God Or...

Mirkheim.

The secret of Mirkheim is revealed and:

"Thereafter came the year which God, or destiny, or chance had ordained." (p. 30)

Well, which was it though: God, destiny or chance? I suppose that that sentence is true but only because it includes "or" twice and covers every possibility. The point of the novel is to recount the events of that year, not to philosophize about ultimate causes. But some of us do contemplate ultimate causes. Philosophers clarify questions but do not agree about answers. However, questions that I had thought were philosophical have become physical: virtual particles emerging from vacuum... Chance.

Split Three Ways

The Polesotechnic League is split three ways: two cartels, the Home Companies and the Seven in Space, and the independents, of which the most powerful is the Solar Spice & Liquors Company founded and single-handedly run by Nicholas van Rijn who is supported by talented individuals like David Falkayn. Loyalties are personal, backed up by oaths of fealty, and Falkayn breaks his oath to van Rijn only once to rectify or counteract a massive imbalance in Technic civilization. Species like Ikranankans and Ivanhoans that we have seen in individual short stories return to the readers' attention when Falkayn secretly founds a company that will serve their interests as against those of the monopolists.

Van Rijn and Falkayn are so competent and gifted that they manage to solve problems not only for their organization but also for their entire civilization and this seems implausible. However, no one can prevent the decline of the League and the Commonwealth and the Troubles ahead. Falkayn's lasting legacy is Avalon which still exists in the late Imperial period although in the Domain of Ythri, not in the Empire.

Human Ages

A human life is brief in cosmic, geological or even historical terms but can be long in numbers of years, decades and personal or professional developmental stages. David Falkayn is seventeen as an apprentice on Ivanhoe and is forty-one nine years before the main action of Mirkheim. He is also eighteen years older than Coya who had been twenty-five in "Lodestar." At the end of Mirkheim, Falkayn becomes acting CEO of Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company but, if he is by then fifty, then he is still has decades ahead of him in which to lead the colonization of Avalon, especially since sf can add artificial longevities, in this case antisenescence. 

Van Rijn is already old, thirty years older than Falkayn, when first seen whereas, in the case of Falkayn, as with Flandry, we are shown most of a career. Flandry has a Young Flandry Trilogy and The Trouble Twisters is a shorter "Young Falkayn" trilogy.

Time In Fiction

A time traveller can study a historical period, then visit it, or can recall the period of his childhood, then revisit that. We appreciate such temporal reversals, as in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and There Will Be Time. 

See:

Innocence And Knowledge

The Past In The Time Patrol Series...

However, mainstream fiction can do something very similar. In Barbara Vine's A Fatal Inversion, three alternating viewpoint characters suddenly have reason to fear that their misdeeds of ten years previously will be brought to light. They try hard to remember what happened, what they did and who that knew them then might be able to bear witness against them now. A long passage recounts what Rufus did ten years ago, then reverts to Rufus thinking about it now. Adam remembers in detail the house that he lived in ten years ago, then closes the passage by entering the house that he lives in now. The narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time in interesting ways that reflect the real world interplay between memory and present experience. Maybe not everyone can literally relive past experiences but maybe also some can come closer to this than others.

But flashbacks can play their part in any fiction, including time travel fiction. In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time, chapters recounting Manse Everard's mission in 209 B. C. alternate with his reminiscences of subjectively earlier although usually objectively later experiences in 1987 A. D., 976 B. C., 1987 A. D. and 1988 A. D. Then he does have a subjectively later experience in 1902 A. D.

Time and consciousness are the two main issues addressed by all fiction.

Why Cross An Interstellar Distance?

Why cross an interstellar distance?

(i) To colonize an extra-solar planet: Hermes: Avalon; Dennitza; etc.

Yovan Matavuly led the Founders to their Morning Star. See Zoria.

(ii) To trade with inhabited planets. See Trade Or War.

(iii) To gather knowledge, i.e., the self-sustaining post-organic intelligences in Poul Anderson's Genesis need neither a habitable environment nor a source of income, neither employment nor a market. However, they are motivated to increase their knowledge both by observation and by locomotion. Is this the future of intelligence? I favour cooperation or at least coexistence between organics and post-organics.

People And Planets In MIRKHEIM

Not everything in Mirkheim is for the last time. We see David Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, for the first time and it reappears, although not as a major setting, in A Stone In Heaven.

A large cast of characters appear for their first and only time in Mirkheim as Poul Anderson shows us every kind of character and point of view. The one-off characters include Eric Tamarin, son of Sandra Tamarin and Nicholas van Rijn, named after Eric Wace who had been on Diomedes with Sandra and van Rijn.

We see the Baburites for their second and last time and their planet, Babur, for its first and last time. 

Sandra Tamarin and Coya Conyon/Falkayn each appear for their second and last time. Nicholas van Rijn makes his tenth appearance in the Technic History and is also seen, outside this series, in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

Mirkheim is a comprehensive culmination of the Polesotechnic League sub-series whereas the Terran Empire sub-series lacks such a culmination.

Last And First Times

Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March, 2011), pp. 1-291.

We see Nicholas van Rijn in his penthouse on the Winged Cross for the third and last time. We read our first reference to "...the Falkayns..." (p. 11) David and Coya have married since "Lodestar." 

We read:

"As confidence dwindled in public institutions, those of the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League alike, loyalties grew the more intensely personal." (p. 13)

This single sentence continues the theme of "Lodestar" and sets the tune for the rest of Mirkheim. The Falkayns know that they will go elsewhere. They do not yet know where.

Poul Anderson shows us human beings taking what they value to other planets: Orthodox Christianity to Dennitza; freedom to Avalon.

Before we go anywhere, we must have something to take with us. This weekend, I will attend a May Day march on Saturday and a Wesak Festival (the Buddha's Birthday) on Sunday. I hope that everyone attends something meaningful to them. 

Youth And Age

Each of us experiences youth and age successively but at every moment they coexist. Poul Anderson shows us the passage of generations.

Time Patrolman Carl Farness interacts with four generations of a single Goth family from 300 to 372.

Emil Dalmady is a young man on his first job for Solar Spice & Liquors when he confronts Nicholas van Rijn in "Esau" but Emil's daughter, Judith, is in her high old age when she writes a fictionalized account of a teenage adventure of Nat Falkayn, son of Nicholas Falkayn who is a son of David and Coya Falkayn and thus a great-great-grandson of Nicholas van Rijn. Tabitha Falkayn is their descendant although we do not know by how many generations.

We ought to be grateful to Roger Elwood for editing original anthologies that resulted in Poul Anderson enhancing his Technic History with the juvenile adventures, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "Wingless," the latter about Nat Falkayn.

Afterword And Introduction

In Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate, a single interstitial passage by Hloch serves first as an afterword to "Lodestar," then as an introduction to "Wingless." Thus, the passage begins by stating that everyone knows that the events of "Lodestar" eventually led to the Babur War for possession of Mirkheim. We, who are not Hloch's intended Avalonian audience but Poul Anderson's twentieth or now twenty-first century readers, know of the Babur War if we have read Mirkheim before the Earth Book, as we are assumed to have done. In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II concludes with "Lodestar" and Volume III opens with Mirkheim which therefore precedes the interstitial passage introducing "Wingless." Thus, this time, we have just read about the Babur War. Anyone who first reads the Technic History in the Saga might wonder why Hloch summarizes what has just been recounted but the answer is that Mirkheim had not immediately preceded this interstitial passage in the original publication order. Complicated but worth unravelling. 

Readers And Fans

As we all know, Poul Anderson wrote:

hard sf

fantasy

historical fiction

detective fiction

non-fiction

verse

Anything else?

Also some combinations:

historical sf (time travellers, immortals)

historical fantasy

historical fiction with a fantasy element

a murder investigation in an sf novel

But I think we can say that:

he wrote mostly sf;

he is known mostly for his sf, secondly for his fantasy;

fans will read anything by an author, irrespective of genre.

Thus, he does introduce sf readers, e.g., to historical fiction even if they never read any more of it.

There are readers, sf readers and sf fans. I have been told that sf fans do not necessarily read sf! The theory is that sf brought like-minded people together. They socialize at Cons and would like to hear or meet Poul Anderson (while he was alive, of course) without necessarily reading his works.

Sf readers might read nothing but sf! I veered in this direction earlier in life but never went all the way. I read CS Lewis' fiction, then everything else by Lewis. I read all of Aldous Huxley's fiction and non-fiction although only two, or at most three, of his novels are sf.

Poul Anderson's sf raises every issue. Recently on this blog, we discussed economic competition and monopolization in relation to Anderson's Technic History. We would not have been able to do that in relation to Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.

We appreciate the realization of fictional places - future cities, other planets - in Anderson's works and also the realization of real places in some contemporary novels, e.g., Stockholm in the early twenty-first century in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and the English county of Suffolk in the summer of 1976 in Barbara Vine's A Fatal Inversion. Both recommended.

Conclusion(s)

Poul Anderson wrote "Lodestar" as a conclusion to his Polesotechnic League series but then added Mirkheim as a more comprehensive conclusion, explaining in detail what had gone wrong between League companies and also winding up the affairs of continuing characters even including Sandra Tamarin, Grand Duchess of David Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, who had been on Diomedes with Nicholas van Rijn in The Man Who Counts - as I said, comprehensive. In Mirkheim, two major changes happen in the lives of trader team members. First, Coya Conyon has married David Falkayn and joins the team although no instalments are set during this period. There is a single short passage of reminiscences by David. Secondly, the Falkayns start a family and stop trade pioneering. They have learned lessons from the irresponsibility of van Rijn's generation. Chee Lan joins another team and Adzel spends time as a lay brother in a Buddhist monastery in the Andes. Next, van Rijn reassembles the original team for an investigative mission to belligerent Babur. They then make a second mission to occupied Hermes. And that really is the end. We last see van Rijn, Sandra, Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan on Hermes after the conclusion of the Babur War. The following instalment is a short story about the Falkayns' grandson on Avalon during the long decline of the League. We never see the League again. The rest of the Technic History is fairly schematic:

the colonization of Avalon

the Troubles

the Terran Empire

the Terran-Ythrian War

the Flandry period

the Long Night

the Allied Planets

the Commonalty period with human civilizations in several spiral arms of the galaxy and the beginning of a new era of unprecedented wealth although, unfortunately, no more stories.

Far Horizons

The Earth Book Of Stormgate also collects The Man Who Counts in which the titular character, Nicholas van Rijn, is on the planet Diomedes where the horizon is twice as far away as on Earth, enough to disturb and alarm any human being. This reminds me of a passage in CS Lewis' The Great Divorce which, however, I find that I have already quoted no less than three times. See here.

Lewis was describing not an extra-solar planet but an extra-cosmic hereafter which turns out, in any case, to have been a dream. Thus, Lewis' concerns are far from those of hard sf writers and his own sf is "soft" although he acknowledges that two ideas in The Great Divorce were derived from pulp magazine "scientifiction."

How many characters in sf spend their time in metal shells of spaceships without any description of the universe as seen from space or on the surfaces of terrestroid extra-solar planets without any scientific analysis of planetary environments?

A Double System

"Lodestar" is the tenth of twelve Technic History instalments collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate and the last of seven such instalments collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader. Thus, in the latter case, "Lodestar" is, appropriately, a conclusion. Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran, opens with Mirkheim. Thus, in the Saga, these two instalments, like all the others for that matter, are put into their proper chronological order.

Mirkheim begins with a description of the supernova that had been the subject-matter of "Lodestar." The narrator of this opening passage remarks that it was unusual for a giant star to have any planets but Coya had already explained in "Lodestar" that the giant was part of a binary system and that its partner was a barely sub-stellar superjovian planet. A double system is a different proposition from a single star with a planetary system.

Challenge

At the end of "Lodestar," Nicholas van Rijn is dramatically challenged by his trader team, by an Ythrian spaceship captain and even by his newly introduced granddaughter, Coya Conyon. Between them, these characters represent almost all that Poul Anderson's Technic History has been about until this point. Fortunately, however, "Lodestar" is not the conclusion of the Polesotechnic League sub-series because it is followed, in the chronological order of fictional events, by Mirkheim in which Coya, Commodore Nadi, Sandra Tamarin and the Baburites reappear, David Falkayn's much-mentioned home planet, Hermes, is seen for the first time, indeed becomes a fully realized place like Avalon and Dennitza, the secret of Mirkheim is revealed and the cat is out of the bag. Thus, a climactic conclusion but also an episode in a continuing history because Mirkheim is only the first of six instalments to be collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire and that title alone informs readers that much more history still lies ahead.

After "Lodestar," Hloch comments that everyone knows what happened next. In other words, we are all supposed to have read Mirkheim...

Lisbeth And Coya

Beside me on this settee are two thick volumes:

the 390 pages of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

the 746 pages of Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest.

Each is part of a larger work.

Larsson's technology is up to date for the early twenty-first century. Anderson's is futuristic but reads like a plausible extrapolation. His characters take their tech for granted as we take ours.

Lisbeth Salander hacks computers. Coya Conyon uses Luna Astrocenter computers to track a supernova.

Coya defies her grandfather. Lisbeth has defied her father. But, apart from that, the two relationships are entirely different. Read them and see what I mean.

By implication, any contemporary novel has some kind of future ahead of it but to refer to any particular future events would be to go outside the parameters of contemporary fiction writing. Anderson's Technic History has the Chaos in the early twenty-first century. Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has only the world events that had happened at the time of writing.

Fashions

Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 333-367.

Coya Conyon thinks:

"My grandfather's generation seldom bothered to get married. My father's did. And mine, why, we're reviving patrilineal surnames." (p. 342)

In 2319 of a different timeline, Time Patrol agent Farness says that he was young during the sexual revolution of the 1960's. His physician on the Moon replies that fashions come and go.

Indeed. Poul Anderson shows us this happening through all of history.

The League Goes Rotten

Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon realizes that the Galactic Empire is falling. Poul Anderson's David Falkayn realizes that the Polesotechnic League is going rotten. Anderson's Dominic Flandry realizes that the Terran Empire will fall. But what a difference between Asimov and Anderson. Anderson explains in detail how the economic competition in the League has led to injustices and, in the case of Tametha, to an armed rebellion.

Seldon establishes the Foundations to restore civilization. Falkayn founds the Supermetals Company for the economic development of the poorer planets and species and later founds the colony of Avalon outside human space. Flandry strengthens several planets so that they will survive during the Long Night.

Essentially the same subject matter but much better treatment by Anderson.

Generation Gaps

In "Lodestar," van Rijn and his granddaughter disagree centuries in our future.

In the Time Patrol, agents born decades or centuries apart interact as if in an eternal present. 

Thus, in at least two ways, sf can show us "generation gaps" beyond ours in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries.

But I find that I have posted quite a lot about this already.

I have a lot of time and respect for Coya Conyon who unfortunately is a viewpoint character in only one short story.

Today we might be busy with other matters.

Two Stories

My two favourite Technic History stories are "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "Lodestar." They bookend the Polesotechnic League instalments in The Earth Book Of Stormgate. Both feature Adzel. I like the younger one-off characters, Jimmy Ching and Betty Riefenstahl, and also Coya Conyon who reappears just once, older, in Mirkheim. Their later counterparts are Tabitha Falkayn and Diana Crowfeather. "How To Be Ethnic..." and "Lodestar" both show us something of the Solar Commonwealth but in very different periods. In the first story, Jimmy and Adzel have yet to enter the League whereas, in the second, David Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan know it all too well from the inside. In fact, they are nearly killed on the first page: action that makes a point.

In "Lodestar," the generation gap between Nicholas van Rijn and his granddaughter, Coya, is particularly good, like a reversal of such gaps that some of us have experienced.

EARTH BOOK Blurb

The front flap blurb of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978) rightly claims that the Earth Book completes the five volumes of the History of the Polesotechnic League but does not mention that it is also the second Ythrian volume. The blurb does mention that the Earth Book presents:

"...a detailed chart that incorporates many of Anderson's later works in one enormous schema."

- but falls short of clarifying that this schema is the History of Technic Civilization of which the Polesotechnic League is just one phase.

One sentence is reasonably accurate and engaging as blurbs go:

"These twelve adventures chronicle the expansion of earthmen out into the inhabited galaxy, meetings with alien races, the growth and decay of the first interstellar government (a trading association governed by trader-adventurers), followed by the foundation of the first interstellar empire."

The words "foundation" and "empire" recall Isaac Asimov's Foundation And Empire but we are bound to add that Anderson does this much better. His Terran Empire is less implausible and more credible.

"Lodestar," the culminating League story in the Earth Book, begins with characteristic Andersonian action but there is a reason for the action and a serious point to the story.

Adzel And Appearances

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

How do aliens appear to us and vice versa?

Jim Ching sees a picture of a Chinese lung, mis-named "dragon," and thinks of Adzel. Freeman Riefenstahl sees Adzel and thinks of Fafner, Wagner's dragon. But the truth is that Adzel was created by a human author so he was always likely to look like something Terrestrial, whether biological or mythological. What will aliens really be like?

Do Adzel's speech patterns indicate that he is not a native Anglic speaker? He says:

"'Tell, Jimmy...'" (p. 65)

We would normally avoid such an awkward phrase because it requires a extra long pause in the middle to prevent it from sounding like "Tell Jimmy..." which means something entirely different. 

"Have you eaten, grandmother?"

Adzel says:

"'A word to the right men - that does appear to be how your Technic civilization operates, no?'" (p. 66)

He has learned this by coming to study in Technic civilization. On Woden, he:

"'...was a prairie-galloping hunter.'" (p. 64)

Finally, for now, he drinks a lot of alcohol for a convert to Buddhism.

Revisiting Beginnings And Endings

We often contemplate beginnings and endings because they are important in history, including fictional history. Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League Tetralogy begins with Trader To The Stars, three stories about Nicholas van Rijn, and ends with Mirkheim, a novel about van Rijn and his trader team but also about the beginning of the end of the League. In the earlier publication order, the first part of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization - corresponding to the first three volumes of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga - begins with Trader To The Stars and ends with The Earth Book Of Stormgate which collects twelve Technic History instalments, including three about van Rijn, one about the trader team and one about both, but also begins before the League and ends after it. 

We have come a long way from Captain Torrance in van Rijn's space yacht, the Hebe G.B., at the beginning of Trader To The Stars to Jack Birnam and Ayan, Wyvan of the Stormgate Choth on Avalon, at the end of the last Earth Book instalment or, indeed, from first contact with Ythri at the beginning of the Earth Book to Jack and Ayan or, indeed, from the exploration of the Saturnian System at the beginning of the Saga to Jack and Ayan: many beginnings - and Jack and Ayan are far from the end. On the last page of the Earth Book, we are addressed for the last time by the Ythrian historian, Hloch, who writes long after Jack and Ayan, shortly after the Terran-Ythrian War recounted in The People Of The Wind and before the nine-volume Dominic Flandry period and its single-volume sequel, these ten volumes corresponding to Saga, Volumes IV-VII. The periods are linked by the Terran Empire which the Domain of Ythri, including Avalon, fights but Flandry defends - mainly from Merseia which the trader team had helped.

The eight League instalments collected in the Earth Book begin with "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and end with "Lodestar." "How To Be Ethnic..." is contemporaneous with and followed by "Margin of Profit," the earliest published van Rijn story, which had been quoted in Trader To The Stars but which had had to be revised before it could be fully incorporated into the Technic History. In "How To Be Ethnic...," the Solar Commonwealth is a safe place to live whereas, by the time of "Lodestar," it has acquired problems which climax in Mirkheim.

The glimpses of domestic life that are welcome in "How To Be Ethnic..." are faintly echoed in "Lodestar" by Coya Conyon's memories of her grandfather Nicholas visiting her parents' home and half-burying her under presents from other planets.

Scrolls And Stars

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

In Adzel's shack:

"Two scrolls hung on the walls, one showing a landscape and one the Compassionate Buddha." (p. 65)

In a question and answer session, the Chinese postgraduate student who attends our meditation group asked, "Why do you have scrolls showing Bodhidharma and Kanzeon behind your altar? Those two figures are not usually associated in China."

What a question! One that I would not have known to ask. The answer was, first, that they are associated in our tradition and, secondly, that, when the group started, someone gave us two scrolls and they happened to be of Bodhidharma and Kanzeon. I could see that he liked that second answer. This is a domestic detail in the Solar Commonwealth that resonates with my current experience: scrolls.

The Riefenstahl's apartment overlooks the Golden Gate where crews work to replicate the bridge. In the living room, Betty punches for coffee while a full-wall transparency shows city lights, the Moon with cities visible on its dark side and a few stars. More welcome domestic details although too few.

Earlier sf writers took the trouble to get to the Moon. In later future history series, cities on the dark side are part of the background. Stars, of course, mean not just lights in the sky but somewhere that Jimmy wants to go. He contrasts the no-longer-existent San Francisco Chinatown which was probably regarded as picturesque with:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)" (pp. 60-61)

That reflection summarizes quite a lot of the Technic History.

"You remember..."

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

We see a little way into the daily life of two future periods, on two planets. Hloch addresses his Avalonian audience:

"To screen a glossary of obscure terms, punch Library Central 254-0691." (p. 55)

Jim Ching addresses his Terrestrial contemporaries:

"Doubtless you remember the line of argument the promoters [of the Festival of Man] used:..." (p. 58)

(Since we twentieth, and now twenty-first, century readers do not remember that line of argument, Jim quotes it anyway.)

This reads like some similar passages in Robert Heinlein's Future History. It also reads as if Jim is writing for publication. However, Hloch tells us that "How To Be Ethnic..." is an extract from Jim's notebook reminiscences shared with Rennhi by his descendants. Therefore, its first publication anywhere is in the Earth Book. Jim did not write with a future, partly alien, audience in mind. Avalonians do not remember the Festival promoters' argument any more than we do. (Sometimes the narrative can get a bit lost going backward and forward in time but this is all good stuff, though.)

Intelligent Flying Carnivores

Ythrians energize their bodies by pumping oxygen into their veins when flapping their wings, especially when they are flying, but they walk awkwardly, cannot be confined and cannot swim or survive in water. They are feathered although not birds. An Ythrian would go insane in a spacesuit. An Ythrian spaceship must allow enough room to spread their wings and must have a wide view of space. On a long voyage, they need a large hold to fly around in. They are carnivores, not omnivores, therefore cannot opt for vegetarianism. They must hunt or herd and therefore are territorial. Their most basic social unit is widely separated families. The next largest unit is the choth which has Wyvans, law interpreters, but no government monopolizing violence. Order is maintained by custom and pride. Parents are bonded by child-care, not by sex which is seasonal except in a few aberrant females. A child clings to either parent in flight.

Given all that, how would Ythrians view God and how would God, assuming that He exists of course, judge Ythrians? Not by exactly the same moral code as human beings, presumably. Poul Anderson's characters face and discuss such questions. We know that Christians find different answers to fundamental questions and Poul Anderson's Technic History reflects this. Christians on Aeneas are outbackers. Peter Berg's Church has decided that Jesus came only to mankind whereas the Jerusalem Catholic Church later converts and ordains Axor, a Wodenite, who then seeks for evidence of a non-human Incarnation and might even find something like that among inscriptions left by the extinct Ancients/Chereionites. The universe of the Technic History is as ambiguous and mysterious as this empirical universe.

Human-Alien Interactions In The EARTH BOOK

Each of the twelve Technic History instalments collected in Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate is about human-alien interactions:

realizing that the large fliers on Ythri are intelligent;

understanding the crux of the Ythrian New Faith;

how does an impoverished Wodenite student survive on Earth?;

how will van Rijn defeat interstellar pirates?;

how Emil Dalmady interacts with Suleimanites and Baburites;

trading with Ivanhoans;

how will van Rijn and his companions survive among warring winged Diomedeans?;

unscrupulous human traders underestimate Trillians;

the trader team saves the Merseians;

Ythrians transport van Rijn to Mirkheim where the trader team teaches him that the many species bypassed or even exploited by Technic civilization are taking action;

human beings and Ythrians colonize Avalon (2).

Festival Of Man

Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70.

Jim Ching's principal school counsellor wants him to represent the San Francisco Chinese Community in the Festival of Man. Counsellor Snyder refers to "'Your people...'" (p. 59) Jim replies, "'My people?'" (ibid.) He happens to have inherited Chinese facial features.

Lancaster celebrates Chinese New Year. A Chinese postgraduate student at Lancaster University, whose name I cannot yet pronounce, has started to attend our Zen group and is a fascinating source of information about Chinese popular religion: the Jade Emperor; Kanzeon; other gods etc. He might be learning Zen from our group because apparently popular Buddhism in China is Pure Land or Tibetan whereas Chan is in the monasteries. A thousand years ago, there was a "Three Teachings in One" movement, aiming to combine Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. I had never heard of it.

We learn all the time.

We should have a Festival of Mankind but it should not be against extraterrestrial influences which is definitely how it comes across in the propaganda quoted by Jim.

Ad astra.

Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, Anderson And Aldiss

HG Wells wrote a fictional historical text book, The Shape Of Things To Come. 

Olaf Stapledon wrote a longer fictional history, Last And First Men. 

Robert Heinlein wrote a future history series, the Future History. 

Poul Anderson imitated the Future History with the Psychotechnic History.

Brian Aldiss combined the Wells/Stapledon and Heinlein models in Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand. (What a title!)

Anderson combined the two models in Genesis. (About a new beginning in a geological future.)

Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate goes even further because it is a single volume of Anderson's Technic History future history series but is also both a future history in its own right and a work of fictional historiographical research.

And that is more than enough for this evening. (I want to read something else before going to bed!)

Rennhi's And Hloch's Research

We are demonstrating that Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate is an outstanding work not only of future history but also of fictional historiography. Anderson wrote Hloch's introductions - indeed, created the character of Hloch - only in order to bind together one last comprehensive Technic History collection. However, these introductions significantly solidify the History. Rennhi's and Hloch's researches draw on contributions from many other beings:

in the University of Fleurville on Esperance, Rennhi finds a recording of a private correspondence that had been conducted on Earth, preserved by heirs and acquired by a historian;

when Jim Ching settled in Catawrayannis, his descendants kept his notebooks and granted Rennhi access to them;

someone who had been involved in the Ivanhoan Christmas celebration informed Emil Dalmady who relayed the story to his daughter;

van Rijn and Falkayn transferred many data units from the Solar System to Hermes from where Rennhi eventually acquired them, then, by initiating a code-breaking project, retrieved the accounts of Merseia and Mirkhein; 

when the Ythrian ship that had transported van Rijn and Coya Conyon to Mirkheim had been identified, it became possible to acquire further information, including the captain's journal, from Wryfields Choth on Ythri.

Read the Earth Book and appreciate its editors' research.

Layers Of Narrative

(Re)reading Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate, we are embedded in centuries of fictional history beneath multiple layers of narrative.

See here.

Hloch also introduces:

AA Craig's accounts, in Tales Of The Great Frontier, first of Nicholas van Rijn's victory over Borthu and secondly of Jack Birnam's rescue of the Wyvan of Stormgate;

Judith Dalmady/Lundgren's accounts in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana, first of her father, Emil's, achievement on the planet Suleiman, secondly of a Christmas celebration on the planet Ivanhoe and thirdly of Nat Falkayn's rescue of a young Ythrian;

an unnamed historical novelist's account of van Rijn's struggle for survival on Diomedes;

Arinnian's retelling of Fluoch of Mistwood's account of events on the planets Paradox and Trillia;

Hloch's and Arinnian's accounts first of the trader team on Merseia and secondly of van Rijn at Mirkheim.

Also, Donvar Ayeghen introduces John Henry Reeves' account of Manuel Argos, Founder of the Terran Empire.

The novel about van Rijn was published under two different titles but Rennhi did not think that this matter warranted investigation. Indeed not. Poul Anderson disliked the publisher's title for The Man Who Counts: War Of The Wing-Men. Rennhi's dismissive attitude is a hint of metafiction.

Definitive Volumes

A future history series can include a definitive volume. Ideally, such a volume would cover the entire period of the future history and would convey some overall impression of its successive stages. However, I can think of only one volume that meets these precise criteria: Tales Of Known Space by Larry Niven. This collection begins with interplanetary exploration in the concluding quarter of the twentieth century and ends with a peaceful interstellar civilization in 3100.

Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth, is definitive up to a point. After the initial technological advances and first Moon landings of Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, Volume II recounts events in different parts of the Solar System about 2000, ending with a hint that things will get worse before they get better, thus paving the way for the Prophetic dictatorship and interregnum of space travel in Volume III, Revolt In 2100 - thus not covering the entire Future History but bridging three main periods, from 1952 until the late twenty-first century.

Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate does not cover his entire Technic History but does span its first main period from the Grand Survey to the colonization of the main Avalonian continent. The Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League rise and fall during this period and, since, by the time of the compilation of the Earth Book, the Terran Empire has arisen and grown, the way is prepared for Dominic Flandry who dominates the second part of this future history series. 

Life In The Solar Commonwealth

After explaining the Solar Commonwealth, Hloch introduces a story set on Earth during the Commonwealth period and even gives his Avalonian Ythrian readers a few rare glimpses of Terrestrial domestic life in the Ching and Riefenstahl households as well as in Adzel's student lodgings. That Hloch's anticipated audience is not readers of Poul Anderson's books in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but rather is his fellow Avalonians in the immediate aftermath of the Terran War is made clear when he writes that a glossary of obscure terms is to be found in Library Central 254-0691. Hloch's text looks back from a further future at a less remote future.

Hloch introduces:

Maeve Downey's account of Aram Turekian's discovery on Ythri;

an unnamed narrator's account of Peter Berg's experience on Gray/Avalon;

Jim Ching's account of Adzel's student days on Earth -

- and more than I can summarize in a single lunch break.

Nations

The political background of the Nicholas van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars, is the Solar Commonwealth. In the van Rijn/Falkayn/trader team novel, Mirkheim, the Commonwealth merges with the Home Companies, one of the two rival cartels in the Polesotechnic League, and thus becomes a corporate state. This development and the consequent civil war are the beginning of the terminal decline of the League and the reason why David Falkayn leads the colonization of Avalon outside human space. 

Hloch is our historian of this period of Technic civilization. In the interstitial passage between the first and second of the stories that he collects in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, Hloch explains to his Ythrian readers what a "nation" is and how the Commonwealth grew out of "nations" while at the same time curbing the potentially Earth-devastating conflicts between them. Even the contemporary Terran Empire cannot be fully understood without reference to "nation."

While the Commonwealth was developing, exploration and colonization spread through this part of the galaxy. The future Avalon was explored by Ythrians employing human beings although not yet colonized. Hloch's summary of this historical period is invaluable and would not have been written except as part of the Earth Book.

EARTH BOOK And SAGA

I am looking at my recently acquired hardback copy of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate. This purchase was necessary because my paperback copy had begun literally to disintegrate and had also come apart although it is still on a bookshelf in two parts, defying any further sellotaping of its pages back together again. The Earth Book has to be appreciated as a work in itself. In Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III (of VII), the twelve Earth Book instalments are reproduced together with their introductions by Hloch but they are dispersed among twelve other Technic History instalments and also their order is slightly altered. We need copies of both the Earth Book and the Saga, in my opinion.

Hloch's initial introduction to the entire Earth Book makes clear that we are not only reading a future history series but also benefitting from the works of future historiographers, in this case his mother, Rennhi, and himself. This continues in the first collected story where the human narrator describes the Grand Survey, the Star Trek-equivalent period of Technic civilization. Hloch's afterword to this story informs us that it is an extract from:

"...Far Adventure by Maeve Downey, the autobiography of a planetologist."

-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), p. 33.

Thus, one future historian introduces another. Hloch enhances the stories which were not individually introduced when originally published. The Earth Book enhances the entire first section of the Technic History. 

Cosmos And Consciousness

If we study philosophy and read sf, then we make some connections. 

Poul Anderson's sf has a cosmic background. Virtual particles emerge from vacuum. Galaxies and stars condense from hydrogen. An end-product of cosmic processes is consciousness with different perceptions and motivations in different intelligent species: human beings, Ythrians, Merseians etc. 

The philosophical mind-body problem can be re-expressed as: how do some objective processes become subjective? We empirically observe causal relationships between earlier and later objective processes but not between objective and subjective processes. Subjective phenomena are unique and "internal," although not just in a physical sense, to each individual subject. Fiction writers have learned how to express different subjective points of view and also how to differentiate between subjective and objective accounts. When an omniscient narrator informs readers that a star went nova billions of years ago, there is no subjective perception of the stellar explosion. Poul Anderson, like many other authors, exercises careful control over narrative points of view.

Mental events - sensations, satisfactions, discomforts, desires, fears, thoughts etc - do not happen in a vacuum. What happens in a vacuum, apparently, is potential energy, virtual particles, quantum fluctuations etc. Energy and mass underwent many transformations before organismic sensitivity became bodily sensation, the first consciousness.

Our present mental states result from a long three-layered past.

Genetic

You are not only a material object subject to the laws of physics but also:

an organism

an animal

a mammal

a biped

homo sapiens

male or female (usually)

Cultural

You were born at a particular time and place, in a particular society and in a particular part of that society. You speak a particular language. Your society has some ruling ideas and might include many world views and belief systems. You have inherited a world view which differs from other world views and which is very far from being identical with the world as a whole as it is in itself. (Some people do not realize that.) Our perceptions both reflect and distort reality in different ways.

Personal

This is everything that has happened to you, has been done to you and has been done by you from the very first moment of your existence as a distinct psychophysical organism.

After all that has happened, someone says, "I think..." or "I believe..." (fill in the blank).

We think that our thoughts are our own but they have had a long genesis.

Children Of Lythran And Blawsa

"[Eyath] asked permission to leave of her father Lythran and her mother Blawsa..."

-The People Of The Wind, I, p. 443.

Hloch of the Stormgate Choth compiles The Earth Book Of Stormgate because:

"His Wyvan Tariat, son of Lythran and Blawsa, has asked this."

Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), p. 75.

So Tariat is Eyath's brother. Hloch's Earth Book follows directly from The People Of The Wind. It stays with the theme of human-Ythrian interactions but backtracks to first contact with Ythri, then to joint exploration of Gray/Avalon, and ends with the two-stage colonization of Avalon. However, between these opening and closing instalments, it returns to the earlier Polesotechnic League period so that we again read about characters who are by now long dead:

Adzel

van Rijn

David Falkayn and the trader team

Coya Conyon

We see again the planets Ivanhoe and Mirkheim while the planets Diomedes and Merseia are introduced. A magnificent future history series.

Closing Scenes

The People Of The Wind, XVIII.

We have appreciated this scene before. Emerging from the improvised hospital outside Gray, Tabitha Falkayn stands, in a murmuring, livewell-scented wind, atop a hill of emerald susin and Avalonian flowers above the gardened city and glittering Bay. We have seen Falkayn Bay, named after Tabitha's ancestor, the Founder of Avalon, often enough that it has become a familiar background setting and we particularly appreciate these concluding scenes set on both Avalon and Esperance.

Arinnian's closing speech to Tabitha celebrates Poul Anderson's twin values of freedom and diversity.

"Snowpeaks flamed. The sun stood up in a shout of light.

"High is heaven and holy." (XIX, p. 662)

Eyath flies home to Stormgate which is where we find Hloch perched on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother when he introduces the following volume of Anderson's Technic History, The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

Fair winds forever.

Reading And Bitching

The People Of The Wind, XVIII.

The forty Terran prisoners in an improvised Avalonian hospital ward:

"...had no entertainment except reading and bitching. A majority preferred the latter." (p. 644)

We appreciate the humour of classifying bitching as a kind of entertainment. Rochefort wears earcups and reads borrowed books like The Gaiila Folk.

There are people who "do not have time" to read and who do not know what they will do in their retirement. Would they prefer to work until they drop? People who "do not have time" to read are not readers. Anyone can read something during their lunch breaks. In my experience, blogging about books makes reading an interactive process. I would not have reread Poul Anderson's works so often and also would not have noticed certain recurrent themes and features without blogging.

Back to Rochefort: we find him an increasingly sympathetic character although this will be our last sight of him.

Oil In A Lamp

"'A cold, blustery day, 'twas. I watched that ship dwindle away under the racing clouds till she vanished in the brume, and something made me stop by the temple of Tanith and my way back and put oil in a lamp - not from them, understand, but for all poor mariners, on whom rests the well-being of Tyre.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 229-331, AT p. 302.

Lancaster City District, where we live, includes Morecambe Bay. Yesterday, walking on the promenade in the town of Morecambe, we saw police cars, an ambulance and a Coast Guard vehicle converging on a single point. A stretcher was carried down to the water's edge. Then a policeman walked back inland, telling us all to clear the area. 

Not only mariners are at risk at sea. Morecambe Bay is tidal. In 2004, when I was working in Morecambe, a group of illegal cockle pickers drowned. I have just googled and found a report of the incident yesterday.

Oil to Tanith - or a candle in St. Peter's Cathedral, Lancaster.

Philippe Rochefort II

The People Of The Wind, XVI.

If the Terrans do land on Avalon, then Rochefort wants to:

"'...be in the first assault group...'" (p. 624)

Cajal points out that:

"'That's the most dangerous...'" (ibid.)

- and suggests that Rochefort has:

"'...earned better.'" (ibid.)

I would go further. Surely Rochefort has proved himself to be such an asset that his superiors would not want to risk him in a first assault? In any case, he seems to lead a charmed life which, of course, has something to do with the fact that Poul Anderson wants Rochefort to survive for a last conversation with Tabitha Falkayn before the end of the novel.

Rochefort will go on his way, Tabitha will marry Arinnian and, unfortunately, we will see no more of any of them.

Fair winds forever.

Admiral And Lieutenant

The People Of The Wind, XVI.

Rochefort's pre-dinner drink with Cajal is one of the most comfortable scenes in the novel. The older man tries to get the younger man relaxed and talking freely. Rochefort says something in favour of his former captors, the Avalonians, which is just the sort of thing that the Admiral needs to hear. 

Rochefort says, "'Body of Christ,'" (p. 624) then signs himself before the Admiral's crucifix. From their descriptions, I infer that van Rijn and later Cajal are old-style Catholics whereas Rochefort and later Axor are, we are told, Jerusalem Catholics. But that such a difference exists is partly inferred.

Is an Avalonian merchant who defects:

"'Despicable or realistic? No matter.'" (p. 621)

It does not matter to the Admiral. I once argued with a neighbour that it would be a good idea for him to join the union at work. I added that, in this instance, either self-interest or solidarity would suffice as a motive!

Rochefort is a good guy, Terran or no Terran. We will stay with him for a while longer if possible.

Philippe Rochefort

The People Of The Wind.

Maybe Philippe Rochefort is our main man in this novel.

Rochefort successively interacts with:

his crew, both killed in battle;

Eve Davisson on Esperance;

Hrill, Draun, Arinnian and Eyath on Avalon;

Admiral Cajal in the superdreadnaught, Valenderay -

- so he could be regarded as a unifying character.

Rochefort is like Dominic Flandry except that he does not save the day for Terra. But everyone cannot do everything.

A Philippe Rochefort series is one of many hypothetical extensions of Poul Anderson's Technic History. Where does Rochefort go and what does he do after Avalon? Hloch might have told us. He writes after the Terran War but does not incorporate The People Of The Wind into his Earth Book compilation. We would have welcomed another such Editor for the second half of the Technic History.

Since 1956

Poul Anderson has been with me personally since some time in the 1960's. I remember reading Twilight World while at boarding school in the Republic of Ireland, 1960-'67. In 1956, when the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," was published, I started to attend a boarding school in Scotland and knew nothing of Anderson as yet although I did read Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones while in Scotland. Over a much longer period, I have become very conscious of connections between Heinlein's Future History, Heinlein's juveniles, including Starman Jones, and Anderson's works.

When we reread such works, especially after very long intervals, they are not the same because we are not. I used to be satisfied if the characters had travelled in spaceships through the Solar System or to other planetary systems. Now considerably more than that is necessary. Anderson conveys some sense of what it is like to be an Ythrian or a Merseian or to be a human being in regular contact with other intelligent species. Merseians, who began as space opera villains, became a credible species with diverse cultures and languages and not every single one of them a villain - obviously.

The People Of The Wind about human beings and Ythrians seems to be inexhaustible in descriptive details and characterization although we approach its climax yet again.

Betrayals

The People Of The Wind, XVI.

Eyath, an Ythrian female, goes on heat when bereaved. Draun, knowing that this will happen, seeks her out. It is not a chance encounter. Draun has learned rape from human beings.

Arinnian challenges Draun. Tabitha/Hrill persuades them to postpone their duel until after the war.

Rochefort steals a spaceboat and escapes with military intelligence that he had persuaded Tabitha to divulge. But Arinnian had already persuaded Tabitha to trick Rochefort with misleading information.

Are any further betrayals possible?

The survivors will eventually arrive somewhere good.

High is heaven and holy.

Wind And Waves

The People Of The Wind, XV.

The elements play their part in a dramatic conversation between Tabitha Falkayn and Philippe Rochefort. When he urges her to divulge military intelligence, even saying:

"'If you love me, you will...'" (p. 604)

- we are told that:

"She stood in the middle of the wind." (ibid.)

Where else?

Then, when he agrees to give his parole, his voice briefly breaks as:

"Waves hissed at his back." (ibid.)

Waves can lap or murmur but these hiss. At him? Do they indicate that he will break his parole? Both find their conflicting loyalties stretched to breaking point. Arinnian plans that Rochefort will escape with misleading intelligence fed to him by his lover. She knows this but says it all in one breath anyway. Suddenly, a John le Carre character might feel at home on Avalon.

Grief And The Elements

The People Of The Wind, XV.

Pathetic fallacy. Eyath learns that Vodan has been killed in battle and nature responds:

night falls;

wind rises;

clouds break;

the moon, Morgana, flees;

surf threshes;

trees roar;

air chills;

Eyath flies alone.

An Ythrian grieves in the elements, not under shelter. Arinnian had thought that she could be the sun or the wind... Oneness with nature is natural for intelligent flying carnivores. 

Tension

The People Of The Wind, XIV.

At a meeting in Tabitha Falkayn's house:

"Arinnian wondered if the tension he felt was in the atmosphere or his solitary mind." (p. 593)

No way, the solitary mind.

Causes of tension:

two species;

two sexes;

two sides in a war;

personal jealousies and animosities.

Draun (Ythrian, male) looks surly, strokes his dirk and is anti-Terran.

Eyath (Ythrian, female) dislikes Draun and is a close galemate of Arinnian (human, male, human name "Christopher Holm").

Tabitha Falkayn (human, female, choth name "Hrill") is the business partner of Draun, who is her superior officer in the home-guard, and has become engaged to Philippe Rochefort, to the discomfiture of Arinnian.

Rochefort (human, male) is a Terran prisoner of war and Tabitha's house guest. 

Much conflict will ensue.

Blind Prejudice

The People Of The Wind, XIV.

"'What is honor to a Terran?' Draun snorted." (p. 594)

The Terran in question is the prisoner of war, Philippe Rochefort, who is supremely honorable. Anyone who deals with Rochefort, either as friend or as foe, has to start with that fact - just as it is also evident that Draun himself is blinded by prejudice.

The first casualty in any war is the truth. I once argued in a fanzine letter column that every state should be secular and was immediately denounced for advocating an Islamic state! That is an obvious contradiction/non sequitur but it fitted the context and the assumptions of my antagonist. The process is: "I strongly disagree with and dislike what someone has said. Therefore, I should denounce it in the strongest possible terms - even at the expense of completely misquoting it!"

Clearly, Draun cannot be trusted to quote accurately anything said by Rochefort. Later, Draun will get his wish. He will die killing Terrans. If he had survived the war, then he would have had to fight a duel with Arinnian. "They who live by the sword..."

I hang my observations on Poul Anderson's passages. Everyone else is welcome to do likewise.

Familiarity

The People Of The Wind is the fourth and last appearance of the planet Avalon in Poul Anderson's Technic History and the sixth and second last appearance by an Ythrian or Ythrians in the Technic History. These finite numbers of instalments generate a sense of a much longer acquaintance with a place and a people.

David Falkayn's mother, Athena, and brother, John, each appear only once, in different scenes, in Mirkheim. But we know the Falkayn family.

(Tolkien has Mirkwood. Anderson has Mirkheim and Mistwood.)

The city of Gray on Avalon seems very real and familiar when Daniel Holm glances out his window:

a clear winter's day although, at this latitude and altitude, there is no snow so that the hills remain green with susin;

whooping wind, cold but exultant;

dancing whitecaps on Falkayn Bay;

cloak-clad men and women;

swooping Ythrians.

We are there.