Quiz Question

This evening, we attended a garden party where there was a quiz which included the question, "Which was the earliest novel published by Poul Anderson?" I was expected to get this right but didn't or at least not quite. I wrote Brain Wave although Vault Of The Ages also came into the back of my mind. In fact (see Significant Dates):

Vault Of The Ages, which is juvenile sf, was the first novel and the correct quiz answer;

Three Hearts And Three Lions was the first fantasy novel;

Brain Wave was the first adult sf novel;

Brain Wave and The Broken Sword were published in the same year.

That is a complicated situation as I hope you will agree. 

In the 1960's, the two sf scenarios were spaceships in the near or further future (the majority) or post-nuclear war recovery in the near future (the minority). Some works by Poul Anderson, e.g., his Psychotechnic History, combined these scenarios. Vault Of The Ages was post-nuclear war but a few centuries in the future. I do not remember much about it so maybe I should reread it if I can find it where it should be on a shelf upstairs but it is too late to look for it this evening.

Meanwhile, my rereading of Ian Fleming has brought me to a game of golf between James Bond and Auric Goldfinger.

The "Best Of The Technic History"

We do not need a Best Of Poul Anderson's Technic History collection because we have the entire History in a uniform edition and can each make our own judgements as to which are the best instalments. In any case, the series is uniformly good right through.

If there were a collection of about half a dozen "best," which ones would they be? Or, rather, how many versions of such a collection would there be?

My suggestions:

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"

"The Season of Forgiveness"

"Lodestar"

The People Of The Wind

"Starfog"

These five are not distributed uniformly through the Technic History.

We have discussed each of these works more than once. "How To Be Ethnic..." is on my list because it introduces Adzel as seen through the eyes of one-off character, James Ching, and also gives us a glimpse of domestic life in the Solar Commonwealth; "The Season of Forgiveness" because it is an excellent Christmas story which also shows us another aspect of the Polesotechnic League without involving any of the continuing characters; "Lodestar" because it introduces Coya Conyon, dramatizes the generation gap between her and her grandfather, Nicholas van Rijn, informs us of the crisis in the League that will be fully developed in Mirkheim and climaxes with a crucial confrontation between van Rijn and Falkayn; The People Of The Wind because of its sense of living in troubled times, because it presents every point of view on war, because of its detailed realization of the environment of the planet, Avalon, and because of its presentation of the biracial society of Avalon; "Starfog" because it is our single glimpse of a remoter future far beyond League or Empire.

Reconciliations

At the end of "The Sharing of Flesh," Evalyth frees the man who had killed her husband, saying:

"'Go home... Remember him.'" (p. 708)

At the end of "Rescue on Avalon," Jack Birnham tells an Ythrian that he is not an enemy, adding:

"'I'll be proud to call you my friend!'"

-Poul Anderson, "Rescue on Avalon" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 307-322 AT p. 322.

Two short stories with neat happy endings. There are others. Poul Anderson's Technic History features several long drawn out and complicated conflicts but is also peppered with several shorter pieces such as these two. What is good about The Technic Civilization Saga is that they are all there together in seven omnibus volumes.

The Benefits Of Technology: The World Made Great

"The Sharing of Flesh."

"'...your wisemen talked of ways to end hunger, sickness, danger, and sorrow.'" (p. 695)

"'Suddenly the world was made great, that had been so narrow.'" (ibid.)

We take hungerlessness, health, safety, satisfaction and knowledge for granted but what would it be like to lose them or never to have had them? And the ending of hunger etc is not yet complete.

Every word of a futuristic sf story can be applied to the time in which it was written and to the changing times in which it continues to be read. There is a reason why the lowland Lokonese fight incessant wars. The Allied Planets can end that reason.

It takes longer in real life but we have the same goals.

Slavery

"The Sharing of Flesh."

The Allied Planets spaceship, New Dawn, has found an isolated human colony planet where there is:

"...a large slave class." (p. 674)

However:

"...none of the space travelers was unduly shocked. They had seen worse elsewhere." (ibid.)

Furthermore, history might inform them that there had been slaves in two previous interstellar civilizations, the Merseian Roidhunate and the Terran Empire. The Domain of Ythri had phased out slavery with the help of technology from Terran Technic civilization.

The text continues:

"Historical data banks described places in olden times called Athens, India, America." (ibid.)

Thus, in this story by an American sf writer, America is remembered not as a land of the free but as a place where there had been slaves.

A local leader tries to convince a Krakener that his people are civilized. They eat only slaves. 

Concluding Phase

"The Sharing of Flesh."

In this concluding phase of Poul Anderson's Technic History, narrative continuity is provided not by continuing characters or even by surnames recognized across the generations but only by the names of planets that had appeared or in some cases just been mentioned in the background in earlier instalments:

Kraken

Atheia

Lochlann

Neuvameruica

Gwydion

Ifri

Freehold

- and by a few very basic future historical references:

ruins or wreck of empire

Long Night

the dead language, Anglic

However, all of these names and references are rich in connotations for consecutive readers. We are still in the same series as when we had been reading about van Rijn, Falkayn or Flandry.

The historical innovation is the Allied Planets which must have grown out of alliances forged in the two previous instalments.

Violence

In Poul Anderson's Technic History:

"Lodestar" begins as natives of the planet, Tametha, attack Polesotechnic League merchants, including the familiar trader team;

in "A Tragedy of Errors," Roan Tom's spaceship is almost immediately attacked when it arrives on the planet, Nike;

"The Sharing of Flesh" begins with the murder of an extra-planetary visitor by a dweller on the planet, Lokon.

Does Poul Anderson write about violence for the sake of violence? No, although we might get that impression if we read no further. In each case, the violence is an expression of a problem and the ensuing story is about finding the solution to that problem.

Fiction is easier to cope with than life. We are not attacked or killed while reading these stories...

Barriers To Understanding

"The Sharing of Flesh" is included in three Technic History collections:

The Long Night

The Night Face and other stories

Flandry's Legacy

Of these, I possess only The Long Night and Flandry's Legacy. This story has no introduction in Flandry's Legacy. The story is set long after Hloch - fictitiously - compiled The Earth Book Of Stormgate. Therefore, it not only does not have but also could not have had any introduction composed by Hloch.

Like Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, The Long Night includes italicized interstitial passages composed not by the author of the stories, Poul Anderson, but by Andersonian scholar, Sandra Miesel. The short paragraph that immediately precedes "The Sharing of Flesh" could serve as an introduction both to The Night Face and to "The Sharing of Flesh."

After referring to "...rediscovery expeditions during the next four centuries...," Miesel comments:

"Time and again, these contact teams would find that simple ignorance was the least of the barriers to mutual understanding."

-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Long Night (New York, 1983), p. 202.

Strangers And Moru

Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708.

"...the tall strangers..." (p. 663) have demonstrated guns although not audiovisual transmitters to their local guides which implies that the strangers are extra-planetarians and that the guides are either non-humans or inhabitants of a human colony planet cut off from interstellar contact during the Long Night. In fact, they turn out to be the latter. 

This story, like many others, opens with the point of view of a particular character, in this case an individual named "Moru," rather than an exposition by a distanced narrator, e.g.:

"As far as we know - but how much do we really know, in this one corner of this one galaxy which we have somewhat explored? - Avalon was the first planet whereon two different intelligent species founded a joint colony."

-Poul Anderson, "Wingless" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 293-306 AT p. 295.

- which raises questions like "Who are 'we'?," "How much time has elapsed between the events narrated and their narration?" etc.

In each of these stories, something matters to someone.

Orion And Kraken

Real people and fictional characters see the stars. Science fictional characters sometimes travel between them. We inhabit the same universe but on different scales. James Bond saw the Milky Way and the North Star, here. Next, in Dr No, Chapter XIV, he sees Orion, a name to conjure with.

Then, in Chapter XVIII, he fights and kills a giant squid which he identifies as:

"...the mythical kraken..."

Dr No, XVIII, p. 163. (See above link.)

See:

"The Giant Squid, The Mythical Kraken"

Kraken

Fighting The Kraken

The Sunken City Of Averorn

Looting Averorn

Thus, Bond connects with a work of fantasy by Poul Anderson.

The problem planet, Gwydion, is referred back to, in authentic future historical style, in the following Technic History instalment but not in any way that continues its history. Do other planets quarantine Gwydion or just avoid contact during Bale time?

THE NIGHT FACE Conclusion

The Night Face, XII.

This is the concluding chapter. When we know from previous readings how the story ends, we can reread more carefully to appreciate the build-up. There is dawning horror before the explanation.

Raven retells a myth about the Sunsmith as:

"'...a harbuck with silver horns.'" (p. 650)

I can find "Harbuck" only as a surname.

Mythic languages involves affirmation of identities:

"'Night Faces are Day Faces are God!'" (p. 649)

"'...a youth killed a bull, and the Bull was the Sun and the Man.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 7, p. 92.

Does Raven distract the mob from Elfavy? Does he escape?

Next: the return of Orion. But first I have business in town.

Feeling It

The Night Face, X.

Elfavy, setting off to the Holy City for Bale time, stops to talk to Raven. When two people converse, three factors are involved, in this case:

Elfavy's perception of the world;

Raven's perception of the world;

the world.

Elfavy makes the common mistakes first of identifying her perception of the world with the world and, secondly, of thinking that Raven's perception must be identical to hers:

"'...it's impossible that you can't feel it! God is here already, everywhere. I see Vwi shining from you, Raven!'" (p. 637)

I have no doubt that Elfavy sees something beyond her usual perceptions shining from Raven. I do not visualize but, like many others, I have felt something. The immediate question is whether the word, "God," is appropriate. That word has many meanings. I knew someone who used it aggressively. Thus, "It's what God [shouted] wants!" (I think that that counts as taking the Name in vain.)

Decades ago, I was present went the guru, Sri Chinmoy, addressed a public meeting. Like, I think, most people present, I saw and heard an Indian man chanting, then speaking. A few saw other things. One saw a shimmering canopy above Chinmoy's head and - bright colours; I forget the details. If I were to encounter someone like Chinmoy now, then I might just possibly be open to seeing more than I did then. Such experiences need to be recorded, studied and interpreted. We are only just beginning. Poul Anderson imagines future seekers.

The Mystery On Gwydion

The Night Face, IX.

The Gwydiona have scientific research, artistic innovations, engineering projects and philosophers and are eager for interstellar contact yet they do not investigate legends of subterranean creatures or forest skulkers that might be evidence for the existence of hidden natives which in turn could explain damage done to towns during Bale time as well as the mystery of why some of the Gwydiona themselves do not return from the Holy City after Bale time. The damage to towns has significantly decreased in recent years and this is cited as a reason why there is little incentive to study the problem! But what of the Gwydiona who fail to return? That still happens.

Are no scientific researchers curious or concerned? What do the philosophers do? Read Plato and Aristotle or try to understand the world around them? Scientists and philosophers have served obscurantist regimes...

House Of Philosophers

The Night Face, IX.

On Gwydion, the grounds of the House of Philosophers include picnic grounds and a carousel because it is good for philosophers to have contact with children and also because the children might acquire some "'...respect for knowledge...'" (p. 627)

Should there be professional philosophers? If things had gone differently at an earlier stage and also if I had been ambitious in that direction, I would have become a full-time academic philosopher but would that have been a good move in terms of personal development or of anything else? The idea of sitting in an office and discussing not practical matters but conceptual questions strikes me as bizarre. There is too big a social chasm between between manual and intellectual work, as I know from having done both. 

I suggest that anyone who thinks that he will want to philosophize should study an introduction to that subject but should also train for some other kind of work and not necessarily just teaching. Philosophical reflection needs to be grounded in practical experience. Any gathering of philosophers needs to include individuals with knowledge of the sciences, industry, social professions, literature etc. A House of Philosophers should be a place where many people go at different times, not an ivory tower for an intellectual elite - what CS Lewis identified as "the intelligentsia." 

Holy Mountain II

The Night Face, IX.

"Far and holy above western forests, the mountain peaks dreamed." (p. 623)

Natural features sometimes "dream" in works by Poul Anderson. See Holy Mountain. In that post, I mentioned a poem which I have now found on-line:

The Starling Lake

My sorrow that I am not by the little dún
By the lake of the starlings at Rosses under the hill,
And the larks there, singing over the fields of dew,
Or evening there and the sedges still.
For plain I see now the length of the yellow sand,
And Lissadell far off and its leafy ways,
And the holy mountain whose mighty heart
Gathers into it all the coloured days.
My sorrow that I am not by the little dún
By the lake of the starlings at evening when all is still,
And still in whispering sedges the herons stand.
'Tis there I would nestle at rest till the quivering moon
Uprose in the golden quiet over the hill.

Seumas O'Sullivan

- copied from here.

A "dun" is a fort.

Last night at the Gregson, Les wore a T-shirt with an image of Ganesh.

Cathedral/Forest

The Night Face, VIII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proto-Intelligence

The Night Face, VIII.

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

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

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

The Milky Way Seen From Earth

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

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

Wells' Selenities or Martians;

ERB's Moon Men or Martians;

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

many others, of course.

(Mars is the most populated planet in fiction.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wellsian Anderson

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

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

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

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

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

For that fourth point, see:

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

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

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

The Verge Of Intelligence

The Night Face, VII-VIII.

The mountain apes might:

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

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

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

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

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

"Ape" means anthropoid and:

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

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

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

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

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

Denial

The Night Face, VII.

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

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

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

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

The Unknown III

The Night Face, VII.

Elfavy says that her planet, Gwydion, is:

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

- and adds:

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

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

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

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

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

- which is what the Gwydiona seem to be doing.

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

See also:

The Unknown

The Unknown II

The Wind

Omniscience?

Imperfect Prolepsis

Metaphor And Myth

The Night Face, VII.

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

A Sense Of Humour

Pronouns

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

Me: Are these texts theistic?

Him: What do you mean?

Me: Do they refer to God?

Him: Yes.

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

Him: No.

Me: So not really theistic. 

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

(Life remains busy here.)

Hero Meets Villain

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

Flandry and Tachwyr

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

Flandry and Aycharaych

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

Bond and Rosa Klebb

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

Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld

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

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

Tragedies

The Night Face, VI.

Raven recalls the titles of three classic tragedies:

Lear

Agamemnon

Old Men At Centauri

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

Raven also reflects on two real tragedies on Lochlann:

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

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

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

Laughter After The Long Night

The Night Face, VI.

Gwydion has not grass but psuedomoss.

How Different Populations Laugh

Namericans, raucously

Lochlanna, wolfishly

Gwydiona, gently and more frequently

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

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

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

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

"The Night Face Called Chaos."

The Night Face, V.

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

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

Sol And Grass

The Night Face, V.

The very last word on p. 585 is:

"'Sol..."

Over the page, the sentence continues:

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

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

On p. 590:

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

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

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

Sunniness

The Night Face, IV.

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

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

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

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

-copied from here.

And:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attitudes To Death

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

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

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

Go with God in some senses of the word.

Essays And Fragments

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

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

Time Travel

Yossi, the Time Traveller (acknowledges Heinlein and Anderson)

Time Travel Memoirs Fragments (a loose and incomplete sequel)

Mask

2025

A Few Fragments

Other

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

See also two earlier posts on this theme:

Incomplete Time Travel Stories

Time Travel Fiction

One More Parallel That I Cannot Resist

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

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

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

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

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

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

Usual

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

Two fictional examples, the second from Poul Anderson:

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

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

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

Raven's Reflections And Sensations

The Night Face, III.

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

scuffing boots;

chuckling river;

murmuring leaves;

rising thunder.

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

The celebration of the senses continues:

the river roars entering the sea;

sunset makes it molten;

the wind is chill, wet and salty;

flying sea birds are gray.

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

One Republic

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

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

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

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

What It Means (Or The Meaning Of It All)

The Night Face, III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God(s) And A Horn

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

A particular bush on Gwydion has:

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

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

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

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

Gwydiona Mysticism

The Night Face.

Gwydiona mysticism is another much-posted topic. See:

Gwydiona Symbolism

Gwydion Mythology

Symbolism

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

Young Flandry And Bond

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

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

Symbolism

The Night Face, II.

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

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

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

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

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

Light Be Yours

The Night Face, II.

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

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

However, it will emerge that the problem runs deeper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through Time

Sf shows cultural collisions, clashes etc when:

space explorers reach inhabited extrasolar planets;

time dilated space travelers return to Earth;

time travelers arrive in historical or future periods.

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

"Welcome"

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

"Time Heals"

Increasing incomprehension with increased futurity.

"The Man Who Came Early"

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

"The Little Monster"

A young boy's effect on proto-men.

"Flight to Forever"

Succeeding civilizations, either hostile or indifferent.

Also:

The Quincunx Of Time by James Blish

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

Conflicting Cultures In Two Future Histories

The Night Face, II.

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

Solarians

Nomads

Erulani

Alori 

- see The Peregrine II

- and also:

Stellamont

- see Conflicting Cultures

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

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