The Engineer's Story

Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009). pp. 555-609.

CS Lewis called hard sf "the Engineer's Story." Some of us just read past technical details. Here are some examples. Technic civilization taps converters directly with stepdown methods. Lacking such methods, the Eksers run a large generator with a heat exchanger, drawing A.C. from it. They pass A.C. through copper oxide rectifier plates to get D.C.

Technic civilization uses a light element converter which develops electric current directly. Ekser power plants might utilize heavier elements with small positive packing fractions. This was found to be impractical on Earth but maybe the Eksers are better engineers. Such a system would require less refined fuel which would be advantageous when visiting unexplored planets and maybe:

"'...enough to justify that clumsy heat exchanger and rectifier system. We simply don't know.'" (p. 588)

I don't know, either. In fact, I am no wiser than when I started to write that summary. We know which sf writers have had a scientific education.

Van Rijn And Flandry

Nicholas van Rijn is first seen in "Margin of Profit" and last seen in Mirkheim. These are the opening and closing instalments of the Polesotechnic League sub-series of Poul Anderson's Technic History. Fortunately, however, the sub-series is not just about van Rijn who:

is off-stage in five instalments;

cameos in one;

receives reports from other characters in two;

shares the stage with other continuing characters in four -

- most noticeably in the second last instalment, "Lodestar," which features van Rijn and all three members of his trade pioneer crew and his granddaughter, Coya Conyon, and members of the Ythrian species who also have their own sub-series of the Technic History.

That leaves only four other instalments about van Rijn.

Dominic Flandry is more up front in his period:

twelve instalments starring Flandry;

one in which he cameos three times (i.e., a lot);

two others.

The instalments in which he does not appear inform us of conditions, characters and events on the planets, Freehold and Aeneas. The novel in which he cameos does the same for the planets, Imhotep and Daedalus. Thus, although there is a lot of Flandry,  there is also more than Flandry.

Details And The Ultimate Question

Either we focus on a single detail of hyperdrive technology in Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place" or, alternatively, we pull back through successive stages, recognizing that "Hiding Place" is a Nicholas van Rijn story, therefore part of the Polesotechnic League series which is part of the Technic History which is one of Anderson's several future histories which are part of the Heinleinian future historical tradition which is one part of modern science fiction which began not with HG Wells' The Time Machine, although that was a major milestone, but with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. On this blog, we always remember that Poul Anderson's last sf novel, Genesis, readdressed the Frankensteinian themes - the roles of science and technology and the ultimate question: is it right to create human life?

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

"to mould me man ? Did I solicit thee

"From darkness to promote me?"

-Paradise Lost, quoted at the beginning of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein [or, The Modern Prometheus] (New York, 1963), p. 10.

In Greek drama, the question is: are the gods just?

We have come a long way from a damaged hyperdrive but must return to the details to enjoy particular stories.

Some Closely Connected Works

While writing recent posts, I have been thinking of certain works of imaginative fiction as closely connected:

Heinlein's Future History

Anderson's linear future histories and multiverse

Blish's linear and branching future histories

Wells' The Time Machine

time travel fiction by Heinlein, Anderson and Blish

Some of these works are obscure but all are worthwhile. Blish's time travel is in Midsummer Century and "The City That Was The World" and I learned while writing the previous post that an unnamed "poet" quoted in "The City That Was The World" was Poul Anderson in one of his future histories.

Today is going to be practical tasks and preparation for travel to London tomorrow.

Time, The Burning Bridge

"...every man knows, as one unregretful poet said, that Time is the bridge that burns behind us."

-James Blish, "The City That Was The World" IN Galaxy, July, 1969, pp. 69-97 AT p. 71.

When I read this, I remembered that part two of Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited (New York, 1963) is entitled The Burning Bridge (pp. 43-70) and that a short story by Larry Niven is entitled "All the Bridges Rusting." (It is in Larry Niven, A Hole in Space (London, 1975), pp. 71-93.)

Wanting to know who the "unregretful poet" was, I googled the phrase, "Time is the bridge that burns behind us," and was referred to Poul Anderson, "The Burning Bridge" (Astounding, January 1960), the original publication of the story that became Orbit Unlimited, part two. See here.

"Burning your bridges" is an idiom.

• Time is the bridge that always burns behind us.
  • Poul Anderson, The Burning Bridge (January 1960). Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction.
  • -copied from the above link.

Consistency And Continuity

We appreciate consistency in future history series. This is the Heinlein model which Poul Anderson consciously copied in his Psychotechnic History, then unexpectedly reproduced on a vaster spatiotemporal scale in his Technic History.

(In graphic fiction universes, consistency is "continuity" but cross-continuity character consistency is more fundamental. We always recognise Clark Kent.)

In Heinlein's five-volume Future History, Volume IV, Methuselah's Children, refers to the contents of every other volume, even including V. In the opening story, "Life-Line," Dr. Hugo Pinero, inventor of the baronovitameter, will, for a fee, accurately predict the date of anyone's death. However, in Methuselah's Children, the immortal Lazarus Long says that Pinero had returned his fee without giving him a prediction. This is perfect future history consistency.

In Anderson's Technic History, every instalment is either directly or indirectly connected to every other instalment. As a single example:

in the opening instalment, "The Saturn Game," Jean Broberg has been brought up as a Jerusalem Catholic;

in the thirty-ninth instalment, The Game Of Empire, the Wodenite Jerusalem Catholic priest, Fr. Axor, meets Dominic Flandry;

in the twenty-seventh instalment, The Rebel Worlds, Flandry had expelled Aenean rebels from the Terran Empire;

in the forty-third and concluding instalment, "Starfog," we are not explicitly told but nevertheless understand that the long-isolated Kirkasanters are descendants of those expelled rebels.

That, of course, is a long line of indirect connections. There is no direct link between Broberg and Kirkasant but the whole of history is a single multiply detailed process.

Instalments of a future history sometimes refer not only to earlier instalments but also to earlier history which also provides a common background to contemporary fiction. Anderson's Terran Empire is modelled on the Roman Empire. Futuristic sf often refers to Einstein either to describe slower than light interstellar travel, because of Einstein's light-speed limit, or to explain how that limit has been broken.

James Blish created Adolph Haertel whose faster than light interstellar overdrive supersedes Einsteinian relativity. Haertel, like Einstein, is referred to in several of Blish's fictional futures, thus generating a sense of historical verisimilitude within this single author's works. 

Blish wrote a historical novel, Doctor Mirabilis, about Roger Bacon and referred to Bacon in a contemporary fantasy, Black Easter, and in a futuristic sf novel, The Triumph Of Time.

Earth and Mars exist in alternative futures and so can fictional planets. Lithia explodes in 2050 in Blish's A Case Of Conscience but still exists millennia later in his The Seedling Stars.

Any future history series can be conceptualized as part of a process with past history and alternative futures.

This week, I will travel to London on Thursday morning and return to Lancaster on Sunday evening so there will be a blog break.

Communication

Poul Anderson imagines:

practical applications of a technology that might never exist;

the practical problem of communicating with a newly discovered intelligent species on urgent matters like "We need a lift outta here rapido and can pay muchly!" 

Hyperdrive vibrations are instantaneously detectable at about a light-year. Van Rijn's yacht, the Hebe G.B., has uncommonly sensitive detectors and therefore spots an alien ship before being spotted. She accelerates to intercept and the alien tries to flee but not toward Adderkops. Deductions: the aliens are not Adderkops and have reason to fear strangers.

The alien goes off hyperdrive, thus becoming a no longer detectable small object in a vast spatial volume. However, knowing both the superlight vector and the instant of cut-off, the Hebe G.B. has a good idea where to look and adopts a search pattern, regularly reverting to normal space to sample neutrinos. By statistical analysis, the computer differentiates a small close neutrino source from stellar sources. The alien craft is found.

Van Rijn wants his crew to communicate and to develop a common language fast so that they can conduct urgent business. Communicating with new species has become routine and they will devise a simplified common language rather than try to learn each other's.

Freya And The Adderkops

Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609.

"'...Freya is a jerkwater planet on the very fringe of human civilization. We've hardly any spatial traffic, except the League merchant ships, and they never stay long in port.'" (pp. 564-565)

A century ago, the Freyans expelled some outlaws whom they call "Adderkops." These outlaws have settled a planet somewhere beyond Valhalla, Freya's sun. They have increased the number of their warships. How, on a newly settled planet? Freya is too strong for them to raid and has no space traffic for them to attack so the Freyans are unconcerned about the Adderkops. However, they attack other planets, extract tribute and conduct overpriced trade. The Polesotechnic League wants to expand in this direction and would put a stop to Adderkop activities so the Adderkops try to discourage the League by harassing their outposts. Van Rijn visits the League base on Freya, interrogates prisoners and gets some clues. His ship, the Hebe G.B., picks up a neutrino trail and locates a human-colonized planet, almost certainly Adderkops. Attacked by their warships, the Hebe G.B. escapes but damaged and unable to return to Freya. Sought by the Adderkops, the Hebe G.B. tries to find one of the three or four other intelligent species believed to possess the hyperdrive in this vast spatial volume.

Blish On Van Rijn

Something that James Blish said to me some time in the 1970s about Nicholas van Rijn:

"Poul likes the flamboyant character but I think it's about played out."

Could we have taken more of van Rijn? We could certainly have taken a lot more of the Technic History.

Blish's closest equivalent to van Rijn would be John Amalfi, Mayor of Manhattan in Fight. Not flamboyant in anything like the same way but nevertheless an interstellar trader, an unorthodox problem solver, a cigar smoker and larger than life. 

And here is one difference between the treatments of these two characters. Blish wanted to make the point that, even with antiagathics, everyone eventually dies so he concluded his future history series with a novel, The Triumph Of Time, in which Amalfi and his fellow Okies must face the imminent end of the universe. The very last sentence is Amalfi's death and a new creation.

It is nearly midnight here. Good night.

Linear And Branching Series

Linear Future History Series by Poul Anderson

Psychotechnic: a Heinleinian time chart

Technic: historical cycles

Maurai: post-nuclear Earth

Flying Mountains: asteroid colonisation

Rustum: extra-solar colonisation

Kith: interstellar trade

Harvest Of Stars: human-AI interaction

Genesis: post-human AI

Linear Future History Series by James Blish

Cities In Flight: flying cities

The Seedling Stars: Adapted Men

Branching Future History Series by James Blish

Haertel Scholium: 

Lithia (a sinless planet);

"Angels" (energy beings); 

Dirac transmitter (an instantaneous communicator);

Galactic Cluster trilogy (microcosmic telepathy).

I am rereading A Case Of Conscience, about Lithia. This novel refers back to Haertel but is not and does have to be consistent with other Haertel Scholium works. 

When we reread a book decades later, it is like a different book.

Spacefarers

Captain Rafael Torres is:

"...a Lodgemaster in the Federated Brotherhood of Spacefarers..."

-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 135-173 AT p. 138 -

- whereas Captain Bahadur Torrance is:

"...a Lodgemaster in the Federated Brotherhood of Spacemen."

-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 555-609 AT p. 557.

This is no big deal. In both cases, the name of the trade union has been translated from Anglic to English for our benefit, in any case. Anglic probably uses some gender-neutral term but it hardly matters. The word, "...astronaut...," is also used on p. 557. In 1956, when the original version of "Margin of Profit" was published, although not yet read by me, I was not yet familiar with the word, "astronaut," but "spaceman" could refer either to a space-suited male human being or to an extra-terrestrial. On screen and in comic strips, I liked "cowboys" but preferred men in spacesuits whereas many of my contemporaries preferred footballers. Why? It can only be because of some random neurological interconnections - which also made us either good or bad at maths.

Films of Poul Anderson's Technic History would have to present some dialogue in Eriau or Planha with subtitles so why not entire scripts in Anglic with subtitles? - although that is probably asking too much.

Later in the series, the relevant union for van Rijn's company is United Technicians. This is exactly the kind of change that has happened to names of trade unions in our lifetimes.

From Beginnings To Transitions

Nine instalments are transitional between the great days of the Polesotechnic League and the declining Terran Empire of Dominic Flandry's time:

an external threat to Technic civilization involving a rogue planet obliges van Rijn and the members of his first trade pioneer crew to embark on urgent missions outside the Solar System;

events elsewhere in space demonstrate the degeneration of the League;

inequalities within Technic civilization and Falkayn's secret discovery of Mirkheim trigger what is potentially a massive conflict between van Rijn and Falkayn;

the Baburite seizures of both Mirkheim and Hermes signal the beginning of the end of the League;

Falkayn's grandson grows up on the planet Avalon which continues to be jointly colonised by human beings and Ythrians (two instalments);

Earth is sacked but Manuel Argos leads a slave revolt and founds the Terran Empire;

the growing Empire annexes Ansa but fails to annex Avalon while the Merseian Roidhunate is a distant but growing threat (two instalments).

That, finally, sets the scene for the Terran-Merseian conflict of Flandry's time.

So many single stories combine into one greater story. I think that the pre-Flandry periods are more involved and intricate despite filling one volume less in The Technic Civilization Saga.

The Technic History, Continued

In the next nine instalments, events pregnant with subsequent repercussions continue to occur in different parts of space: 

Falkayn rises in the League, is employed by van Rijn's company, makes a significant discovery about rogue planets and is the first to use hyperspatial pulses for communication;

there is more League trading on Ivanhoe;

van Rijn's activities on Diomedes, a planet later visited by Flandry, will have important consequences for Falkayn's home planet, Hermes;

Emil Dalmady from Altai, another planet later visited by Flandry, thwarts the Baburites who will later become drawn into the first civil war in the Polesotechnic League, thus signalling the eventual decline and dissolution of that organization;

van Rijn remains active in space and on other planets but also appoints Falkayn to lead his first trade pioneer crew, which includes Adzel;

that crew saves Merseia, Flandry's future foe, while van Rijn continues to run Solar Spice & Liquors from Earth.

The Early Technic History II

Between "The Problem of Pain" and "Margin of Profit," there are:

the births of Nicholas van Rijn on Earth and of David Falkayn on Hermes;

the Council of Hiawatha, which fails to reform the Polesotechnic League;

he colonisation of Dennitza.

According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology, both the height of the League and the beginning of its decline are in the twenty-fifth century.

The fourth, fifth and sixth stories introduce:

van Rijn in Djakarta, then in space

Adzel from Woden, studying in San Francisco

Falkayn, apprenticed to Martin Schuster on Ivanhoe

We will see Ivanhoe one more time and some Ivanhoans later. Van Rijn, Falkayn and Adzel will reappear and come together. The future history series is gradually and skilfully constructed.

The Early Technic History

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization begins by moving forward in time in its first four instalments, then sideways in space in its fifth and sixth instalments.

The only year date in the entire History, 2057, is given in the opening instalment, "The Saturn Game." Dates as given in Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization mark the facts that years and decades elapse in characters' lifetimes and that centuries or millennia elapse between historical periods. Apart from that, there is no basis for specifying any particular year dates. Dominic Flandry is arbitrarily stated to be born in 3000, a round number. Later round numbers in the Chronology are 3600, 3900, 4000 and 7100 for the concluding four instalments.

At the beginning of the History, many important events happen before or between the instalments. First, the Chaos. "The Saturn Game" is set during the recovery from this period of unrest. Reality and fiction begin to diverge. In 2024, we are not recovering from environmental destruction but sinking deeper into it.

Between "The Saturn Game" in the twenty-first century and "Wings of Victory" in the twenty-second, there are:

the hyperdrive

the Breakup

the Solar Commonwealth

the colonization of Hermes

"Wings of Victory" is about the Grand Survey and first contact with Ythri. According to the Chronology, before "The Problem of Pain" in the twenty-fourth century, there are:

the founding of the Polesotechnic League

the colonisations of Aeneas and Altai

In "The Problem of Pain," Ythrians have moved into space. Some have studied on Aeneas and explore Gray/Avalon.