Conan And Many Others

Conan The Rebel.

Poul Anderson clearly did not want to write just about Conan or from Conan's pov. 

In Chapter I, Tothapis converses with Set who gives Tothapis a remote viewing of a conversation between Conan and Belit. Mitra detects and interrupts Set but remains off-stage.

In II, Tothapis converses with Ramwas and Nehekba and gives them a remote viewing of Jehenan and his guards.

In III, Belit tells Conan about Hoiakim, Shaaphi, Jehanan, Aliel, Kedron, Ramwas and three men that she killed. We read not only her dialogue but also some flashbacks.

In IV, Shuat converses with his adjutant, then Ausar addresses his men and converses with his daughter, Daris.

I have not reread any further yet. Clearly, Conan is one of a large cast of characters. There are XX chapters and I am probably going to reread Larry Niven or someone else for the rest of this evening. 

Ivory, Apes, Peacocks And Jealous Gods

Conan The Rebel, III.

"'With what ivory, apes, and peacocks we could muster, I sent back a commission for a warcraft to be built and outfitted.'" (p. 29)

For some history of the phrase, "ivory, and apes, and peacocks," see two previous posts here.

Belit says that Conan and she will have:

"'...a life together. If the jealous gods allow.'" (ibid.)

Probably series editors and authors will not allow but I cannot remember what shape the Conan-Belit relationship is in at the end of this volume and will wait to find out.

We know of one "jealous god" in the Bible but what is the origin of this phrase? Were other gods "jealous"?

Belit's remark reminds us of Manse Everard's realization that the gods are "...a miserly lot." Time travellers who spend a lot of time in the past probably learn to think that way.

I expect to be doing more gardening than blogging tomoz.

Laterz.

Belit And The Wind

Conan The Rebel, III.

Conan is currently with a woman called Belit whose parents, husband and son are dead because of a Stygian raid led by Ramwas. The men were killed. The mother killed herself and Belit killed her young son to save him from slavery. She and her brother were enslaved but she has escaped. She must have revenge so that her dead will have slaves in the hereafter. While she is telling Conan about this, there is a characteristic Andersonian interruption:

"'...I must use my wits, so that Hoiakim, Shaapi, Aliel, and Kedron may have many slaves to attend them.'

"A flaw of wind made the ship lurch and the sail crack.

"'Ramwas had business in Khemi...'" (p. 26)

At the mention of slavery in the hereafter, the ship lurches and the sail cracks because of the wind. It seems to be automatic for Anderson to use the wind to emphasize dramatic moments in the dialogue. By now, regular blog readers have become very familiar with this motif.

Genre Requirements

 

In hard sf, when a spaceship moves faster than light, Poul Anderson has to present a scientific rationale, e.g., in his Technic History, a rapid succession of quantum jumps of the entire ship, whereas, in fantasy, when a sea vessel moves with supernatural speed, magic or the will of a god is a sufficient explanation.

In Virgil's Aeneid, Neptune, favouring one captain in a boat race, reaches up and moves that boat forward by hand! Another captain, realizing what must be happening, rallies his men by declaring that the first place is the gift of the gods and that men must strive for second place.

In Poul Anderson's multiverse, universes with quantum jumps and gods coexist and there is some limited contact between them but never enough to compromise the integrity of the distinct genres.

It is a matter of individual taste which kind of narrative we prefer.

Jehanan And Ramwas

Conan The Rebel, II.

A prisoner, Jehanan, spits on an image of Set in front of his guards. This is unwise. Set is powerful and his worshippers are vengeful. In any case, maybe Set as a deity merits some passive respect although no more than that.

Addressing Ramwas, who is a Stygian military officer, minor nobleman and large landholder, Topathis says:

"'Though the penalty for failure is unbounded, the reward for success can be high.'" (p. 16)

This is a characteristic of evil organizations in fiction and probably also in fact. Failure is punished as if it were deliberate wrong-doing! Knowledge that I was working for such a regime would certainly make me want - and plan - to get out. Ramwas is concerned not about that but only about the dangers of the task that Topathis sets for him.

As in Ian Fleming's From Russia, With Love, the villains assemble before we see much of our hero.

I appreciate Conan The Rebel as one part of Poul Anderson's works but not as an instalment of the Conan series, not having read any other volumes of the latter.

Myth And Fact

 

"'...that which was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.' PERELANDRA"

-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

(Lewis quotes from his own novel, Perelandra. I have Perelandra upstairs but will not now go to look for that passage in the original.)

Yggdrasil, the World Tree, is a myth to Dominic Flandry (see Yggdrasil And Youth) but a real place to Odin and Loki (see Yggdrasil). Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods is set in a universe where Yggdrasil is real. That universe is visited by Virginia Matuchek from the goetic universe in Anderson's Operation Luna (see Mimir).

Neil Gaiman retells Norse myths and asks whether Ragnorak has happened yet. The ambiguity of the answer to this question makes these myths:

"...seem strangely present and current..."

-Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology (London, 2018), p. xii)

- instead of just past.

Lewis, Anderson and Gaiman are a trinity of the imagination.

Set And Mitra

Conan The Rebel, I.

We are on familiar imaginative territory. Although the magician Tothapis addresses Set as:

"'...lord of the universe...'" (p. 2)

- Set reminds Tothapis:

"'...how many and diverse are the gods of earth, sea, sky, and underworld...'" (p. 3)

Many peoples regard serpentine Set as a devil. His main divine enemy is solar Mitra, worshipped by the Hyborians (not on our map), who would tread him underfoot.

What would we do if we inhabited such a universe? Not worship Set. Tothapis' mattress is:

"...stuffed with the tresses of sacrificial maidens...'" (p. 1)

I would probably pay due respect to Mitra and to local gods while continuing to practice a form of meditation that works just as well in a universe without gods. All kinds of universes coexist in Poul Anderson's multiverse. 

Night In Stygia

See the previous post.

If the fifth dimension is spatial, then we say that the timelines coexist in parallel with each other. If it is temporal, then we say that they succeed each other. If it is something else, then we do not know what to say.

It would be strange to read Poul Anderson's canon in chronological order of fictitious events starting with Conan The Rebel and we would not usually advise anyone to do this. But when we do begin to read the novel, we find Anderson's characteristic detailed descriptiveness:

"Night lay heavy on Stygia. Where the great river emptied into its bay, no whisper of wind came off the ocean beyond. The sky was hazed, so that only a few stars glimmered in sight above Khemi..."

-Poul Anderson, Conan The Rebel (New York, 1981), I, p. 1.

We find Stygia and Khemi on a two-page map after the contents page.

We, editorially speaking, remember almost nothing of previous readings so maybe it is time for another reading at a leisurely pace?

5 Dimensions + 3 BC

Imagine that the events of Poul Anderson's fictional narratives occur in different parts of a single five-dimensional space-time. Each particular sequence of events has the usual three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. Additionally, the sequences are separated by a fifth dimension which is either a fourth spatial dimension, a second temporal dimension or a third kind of dimension. The fifth dimension is traversed by multiversal travellers and by guests of the Old Phoenix.

Each sequence of events is a single timeline. Thus, there are multiple pasts and futures. In some cases, we are shown very remote futures. When we say that three of Anderson's novels are set BC, we do not necessarily mean that they are set in the BC period of the same timeline. In fact, they are almost certainly not.

Conan The Rebel is heroic fantasy set in a remote fictional past.

The Dancer From Atlantis is historical sf/time travel fiction set in Atlantis.

The Golden Slave is historical fiction set in 100 BC.

Conan... is the earliest.

The Changes Concluded

Brain Wave, 21.

Archie Brock presides over a community of morons, imbeciles and animals. A chimpanzee and a moron build a charcoal apparatus.

A small silent ovoid with no visible means of propulsion lands and a man steps through its shimmering side. Intellectual mankind will leave Earth not to conquer the many lesser intelligences out there but just to build its own interstellar civilization which might help others now and again. Spacefaring human beings do not:

"'...intend to establish a galactic empire. Conquest is a childishness we've laid aside...'" (p. 187)

These guys know what they are doing in a way that we need to.

Brock's community and any others like it will inherit the Earth. They might be helped now and again but basically they are on their own. Brock would not want to return to the old days. Everyone is making the most of their new reality which, I suddenly realize, is what we have to do every day. 

Future Histories And Poul Anderson

We can look back on future histories as a twentieth century literary tradition with Poul Anderson, I will argue, as a culmination. 

Wells and Stapledon wrote before we were born. Published in 1945 and set loosely after the war, CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength is an imaginative Christian reply to Wellsian/Stapledonian anthropocentric extrapolations. 

American future histories are embedded in our lifetimes if we are old enough. The opening story of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set in 1951. His second volume is set around 2000. Larry Niven's Known Space History opens with:

"...the near future, the exploration of interplanetary space during the next quarter-century."

-Larry Niven, Tales Of Known Space (New York, 1975), p. xii.

That quarter-century is 1975-2000. Niven wrote in 1975 that:

"The Known Space series is now complete." (ibid., p. 223)

It was not. But think about 1975. It is now fifty years ago.

James Blish's Cities In Flight opens with Year 2018!

In Poul Anderson's main future history series, the early twenty-first century is:

"...a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos."

-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 795-804 AT p. 795.

We are not out of that yet!

Anderson's Genesis, published in 2000, summarizes past human history, then proceeds through billions of years in a galactic future of post-organic intelligences that will not be superseded either in our lifetimes or for a very long time after that.

Stillness

Brain Wave, 20.

Corinth feels "...the sea wind in his face..." (p. 176)

When Helga tells him that it is he who has become afraid to face life:

"There was a long stillness, only the sea and the wind had voice." (p. 178)

Then he asks for her help. We leave them with sea, stars and a full moon. However, the concluding chapter belongs to those who remain the old kind of human beings, Archie Brock and Sheila. We will reread it shortly.

(Short posts punctuate other activities.)

Known Space And The Earth Book

Tales Of Known Space has the same relationship to Larry Niven's Known Space future history series as The Earth Book Of Stormgate has to the Polesotechnic League period of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. 

Both volumes collect previously uncollected instalments. Tales... collects thirteen. The Earth Book collects twelve.

Tales... has an introduction and interstitial notes by Niven. The Earth Book has the same by Hloch of Stormgate Choth.

Tales... begins with early interplanetary exploration; the Earth Book with early interstellar exploration.

Tales... features the continuing characters, Lucas Garner, Beowulf Shaeffer and Louis Wu. The Earth Book features Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn and the other members of the trader team.

Tales... shows the beginning of conflict with the kzinti. The Earth Book shows the origins of conflict with the Merseians.

Each shows some daily life in its history and is a definitive collection of its series.

Glimpse Or Trance

 

Brain Wave, 20.

A Hindu says that, since the change, he has:

"'...lost the feeble glimpse of the ultimate that I once had...'" (p. 173)

Mandelbaum replies that the Hindu's mind has become too strong for:

"'...the kind of trance which was your particular fetalization...'" (ibid.)

What an appalling antithesis!

Contemplation is not a trance. In zazen, we sit in an alert posture with eyes open facing a wall. Contemplation and intelligence are complementary. I expect them to coexist in a better future but we need to build that future to find out.

Sea Wind

Brain Wave, 19. 

When Peter Corinth is told that his wife, Sheila, who had been unable to cope with the change, has given herself unsupervised electroshock treatment which nearly killed her but has instead restored her pre-change personality:

"Corinth was dimly aware of how live and fresh the sea wind felt in his nostrils." (p. 163)

The wind almost always accompanies a pause in the dialogue when the viewpoint character has to absorb what he has just been told. The wind is live and fresh. Sheila has restored her sanity. She has lost the enhanced intelligence which she did not want. She is mentally healthy again although she and he are now irrevocably apart. As if from a distance, he is dimly aware of the fresh wind that signifies her restored wellbeing. Readers often do not analyze how the text conveys its message.

The Change Continues IV (But Nearly Finished)

Brain Wave, 18.

Sensitives make the postal service redundant.

Men's and women's washrooms are no longer separated.

Of necessity, scientists work together for a while to address the change but then become free to follow their own interests. A few recidivists plan to reproduce the inhibitor field and thus to reverse the change but they will be easily detected and stopped by the majority. 

Poul Anderson tries to present the new truncated conversations using italics and brackets as well as quotation marks and the text becomes somewhat disjointed. 

Mankind is advancing beyond the readers' comprehension. The novel approaches its conclusion and as with many other such works, e.g., Starfarers and The Boat Of A Million Years, there will be no sequel. I am a series man, myself.

The Change Continues III

Brain Wave, 18.

The few road vehicles in New York run off the new powercast system. The air is dustless and smokeless. Mid-week feels like Sunday. It is "...like being in the country." (p. 150) The city is dying.

Ten year olds play in an empty shop, then run down the street but do not shout and are no longer like children.

A long noiseless metallic flying shape might mean that gravity has been mastered. An overheard conversation is gibberish to the viewpoint character and to the reader. In the Institute lobby, there is only a blinking, glowing machine. In the building, light is diffused through the air without bulbs.

There is more but it is getting late here. Poul Anderson generates the impression that the changes will continue indefinitely. 

The Inhibitor Field

Brain Wave, 16.

Earth entered the inhibitor field before intelligence had evolved. When intelligence did emerge, it adapted to compensate for the field so that animals and human beings became about as intelligent as they would have done without the field. Then, when Earth left the field, their intelligence quantitatively increased to a qualitatively new level.

The opposite happens for intelligent beings whose planets enter the field. They are suddenly reduced to a sub-moronic level and probably do not survive. Because passage through the field benefits some species, including humanity, Nathan Lewis wonders whether there is a reason for all this but, if there is a reason, then it has to account for the bad effects as well.

At the end of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, Robert Anderson wonders whether time travellers from a far future travelled into the past to sow the genes that generated mutant time travellers. That is a better worked out "reason."

Seasons

Some chapters open by marking the passage of the seasons in:

Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys;

Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea";

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave.

Brain Wave, 15:

"...the late fall of snow..." (p. 131)

17:

"Spring had come late, but now there was warmth in the air and a mist of green on the trees." (p. 143)

18:

"Early summer: the first shy green of leaves has become a fullness enchanted with sunlight, talking with wind; it has rained just an hour ago, and the light cool wind shakes down a fine sparkle of drops, like a ghostly kiss on your uplifted face; a few sparrows dance on the long, empty streets; the clean quiet mass of the buildings is sharp against a luminous blue sky, the thousand windows catch the morning sun and throw it back in one great dazzle." (p. 149)

(It does not surprise regular Anderson readers that the wind talks.)

21 (the closing chapter):

"Autumn again, and winter in the air. The fallen leaves lay in heaps under the bare dark trees and hissed and rattled across the ground with every wind. Only a few splashes of colour remained in the woods, yellow or bronze or scarlet against grayness.

"Overhead the wild geese passed in great flocks, southward bound. There was more life in the sky this year - fewer hunters, Brock supposed. The remote honking drifted down to him, full of wandering and loneliness. It was a clear pale blue up there, the sun wheeled bright and heatless, spilling its coruscant light across a broad and empty land. The wind was strong, flowing around his cheeks and flapping his clothes, the trees were noisy with it." (p. 181)

A full year.

I did not set out to quote at such length but it was difficult to stop, especially since the autumnal passage above culminates with a trademark strong wind.

Autumn is the beginning of an end with the promise of a new beginning if only because there is a cyclical return. This autumn is an end of all the old ways on Earth but much is happening elsewhere and is still happening for Archie Brock on Earth. The season is not dead. The wind flaps his clothes and is noisy in the trees.

The Change Continues II

Brain Wave, 17.

I tried to write that previous post while listening to an on-line interview about current world changes and it became very confusing.

Brian O'Banion, an Irish former New York policeman, now speaks Unitary. In the current local Dukes Playhouse dramatization of The Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy has a language problem on first meeting the Munchkins. One of them asks her, "Kion lingvon vi parolas?" They soon establish that she speaks English and they switch to this although they continue to insert some Esperanto, like "Sekvu la flavan brikan vojon" for "Follow the yellow brick road." During the interval, I approached a Munchkin and said, "Cu vi parolas Esperanton? Gi estas tre facila lingvo," and left him with "Kaj al vi, kamarado!" (Which was about as much as I could manage.) I have gone off the point, haven't I?

O'Banion is an Observer, a role invented by Mendelbaum although probably soon to be adopted by the international government. Administrators need to know what people are thinking and saying so that they can then know what needs to be done. The feeble-minded need to be guided to their new colonies. Someone acting anonymously is buying or at least somehow acquiring scientific equipment and secreting it somewhere. This has to be investigated.

The Change Continues

Brain Wave, 17.

Poul Anderson continues to spell out the implications of his premise until the end.

Gold has become an industrial metal, conductive and inert. A new world-wide man-hour credit standard will replace money. Meanwhile, in New York, New Jersey and New England, the chief administrator, Mandelbaum, issues scrip to be exchanged for goods and services. He and a food-factory superintendent converse in Unitary, made public only a week before, which has maximal logic and minimal redundancy.

Food synthesis plants, when built, will feed everyone without charge. However, it will take time to build robot construction workers. Meanwhile, human workers want to work for less than six hours a day because driving nails, mixing concrete etc are too boring. Mandelbaum suggests beamcasting talks, symphonies etc that they can listen to while working.

Hundreds leave the city every day. When weather-turning force screens are in full production, Mandelbaum will move his office to the country and work outdoors. 

Protean Mind

Brain Wave, 16.

Peter Corinth thinks that somatic control by enhanced intelligence will result in:

an end to psychosomatic diseases;

control by will alone of many organic problems;

an end to pain;

no need for doctors because everyone will learn enough medicine to cope with whatever illnesses remain;

many centuries of lifespan;

no senility.

Corinth discounts immortality because that would involve overloading of experiences and exhaustion of the nervous system although Poul Anderson's own later The Boat Of A Million Years contradicts this.

This is Corinth's "Protean man -" (p. 138) 

Corinth uses the adjective, "protean," one more time when he says that "'...pure logical mind is so protean...'" (p. 141) that hyperintelligent organisms, whether human beings or giant spiders, will discount their physical differences. I think that "giant spiders" is a hopelessly inadequate way to envisage extraterrestrial intelligences. Maybe we will get some data in our lifetimes.

Other Species

Brain Wave, 16.

The Time Traveller has to deduce how mankind devolved into Eloi and Morlocks. Corinth and Lewis, travelling not in a Time Machine but in the first faster than light interstellar spaceship, find a planet of city-dwellers with no signs of warfare. Either these beings outgrew militarism before they industrialized or they have built a universal state but there is no time to find out. 

Corinth and Lewis find other planets where life has developed in ways that we recognize from later works by Anderson:

three intelligent species have evolved on a gas giant;

a planetary civilization has become so inflexibly organized that individual consciousness is atrophying;

a nuclear war is destroying a civilization;

having developed specialized plants to satisfy all their needs, an entire species becomes idle - Eloi again.

Because of the timing of its passage in and out of the inhibitor field, humanity will probably become one of the few most intelligent species in the galaxy and will play a leading role in an unimaginable future. 

There are a few more details in Brain Wave to be highlighted before we move on to - where next?

Proteus

Today has been a day-long birthday celebration (not mine) so I return to the blog late and briefly.

In Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, 16, Peter Corinth's enhanced intelligence now controls his instincts and emotions. He can feel rage but control it instead of being controlled by it:

"Corinth willed the rage and grief out of himself, willed calmness and resolution." (p. 136)

He expects that human life in future will be both healthier and longer. We can look more closely at this prospect tomorrow. 

Corinth thinks:

"Protean man - intellectual man - infinity!" (p. 138)

I notice this phrase first because, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, human beings are described as their own protean enemy and secondly because we have also referred to Proteus himself, particularly in a poem by Wordsworth.

Weather And Minds

Brain Wave, 15.

The weather matches the characters' states of mind - no surprise - although this time there is no wind - slight surprise:

"Roger Kearnes...shivered a little and jammed his hands into his pockets as the raw wet cold fell over him. There was no wind, no shadow, only the late fall of snow, thick sad snow that tumbled quickly from a low sky and clung to the windowpanes and melted on the ground like tears." (p. 131)

Can snow be sad? It seems so to Kearnes - and it dissolves like tears. The immediately following sentence explicitates Kearnes' frame of mind:

"He wondered despairingly if there would ever again be a springtime." (ibid.)

Of course there will. It is mind, not the climate, that has changed. But Kearnes needs a springtime of the mind.

His psychiatric patient, Sheila Corinth, is schizophrenic but also now intelligent enough to deceive him that she is getting better. When he has left:

"The sea growled and grumbled, and snow fell thicker against the windows." (p. 134)

Sheila has just inwardly grumbled about Kearnes. How does she feel with snow pressing against the window?

"She felt as if the world were closing in on her." (ibid.)

A perfect match between outer and inner.

River And Circle

Brain Wave, 14.

"The Milky Way flowed as a river of radiance..." (p. 121)

"The huge circle of the Milky Way...glimmered..." (p. 126)

Here are two phrases to describe the Milky Way. I must have posted about both phrases before, so I thought. However, I cannot find either phrase by searching the blog.

The search for "river of radiance" had only one result:

Poul Anderson Appreciation: A Beautiful Paragraph

This post contains the words "radiance" and "river" but not the phrase, "river of radiance."

The search for "The huge circle of the Milky Way..." had no result.

This post, "River And Circle," will now be added to The Milky Way Thread which must surely be approaching completion.

In Brain Wave, humanity stands at the threshold of a galactic civilization but it is one that we would not be able to understand. In Poul Anderson's Technic History and many other such works, human beings as we know them go out into the galaxy.

Brain Wave has many covers but we have nearly exhausted the supply.

Prophet And God

 

Brain Wave, 14.

"Wang Kao was hard at work when the prophet came." (p. 119)

We misunderstand "prophet," expecting another Ba'al. Instead, "guru" would have been more appropriate. Realizing that ways of thought have changed, a scholar has sought out the best ways to use these new mental abilities. It makes sense that more than intellect has been affected but also that it will take time to learn all the implications.

From the new spaceship, Peter Corinth looks at the ocean of space and remembers Helga's words:

"'Maybe you need to find God.'" (12, p. 112)

He reflects:

"Well - perhaps he had. He had at least found something more than himself." (p. 122)

Let us suppose for a moment that the ultimate reality is indeed a transcendent person as theists claim. Philosophically, I think that any self-conscious being must be only one relative part of reality. However, in philosophy, we disagree and consider alternatives. On the theistic hypothesis, God is communicating with Corinth by revealing the ocean of space to him. God certainly does not need Corinth to realize at this stage that he is dealing not only with impersonal forces of nature but also with, beyond them, a transcendent person. That, if true, can wait. After publishing this post, I will retire upstairs to meditate.

Back On The Farm

Brain Wave, 13.

Archie Brock looks at a snow-laden landscape as if he had never seen one before:

"And indeed, he thought I never have - not really." (p. 113)

The dog, Joe (we are told) understands most of what Archie says but, of course, cannot respond linguistically. 

The chimpanzee, Mehitabel, wearing specially made clothes and fur cap, repeats the word, "Cold, " in the pidgin dialect devised by her, her mate, Jimmy, and Archie.

Mehitabel works on the farm, e.g., fetching hay and grinding corn, while Jimmy cooks and keeps house. An inarticulate human imbecile, probably escaped from an asylum, helps to milk the cows. Jimmy offers to kill the imbecile but Archie finds a use for him.

Jumbo the elephant breaks ice with her trunk and carries water from the emergency pump to the tank. 

Walls have had to replace mere fences although the sheep have now learned to respect Archie's fences.

Animals have become more sensitive and aware without being able either to express their enhanced awareness or to do much about it. Archie must take one sheep out of sight of the others for Mehitabel to slaughter it. It will seem to them just that one of their number has departed and not returned. Archie can name the sheep for Joe to bring.

New Mental Powers

Brain Wave, 14.

New mental powers:

to keep the blood circulating warmly even in a cold environment;

to stop a wound from hurting and bleeding;

to communicate with and befriend animals;

to remember everything that you have experienced;

to have only feelings and wishes that your mind judges to be good;

to communicate with men without speech;

to think how the world must really be.

In haste to go out.

A Changed World

Brain Wave (originally THE ESCAPE), 12.

In every detail, Poul Anderson demonstrates that his characters live in a changed world. 

Peter Corinth calculates intranuclear stresses in a faster than light drive field simultaneously with the construction of the hull, engine, armour, doors, ports and controls of the first interstellar spaceship, all designed as an unprecedented piece of precision engineering.

The Institute works nonstop because its many liberated minds now have unimaginable horizons. The future belongs to the young, strong, purposeful and balanced technicians whereas Corinth feels exhausted at thirty-three. He and Helga are now so perceptive that they cannot conceal their feelings for each other and do not try. 

Thin, sharp air smells of autumn and sea. Dead leaves swirl. Frost has come. That is not new, of course, although it is standard Andersonian description, but what is new is that New York streets are half empty. Pedestrians and cars are rare. Skyscrapers are dark.

Roger's Cafe is:

"'A new night club for the new man.'" (p. 106)

Inside, there is a blue twilight. Corinth immediately deduces the new fluorescence principle used. Tables are spaced farther apart than formerly and are arranged in a spiral that minimizes distances to be walked by waiters. However, the waiter is a wheeled machine that extends slate and stylus for orders.

An orchestra including some previously famous musicians plays both old and new instruments to a now more appreciative audience. The new ability to see each other more clearly has eliminated former social distinctions. Corinth and Helga communicate with looks, gestures and very few words. 

He remembers liking:

"Ah, Love, could thou and I with Fate conspire -" (p. 110)

- but now sees it as childish.

Some More Lancaster Life

I have more to post about Poul Anderson's Brain Wave but not this evening. It is nearly 11:00 PM. And maybe not much tomoz when there are Viking, Kite and Art Festivals in Morecambe, which is part of Lancaster District - and, additionally and incidentally, is also where Andrea lives above the Old Pier Bookshop.

The Ashton Memorial in Williamson Park is currently the Emerald City. See the attached image. I listed six of its earlier dramatic identities in "Oberon Trod Forth." A footpath through the wood has been painted yellow and we followed the characters along it between scenes.

We can think about the works of Poul Anderson while sitting in Williamson Park, in Market Square or on Morecambe Promenade. Brain Wave, in particular, is so rich in observations on human life that it repays very careful rereading and analysis. We have certainly not finished with it yet. How do its characters live and how should we live now even without their increased intelligence?

A Neat Office

Brain Wave, 12.

"Helga began arranging her papers and stacking them away. Her office was always neat and impersonal, a machine could have been its occupant." (p. 106)

I worked in an office just before computers arrived and became ubiquitous. My attitude was that anything that came into my in-tray went into one of three places: out-tray; hanging file; waste paper basket. Thus, at the end of a day, there was nothing left on the desk but two empty trays and a telephone. Someone looking for a particular document was told that there might be a copy on Paul's desk. Having checked in my office, she returned puzzled and said, "There's nothing on his desk. It's as if he's left." My mother said, "They'll think you don't do anything." Colleagues always had stacks of papers, including out of date agendas and circulars, plus desk surfaces covered with layers of letters, minutes etc. When we began to work mainly on computers, I found it less easy to keep track of documentation which did still arrive.

Time to get ready to go out for the evening.

Some Lancaster Life

Earlier today, we attended a series of talks on Richard Owen, not to be confused with Robert Owen. References to Victorian Britain, the British Museum and the Linnean Society reminded us, or at least me, of The Time Machine and thus, indirectly, of Poul Anderson's eminent successor to The Time Machine, the Time Patrol series. (It is particularly appropriate that, in 802,701 AD, the Time Traveller explores a museum, the Palace of Green Porcelain - he travels into the future and finds a record of the past -, which we recently mentioned in connection with the time vault in Anderson's Vault Of The Ages.)

This evening, in Williamson Park, Lancaster, we will attend a performance of The Wizard Of Oz. Philip Jose Farmer wrote a sequel but I am not aware of any Andersonian connection with Oz. 

This busy cultural life means less time for blogging today. I continue to reread Anderson's Brain Wave which has reached a somewhat pulpish section. Atomic rockets are stopped by a force field while a faster than light spaceship is being developed. In other sf rereading, we approach the end of Larry Niven's The Integral Trees, to be followed by its sequel, The Smoke Ring.

Into futurity.

Full Of Days And Animism

Brain Wave, 11.

Poul Anderson employs the Biblical phrase, "full of days," not at least twice as I said here but at least three times:

"Rossman wasn't afraid, he was old and full of days..." (p. 102)

Just before that, Mandelbaum had thought:

"Prayer? Not likely; if there was to be a religion in the future, it could not be the animism which had sufficed for the blind years." (p. 101)

As SM Stirling argued in the combox to a recent post, human beings are selected to interpret intentions and to interact with persons. A human infant is not yet engaged with changing the environment but has to know the difference between a smile and a frown and to anticipate how adults will respond to it. A baby is surrounded by humanoid forms bigger and more powerful than it, effectively omnipotent. We have projected intentions and personalities onto inanimate nature. Theists continue to do this. Buddhists contemplate mental processes and can thus detect projections. They envisage and visualize a Bodhisattva of Compassion but do not believe that such a being literally exists.

Consider a priest elevating the Host and a Zen monk facing a wall. In Mandelbaum's view, only the latter will exist in future.

Thinking More And Clearly

Brain Wave, 10, p. 91.

Grunewald: "'What use is [intelligence] to any of us, in fact?'

Corinth: "'Would you go back, yourself?'

Grunewald: "'Yes, I would. It's not good to think too much or too clearly.'"

(I have found it convenient to re-present prose conversation as dramatic dialogue.)

Grunewald makes a value judgement. I have not experienced increased intelligence like him or Corinth but I do value the ability to think instead of just to repeat dogmas or cliches.

A World War II veteran told me that, "The French are cowards," and cited as evidence a single occasion when a French force had retreated instead of advancing with its allies! I am glad that I do not think like that. (I have since learned more about issues involving the French during the war but my indignant veteran did not tell me any of that although presumably it was in his mind somewhere.)

I value wisdom and goodness more than physical pleasure. I would prefer to be Socrates unhappy than a pig ecstatic. 

Although my thoughts have been neither intensified nor accelerated, I practice "sitting with" them in Zen meditation. This can be extremely unpleasant but - and this is my value judgement - it is preferable to remaining in the comparative lack of self-awareness that preceded meditation.

Brain Wave needs a passage about Zen practitioners. In any case, it is a novel about who and what we are and we can all look at ourselves through it - to be reread and reassessed several times.

Looking Backward And Forward

Brain Wave, 9.

"...the old forms of government would be no more important than the difference between Homoousian and Homoiousian." (p. 90)

We search the blog to find out whether we have posted about these terms before. We have, but not in relation to Brain Wave. See Historical And Science Fiction. So Poul Anderson made this historical theological reference twice (at least) and it has taken this blog over eleven years to link the two references.

Glancing ahead to the end to check the page count - we are almost at the mid-point of the novel -, we spot something that we recognize as an Andersonian motif:

"'Have you come far?'

"'From New York City.' There was a small shiver in her, and he wondered what had happened there. Or maybe it was just the cold. The wind piped bitterly now." (21, p. 189)

Much had happened in New York. Sheila shivers and the wind pipes in sympathy. When Archie and Sheila approach the shelter of the house, they have:

"...the dog and the wind at their heels..." (ibid.)

Canine support counterposes the potentially hostile external world.

Meanwhile...

Brain Wave.

In the opening passage of Chapter I, a rabbit escapes from a trap.

In the opening passage of Chapter 6, a witch doctor contemplates the laws of causality and contagion while a black leader and an armed gorilla plan revolution.

In the opening passage of Chapter 9, a materialist, a priest and a Sensitive take part in a Russian revolution.

In the opening passage of Chapter 14, men have developed higher mental powers.

These vignettes show what is happening in different parts of the world simultaneously with the main events of the novel to which we will shortly return.

Intelligence And Freedom

Brain Wave, 8.

People who are many times more intelligent than us will cooperate with each other without needing to be coerced. Sometimes everyone will spontaneously see and understand what needs to be done. At other times, when the issues are more complicated, they will agree on practical programs of action after some reasoned discussion. Even in a local community, "'...the mechanically minded...'" (p. 77) will devise automatic machinery for routine tasks.

When Archie Brock, now managing the Rossman farm single-handedly, drives into the nearest town, he finds that:

the streets are empty although the houses seem occupied;

most shops are closed;

the supermarket displays unpriced goods;

the single supermarket attendant explains that -

the national government is no longer relevant;

local life has been rationally reorganized without money;

"property" is an outmoded concept;

most farmers have moved into town houses vacated by those who have moved elsewhere;

most farm work is automated;

the man spends his time doing something that he cannot explain to Archie;

those who disliked the new set-up have left;

those who remain devise new social relationships for their new personalities;

Archie can either join their community or make his own way in a dangerous world with escaped circus animals where a lot of physical labour is necessary just to survive;

(I disagree here. Surely the community could help Archie. But the man says that "charity" is as outmoded as "property.");

decisions are made by the Council and the "Societist" (p. 78);

the economy is not tyrannical but freer than any before it.

I get it that this economy is free but the man needs to spell this out in more detail to Archie who rejects the offer of becoming what he sees as a domestic animal doing whatever chores he is given. He ought to ask more before deciding. Already he has been working hard, reading, thinking, devising a schedule and inventing gadgets. He has some chance of surviving on his own but might also be able to contribute if he does join the community.

Returned to the farm, Archie is attacked by pigs and a bull but rescued by armed chimpanzees riding an elephant! See book cover image here. The chimps become his new allies. This is indeed a brave new world.

Intellect-Emotion Antithesis

There is Homecoming (+ Coming Home) and there is also the feeling that we can't go home. See The End Of A Stone In Heaven and:

"'...might we return to the inhibitor field out in space - why not? Go back to being stupid. Maybe we'll be happier that way. No, no, I realize you can't go home again.'"

-Brain Wave, 7, p. 71.

Hegelian thinking becomes relevant yet again.

Thesis: Suddenly, everyone can think more quickly.

Antithesis: But most people have nothing to think about except their superstitions, prejudices, hates, fears and greeds.

Synthesis: Therefore, their accelerated thought processes merely rationalize these superstitions etc.

Antithesis: But this is unsatisfactory, frightening and confusing.

Synthesis: Therefore, the new Third Ba'al religion tells them to reject intellect in an emotional orgy.

Antithesis: But this can't last.

Synthesis: Constructive applications of new intellectual powers will emerge.

Already there is a Relativity-quantum mechanics synthesis and food synthesis plants and the prospects of atomic energy from any material and of faster than light travel. 

The sky is, literally, the limit.

Feelings Also

Brain Wave, 7.

Corinth and his colleagues, like Isaac Asimov's Second Foundationers, now understand each other well enough to communicate merely by facial expressions and hand gestures. I find this implausible to the point of impossible.

Not only thoughts but also feelings have intensified because they too depend on neural connections. I had not thought of this implication before. However, it explains why so many people not only think more quickly but also feel and respond more intensely.

Helga already feels nostalgic:

"'The old days - the lost innocence. We'll always regret them, won't we? We'll always look back on our blindness with a wistful longing that the new generation simply won't understand.'" (p. 70)

Another predictable reaction.

Innocence lost is a major theme of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, appropriate for time travel.

Personally, I prefer the perspective of age to the inexperience of youth - but I do not denigrate people younger than me now! In general, they have a much better understanding than I ever did.

Trucking Food

Brain Wave, 6.

In emergency conditions, one destitute guy would rather starve than work for City Hall:

"'Sweeping streets, hauling garbage, trucking in food...'" (p. 59)

Corinth tells him to starve. An extreme case? Natural selection at work? 

I would jump at the chance to drive a food truck although I would have to haul garbage if that was what was needed. And we would be building a better society in which drudgery would be eliminated and creative forms of employment would flourish. We are going to have to do this in any case, increase in intelligence or no increase in intelligence.

In this novel, Poul Anderson follows Wells not only in writing about the future but also in describing a better future. This is the true Wellsian tradition that CS Lewis propagandized against. Read Wells, Stapledon, Lewis, Heinlein, Blish and Anderson and see what you think.

What kind of future lies ahead of us? No one knows.

Brothers

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave gives us a hint of Animal Farm and also of The Planet Of The Apes. However, the rifle-wielding gorilla does not speak English. M'Wanzi, a black revolutionary leader, has devised:

"'...a common language of clicks and grunts...'" (7, p. 68)

The brothers of the forest and the brothers of the fields will:

"Drive the white oppressors back beyond the sea!"(p. 67)

A great revolution incorporates many subsidiary revolutions. Each page discloses a new implication of the novel's premise. Then we are back to Peter Corinth in New York where men of good will must respond to the collapse of national government.

Thought Boiling Unbidden

I have reread and posted about Poul Anderson's Brain Wave twice before but am finding more to say about it the third time. The book seems to be a test of the state of my understanding each time I reread it.

Regarding that "typical" human being, Peter Corinth thinks that:

"Then suddenly, almost overnight, human intelligence had exploded toward fantastic heights. An entire new cosmos opened before this man, visions, realizations, thought boiling unbidden within him." (6, p. 59)

Zen meditators practice "sitting with" whatever thoughts come up so maybe experienced meditators would be as well equipped as anyone might be to cope with this particular change.

This is also the experience of Larry Niven's human protectors. They wake clear-headed and think:

"I've been stupid."

-Larry Niven, Protector (London, 1974), p. 213.

In Brain Wave, human beings had not been what we would call "stupid" before the change. Surviving nervous systems had adapted and compensated for the inhibiting force by becoming more efficient. Thus, everyone was:

"'...about as intelligent as they would have been anyway.'" (p. 63)

Then Earth moved out of the inhibiting field...

Hollowness, Misery, Inadequacy, Triviality, Narrowness, Meaninglessness

Brain Wave, 6.

Brain Wave has to be Poul Anderson's most philosophical work. In it, he writes a damning indictment of Western civilization. 

Peter Corinth reflects on what he sees as a typical human being, a factory or office worker:

"...his mind dulled to a collection of verbal reflexes..." (p. 59)

Is it really that bad? How many people do not think but merely repeat a set of words in response to each new input? Individuals, groups within society and social policy need to do something about developing minds, not dulling them. 

Corinth's litany continues. Each day, this typical person merely eats and is anaesthetized by screened entertainment. There is:

"...an inward hollowness..., an unconscious realization that there ought to be more..." (ibid.)

Increased intelligence enables the typical person to see that his life is miserably inadequate, that his work is trivial and that his beliefs and conventions are narrow and meaningless. (I am paraphrasing Anderson's text, not adding my own comments here!)

Something needs to be done about all this now - and not just waiting for intelligence to increase.

Seat Of Consciousness

Brain Wave, 4.

"'...the most highly organized tissue in the world is, of course, the human cerebrum, the gray matter or seat of consciousness if you like.'" (p. 46)

Here again is the mind-body question: the relationship between observable gray matter and an observing consciousness. Organismic responsiveness to environmental alterations has quantitatively increased until it has been qualitatively transformed from unconscious sensitivity into conscious sensation. Pleasure and pain have survival value but require consciousness. Therefore, if consciousness is possible - and we know, by direct experience, that it is - then it will be naturally selected. Sensation became perception, thought and every other mental process. But all that we can detect inside brains is electrically firing and electrochemically interacting neurons which can be fully described without ascribing any consciousness to them. 

In any case, the firings have intensified and the interactions have accelerated. An electrochemical change too small to affect other bodily functions noticeably has a big effect on the sensitive cerebral tissue. Drugs and alcohol can have big effects and this change is bigger than them because it affects:

"'...the very basis of the cell's existence.'" (ibid.)

But can such sensitive cells survive such a big change? There are sf novels in which everyone dies but Brain Wave is not one of them.

Possible neuronic interactions outnumber atoms by a factor of ten to the power of several million.

Implications

Brain Wave, 5-6.

An sf novel should have a counterfactual premise with logically worked out implications. Animal and human intelligence has increased and a bull has escaped:

"[Brock] checked the bull's pen. The gate had been broken down by a determined push. Half the power of fences had always lain in the fact that animals didn't know enough to keep shoving at them. Well, now they did, it seemed." (p. 56)

We should all have been able to think of that.

Because many people have quit low ability jobs, the city has almost ceased to function. A man preaches:

"'...because we forgot the eternal principles of life, because we let the scientists betray us, because we all followed the eggheads.'" (p. 58)

Because a sudden increase in intelligence has disrupted society, he turns against intelligence. Anti-intellectualism is not the answer; nor is intellectualism at the expense of values. The preacher continues:

"'I tell you, it is life only that matters before the great Oneness in whom all are one and one is all.'" (ibid.)

As a matter of fact, I agree that the single reality has become conscious of itself by appearing to itself as other and many, thus that all is one and we are one although in a way that does not negate but incorporates our individualities. The One is neither homogeneous nor static but internally differentiated and dynamic. However, the content of these abstract propositions must be concretely experienced and enacted. Can we act as one not at gunpoint but from freely realized necessity as in an emergency? Global survival becomes an emergency. Anti-intellectual preaching will not help.

Five (And More) Future Histories

We have often listed "future histories," including Poul Anderson's several such series or single works. Let us now focus on just five interconnected future histories:

Poul Anderson's Technic History and Larry Niven's Known Space series are arguably the most significant successors to Robert Heinlein's original Future History;

Anderson's Psychotechnic History, modelled directly on the Future History, occupies a position intermediate between the Future and Technic Histories;

despite the prominence of his Known Space series, Niven presents an entirely different history of the future in his "State" series -

A World Out Of Time

The Integral Trees

The Smoke Ring

In Volume I, two individuals from different periods make relativistic round trips to the galactic core whereas, in Volumes II and III, an interstellar crew has mutinied and colonized the Smoke Ring.

I am currently rereading The Integral Trees when not rereading Anderson's Brain Wave.

A list of Niven's series at the end of his Tales Of Known Space places "Rammer," the first part of A World Out Of Time, in the short Leshy Circuit sequence which is also about Bussard ramjets. Teleportation booths are common to Known Space, the State and a separate "Teleportation" series. Niven begins to rival Anderson in the number of his alternative future history series.