Last Moments

In Fire Time (here), during a battle, Larreka is rocked by a blow, experiences pain, then darkness, drops his sword, feels a shaft in his head and asks, "'Already?'" (XX, p. 210) - amazement, whirling, thundering, crumpling legs, a summoning of strength to create a death dream.

Is there one omniscient narrator for all fiction or for each author or for each narrative? Should we say the or an omniscient narrator? Only this (kind of) narrator can describe a third-person character's experiences and thoughts up until the moment of death. This information is not open to us in real life. Even I will not know what I had thought at the moment of death after I have died. How does the omniscient narrator know about others? Like his audience, he is outside the narrative.

CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength contains these two contradictory statements. Of the anonymous tramp, we are told that he:

"...made his escape...into the wide world. I have not been able to trace him further."

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 16, 2, p. 719 -

- whereas, of a man called Frost, we are told that:

"With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him..." (6, p. 727)

The first person narrator does not know what became of the tramp who, when last seen, was still alive whereas the apparently omniscient narrator of the same continuous narrative is able to tell us that Frost had damned himself with his last act of will. Usually, I object to inconsistencies. However, Lewis knew what he was doing. Given the nature of the narrative, there might be an implication that he later gained access to supernatural knowledge of the states of souls. 

Meanwhile, back on Ishtar, it is the familiar omniscient narrator who informs us of Larreka's last moments.

Interstellar Affairs

What will interstellar explorers find in other planetary systems and in the spaces between them? Some, not all, sf merely projects Terrestrial international relations onto inter-species interstellar relations. Several interstellar novels by Poul Anderson do not do this.

However, in Anderson's early Dominic Flandry stories, the Merseians are introduced merely as standard green-skinned space opera villains and the Terran Empire - not serious extrapolation - is just the Roman Empire with spaceships, a colourful backdrop for space opera adventures and even for carefully rationalized swordfights. 

When the Flandry stories were incorporated into a future history series, the Terran Empire, like the Solar Commonwealth before it, became just one phase in the rise and fall of a civilization, the hostility of the Merseian Roidhunate was explained and we learned that not all beings of Merseian descent support the Roidhunate. It is a liberation when we read of friendly ychani/zmayi greeting Kossara Vymezal on her home planet, Dennitza.

But let's return to our theme of interstellar relations reflecting international relations. Is this what some people expect? I suppose that it has to be considered as one possibility:

"'...what happens if the next planet we hit is an outpost for a whole federation, maybe bigger than ours? When that day comes - and it will, it's in the cards -...'"

-James Blish, A Case Of Conscience IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 523-730 AT BOOK ONE, VI, p. 587.

I would say that it is improbable on several grounds but not, I suppose, impossible.

"The nightmare of finding the whole of the center of the Galaxy organized into one vast federation, much older than Earth's, had been troubling the State Department for a long time..."

-James Blish, "This Earth of Hours" IN Robert A. W. Lowndes (Ed.). The Best Of James Blish (New York, 1979), pp. 257-280 AT II, p. 263. 

Nightmare? Yes, to a government that conducts its foreign affairs through a State Department! Current knowledge implies an uninhabitable galactic centre but that is not the main issue here. Would interstellar federations, if they exist, merely absorb or swallow newly discovered planets?

Different branches of Blish's Haertel Scholium present the Heart Stars, the Central Empire, the Green Exarchy and Cleaver's speculation in A Case Of Conscience. In Blish's Cities In Flight, Earthman culture is preceded by the Vegan Tyranny and succeeded by the Web of Hercules. Blish said that interstellar space was vast enough that such conflicts could usually remain indecisive. 

Anderson's Terran Empire falls but before that the Merseian Roidhunate is demoralized mainly by repeated defeats at the hands of Dominic Flandry.

Learning From Lithia

By Andersonian criteria, James Blish's A Case Of Conscience gives us far too little - almost nothing - by way of physical description of the planet Lithia. What it does give us is a four-sided argument between the commissioners about whether to open up or close off Lithia. This is worth reading in itself and as an interesting comparison and contrast to Anderson's works. I realise that I did not appreciate Case fully when I first read it in the 1960s. Because of my upbringing, I focused far too closely on Ruiz-Sanchez's theological arguments about the Lithians. Of the four commissioners, I now identify most closely with Michaelis who thinks that human beings can learn from the Lithians' social equilibrium. The least sympathetic, of course, is Cleaver who wants to use Lithia and indeed the Lithians to manufacture fusion bombs for the UN. Yet the slamming door symbolism at the beginning and end of BOOK ONE suggests that Cleaver's viewpoint will win.

I have not finished rereading BOOK ONE but it is getting late here. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I did not know that today would bring Sudanese food and Simon Peter the Jehovah's Witness.

Onward and upward.

Life And Fiction

 

Theological sf interacts with real life quite a lot. Poul Anderson's Peter Berg wants to know how Ythrians relate to God. James Blish's Fr. Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez wants to know whether Lithians have qualms of conscience. Meanwhile, in real life, human beings have more than enough problems, both outer and inner, of our own. Today, sitting in our Market Sq, after eating some Sudanese food from a Refugees' Week event in the Public Library, I was approached by a black Jehovah's Witness. We discussed Genesis - not Poul Anderson's novel -, Revelations and much between, also the present state of the world. Our subject matter seemed as fantastic as the contents of several sf future histories. When we shook hands at the end of the conversation, we discovered that our names were Simon Peter and Paul, respectively. Two thousand years after Saints Peter and Paul, we discuss their heritage - and some of us imagine that heritage extending into an indefinite future. Maybe I will be a bit more focused after half an hour of meditation.

Exploring Extra-Solar Planets

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, the four scientists who make up the Lithian Review Commission spend time as guests on the planet Lithia and must decide whether that planet would be a suitable port of call without harm either to Earthmen or to Lithians. We remember a ship of the Grand Survey making first contact with the planet Ythri and, later, Ythrians and human beings exploring another planet, Gray. James Blish and Poul Anderson wrote the same kind of sf. We read Blish's descriptions of the Gulf of Sfath and of the city, Xoredeshch Sfath, and wonder how they compare with Anderson's descriptions of natural scenes and cities on extrasolar planets. Anderson is always more detailed.

When a member of the Commission reflects on the Haertel description of space-time, this places Case within Blish's non-linear future historical scholium. 

I am unemployed and this is Saturday. Nevertheless, I have duties which require me to walk into town and not to let breakfast blogging continue into lunchtime.

"Go with God," to quote Jorn the Apostle from Blish's The Triumph Of Time.

"After such knowledge" In GENESIS

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, X.

Two further passages are set in the eighteenth century emulation:

"Early morning in the garden, flashes of dew on leaves and petals, a hawk aloft on a breeze that caused Laurinda to pull her shawl about her. She sat by the basin and looked up at him where he strode back and forth before her, hands clenched at his sides or clutched together at his back. Gravel grated beneath his feet." (2, p. 218)

Andersonian attention to detail: flashing dew, a hovering bird of prey, a breeze, our last sight of the fish basin, grating gravel - three senses.

"They followed a lane to a hill about a kilometer away. Trees on its top did not obscure a wide view across the land. The sun stood dazzling in the east, a few small clouds sailed across a blue as radiant as their whiteness, but an early breath of autumn was in the wind. It went strong and fresh, scattering dawn-mists off plowland and sending waves through the green of pastures; it soughed in the branches overhead and whirled some already dying leaves off. High beyond them winged a V of wild geese." (6, pp. 229-230)

This is the last sight of eighteenth century England both for the characters and for their readers. We see this emulation only when they do. Thus, the breath of autumn and the few dying leaves are appropriate. I do not fully appreciate all these nuances until I blog about them.

Christian and Laurinda will be together but as memories in Alpha. Gaia will not maintain them in an emulation:

"'After such knowledge as they have tasted of, how could they return to me?'" (XII, p. 246)

I don't see why not. But I have just noticed James Blish's title, After Such Knowledge, a quotation from TS Eliot, in Anderson's text. There is always more to be found.

Identifying SF Texts

When we start to read a novel, we usually know whether it is sf! We have been informed in several ways, probably by the title, the author's name, the cover, the publisher, the blurb etc. Nevertheless, the text needs to identify itself quickly. I once read a pulp paperback sf novel that began by informing us that the central character's hair was receding so fast that you would think that his nose was radioactive. This was amusing and established a scientific frame of reference. CS Lewis subtitled That Hideous Strength as a fairy-tale to warn readers because the first two chapters are undiluted contemporary fiction - or near future fiction but we do not notice that difference. And I did not sense any discrepancy on a first reading but then I already knew that this was Volume III of an interplanetary trilogy with an sf-fantasy interface.

We have quoted this opening phrase before:

"Every planet in the story is cold -..."

-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 I, p. 342.

The text can only be sf even if we did not already know it.

James Blish's Black Easter opens with a single-sentence paragraph:

"The room stank of demons."

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London. 1991), pp. 319-425 AT p. 325.

OK. Despite the author's name, not sf, fantasy. But the work by Blish that I wanted to compare, in this respect, with A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows was A Case Of Conscience which opens:

"The stone door slammed. It was Cleaver's trade-mark: there had never been a door too heavy, complex, or cleverly tracked to prevent him from closing it with a sound like a clap of doom. And no planet in the universe could possess an air sufficiently thick and curtained with damp to muffle that sound - not even Lithia."

-James Blish, A Case Of Conscience IN After Such Knowledge, pp. 523-730 AT BOOK ONE, I, p. 531.

Alright. We have to wait till the third sentence - not too long - but we get there. These guys work on different planets. Despite its proximity to Black Easter, Case is sf. Planets are an easy indicator.

Oneness

Genesis, PART TWO, VII.

Both Christian and Laurinda remember:

"...having been one with a nodal being." (p. 170)

The members of the galactic brain are not absorbed but remain individuals and therefore are called nodes, not cells. Each is a complex of machines and organisms, the latter living mostly on the quantum level. Thus, the uploads' oneness was with a member of the galactic brain, not with the galaxy or the cosmos. The memory of oneness is described as:

dim;

fragmentary;

nameless;

formless;

a sense of transcendence;

"...like the afterglow of a religious vision long ago..." (ibid.);

pervading the personality;

more unconscious than conscious;

Laurinda's relationship to Gaia;

her speaking for the Terrestrial node;

Christian's relationship to Wayfarer and Alpha.

This does sound religious. Religions differ but often refer to oneness with a transcendent consciousness. They usually assume that consciousness is ontologically primary although the Norse gods arose from interaction between the unconscious material forces of heat and cold. Nodes, produced by earlier nodes, are descended from artificial intelligences created by intelligent organisms which evolved from unconscious matter.

I agree with the language of oneness and transcendence but not with the primacy of consciousness. The universe becomes conscious of itself through conscious organisms. Thus, it is the universal self and they are individual selves which can realise their oneness with the universe although consciousness does not precede or succeed organisms.

Christian's Arrival In The Garden

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, V, 2.

Looking back through recent posts, I realised that I had not quoted in full the opening description of the eighteenth century emulation so here it is:

"He stood in a garden on a day of bright sun and mild, fragrant breezes. It was a formal garden, graveled paths, low-clipped hedges, roses and lilies in geometric beds, around a lichened stone basin where goldfish swam. Brick walls, ivy-heavy, enclosed three sides, a wrought-iron gate in them leading to a lawn. On the fourth side lay a house, white, slate-roofed, classically proportioned, a style that was to him antique. Honeybees buzzed. From a yew tree overlooking the wall came the twitter of birds.

"A woman was walking toward him." (pp. 146-147)

We summarized this description here.

It has to be remembered that, for billions of years, the memories and identity of Christian Brannock have been one aspect of an extra-solar, post-organic intelligence. Now that aspect has been returned to Earth and has been re-embodied not in a material organism but in the appearance of such an organism in a virtual reality where one other apparent human being, Laurinda Ashcroft, is a second uploaded personality whereas all the others are conscious AI constructs who think that they are living on eighteenth century Earth.

Uploads could spend some time in the oneness and some in various emulations.

Night, Moon And Wine

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, VII, 10.

OK. I am seeking out every detail of the eighteenth century emulation and here is another:

"The night was young and gentle. A full moon dappled the garden. Wine had raised a happy mood, barely tinged with wistfulness. Gravel scrunched rhythmically underfoot as Laurinda and Christian danced, humming the waltz melody together. When they were done, they sat down, laughing, by the basin. Brightness from above overflowed it." (p. 195)

That basin is developing a history. On pp. 146-147, paths, hedges and flowerbeds surrounded:

"...a lichened stone basin where goldfish swam." (2, p. 147)

On p. 175, Christian and Laurinda sat:

"...on a bench by the fish basin." (4, p. 175)

On this, its third, appearance, it is described only as "the basin" and again they sit beside it.

Our next visit to the emulation is inside the house:

"The room was warm. It smelled of lovemaking and the roses Laurinda had set in a vase. Evening light diffused through gaudy drapes to wash over a big four poster bed." (VIII, 10, p. 216)

Whatever happens, there are always colourful details.

Theological SF

There is other theological sf but for me the big three are:

A Case Of Conscience by James Blish - a Jesuit has a theological problem because the Lithians are Godless but good:

"The Problem of Pain" by Poul Anderson - Peter Berg has a theological problem because the Ythrian New Faith is a workable faith but is completely at odds with Christianity;

the Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis - Elwin Ransom visits Mars and Venus and finds there beings and conditions that exactly correspond to his Christian beliefs!

Lewis thought that space travel was wrong and imagined (at least) that the conditions of Man's Fall existed only within the Lunar orbit. As ever, Anderson provides a culmination. His Galilean priest, Fr. Axor, accepts that all known intelligent species are Fallen but seeks evidence for an extra-solar Incarnation.

A Case Of Conscience has given us three parallels:

the Shelter economy;

a proto-future history;

theological sf.

Will I, after many years, reread A Case Of Conscience and make further comparisons with Anderson's works?  Is A Case Of Conscience an anti-climax since it is Volume III of A Trilogy where Armageddon had occurred at the mid-point of Volume II? Will I stop asking questions and conclude this post? Who can possibly say?

Future Events

Any sf novel set at a future date implies a future history connecting the readers' present to that fictional future. See:

Unpacking A Future

How Spacemen Walk

These posts discuss Poul Anderson's Kith History and Tales Of The Flying Mountains. I made the same point somewhere else about his The Byworlder and The Long Way Home. 

I was reminded of this when James Blish's A Case Of Conscience sketched in a future history:

1945 fission bomb race

1950 fusion bomb and IBM race, then the Shelter race

1993 Corridor Riots, leading to UN world government

Westering Sun

 

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, VII, 9.

Again Christian and Laurinda return to their base emulation:

"The sun over England seemed milder than for America. Westering, it sent rays through windows to glow in wood, caress marble and the leather bindings of books, explode into rainbows where they met cut glass, evoke flower aromas from a jar of potpourri." (p. 192)

Two sentence with many concentrated details: wood, marble, leather, cut glass, flower aromas. For narrative purposes, Poul Anderson need not have told us any of this but I have come to appreciate every detail about this emulated world and it is now time to switch off for the night.

Alternative Histories And A Summation

Poul Anderson had several ways to speculate in fiction about the possible alternative consequences of historical turning points:

two short stories are set in alternative histories - Alexander did not die young, the Jews did not return from Babylon;

in the Time Patrol series, Stane describes the peaceful future that he had hoped to bring about, two Neldorians do help Carthage to defeat Rome, quantum fluctuations upset the Medieval church-state balance of power, first one way, then the other;

in Genesis, Gaia generates an emulation where the conciliar movement succeeded and there was no Reformation or wars of religion but later Germany became powerful and oppressive.

SM Stirling added a Time Patrol story where World War I was prevented but, of course, the Patrol had to restore it.

John K. Hord, whose theory of historical cycles underpinned Anderson's Technic History, regarded the failure of the conciliar movement as a historical breakdown point. Again, Anderson's Genesis, whose title implies a new beginning, also seems like a summation of all that has gone before.

Peace And Clouds

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, VII, 6.

I appreciate every detail of Christian's and Laurinda's eighteenth century "emulation," e.g.:

"Peace dwelt in England. Clouds towered huge and white, blue-shadowed from the sunlight spilling past them. Along the side of a lane, poppies blazed in a grainfield goldening toward harvest. On the right stretched the manifold greens of a pasture where cattle drowsed beneath a broad-crowned oak. Man and woman rode side by side. Hoofs thumped softly, saddle leather creaked, the sweet smell of horse mingled with herbal pungencies, a blackbird whistled." (p. 182)

Remember this is not a reproduction of the entire universe or even of the entire Earth. Stars are lights in the sky. Antipodal details are sketchy. Weather cannot be as it would have been at the corresponding time in the original history. Gaia alters or terminates emulations that go too far off course. But she could also maintain this mock eighteenth century indefinitely.

The possibilities are endless and awesome.

The Past Of Future Histories

In Robert Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon," the title character, DD Harriman, lives underground in an elaborate nuclear air raid shelter. In Poul Anderson's Genesis, Laurinda Ashcroft also lives underground although, above her technologically equipped dwelling, there is an artificially created preserve on the former site of a genetically engineered plantation where, before that, there was an ugly industrial town. Thus, future histories move with the times.

James Blish's After Such Knowledge is not a future history but a multi-genre trilogy comprising one historical novel, one contemporary fantasy and one futuristic sf novel. In Volume III, set in 2049-2050, almost the entire Terrestrial population lives in underground city-states that are massive, self-contained Shelters which have long outlasted the threat of nuclear war but cannot now be disassembled or decommissioned. When Blish wrote this novel, that was a conceivable future.

Thus, Blish's global Shelter economy is intermediate between Heinlein's nuclear threat, solved by the Space Patrol, and Anderson's later world concerned with preserving the environment. Maybe we are living into the consequences of not preserving the environment?

Ad astra?

2001

In twentieth century sf, the years 2000 and 2001 represented the future. Volume I of Robert Heinlein's Future History covered the period from the author's present to the end of the century. The stories in Volume II are all set around 2000. They are overlapping stories like some in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In his Introduction to Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, John W. Campbell describes Heinlein's stories as a window or a TV set showing the future but adds that we lack the key to the door into the future. However, we are walking through that door at every moment. We now look back at the periods covered by the Future History, Volumes I and II, and Poul Anderson's ultimate sf novel, Genesis, was, appropriately, published in 2000, at the very end of the twentieth century. Its first mass market edition, which I have, was published in 2001 at the very beginning of the twenty-first century. We have come a long way from Heinlein's opening story and, so far, are still going. From 2024, we salute John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson.

The Paradox Of Virtual Reality

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, VII.

(That publication year, 2001, is in itself highly significant - the dawn of the twenty-first century and an echo of Arthur C. Clarke -, especially since Poul Anderson's publication history began in 1947, thus spanning over half of the twentieth century.)

A virtual reality that is indistinguishable from physical reality and that is generated by a conscious planetary AI represents an extremely high level of technology, to say the least. And yet it is used to "emulate" (consciously simulate) an earlier, much lower tech, society:

"Nor did the primitive conditions of the eighteenth century matter to [Christian] or to Laurinda. Rather, their everyday experiences were something refreshingly new, and frequently the occasion of laughter." (p. 169)

"Wind gusted and shrilled around the house, rain blinded the windows, there would be no going out even in a carriage. Indoors a fire failed to hold dank chill at bay. Candlelight glowed cozily on the breakfast table, silverware and china sheened, but shadows hunched thick in every corner.

"He took a last sip of coffee..." (p. 170)

The elements: wind, rain, dankness, chill, shadows...

Luxuries: silver, china, coffee - although no electricity.

I appreciate every mention of the garden:

"The next morning, which was brilliant, they went out into the garden and settled on a bench by the fish basin. Drops of rain glistened on flowers, whose fragrance awoke with the strengthening sunshine. No one else was in sight or earshot." (4, p. 175)

And an uploaded personality would be able to live in such an environment indefinitely.

The Reality Of A Garden

Philosophically, some people say that we perceive appearances and infer reality. I think that it makes more sense to say that we perceive reality as it appears to us. Appearance is our perception, not the object of it. The object of perception is reality although that single reality appears differently to organisms with different sense organs. 

The idea that we infer reality arises because reality does differ from appearance. The Sun appears to rise above the horizon, move across the sky and sink beneath the opposite horizon whereas in reality Earth rotates. An apparently single solid stationary object on the Earth's surface is really many moving particles and is not stationary because, with everything else on Earth, it continually moves around the Sun and the galactic centre. 

Given that reality and appearance differ, it should not surprise us to learn that reality differs not only from appearances but also from any expectations that we might have about it. The smallest part of a solid object is not a very thin slice but a sub-atomic particle. Also, atoms are entirely unlike small planetary systems.

What does this have to do with Poul Anderson? We approach the point. My perception of our backyard is caused by the reality of a backyard. In the emulation, Christian's and Laurinda's perceptions of a garden are caused by the reality not of a garden but of a conscious AI program. There can be two completely different causes of an identical effect. Despite its "unreality," at least as we usually think about such things, I really like that garden:

Christian's And Laurinda's Base Emulation (see here)

Cosmic Contexts

The Wardens and Rangers in Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time and the mutant time travellers in his There Will Be Time can neither initiate divergent timelines nor enter any already existing parallel or alternative timelines. Their entire experience is of a space-time universe with only a single timeline and it would certainly have contravened the integrity of their narratives if the author had added any sequels in which suddenly it was possible to "change the past" just as it would contravene the integrity of a contemporary novel if either an extra-terrestrial spaceship or a temporal vehicle from the future were to arrive as a deus ex machina on the last page. However, it is a premise of multiversal fiction that there are many universes that have no contact with each other, some of which even have different laws of physics. Therefore, I think that there can be a role for a fictional observer who sees into the various universes without intervening in any of those worlds where such intervention would be inappropriate. The events of a contemporary novel occur on an Earth that is part of the Solar System where there might be events happening on Mars right now although it is not the job of this novel to inform us about them. Everything happens in a cosmic - or multi-cosmic - context even though we often do not reflect on this fact.

A Surrey Estate

Our blog machine is wobbling between fictional timelines with all the finesse of a drunken Time Lord or a demented Neldorian. 

In the Old Phoenix multiverse, characters travel between timelines by magic or maybe by entering the Inn from one universe and exiting it to another.

In the Time Patrol universe, characters enter divergent timelines either by altering events or by living through a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy.

In Poul Anderson's ultimate novel, Genesis, characters can enter virtual realities of alternative timelines and thus could consciously simulate either of the other two scenarios.

Genesis refers to more of the past than we might have thought. Christian and Laurinda enter an "emulated" estate in Surrey in mid-eighteenth century England. This emulated world includes:

underpaid, undernourished, under-respected domestic servants;

American colonists who keep slaves and will rebel;

a French monarchy that will provoke:

"'...a truly terrible revolution, followed by a quarter century of war.'"

-Genesis, PART ONE, VI, p. 155.

When Christian comments:

"'Well, the human condition never did include sanity, did it?'" (ibid.)

- he unknowingly recalls the theme of Anderson's first future history where the Psychotechnic Institute tried to change the human condition. His comment is followed by the observation:

"That was for the machines." (ibid.)

Thus, this single-volume future history replies to that earlier series.

Christian, who has returned to the Solar System, has seen:

suns

worlds

life

nebulae

black holes

galaxies

the space-time structure

- but Laurinda tells him about Jane Austen:

"'An early nineteenth-century writer. She led a quiet life, never went far from home, died young, but she explored people in ways that nobody else ever did.'" (p. 150)

In the borrowed Surrey estate, Laurinda's dinner guests are James Cook, Henry Fielding and Erasmus Darwin. Thus, although Genesis is a culmination of the traditions of Mary Shelley and HG Wells, it also refers to Jane Austen and Henry Fielding, the latter regarded as a founder of the novel.

GENESIS And Time

Poul Anderson's Genesis, especially in its opening paragraph, is like a culmination of the author's works and also of a science fiction tradition beginning with Frankenstein and exemplified particularly by The Time Machine. Genesis opens:

"The story is of a man, a woman and a world. But ghosts pass through it, and gods. Time does, which is more mysterious than any of these."

-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, I, p. 3.

The references to ghosts and gods remind us that Anderson wrote fantasy as well as sf.

In sf, "time" variously implies time travel, time dilation, billions of years or galactic epochs. In Genesis:

billions of years elapse but some post-organic entities remain conscious and active throughout all that time;

there are "emulations," conscious AI simulations, of historical periods and alternative histories (like more allusions to previous works);

some individual human beings are technologically resurrected so that they not only remember their former lives but also, like the Time Traveller, experience what, in relation to those lives, is a remote future.

The passage of time both in individual lives and across longer periods is, of necessity, a major theme in all literature in any case. In a novel by Dornford Yates, characters entering old age after World War II remember a man that they had known who had lived in the reign of William IV, thus a pre-Victorian. My grandparents were born in the late nineteenth century. My granddaughter's contemporaries are having children who should live into the twenty-second century and should meanwhile have children and grandchildren of their own. That seems like a very long period of time to be linked by a single person, in this case me - but the same applies to everyone.

Poul Anderson captures both a time traveller's experience of time and an ordinary person's experience of it in a single sentence:

"In awe he felt a sense of that measureless river which he could swim but on which she could only be carried from darkness to darkness."

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), IX, p. 98.

Fiction And Literature

Value judgements can be individual or collective. An example of an individual value judgement would be if someone said something like, "I think that the literary qualities of Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Night's Tempest are so outstanding that this novel counts as 'literature.'" However, a collective value judgement is shown by which works of poetry, prose fiction or drama are permanently in print. For present purposes, I refer to the permanently in print as "literature." All science fiction is fiction but how much of it is "literature"? Frankenstein and The Time Machine definitely are. They are also pre-genre science fiction. The Frankenstein theme is continued in Poul Anderson's Genesis and time travel in several of Anderson's works that we do not need to list yet again.

The Time Machine owes its status, I think, to:

its discussion of the nature of Time (I disagree with everything that is said but the point is that there is a discussion);

its vivid descriptions both of time travelling and of several future periods;

its vision of the future and sunset of mankind;

its characterization;

its hints at curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion;

its final mystery about when the Time Traveller went and whether he will return;

its poetic descriptions of the past ages when he might have gone.

Enthusiasts for time travel fiction rightly value Poul Anderson's several contributions to this sub-genre although these works have not become "literature."

Fiction And Prediction

Wells-Anderson comparisons are compelling, once they get going. 

The Shape Of Things To Come was a British political future history of its era whereas the Technic History is the ultimate (so far) expression of the, very different, Heinleinian model, individual stories set against a background of historical process: progress, breakdown, reconstruction, further conflicts etc with maybe an eventual mature civilization, which is another Wells parallel.

In the Technic History, Chunderban Desai predicts disintegration and a dark age but adds:

"'There is no absolute inevitability... I suppose, even this late in the game, we could start afresh if we had the means - more importantly, the will.'"

-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 -

- whereas the Time Traveller, a pessimist:

"...thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 16, p. 101.

Wells, Heinlein, Anderson: science fiction and real issues.

The Time Traveller witnesses the old age of Earth. Flandry witnesses the old age of Chereion. Another planet and an older civilization.

See also here.

Jill In Ulu

Fire Time.

In Chapter XII, Arnanak parleys in Rua. Chapter XVIII opens:

"Jill had barely arrived at Ulu when Arnanak got a message that sent him off again. 'They want to parley in Rua,' he said." (p. 178)

We appreciate different points of view and knowing what is happening in different places at the same time. Ulu and Rua do not gain the same sense of substantiality as several locations on Hermes, Avalon or Dennitza in the Technic History but we know that Poul Anderson could have written more about Ishtar. 

"[Jill] could walk about freely. Since her supply of amino acids and vitamins was sequestered between meals, she had no possibility of escape." (p. 178)

She is an honoured hostage: more honoured than human hostages sometimes are among their own kind. She enjoys her surroundings, then feels guilt about how those who care for her must be worrying. 

There is an Andersonian description of a hall, its outbuildings and brawling life.

Then Jill encounters extra-Ishtarian life.

Wells And Anderson

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, a nineteenth century inventor travels through time to a future Earth where human beings have devolved, then to further futures where they have become extinct. In Poul Anderson's Genesis, a post-organic intelligence travels across interstellar space to a future Earth where human beings have become extinct but have been re-created by the Terrestrial post-organic intelligence. Thus, there are similarities and differences between an early work by Wells and a late work by Anderson. Both works address the long term future.

The link between the two authors is enhanced by the fact that earlier works by Anderson feature literary successors of the Time Traveller, notably Time Patrol agents, mutant time travellers and travellers along temporal corridors.

My advice is: read them all. 

Does Utopia Become Dystopia?

(OK. We have had a Wild Life Learning Event in a public orchard, a band in a park by the Bay and a Fathers' Day meal with family.)

A particular issue has arisen several times when discussing certain works by Poul Anderson. This issue relates to utopian-dystopian sf and has crystallized again in Miracleman: The Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham. Gaiman argues, through a character closely resembling Alan Moore, the original Miracleman script writer, that, if people are given everything that they want, then this will demonstrate that that is not what they need. Thus, for example, in HG Wells' The Time Machine and in Poul Anderson's Genesis, subsequent human generations inherit a utopian environment and therefore become passive, ceasing to create, invent or innovate. They dwindle in numbers and even, in The Time Machine, devolve until eventually they become extinct. Thus, what they might have wanted was not what they in fact needed.

So what is the answer? Aldous Huxley's Savage concludes that complete contentment should be rejected in favour of a return to all the old discontents. However, Huxley later realized that there was another option which he expressed in mystical religious terms, "the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead of Brahman." Transcendence, yes. Human beings are essentially active. If we sit still physically, then we remain active mentally. Contemplation is possible but is not what most people should do most of the time. The ways of Mary and Martha: someone has to produce the food that is put into the begging bowl.

In any future social or environmental transformation, people in general, not just a minority, will have to be actively involved in understanding and acting on their environment which after all is always greater than anyone's knowledge or understanding of it. If some are unable to adjust to a more active role, then others will be able and they will inherit "...a new heaven and a new earth." All the myths are essentially true. They just need to be realized. SF writers can imagine more proactive utopias. Futuristic fictions can point to a potentially real future.

Sparling's Realization

Fire Time, XVI.

This chapter concludes with a typical Andersonian moment of realization. Ian and Rhoda Sparling are embracing:

"A thought went though him like an electric shock. She sensed it in his body. 'What is the matter?' she asked timidly.

"'Nothing, nothing.' He spoke with his voice alone; his mind was elsewhere. 'I just got a notion...'" (p. 171)

Sure he did. We will just have to wait. 

I have to go out. It is Sunday and Fathers' Day.

Life In The Technic History

Imagining living in Poul Anderson's Technic History, I envisage myself neither as a League merchant nor as an Imperial Intelligence officer but as living a quieter life in one of the many exotic locations:

Earth in the Solar Commonwealth;

Starfall on Hermes;

the Kazan, the Obala or Zorkagrad on Dennitza;

anywhere on Avalon;

Olga's Landing on Imhotep;

beside the Highroad River on Daedalus.

Also visiting Ythri, Merseia etc. 

If living in the appropriate era, I might work as a researcher for van Rijn or for the Terran government. If working for van Rijn, I would seek election as a union steward and might have some interesting interactions with our employer. 

St. Thomas's Church in Lancaster always holds General Election hustings where the Parliamentary candidates answer questions. That and other important events are scheduled for this week.

Onward to the future.

Wars In Future Histories

Wars are still on the Earth's surface or in its atmosphere in future histories by Wells, Stapledon and Heinlein. There is an attempted military coup by some Space Patrol officers on the Moon in Heinlein's Future History. Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins in the aftermath of World War III. In Niven's Known Space future history series, the Man-Kzin Wars, or Wars Against Men, are franchised to other authors, including Anderson, Pournelle and Stirling. In Pournelle's CoDominium future history, mankind exports militarism and imperialism beyond the Solar System. In Blish's Cities In Flight, the war against Vega occurs between volumes. Anderson's Technic History includes good military sf but presents it as one part of the history of the future, not as a major theme in its own right.

Read them all:

Wells

Stapledon

Heinlein

Anderson

Niven

Stirling

Pournelle

Blish

Military SF In The Technic History

The military sf in Poul Anderson's Technic History is in:

"Margin of Profit"

The Man Who Counts

Satan's World

Mirkheim

"The Star Plunderer"

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

The People Of The Wind

Ensign Flandry

The Rebel Worlds

"Outpost of Empire"

"Tiger by the Tail"

"The Game of Glory"

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

The Game Of Empire

(Some readers might draw the line in different places.) Quite a lot but imagine if the whole History were nothing but the activities of the navies of the Solar Commonwealth, the Polesotechnic League, the Terran Empire etc.

When the Merseians take military action on Gorrazan in The Game Of Empire, it feels as if we are reading a future history not only of mankind but also of Merseia and some other species.

Merseia is:

contacted by the Grand Survey;

saved from supernova radiation by the trader team;

a distant but growing threat at the time of the Terran-Ythrian War;

the major opponent of the Terran Empire in Flandry's time;

no longer an interstellar power, apparently, at the time of the Commonalty.

War On Mundomar

Fire Time, XV.

This chapter is good military sf which Poul Anderson writes very well. Some sf authors write nothing but. It is obviously based on real military conflicts despite being about fighting Naqsans on Mundomar. We see a crowded personnel carrier, pulverized bones, cooked faces, melted eyeballs, children getting in the way of bullets, colonial citizens entertaining their new allies, air combat, loss in action of a man who had got married shortly before leaving Earth, a jungle base, rain roaring on barracks, men huddled near the 3V, a news tape of Christmas, Chanukkah and the Universal Love movement on Earth, an interest in oil in the disputed territory, Naqsan corpses unburied because they cannot infect human beings, the arrival of trained Naqsan pilots, Conway waking in pain in a wrecked flyer in a jungle with no radio, a dialogue with death, a KILLED IN ACTION: list of human names and a MOURN FOR: list of Naqsan names.

Obviously the war on Mundomar, like Gunnar Heim's privateering in the previous volume, could have become a spin-off series.

The Green Fields On Mundomar

Fire Time, XV.

Don Conway whose species evolved on Earth grew up on Ishtar and is now on Mundomar:

"Amidst regimented trees and fields, green though they were, he missed Ishtar's wild red and gold..." (p. 160)

So it is possible for a human being to prefer red and gold to green.

We hark back to The Green Hills Of Earth of the original Future History. The stories are set not on Earth but in space where Rhysling sings of Earth.

For my imagining of The Green Fields Of Earth, see Sky, Stars And Song. 

That is the end of the breakfast posts. There is business in the town centre on Saturday.

Overlapping Stories In Two Omnibus Collections

Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins with:

"Wings of Victory"

"The Problem of Pain"

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"

"Margin of Profit"

- whereas Baen Books' later omnibus collection, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, begins with:

"The Saturn Game"

"Wings of Victory"

"The Problem of Pain"

"Margin of Profit"

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"

There are two differences. First, the Saga is the complete History of Technic Civilization and therefore includes the previously uncollected, and also more recently written, "The Saturn Game." Secondly, "How To Be Ethnic..." and "Margin of Profit" are contemporaneous and therefore can be read in either order although I prefer the Earth Book order as establishing the background of the Polesotechnic League before introducing van Rijn.

Stories overlap even more in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader, where there are three sets of characters:

van Rijn in "Territory" and "The Master Key";

the trader team in "The Trouble Twisters" and "Day of Burning";

another bunch of guys in "A Little Knowledge";

van Rijn and the trader team together in Satan's World and "Lodestar."

Death And Capture

Fire Time, XIV-XV.

Andersonian action rules. 

At sea, Arnanak loses a son but captures Jill Conway. 

On Mundomar, human beings including Donald R. Conway and Naqsans including Keh't'hiw-a-suq of Dzuag die in action.

But we will have to read about the conflict on Mundomar tomorrow some time.

My attention wanders from Fire Time back to the Technic History - and, of course, to other reading later in the evening. Dune is receiving less attention. What we look for in Foundation and Dune, we find in the Technic History.

New Beginning

Fire Time, XIV.

Arnanak applies his religious philosophy to current events:

"...let him go boldly forward. The Three would dance out his fate: in the mighty rhythms of Sun and Ember Star, and in that chaos the Rover brought, from which free will might snatch a chance to begin a new cycle of destinies." (pp. 153-154)

Sun and Ember Star are the cycle of life and death. The Rover is the possibility of a new beginning. Arnanak must act freely when the possibility is near. But it is unfortunate that the only possibility that he sees is military conquest.

I know some astrologers, including one who has written a specialist book on the subject. The ancient belief in the might rhythms of the stars is still with us.

A Little More Galactography

"Lodestar." (here)

This story might add to our galactographical knowledge. The Ythrian spaceship carrying van Rijn and Coya is:

"...bound into a region that nobody is known to have explored." (p. 640)

The two human beings had proceeded to the Quetlan System, 278 light-years from Sol toward Lupus, in van Rijn's yacht, then transferred to the Gaiian which has proceeded toward the Deneb sector and is now 100 parsecs from Earth. They are in a region that other ships have passed through over the centuries but where no planetary systems have been visited or catalogued. 

Quetlan is 278 light-years from Sol in the direction of Lupus. The Gaiian has proceeded from Quetlan towards Deneb and is now 100 parsecs from Sol. Maybe someone who knows some astronomy can calculate an approximate position for the Gaiian? - which is about to find Mirkheim. 

POV Cop III

 

"Lodestar." (here)

Falkayn's moment of realization completes our fadeout from his perceptions and thoughts. His silence and tension tell us that something has come into his mind but nothing in the text tells us what it is. In a screen adaptation, the camera should recede from Falkayn, where he is seated in Muddlin' Through, then from Muddlin' Through.

After that, the text divides into four sections, pov(point of view)-wise, although they are unequal in length and and are not all clearly demarcated as such. First, in the page-long passage beginning:

"This happened shortly after the Satan episode..." (p. 639)

- an omniscient, or at least a very well informed, narrator summarizes several years of Nicholas van Rijn's life, describing the merchant unflatteringly:

"...his thick neck..." (ibid.)

This is not quite van Rijn's pov but close:

"Returned home, he swore by all that was holy and much that was not: Never again!" (ibid.)

Our narrator knows his man. This passage ends with van Rijn's competitors hoping that he is slowing down. Then, without any pause or gap in the text, it segues into Coya Conyon's pov:

"I can't say I like most of those money-machine merchant princes, Coya reflected..." (p. 640)

Coya remains our viewpoint character until she strides aft to confront her grandfather in his stateroom. Then, after three asterisks, the scene changes to that stateroom where a conversation between van Rijn and Captain Hirharouk is narrated from neither of their povs. But Coya enters and we return to her pov where we remain until the end when she:

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

POV Cop II

"Lodestar." (here)

When the trade pioneer crew escapes from Tametha:

"...Muddlin' Through ascended to heaven."

"--Gathered on the bridge, her crew stared at a downward-viewing screen." (p.635)

It is possible, at least at this stage, that the long dash which I have had to render as two shorter dashes signals a change of pov (point of view) from individual to collective, from Falkayn alone to the team as a whole. Conversation between the three is recounted but not from any single pov. Falkayn runs fingers through hair and speaks but we are not told how he feels or what he thinks without saying it.

However, when the three repair to different parts of the ship, we follow Falkayn and then are explicitly told what he is thinking in italicized prose. But, when Chee joins him, the narration again becomes objective. 

"Seeking distraction, Falkayn raised screen magnification..." (p. 638)

This phrase is ambiguous. Chee could have observed that he was seeking distraction. At the end of this passage, Falkayn sees the Nebula, grows silent and grows tense. He has had a moment of realization and we are not told what he is thinking.

After a double space between paragraphs, there is a definite change both of scene and of pov. An omniscient observer informs us that:

"This happened shortly after the Satan episode..." (p. 639)

We have by no means exhausted this story.

POV Cop

"Lodestar" (here) opens:

"Lightning reached. David Falkayn heard the crack of torn air..." (p. 633)

Clearly, Falkayn is the viewpoint character here and, if we have read the series consecutively to this point, then we know who he is. 

Does the narrative point of view remain consistent? This opening paragraph continues:

"...and gulped a rainy reek of ozone. His cheek stung from the near miss. In his eyes, spots of blue-white dazzle danced across night." (ibid.)

Still Falkayn's pov (point of view). It is he that smells ozone, feels a sting and sees spots. But a writer, particularly Poul Anderson, is not likely to switch povs within a single paragraph. 

Continuing:

"'Get aboard, you two,' Adzel said. 'I'll hold them.'" (ibid.)

The text has not switched to Adzel's pov. We are told what Falkayn and another companion hear Adzel say.

"Crouched, Falkayn peered after a target for his own blaster." (ibid.)

This sentence alone could be Falkayn's pov but could also be what someone else sees and infers from his actions. We can see that someone is peering and infer what it is that he is looking for. However, the next sentence after that confirms that the narrative remains within Falkayn's pov:

"He saw shadows moving..." (ibid.)

Moving forward through the text, we find Chee Lan addressing Falkayn and running towards the spaceship. When she is attacked by a native:

"Sick-hearted, Falkayn took aim." (p. 634)

Someone else would be able to see him take aim but it is Falkayn that feels sick-hearted.

"Hurry! Falkayn told himself." (ibid.)

At the bottom of this page and the top of the next, we read his italicized thoughts and are told that his mind groans: not his mouth, which could be heard by someone else, but his mind. Further down p. 635, we are told what he wants and what he thinks.

Thus, so far, the narrative point of view is consistent. There is an interesting change of pov later.

The Best Single Instalment?

Poul Anderson liked writing action fiction and "Lodestar" begins with action:

"Lightning reached. David Falkayn heard the crack of torn air and gulped a rainy reek of ozone. His cheek stung from the near miss."

-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 631-682 -

- but keep reading. Anderson's action is above average good and the story is about more than that, in any case. The point is that the oppressed Tamethans have risen against the Polesotechnic League and the trade pioneer crew members are lucky to escape with their lives. This will make Falkayn do something about League injustices and this in turn will make him break his oath of fealty to Nicholas van Rijn. This is a real turning point story.

The story also introduces Coya Conyon, van Rijn's granddaughter and Falkayn's future wife, and, like "How To Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," conveys some sense of life on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth period. It also shows van Rijn and Coya interacting with Ythrians and brings all these characters - van Rijn, Coya, Falkayn, Adzel, Chee Lan and Ythrians - together in a single short story. "Lodestar" might qualify as the single best instalment in Anderson's Technic History.

Not The Universe

 

Fire Time, XIII.

"'Having yarned with a lot of outsiders, I knew our gods did not rule the universe.'" (p. 148)

The pagan attitude. As a matter of fact, Larreka had come to doubt whether the gods "'...were more than a story.'" (ibid.) But, even if they are real, they do not rule the universe. 

Buddhism spread to different countries, leaving the local gods in place. A Christian who visited our particular Buddhist Priory was told that she would continue to believe that and the monks would teach her how to meditate.

I say that thunder is Thor passing overhead and know that this language is mythological but also that we would not be human beings without imagination, myth, story and fiction.

Bereavement

Fire Time, XIII.

"'Remember, different nations have different ways of taking a member over a loss. What the clans do is to provide him or her company, day and night, until the wound seems to've healed. Somebody's always beside the mourner, ready to lend a hand or talk or whatever. Usually several persons are. For most this is good. At least it's better than brooding alone...'" (p. 149)

I saw this custom in Northern Ireland. In the 1970s, when Sheila and I lived in a house without a telephone, we were visited by her aunt but her brother telegrammed that both of them were needed back home immediately because Sheila's and his brother-in-law had just died. When I walked to a public telephone kiosk to respond to the telegram, I had to tell him that the widow could take cups from the aunt's house if she needed them. I relayed this message but wondered: why does she need cups? 

When we arrived, the front room of the house was full of people, most of whom just sat there without speaking. A few sat directly around the widow. The kitchen table was piled high with things to eat, mainly cakes and biscuits, and some of us spent a lot of time serving tea or washing dishes. The coffin was upstairs. After a day or so, a Presbyterian minister arrived and spoke in the house. Then the hearse went straight to the cemetery.

Larreka's clans would understand. They help their neighbours without stint and honour the gods.