Fast Bound

The Avatar, XXXIII.

Joelle remembers a chaplain quoting not only from the Bible but also from the Book of Common Prayer:

"'- fast bound in misery and iron -'" (p. 286)

However, this brief quotation from the BCP seems to be from Psalm 107: 10, in any case. See also here.

See some relevant previous posts here.

Particularly:

A Note on Anderson's Use of the Bible by Sean M. Brooks

The Bible on The Blog (this has not been kept up to date)

It is beyond my power to list all of Poul Anderson's references to the Bible. How many are there in this single novel to begin with?

Elder Races And Law Enforcement

In the Green Lantern superhero comic book, the Guardians of the Universe are an elder race that organizes the Green Lantern Corps as a multi-species, intergalactic law enforcement agency. The Guardians combine aspects of the Others in Poul Anderson's The Avatar and of the Danellians in Anderson's Time Patrol series. 

The Others are a cosmic elder race that facilitates travel through space-time by less advanced beings but that rarely has occasion to intervene in the affairs of such beings. Law enforcement is not necessary. The Danellians, an elder race in time as opposed to space, are our successors rather than our predecessors. They do have to intervene in the affairs of their ancestors and therefore organize the Time Patrol as a time travelling police force to prevent interference in past events.

Another possible comparison is with EE Smith's Arisians organizing the Galactic Patrol against the Eddorians but that is hardly on the same level of writing. 

When a human spaceship revolves around a T machine constructed by the Others and arrives at a time before the galaxies had condensed, Poul Anderson brings home the implications of the concept of a species operating on the scale of cosmic space-time.

Guardians and Arisians: space.

Danellians: time.

Others: space-time.

Wind And The Milky Way

The Avatar, XXXI. 

The Milky Way is described as:

"...the galactic river..." (p. 265)

I do not know whether I have noted this particular use of this phrase before. For others, see:

Meanwhile, Back On Earth, Time Passes

This chapter presents yet another item, in this case Caitlin's head, seen against the Milky Way but we have noticed this one before. See:

Shadow And Milky Way

Caitlin's newly composed song invokes the wind as inspiring wanderlust:

"A bugle wind is blowing

"It's time that I be going..." (p. 268)

I cannot imagine that song being sung though but maybe someone has done it at a Con?

Things go as well as they might but not perfectly for the crew after a drunken party and they prepare for the next jump.

On Danu

The Avatar, XXVIII.

On Danu, inter-species communication commences not with mathematics but with music. It was fortunate that Caitlin Mulrayn was the third (lookout etc) in the crew of the exploratory vessel and that she took her musical instrument with her. Unfortunately, communication must cease as soon as it starts because Chinook has to move on. 

The human explorers have been fortunate in their first jump because they have found not only an intelligent species but also one that has been favoured by the Others who have given the Danaans metal tools to use on their gas giant planet. Poul Anderson has created an environment that his characters visit but must then leave.

The novel must move on. Chapter XXIX is narrated by a chimpanzee who occupies two entire pages as against the single page granted to the previous avatars of the Others. Chapter XXX returns us to human problems on board Chinook. The familiar contrast between the freedom of interstellar travel and confinement inside a spaceship:

"'Free?...Locked in a metal shell...'" (p. 235)

- had been made back in Chapter XXVII.

The human spirit, exemplified by Caitlin, can transcend its constraints - and can also learn how to construct less constraining interstellar vessels.

A Few More Popes

After a recent post on Popes, I will add:

we went to see Conclave earlier today;

James Blish's demon Pope takes the name, Juvenember LXIX, although what that name signifies or why his number is so high I have no idea.

In Poul Anderson's The Avatar, XXVIII, Caitlin Mulryan, raised in post-Troubles Catholic Ireland, says that she believes:

"'In life...'" (p. 248)

In Anderson's Technic History, some characters, like van Rijn and the Nuevo Mexicans, are Catholics whereas others, like Philippe Rochefort and Fr. Axor, are "Jerusalem Catholics." We are not told whether these are the same. If my theory that Jerusalem Catholicism is the former Roman Catholicism with its headquarters moved to Jerusalem is correct, then it follows that the Bishop of Jerusalem is the Pope but Poul Anderson avoids all such details. There are many unanswered questions in his Technic History.

"I" II

When I wrote here that there is an "I," I did not mean to contradict the Buddhist anatta (no soul) teaching. I do not believe that each psychophysical organism is conscious only because it interacts with a permanently enduring immaterial entity but I do agree with Kant that coherent experience is possible only if disparate sensory inputs are unified into discrete perceptions, generating the thought: "I see/hear/perceive that." This "transcendental unity of apperception" does not entail a metaphysical soul. In this sense, I think that Joelle is right to deny that there is an "I" and the Buddha was right to deny that there is a soul.

Poul Anderson's texts are a springboard to discuss anything and everything.

Tonight our clocks gain an hour and tomorrow is Mothers' Day. We have two mothers in our immediate family. I will be away from the computer for much of tomorrow.

Prevarication

The Avatar, XXVI.

(Explanatory Note: In a post title, "The Avatar VI" means the sixth post about The Avatar whereas, within a post, "The Avatar VI" refers to The Avatar, Chapter VI. Apologies for any  confusion.)

Simeon Ilyitch Makarov, premier of Great Russia, says kill the prisoners. His fellow conspirator, Ira Quick, thinks:

"I've had an inferno's worth of hours to agonize over the moral issues..." (p. 232)

Quick tells himself that he has agonized so what has this agony done for him? His thought continues:

"A time finally comes when the civilized man must attack alongside his ally of expediency or be left behind and have no voice at the peace conference." (ibid.)

Quick has previously thought of this ally of expediency as:

"...you barbarian tyrant." (XXV, p. 216)

Now Quick says:

"'Sir, let's sleep on it and then talk further, but at the moment I am inclined to believe that in principle you are right.'" (p. 232)

That means: "You are right." Everything before that is prevarication. James Blish wished that CS Lewis had written more fiction precisely because of his ability to show how people deceive themselves in just this sort of way.

Some other prevarications that I have heard:

"I used to be a person who was promiscuous."

That means: "I was promiscuous." Six unnecessary words serve only to delay the admission, if such it is.

A British theologian: "The truth is that I adore Jesus."

In a theological work, we expect a phrase like "The truth is..." to presage a theological truth. Instead, this writer's subjective state of mind is elevated to the level of "truth." His sentence means: "I adore Jesus." That is a psychological or biographical datum about him, not "The truth..."

Through Space And Time II

See Through Space And Time.

The Time Machine and the time projector do not move. They do not go anywhere. They stay where they are on the Earth's surface - despite the Time Traveller's reported, and unaccountable, sensation of headlong motion. Poul Anderson's Martin Saunders, enclosed in his time projector, has merely the familiar experience of sitting or walking around inside a vehicle while it is in transit. He see grayness, not accelerated events, through the single porthole.

When either of these temporal vehicles "arrives," it is still where it was. Only time has passed. This contrasts sharply with what happens to Dan Broderson's spaceship, Chinook, when it has followed a path around a T machine. Chinook is still in space although in a very different part of space, in a different planetary system, or even further afield. To explore a planetary surface, assuming the existence of a suitable nearby planet, some crew must descend in a space boat. They cannot just do the equivalent of stepping off the Time Machine or out of the time projector.

For their first four "jumps," see here.

"I"

The Avatar, XXVII.

Joelle, the holothete with a computer-enhanced perception and understanding of the universe, thinks:

"...I learned long ago not to fear death. Having looked straight into Reality - there is no "I" to dread the loss of. There is a temporary association of mitochondria, eukaryotic cells, intestinal flora, and the like, the whole symbiosis shading off into the world around it that begot it, serving no end except the perpetuation of the genes within. Were the immortality of my 'person' offered me, I would not want it. Too petty, amidst atoms, eons, and galaxies." (p. 238)

This is the mind-body problem again. Physically, chemically and biologically, there is only a temporary association of cells, flora etc. Psychologically, there is experience, self-consciousness, intellect, intuition, understanding and maybe some wisdom. That is where there is an "I." It too is temporary but it exists just as the mitochondria do. The end served by the biological synthesis is the perpetuation of genes but the ends served by the "I" are the growth of consciousness, knowledge and understanding. Immortality, or at least longevity, of the "person" would further those ends.

How do mitochondria generate "I"? How do wavelengths generate colours? Quantitative changes generate irreducible qualitative changes. 

Through Space And Time

One kind of sf narrative involves successive jumps through space, through time or through space-time. Thus, the author is free to create several novel destinations as opposed to just a single fictional setting. We can start with HG Wells' Time Traveller who watches architectural and environmental changes speeding past the Time Machine, spends a few days in 802,701 AD, visits some further futures, culminating in the end of life on Earth, then returns to his starting point in the late nineteenth century. (This means that our twentieth and twenty-first centuries are completely bypassed.)

In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the time projector, like the Time Machine, remains stationary on the Earth's surface so that the jumps are only through time. Both vehicles arrive back in a slightly different position because they were moved in the future. The Time Machine is at the other side of the laboratory whereas the time projector is down the hill. The projector remains stationary not only on Earth but also at a point in space corresponding to that position on Earth as it moves not back but forward around the circle of time to 1973.

In Anderson's The Avatar, not a temporal vehicle but a spaceship moves backwards or forwards in time and across galactic or intergalactic distances in space by rotating around a T machine. 

Read Wells, then Anderson.

The Old Phoenix And After Such Knowledge

There is a rather obvious parallel here although it is not necessarily immediately apparent because the differences are even greater. However -

Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos is about magic and has a sequel, Operation Luna. Both works have been collected in a single volume entitled Operation Otherworld. They are connected to two other novels and to two short stories. The common theme is parallel universes and there is an inter-universal inn called the Old Phoenix.

James Blish's Black Easter is about magic and has a sequel, The Day After Judgement. Both works have been collected in a single volume entitled either Black Easter and The Day After Judgement or The Devil's Day. Blish suggested that an appropriate joint title would be Faust Aleph-Null which is the sub-title of Black Easter. The two works, considered as a unit, are the second volume of a trilogy entitled After Such Knowledge whose common theme is the question whether the desire for secular knowledge is evil.

In Black Easter and The Day After Judgement and in Operation Chaos, magic works, Hell is visited and the Devil speaks. Blish's Hell is Dantean and subterranean whereas Anderson's is entropic and extra-cosmic. Blish's magicians operate in secret whereas, in Operation Otherworld, magic has become an everyday technology on a parallel Earth. The differences in detail are greater despite the structural parallels.

Intellectuals

The Avatar, XXV.

"A part of Quick recalled an essay he had read years before, on how intellectuals are chronically fascinated by violence as an instrumentality..." (p. 221)

- and:

"...when a conflict of which [intellectuals] approve (and they approve of most) does erupt, they take the lead in cheering on the warheads and calling for more soldiers to feed the furnace." (ibid.)

I have come across other statements of this sort. A social group called "intellectuals" is not defined but is referred to in a disparaging way. Presumably, an intellectual is someone who has some measure of intelligence and, usually also, of education, who is theoretically rather then practically inclined and who thinks, whether professionally or on his own time. That does not tell us either what he thinks or even what he thinks about. Thus, some intellectuals - at least! - might abhor violence rather than be fascinated by it. Indeed, surely some of them, not of course all, are pacifists - and are derided for that? Do intellectuals as a group approve of most conflicts? Do they even cheer them on and call for more of them? Some people do all of these things but are those people to be identified with "intellectuals"?

I find disparaging generalizations about "intellectuals" puzzling. I expect to find people of intellect on every side of every argument and within every social group differentiated by its particular beliefs and attitudes. So who are these "intellectuals"?

Two Places And A Sparrow

The Avatar, XXIV-XXV.

"'...a cold and brilliant night at Machu Picchu.'" (XXIV, p. 206)

A recording on a giant viewscreen of York Minster:

"...was not static but moved slowly around the delicate facades, soaring and intricate vaults, glowing windows of that loveliest of medieval churches." (XXV, p. 215)

Two places that are seen elsewhere in Poul Anderson's works. 

Are the Others who constructed the T machines:

"'Like God? 'His eye is on the sparrow.'" (XXIV, p. 208)

A Biblical allusion.

The Avatar shares the same rich background as Anderson's other works.

Chasidism And Catholicism

The Avatar, XXIV.

"'...I went to Neo-Chasidic rabbinical school in Eopolis. A man can bear the marks of that his whole life, no matter if the faith has gone.'

"'Well, I am a Catholic of sorts, I think, but I must admit those years at Beta made me wonder a lot.'" (p. 206)

People will take their received beliefs out into the universe where they will learn much. I believe in "karma" in one basic sense of that word. "Karma" means "action." Actions matter because they have consequences in this life, whether or not there is another life. Each of us is predisposed from birth or earlier to act/live in a particular way: introverted or extraverted; proactive or indolent; truth-seeking or pleasure-seeking etc. Received beliefs are an extra layer added onto our basic, underlying "karma"/way of acting. A guy that I knew at University, brought up as a Catholic, observed that there were three kinds of Catholics: pious, intelligent or indifferent. None of us chooses to be what kind of person we are. We simply live in accordance with our most basic motivations/"karma."

I could not be content to be "...a Catholic of sorts, I think..." I had to seek some kind of understanding - which might have wound up as an acceptance of Catholicism. I could not know that in advance. But I did not confine my reading or thinking to what I had been told in school. But, as in every previous generation, my contemporaries took all sorts of different paths.

In this passage, Poul Anderson presents two men with different upbringings facing what they know about intelligence elsewhere in the universe. They do not have to reach any conclusion, certainly not in the course of a single conversation. It is enough that Anderson shows us two characters with different backgrounds and a similar interest in learning more.

Wind Gone Cold

The Avatar, XXIII.

Joelle and Eric end their relationship:

"He walked out into a wind gone cold at evening." (p. 204)

Of course this wind is not warm but cold... Should I stop quoting passages in which the wind comments on human affairs? A recognizable style could easily be parodied.

Alternatively, an attentive author would be able to write sequels or imitations close in style to the originals:

descriptions of skies, sunsets, seas and landscapes;

appeals to three or more of the senses;

descriptions of stars and galaxies seen from space;

sudden moments of realization, not explained until later;

competent heroes;

sympathetic treatment of their antagonists;

a positive evaluation of freedom and diversity;

the wind...

Morning Stars

 

The Avatar, XXIII.

Computer-enhanced human consciousness perceives an exploding atom and:

"The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." (p. 201)

Recognizing this sentence as Biblical and checking whether we have quoted it before, we find that we have quoted it twice but from another novel by Poul Anderson. See here. However, we have not quoted this sentence on any previous reading of The Avatar. Innumerable details remain to be found in Anderson's works.

Popes In And Out Of Fiction

(For us, this will be another Anderson-Blish comparison although, of course, our two guys do not have a monopoly on fictional Popes.) 

What can be done with Popes in fiction? Anything, of course, although there are some rules. In a historical novel like James Blish's Doctor Mirabilis, Popes succeed each other as they did in our history. As long as the genre remains historical fiction, they cannot do anything else.

A contemporary novel can feature a fictional Pope, thus taking a single sideways step into alternative history. Blish's futuristic sf novel, A Case Of Conscience, of necessity features a fictional Pope although he is named Hadrian VIII, thus acknowledging Hadrian VII.

Let us venture further into alternative history. When some of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol agents enter a divergent timeline, a major clue as to the moment of divergence is that a particular Pope is absent from the list. In our timeline, neither side must decisively win the medieval church-state conflict. The character of a particular Pope or Emperor can make the difference.

These reflections are occasioned by a clever reference in Blish's The Day After Judgment. Monte Albano is a fictional monastery where the monks are magicians. One of its Abbots became Pope John XX. I googled John XX, not expecting to find that he had been Abbot of Monte Albano! Instead, I found that there was no John XX in our history. See here. Blish must have known this.

Finally, later in The Day After Judgment, a demon Pope is elected...

Anything is possible. See also Robert Silverberg's Pope Sixtus the Seventh.

Addendum: Blogging allows second and third thoughts. I forgot to mention that, in the third Godfather film, a Cardinal whom I thought was fictional is elected Pope and chooses the name, "Joannes Paulus Primus." He is a real guy and we know what will happen next.

Views Of The State

See combox here. 

Poul Anderson's View (we think)

The state controls and reduces violence but we don't have to like it.

My View

The state as bodies of armed men originated when grain began to be stored and had to be protected from its producers.

Dna Broderson's View

"'The welfare state - any state - is an end in itself. It's the way for a few to impose their will on the many. And Judas priest, how those few do want to! Need to.'" (The Avatar, XXII, p. 189)

Comment

Broderson's view is absurd. Society existed without a state but nevertheless a few people conceived the idea of imposing their will on the many and then, in order to do this, they organized a body of men to bear arms, to obey their orders and thus to impose their will on everyone else? Once a state had come into existence for whatever reason, then some people could aim to gain control of it in order to impose their wills on everyone else but that cannot have been how the state originated in the first place.

Broderson equates a modern state with a welfare system to a succession of historical Empires. Surely there are differences as well as similarities between all these social structures?

Broderson's Speech II

The Avatar, XXII.

I concluded the previous post abruptly before going out for several hours. The point, of course, was not just that the star gates would end the welfare state but that that is why Ira Quick is trying to delay or even prevent interstellar travel. 

Chapter X had summarized the motives of other cabal members:

Stedman of the Holy Western Republic fears the collapse of his country's already threatened faith;

Makarov of Great Russia wants reunification with Byelorussia, Ukrainia and Siberia (!);

Abdallah of the Meccan Caliphate wants to prevent high-energy industrial Iran from gaining an advantage within Islam;

Garcilaso of the Andean Confederacy does not want any upset to the relationship between his corporation and its chief competitor, Aventureros Planetarios;

Broussard of Europe fears oblivion for his culture and tradition;

there are others.

They sound as mixed a bag as the anti-UN gang in Poul Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History.

Is Broderson engaging in wishful thinking by predicting that opening the star gates will enable individuals and small outfits to displace big corporations? But let us suppose that his prediction is correct. I suggested first that a population with some welfare needs will remain on Earth and secondly that the predicted immense profits should be able to cover such needs but how will that be administered if the World Union state collapses? Well, something will replace it. Secondly, some of those individuals and small outfits will still base themselves in the Solar System and some of those will still feel some responsibility toward the home planet and its people. Terrestrials can be trained to look outward - whether or not also to travel outward - and also to organize their own communities and govern their own affairs instead of suffering under global politicians like Ira Quick!

Broderson's Speech

The Avatar, XXII.

Andersonian ideology flows through Broderson.

Broderson:

Easy interstellar travel via many T machines will generate massive profits;

therefore, economic power will shift away from Earth, governments, unions and corporations "'...toward small outfits and individuals.'" (p. 189);

that will end the welfare state;

Joelle thinks that, if the need for welfare ends, then so should the welfare state;

Broderson replies that any state is "'...the way for the few to impose their will on the many.'" (ibid.);

he lists six Empires.

Slow down there, Broderson! Surely the earliest states were an instrument to control slaves or serfs? Priests controlled granaries and needed to enforce social order so that the granaries would continue to be filled. It was not just that a few wanted to impose their will and found a way to do this!  Are the Mongol Empire, which he cites, and a modern welfare state just two ways for the few to impose their will? That and nothing else?

All individuals cannot and will not become entrepreneurs travelling through the star gates. Presumably there will still be a Terrestrial population, some of whose members will continue to need welfare provision which can easily be funded out of those massive interstellar profits?

Broderson is right that politicians like Ira Quick and many trade union bureaucrats want to preserve the status quo together with their own positions and roles within it. So I am with Broderson to that extent.

Mutations In Two Timelines

This book cover combines two sf ideas: mutants approach a spaceship. 

The front cover blurb proclaims:

"An intensely gripping and imaginative novel of tomorrow's children."

-Poul Anderson, Twilight World (London, May 1964), front cover.

(I do not mean that the author of the novel wrote the cover blurb for this edition but how else am I supposed to write the reference?)

A nuclear war generates many human mutations. Some are beneficial and colonize the Solar System before Earth becomes uninhabitable. Millennia later, a Martian member of an archaeological expedition to Earth feels:

"'... the wind gibing at me, there on that old broken planet...'" (EPILOGUE, p. 127)

Andersonian winds always comment somehow.

In James Blish's Black Easter, Armageddon includes World War III. In the sequel, The Day After Judgement, a US military scientific advisor speculates:

control of the environment stopped natural selection for mankind;

furthermore, we even preserve our bad genes;

therefore, mutation is the only remaining evolutionary pressure;

artificial radioactivity and fallout help this process.

(He does not yet know that the demon fortress of Dis has been raised to the Earth's surface in Death Valley where it will be attacked by the Strategic Air Command. The heavenly host has fallen but the war continues.)

The God

I find that I have posted no less than three times about a cartoon in which a man praying to "God" is answered by Thor. See here.

If there are many gods, then each needs a name but, if there is only one, then "God" becomes a name just as extraterrestrials might address the last surviving male human being indifferently either as "John" or as "Man." The need for a distinguishing name becomes redundant. The need to address an invoked entity by the correct name persists in demonology.

However, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, the monotheists of the Merseian Roidhunate refer not to "God" but to "the God," implying, I think, a lack of personal relationship to this single deity. We know that at least the Vach Urdiolch has "Secret Prayers" and we do not know what is said in them. (They are secret.)

The phrase, "...THE GOD..." occurs twice on p. 422 of James Blish's After Such Knowledge (London, 1991). A demon, speaking in capitals, refers contemptuously to "THE GOD" Who does not appear and Who, allegedly, is dead. Apparently, that being no longer warrant a Name...

There is no remotest connection between Blish's demon and Anderson's Roidhunate - except that at least one sf fan, reading of one, thinks of the other. Everything connects in our minds.

Andersonian Action And An Alien

The Avatar, XIX. 

Broderson's crew rescues the Emissary crew who have been detained in a space station by secret service men controlled not by the World Union government but by the anti-stellar cabal within it. Andersonian action: gunfire and deaths - we need delineate no details. 

Broderson sees the Emissary's single Betan passenger:

"He saw the alien, chimerical cross between an otter, a lobster, a seal, a duck, a kangaroo, an alligator, a porpoise, no, none of those really, nothing he could name, nothing his vision was ready for, a brown blur -" (pp. 170-171)

We commented here on how Poul Anderson sometimes describes an alien by comparing it to a Terrestrial organism, then denying that comparison, while leaving the suggested similarity in his readers' minds, nevertheless. Surely he overdoes that approach in this case: a cross between an otter etc? "...brown blur..." would have sufficed for a first impression. And it would be a very rushed glimpse on a cinema screen.

ESP Or Magic

We have seen that the premise of one work can be casually referenced or even summarily dismissed in another work by the same author. For example, in Poul Anderson's The Avatar, the Betans can travel through space-time via T machines but cannot enter or intervene in their own history, unlike time criminals in the Time Patrol timeline. FTL is possible and extraterrestrial intelligences are abundant in some fictional universes although not in others. There are several alternative answers to the question whether conscious AI is possible. And so on. We appreciate such systematically alternative approaches in Poul Anderson's prolific output. We also find something similar in the works of the author whom I think of as paralleling Anderson, James Blish. 

In an early novel by Blish, Jack Of Eagles, ESP is scientifically rationalized and extensively deployed. Several later works by Blish present alternative rationales for ESP. However, in his Black Easter, a black magician, Theron Ware, says to a client, Baines:

"'Then you don't really believe in magic yet - only in ESP or some such nonsense.'"

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT p. 33.

When Baines' scientific advisor, Adolph Hess, compares black magic to flying saucers, Baines replies that the reasons for thinking that anyone has seen a saucer are pitiable whereas they have seen a demon. Thus, stories about alien visitations are dismissed. 

When travelling underground in a gravity-vacuum tube, Baines' personal assistant, Ginsberg, remarks that riding in such a thing makes it hard to believe in devils. Yes, hard sf and fantasy are usually light-years apart.

Ware refers to magic as goetic art. See also here.

The Principles Of This Blog Restated And Slightly Expanded

(I) Remember Wells. (I am quoting James Blish here but I agree.)

(II) Read and reread Poul Anderson.

(III) Anderson should be filmed but it would have to be done well.

(IV) Read Blish also.

(V) Blish also should be filmed. (In fact, there were advanced plans to film his Welcome To Mars and Cities In Flight.)

(VI) SM Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson especially in alternative histories.

(VII) Remember the literary traditions that preceded Anderson:

Sagas and Eddas;

the Bible;

Shakespeare;

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein;

Olaf Stapledon's future and cosmic timescales;

Wells again, particularly The Time Machine and future wars (Wells: aircraft; Anderson: spacecraft);

earlier causality violation time travel sf (the Time Patrol addressed an already existing paradox that Wells had hinted at).

The Avatars

The Avatar

Compare the avatars of the Others:

Tree

Insect

Fish

Bird

Mammal 

Man

-see here

- with the avatars of Vishnu:

Fish

Turtle

Boar

Man-Lion

Dwarf

Parashurama

Rama

Krishna

the Buddha

Kalki

Both lists display an evolutionary progression. Vishnu is the most comprehensive deity.

Personal Relationships

The Avatar, XII.

Personal relationships play a big part. Broderson's deceased first wife's family are influential on Earth. One of them is in the impounded interstellar ship, Emissary, as is Joelle the holothete with whom Broderson had a relationship. The crew of Broderson's own ship, Chinook, includes the brother of Broderson's current wife and that brother resents the presence of Broderson's mistress. Things get more complicated.

The mistress, Catlin, is an "avatar" with a mysterious birth who feels one with the universe. This makes her sound like a Hindu deity. Her mysterious birth apparently involved Irish mythological beings but Hinduism can easily incorporate that. The real explanation is extraterrestrial but we have a long way to go before the eventual meeting with the Others.

Storm

The Avatar, XI.

The "objective correlative" is made explicit when Joelle and Christine walk through rain:

"...bearing their private storms." (p. 114)

Pp. 114-115 describe a Betan storm in which Christine dies:

inky sky

forking lightning

banging thunder

flying clouds

blowing spindrift

rearing, trampling, crashing, exploding sea

white foambursts

grinding shingles

millstone noise

moving bushes

flailing trees

whipping leaves and fronds

roaring, yelling, strengthening wind

rain like spears, axes, a hammer

dissolving soil

blasting, shrieking, yowling tempest

bone-shaking thunder

rising and rising wind

lightning, then booming lightlessness

hail stones whitening land, bruising and drawing blood

whip-thin branch flaying Joelle into the mud and water and fracturing Christine's larynx...

Fictional Evolution And History: The Betans

 

The Avatar, XI. 

III, pp. 16-18, summarized some future Terrestrial history.

XI, pp. 109-114, summarize the fictional evolution and history of the Betans. Because travel between human and Betan space is via T machines, we do not know whether the events summarized here are "past" or "future" in relation to human history.

The summary is complex and condensed and I do not propose to condense it even further here. Basically, the Betans' technological advances have generated a social crisis which they hope that human beings will be able to help them with.

There are echoes of other Anderson works. The Betans have met a winged migratory race. They have discovered that the placing of T machines does not allow for any temporal paradoxes. Thus, they cannot get into their own history to try to change it. Footnotes could refer readers to Anderson's The Man who Counts and Time Patrol. 

Wind And More On Beta

The Avatar, XI.

One woman, Chris, asks another woman, Joelle, for advice about personal relationships. The conversation reaches a dramatic point when a choice has to be made. Then we notice what happens during a pause in the dialogue:

"They tramped on. The wind loudened, the sea ramped. Clouds in the east lifted their wall higher, startlingly fast. Wrack blew off them, to scud across indigo heaven.

"Chris hunched shoulders against a gathering chill." (pp. 198-109)

Pathetic fallacy: nature does everything that it can to underline the impasse of the conversation -

wind does not whisper or caress but loudens;

sea does not touch the shore gently but ramps;

clouds lift a wall, a barrier;

they raise it fast;

they raise it startlingly fast;

wrack scuds;

it scuds across what otherwise would have been a peaceful heaven;

chill gathers;

the woman who seeks advice hunches her shoulders against this gathering chill.

Everything indicates that personal relationships will remain problematic. A problem-solving conversation would have been accompanied by very different weather!

Supernatural Changes

As you know, I think of Poul Anderson and James Blish in parallel:

hard sf

original imaginative means of FTL travel, e.g., quantum hyperdrive and "spindizzies"

future histories, e.g., the Technic History and Cities In Flight

historical fiction

fantasy

That is quite a lot in common. Blish had a smaller output and much less time travel.

While staffing a stall at a musical event at Lancaster Kanteena this afternoon, I passed the time mentally by reviewing the dramatic events of Blish's Black Easter and The Day After Judgment. The closest approach among Anderson's works is The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson). In both cases, the action is mainly on the human level while the behind-the-scenes supernatural realms change.

The Andersons: Gratillonius is King of Ys while its gods and other gods withdraw before the advent of a single new god.

Blish: the demons win Armageddon but with unexpected results.

But we have summarized all this on this blog before. Comparable supernatural changes occur in the graphic fiction sequence of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman followed by Mike Carey's Lucifer:

Lucifer retires;

Dream dies;

God withdraws and is succeeded by his granddaughter, a British schoolgirl!

Despite all these fantastic changes, the universe continues, fortunately.

Four Senses On Beta

The Avatar, XI.

Two Terrestrials walk by a Betan shore:

heat

sea salt

odors sweet, sulfurous, rosy, cheesy, spicy, indescribable

booming surf

skirling wind

a fluting flier

deep purple blue sky

the sun, Centrum, a dim orange disc, smaller than Sol

immense red- and gold-edged clouds, lightning winking in dark depths

white-capped, gunmetal ocean crashing on shingle

rattling canebrakes

fluttering fronds

wildly whipping branches

shades of brown, sorrel, ruby, apricot, ocher and gold

"...a somber, Rembrantesque richness." (p. 106)

Is that rich enough for us? Beta is the second extra-solar planet described in this novel.

(Lewis' The Cosmic Trilogy was not on a bookshelf because it was on top of the bookshelves. "Difficult things have simple explanations. Discuss." There should still be a copy of Voyage To Venus somewhere.)

An Argument

The Avatar, X.

The anti-stellar politician, cabalist and conspirator, Ira Quick, tries to flannel and of course winds up arguing with the imprisoned interstellar explorers. It is perfectly clear which side of the argument we, the readers, are supposed to be on! I am certainly against Quick, an obnoxious self-serving professional performer and manipulator. But I am not fully on either side of the argument as put.

Quick is outraged because the most talented Terrestrials divert resources into their interstellar adventuring, abandoning the poor and downtrodden millions on Earth to their fate (!) First, interstellar exploration via T machines with the help of a more experienced race is not adventuring but hard work with immeasurable benefits - "profits," if we must still use that word. Secondly, those millions are not passive recipients of welfare but human beings who periodically take collective action that can be the death, whether literally or metaphorically, of politicians like Quick. Meanwhile, government policy could encourage populations around the world to organize their own affairs in their own communities instead of, or as well as, receiving a dole and watching Quick's speeches, and hopefully also more edifying material, on TV.

Quick gropes his way towards a "...final..." (p. 103) solution for the astronauts.

Blurring A Distinction

 

Arthur C. Clarke's third law is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thus, in Poul Anderson's The Avatar, the Others, a technologically advanced race, are able to pass themselves off as beings from Irish mythology. On this analysis, all beings and laws are natural but some can be made to appear supernatural.

In other works of fiction, natural and supernatural coexist and interact. See Martians And Morpheus.

CS Lewis takes a third course of blurring the distinction between natural and supernatural. Because of the disruption associated with a house move, certain books are not currently to hand. These include both Lewis' Voyage To Venus/Perelandra and his The Cosmic Trilogy which includes Perelandra. However, I find the entire text of Perelandra on-line. This passage is worth quoting in full:

 "As to my intense wish never to come into contact with the eldila myself, I am not sure whether I can make you understand it. It was something more than a prudent desire to avoid creatures alien in kind, very powerful, and very intelligent. The truth was that all I heard about them served to connect two things which one's mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one a sort of shock. We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label "scientific" and "supernatural" respectively. We think, in one mood, of Mr. Wells' Martians (very unlike the real Malacandrians, by the bye), or his Selenites. In quite a different mood we let our minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghosts, fairies, and the like. But the very moment we are compelled to recognise a creature in either class as real the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it is a creature like an eldil the distinction vanishes altogether. These things were not animals--to that extent one had to classify them with the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group. The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and when it had done so, one realised how great a comfort it had been--how it had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think of both in the same context. What price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security and accepted confusion of thought is another matter."

-copied from here (ONE, paragraph 4)

The Phoebean System And Ireland

The Avatar, IX.

The moons of Demeter are Persephone and Erion. The planets of the system include not only a Zeus and an Aphrodite but also an Ares. In a Demetrian lake, a large dark wassergeist rises, whistles and sinks. Its whistle is "...eldritch..." (p. 85) This is appropriate.

The Troubles impoverished some parts of Ireland. (Not the "Troubles" that some of us remember but those that are still to come in this fictional future.) Uneducated smallholders again believe in the Sidhe. If Others, why not Sidhe?

The two are connected. Caitlin has always felt one with the universe. When her mother, Norah, tramped through Ireland and slept in the open air near Slieve Bernagh, a man of awesome beauty invited her into the mountain where she experienced:

"'...rainbows and suns, purple and gold, wind and wild seas and everything a glory.'" (ibid.)

Nine months later, Caitlin was born. She is our title character. She refers to Lady Gregory.

Novy Mir On Demeter

The Avatar, IX.

Apparently, "mir" can mean:

world

peace

universe

kingdom

quiet

pax

quietude

system

See here. Some of these words have the same meaning so I do not understand why they are listed separately.

"Mir" was a Russian space station. Novy (New) Mir is a Russian-language village on Demeter. Its only public phone, which however has a screen, is on a wall inside its tavern where there is also an ikon. Outside, there is a single dusty street of brightly decorated timber houses and a communal cropland. Broderson sees a cat, a babushka, children, a green valley and sheer mountains. 

Can all of this exist on a colonized extrasolar planet? Yes, because:

geneticists have modified Terrestrial plants;

agrochemists have converted the soil;

ecological technology, mostly microbial, holds back native life.

Thus, the ecology will revert if the colonists fail or withdraw.

Disappearances

A Time Patrol timecycle disappears at one set of spatiotemporal coordinates and appears at another. So does a spaceship following a path around a T machine. However, I think that the two disappearing acts are fundamentally different. The timecycle does not exist between its departure and its arrival. The spaceship does exist. Its world line continues to extend through space-time but in a direction that has taken it out of the field of vision of any observers who have remained at its departure point. I was surprised when a spaceship was described as disappearing in Poul Anderson's The Avatar but I think that this is the explanation. In any case, I am now bound not for a T machine but for the realm of Morpheus.

Not Meant To Know?

The Avatar, VIII.

Discovery of the T machine with its robotic messenger in the Solar System is not First Contact with the Others but is the next best thing. Poul Anderson correctly lists the effects that such an event would have on Earth:

excitement

speeches

crowds

demonstrations

sermons

prayer meetings

press conferences

interviews with experts

tumult

parades

ceremonies

parties

extravagant predictions

occasional forebodings

claims that the Others caused the Troubles -

"...it was too disturbing, too provocative of heresy; there were things man was never meant to know." (p. 74)

Never meant by whom? I had heard that phrase and believed it to be true in my early teens. James Blish wrote a Trilogy, After Such Knowledge, its title derived from a poem by TS Eliot:

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" 

K'thrr'u/Gaoung Ro Mm

The Avatar, VII.

The Betan, Fidelio (not his real name), is not from Beta Centauri or from any other second star in a constellation but from the second planet of a star which human explorers called "Centrum" after a T machine had transported them to it.

Fidelio has two Betan names:

"K'thrr'u'" on land;

"Gaoung Ro Mm" in water.

OK. That is really alien. Human beings have to say "Fidelio." However, Fidelio has two eyes and two ears. That is too terrestroid. I know that two is a sensible number of eyes and also of ears but extraterrestrial evolution is going to find different ways to deploy sense organs. An sf writer like Poul Anderson knows how to alienize. The eyes are large and uniformly blue with nictitating membranes for underwater sight. Fidelio is furred and unclothed, although his reproductive organs are retractable, and three times the size of a Betan female.

His chemosensitivities do not correspond exactly to either taste or smell. Finally, without listing every other detail, he is a six-limbed biped which means that he has two sets of arms like some other fictional extraterrestrials that are known to us. For a cover illustration featuring Fidelio, see here. I think that he is insufficiently alien but this will be a continual debate until we meet some.

Multiple Space-Time Options

This is not a complete list but you get the idea.

There Will Be Time: time travel and circular causality on Earth.

Time Patrol: space-time travel, circular causality and causality violation on Earth.

Tau Zero: time dilation in space.

The Avatar: space-time travel in space over distances that avoid paradoxes.

There Will Be Time ends with two possible syntheses of time travel with space travel. Either time travellers travel futureward within slower than light interstellar spaceships or travel into the past is mathematically equivalent to faster than light travel so that FTL spaceships can be developed.

Poul Anderson deserves a special Hugo Award as the Most Comprehensive SF Writer.

T Machines

The Avatar, II.

What seems wrong with the following dialogue?

"'...everybody expected you'd be gone for years!'

"'We were.'

"'No. I witnessed your transit. That was, uh, five months ago, no more.'" (p. 4)

After some calculations:

"'For us, approximately eight Terrestrial years have passed.'" (ibid.)

Interstellar explorers have lived for about eight years although only twenty weeks and three days have elapsed in the planetary system from which they had departed and to which they have returned. We have got used to it the other way around. Because of time dilation at relativistic speeds, less time elapses for the space travellers. However, that is not what we are dealing with here. It is further explained:

"'It turns out that the T machine is indeed a time machine of sorts, as well as a space transporter. The Betans - the beings whom we followed - calculated our course to bring us out near the date when we left.'" (ibid.)

This is neither Tau Zero nor Time Patrol but something else. Poul Anderson follows every possibility, of course.

In Their Absence

In After Doomsday by Poul Anderson, an interstellar spaceship with a human crew and one alien passenger returns to the Solar System to find that Earth has been sterilized by as yet unknown aliens.

In The Avatar by Anderson, an interstellar spaceship with a human crew and one alien passenger returns to the colonized Phoebean System and from there is escorted through the T machine gate to the Solar System there to be held incommunicado by order of the anti-stellar clique within the World Union government. (Ships with only interplanetary capacity traverse interstellar and vaster spatiotemporal distances by orbiting around T machines.)

In both cases, heavy things have gone down in the explorers' absence but the enemy is alien in the first case and human in the second. Meanwhile, stuff going down on Earth keeps me away from this lap top.

Problems On Earth

The Avatar, V.

Dan Broderson lists the problems:

Transdeism

New Islam

Asianism

centralization causing secessionism

possible revival of Keynesianism!

Broderson is particularly hostile to Keynesianism. I have just read an article that said that, in major economies, state spending still made up forty percent of GDP even after Keynesianism and that states intervened to bail out big firms under neoliberalism. 

Earth has a Covenant, an echo of Robert Heinlein's Future History, and Broderson says that the best outcome of a breakdown:

"'...would be a kind of Caesar...'" (p. 51)

- an echo of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Humanity can do better than Caesars - but it is our collective responsibility to demonstrate this in practice. Overthrow Putin and/or (fill in the blank) and don't replace him with just another one. It can be done. 

On Demeter And Earth

The Avatar, V-VI.

Some days, there is too much else going on for new blog posts.

In what is left of Chapter V, Dan and Caitlin discuss personal matters against the Demetrian backdrop summarized in recent posts.

On Demeter, there are garms. On Avalon in Poul Anderson's Technic History, there are draculas. In Larry Niven's Smoke Ring, there are large birds whose mating ritual earns them the name, "flashers." Human beings will take words to other worlds and give them new meanings.

Chapter VI, a second one-pager, is narrated by another "avatar" which has been caterpillar, pupa and moth. An insect is conscious, unlike a tree. This insect describes its sensations at each stage of its life cycle, then adds:

"...One gathered me up, taking me back into Oneness, and presently We knew what my whole life had been since I lay in the egg." (p. 55)

In this second case, the selected organism is conscious of its "Oneness" with the Others. We do not know the whole story yet although we might be starting to guess.

The human story continues in Chapter VII which is maybe where we will go tomorrow.