An Accumulative History

An instalment of a future history series builds on earlier instalments. There are three Polesotechnic League novels, one in each of the first three volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga. 

The Man Who Counts features Nicholas van Rijn, who had been introduced in "Margin of Profit," and introduces Sandra Tamarin.

Satan's World features van Rijn and his trader team which had been introduced in "The Trouble Twisters" although two of its three members, Adzel and David Falkayn, had previously been introduced in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and in "The Three-Cornered Wheel," respectively.

Mirkheim features van Rijn, the trader team, Sandra Tamarin, Coya Conyon who had been introduced in "Lodestar," the planet Mirkheim which had also been introduced in "Lodestar," Baburites who as a species had been introduced in "Esau" and Merseians who as a species had been introduced in the second trader team story, "Day of Burning." 

After Mirkheim, some historical continuity is provided for a while by Ythrians, who as a species had been introduced in "Wings of Victory," and by the Falkayn family.

North Or South II

War Of The Wing-Men, VI and X.

See North Or South.

"...this was not the dear green Southwater when starvation had driven the Fleet..." (X, p. 63)

OK. I had misread Chapter VI. Its opening paragraph informs us that an archipelago stretches north from the island of Lannach and that the islands protect the Sea of Achan from the cold Ocean. When the second, single-sentence, paragraph adds that:

"Here the Drak'honai lay." (VI, p. 32)

- it refers to the Sea of Achan, not to the archipelago. So the Drak'honai came to Lannach from the south, not from the north. Perfectly obvious, you might say. Did anyone realize this but not comment?

Other stuff going down here. Maybe just one more post this year.

Multiple Short Stories

 

When an author has a large output of short stories republished in multiple collections with overlapping contents, we can remember the plot or some of the details of a story without remembering either the title or which collection(s) it is in. 

When John Costello referred to "To Build a World" and said that it was about transforming the Moon, I had to check that against a terraforming-the-Moon story that I remembered. This required me to take a dozen collections, some of them with interchangeable titles, from the shelves. Since "To Build a World" is online, I almost immediately confirmed that its opening sentence is the same as that of "Strange Bedfellows," collected in Beyond The Beyond. Problem solved. But it could have been a bigger research job.

We do not remember the names of the characters in these numerous short stories but can refer to the texts if necessary. This is a different world from the major series with big name heroes like van Rijn and Flandry.

Addendum: I have ordered through eBay The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes which I think does contain one genuine canonical short story that has not been included in the canon.

The Diomedean Moons

War Of The Wing-Men, X.

Rodonis, a female Diomedean, offers a song to the Mother Moon.

"She did not address Sk'huanax the Warrior, any more than a male Drak'ho would have dreamed of petitioning the Mother." (p. 62)

In Briganti Moot, while it existed, we had a talk from a biographer of the founder of Wicca and another from a Traveller woman who claimed that, in her community, women had worshipped the Moon and men had worshipped Herne the Hunter. Scholars of the subject think that there was no survival of any unbroken Pagan tradition in Christian Europe so where did that community get its Moon- and Herne-worship from?

Sf writers base alien religions on human religions. Perhaps the most original and imaginative alien religion is the Ythrian New Faith in God the Hunter in Poul Anderson's Technic History. 

The Lode Star And Knowledge

War Of The Wing-Men, X.

Common sailors who used to make:

"...primitive bloody sacrifices to Aeak'ha-in-the-Deeps..." (p. 62)

- now worship the Moons but educated Diomedeans know that there is:

"...only the Lodestar." (ibid.)

Terrestrial monotheists would accept this provided that they could get some agreement on what the "Lodestar" is. And there is also much room for discussion as to whether "know" or "believe" is the more appropriate verb. 

We need another word for "know." My political opponent knows (so he thinks) that the party that I support has disastrous policies! We all know contradictory propositions to be true. See two earlier posts on "knowledge" of the nature of comets here.

I am certain that many propositions that are commonly "known" are not true but it would probably unleash an argument if I said what they are. When I was only a few years old, I "knew" that germs and Germans were bad (post-WWII period) and was not sure of the difference between them. Of course my ideas have changed since then but I am not sure that everyone's ideas change. Some people came out of University with exactly the same opinions that they had had when they went in.

How Most Diomedeans Live

War Of The Wing-Men, IX.

Lannachska Diomedeans, like Ythrians, are:

"...primarily hunters..." (p. 56)

- living in almost independent groups over a wide area with:

few craftsmen;

everyone able to make his own tools;

exerting themselves spasmodically when hunting;

but not needing to toil all day;

no economic need for bosses or overseers;

small matrilineal clans;

the Flock mainly necessary for survival during migration or war.

However, migration limits population and selects for pro-survival qualities:

storm

exhaustion

sickness

barbarians

wild animals

cold 

famine

Extreme seasonal changes necessitate migration which has become linked to procreation.

Darwinian Thinking

War of the Wing-Men, IX.

It has become natural to think in Darwinian terms. Van Rijn deduces how the Diomedeans became intelligent. Their environment offers only two options:

"Hibernate or migrate! And if you migrate, then be smart enough to meet all kinds of trouble, by damn!'" (p. 57)

More generally, he reflects that:

"'Natural selection...is all well and good, if nature is obliging to pick you for survival. Otherwise gives awful noises about tragedy.'" (ibid.)

But surely the fact that all life is temporary local negative entropy makes it tragic even for the survivors?

In the summer of 1973, I worked in a gift shop in Maine where we sold scrimshaw. The shop manager, Sewell, told me that whales swim forward with open mouths and a single row of teeth that trap plankton. I asked, "How can they have a single row of teeth if they have never used them for chewing?" Sewell replied, "That's the theory of evolution!"

Me: Yes, but don't you believe in it?

Sewell: Nope. Nowheres in the Bible...

CS Lewis' Perelandra is anti-Darwinian and therefore implausible.

Diomedean Social Developments

War Of The Wing-Men, IX.

How does the author's reasoning about social developments stack up?

"In many ways, the Drak'honia were closer to the human norm than the Lannachska." (p. 55)

Why?

"Their master-serf culture was a natural consequence of economics..." (ibid.)

So what were their economics?

"...given only neolithic tools, a raft big enough to support several families represented an enormous capital investment." (ibid.)

So why did the Drak'honai make that investment instead of staying with the migratory life-cycle of other Diomedeans? (The answer to this question probably is in the text. I am following through the reasoning again.)

Given life on big rafts:

"It was simply not possible for disgruntled individuals to strike out on their own; they were at the mercy of the State." (ibid.)

OK.

"In such cases, power always concentrated in the hands of aristocratic warriors and intellectual priesthoods; among the Drak'honai, those two classes had merged into one." (pp. 55-56)

In the opening sentence of Chapter I, a single individual bears five titles:

Grand Admiral;

(hereditary) Commander in Chief of the Fleet of Drak'ho;

Fisher of the Western Seas;

Leader in Sacrifice;

Oracle of the Lodestar.

Admiral and Commander are military. 

Leader in Sacrifice and Lodestar are priestly. 

"Fisher" is economic in that raft-dwellers toil to net fish.

North Or South

 

We have discussed Diomedean geography in several posts. In the post entitled Diomedean Geography, we asked where the "Draka waters" were located. 

In The Man Who Counts, Chapter VI informs us that the Holmenach archipelago stretches north from the island of Lannach and that:

"Here the Drak'honai lay."

-Poul Anderson, War Of The Wing-Men (London, 1976), VI, p. 32.

(This paperback edition is more convenient to carry in a gym bag and to read over lunch after coming out of the gym.)

Chapter IX confirms that the Flock of Lannach lives on the island of that name and, in this chapter, the military Commander of the Flock informs van Rijn that:

"'...[the Drak'honai's] home regions are well to the southeast of ours.'" (IX, p. 54)

Moon, Maanerek And Memory

In Poul Anderson and the Men Who Count, John Costello writes that:

"To Build a World," about the transformation of the Moon, is the beginning of Poul Anderson's Technic History;

"A World Called Mannerek" shows the rebirth of interstellar civilization after the decline of the Terran Empire in the Technic History.

("Mannerek" should be "Maanerek.")

"To Build A World" is the original title of "Strange Bedfellows" which is not a Technic History story.

"A World Called Maanerek" is the original title of "Memory" and we have previously discussed whether this story belongs in the Technic History.

Stories could be connected in different ways and we should consider different possibilities.

EARTH BOOK And SAGA

I keep saying this because it keeps going round in my head. Take the twelve Technic History instalments that are collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, remove the last five (put them in later volumes), then add, in their appropriate chronological positions:

the previously uncollected "The Saturn Game";

the first two of the three instalments that had been collected as The Trouble Twisters;

the first of the three that had been collected as Trader To The Stars -

- and you have transformed the Earth Book into The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method.

The Man Who Counts, which we are currently rereading, is one of the seven instalments that are common both to the Earth Book and to the Saga, Volume I. I have The Man Who Counts in both of these collections although not as a separate volume and we will resume rereading probably tomoz.

The holiday period continues with events planned for next weekend.

Addendum: I tell a lie. I find upstairs a copy of Poul Anderson, War Of The Wing-Men (London, 1976). This is an alternative title of The Man Who Counts and this London edition has the attached cover.

Eric Wace

The Man Who Counts.

See some posts which are about or refer to Eric Wace here.

"'Holy St.Peter!' cried Wace." (III, p. 151)

"'All saints in heaven!' choked Wace." (VI, p. 174)

If I find any more confirmations of Wace's Catholic background, then I will add them here. 

In Mirkheim, we learn that Nicholas van Rijn was the father of Sandra Tamarin's son who is named Eric after Wace.

Wace himself appears only in The Man Who Counts. He is not "the man who counts" but learns that van Rijn is. Wace is a main viewpoint character throughout this book although narrative points of view also include those of Diomedeans.

Details On Diomedes

The Man Who Counts, VII.

When van Rijn's enacted naivety has nearly sparked violence between two leading Drak'ho:

"In the silence that fell across the raft,  Wace could hear how the dragon shapes up in the rigging breathed more swiftly. He could hear the creak of timbers and cables, the slap of waves and the low damp mumble of wind. Almost, he heard obsidian daggers being loosened in their sheaths." (p. 171)

The dragon shapes are Diomedeans. Poul Anderson observes and Wace hears every detail: breathing; creaking; slapping waves; mumbling wind. Of course the wind mumbles as some of the Diomedeans might. Wace imagines hearing daggers loosened. Everything has been orchestrated by van Rijn.

One of the potential combatants asks:

"'...have these creatures driven us crazy?'" (p. 173)

One of them will.

Captain Van Rijn

The Man Who Counts, VII.

Because there are three human beings, the Drak'ho Admiral asks which of them is captain. Wace explains that the other male is their leader but does not yet speak the language well so that he needs the Lannach'ho prisoner as interpreter. Van Rijn who, through the Lannach, is learning two Diomedean languages simultaneously is playing an elaborate game as usual. He insists that it is he, not Wace, who must speak, however difficult and roundabout this is. The Admiral accepts that an alien aristocrat has the right to speak.

This reminds us, slightly, of Larry Niven's animated Star Trek episode where the kzinti capture three Starfleet officers. Spock is senior but the kzinti cannot talk with a pacifistic herbivore. Uhura is second but the kzinti cannot talk with a female. So Sulu, who maybe looks to some of us like a Jap in an old war comic, has to do the talking.

Not really the same situation. Van Rijn, working hard to appear ignorant and naive to his captors, controls most of what happens.

Two Wars

War is waged between bat-winged Diomedeans in Poul Anderson's sf novel, The Man Who Counts, and by bat-winged demons in James Blish's fantasy novel, Black Easter/The Day After Judgement. Diomedeans, obeying known laws of physics, are able to fly in their planet's heavy atmosphere whereas demons, obeying unknown laws of metaphysics, are seen to fly even without wings. Thus, although the visuals of the two novels bear some similarities, these are entirely dissimilar narratives. This is an early morning post because I have got up early and have not meditated yet. We might walk along the canal today on this Sunday between Christmas and the New Year.

Happy New Year and let us not only hope but also campaign for less wars in 2026.  

The Man Who Counts and the "Merchant Peccant To The Deaths of Fellowe Men"

The Man Who Counts, VI.

Asked how he would solve a practical problem, van Rijn replies:

"'Bah! Details! I am not an engineer. Engineers I hire. My job is not to do what is impossible, it is to make others do it for me.'" (p. 164)

(The moral that will be drawn at the end of the novel is stated clearly enough in advance.)

James Blish's arms merchant, Baines, later described by Satan as a "merchant peccant to the deaths of fellowe men," (ASK, p. 419) has paid for a major demonic conjuration but does not really care whether the cause of the phenomenon is demons or electrons. Any such detail:

"'...is a stupid footling technicality that I hire people like [his scientific adviser] and [the black magician] not to bother me with.'"

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT 16, p. 419.

Baines sounds like Holmes not caring whether the Earth goes around the sun. Van Rijn and Baines hire experts to solve problems for them. The difference is that van Rijn has a conscience.

Oceanest

The Man Who Counts, V.

Some Diomedeans call their planet "Oceanest." We have mentioned this name twice before. See here. (Scroll down.)

Does "Oceanest" mean "Most Oceanic" or "Ocean-Nest"? I suppose not the latter. If Poul Anderson had intended such a meaning, then he would have expressed it more clearly.

The sound that the Diomedean utters is "'...Ikt'hanis...'" (p. 160) Unlike some other planetary names, it does not mean "earth" but instead refers to the water covering the earth.

We want to know much more about Anderson's extraterrestrial languages and apparently some Trekkies have expanded on Vulcan and Klingon but Tolkien was unique. No one can do everything and Tolkien's project of creating languages, then imagining people who spoke them, then writing stories about those people was unprecedented and unparalleled.

Heliocentricity

The Man Who Counts, V.

We have found what has got to be an entirely unintended parallel between the Technic History and Sherlock Holmes. Wace asks Delp whether the Diomedeans know that their world goes around its sun:

"'Quite a few of the philosophers believe that,' said Delp. 'I'm a practical (?) one, myself, and never cared much one way or the other.'" (p. 159)

We find this conversation between Holmes and Watson:

My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

-copied from A Study In Scarlet, CHAPTER II.

Holmes' remarks are absurd. Any civilized person has to care whether the Earth goes around the sun. We cannot compartmentalize theoretical and practical knowledge. A brain is not like a little attic. In another story, he deduces that a man is intelligent because he has a large head! Intelligence is a matter of connections within the brain, not of its size, although it seems that this was not known then.

War Of The Diomedeans

The Man Who Counts.

Van Rijn never starts a war to profit from it. Instead, whatever planet he is on, he finds some arrangement that will benefit all concerned. However, he certainly knows how to make the most of any existing situation. The Diomedeans are already at war so:

"'...where there are enemies to bid against each other, that is where an honest trader has a chance to make a little bit profit!'" (IV, p. 158)

There is the usual touch of humour. How "honest" will he be? How "little" will be the profit?

Here is a more practical idea:

"'...it is true that we must settle matters here, I think. End the war for them so they can do important business like getting me home.'" (VI, p. 163)

That is home from a planet where he cannot survive indefinitely because he cannot eat local food. Sometimes, the "profit" is mere survival.

Next, van Rijn will make an entirely pragmatic decision about which side to support. And that will not necessarily be the side that has just rescued him and taken him prisoner. Despite language problems, he is learning Diomedean politics surprisingly fast.

Talking And Shouting

The Man Who Counts, IV. 

Van Rijn and his companions have been rescued by a native dugout crew. Van Rijn makes some deductions. Of the crew, some wear helmets and breastplates and all are armed while their vessel bears a catapult. Therefore, this is a naval ship, not a merchant. Not good: van Rijn can talk with traders but only shout at officers. 

And there is Someone else that he can address. Raising his eyes to heaven:

"'I am a poor old sinner,' he shouted, 'but this I have not deserved! Do you hear me?'" (p. 156)

He sounds like the lead character of Fiddler On The Roof who speaks conversationally with God: "I'll talk to You later," and so on. Indeed, the Hebrew prophetic experience is a prolonged dialogue with the God of a people, sometimes asking Him what He is doing. But we have wandered far from that dugout.  

Sounds And Concepts

 

The Man Who Counts, III.

Eric Wace tells Sandra Tamarin that he speaks the language of the migratory hunters of the Tyrlanian Flock on Diomedes:

"'As well as my human palate and Techno-Terrestrial culture permit me to, my lady. I don't pretend to understand all their concepts, but we get along-'" (p. 152)

How many intelligent species will use a single bodily orifice, a "mouth," for both eating and speaking? Fictional extraterrestrials remain anthropomorphic. 

As Wace indicates, a language comprises not only sounds but also concepts. Sf writers can, and sometimes do, introduce an alien word (Heinlein: "grok") that is used without translation by English/Anglic speaking characters so that readers have to learn its meaning from context. Poul Anderson does not really do this but his nearest approaches to it are:

Planha

choth

Khruath

Wyvan

Oherran

"deathpride" (this is translated for us)

Eriau

Vach

CS Lewis' Solar language

hnau

eldil

A Big Build-Up

The Man Who Counts.

Diomedeans have bat wings whereas Ythrians are feathered. Thus, these two flying species differ from each other although both are described by comparing them to Terrestrial organisms.

In Chapter I, Diomedeans, not yet named as such, observe three wingless, tailless, four-limbed, clothed, land animals which we realize might be human beings recently arrived from space.

In Chapter II, two of these land animals, Eric Wace and Sandra Tamarin, converse with each other and refer to their off-stage companion, Nicholas van Rijn.

In Chapter III, van Rijn comes on-stage and roars, "'Death and damnation!'" (p. 150)

Thus, the title character is given an appropriate build-up and the Diomedeans will not know what has hit them.

Castle Or Manor House

 

See the combox for The First Hermetian, then see Hornbeck.

I was just about to turn in but a combox comment made me search the blog for the phrase, "old castle," and thus I found the two descriptions of the Falkayn home. I think that we deserve some account of why the two accounts are so different. 

I have started to reread The Man Who Counts as being an early novel-length Technic History instalment.

The earliest idea of the Diomedeans was of intelligent fliers. The earliest idea of the Ythrians was of organisms with biological super-chargers, then this led to the idea that such an enhancement would enable intelligent beings to fly in terrestroid conditions. So the Technic History wound up with two intelligent flying species.

To those who read, good flight.

The First Hermetian

In the original book publication order of Poul Anderson's Technic History, the David Falkayn collection, The Trouble Twisters, comes several volumes before The Earth Book Of Stormgate which collects the first Nicholas van Rijn novel, The Man Who Counts. In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, the first two Falkayn short stories appear earlier than The Man Who Counts. Thus, either way, we read about Falkayn as a junior aristocrat from Hermes before we encounter Sandra Tamarin who is to become the Grand Duchess of Hermes. However, the Chronology informs us that The Man Who Counts was published in 1958 whereas the first two Falkayn stories were published in 1963 and 1968, respectively. Thus, it was Sandra, not Falkayn, who was first introduced to Anderson's readers as a Hermetian. The chronological order of fictional events and the chronology of the creation of a future history series are two distinct narratives. James Blish's Cities In Flight and The Seedling Stars were both written from the centre outwards.

Unidentified Floating (And Maybe Also Fallen) Object

Poul Anderson, The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 140-265.

The characters in Chapter I, have wings and tails so they are not human although they do have all too familiar emotions and motivations.

One of them has seen an unfamiliar floating object carrying three wingless, tailless but clothed animals:

"'...like typical flightless land forms, except for having only four limbs.'" (p. 143)

We begin to recognize these intruders who are not fish, sea mammals or adapted for swimming and therefore maybe fell from the sky.

Decades ago, I read a comic strip about a UFO scare among bipedal Martians. One of them described being chased by a flying saucer and we saw what he described. The UFO's were thought to have come from Earth but there were fantastic and incompatible accounts of what the extra-Martians looked like. Right at the end of the story, what we recognized as a spacecraft landed and what we recognized as space-suited Earthmen emerged from it. Something similar is happening here although without the UFO scare first.

Other Works Online

OK. We think that we have answered the questions raised at the end of the previous post.

"The Innocent at Large" by Poul and Karen Anderson was published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1958, and was collected under the title, "The Innocent Arrival," in Poul and Karen Anderson, The Unicorn Trade (New York, April 1984), pp. 56-85.

Its sequel, "The Moonrakers," was published in If Worlds of Science Fiction (January 1966) and was collected in Poul Anderson, Beyond The Beyond (London, 1973), pp. 133-166.

Having reread earlier posts, I find that I am rediscovering facts that I had discovered before and am still unsure whether the "Great Swindle" occurred in the first story or between stories but am not about to pursue that now.

"Witch of the Demon Seas" is online but we have previously discussed it here.

"The Virgin of Valkarion" is online but we have previously discussed it here.

"The Valor of Cappen Varra" is online but we have previously discussed it here.

I have checked and confirmed that "Security" refers to a "Hemispheric War" as well as featuring those owl-like Martians. Some background information is common to several early stories. 

I think that we have exhausted online stuff for the time being.

Assessing "Sentiment, Inc."

"Sentiment, Inc."

"'Thought-habits, associational-patterns, the labeling of this as good and that as bad, seem to be matters of established neural paths. If you could successfully alter the polarizations of individual neurones - But it's a pretty remote prospect; we hardly know a thing about the brain today.'" (in 2)

The researchers in the story get lucky and make a discovery ahead of their time. As in Wells' The Time Machine and The First Men In The Moon and in Heinlein's "Life-Line," the discovery is lost at the end of the story but there could always be a sequel.

The villain of the piece wants to change powerful people and thus also society and the world for the better but I agree with our hero that this is not the way to (try to) do it.

The passage quoted above encapsulates in a work of fiction the central question of philosophy: how do states of neurons cause states of consciousness? Could a sufficiently powerful being or technology create a duplicate universe in which neurons did not cause consciousness so that there there would be no "lights on," no one "at home"? If not, why not? Can we even answer this? How do neurons cause consciousness? As of now, no one can answer that.

Next: "Innocent at Large" by Poul Anderson and Karen Anderson. I think that I have read this one and have it in a collection upstairs but I cannot find it on the blog. Maybe it has a different title?

Later: See the results of blog searches for Peter Matheny and "The Innocent Arrival."

Seasonal Reflections

We have reread Conan Doyle's "The Blue Carbuncle" and Poul Anderson's "The Season of Forgiveness" and have appreciated how appropriate it was that Anderson adopted a phrase from the conclusion of the former as the title of the latter, in which Ivanhoan polytheists appreciate a Christian festival. The season inspires me to address such issues.

I was brought up in one of the Abrahamic prophetic traditions but now meditate in one of the Indian contemplative traditions. In a prophetic tradition, it is necessary to be neither polytheist nor atheist but monotheist whereas, in a contemplative tradition, it is possible to begin from any premise or world-view, to be polytheist, monotheist or atheist, and also to reinterpret beliefs. Many gods may be aspects of one god and the one reality need not be personal. It is possible either to advance from polytheism through monotheism to monism or to remain theistic. Contemplation is comprehensive and inclusive.

Happy Midwinter Festival and Christmas.

See Traditions.

Starting "Sentiment, Inc."

"Sentiment, Inc."

Different, again. A contemporary short story about romantic relationships but with an sf premise to which the first attached cover image might give some clue although I am not going to read any further into it this evening and will probably not be on the computer tomorrow. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Here is yet another early short story with a remarkable number of cover illustrations as I might demonstrate.

I will shortly watch TV news. We have been without a TV for just over a year - until Mike, whom I have mentioned somewhere on this blog, fixed the aerial.

GK Chesterton's Father Brown was one of the many fictional detectives to come after Sherlock Holmes. A British TV adaptation of Brown has an offshoot, Sister Boniface, about a detective nun. She was on while I was posting about the science of Poul Anderson's "Security," an aspect of my immediate environment of which blog readers were obviously completely unaware!

I will return to The Hound Of The Baskervilles before retiring.

Laterz.

"Security": Conclusion

"Security." 

I have read this story to its surprise ending and will let blog readers do the same. When subversives infiltrate Security, any plot twist becomes possible.

The secret project produces capacitite and call it ffuts. We did wonder whether the same name would be used. It is not.

Poul Anderson plausibly describes a scientific theory and a discovery that have not happened yet. My attempted summary might reveal a lack of scientific knowledge. 

Superior dielectrics might lead both to a perfect electrical insulator and to fantastic energy storage. A small accumulator with minimal leakage would make possible generators handling average instead of peak load. Portable electric motors carrying their own energy supply would enable "...electric automobiles and possibly aircraft..." Power sources could be remote, like distant waterfalls, or diffuse, like sunlight, and could augment or even replace declining reserves.

A mineral combining barium, titanium and rare earths and displaying fantastic electrical properties was found on Venus. Its dielectric constant increases with applied voltage, contradicting theory. Such variability implies a flexible crystal structure even though the substance is brittle. Understanding of this process, produced by a geological freak, involves quantum mechanics, oscillation theory and the periodic functions of a complex variable.

The team, which has formulated a tentative theory of the mechanism and begun to search for a way to duplicate this super-dielectricity in more useful materials, comprises:

a gadgets being (the Martian);

a designer;

two physical chemists;

a crystallographer who is also a mathematician;

an expert on quantum theory and inter-atomic forces;

an imaginative experimenter;

a synthesizer, the team leader.

The previous team leader, unfamiliar with the Belloni matrix, had used a simplified quantum mechanics that did not correct for relativistic effects, thus overlooking some space-time effects of the psi function. Belloni's work remains classified because it is useful in the design of new alloys. The corrected equations provide "...an adequate theory of super-dielectricity..." and a precise idea of the necessary semi-crystalline, semi-plastic substance "...with a grid of carbon-linked atoms." Experiments eventually produce this substance which is physically and chemically stable over hundreds of degrees, has a breakdown voltage in the millions, has an insulation resistance better than any other and a dialectric constant, ranging from a hundred thousand to about three billion, that can be varied "...by a simple electric field normal to the applied voltage gradient..." which can be generated by a couple of dry cells, is the ultimate dielectric and can be made by anyone at home.

There are scientific, industrial and military applications.

Military

lightning throwers

fuelless vehicles

"deadly hand guns"

pistols equal to cannons

weapons for citizens or rebels

Next: "Sentiment, Inc."

Weapons And Dielectrics

"Security."

Vegetable samosas from the street stall, mince pie from a local bakery and coffee for lunch and another crack at this story which has an sf plot idea:

"The perfect dielectric."

- in common with another early story that we have just read, "Snowball." 

(Meanwhile, in town, I have bought a hardback Complete Sherlock Holmes which will be wrapped and deposited under a Christmas tree.)

If the space station for the secret project had been constructed using valuable materials ferried up from Earth and if the expensive equipment needed for the project had been sent up after it, then this would have required a massive governmental bureaucratic exercise that it would have been impossible to conceal from subversive spies so instead the station has been improvised around a wrecked freighter that had fallen into a skewed orbit.

"Lancaster had always suspected that Security was a little mad. Now he knew it. Oh, well -"

When weapons are so cheap and simple that anyone can make and use them, governments are loose whereas, when weapons become expensive - like (obviously) atom bombs and missiles - , governments are powerful. Security suspects that a cheap and easy "equalizer" is technologically imminent and wants to develop it first. Hence, the secret project. This "equalizer" concept is common to Poul Anderson's "Snowball," "Security" and Psychotechnic History.

The paragraph that we are about to read next summarizes the significance of superior deielectrics and energy storage, as in "Snowball": all aspects of Poul Anderson's imagiverse. 

"Security" For Breakfast

"Security." 

Continuing to read "Security" over breakfast before Christmas Eve shopping.

The secret project to develop a new weapon is in a black-painted space station in an orbit out of the ecliptic. The American government is authoritarian, having apparently lost World War III. Hence, "Security" counteracting allegedly well organized "subversives." Other than that, global politics are recognizable. Characters expound military and political history in mini-speeches.

Poul Anderson has several Martian races. One, feathered and owlish, appears in several short stories, including here. Surprisingly, human beings have literally enslaved this version of the Martians. One Martian, Rakkan of Thyle, is part of the project and might turn out to be a significant character although I will have to ascertain this later. 

Reading and posting have become ultra-episodic.

(Meanwhile, the "L.L." in The Hound Of The Baskervilles has been identified.)

L.L.? II

See L.L.? 

I must be brief but there is a parallel here. In a detective novel by Poul Anderson, a murdered man has scribbled the letters "L.L." (See the above link.) In The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Sir Charles Baskerville who died in mysterious circumstances had received a letter from a woman who had signed it with the initials, "L.L."

What can we make of that? Although I have read both books before, I can remember neither what the letters meant in the Anderson book nor who the woman was in the Conan Doyle book. But I will shortly be reminded of the latter. And I will shortly also know what is the secret mission of Allen Lancaster in Anderson's "Security." Fictional universes are complicated and many of their details are forgotten.

Starting "Security"

I have started into "Security" but it is not grabbing me yet and I will probably leave it aside till tomoz. I want to get back to The Hound Of The Baskervilles before midnight.

Like Simon Arch in "Snowball," Allen Lancaster works with dielectric polarization. The difference is that Lancaster lives in a future interplanetary period when society and science are subject to "Security." (James Blish's They Shall Have Stars is about security stifling science but secret scientific projects finding an escape route.)

Palpable fear of Security, retroactively reedited public propaganda and a new phonetic orthography all make Lancaster's milieu sound 1984-esque although its technology is more advanced. (I think that the 1984 regime will grind to a halt through lack of research.)

Security will replace Lancaster with a double while he works on a top secret project for them so we will find out what that is next time or of course blog readers might read the story online first.

Why do these obscure early short stories have so many different cover illustrations? What a strange new perspective we are gaining on Poul Anderson's works. I am wondering how to escape back to the continuity and the greater substantiality of the same author's Technic History. 

"Snowball": Conclusion

"Snowball." 

"Snow whirled against the house, blindingly, as if the world drew into itself and nothing lay beyond these walls. The muted skirl of wind came through, lonesome and shivering. But inside, there was warmth and a calm light."

This signifies that the social upheavals and conflicts are dying down so that now a new kind of life as normal can be found.

Our hero, Arch, needing to do something new, has an Andersonian moment of realization. His invention, capacitite, can concentrate energy and this can be used for:

"'Spaceships!'" (The last word of the text.)

Next: "Security."

Wind And Sky

"Snowball."

Like "Let There Be Light" in Robert Heinlein's Future History, this is a story about a new source of cheap energy. Someone might summarize the technical details and economic ramifications. Not me.

"Autumn, the New England fall of rain and chill whistling wind, smoky days and flame-like leaves and the far wild honking of southbound geese."

We are on familiar territory here, especially with the "chill whistling wind." However, the paragraph continues by outlining human activities:

"The crash came in September: a reeling market hit bottom and stayed there. Gasoline sales were down twenty-five per cent already, and the industry was laying men off by the hundreds of thousands. That cut out their purchasing power and hit the rest of the economy."

A newly unemployed man who remembers the breadlines of thirties tries to kill the inventor of the destabilizing factor, capacitite.

During the depression, there are:

"...a leaden sky and a small whimpering wind."

As ever, a whimpering wind exactly expresses what is going on for the human characters.

And I thought that a leaden sky had played a significant role in James Blish's Black Easter:

There may be some textual evidence that the demons are not really at large. When Domenico wondered why an angel conjured by the white magicians appeared headless:

“The leaden skies returned him no answer.” ²⁹

And when Hess suggests that they are all insane, he does so “…in a leaden monotone.” ³⁰

Does Hess’ leaden monotone confirm that Domenico’s leaden skies are part of a collective hallucination? The word “leaden” seems significant. Blish would have known that he used it twice and that, by doing so, he linked an inner state, insanity, to an outer appearance, an unanswering sky. However, the Goat’s swallowing of the hysterically incredulous Hess seems even more significant, a decisive statement that demons are real.

-copied from here.

Literary Connections

Authors expect at least some of their literary references to be recognized and also hope that their texts will affect their readers in the ways that they intend whether or not those readers fully understand how this has been done. Biblical or Shakespearean quotations usually have their own resonances whether or not their source is recognized. See "Give Me Strength!"

However, memory also operates by entirely accidental associations or resemblances that cannot possibly be anticipated or intended. Rereading a book can remind any of us of where we were the first time that we read it which is unique to each reader. There was a time when the name of Selden, the escaped convict in The Hound Of The Baskervilles, automatically made me think of Seldon, the psychohistorian in Asimov's Foundation, although there is no possible connection between these two guys even if, just possibly, "Selden" was somewhere in Asimov's memory when he wrote "Seldon." Nowadays, Holmes texts recall the fruitful connections between that series and Poul Anderson's works and these connections, of course, were fully intended by Anderson although not necessarily recognized by all readers. Indeed, "Altamont" and The Origin Of Tree Worship are quite obscure.

Fiction About Science

Science fiction could mean fiction about science, i.e., about the work of scientists and about scientific processes. How much would we have to know about science in order to understand such a kind of fiction? Would the author be able to explain scientific issues clearly enough for the benefit of readers who were not scientifically educated and would he also be able to hold their attention throughout a narrative specifically about scientific questions and their resolutions? Scientifically uninformed readers tend to skip past the scientific rationales in works of sf but suppose the content of such rationales was present not only in a few introductory passages but also throughout a novel or short story, forming the main content of its narrative? James Blish put a lot of scientific background into They Shall Have Stars about the development both of antigravity and of antiagathics. I mention this because, among Poul Anderson's short stories, "Catalysis," which we have just read, and "Snowball," which we might be about to read, seem to fit into this proposed category of "science fiction." I could quote some dialogue from either story to illustrate this point. However, I would have little or no understanding of what I was quoting.

Have You Ever Heard Of "Snowball"?

Next, maybe, will be "Snowball" and again I will not begin to read this previously unknown story at nearly 10:00 PM. These stories are so dissimilar to each other that starting to read a new one is a wrench. We have gone from an interstellar empire to Triton Station to now an Earth-based story. Each of these obscure stories has several cover illustrations.

There is a program on TV about Papal Conclaves. And we, editorially speaking, have begun to reread The Hound Of The Baskervilles. Christmas approaches but preparations are in hand. 

And discussion of Poul Anderson's works remains endless but might slow down for a while.

Technic History Collections

A short story collection is not usually a "short stories plus also one novel" collection. If Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate had not included The Man Who Counts, then the latter would have been the first volume in the Technic History, preceding even Trader To The Stars. The first person narrator of the concluding story in Trader... describes Nicholas van Rijn as:

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes, and t'Kela!"

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1964), pp. 115-159 AT p. 121 -

- thus explicitly referring to the contents both of the previous two stories in the collection and of the novel. 

Why is "Esau," published in 1970, placed before "Hiding Place," published 1961, in the Chronology of Technic Civilization? This puts "Esau" between The Man Who Counts and "Hiding Place," the first story in Trader...

The first two volumes, Trader... and The Trouble Twisters, are specifically about van Rijn and Falkayn respectively and therefore would not have included any chronologically earlier stories about other characters which in any case were not written until later and therefore could not have been included.