The Mathematics Of Profit

"Margin of Profit." (here)

The Borthudians capture Polesotechnic League ships and impress their four-man crews. A Solar Spice & Liquors ship with:

"...extra hull bracing and a new and monstrously powerful engine..." (p. 158)

- can use tractor and presser beams to capture a twenty-crewed Borthudian frigate but costs three times the profits than it can be expected to make. However, only one in four League ships will be specially equipped. For every four encounters, the League will lose twelve men but the Kossaluth will lose twenty warriors and thus will soon also lose this war of attrition. Enforced peace terms will include freeing of all slaves with massive indemnities. Spacemen who have recently refused to fly through Borthudian space will now volunteer, knowing that, if captured, they will soon be freed with enough compensation to retire in luxury. League academies will train Borthudian spacefarers for slightly raised fees and the League will impose trade concessions but the alternatives are worse for the Kossaluth: to impoverish themselves with continued attacks or to withdraw, leaving their unstable empire subject to subversion and to rebellions armed by the League. Van Rijn offers Borthudian rulers a way to lose power without also losing their lives.

Later in the series, van Rijn is celebrated as the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes and t'Kela.

Where Is The Multiverse?

The Technic History hyperdrive quantum jumps between thousands of closely adjacent points in space per second but does not traverse the short distances between those points and therefore is not bound by the relativistic light speed limit. In Poul Anderson's "Margin of Profit," van Rijn's ship, Mercury, and the Borthudian frigate, Gantok, pulse in and out of space with different frequencies with the result that missiles from Gantok pass harmlessly through the volume of space occupied by Mercury and her crew, including van Rijn himself. Later in the Technic History, Dominic Flandry's ship interpenetrates the space occupied by an enemy vessel and Flandry momentarily glimpses his personal antagonist on the bridge of his ship. 

On this hypothesis, only objects on hyperdrive oscillate. However, an extension of this idea would be that everything oscillates on a level below the level of perception. Subjects and objects of consciousness oscillate at the same frequency so that no one notices objects momentarily disappearing and reappearing. Entire universes would be able to occupy the same space while oscillating at different frequencies and an individual would be able to travel between universes - disappear from one and appear in another - simply by changing his rate of vibration. This was the basis of one superhero multiverse.

In another kind of multiverse, each universe splits every time a random event occurs or a choice is made. Each such universe has three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension and they coexist in a fifth dimension. Alternatively, they have always coexisted in parallel with each other and they only appear to split when their histories diverge noticeably. Valeria Matuchek gives this second account in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest.

My point is that these are two kinds of multiverses. Maybe both exist?

Minted Gold

It is Sunday morning and a convoy of cars will travel to nearby Preston for political reasons - General Election this coming Thursday - so there will probably be no more blogging here until this evening at the earliest. Before cooking a substantial breakfast, I have read more about Nicholas van Rijn and want to quote a passage but find that I have already done so nearly ten years ago here.

As a contrast from sf, I am enjoying Camino Ghosts by John Grisham and as yet its genre is ambiguous. There is always more to read or reread. But next on the agenda is breakfast. Have a good Sunday. Attend a place of worship or meditate in private.

How Are Agreements Reached?

"Margin of Profit."(here)

Some Polesotechnic League spaceships that pass through Borthudian space are attacked and captured and their crews are conditioned to work for the Borthudians. The trade union, the Federated Brotherhood of Spacefarers, refuses to continue to travel through that space - except in a punitive expedition, which the League cannot afford to mount. Van Rijn tells other company bosses that:

"'The Brotherhood will accept no more.'" (p. 152)

- and confidentially adds that neither would he. The Brotherhood's stance obliges him to take action that would soon have become necessary in any case. Who wields power? In the ordinary way of things, van Rijn. He owns and controls the company and not only gives the orders but also, more importantly, gives orders that work so that, most of the time, there is no cause for complaint. Routineers remain in employment while those who can rise from the ranks do. Fundamentally, the Brotherhood wields power because it can withdraw its labour and could take control of the company although things never come to such a pass.

How is agreement reached? Van Rijn is canny enough to understand when interests coincide. The Borthudian situation has become intolerable both to Solar Spice & Liquors and to the Brotherhood. Joint action becomes not only necessary but also possible. Van Rijn will return to space...

At This Hour

John Milton wrote a sonnet beginning: "Cromwell, our chief of men..." (here)

William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet beginning: "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour..." (here)

Let me add: "Anderson, our chief sf writer...," "Anderson! You should be living in this century..."

I have heard or read that there is evidence that:

there are large asymmetrical objects in orbit around a nearby star;

there is a Dyson sphere around another star (these might be the same story);

there are energy traces in space that might have been left by warp drive spaceships.

If any high tech is active nearby, then it should be detectable. A relativistic spaceship approaching light speed would have to be visible as a massive artificial energy source. Is it possible that humanoid aliens will arrive soon in FTL spaceships and incorporate Earth into an interstellar empire? I do not think so if only because nothing ever happens as it had been imagined, e.g., the first Moon Landing. We have not met Selenites or Martians, Barsoomians or Malacandrians, or discovered an oceanic Venus but we might just possibly be starting to move into space at last. Let me do two things:

(i) confidently predict that no humanoid aliens will arrive in our lifetimes;

(ii) acknowledge that I could be proved wrong about this tomorrow.

Meanwhile, what kind of sf would Poul Anderson be writing if he were still at work today?

Kinds Of Fiction

Poul Anderson's literary traditions:

Biblical (frequent quotations)

Norse mythological (The Broken Sword etc)

Shakespearean (A Midsummer Tempest)

Frankensteinian (Genesis)

Wellsian (time travel; future histories; future wars)

Stapledonian (Genesis again)

Heinleinian (Heinlein-model future histories; Operation Chaos)

historical fiction (The King of Ys; The Last Viking etc)

detective fiction (Trygve Yamamura trilogy etc)

On these bases, we compare Anderson with other authors. I have just collected Camino Ghosts by John Grisham from the Public Library and this leads to a further distinction. Any given novel can be:

(i) enjoyable but forgettable, to be reread at most once;

(ii) enjoyable and substantial, rereadable many times.

Many successful authors are (i). Anderson is mostly (ii).

This Corner Of The Galaxy

"Margin of Profit." (here)

Consider the precise wording of this sentence:

"This tiny, outlying corner of the galaxy which Technic civilization has slightly explored is that big and various." (p.149)

Then consider a slight revision:

"The tiny, outlying corner of the galaxy which Technic civilization had slightly explored was that big and various."

In Poul Anderson's wording, the narrator places himself in this volume of space and at this time when it has been explored. The revised wording would relegate him to the role of the omniscient narrator who is not located at any place and time. Later in the Technic History, mankind will occupy a vaster spatial volume but our present narrator is not aware of that.

The text of the story does not identify its narrator. However, Hloch's Earth Book Introduction to this story informs us that he is A.A. Craig, author of Tales Of The Great Frontier. Later, when introducing a second story by Craig, Hloch informs us that that author had travelled widely gathering material for historical narratives during a pause in the Troubles, thus after the League but before the Empire.

The Earth Book Of Stormgate immensely enriches the Technic History.

Sea Of Stars

Sf writers describe stars seen from space. Perhaps this is when a man or woman is in their most direct relationship to the universe as a whole. We have quoted Poul Anderson's many descriptions of the Milky Way. James Blish also does this well. In the story to which I have recently referred, he describes the Solar System seen by a man who is leaving it:

"...a sea of stars in which the planets were only other sparks, lost in vastness and impossible to identify without the aid of the computer..."

-James Blish, "Darkside Crossing" IN Galaxy, December 1970, p. 21.

And, when the Sun has become so small that it too can only be identified by the computer:

"The lone star that had spawned Man's home was now only a bright dot among thousands of other dots; no longer Zarathustra's and Mithra's great object of worship, but only a grain of incandescent sand on a remote, permanently dusky beach.

"Dane was expatriate, as no man had ever been before - nor would he ever see that Sun again." (p. 23)

The phrase, "...lone star..." is evocative - as is an object of worship reduced to a grain of sand on a remote and dusky beach. Sf takes us out and into the universe.

The Cosmos And The Future

I am trying to refocus on Nicholas van Rijn but that has taken us through the League, Empire and Commonalty periods of the Technic History to Mars in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History to an interstellar crossing in an obscure, magazine publication only, work by James Blish. But sf is all one. It is about our relationships not only to each other and to our Terrestrial environment but also to our total cosmic environment as revealed by science. The laws of physics apply "...on Earth as in the heavens."

In a sense, we cannot go into space because going into space will change us so much that we will no longer be who we were before we went. In most sf, we continue to act in the same kinds of ways because we have not changed enough yet but give us more time. Daven Laure says that the people of the Commonalty do not get into wars and, indeed, if they have no reason to wage wars, then they will not, any more than most of us attack our neighbours here and now.

We need to imagine different futures because we will live into them.

Life Off Earth

"Margin of Profit." (here)

"This tiny, outlying corner of the galaxy which Technic civilization has slightly explored is that big and various." (p. 149)

This much repeated observation about the relative smallness of known space on a galactic scale is made that early in the Technic History. The observation will remain true throughout the League and Empire periods although eventually, millennia later, human civilizations will have spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy. But that will be long after the fall not only of the Terran Empire but even of Technic civilization. Not that subsequent civilizations will not be technological but "Technic" has come to mean a particular global and spacefaring civilization that succeeded Western.

In the 1950s, I loved the idea of human beings able to move freely around in interstellar space. Now I am more conscious of the difficulties of remaining alive off Earth. Also, there is a question about the psychological effects of leaving the Terrestrial environment. Will colonists on Mars remain sane?

"It was a cruel world, this Mars, a world of cold and ruin and soaring scornful emptiness, a world that broke men's hearts and drained their lives from them - rainless, oceanless, heatless, kindless..."

-Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (Riverdale, NY, October 2017), pp. 21-100 AT III, pp. 28-29.

This passage continues for several more lines of text but I do not want to post lengthy quotations.

I am now having a problem familiar to readers. Books have been moved around here. James Blish planned a novel to be called King Log that was never completed although three extracts from it, entitled "The City That Was The World," "Darkside Crossing" and "Our Binary Brothers," were published in Galaxy. I want to quote from "Darkside Crossing" but that is the one issue that I cannot now find beside the others on the shelf! 

From memory:

John Hillary Dane makes the two light-month crossing from Sol to a previously unnoticed white dwarf companion star. When he glances back and realizes that he can no longer see Sol, he suffers a nervous breakdown because he is cut off as no man has been before. Is this an insight into possible psychological effects of space travel?

Addendum: Persevering, I found "Darkside Crossing" on another shelf in another room and will now reread it. There is nothing quite like the pleasure and relief of re-finding something.

Interstellar Trade And Travel Time

Stories about interstellar trade can focus on long periods of time spent travelling between stars:

Poul Anderson's Kith travel slower than light (STL) and dwell in Kith Towns on planetary surfaces;

James Blish's Okies live in cities that travel between stars faster than light (FTL) but still need antiagathics to survive such long trips;

Anderson's Nomads travel FTL and do not need antiagathics but have chosen nomadism and spend most of their lives in their ships.

Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn, living on Earth, runs a company whose FTL ships are fast enough to carry goods and report back without having to invest years or decades in each trip.

In "Margin of Profit," van Rijn receives a report, then leaves the Solar System.

In The Man Who Counts, he is on an extra-solar planet.

In "Esau," he receives a report.

In "Hiding Place," he is in a spaceship that does not need years to complete a journey but has run into other kinds of difficulties.

In "Territory," he is on an extra-solar planet.

In "The Master Key," he receives a report.

Thus, Polesotechnic League interstellar travel is faster than that of the Kith, Okies or Nomads. We get a sense of a dynamic economy spanning vast distances with individuals like van Rijn and Falkayn able to travel from end to end of Technic civilization on particular missions.

Entry Point

Although Trader To The Stars, a single collection of three short stories about Nicholas van Rijn, has been superseded by The Technic Civilization Saga, seven omnibus volumes collecting Poul Anderson's entire History of Technic Civilization in chronological order of fictional events for the first time, Trader..., originally Volume I of the Technic History, might still serve as a convenient entry point to this future history series, allowing readers to decide whether they want to learn more about van Rijn and the Polesotechnic League as well as about the longer fictional history encompassing them.

Trader... collects:

"Hiding Place"

"Territory"

"The Master Key"

Placing these three stories in their future historical contexts, we find that:

10 instalments (3 pre-League, 3 van Rijn, 2 Falkayn, 1 Adzel, 1 other) precede "Hiding Place";

2 trader team stories come between "Territory" and "The Master Key";

3 van Rijn and trader team instalments plus 1 other follow "The Master Key."

That completes the pre-League and League periods of the Technic History. The final League instalment, Mirkheim, is the first of six instalments collected in Saga, Volume III. My fascination with the mercurial structure of the Technic History focuses on the pre-Flandry periods, collected in Saga, Volumes I-III. The Flandry period covers Volumes IV-VI and the first half of VII but there are more millennia of history in the four remaining instalments. What a future history series!

Scene-Setting And A Saint

Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 135-173.

Scene-setting: 

Solar Spice & Liquors Company office in Djakarta;

guards in the lobby; 

an armed receptionist, probably with a personal fealty clause in her contract; 

a carved Martian sandroot image of St. Dismas on van Rijn's expansive but cluttered desk.

OK. What is sandroot? And it finally occurred to me to check what an image of St. Dismas looks like. Is it just a crucifixion, indistinguishable from the crucifixion of Christ? If you google, you will find images of St. Dismas holding a cross. 

We are back into reading about the Polesotechnic League. To quote the introduction to Trader To The Stars:

"...we are on our way." (p. 556)

Maybe more tomorrow.

Problems And Issues

The first Nicholas van Rijn story in the Technic History is "Margin of Profit" whereas the first story in the first van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars, is "Hiding Place." Both of these stories begin with a Lodgemaster Captain preparing to discuss a problem with his employer, van Rijn. These are sf problem-solving stories. The two aspects of such a story are, first, the identification of a technical or practical problem of some kind and, secondly, the implementation of our hero's solution, preferably preceded by what I call an Andersonian moment of realization when the hero suddenly realizes what the solution has to be but does not articulate it yet. Obviously, such a story need not involve any specifically human problem or issue. However, if it is to address life, then fiction has to address such issues sometime. And, indeed, since the practical problems are life or death matters, they are human issues to that extent - but life involves values and loyalties as well as mere survival.

"Lodestar" was written to be the last van Rijn/trader team/Polesotechnic League story although Mirkheim was added later. "Lodestar" is both a problem-solving story and a human issues story.

Problem: Where does Supermetals get its supermetals? ("Supermetals" is a company whereas "supermetals" are rare valuable elements, in this case sold by Supermetals to industrialists in Technic civilization.)

Van Rijn's solution: He locates an outer orbit planet that had been so massive that its core survived the supernova explosion of its primary and therefore still exists but now coated with supermetals that had been fused inside the massive dying star, then ejected by the explosion.

That problem and its solution would have sufficed for an sf story. However, there is also a human dimension. David Falkayn had had a problem.

Problem: How to locate a source of supermetals and without the clue of a company already selling them.

Falkayn's solution: Get a computer to calculate the probable location of a supernova remnant left by a star that had been orbited by a massive planet, the same solution later implemented by van Rijn.

The human issue: It was Falkayn who had located the supermetals planet, later called Mirkheim, and founded Supermetals. It follows that he had used his discovery not to enrich his employer, van Rijn, but to help the poorer planets in Technic civilization who are the shareholders in Supermetals.

The confrontation between van Rijn and Falkayn is the pivotal conflict of the entire Technic History.

The Fourth Instalments

Comparing our four parallel future histories, as I now think of them, we notice that the Technic History has progressed further by its fourth instalment than any of the other three have by theirs.

The Future History

DD Harriman, still on Earth, has sent a man to the Moon and back.

The Psychotechnic History

Earthmen have colonised Mars and Venus.

Known Space

An explorer has reached Pluto.

The Technic History

When the story opens, Nicholas van Rijn is on Earth but Earth is part of an interstellar civilization and van Rijn is a leading figure in the interstellar economy.

In its original reading order, the Technic History began with a collection of three stories about van Rijn, leaving no less than ten instalments set earlier, three of them also about van Rijn, to be collected later. The first story about van Rijn opens the sixteen-instalment sub-series about the Polesotechnic League in which van Rijn has solo adventures and also brings together the independently introduced characters, David Falkayn and Adzel, into his first trade pioneer crew. By imperceptible increments, Poul Anderson builds a substantial structure.

The Fourth Instalment In Four Future Histories

By its fourth instalment at least, a future history series should be going somewhere so what is happening in our various parallels (if we see them that way)?

The Future History

The first Moon landing. Space travel has begun and will fill Volume II.

The Psychotechnic History

An Un-Man overthrows a dictatorship on Venus. A good period begins, before a decline.

Known Space

Someone is on Pluto. Initial interplanetary exploration is complete but the next question is what has been happening on Earth?

The Technic History

Nicholas van Rijn is introduced. The first major sub-series begins.

Yes. All four of of these future history series are going somewhere. Heinlein's successors go further than he did.

Different Beginnings

HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come and Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men begin by describing the world at the time of writing before moving gradually into the near future, then the further future, in Stapledon's case the furthest possible future. 

A future history series needs a few opening stories to get it off the ground. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the capacity to produce an escape velocity fuel is developed at the end of the third instalment and the first Moon landing happens in the fourth instalment. Until that point, the History has been a progression of technological advances but social regression will emerge in Volume III.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins in the aftermath of World War III which reads like the aftermath of World War II - well, worse - but this time a predictive science of society is being applied. The speculative fiction begins here.

Larry Niven's Known Space future history series begins with four stories of interplanetary exploration. Anderson's Technic History began with two stories of interstellar exploration but then one story of interplanetary exploration set earlier was added later. Thus, The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins on the extra-solar planet, Ythri, whereas The Technic Civilization Saga begins on the Saturnian moon, Iapetus.

We have come a long way from Wells and Stapledon and even from Heinlein.

(What is wrong with that cover image?)

Different Timelines

Each particular future history series presents a single linear timeline that differentiates that series from any other. Thus:

in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, a near future nuclear war leads to a UN world government;

in Anderson's Maurai History, a near future nuclear war leads to the Maurai Federation;

in Anderson's Technic History, a period called the Chaos is followed by the transition from Western to Technic civilization.

These fictional futures are equally valid but mutually incompatible although partially parallel. We can imagine that the different histories unfold in parallel timelines. We might even compile comparative chronologies in parallel columns. However, most relevant texts do not encourage any parallelism. Some later volumes by Heinlein do refer to a multiverse but I do not accept anything after Orphans Of The Sky as a valid contribution to the Future History even though written by Heinlein himself. 

In Anderson's "House Rule," Nicholas van Rijn from the Technic History visits the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, and Anderson's "Losers' Night" informs us that Rhysling from Heinlein's Future History has also been there. However, these two stories are outside the future histories which is appropriate since the Old Phoenix is outside the timelines. The two Old Phoenix stories have closer links to two fantasy alternative histories than to the future histories. This is the point at which Anderson's works come closest to forming One Big Series although they never do that because most of his series and individual works remain self-contained narratives and there are a lot of them.

Contempt

Fire Time, AFTERWORD.

"Contempt crackled forth: 'Don't fear, either, that you need become fashionable radicals. Leave oratory, demonstrations, riots, denunciatory essays in chic magazines, solidarity with every grubby Cause that wants to hitch a ride, sermons which don't mention God because he isn't relevant - leave such things to the monkeys. Better, disown them, reject them.'" (p. 244)

What a litany! Demonstrations and riots strung together! Monkeys! Why are causes grubby? Why should there not be solidarity between groups that have different specific grievances within the same Federation? If a clergyman does not mention God as often as someone else thinks that he should, then that is a matter between him and his bishop and his congregation. If the sermon has a political content, then let each of us make our own judgements about that.

An unwelcome outburst of contempt near the end of a novel.

Luke, Job And A Realization

Fire Time, XXIV.

Dejerine thinks that he should pray:

"Father, forgive me..." (p. 234)

He is quoting Luke 23:34 although he changes the pronoun. Then he quotes:

"For now thou numberest my steps..." (ibid.) (Job 14:16-22)

Two more examples of the Bible in Poul Anderson.

Next, it is as if a nova bursts within Dejerine so that Jill asks what is wrong and whether he is all right. He has had an Andersonian moment of realization.

Dejerine gives us more than our money's worth and brings us to the end of Chapter XXIV, leaving only the AFTERWORD which harks back to the FOREWORD and also ends our record of events in this fictional timeline. 

Understanding The One

The characters' religious beliefs, if any, are rightly an important factor in any sf by Poul Anderson - and also by James Blish, CS Lewis and SM Stirling. (This is not an exclusive list, of course.) 

Let me state what I think about religion. The single reality becomes conscious of itself through individual organisms, which are its members, and appears to itself as the empirically discernible universe. The One, as Plato called it, is within and beyond everything experienced. Some of its members conceive of it as not or not only the essence of the universe but also an extra-cosmic creator. And indeed it does create everything that we see although not, in my opinion, consciously. Consciousness is a summit of creation, not its origin. Someone that I know responds to the One by reading the Bible and concluding that "Christ Jesus is the Messiah." I respond to that same One by practising just sitting meditation. Through both of us, the One understands itself, albeit partially and differently.

That is as close as I can get to acknowledging two aspects of religion: its importance, indeed profundity, but also its diversity.

The Captain's Com

Mobile phones with internet access have transformed life and are now taken for granted as will be further changes as yet unimaginable. This could be the message of sf:

historical fiction shows how life was different in the past;

sf can show that life will be different in the future;

contemporary fiction can show how life is different for different sections of global society right now;

a long past-and-future historical sequence, with or without immortals or time travellers, might bring everything together;

a far future narrator would be able to comment on everything.

Poul Anderson's fiction takes several steps in this direction - without becoming one big series, of course.

We notice the absence of mobile phones in most, not all, future histories. In Poul Anderson's Fire Time, Captain Dejerine's com buzzes while he is conversing with an Ishtarian. Taking the flat case from a pocket, he presses accept and converses with one of his Lieutenants. After he has clicked off and started the return journey to base, he calls Mayor Hanshaw and is relieved to find him at home. Thus, Dejerine's "com" is part of his Naval equipment, not a standard item for every citizen. We have become so used to mobiles that we might not notice this difference.

New York

New York is where Manse Everard of the Time Patrol lives in the second half of the twentieth century in his timeline. What will the city be like in the futures?

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars, there is still some business in Niyork but otherwise ivy and lichen grow on tall empty towers.

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, the crumbling pinnacles are nearly all empty all of the time because most of the population is underground. In Blish's Cities In Flight, New York, like other cities, flies between stars. 

Sf covers every (im)possibility.

Xeno- Studies

In the Solar Commonwealth period of Poul Anderson's Technic History, a Solar Spice & Liquors trade pioneer crew comprises a Master Merchant, a planetologist and a xenobiologist, according to van Rijn in "Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters." Elsewhere (here), I have referred to the last two as a planetographer and a xenologist. "Xenologist" is the usual name for Chee Lan's profession in the Technic History.

I mention this because, in James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, a young woman called Dr. Liu Meid is a leading xenozoologist. Authors have not yet settled down on a single terminology. Anderson and Blish wrote the same kind of sf but Anderson wrote a lot more of it which is why this blog is mainly about him.

As I blog, Dr. Alice Roberts on the Digging For Britain TV series covers the periods of Norse and Anglo-Saxon settlements in Britain which we read about in Poul Anderson's fiction.

From the past through the present into the future.

In the historic Merchants pub, a Greek comrade asked a member of staff whether he was Italian but he turned out to be Portugese. I remarked that Lancaster is an international city - as well as historical. We welcome diversity and hope for more in the future, as in Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic..."

Death

Human-alien interactions, even in fiction, are a good opportunity to question the most basic assumptions made by human beings.

Sheol, Hades and Hel were not immortality, or deathlessness, but consciousness of the absence of life, something not to be hoped for but to be dreaded and delayed for as long as possible. We might ask: how can consciousness outlast life? Consciousness seemed to leave the body temporarily in dreams, therefore was assumed to leave it permanently at death.

Biblical immortality was in a resurrected body. Greek, Jain and Hindu Dualist immortality is in a reincarnating but eventually liberated soul. Christian immortality is in a soul and a resurrected body.

In Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain," when an Ythrian of The New Faith is asked whether he believes that the spirit outlives the body, he snaps, "'How could it?...Why should it?'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 122) Two very good questions.

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, when Fr. Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez asks the Lithian, Chtexa, whether his people die, Chtexa replies that every organism ceases to change and becomes inert and that this is good because the dead feed or make way for the living. Chtexa sees death in purely physical terms and this is a problem for Ruiz-Sanchez.

Time Charts

Future histories generate time charts, most famously Heinlein's. Poul Anderson modelled his Psychotechnic History time chart on Heinlein's. Later, Sandra Miesel compiled the Chronology for Anderson's Technic History. There are similar time charts for:

James Blish's Cities In Flight;

Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality Of Mankind;

Larry Niven's Known Space;

Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium. 

Blish's Haertel Scholium generates branching timelines. Thus:

The Haertel History

Chronology Of The Beep

Future Events (revised earlier today)

Quadrupeds On Ships

Closing this evening with a truly obscure textual parallel - 

A quadrupedal Ishtarian discusses sailing ships with a human being:

"'...in spite of arrangements like bosun's chairs and ankle hooks, the crews cannot get about aloft as readily as you.'"

-Fire Time, XXI, p. 211.

A young centaur recounts what happened when she ran away to sea:

"I saw many things on that first voyage. My first two-legs, for instance.

"All the ships of the folk employ them because we can't climb. I was fascinated and repelled by their ungainly shapes, their strange flexibility."

-Mike Carey, Lucifer: The Divine Comedy (New York, 2003), p. 76, panel 3, captions 1-2.

So that is how we look to them. Writers like Poul Anderson and Mike Carey look at us through alien eyes.

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:

1945-1950 fission bomb race

1950-1955 fusion bomb race

1955-1960 IBM race

1960-1985 Shelter race

1993 Corridor Riots, leading to UN world government

2049-2050 Shelters and world government still in place

(Haertel and interstellar flight at unspecified intermediate dates)

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.