The End

We approach the end of this month and also the end of Poul Anderson's The Byworlder. I do not remember how this narrative ends but have gathered the gist of it by rereading earlier blog posts. We will reread to the very end on May Day.

Morals? Human conflict continues and remains extremely destructive even when humanity is offered extra-solar beauty and knowledge. I would say, "knowledge and beauty," but the Sigman's priorities are the reverse. Skip and Yvonne are Americans. Should their country gain the superior technology from Sigma Draconis? Would Americans be more trustworthy with it than the Chinese? It is easy to say, "Yes." Trustworthy to whom? Would the Americans use superior technology not in their own strategic, economic and military interests but purely in the widest possible interests of everyone on Earth? How many Americans will respond, "Why should they?"

In Poul Anderson's universe of discourse, important decisions are made not by states but by individuals so what will Skip and Yvonne decide to do with the spaceship that they have inherited from the Sigman?

Places In The Solar System

The Byworlder, XIV.

The upper stratosphere of Saturn is calm because it receives less than a third of the scant solar energy that Jupiter gets. Also, at that height, Saturnian gravity is little more than Terrestrial. Thus, this place is safe for human explorers but how can they get there? Skip, Yvonne and Wang Li accompany the Sigman in his interstellar spaceship and thus they experience that upper stratospheric calm which Anderson describes and explains. Hopefully, human explorers will arrive there eventually. Meanwhile, scientifically informed sf writers like Poul Anderson can project what it might be like. There must be innumerable places like this in the Solar System that can be imaginatively described before they are experienced.

Sigman: Body And Mind

The Byworlder.

I have searched this blog for previous references to the Sigman but do not seem to have referred to one of its most interesting features. Every cell in the Sigman's body makes direct, extremely sensitive, contact with the environment. Air and water pass freely between its moving protective shells. With four stalked eyes and maybe other extensible organs, the Sigman continually experiences the external world with an intensity that would make human experience seem like sensory deprivation. Furthermore, its cells might also carry nerve impulses so that:

"'Maybe the Sigman thinks as well as senses with its entire body.'" (IX, p. 84)

Slower but deeper thoughts based on louder, more colourful, more intense sensations and perceptions? Right.

(I think that one version of the Marvel Comics character, Tony Stark/Iron Man, had a body that was all brain.)

Man

Writers can play various tricks with the ambiguities of the word, "man."  Consider the following juxtapositions:

Man and Nature

Man and God

Man and Machine

Man and Woman

Suddenly, "Man" means male human beings, not human beings. 

In Between Time and Timbuktu, Neil Armstrong's first words on the Moon are mercilessly parodied and, as part of this, they are attributed not to Armstrong but to "Man."

Succeeding Superman, several subsequent superheroes were called "-man" or, of course, "Woman." Alan Moore has a character misremember the Flash as "Flashman," who, of course, is the villain of Tom Brown's Schooldays and the central character of sequels by another author. Also in Moore's Watchmen, after the superhero, Ozymandias, has publicly unmasked and revealed his secret identity, a reporter reflects on this revelation by referring to Adrian Veidt as "Ozyman-" but then breaking off mid-word, thus effectively inventing a new superhero name. The superheroes had banded together as "Minutemen," despite the "Watchmen" of the title. (And a later superhero, Doctor Manhattan, had been a watchmaker.) (My emphases.)

All of this is a long-winded way of leading back to the fact that Poul Anderson plays with "-man" in The Byworlder. An alien comes from the direction of Sigma Draconis and therefore is called "the Sigman," plural: "Sigmans," not "Sigmen." Presumably, another Sigman could come and might play a more prominent role on Earth but, whatever s/he did, s/he would not be a man from Sig.

Three Future Histories, Another Action Scene And Self-Driving Cars

Later in the evening, I turn to non-Andersonian reading or rereading but find it difficult to keep focused on Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. Herbert either is unaware of or just ignores the need to control narrative points of view. His characters connive for power and influence in an interstellar empire without conveying any sense of life in that empire. By contrast, we do receive some impression of how people live on Hermes, Dennitza, Imhotep, Daedalus and, to a lesser extent, Terra in Poul Anderson's Technic History. The Technic History gives us everything that Foundation and Dune should have given us but it has not yet been filmed.

Meanwhile, rereading Anderson's The Byworlder, there is a second action scene. This time, Yvonne is kidnapped and Skip goes to extraordinary lengths to assist the FBI's rescue job. As I said before, what we have had so far is mostly not human-Sigman interactions but human interactions caused by the Sigman's presence.

The cars in this fictional future are not aircars as we have come to expect but are self-driving. In Yvonne's car:

"...the pilot opened fuel cells to maximum..." (II, p.15)

"...pilot..." makes us think of aircraft but here it means the gadget driving the car.

"Pilot set, the car hummed into motion." (X, p. 99)

"An auto purred by. Skip shouted and waved. The man inside was watching television and didn't notice." (XI, p. 102)

Watching television? Sure. The car is a self-mover, a true auto-mobile.

Skip's And Yvonne's POVs

The Byworlder, X.

Yvonne and Skip:

"...walked out hand in hand. She knew that if he hailed a taxi and they snogged on the way to Watts Towers, she would share his bed. But that didn't occur to him. His merriment on the shuttlecar suggested to her that she might anyhow." (p. 98)

In this paragraph of four sentences, the first sentence is objective. The second and fourth definitely express Yvonne's point of view (pov): "She knew...," "...suggested to her..." The third sentence reads as if it expresses Skip's pov: "...didn't occur to him." However, it would be unusual for Poul Anderson to change the pov for a single sentence in mid-paragraph. Does the third sentence mean that Yvonne could see that "...that didn't occur to him"? That would explain why, in the fourth sentence, it is suggested to her that she might share his bed anyhow.

Pov copping helps us to analyse texts minutely.

Fictional Comments

The Byworlder.

Futuristic sf comments on the period in which it is written. Discussing art, Skip says:

"'You know what absolute garbage-pit bottom we hit in the middle twentieth-century, don't you?'" (IX, p. 78)

See also The Relevance Of SF and Old Days And Silence.

Fiction set in any period also comments on people fairly timelessly. Skip tells Yvonne that, despite her recent celebrity, she will not be recognized in public because:

"'The sensation's died of old age. Your picture hasn't been on a screen for two or three weeks. Ninety-nine percent of the population has lousy memory...'" (X, p. 96)

Similarly, despite having been "Wanted for Murder" for an extended period, Lisbeth Salander:

"...was surprised that nobody at the ticket desk or at the check-in counter seemed to recognize her or react to her name."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (London, 2010), CHAPTER 29. p. 688.

We can pass from being well-known to back again. "This too will pass" etc.

Other League-Empire Links

The trader team's experience on Merseia lays the basis for the Merseian xenophobia of the Imperial period. 

The second Young Flandry novel involves the rediscovery and reclamation of a robotic mining operation abandoned at the end of the League period.

Flandry refers twice to van Rijn and once to a planet called "Vanrijn." That third reference harks back to the first story in Trader To The Stars although we did not then know that the home planet of the newly contacted bipartite race would be named after van Rijn.

Several other intelligent species are common to both periods, none having become extinct in between. (Surprise: the Chereionites, not introduced until the Flandry period, turn out to have been extinct all along except for their single survivor, Aycharaych.)

The planets, Hermes and Diomedes, play roles in both periods. Other planets are present as background references, e.g., van Rijn's operative, Emil Dalmady, comes from Altai where Flandry, later, foils the Merseians; van Rijn's space yacht captain and Flandry's acquaintance, Chunderban Desai, both come from Ramanujan.

Meanwhile, rereading The Byworlder, it has become a travelogue: the sea journey; the subsea station; San Pedro Bay; a train journey inland; Watts Tower; Afroville. This happens sometimes in futuristic sf.

Back in China, Wang Li has the misfortune to be married to a fanatical harridan. The daily life of the future.

History And Biography

Young Flandry is three novels.

Captain Flandry is two collections and one novel.

Admiral Flandry is two novels although Flandry only cameos in the second because the central character has become his daughter. Thus, a potential new series.

Future history includes future biography. Flandry has a son and daughter. His Starkadian friend, Dragoika, has a son who becomes a friend of Flandry's daughter. Falkayn had a daughter, son and granddaughter. Van Rijn has a granddaughter who marries Falkayn and a son who will become the Grand Duke of Falkayn's home planet. Emperor Hans Molitor had three sons, a granddaughter and a grandson.

The spaceship on this cover of The Trouble Twisters resembles a Klingon Bird of Prey, I think. Trekkies need to read Anderson, of course. There are two levels of sf. I was in an sf shop that had no sf novels, no Wells, Anderson etc, only media-related items, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who etc. Some people say that they like sf and mean that stuff. Anderson does future histories, interstellar wars and time travel better. It ought to be easier to communicate that message.

Far Along The Way

Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, part of his Technic History, subdivides into "Young...," "Captain..." and "Admiral..." The culmination of the Captain Flandry sub-series is the novel, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, in which Chunderban Desai speaks to Flandry of growth, wrong decisions, breakdown, wars, Imperial Pax and its dissolution, reconstitution and disintegration, leading to a dark age:

"'Technic civilization started on that road when the Polesotechnic League changed from a mutual-aid organization of free entrepreneurs to a set of cartels. Today we far along the way.'"

-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, pp. 388-389)

That phrase, "...far along the way...," encapsulates the whole "end of the age" feel of the Flandry series. Desai refers to the events of Mirkheim and thus links this Captain Flandry series culmination back to the Polesotechnic League series culmination, binding the Technic History across time. There are other League-Empire links but not at this time of night, folks.

Meanwhile, while we reread The Byworlder, Yvonne asks Skip to tell her about his idea at the very end of Chapter VIII and, in Chapter IX, they have started to work on that idea without as yet having told us what it is although their artistic discussion is a clue.

The TV News has just come on, about Gaza. Good night.

People Of The Wind And Of The Sea

To complete the line of thought of the immediately preceding post:

the Polesotechnic League tetralogy is followed by a single Ythrian novel, The People Of The Wind;

the second group of eighteen Polesotechnic League instalments is sandwiched between two sets of two Ythrian short stories in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

The structure of that first section of Poul Anderson's Technic History is endlessly fascinating, especially since it was not designed but grew. We can analyse the series into building blocks of narratives and of pairs or groups of narratives but it was not consciously preconceived or constructed in such a way. The stories of individual people and their organizations and planets developed organically.

But maybe it is time to return to The Byworlder where tens of thousands of people live permanently at sea. Several fleets of large ships move constantly across international waters, fishing, farming, prospecting for ore or oil, carrying freight, extracting minerals from seawater and processing seaweed for food and fabric. One flagship is a floating conurb for four thousand people. Its half-dozen companion ships include a service ship, a kelp-processing factory ship, a mineral-extractor craft and a trawler. Others are beyond the horizon. Skip and Yvonne meet on the flagship and the story continues.

Series Within Series

I am yet again contemplating Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization in its original publication order. OK. This is an obsession. But the Technic History is such a rich future history series both in itself and when compared with any other such series.

This future history begins with a Nicholas van Rijn series, three stories collected as Trader To The Stars. This series could have been extended indefinitely or at least as long as the later Dominic Flandry series. However, nothing remains the same for long in the Technic History.

The van Rijn series is followed by a David Falkayn series, three stories collected as The Trouble Twisters. Unlike its predecessor, The Trouble Twisters is a fictional biography, following Falkayn's early career as apprentice, journeyman and Master Merchant. Further, the third story becomes a trader team story - Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan - and cameos their employer, van Rijn.

The trader team and van Rijn series merge in Satan's World and reach a conclusion in Mirkheim. In fact, time had passed and the trader team had been disbanded but van Rijn reassembles them for a different kind of mission, one that eventually signals the beginning of the end of the Polesotechnic League.

Thus, here is a complete series of series comprising eight instalments in four volumes. However, there are eight more Polesotechnic League instalments set before or between the eight that are in the initial tetralogy. These second eight consist of:

1 Adzel

3 van Rijn

1 trader team

1 van Rijn and trader team

2 others

Thus, there is a move away from a focus just on van Rijn or Falkayn. There are also six other Technic History instalments to be read between Mirkheim and two contemporaneous League stories:

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" about young Adzel;

"Margin of Profit," the earliest published van Rijn story.

And all of this is less than half of the Technic History.

An Andersonian Action Scene

The Byworlder.

Poul Anderson liked action scenes and what could be more active than an assassination attempt? Posing as a uniformed employee of her conurb, a professional hitman gains entry to Yvonne's apartment and points a gun at her but then acts unprofessionally, offering her time to pray and continuing the conversation. She drops her robe and offers him sex. He continues to talk, asking if she is crazy instead of just shooting her. She invites him to the bedroom but then runs into the kitchen and, when he follows, throws a boiling saucepan into his face, after which she grabs his dropped gun, presses it into his stomach and squeezes the trigger repeatedly until the gun is empty.

"'A pity you killed him,' [Almeida] said." (VII, p. 61) (later)

It did not have to happen like that. We could have been informed of a failed assassination attempt without the action in the kitchen but, as I said, I think that Anderson liked action scenes which he inherited from pulp fiction.

Skip And Yvonne?

The Byworlder.

The Tuatha de Danaan Keeper caravan are restoring the land around Lake Tahoe, distributing soil,  planting trees and bushes and reintroducing wildlife, as well as decontaminating the Lake itself. (III, p. 27) The windows of the chief's headquarters shack are "...filled with a mountain." (VII, p. 64) and:

"A breeze gusted through, bearing odors of pine, noises of machinery." (ibid.)

Three senses: the view through the window, odours and noises. The odours remind us of the natural environment that is being restored while the noises remind us of the work that is being done to restore it. Succinct.

Chief Keogh is trying to arrange for Skip to meet Dr. Yvonne Canter. Her idea about communication with the Sigman apparently ties in with Skip's. Plot lines converge as they were going to have to. Will Skip leave Earth and meet the Sigman? I do not remember exactly.

The Sigman's Significance

So far, Poul Anderson's The Byworlder has been less about human-Sigman interactions and more about human interactions caused by the Sigman's mere presence.

The Theontologists have come to believe that the Sigman, an alien from Sigma Draconis, is "...a direct manifestation of God..." (I, p. 8) They chant, dance, kneel and prostrate when the Sigman's ship rises:

"Hail...Ave...Om..." (ibid.) etc.

The Chinese and Americans try to gain a military advantage from their contacts with the Sigman. As one part of this endeavour, they try to keep the science secret. (Bad idea. Read James Blish's They Shall Have Stars where every new discovery is automatically labelled secret.) The Chinese even try to have the American expert, Yvonne, assassinated. Such short termism! The whole of humanity stands to gain yet their response is try to kill the woman who has made the breakthrough in Sigman communication.

Skip cuts short a just-commenced relationship and travels across the US, seeking contact with the President or someone else highly placed. He has an idea about the Sigman but, in order to do anything about his idea, he must first deal with his fellow human beings. 

In Anderson's "A Chapter of Revelation," there is not an alien visitation but a literal miracle yet still lobbyists and interest groups try to use even a miraculous event not to learn the Message but to push their own preconceived messages. We imagine God asking Himself, "Why do I bother?" But do we agree that this is how humanity would respond to an extra-terrestrial visitation or to a supernatural revelation?

A Soothing, Then Unsettling, Helicopter Ride

The Byworlder, VI.

Almeida flies Yvonne home by helicopter:

"The ride was balm. Only a murmur of blades and wind, the gentlest quiver through seat and flesh, broke stillness." (p. 53)

The wind always plays along in Poul Anderson's texts. Yvonne is enjoying a metaphorical quiet after the storm so this wind merely murmurs. During the journey, she becomes unsettled when Almeida challenges her liberal intellectual world-view. Consequently (?), on arrival:

""A cold wind streaked by, ruffling hair and slacks, sheathing her face." (p. 56)

While they are still airborne, Anderson places them in their cosmic context by listing some visible stars and constellations:

Deneb

Vega

Pegasus

the Great Bear

Draco

Polaris

Almeida's profile joins our list of objects:

"...seen against the Milky Way..." (p. 53)

Almeida:

"'I think [America] can better be trusted than anyone else -'" (p. 56)

How many people think that their country can be trusted better than any other? But this time it happens to be true? They all say that as well. I happen to think that the world needs something more than just one of the current super powers gaining more power than any of the others. Do I think that my view is right? Of course I do. Otherwise, it would not be my point of view. Does my thinking that my view is right prove that it is right? Of course not! How many people need to grasp this distinction?

The BBC TV series, Doctor Who, primarily aimed at school children, was also watched by University students. When a stereotypical militarist, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, said (paraphrasing), "And, of course, the only country that all other countries could trust not to misuse military intelligence in its own interests was Great Britain!," University students laughed. Was that script written very cleverly as nationalist propaganda for one age group but as satire for another?

Wang Li

Poul Anderson's The Byworlder, Chapter V, presents a sympathetic treatment of Wang Li, a well-meaning scientist obliged to live and work under Maoism. His father was wounded by the Americans in Korea and killed by the Russians in Siberia.

Remember that line of reasoning to the conclusion that a technologically advanced race must have solved its social problems? The Maoist version of that, expressed by Wang Li's superior, General Chou Yuan, is:

"'Some believe that the Sigman will inevitably put itself at the disposal of the people's sacred cause, when communication has become good enough for it to realize what conditions are like on Earth.'" (p. 45)

Put itself at the disposal! Of the Chinese government? We really do not know what will happen. My hope would be that a wiser and more technologically advanced alien would introduce, gradually, technological innovations that would ease the most pressing problems on Earth, thus starting to address the most immediate causes of conflict. Beyond that, it would be up to us - "the people" - how we responded to any help offered by an alien.  

Poul Anderson's Time Travel

We would like to see uniform editions of Poul Anderson's time travel works presented as a single discrete sub-category of his complete works. Thus, the Time Patrol series would be reissued in either two or four volumes. A revised and completed Past Times collection would still of course culminate in "Flight to Forever." There Will Be Time should be presented as the culminating volume of a trilogy beginning with the collected Maurai short stories and continuing with the long novel, Orion Shall Rise. Of these three volumes, only There Will Be Time deals with time travel but it nevertheless belongs with the Maurai History since, in this case, Anderson merged time travel with future history. That leaves The Corridors Of Time and The Dancer From Atlantis as two one-off time travel novels although I also link the latter to Conan The Rebel and The Golden Slave because these are Anderson's three novels set B.C. Anderson's time travel works considered as a whole are one massive successor to H.G. Wells' contrastingly brief The Time Machine.

We would also like to see long and detailed screen and graphic adaptations of Anderson's time travel works. A single actor would be able to play Brann in The Corridors Of Time and Merau Varagan in the Time Patrol series - as well as the Master in the Doctor Who series. In particular, the many future periods visited in "Flight to Forever" deserve different and special visual treatment. There is the climax of the restoration of the Galactic Empire followed by several even remoter future periods leading to the dissolution and reconfiguration of the universe, then a journey forward through Earth's past and back to this time traveller's starting point. These concepts and images deserve to transcend their original formulations as prose fiction.

A Special Post

Fiction reflects life. Futuristic sf reflects the period when it was written and sometimes explicitly comments on contemporary society. Time travel fiction set in the past can comment also although perhaps not as often. Manse Everard meets Chaim and Yael Zorach, an Israeli couple who run the Time Patrol base in Tyre in 950 B.C., during the reigns of Hiram and Solomon. Chaim explains:

"'...this post is special for us. We don't just maintain a base and its cover business, we manage to help local people now and then. Or we try to, as much as we can without causing anybody to suspect that there's anything peculiar about us. That makes up, somehow, a little bit, for...for what our countrymen will do hereabouts, far uptime.'

"Everard nodded."

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 246.

The trouble with that is that the Patrol exists to preserve every atrocity that was ever committed in history. This brings us back to the paradoxes. It seems to me that, if an event is known to occur/have occurred at a particular set of spatiotemporal coordinates - and there can be more than one temporal coordinate - then it is not the case that that event also does not occur at that set of coordinates. If we change the temporal coordinate, i.e., move to an alternative or parallel timeline, then of course, in that timeline, there might be a different or altered sequence of events. Thus, the Danellians and the Patrol could leave behind them their original timeline in which there is both a Holocaust and a Nakba and bring about a completely different sequence of events although they would then be unable to return to their original sequence of events.

Poul Anderson's Non-Humanoid Aliens

The Reardonite in "the Pirate" in the Psychotechnic History.

Rax in A Circus Of Hells in the Technic History.

The Baburites in "Esau" and Mirkheim in the Technic History.

The Dreamer in "Flight to Forever."

The Sigman in The Byworlder.

Baburites and Sigmans chew food with their claws. Baburites dissolve it in a pouch and suck it through a snout whereas Sigmans ingest it up an arm. Sigmans face both ways and have no front or back. Poul Anderson designed them to be physically disgusting to human beings. Read his description and see what I mean.

Communication with the Sigman failed for three years but then Yvonne made a breakthrough because she realized that human scientists had been synthesizing sounds that were unpleasant or even painful for the Sigman.

Steps To The Top

The Byworlder, III.

Skip approaches Chief Keogh of the Tuatha de Danaan Keeper caravan so that the latter will pass him on to a reputable scientist or engineer who can get him an interview with President Braverman or Commissioner Uchida. Skip reckons that no one in the US is more than ten steps away from the top. For example, he knows his father who knows a state committeeman who is friendly with Senators who know the President but Keogh must know more scientists and engineers than Skip's father and their word will carry more weight in this matter.

We made this same point in relation to Targovi and Flandry in Targovi IV. We still do not know what Skip wants to say.

Future Education

The Byworlder.

While Skip travels, a bore on a bus gives us more background information. Education has been technologized with the teaching machine (?), psychophysiological conditioning, subliminal exposure, simpler, subtler, deeper approaches and effective positive reinforcement. It sounds as if the methods of the Psychotechnic Institute have survived in this future. The bore bemoans the loss of scholarship but then says that he would joyfully nuke the Satanic Sigman! Not scholarship but obscurantism and worse. If an alien arrived tomorrow, then some among us would say precisely that.

Skip reflects:

"Frustration breeds fanatics..." (III, p. 26)

Yes, frustration. There is a social explanation.

Death And Completion

Aycharaych tells Dominic Flandry that death is a completion. See Reflections On Death. 

"'What did Paul Atreides tell you, woman?' he demanded...'He told you that completion equals death!' The Preacher shouted."

-Frank Herbert, Children of Dune (New York, 1977), p. 226.

So death is a completion and completion equals death? I question that second statement. I doubt that there is any connection between the two texts.

Occasionally rereading other future histories, I appreciate Poul Anderson's Technic History more by contrast. I must now complete my lunch and walk to Morecambe. We will return to Anderson's The Byworlder shortly.

The Earth Book In The Technic History

As regular readers of this blog already know, the first section of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, corresponding only to the first three of the seven volumes of Baen Books' omnibus collection, The Technic Civilization Saga, comprises:

The Polesotechnic League Tetralogy

Trader To The Stars

The Trouble Twisters

Satan's World

Mirkheim

Two Ythrian Volumes

The People Of The Wind

The Earth Book Of Stormgate (which is also the 5th League volume)

Three Other Stories

"The Saturn Game"

"The Star Plunderer"

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

The three stories could be collected to be read between League and Ythrians although "The Saturn Game" is pre-League.

The Earth Book illuminates earlier volumes because it collects:

the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," which was quoted, in a passage adapted as an introduction, at the beginning of the second of the three stories in Trader To The Stars;

"The Season of Forgiveness" which is a sequel to the first of the three stories in The Trouble Twisters;

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" which expands on Adzel's student days which were first mentioned in the third story in The Trouble Twisters;

"Esau," The Man Who Counts "Day of Burning," and "Lodestar" which shed light on different aspects of Mirkheim;

"Wings of Victory," "The Problem of Pain," "Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon" which are prequels to The People Of The Wind;

"A Little Knowledge" which is of more general significance.

Skip Travels

The Byworlder, III.

Despite having just begun a casual relationship with Urania, Skip:

"...burned to be off with the word that had come to him..." (p. 22)

This word must be important although we still do not know what it is. He burns to convey it to:

"...the President of the United States or the High Commissioner of the Peace Authority..." (ibid.)

- or someone like that. We are learning more about this future world state of affairs by subtler means than Urania's list of "income guarantee" etc in Chapter I. Skip is about to travel so we will learn more about the world as he travels through it although not tonight as I sometimes say. The first thing that Skip does is to phone data service and enquire about Keeper caravans...

High Tech Survival

The Byworlder.

We will not know what another rational species is like until we encounter one and, so far, they have been conspicuous by their absence on Earth, in the Solar System and as far as we can see beyond that. I know that the universe is a big place but maybe it is such a big place that the nearest technological civilization is several galaxies away and not even contemporary with ours. I am certain that, if and when we do make First Contact, then the Others will not be remotely like what anyone has ever imagined. (Although, of course, I could be wrong even about that.)

"'I agree with those who hold that star-exploring civilizations must be peaceful because otherwise they would have destroyed themselves before reaching the required level of technology.'" (II, p. 19)

Well, it depends what level of technology is required, doesn't it? But, more generally, I agree with a point that I first read somewhere in Arthur C. Clarke's non-fictional works. Any species that has had a very high level of technology for a very long time must have ceased to conduct intra-species conflicts because otherwise it would surely have destroyed itself before now? Can nuclear weapons continue to be manufactured and stockpiled indefinitely without ever being used? Have we just been lucky all this time? (Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers think so.) How long before terrorists get nukes? What news might we wake up to tomorrow morning? As part of the same argument, indeed even more obviously, the high tech species must have prevented its technology from destroying its environment.

The speaker goes on to say that the extra-solars cannot have any motive to attack Earth. Again, I tend to agree but we cannot be certain and would have to be prepared for anything.

Internet And International Stability

The Byworlder.

Chapter II ends when Yvonne passes:

"...inboard to confront the Sigman." (p. 21)

However, when we turn the page, Chapter III returns us to Skip in the Theontologist adobe village back on Earth. Suspense.

Chapter II presented several data of which we will note four. First, every encounter with the Sigman:

"...is fully recorded in every feasible way and put on the open data lines." (p. 15)

Thus, Earth has the Internet in a novel published in 1971. We knew it was coming. My name for it was "Cencom": Central Computer.

Secondly, Americans, Europeans, Russians and Chinese regularly send their representatives to try to converse with the Sigman. The Terrestrial powers are no longer at daggers drawn. There is some global stability and arms control.

Thirdly, Yvonne, American, feels that a pattern is emerging from her contacts with the Sigman. She might be on the verge of a breakthrough. This puts her in the same camp as Skip who thought that he had realized something. No doubt these two characters will come together.

Fourthly:

"Traffic Control's computers steered [Yvonne's] car out of town..." (ibid.)

Standard stuff in an Andersonian future.

POVs And A Realization

The Byworlder.

Chapter I is narrated entirely from the point of view (pov) of Skip and ends when he has an Andersonian moment of realization. A spacecraft from Sigma Draconis is orbiting in the Solar System. Puzzled by the continued failure of scientists and politicians to establish communication with the Sigman, as the single extra-solar alien in the spacecraft is called, Skip speculates about the Sigman's motivations, then suddenly stops speaking:

"'If -'" (p. 14)

His mouth falls open, he drops his fork and yells - all the signs of an Andersonian moment. We know that we will have to wait to learn what his realization is, especially since this is the end of a chapter and the following chapter introduces a new character in a new setting.

I have read The Byworlder at least twice before but cannot remember what Skip's realization is. Is it that the Sigman's motivations might be not scientific but artistic - what with Skip being an artistic kind of guy?

The opening passage of Chapter II begins with the pov of Yvonne Canter:

"...Yvonne Canter reflected." (p. 15)

"That's what they think, Yvonne told herself." (ibid.)

- but inexplicably changes pov:

"Almeida doubted Yvonne had had any bed partner in life except her husband..." (p. 17)

A double space between paragraphs immediately before:

"Almeida studied her." (p. 16)

- should have been used to mark the change of povs.

A double space on p. 17 does mark the return to Yvonne's pov and also a change of scene because she is now in space approaching the Sigman's vessel.

Truth And Falsehood

The Byworlder, I. 

Theontology:

our minds largely construct our apprehensions of reality;

everything imagined contains partial, distorted truth and points to cosmic oneness;

meditation on every aspect opens us to "'...direct apprehension of the divine.'" (p. 7)

A Catholic dogmatist once said to me, "Truth is one. Error is manifold." I replied, "Truth is one. Its expressions are manifold." Those are a classic Hegelian thesis and antithesis. What is the synthesis? That there is some truth in every error and some error in every expression of truth? I could live in the Theontological village, practicing Zen. I can participate in rituals provided that they do not demand an affirmation of faith in the literal existence of deities. I can accept food in a temple but not communion in a church.

Night

The Byworlder, I.

By moonlight, Skip sees:

cultivated fields

a stream

cottonwoods

sagebrush

boulders

a rabbit

an owl

"...majestic mountains." (p. 8)

"Skip felt his irreverent heart uplifted. The night was so huge and holy." (ibid.)

We remember:

High is heaven and holy.

Poul Anderson presents not only technological futures but also an appreciation of the natural world, past, present and future.

The "huge and holy night" is my time to turn to other reading.

Life Styles And Pathetic Fallacy

The Byworlder, I.

"'Please understand that this community doesn't disdain cybernation and machines. Without them - without income guarantee, the low price of most necessities, cheap and versatile power tools, everything technology makes possible - I doubt we could have made a go of this.'" (p. 10)

Urania of the Theontological Spirits cult addresses her guest and our viewpoint character, Skip, but she really lectures the reader with a list of aspects of their contemporary society. The author is cutting corners in laying out the background details for this novel. The monastery that supports our meditation group is maintained entirely by voluntary donations from members of the lay sangha (Buddhist community). Without that, the monks would have to be working clergy. "Income guarantee" would go a long way toward supporting a diversity of life styles. 

Something else happens between Urania and Skip:

"They kissed. The sun rose blindingly over a tall peak. A lark whistled." (ibid.)

That much is pathetic fallacy. The following sentence tells us something about the Theontological community:

"A few persons in sight voiced friendly cheers." (ibid.)

Sun, a lark and friendship. All is well, so far. 

The Jesus Cult

The Byworlder, I. 

Theontology incorporates the Jesus and other cults. Writers sometimes change our perception of the familiar by referring to it in terms that are unfamiliar. Thus, not Christianity but "Jesus cult." 

Other examples:

the adjective, "Christic";

"the brotherhood of the book and the bread";

"A man is sipping wine by candlelight in the presence of kneeling women."

Does the Jesus cult include Christians in any of the traditional senses? Probably not. They would not want to be classed as one "cult" among others. If I were in the Theontology commune or whatever it is, I would practice zazen in the Amida cult but might also make a contribution to the Jesus cult. I would suggest that we focus on the early Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom (a new consciousness and a new society) but not on the later Jesus who let Peter persuade him that he was the Messiah, then interpreted the Messiah as the Suffering Servant. Thus, our symbol would be the fish, not the cross.

Sandalphon's Cross

The Byworlder, I. 

"Sandalphon...was tall and richly bearded, belonged to the Jesus cult and had thus donned a black ceremonial robe, setting off a pectoral cross of turquoise-studded silver." (p. 6)

This passage has many connotations for me as a reader. Following our personal connotations takes us away from the author's textual denotations but is valid nonetheless. 

An image of an instrument of torture and execution is decorated in turquoise and silver! I dislike the cross or crucifix as a symbol of a blood sacrifice. There are crosses of other shapes. The Christian-shaped cross might be used to symbolize the intersection of time with eternity. The horizontal line is time. The vertical, which is longer, is eternity which always intersects time in the present. Thus, the past is to one side and the future to the other. Everything is there. Sort of.

Three better religious symbols, in my opinion, are:

the seated Buddha;

yin-yang;

the fish, for Christianity.

Next we will consider the Jesus cult. 

Introducing The Byworlder

Poul Anderson, The Byworlder (New York, 1971). 

Theontology (scroll down) sounds familiar but is not on google. The name combines theology or Theosophy with Scientology.

Starting to reread The Byworlder again, we find both that we have posted about it in some detail previously and also that we have forgotten most of the details. This is another implied future history since some sequence of events must link the author's time to this particular fictional future. From the opening page, we enter into yet another imagined future society with background references whose meanings will become clearer as the narrative proceeds and I am typing this over a hasty breakfast so we will have to return to this theme later. Let us try to spread some light in a darkening world.

Revisiting "The Voortrekkers"

Poul Anderson, "The Voortrekkers" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 249-270.

This story comprises nine narrative passages:

the first

the second

the third

the fourth, fifth and sixth

the sixth and seventh

the eighth and ninth

For discussions of the story in its entirety, see:

The Voortrekkers

Assessing "The Voortrekkers"

"Life After Life, Death After Death"

- and for more on the first passage, see:

Milky Way, Andromeda And Sirius

EXPLORATIONS: Contents

Poul Anderson's Explorations collects:

"The Saturn Game"

"The Bitter Bread"

The Ways of Love"

"The Voortrekkers"

"Epilogue"

"Starfog"

"The Saturn Game" and "Starfog" belong in the collected Technic History and are to be found there. "The Way of Love" belongs in the same volume as The Enemy Stars to which it is a sequel and indeed they have been republished as a single volume. The remaining three stories are one-offs. They belong in a multi-volume collection of all of Anderson's non-series shorter works which I think should be presented in chronological order of publication. Thus, there are several collections like Explorations that would not be reproduced as such in any Complete Works of Poul Anderson. In particular, The Armies of Elfland is entirely redundant.

"Epilogue": Climax

Can we analyse Poul Anderson's "Epilogue" without discussing its dramatic climax? Yes because we have already discussed that passage in reasonable detail in 2013. See Madness And Divinity.

The radio assault on the robots includes:

an Upanishad

Shakespeare

the Bible

- and Zero's response includes a robotic adaptation of part of the "Hail Mary" prayer.

Dramatic indeed but that almost concludes "Epilogue" so where next? We will find that out tomorrow.

Robots

It took me a long time to realize that Poul Anderson's "Epilogue" is a robots story. First, we read Zero's point of view with only occasional clues as to his body shape. Then the human characters perceive him as a large metallic four-armed humanoid although his wife is a completely different shape. Next, it occurs to us and to them that the word, "robot," is applicable provided that this does not imply that organic beings have constructed Zero to serve them, to obey orders - even to obey the Three Laws - or to replace human workers. Zero was created in a solution inside another machine for no other purpose than the propagation of his species so he is not a robot in the original sense of "worker" but is in fact a hunter of other machines whose metal and reusable parts he needs for survival. This machine ecology was not constructed for any purpose but merely grew by natural selection. Robots in the original sense are three billion years in the past.

In "That Thou Art Mindful Of Him," one of Isaac Asimov's culminating Robots stories, human beings are designedly roboticizing the Terrestrial ecology with artificial worms, insects, birds etc but that is design, not natural selection. Anderson's Psychotechnic History includes one robot story in which the moral is that the first robot in the world is already redundant and unemployed although, at the same time, human labour is being displaced by high tech automation and computerization.

Leadership

"Epilogue."

Hundred is a leader, not a ruler. He issues practical instructions which are complied with because they work and because they come from the wise Hundred who would lose his following if he became senile. He would not have to be deposed because he does not occupy any formal or official position in the first place. 

When Zero says "No..." to a direct order:

"Hundred surrendered, having lived long enough to recognize unbendable negation." (p. 228)

Hundred has neither the means nor the will to coerce Zero. He continues to address the immediate crisis, directing other members of their community.

Leadership is inherent in social interactions. You give a lead every time you make a suggestion that is accepted. Sometimes a leader steps forward, risking that he will not be followed, but never stands back to order others forward nor has he the means to do so. We lead by example.

Inside And Outside

"Requiem."

The two preceding posts highlight two different meanings of the words, "inside" and "within." What is inside human beings?

Objectively, physically, materially, empirically:

a brain;

soft material in red liquid.

Subjectively, mentally, psychologically, spiritually:

consciousness/awareness.

Some of those adverbs imply mind-body dualism but I am using the available vocabulary.

The philosophical question:

How does the objective generate the subjective?

Answer:

We do not know and maybe the question cannot be answered. 

Authors of fiction work with the objective-subjective distinction every time they write a narrative with a point of view. Objectively, the temperature is below freezing point. Subjectively, we are informed that one of the characters feels cold and notices that others are also shivering. An account is either objective or subjective but nothing bridges the gap.

Brains And Awareness

"Epilogue." 

Zero regards a captured biped and reflects that it is not a unit but an entity:

"Somewhere behind that glass and horrible tissue, a brain peered back at him." (p. 232)

A brain. Of course, this is just an English word used by the narrator just as "Zero" is not really Zero's name. Nevertheless, the word establishes for our benefit that Zero's kind have an internal organ which they identify as the seat of thought. Zero is coming to accept that his captive also thinks whereas Seven remains uncertain:

"'Despite our previous conversation... I cannot bring myself to believe quite seriously that these are anything but motiles or artifacts. Very ingenious and complex, to be sure...but aware, like a person?'" (p. 233)

Just before this, Seven has questioned whether the alien biped is conscious. I have come to realise that "consciousness" and "awareness" are synonyms, therefore that neither can be used to define the other, although these and related words can be used with slightly different nuances. If Seven thinks that the biped is not conscious/aware but instead is either a motile or an artefact, then apparently he thinks that motiles are not conscious/aware whereas I had thought that they were the equivalent of animals. According to Seven, only persons are aware. He agrees with Descartes. 

Can Chemistry Be Intelligent?

"Epilogue."

While we wonder how the intelligent machines function, Poul Anderson shows them wondering about us:

"'I cannot understand your description of the bipeds' interior,' Hundred said practically. 'Soft, porous material soaked in sticky red liquid; acrid vapors - How do they work? Where is the mechanism?'" (p. 228)

Seven thinks that the captured bipeds might be chemically powered artefacts. Zero thinks that they are auxiliaries of "'...the monster...,'" (p. 229) his name for the space boat, then realizes in amazement that they might instead be its masters! Meanwhile, the human beings have with some difficulty acknowledged between themselves that the robot which has captured them is autonomous. "'...mutual comprehension...'" (ibid.) grows but gradually.

Machine Evolution

"Epilogue."

The kind of environmental interaction that made mobile organisms conscious later makes mobile mechanisms conscious. A mechanism that processes its inputs with equivalents of cells and synapses is not only sensitive, like a good camera or microphone, but also sensorial, like an animal or human being - if we follow this line of reasoning. 

This evolution resulted from mutation and selection among unsupervised, solar-powered, self-repairing, self-reproducing, mineral-collecting sea rafts. The first mutation was that a new kind of raft collected metal from other rafts instead of from the sea. The new kind became predators. Then other changes occurred and, as with organisms, favourable changes were selected. Evolution spread to the land and to the air and under the sea. Alloys are less alterable but more durable than amino acids and machine parts had increasingly been designed to be interchangeable. Thus, predators sometimes consume their prey and sometimes just incorporate their parts. Three billion years later, the most complex and sensitive mechanisms are self-conscious and intelligent.

Is this remotely feasible? All that we can say for certain is that Poul Anderson runs with this idea as far as he can.

The "Epilogue" Ecology

When we are immersed in the details of the "Epilogue" timeline, it can seem as substantial a fictional future as some future history series. "Epilogue" presents not a history but an evolution and an ecology. The plant equivalents evolved from animal equivalents which began as hunters.

There are no microbes. Immobile units powered by molecular solar batteries break down ores, manufacture alloys and concentrate dielectric energy, using reagents like acids in glass. Mobile units extract processable metal and reuseable parts from each other. More complex machines divide into large, tall four-armed bipedal hunters and low, wide, bulky, two-armed octopodal reproducers. (The Arvelan sexes also differ in size.) Reproductive crystallization begins when the two body patterns heterodyne in electric currents and magnetic fields. When complete, the new unit is activated. 

Because the new unit that One is creating is almost complete, Zero, who has lost one of his four hands, is able to thrust his arm stump into her repair orifice and, after a while, withdraw it with a new hand. While inside, the stump was enfolded and scanned by interior tendrils. Meanwhile, the new unit's synaptic pathways gradually crystalize from solution. When one of its motor impulse pathways has been completed, the unit stirs within One. That word, "synaptic," addresses my question: how can these self-reproducing artefacts feel anything?

Zero's Senses

"Epilogue."

Zero's three captives generate a lot of:

"...sound-wave radiation." (p. 205)

In other words, people speak and even shout or scream! Zero theorizes that this radiation is caused either by a mechanical malfunction or by some auxiliary system switched on internally. Sure. We do not press a button on our bodies in order to speak. Zero's sound receptors are too insensitive for him to discern whether the radiation is modulated but, in any case, he dismisses anything so localised as a useful means of communication. Each person needs many square miles for sustenance - like Ythrians - so a community needs a medium like radio that can reach beyond the horizon although some lower motiles do use sonics.

Zero's internal sensors warn him that he needs replenishment. This sounds like seeing a red light or reading a screen message to warn you that your batteries are low. However, an energy drain makes him feel "...ravenous." (p. 207) He is hungry enough to eat unprocessed storage cells and salts. He also grinds a digger and her uncompleted new specimen even though he is unable to treat them with heat and acid. A rotor flees between the rods and crystals but Zero brings it down with his crossbow and takes it back to the cave for One. He sounds partly like a conscious machine and partly like a conscious being using machines.

Communication

"Epilogue."

Zero transmits an alarm:

"Forty miles thence, the person who may as well be called Two answered, 'Is that you, Zero? I noticed something peculiar in the direction of your establishment. What is the matter?'

"Zero did not reply at once. Others were coming in, a surge of voices in his head..." (p. 180)

Lisbeth Salander logs on to Hacker Republic:

"<Hi, gang.> Wasp wrote.

"<Wasp. That really U?> SixOfOne wrote. <Look who's back.>

"<Where you been keeping yourself?> Trinity wrote.

"<Plague said you were in some trouble.> Dakota wrote."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (London, 2009), CHAPTER 13, p. 320.

This is when Zero reminded me of Wasp. Hackers like Plague live mainly on line but they are exceptions where humanity is concerned. However, by contrast with the mass of humanity, Zero and his kind communicate entirely by radio and hardly ever physically. Zero has observed very few persons optically. By radio, they communicate ritual, friendship and art. Zero and Seven criticise each other's poetry. Ninety-six shares his abstract tone constructions, Eighty shares narratives and Fifty-nine shares speculations about space and time. Fourteen has shared with Zero his sensory impressions of the seashore, including the salt in the air. In this way, Zero has also experienced catching and eating an aquamotile.