, disrespected, disagreed with etc:

"...unspeaking except to voice a sense of loss. Was it only a meaningless form, or was it some recognition of the awesome stillness and the common destiny of all life? There was nothing more they could do for the dead flesh down under those rocks; did they wish they had done more while it lived?" (p. 78)

It is never a meaningless form. Professor Ninian Smart, leading a post-graduate seminar, made the point that everyone present was agreed that, if one of us were to drop dead there and then, then it would be completely inappropriate for the rest to move the body to one side and to continue the seminar! (Many years later, I attended Professor Smart's funeral and wrote "Multa docuit multos" ("He taught much to many") in the book of remembrance. )

There is a recognition of awe and destiny. There is nothing more to be done and there might be a wish that more had been done. 

An agnostic funeral prayer on a Polar expedition in another novel:

"'This is Joseph Wentz, who came here with us to learn something more about the world he was born in. If there is a God and He's listening, He made this man. Through him He learned something new about Himself. Now we give Joe to His care, and we hope it will be better care than we gave him. We did not love him well enough, and we suspected that his Creator did not love him at all. We hope we were wrong."

(Pause.)

"'If You exist, God of the monobloc, and if You are still thinking of men, think of Joe Wentz. He admired Your fine workmanship in the stars, and never reproached You for spoiling him. We commit his body to Your ocean, in Your name. Amen.'"

-James Blish, Fallen Star (London, mcmlxv), Book Three, XI, p. 158.

I think that that is good for an agnostic.

Death And The Wind

Question And Answer, CHAPTER X.

"Lorenzen stood very still. He had never seen a man die before. There was no dignity in it. Fernandez lay grotesquely sprawled, his face mottled bluish, a little drool still coming from his mouth. The wind slipped between the crowding men and ruffled his hair. Death was an unclean sight." (pp. 76-77)

This scene should be filmed exactly as described. Without Lorenzen having to say it, a cinema or TV audience should get the message that death is undignified and unclean. The wind has no respect for a dead body and, of course, I have quoted this paragraph mainly because it is yet another example in a work by Anderson of the wind commenting on a human event, in this case the ultimate event. What more is there to say? In death as in life, the wind, that unstoppable force of impersonal nature, blows between Poul Anderson's universes. We will read on and will certainly meet it again.

Miguel Fernandez

Question And Answer, CHAPTER X.

In this chapter, the opening paragraph of four sentences tells us in some detail what a great guy Miguel Fernandez was. The second paragraph is a single sentence:

"He died on Troas." (p. 74)

The third paragraph backtracks to lead up to his death so that we have to read about human beings and kangaroo-like aliens trekking on foot across a very Earth-like extra-solar planet. 

This does not really work, does it? To care about a character dying, we have to have known him for some time beforehand and we also need to see up front how he dies. Question And Answer was written as one part of a Twayne Triplet with a scientist designing the planet, then Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov and James Blish each writing an independent story set on that planet. The idea does not seem to have inspired a great deal of creativity in Anderson.

I read somewhere, although I can't find it now, that Sandra Miesel had persuaded Anderson that this novel could be incorporated into his Psychotechnic History although obviously it cannot - although the novel clearly does parallel that History with religious dissenters colonizing Mars and a predictive science of society. The text ends by making the point that mankind needs diversity, a recurrent Andersonian theme, but one that in this case is merely stated by the viewpoint character, Lorenzen, in argument with the psychman, Avery. In other works, Anderson dramatically demonstrates diversity.