Cathedral/Forest

The Night Face, VIII.

"They re-entered the cathedral stillness of the forest." (p. 615)

Yes, a forest is a cathedral with trees for columns and leaves for arches. By a "cathedral" here, I mean a large place of worship or, if "worship" is too theistic a term, then a large place for contemplation and awe. Another word is "temple." Of course, "cathedral" means specifically the location of a bishop's cathedra or throne. Bishops are successors of the Apostles who were (believed to be) witnesses of the Resurrection. But that is one tradition. There are many traditions but one mountain-top.

We worship - or contemplate with awe - with Earth below, sky above and ocean to the west and, if we are close enough to the coast, then with ocean also before us. The world is a temple. 

Regular blog readers will realize that this is a post in which I quote a single phrase from a work by Poul Anderson, then hang my own observations from it. But everyone is free to do the same, especially with such rich texts.

Shortly, I will walk across Lancaster to the Gregson Centre for a monthly gathering. Also this evening, Sheila's sister will arrive from Northern Ireland for a month or so. Fiction and life proceed in parallel.

I sometimes meditate in St. Peter's Cathedral, Lancaster. (See image.)

Proto-Intelligence

The Night Face, VIII.

Mountain apes, acting together, stalk and capture Toltecha and Raven with the clear intention of eating them. The apes are bipeds, have opposable thumbs, chatter, respond to a syllable howled by the largest, wield clubs of bone, throw rocks and bind their prisoners' hands behind them with vine which one of their number had carried around his waist. However, they bind clumsily, discard captured guns and even knives and are easily discouraged from pursuing when Raven has untied his bonds, broken free and wrought considerable damage, even killing the leader. Tolteca's verdict is: "'Proto-intelligent -...'" (p. 618)

However, this particular band of apes is more intelligent than those living nearer to human beings. The apes most frequently observed have not started to use tools even despite seeing human beings doing so. Raven hypothesizes that inbreeding of a mutation has increased the intelligence of the band that had attacked him and Tolteca which has started to develop tools even despite not seeing human beings doing this. Further, even these more intelligent apes lack the means to break into houses in order to attack human beings during Bale time. Therefore, they are not the cause of violence during Bale time.

Instead of welcoming Raven's investigation of this mystery, Elfavy denounces his interest in the matter as an "'...obsession...'" (p. 622) We should by now have realized that there is something odd about her resistance to this enquiry. 

The Milky Way Seen From Earth

Some things are taken so much for granted that usually we do not reflect on them. For instance, Sun, Moon, stars and Milky Way are perennial parts of our environment as perceived from the Terrestrial surface where we and all our ancestors have always lived. Therefore, they are often mentioned in passing in works of literature and fiction. In fact, their creation is even described in Genesis. These heavenly bodies adopt a completely different significance in science fiction where the human environment extends outwards so that people can now inhabit bases on the Moon or Mars or even travel between the stars etc. 

It is of no interest or concern to most authors that the Moon or Mars might be inhabited. Their conceptual universe does not include anything like:

Wells' Selenities or Martians;

ERB's Moon Men or Martians;

Robert Heinlein's or Poul Anderson's several races of Martians;

many others, of course.

(Mars is the most populated planet in fiction.)

Nor do non-sf authors ask us to willingly suspend our disbelief in future dwellers on the Moon, like Anderson's Lunarians and Selenarchs. This is self-evident because any author who did treat such ideas as if they were realities would thereby become an sf author.

These observations are occasioned by finding the Milky Way in a James Bond novel:

"The Milky Way soared overhead. How many stars? Bond tried counting a finger's length and was soon past the hundred. The stars lit the sea into a faint grey road and then arched away over the tip of the mast towards the black silhouette of Jamaica."

-Ian Fleming, Dr No (London, 1958), VII, p. 63.

Of course, Bond's, and our, attention must re-descend to Earth, to the sufficiently exotic setting of Jamaica. On the following page, Bond steers by the North Star.

Poul Anderson often describes the Milky Way as seen from space or from the surface of some other planet. Bond's perception of the soaring Milky Way gives him a remote kinship with sf characters.

Wellsian Anderson

We can show that Poul Anderson is a Wellsian sf writer just by focusing on The Time Machine:

Time Patrol timecycles are like improved, streamlined and mass-produced Time Machines;

the experience of time travelling is the same for Wells' Time Traveller and for Anderson's mutant time travellers;

time is a Fourth Dimension in The Time Machine and in The Corridors of Time;

there is a dark underside both in The Time Machine and in The Night Face.

For that fourth point, see:

Both Sides Now or: Dark Nights, Long Night And Night Face

- which, despite its title, omits any reference to the Long Night in Anderson's Technic History.

And now it is time to say, "Good night."

The Verge Of Intelligence

The Night Face, VII-VIII.

The mountain apes might:

"'...be half intelligent.'" (p. 608)

They might have colonized so many islands by crossing the sea on logs. Or maybe the islands were previously a continent or there were land bridges. 

Elfavy objects to the apes being killed because they might be intelligent - not "half intelligent," as before. Raven thinks that any intelligence would be:

"'On a very low plane...'" (p. 609)

- that would not bother him but, in any case, they can be dealt with without being killed. 

"Ape" means anthropoid and:

"'...fairly bright though without tools or a true speech.'" (p. 612)

Elfavy suggests that the apes might be cunning enough to evade guard robots and to use rudimentary tools but they have not been investigated as they should have been. They are a convenient explanation for something that the Gwydiona suppress.

Tolteca and Raven are used to non-human intelligences and also to:

"'...animals on the verge of intelligence...'" (p. 613)

The Gwydiona mountain apes will turn out to belong in neither of these categories.

Denial

The Night Face, VII.

According to Tolteca on p. 612, "apes" are anthropoid animals common on terrestroid planets because of parallel evolution. But we do not see them on any other planet in the Technic History.

If the mountain apes are the cause of the occasional violence during Bale Time, then they can easily be exterminated or rounded up and isolated on a distant plateau. But, when Raven suggests this, Elfavy is horrified:

"'Can you not understand? The Night Faces must be!'" (p. 609)

Yes, the dark side of life, death and so on, must be but how would preventing violence from a few apes interfere with the dark side of life, its Night Face? It would not. But Elfavy's psyche knows something else. Investigating the mountain apes would reveal that they are not the cause of the violence. Then further investigation would disclose that the Gwydiona themselves are the cause of the violence. Despite their claimed acceptance of the Night Faces, their own periodic insanity is something that their usually sunny selves cannot face.

The Unknown III

The Night Face, VII.

Elfavy says that her planet, Gwydion, is:

"'...too big for us to know everything.'" (p. 608)

- and adds:

"'And it is right that the world be so.'" (ibid.)

She asks whether Raven would like to live without mystery. He says not and adds:

"'I suppose that's why men went to the stars in the first place.'" (p. 609)

Elfavy becomes scornful when she says that men must keep looking further, sucking the planets dry, whereas the Gwydiona maintain their existing frontiers. Raven, maybe trying to placate Elfavy, says that he likes the Gwydiona attitude but sees no sense:

"'...in letting an active menace run loose.'" (ibid.)

- which is what the Gwydiona seem to be doing.

Raven is right but there is more to it than that. Maintaining existing frontiers is obscurantism. We need not preserve the area of the unknown because it is infinite whereas the growing area of the unknown is always only finite. Learning more does not suck everything dry. But the Gwydiona adopt the attitude that they do because they are avoiding a realization about their own nature.

See also:

The Unknown

The Unknown II

The Wind

Omniscience?

Imperfect Prolepsis

Metaphor And Myth

The Night Face, VII.

Does "God" have a sense of humour? See:

A Sense Of Humour

Pronouns

It is clear from the context that the Gwydiona use the word, "God," in an impersonalist sense. Some readers would prefer that this term not be used in that way. Nevertheless, some people do use it in that way. I questioned a friend about some mystical or occult reading that he was doing -

Me: Are these texts theistic?

Him: What do you mean?

Me: Do they refer to God?

Him: Yes.

Me: Do they refer to God as if God were a person?

Him: No.

Me: So not really theistic. 

Whether you like it or not - famous phrase -, there is that word used in that way. In Vedantist terminology, the Gwydiona are impersonalists. Therefore, the individual who refers to God's sense of humour speaks metaphorically and mythologically but not metaphysically.

(Life remains busy here.)

Hero Meets Villain

This can be a dramatic moment if it is handled right.

Flandry and Tachwyr

They meet first when they are both very junior, then on several occasions as they rise through the ranks, although we are shown only two such occasions. They reach the very highest ranks but do not meet then.

Flandry and Aycharaych

They meet when they are members of their respective delegations to Betelgeuse. Flandry must learn first that Aycharaych is a universal telepath, then that he is the spearhead of Merseian Intelligence. They meet several times. Flandry even captures Aycharaych once but the latter is included in a prisoner exchange. They have a final confrontation on Chereion.

Bond and Rosa Klebb

SMERSH was in the background in Casino Royale and is Bond's main opponent in Live And Let Die but he finally confronts its Head of Operations, Rosa Klebb, only at the very end of his fifth novel, From Russia, With Love.

Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld

SPECTRE replaces SMERSH as the collective villain but Bond does not confront its founder and chairman, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, until a third novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. On that occasion, they are both in different identities and Bond initially thinks that the Count cannot be Blofeld because his appearance is so different from his photograph.

Fleming's long build-up to the first meetings with Klebb and Blofeld is superb.

Tragedies

The Night Face, VI.

Raven recalls the titles of three classic tragedies:

Lear

Agamemnon

Old Men At Centauri

A few times before we have seen this kind of list extended into the future. Does the future addition seem quite plausible?

Raven also reflects on two real tragedies on Lochlann:

Vard of Helldale did not believe in his family honour but nevertheless rebelled in the name of it and was defeated and killed by his former comrades;

young Brand tended his insane wife in a peasant hut at the expense of breaking his regimental oath and losing friends, wealth and mistress.

Are these tragedies in the classic sense? Vard and Brand are not great men with fatal weaknesses but men who do the right thing by some criterion. I am not sure about family honour but commitment to a wife seems paramount. 

Laughter After The Long Night

The Night Face, VI.

Gwydion has not grass but psuedomoss.

How Different Populations Laugh

Namericans, raucously

Lochlanna, wolfishly

Gwydiona, gently and more frequently

There was also the earlier comparison of how the three populations work. See Three Approaches To Life.

Sf often compares two cultures. Poul Anderson was able to handle more than two.

How people laugh might seem trivial - in fact, it is trivial - but it tells us something. The raucousness and wolfishness of the Gwydiona have not ceased to exist but have gone somewhere but are covered up by talk of "God," the sub-rational passed off as the supra-rational. Raven has to deduce what is going on.

Is World War III starting? Is it becoming pointless to continue speculating about an extended future for mankind?

"The Night Face Called Chaos."

The Night Face, V.

There is much about (different kinds of) "Chaos" in Poul Anderson's works and therefore on this blog but have we noticed before now that "Chaos" is one of the Night Faces in The Night Face? (p. 591) Yes. See Living In Myth.

Just another quick morning post before I dash back into town where a Muslim street trader gives me his take on the war that has sprung up overnight. Internet news and our current "Chaos" are lived. Maybe we have an interstellar civilization in our future or maybe we don't.

Sol And Grass

The Night Face, V.

The very last word on p. 585 is:

"'Sol..."

Over the page, the sentence continues:

"'...went there with a camera.'" (p. 586)

So this "Sol" is the name of a man, not of Earth's sun.

On p. 590:

"Grass whispered under [Raven's] boots..."

In a narrative set on the surface of another planet, Poul Anderson usually uses some phrase like "pseudo-grass" or "the local equivalent of grass" in order to make the point that, if there is any ground cover there, then it cannot be identical to any kind of Terrestrial grass - and should be shown to be different in any screen adaptation. The entire environment, not just some of its inhabitants, should look extra-terrestrial even in those cases, like the present one, where the planet is described as terrestroid.

The precision of Anderson's texts makes close readers sensitive even to minor terminological issues.

Sunniness

The Night Face, IV.

If everything is a facet of God, then this should include:

"...death, ruin, sorrow. But [the Gwydiona] didn't say much, or seem to think much, about that side of reality. [Tolteca] remembered that their arts and literature, like their daily lives, were mostly sunny, cheerful..." (p. 582)

I have read something else very like that recently. I do not seek out these parallels but they come to me. 

We’re told it’s June, specifically June 10. This is the fourth of the five Bond books published so far to take place in the summer months. Is summer the best time for secret agent work? Fleming wrote all of the Bond books at Goldeneye in Jamaica, where he went every year to escape the cold London winters. “The sun is always shining in my books,” Fleming once said.

-copied from here.

And:

"...the endless summer drew on into September.

"In my memory of those days the sun is always shining...

"It surely must have rained... there must have been clouds in our private skies, but if there were I can't remember them."

-Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me (London, 1980), three, p. 34.

However, Fleming also shows us plenty of death! - whereas the Gwydiona are concealing something from themselves.

The Gwydiona dancer, Elfavy, compares the Lochlanna soldier, Raven, to a storm, in other words to something that does exist, thus is part of God, but also is difficult to live with.

"'He lives with the Night Faces. All the time. I can't even bear to think of that, but he endures it.'" (pp. 584-585)

In "just sitting" meditation, we "sit with" whatever comes up, which can be ghastly, our past wrong actions and their consequences, but we do not seek out or dwell on ghastliness. Also, one step on the Buddhist Eightfold Path is "right means of livelihood," which surely excludes making killing a profession. There are differences of opinion, of course...

Attitudes To Death

An Ythrian of the New Faith is astounded at the suggestion that a soul should leave a body at death. He asks, "'How could it? Why should it?'" (See Death.) 

A Gwydiona woman is horrified by an ancient song in which a dead person speaks from her grave. The dead do not speak. They go into the Night which becomes and is the Day. It is all one. (The Night Face, III, pp. 575-576)

I share the Ythrian's scepticism and the Gwydiona monism but am short of time. Back here later today probably.

Go with God in some senses of the word.

Essays And Fragments

This blog focuses on Poul Anderson but also discusses other writers. Anderson is an ideal focus because of the quantity and quality of his works. Some of what is said here is more generally applicable, e.g., that an author needs to control narrative points of view; that he needs to be able to present sympathetic treatments of characters with opposed aims and philosophies; that descriptive passages are more vivid when several senses are appealed to; that an author can make his point, if he has one in any particular work, without directly preaching at his readers etc.

Those of us who read a lot of fiction develop some understanding of how it should be written without being able to write it ourselves. At most, we can make some attempts or "essays," thus learning at first hand how difficult it is. Writing groups exist although I have never been involved in one. There was, maybe still is, a Masters degree course in creative writing at Lancaster University although I think that an entry requirement was that a candidate had to already have had at least one piece published. Rereading our own attempts years or decades later, we might conclude that they are not hopelessly bad but also that they fall far short of the standard of successful published authors. It is in this light that I have recently reread my own few attempts:

Time Travel

Yossi, the Time Traveller (acknowledges Heinlein and Anderson)

Time Travel Memoirs Fragments (a loose and incomplete sequel)

Mask

2025

A Few Fragments

Other

The Very First Draft Of A Science Fiction Story (also set in 2025)

See also two earlier posts on this theme:

Incomplete Time Travel Stories

Time Travel Fiction

One More Parallel That I Cannot Resist

Two young gypsy women are about to fight. Darko Kerim informs James Bond:

"'They are to fight. If the loser is not killed she will be banished for ever. That will be the same as death. These people whither and die outside the tribe. They cannot live in our world. It is like wild beasts forced to live in a cage.'"

-Ian Fleming, From Russia, With Love (London, 1964), CHAPTER 18, p. 129.

The parallel should be obvious to Poul Anderson readers. In Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, the tinerans fight a lot and die if banished. However, Anderson presents a scientific explanation or science fictional rationalization. The tinerans have become addicted to the emotional feedback and amplification that they receive from the telepathic, formerly Chereionite, animals that they keep as mascots.

Is it true of gypsies that they would fight to the death and die if banished or was Fleming's imagination just running on overtime? In any case, his gypsies exactly parallel Anderson's tinerans.

Tomorrow, I will travel to another town for a pre-corona-operation interview so there will be less time for blogging. Eyesight is important for reading, not to mention other activities.

Usual

What is "usual"? What we are used to which can be very different from what someone else is used to. 

Two fictional examples, the second from Poul Anderson:

(i) In a DC comic, a supervillain had found himself on a very peculiar parallel Earth where no one had gained any superpowers so that the only place to read about superpowered beings was not in the newspapers but in comic books. Another supervillain commented that that seemed unlikely and it was unlikely, to them.

(ii) In Poul Anderson's Operation Luna, Einstein and Planck cooperated to originate neither relativity nor quantum mechanics but rheatics, then Mossley degaussed the effects of cold iron, thus releasing goetic forces which we call "magic." Therefore, among many other consequences, it is usual to cross the Atlantic not in an airliner but on a flying carpet. I kid you not. 

Inhabitants of those parallels would find our everyday circumstances highly unusual. 

Raven's Reflections And Sensations

The Night Face, III.

When I quoted "green fragrance" and a blowing horn here, I neglected to mention that the immediately preceding sentence had been full of sounds:

scuffing boots;

chuckling river;

murmuring leaves;

rising thunder.

These sounds are said to stir the silence. Contradiction? The silence is that of Raven, unspeaking because thinking. That the Gwydiona have no dangerous weapons is what frightens him. His fear is of the unknown. I happen to think that a human society without conflict is possible but I agree with Raven that, if we were to encounter anything that was (to us) so unusual, then our initial response should be caution: beware of hidden pitfalls. ("Let the spacemen beware!")

The celebration of the senses continues:

the river roars entering the sea;

sunset makes it molten;

the wind is chill, wet and salty;

flying sea birds are gray.

Since we both smell and taste salt, that is a full complement of the senses. Hail Poul Anderson.

One Republic

Rereading James Bond simultaneously with Poul Anderson's Technic History, I find prime facie plot holes in Fleming's novels but, if these are to be posted about, then this should be done on my Personal and Literary Reflections blog and I am currently focused only on Poul Anderson Appreciation.

Fleming's descriptions of exotic locations like Istanbul remind us of sf writers' descriptions of cities on extra-solar planets. Istanbul has Hagia Sophia. Ardaig, ancient capital of Merseia, has the tower on Eidh Hill. See Merseian Prayers.

Appreciating the works of both authors, we reflect that "The Republic of Letters is one," a phrase that I find that I have quoted before although I had completely forgotten what it referred to. See here.

Does sf remain a literary ghetto? Somehow, the description of a real historical city comes across as more substantial and plausible than the comparably detailed description of an imagined city, albeit also ancient, on a terrestroid but extra-solar planet.

What It Means (Or The Meaning Of It All)

The Night Face, III.

Raven, the Lochlanna Commandant, works hard to understand the Gwydiona, especially since they are so unusual to begin with. He tells his men:

"'They say, "Man goes where God is," and it seems to mean...'"

(We have been wondering what "God" means so here we go...)

"'...that work and play and art and private life and everything else aren't divided up; no distinction is made between them, it's all one harmonious whole.'" (p. 566)

Oneness, harmony, wholeness: yes, we can associate these qualities with "God," although some might say that the use of this word with only that meaning is metaphorical.

The Gwydiona fish (work) in elaborately carved and decorated boats (art) with multiple symbolisms to musical accompaniment (more art) and claim that this multifaceted activity is more efficient than compartmentalization. Raven is even prepared to concede that:

"'They might be right...'" (ibid.)

The transcendence of the distinction between work and leisure should be a future social goal. Drudgery should be eliminated. Enjoyable and self-realizing activity, whether "work" or creative leisure, should be maximized. Years ago, my friend, Kevin, sat on a park bench watching his grandchildren on the swings on a Saturday morning while simultaneously selling an electric balance to a customer over his mobile phone. His work and leisure were seamlessly blended. Before mobile phones, he would have had to go home and use the land line: more of a distinction between work and leisure. A trivial example, of course.

I think that the Gwydiona vision is realizable without the downside, the Night Face, which we learn that it has.

God(s) And A Horn

In James Blish's The Triumph Of Time, Jorn the Apostle says, "Go with God." In Poul Anderson's The Night Face, the Gwydiona say, "'Man goes where God is.'" (III, p. 566) They sound the same. However, Jorn is described as a Fundamentalist. The Gwydiona are anything but Fundamentalists. Their God has Aspects which are clearly symbolic. That word, "God," gets a lot of use. And the Gwydiona are misusing the word because their supposed annual ascent into God is really a temporary descent into insanity. "God" has to mean something transcendent - Someone, according to theists - or it means nothing.

A particular bush on Gwydion has:

"...a green fragrance..." (ibid.)

After that combination of colour and scent, we expect a third sense and are not disappointed. In the very next sentence:

"Then far off and winding down the slopes, a bronze horn blew, calling antlered cattle home." (ibid.)

Poul Anderson knew exactly what he was doing in every sentence. He went with God in creativity.

Gwydiona Mysticism

The Night Face.

Gwydiona mysticism is another much-posted topic. See:

Gwydiona Symbolism

Gwydion Mythology

Symbolism

Rather than add more philosophy to these posts, I have just now added to the combox for "Gwydiona Mythology." 

Young Flandry And Bond

Poul Anderson, having written about Captain Flandry, then backtracked and wrote about seventeen-year-old Ensign Flandry. Ian Fleming, having written about Commander Bond, did not backtrack but kept Bond's assignments about a year apart in sync with his book publications. However, in his fifth instalment, Bond remembers his skiing and rock-climbing seventeen-year-old self, imagines meeting that younger self and wonders what the two Bonds would make of each other but then dismisses such thoughts as a waste of time. Subsequently, someone else has been authorized to write Young Bond novels. We age and remember and novelists find different ways to express these universal experiences. 

The year 1956 returns to our attention when Fleming footnotes that it was in March of that year that he wrote a passage in which Bond speculates that Guy Burgess would be driven to make contact.

Symbolism

The Night Face, II.

"...Dawyd knelt to light a candle before a niche. The shrine held a metal disc, half gold and half black with a bridge between the Yang and Yin of immemorial antiquity." (pp. 562-563)

A disc half gold and half black sounds like Yin and Yang but what is the bridge? 

Dawyd explains the elaborate symbolism in the designs on a bronze and tooled leather chair. The Burning Wheel is the sun, all suns, time and thermodynamic irreversibility. Interwoven vines which bloom during hay-gathering also mean time which destroys and regenerates. Leather from wild areas recalls Night Faces, the other side of Day Faces. Bronze, man-made, says that man embodies meaning and structure. However, that same bronze, by turning green as it corrodes, says that all structures vanish into new life. Trying to summarize, I have omitted references to two Aspects of God, the Green Boy and the autumnal Huntress.

Too elaborate? Gwydiona psychology has constructed complicated structures to control its own "Night Faces," supposedly acknowledged but in fact suppressed most of the time.

The Buddhist monastery visited by our meditation group displays detailed images of both historical and mythological figures but the images are intended to elucidate, not to conceal, and the meditation practice is focused on inner reflection facing a blank wall, not on visualization. (Visualization is used in another tradition. Everyone finds the practice that helps them.)

Light Be Yours

The Night Face, II.

The immediately preceding Technic History instalment, "A Tragedy of Errors," is about misunderstandings caused by linguistic changes. The Night Face might involve the same problem:

"'Evidently, the meaning of the word "government" has diverged in our language from yours. Let me think, please.' Dawyd knitted his brow." (p. 557)

However, it will emerge that the problem runs deeper.

When the Gwydiona, Dawyd, welcomes the Namerican, Tolteca, into his house, he recites a formal greeting:

"'O guest of the house, who may be God, most welcome and beloved, enter. In the name of joy, and health, and understanding, beneath Ynis and She and the stars; fire, flood, fleet, and light be yours.'" (p. 562)

Ynis is the sun. She, IIRC, is the single moon. Thus, "beneath heaven." Why is this elaborate greeting not abbreviated? Why does he wish fire, fleet and flood for his guest? There are further refinements. Dawyd crosses himself, then draws a cross on his guest's brow with a finger. Furthermore, and this is surprising:

"The ritual was obviously ancient, and yet he did not gabble it, but spoke with vast seriousness." (ibid.)

Surely you or I would tend to gabble if we had to repeat that regularly? It is not a mere ritual. The psychology of the Gwydiona is such that, without any apparent effort on their part, they maintain elaborately civilized behaviour most of the time but go insane once a year and then forget. Even they do not know what their problem is. The Night Face is hidden.

Someone might ask, "Wasn't there a Star Trek like this?" But we have already covered that! See here.

Through Time

Sf shows cultural collisions, clashes etc when:

space explorers reach inhabited extrasolar planets;

time dilated space travelers return to Earth;

time travelers arrive in historical or future periods.

The conclusion of the preceding post reminds us of time travel stories by Poul Anderson:

"Welcome"

Time travelers to a near future are welcome to share a cannibalistic meal.

"Time Heals"

Increasing incomprehension with increased futurity.

"The Man Who Came Early"

A modern man does not succeed in an earlier period contra Mark Twain.

"The Little Monster"

A young boy's effect on proto-men.

"Flight to Forever"

Succeeding civilizations, either hostile or indifferent.

Also:

The Quincunx Of Time by James Blish

Not time travel but nevertheless increasingly incomprehensible messages from further futures.

Conflicting Cultures In Two Future Histories

The Night Face, II.

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

Solarians

Nomads

Erulani

Alori 

- see The Peregrine II

- and also:

Stellamont

- see Conflicting Cultures

In Anderson's Technic History, Namericans are enthusiastically welcoming and sociable whereas Lochlanna are elaborately and guardedly courteous and Gwydiona are both friendly and hospitable but in an unusual, almost alien, way that extraplanetary visitors must try to fathom.

Cross-cultural contacts across space and time are one theme of sf, e.g., the Time Traveler and the Eloi.

What We Did Not Say In The Previous Post...

...but have said often enough before.

Poul Anderson addressed the Frankenstein question, "Is it right to create human beings?," in his posthumously published novel, Genesis.

Anderson wrote several future histories and his Technic History is longer and more complicated than Heinlein's Future History.

Wells hinted at time travel paradoxes whereas Anderson fully developed both such paradoxes: circular causality and causality violation.

Anderson retold Norse myths and sagas.

The surprise in the previous post came when I realized that Buck Rogers, although not originally a space traveller, had inspired several later space travelling science fiction heroes and therefore that Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry might be regarded as one culmination of this tradition in popular fiction. 

Literary Traditions And Culminations

As we have seen, some works by Poul Anderson can be regarded as culminating points in particular literary traditions. 

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel.

Robert Heinlein's Future History was the first future history series.

HG Wells' Time Traveller was the first fictional character able to move backwards and forwards in time at will, thus the first time traveller as opposed to a temporally displaced person.

We know of Anderson's contributions to science fiction, to future histories and to time travel.

Also, like Tolkien, he brought Norse mythology into modern fantasy. 

Anderson's Dominic Flandry is a space adventurer so who was the first of those? I think that it was Buck Rogers even though the earliest version of this character:

was called Anthony Rogers;

was born in 1898;

was a veteran of World War I;

survived into the 25th century by suspended animation;

did not travel through space;

was revived by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle;

was loosely connected by them to their Lucifer's Hammer.

A fascinating piece of science fiction history.

Gwydion

Poul Anderson, The Night Face IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 541-660.

The Night Face is over 100 pages in length, which is my rule of thumb criterion for differentiating a novel from a shorter work of prose fiction.

How often in sf do space travelers approach a new planet and have to discover what is peculiar about this particular planet? The answer to this question provides the plot of a story. We remember many Star Trek episodes but also many prose stories and novels by well known sf authors. 

Unlike the sun of Nike in the preceding Technic History instalment, Ynis is:

"...a most ordinary main sequence star..." (I, p. 552)

Is there anything peculiar about its humanly colonized planet, Gwydion?

Gwydion:

very Earth-like;

ten per cent smaller and denser;

younger;

therefore, incorporating heavier atoms;

with archipelagos in shallow oceans but no continents;

uniformly mild climate;

one moon.

But what of the inhabitants? First, they are not primitive. Secondly, there is no evidence of strife or crime in their society. The Commandant of the military force in the Quetzal is right to state that, in that case, he:

"'...can't guess what their common sense is like.'" (p. 550)

It sounds promising but what is beneath the surface?

Old Mars

Mars has lost most of its air and water because it is old. Martians direct water from the poles along canals and maintain their atmosphere with oxygen-generating machinery in large buildings called "atmosphere plants," as far as I remember. My source is A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. 

But surely Mars should be no older than Earth? They were formed at the same time together with the rest of the Solar System.

Mars has not developed a thick atmosphere yet because it is small, according to Yasmin in Poul Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors." See "Yasmin's Moment Of Realization," here.

I like Yasmin's additional point that any star is nearly all hydrogen and helium so that:

"'Variations in other elements...'" (p. 532)

- cannot affect it much. This helps her to deduce that Nike and its sun are old, not young, which in turn has immediate and important practical consequences.

Anderson's characters are problem-solvers, Yasmin and Roan Tom par excellence.

After

What happens after a disaster?

After the Apocalypse and the Ragnarok, a new heaven and a new earth.

After Armageddon at the end of James Blish's Black Easter, the events of the sequel, The Day After Judgement.

After Earth has been sterilized in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, an American all-male spaceship crew and a European all-female spaceship crew find each other.

After this universe in Anderson's Tao Zero, a new universe.

After this universe in Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the same universe in a temporal cycle.

Near the end of this universe in Anderson's The Avatar, a powerful race influencing the formation of a new universe.

After the Terran Empire in Anderson's Technic History, two appropriately entitled volumes: The Long Night and The Night Face.

After Earth has had to be evacuated in Anderson's "The Chapter Ends," human participation in Galactic civilization.

After the inundation of Ys in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, the Dark Ages but also the seeds of medieval feudalism.

Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End is continually created by the ending of worlds.

Something will happen after us.

Wanderer And Wind

"A Tragedy of Errors."

On Nike, the "Wanderer" is clearly the Devil:

"'Orgino was a war chief of three hundred years agone. They said he was so wicked he must be in league with the Wanderer...'" (p. 520)

Wanderer is a character in The Boat Of A Million Years.

Odin is the Wanderer because he is the god of the wind.

Roan Tom, flying, thinks that:

"He must be one with the wind..." (p. 526)

- which suddenly blows with impossible force!

Unpredictable destructive weather is a clue to Nike's nature. And learning how to predict that weather will be a decisive negotiating edge for Tom's group.

Wind And Waves

"A Tragedy of Errors."

See Silences.

You will find a conversational silence in which wind lulls.

In another timeline, Roan Tom, unable to sleep even at midnight, awaits his wives at a designated rendezvous point while:

"The cold wind lulled, the cold waves lapped, a winged creature flittered and whistled. Tom sat down where a portcullis had been and stared into the woods beyond." (p. 523)

Wind, waves, woods, winged whistler and worries match up with each other. Then Dagny and Yasmin arrive and the narrative continues but meanwhile we have appreciated a pause between the actions.

And what they do next is a story for another day.

Duplications

Sometimes, while rereading a work by Poul Anderson, I find a passage that I would like to post about but then search the blog and find that I have already posted about it. This happens increasingly frequently, of course. At other times, I post first and search second. This can result in some duplications, e.g.:

Three Senses On Nike (21 April 2018)

Three Senses On Nike (8 June 2025)

Just over seven years between them so, of course, I had forgotten the first post. But there are some slight differences between the two posts so maybe both are worth preserving? The first post links to many others through the short story, "Eutopia," which takes us from a future history series to alternative histories. History is an important aspect of Poul Anderson's works which also include ordinary historical fiction in which, e.g., explorers into Northern waters find not Utgard or the World Serpent but icebergs. It is all one multiverse.

Whether To Continue Writing (Or Reading) A Series

Perhaps many of us would agree that the Foundation series and the Dune series should have been discontinued long ago but let's discuss something more positive - four authors: Poul Anderson; Stieg Larsson; John le Carre; Ian Fleming.

Anderson (i) knew when to stop and (ii) remained creative until the end. Thus, within his Technic History, Anderson brought the Polesotechnic League sub-series to a conclusion in grand style with Mirkhem, brought the Dominic Flandry sub-series to a conclusion in grand style with A Stone In Heaven and The Game Of Empire, then turned to other kinds of speculative futures. Anderson got it right at every stage. I would have preferred more Technic History but I cannot fault what Anderson did.

Larsson planned ten Millennium volumes but died after only three so that series is unfinished.

Le Carre said in an interview that he had started writing George Smiley as played by Alec Guinness! - so he terminated that series and wrote novels about different versions of the Secret Service.

Fleming got tired of his series and made some attempts to break out of it but nevertheless continued writing James Bond novels competently until the end.

Four different writing, and reading, experiences.

Three Senses on Nike

"A Tragedy of Errors."

"Sunset rays burned the hilltop fiery. Further down, the land was already blue with a dusk through which river, bay, and distant sea glimmered argent. Cloud banks towered in the east, blood-colored, dwarfing the Sawtooth Mountains that marked Hanno's frontier." (p. 518)

Several colours but what of other senses? There should be at least two. Sure enough:

in Tom's captured flyer, savagely cold air sears his nostrils and numbs his fingers;

he hears the droning combustion power-plant and the clattering of the captured "fish"'s teeth. 

When Poul Anderson mentions one sense, look for more.

Fish

Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors" is about words changing their meanings but why are Nikean fighter pilots called "fish"? This could be an abbreviation of "officer" or "official." There is a film in which a character played by Peter Ustinov asks another character, "Are you here officially?" The other man, appearing to understand, enthusiastically replies, "Yes, yes, fishally!" and hands him a big fish. A Lancaster City Councilor has the surname Fish so I ask him whether he is attending an event officially. In Frank Herbert's Dune series, an all-women army is called Fish Speakers with little or no explanation of this odd phrase. (The God Emperor resembles a big beached fish.) So the word, "fish," crops up in some odd contexts where it seems really out of place: a fish out of water; a fish riding a bicycle.

Radiation Or Convergence II

In Isaac Asimov's future history series, mankind spreads from Earth out into the Galaxy. However, we do not yet know whether this is true. Maybe "mankind" is currently evolving on many terrestroid planets and will converge to form an interstellar civilization that will become a Galactic Empire? In Poul Anderson's short story, "Details," humanoid beings differing only in superficial bodily features do evolve on many terrestroid planets. However, that was not serious speculation by Anderson. And there is no suggestion that these different humanoid races would be interfertile.

Although many humanities have not yet been disproved, they are surely so improbable that they can be ruled out. However, we can hope to get more positive knowledge of extra-solar life in our lifetimes.

Fourteen Comparisons

James Bond is often hospitalized after a mission. Dominic Flandry is not.

Bond has a Scottish housekeeper, May, who is mentioned several times but appears only twice. Flandry acquires Chives who accompanies him on missions.

Bond drives fast cars. Flandry has an interstellar speedster.

Bond operates while the British Empire is being dismantled whereas Flandry operates while the Terran Empire is in long term decline.

Bond's conflict with Blofeld becomes a personal vendetta. Flandry regrets his conflict with Aycharaych.

Bond has a more powerful ally, the CIA. Flandry does not.

Bond blows up the Castle of Death. Flandry bombards Chereion.

We see more of Bond in his office than of Flandry in his.

Bond remains a Commander throughout his series whereas Flandry advances from Ensign to Fleet Admiral.

Bond dreads aging and is not seen to age, indeed is kept young, even in the books, whereas Flandry does age and interacts with a grown-up son and daughter.

Bond refuses a knighthood. Flandry accepts his.

In Japan, Bond prays at Shinto shrines. On Dennitza, Flandry addresses Kossara, martyred though not yet canonized, in a Cathedral.

Bond senses a response from a Jizo guardian whereas Flandry does not feel that he receives any answer in the Cathedral.

Bond works with the Union Corse, French organized crime, against SPECTRE. David Falkayn works with the Gethfennu, Merseian organized crime, against Valenderay.

Addendum: Maybe there is covert sf in Moonraker? - an impossible-seeming burst of speed from a Russian submarine before it is destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Maybe the Russians were experimenting with a superfast sub?

Radiation Or Convergence

Did human beings originate on a single planet, then spread to many planets throughout the Galaxy, or, alternatively,  did they originate on many planets, then converge? This question arises not in Poul Anderson's Terran Empire, four hundred light-years across, but in Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire, literally filling the Galaxy although spreading no further.

The question is absurd. Asimov assumes a Galaxy full of terrestroid but uninhabited planets easily colonized by human beings without any need for terraforming or adaptation. He does not describe any extra-solar organisms from which human beings might have evolved. In fact, he does not describe any extra-solar organisms - whereas, for every exoplanet in his Technic History, Anderson always presents a full ecology of plants and animals. He also goes into detail about the evolution of some of extra-solar intelligent species. See Speculution. 

Anderson deserves to be read more widely than Asimov.

A Historical Summary

"A Tragedy of Errors."

"The Empire fell." (p. 500)

Interstellar travel diminished.

Colonies were demoralized.

"...planets broke up politically..." (ibid.)

"...most industry was destroyed..." (ibid.)

There were no resources for rebuilding.

On Nike, heavy metals, formerly imported, are reclaimed from scrap.

Lighter metals had been not mined but electrochemically extracted from the sea.

But extraction technology no longer exists.

Iron oxides are present but unworkably diffuse.

Boards in houses are pegged, not nailed.

A wooden windmill pumps water that drives farm machines.

Nike will benefit from an interstellar alliance.

Peace And Space

There is another reference to interplanetary travel in Moonraker. The Prime Minister addresses the public about the rocket:

"'...designed exclusively for the defence of our beloved island...a long era of peace...development for Man's great journey away from the confines of this planet...Sir Hugo Drax, that great patriot and benefactor of our country...'

"Gala heard Drax's roar of laughter above the howling of the wind..."

-Moonraker, Chapter XX, p. 147.

There was a feeling that peace and space were in our future as described by sf writers although Heinlein and Clarke were generally better known than Poul Anderson.

I trust that regular readers of this blog appreciate the howling wind accompanying the villain's roaring laughter.

(This is late evening other reading time.)

Languages And Hope

"A Tragedy of Errors." 

Yasmin speaks Pelevah and Anglic. Dagny speaks Eylan and a little pidgin Anglic. Roan Tom speaks Eylan and Anglic. Nikeans speak Anglic but with some crucial changed meanings.

In Tom's absence, Dagny, using single words, signs and sketches, slowly tells Yasmin that:

"'We've nothing to go on but hope.'" (p. 489)

This makes for a comparison with a recent discussion of virtues. See Diana's Faith And Hope. As against the traditional virtues of faith, hope and charity, Dagny proposes a different list: hope, courage, wits and endurance. But these are necessary specifically for survival. In their circumstances as fugitives on Nike, Dagny has no need to discuss any more civilized virtues. Civilization is being rebuilt but not in the space of a single short story. The barbarism of Dagny's home planet, Kraken, is shown when she says:

"'We may or may not be able to get Tom back unhurt. I vow the gods a hundred Blue Giant sea beasts if we do!'" (ibid.)

- a conceptual link back to some of Poul Anderson's historical fiction.

An Unusual Star

"A Tragedy of Errors."

Like Roan Tom, his chief wife, Dagny, is familiar enough with stellar types to recognize when a newly approached star is unusual. The sun of Nike radiates as much as an early Type F although its colour and spectrum are closer to late G or early K and it flares so much that maybe its chemical composition is anomalous. Dagny also knows that her own knowledge and understanding of astrophysics and planetology are limited because they are unscientific and merely traditional. Her initial conclusions are necessarily provisional and will be shown to be mistaken when Yasmin, with her "classical" education, has had time to make some more precise calculations. But Dagny is able to think about such matters in ways that most of Poul Anderson's readers cannot because she has some practical experience of interstellar travel. Will our descendants have such experience, even if not faster than light?

AI Writing

Authors continuing their creative careers in a hereafter? See:

Some Reflections On Death III

Highly improbable. However, might something else happen? Might an AI program be able to reproduce Poul Anderson's literary style and thus to create entire new collections or novels about:

the Chaos

the Grand Surveys

the Breakup

young van Rijn

Jim Ching

Juan Hernandez

Emil Dalmady

the second trader team that Chee Lan joined

Manuel Argos

Tachwyr

Aycharaych

Diana Crowfeather and Targovi

the Long Night

Roan Tom

the Allied Planets

Daven Laure of the Commonalty

the Time Patrol

the Old Phoenix

etc?

If this could be done, then it might be regarded as an artificial but nevertheless authentic extension of the original author's creativity whereas a second human author writing sequels unavoidably contributes his own creativity.

I do not know whether this is possible. One thing is certain - that readers would be deeply divided as to its desirability.