We hope to return to Poul Anderson's Merman's Children this evening.
Onward with imagination in all its forms.
Tuesday, 26 August 2025
Psalm 30
Monday, 25 August 2025
Ending The Day On A Whimsical Note, Maybe
Everyone knows of parallels between Ian Fleming's James Bond and Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry although Flandry not only pre-existed Bond but also was conceived by Anderson as an sf equivalent of Simon Templar. (Roger Moore played both Templar and Bond.)
Many people might perceive Modesty Blaise as a female equivalent of James Bond although she is and has always been an independent and original character, beginning in a newspaper comic strip before branching into novels and films.
Why do I link Modesty with Flandry? Flandry's earliest published story was entitled "Tiger by the Tail" because, in it, enemies of the Terran Empire took Flandry prisoner and wished that they hadn't. Modesty's earliest story was entitled "La Machine" because, in it, Modesty goes up against a French murder outfit of that name. When La Machine captures Modesty, her assistant, Willie Garvin, says that they have - a tiger by the tail.
OK. A very minor literary parallel.
I will now return to reading Modesty Blaise for the rest of this evening.
Autumn Evening
Autumn approaches:
some leaves are a paler green;
others are brown, red or gold;
the sky is wan;
geese cry;
when the sun sets, the cool breeze becomes chill;
many villagers idle at home.
(Three senses.)
This description sets the scene for a conversation between a parish priest and a merman. Until we added "merman," the scene was entirely natural.
There is one other detail which is not a natural phenomenon but a human response. The cries of the geese awaken:
"...wordless longings..." (p. 119)
People see and hear birds flying through the darkening sky towards the horizon. They aspire to transcendence.
The Commonplace
A lot of us have probably had this kind of experience: church flower festival; cakes and teas; second-hand bookstall; paperbacks, including sf by Iain M. Banks, Piers Anthony or whoever; back cover blurbs - a character with a military background pursued by a hostile sect travels between planets in an imaginary planetary system; a character travels from his interstellar civilization to a fabulously wealthy empire... Am I persuaded to purchase? No way. I am already reading or rereading enough at home. Besides, these blurbs offer nothing new. Certain sf ideas have become genre cliches:
faster then light interstellar spaceships;
inhabited or colonized extra-solar planets;
an interstellar civilization;
characters for whom all of the above is commonplace so why should we go there?
See a poem by CS Lewis here.
Wells and Lewis were pre-genre science fiction authors. Some authors, notably Poul Anderson and James Blish, have worked well with the cliches but that should not make us want to perpetuate such cliches indefinitely.
Greg Bear wrote in the SFWA Bulletin:
"And give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson, but you are most likely not."
Connections
One Person is Aslan in Narnia and Maleldil in CS Lewis' version of the Solar System. Again, these are different universes although with a single creator. Any fantasy author who asks his readers to contemplate a multiverse could imply that Narnia exists somewhere in that multiverse but would, I hope, respect the integrity of Lewis' vision.
Right now, I am reading something else in a different medium before going out for the day. Have a good Monday.
Sunday, 24 August 2025
Culminations
Anderson's Time Patrol series is a definitive causality violation time travel series. (Is it the only causality violation time travel series?)
Anderson's There Will Be Time is both a circular causality time travel novel and a synthesis of time travel with future history.
Robert Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps" is perhaps the definitive circular causality time travel story.
Anderson's Genesis is an ultimate single-volume Stapledonian future history and a culmination of the theme of Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel. (Is it right to create human beings?)
Giving Heinlein his due, Anderson surpasses him.
Evening On The Strand
The evening is chilly. The Kattegat glimmers into dusk. The shore darkens. Sunset reddens water, reeds hummocks and willows. The breeze from inland smells of mire and damp. A bittern booms. A lapwing shrieks. An owl hoots.
Four senses: I have summarized instead of quoted. Thinking to check, we find that we have discussed this passage more than once before. However, each time is slightly different. Multi-sensory scenes, present throughout Poul Anderson's works, are almost part of his grammar. And I particularly like beaches.
Some Fundamentals
My two favourite kinds of sf are time travel and future histories. Poul Anderson not only excels at both but also presents multiple examples of both.
Both of these sf themes address in different ways the mysterious nature of time. HG Wells' Time Traveller tells his dinner guests that that morning he had set off through "tomorrow" and "into futurity." The opening story of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set in 1951 - but it remains the Future History. Its readers' chronological relationship to it does not affect the nature of the series.
There are two kinds of future histories:
single-volume future historical text books, mainly by Wells and Stapledon;
series of stories and novels set in successive historical periods by Heinlein, Anderson and others.
Stapledon recounts Martian invasions of Earth the way English historians recount the Norman Conquest. Anderson's Technic History does what Heinlein's Future History should have done, expands through many volumes: seven omnibus volumes when collected by Baen Books as The Technic Civilization Saga. This blog periodically returns to the Saga. Last night, while listening to a YouTube interview, I posted Important Events which says nothing new but nevertheless drew an interesting comment about the plausibility or otherwise of the founding of the Terran Empire. Several characters are introduced in Saga, Volume I, go through some changes in Volume II and reach their climax at the beginning of Volume III. The sheer length of the Technic History allows time and space for such developments to occur.
Yesterday, we also discussed Two Meanings Of "Time Travel."
Saturday, 23 August 2025
Important Events
van Rijn initiates his first trade pioneer crew led by Falkayn;
that crew saves Merseia from the supernova, Valenderay;
the Shenna are revealed as an external threat to the Polesotechnic League;
some League merchants become piratical and worse;
the League cartelizes and Falkayn clashes with van Rijn.
Thus, five of the seven instalments in Volume II present events that build up to the major events in Volume III which are:
civil war in the League;
Falkayn's colonization of Avalon;
the Troubles;
the early Terran Empire;
war between Empire and Avalon.
The Mandate Of Heaven
"...bad luck struck down on misjudgment - unless everything was the will of Heaven..." (p. 101)
Given the premise of an omnipotent Creator from nothing of everything other than Himself, then every single event must be "...the will of Heaven..." (p. 101)
If a storm throws a ship off course, then the Creator could have prevented that storm. Indeed, He caused it. Decades ago, CS Lewis persuaded me that God was like the author of a novel. Even if his characters act consistently and fully in accordance with their fictional personalities as created by him, the author controls the course of fictional events towards the preplanned conclusion of his novel. A storm occurs only if he decides that it does. He probably follows the rule that too much coincidence is unacceptable in fiction although, at the same time, some coincidences do occur. What looks like a coincidence to a character/creature is not a coincidence to an author/the Creator. It cannot be. The Creator is not a limited deity controlling only some aspects of nature as against others. Everything that goes one way He could have made go another way. Lewis thought that creatures had "free will" and therefore could thwart their Creator by damning themselves even despite His attempts to save them. I now think that freedom of choice/absence of constraint makes sense between finite creatures but not between such creatures and their Creator. He could have made us either immune to temptation or strong-willed enough to resist it. We confidently predict that a good person or "saint" will never even think of torturing a child and yet do not think that such goodness makes a person unfree. A saint is indeed free to torture a child... Good people are not automata any more than their Creator is. And I do not believe in such a Creator. I am merely following through the logic of a particular belief.
Two Meanings Of "Time Travel"
(i) HG Wells' Time Traveller is said to "travel" on his Time Machine to 802,701 AD, then to "The Further Vision," before returning to 1895. In my opinion, what the Time Traveller undergoes is not a kind of travelling but stationary time dilation. However, the term, "travel," suffices for the purpose of differentiating this process from phenomenon (ii) below.
Comparable to the Time Traveller, and still within phenomenon (i), are two of Poul Anderson's characters:
Martin Saunders "travels" in his time projector through an even further future and back around the, in this case, circular timeline to 1973;
Jack Havig, a mutant not needing a temporal vehicle, "travels" through past history and future history and remains in the future.
All three characters have what seems to them to be the experience of "moving" through objective time in a smaller amount of subjective time.
(ii) In Anderson's "Delenda Est," Neldorian time criminals generate a timeline in which Carthage, not Rome, won the Second Punic War. Do the Neldorians even travel back through the familiar timeline in order to do this? Like every other time traveller in their timeline, they do not "travel" between moments in time but simply disappear from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates and (re)appear at another set. Do they appear in the familiar timeline, then disappear from it at the moment when they change history or just not appear in it in the first place? Does the Time Patrol have records of time travellers appearing/arriving in the past, then disappearing, indicating that they have generated a divergent timeline? In any case, this is a very different process from (i).
The Part Played By Chance In The Generation Of Human Beings
female instead of male;
an inner conformist, fully internalizing received values;
an outer conformist, paying lip service to received values;
a non-conformist, questioning and rejecting received values.
I did not choose to be a non-conformist but found that I was one.
This has repercussions for Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. If history were effectively rewound and run forward again, as it is in "Delenda Est" and The Shield Of Time, then the random processes of procreation might very well have, indeed arguably would have, produced a different person as a result of every single act of human copulation - and different persons would have made different choices and decisions, thus changing the course of history unpredictably. The original timeline would have been unrecoverable.
My friend, Andrea, is right: Fortuna rules.
Two Dissimilar Works
...Silent Planet is about space travel and ends with a reference to time travel. "Flight..." is about time travel. In ...Silent Planet, because the villain, Weston, has closed the door on interplanetary travel, Ransom tells Lewis that the only remaining way to the planets is through time travel. At the end of "Flight...," the door is closed on time travel.
Before Weston's spaceship left Mars to return to Earth, some Martians treated it in such a way that, after ninety days, whether on Earth or still in space, it would "unbody" and become nothing. When Martin Saunders returns to 1973, his time projector dissolves into nothingness because the "gods" in the far future had preprogrammed its annihilation. In both cases, the annihilation is accompanied by a flash of light.
Friday, 22 August 2025
Mediterranean And Mussulman
The Mediterranean is:
"...a narrow sea divided between Christian and Mussulman with naught of Faerie surviving." (IV, p. 94)
Islam is:
"...a faith which kindled still more zeal against Faerie than Christendom generally did." (I, p. 75)
Again, this narrative is much closer to that end of Faerie that Poul Anderson had predicted at the end of his FOREWORD to The Broken Sword.
I read, and might still have somewhere upstairs after a house move (in fact, it is here), a nineteenth century work of Roman Catholic apologetics by an American clergyman who:
described the Paris Commune as a "many-headed monster";
said that the Holy Land was "profaned by the foot of the Mussulman";
accused Protestants of "monstrous ingratitude" because they accept the Bible but not the early Church that formulated the Christian canon of scripture;
accepted a literal Adam and Eve and Annunciation by Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.
This demonstrates what I was told as a trainee Religious Education teacher in Manchester, that there is no unchanging religious tradition. A city centre Church incorporated a Centre for the Study of Religion in the Urban Environment which printed documents for different religious communities. We, a group of students, were taken on a tour which included a synagogue. We had access to nineteenth century Christian missionary material which, however, was not on public display because some of it was regarded as offensive. Nowadays, where they exist, Pagans are just another religious group.
Traditions will have changed again in the kinds of futures projected by sf writers.
White Cliffs
"Herning rounded Wales, passed by the white cliffs of England, followed the Lowlands on toward home." (p. 93)
Coincidentally, I have just reread a graphic novel in which some characters fly over the White Cliffs of Dover while singing a song about them. Instead of reading a sentence, we see a panel that shows the White Cliffs, a flying vehicle and a speech balloon which contains a sentence. We appreciate verbal and visual-verbal media. The third medium, also accessible, is film, which is audiovisual.
At this point, The Merman's Children is following two sets of merfolk, each in a ship, one proceeding up the English Channel, the other approaching Albania.
I am posting between other activities - not sure how much more posting today.
Thursday, 21 August 2025
Connections
The Broken Sword
Hrolf Kraki's Saga
The Demon Of Scattery
War Of The Gods
Mother Of Kings
The Merman's Children is one of three novels by Poul Anderson set in the fourteenth century:
Rogue Sword
The Merman's Children
The High Crusade
Sean M. Brooks found an unexpected connection between Rogue Sword and The High Crusade.
The five Norse novels are separated chronologically only by Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy:
The Golden Horn
The Road of the Sea Horse
The Sign of the Raven
- which is preceded by Poul and Karen Anderson's The King of Ys Tetralogy:
Roma Mater
Gallicenae
Dahut
The Dog and The Wolf
- which in turn is preceded only by Poul Anderson's three novels set B.C.:
Conan The Rebel
The Dancer From Atlantis
The Golden Slave
Every time that I try to summarize a part of Anderson's past fiction, I wind up summarizing all of it.
The End Of Faerie
Hauau, the were-seal, foresees that a mortal woman will bear him a son but will then marry a man who will kill both him and the son:
"'I'm na afeared. Sad for the bairn, aye. Yet in those days Faerie will be a last thin glimmer ere it fades oot fore'er. Thus I can believe 'tis a mercy for him; and mysel', I'll be at one wi' the waters.'" (III, p. 88)
Thus, Hauau anticipates the end of Faerie, which Poul Anderson had already predicted:
"As for those who were still alive at the end of [The Broken Sword], and the sword, and Faerie itself - which obviously no longer exists on Earth - that is another tale which may someday be told."
-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), FOREWORD, p. 12.
But it was not, despite Anderson's prolificity. However, The Merman's Children moves the inter-textual narrative much closer to that end. Most Mediterranean countries are inhospitable to merfolk. Only one, eastern, shore is otherwise. In Dalmatia:
"...Faerie was not wiped out as it had been in, say, Spain." (I, p. 75)
Vanimen's merfolk had tried to cross the Atlantic in their stolen ship but the (cursed?) storm has driven them the other way, towards the Mediterranean. Thus, Book Two at last links back to the Dalmatian Prologue.
Self-Rule
Here is a different perspective:
"'There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair - or one trying to see over a whole country when he is on a level with it - like a female trying to beget young on herself.'"
-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 1-144 AT 16, p. 91.
beasts = animals
hnau = rational animals
eldila = angels
Maleldil = God
"These creatures..." = Terrestrials
We must learn how to rule ourselves. That learning is still in progress. We are not on a level with our surroundings but have raised ourselves above them. Rationality transcends animality which transcends unconscious organicism and inanimate matter. What did Lewis think that we would find on other planets? In fact, he was against us going there.
Mars And Martians
Wells, Lewis and Anderson: what a trio of different imaginative authors!
Mars and Martians can be detachable items. Thus, HG Wells' The War Of The Worlds and Poul Anderson's The War Of Two Worlds are about Martians but are set on Earth - because, in both cases, the Martians have invaded Earth, obviously. Anderson never set an entire novel on the surface of Mars although there are scenes on the planet in a few of his works. Readers are invited to remember which.
When Heinlein or Anderson wrote about Martians, it must still have been scientifically possible that Martians existed? - although Isaac Asimov acknowledged in The Early Asimov that Martians, Venerians and inhabitants of other Solar planets remained a convention in sf after they had ceased to be feasible. So much has been learned so recently with probes.
Lewis, writing Out Of The Silent Planet before World War II - thus, in a very different era - does a very good job of explaining why Mars, which had been fertile a long time ago, appears inhospitable when observed by Terrestrial astronomers although air, water and life still persist within deep crevasses - the canali. Similarly, Lewis' oceanic Venus was no more counterfactual at the time of writing than versions of the planet written by Heinlein or Anderson.
So I was wrong to put Lewis in the same category as Bradbury.
Wednesday, 20 August 2025
Words
Verbal
Homer worked only with spoken words. Authors of prose fiction work only with written words.
Audiovisual
Oral narrative became drama with the addition of extra speakers and actions. Film replaces stage sets with locations.
Visual-Verbal
Representational art becomes sequential art story-telling with the addition of extra pictures, captions and speech balloons.
Nowadays, two main creative groups work only with words: poets whose works are meant to be heard or read and authors of prose fiction which is meant to be read.
The paradox that I find is that Poul Anderson in particular vividly describes natural phenomena so that his readers should be able to imagine the colours of a sunset, the brilliance of the Milky Way etc. One problem with this is that some of us, maybe only a very few, lack any ability to visualize. The more basic question is whether the prose author is trying to do with words alone what can only really be done by pictorial art or on film.
Exotic Settings
When Vanimen kills a watchman in order to steal his ship, the dying watchman calls on God to curse and St. Michael to avenge. When Vanimen and his people sail across the Atlantic, a freak storm batters the stolen ship. Might the curse have caused the storm? Vanimen thinks so and so should we because supernatural agencies are a premise of this fantasy novel.
We appreciate exotic settings in imaginative fiction. Thus, concurrently in my present reading:
the mid-Atlanic as explored by Poul Anderson's merfolk;
the version of Mars, called Malacandra, in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy;
Larry Niven's Smoke Ring;
Neil Gaiman's continuation of Alan Moore's Miracleman series.
The Smoke Ring is an environment with a breathable atmosphere but no ground underfoot.
Lewis, like Ray Bradbury, presents an unscientific, humanly habitable, Mars. Anderson presents several races of Martians but always on versions of the planet that were scientifically accurate at the time of writing. What are we to make of unscientific Marses? We can only conclude that they exist in parallel universes. (Bradbury offends, in my opinion, by stating that his Mars is cold by night but hot by day! See Hard And Soft SF II.)
Gaiman's graphic novel makes us want to see visual adaptations of the other works mentioned here.
The Nets Of Ran
Fiction is about life and death, our lives and deaths.
"No matter how long a life you might win for yourself, who in the end escaped the nets of Ran?" (p. 72)
Drowned sailor are caught in the nets of Ran. Everyone has an appointment in Samara.
This reflection is relevant to works by two of Poul Anderson's colleagues, James Blish and Robert Heinlein.
Blish's Okies have anti-agathics which prevent death by disease or old age but Blish wants to make the point that even they must die sooner or later so he shows them surviving until the end of the universe which, for fictional purposes, he brings closer to the present than expected. Time triumphs.
By contrast, the implication of Heinlein's Methuselah's Children is that Lazarus Long, a mutant, will survive indefinitely. Neil Gaiman's Hob Gadling manages this as well but that is in a work of fantasy.
Anderson's mutant "immortals" in The Boat Of A Million Years agree to rendezvous after a million years but how many of them will survive that long?
Wind And Waves
Having embarked on Book Two, we must now specify that we are in that Book because the chapter numbers recommence from I.
The merfolk have stolen a ship named Pretiosissimus Sanguis. Authors test our knowledge of Latin, some more than others.
Sail rattles, hull creaks, yaws, rolls and pitches, spray sheets, passengers jostle and cry out, waters crest, wind spills, hoots, shrills, strains, smites and strikes, rain walks, a cloud cavern gapes, lightning flares and thunder tones. We are in our elements.
The previous post listed three multiverses. As we have noted before, Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End is comparable to Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix. However, Worlds' End connects a multi-authored multiverse.
We want to see Anderson's works adapted not only to screen but also into the graphic medium commonly called comic strips where we would not only read but also see Pretiosissimus Sanguis amid wind and waves.
Tuesday, 19 August 2025
Three Multiverses
We compared three place-names:
Averorn
Meldilorn
Tanelorn
Each of these three authors:
Poul Anderson
CS Lewis
Michael Moorcock
- created a fictional multiverse.
Anderson's multiverse has a common point in the Old Phoenix.
Lewis' multiverse includes the world of Narnia, the Wood Between The Worlds and Othertime.
Moorcock's Multiverse incorporates his several series.
All are united by creative imagination.
Mermen And Ythrians
Every part of a dead merman returns to nature where it wanders widely at one with the world. His spirit goes into sunlight, spindrift and sea-surge, his flesh into fleetness of fish and fowl, his bone and blood-salt back to the Bearer. I am paraphrasing a song of farewell that ends:
"The sky take you.
"The sea take you.
"And we will remember you in the wind." (p. 60)
At an Ythrian funeral, a Wyvan speaks the words of the New Faith which end:
"'Go hence now, that which [God's] talents left, be water and leaves, arise in the wind; and spirit, be always remembered."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT X, p. 559.
Two intelligent species on two planets in two timelines in one author's imagination.
Three Titles
"Also by Poul Anderson in Sphere Books:
"THE AVATAR
"THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND"
-The Merman's Children, back cover blurb.
Imagine initially reading those three novels, then seeking out others by Anderson.
The Merman's Children is about intelligent sea-dwellers.
The People Of The Wind is about intelligent fliers and is one volume of Anderson's Technic History which also features intelligent sea-dwellers in Ensign Flandry.
In The Avatar, several organisms become avatars of an Other, including:
"I was a great proud salmon, but had no words for greatness or pride; I was them."
-Poul Anderson, The Avatar (London, 1985), XIII, p. 124.
"I was a crow."
-ibid., XXI, p. 185.
Merfolk, Ythrians, Starkadians, Others, salmon and crows are all united in Poul Anderson's imagination.
Old And Older Gods
Eyjan, a mermaid, tells Niels Jonsen, a young man:
"'They tell me our kind was friendly with the old gods, and with older gods before them. Yet never have we made offering or worship. I've tried and failed to understand such things. Does a god need flesh or gold? Does it matter to him how you live? Does it swerve him if you grovel and whimper? Does he care whether you care about him?'" (p. 46)
So, in this timeline, successive pantheons have existed as they were believed in? This sounds complicated although it is what happened in The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson. Neil Gaiman's The Sandman explains in more detail how gods and their pantheons begin in the Dreaming and come out into the land where they are worshiped and what happens to them after that.
Eyjan expresses a Buddhist attitude to gods. Even if they exist, what do we need from them or vice versa? They too are born and die. Mythologically, the Buddha is a teacher of gods and men.
Monday, 18 August 2025
Three Senses At The Fjord
When the black cog, Herning, hired by the halflings, stands out of Mariager Fjord, Poul Anderson describes:
receding hills;
clear day;
dazzling sun;
glittering waves;
skirling wind;
thrumming rigging;
creaking timbers;
surging cutwater;
mewing gulls;
snowstorm-like wings;
smells of salt and tar blowing around.
A well-described scene, as ever. That is short but all that we have time for this evening. Next, other reading and bed. Tomorrow, gym and Gregson. Ever onward.
Out Of Hadsund
The cog, Herning, a cargo tramp working out of Hadsund at the end of Mariager Fjord in Jutland, fares north to Finland, east to Wendland and west to Iceland.
As an abstract, auditory, non-visual thinker, I find geography, especially Northern European geography with all those peninsulas, very confusing so I am trying to pin things down here. In Poul Anderson's works, we must cope not only with fantastic realms and other planets but also with a lot of real world geography like a trip through Denmark in The Corridors Of Time. We can learn a lot by reading Anderson and then following up his many historical and geographical references.
Here, it is nearly time to eat, then attend meditation group.
Averorn
Creative authors adopt and adapt existing ideas.
"'Long ago was a city of men on an island in midocean...'" (p. 38)
That sounds like Atlantis.
Continuing:
"'Great it was, and gorged with riches.'" (ibid.)
That also sounds like our idea of Atlantis.
"'Its god was a kraken.'" (ibid.)
Poul Anderson is now telling his own story. The island-city turns out to have been called Averorn. Its inhabitants lowered treasure, which their god did not want, and animals, which he ate. When they stopped sacrificing to him, he rose and pulled down Averorn. Again, Anderson's story parallels that of Atlantis.
Is there any significance to place-names ending in "-orn"?
Candle Flames
Yria, mermaid, has been baptized and has become Margrete, mortal. Ingeborg, mortal prostitute, addressing Tauno, merman, compares their three fates:
"'For the price of her past, and of growing old, ugly, dead in less than a hundred years, [Yria/Margrete] gains eternity in Paradise. You may live a long while, but when you die you'll be done, a blown-out candle flame. Myself, I'll live beyond my body, most likely in Hell. Which of us three is luckiest?'" (p. 35)
I am sure that many people, not just myself, have problems with this passage. I expect everyone to be blown out like a candle flame. That is a good description of death. I do not think that a prostitute or anyone else deserves Hell. I do not think that individual consciousness can continue forever. However, Paradise and Hell are premises of this fantasy novel. Within the parameters of this particular fictional narrative, we have to accept that Ingeborg's account is accurate. But we do not have to like the idea of Hell, even within fiction.
Vastness, Life And Beauty
King Vanimen tells his people:
"'This is not the whole universe.'" (p. 28)
Europe and its coastal waters are not the whole universe. But what lies beyond them? In his youth, Vanimen wandered widely as far as Greenland. Merfolk, men and dolphins informed him:
"'...of countries beyond.'" (ibid.)
There are:
"'...wonderful shoals and shores...'" (ibid.)
- beyond Christendom.
If the merfolk go there, they will be able:
"'...to grow into...vastness, life, and beauty...free and at peace.'" (ibid.)
Because it is too far to swim, he urges them to steal a human ship:
"'...and steer for the western lands - the new world!'" (p. 29)
We share the sense of adventure.
"From harbors like this, a few life-times hence, men would set sail for the New World."
-Poul Anderson, "Death and the Knight" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 737-765 AT HARFLEUR, WEDNESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 1307, p. 754.
The King of Ys contemplated trans-Atlantic trade but the distance was too great.
Descriptions Of Nature
Someone could compile a long collection of Poul Anderson's descriptions of nature. They are ubiquitous in his narratives although maybe unnoticed by some readers. In a single short paragraph:
the eastern sky is like "...a violet-blue chalice..." (p. 29) holding the early stars;
the western sky is a "...red, purple, and hot gold..." (ibid.) fountain;
luminous waters move and lull;
quiet, soft air smells "...of kelp and distances." (ibid.)
We have encountered an odour of distances before.
Hungry, weary and woeful merfolk can find hope for an hour. We pause on this paragraph but the narrative continues.
Responsibilities And Rewards Of Kingship
For duties, see King Vanimen.
And another responsibility is added in the following paragraph. He is:
"...expected to be hospitable and openhanded..." (p. 28)
His rewards, before the destruction of their city, were:
to live in a hall instead of a simple home;
to have his needs provided when he did not want to hunt;
to receive splendid gifts;
to be highly respected by an otherwise irreverent tribe.
Only the fourth reward remains.
He does not seem to have had any counsellors.
In the Bible, the people of Israel want a king to be like other nations even though they are warned that he will exploit them. In CS Lewis' A Preface To Paradise Lost and Perelandra, kingship is inherent in the first unFallen man whereas, in Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, Aslan institutes human kingship of Narnia only because a human being has introduced evil into that newly created world. In this case, kingship is a stopgap measure.
Those of us who are republicans have to regard kingship as an earlier way of doing things. The Romans were the first to depose a king and establish a republic. We have a long tradition with ancient precedents.
Sunday, 17 August 2025
King Vanimen
Before the merfolk king, Vanimen, addresses his dispossessed people, he reflects that:
"He must offer them more than the empty wail of the wind." (p.26)
The wind usually plays some role. Often, it emphasizes dramatic pauses in the dialogue. Here, its empty wailing contrasts with the significance of the speech that Vanimen is obliged to deliver.
The king's roles are:
to preside over infrequent folkmoots;
to judge disputes;
to deal with other communities;
to lead any united efforts;
to act as the master of festivals;
to transmit wisdom;
to counsel the young or troubled;
to preserve and teach lore;
to keep talismans;
to know spells;
to guard against monsters, evil magic and humanity;
to intercede with the Powers.
Regarding the Powers, he is said to have:
"...guested Ran herself...." (p. 28)
Ran is the wife of Aegir, the Norse mythological sea giant, who is also mentioned. Are we to understand that the Aegir, the Vanir and Yggdrasil had also existed in this timeline?
Naive Mythology
Since any fantasy assumes counterfactual premises, Poul Anderson bases this particular historical fantasy novel on:
"...the naive, half-pagan mythology of peasants and seafarers in the early fourteenth century..." (p. viii)
- which he sharply distinguishes from Thomist theology. Indeed. In this mythology:
pictures and images turn their faces to the wall when a merman enters a church;
some rational beings, e.g., merpeople, do not have souls - but can be given them!
This contradicts not only what I believe now but also what I was told to believe in school but it does not matter because the work is a fantasy. Soulless rational beings coexisting with souled rational beings is a fictional premise just as much as merpeople and revolving images.
This fantasy does not have to be set in a parallel universe because the idea is that, as in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, Faerie withdrew from Earth in historical times so it should be completely gone by the time the novel is written.
A Conversation About SF
Wells
Stapledon
Lewis
Blish
Anderson
Pullman
Heinlein should also be mentioned as a future historian coming after Wells and Stapledon but before Blish and Anderson.
Nothing much was said that has not been said here before. All but Lewis and Pullman stand in a particular science fiction tradition. Lewis replies to Wells and Stapledon. Blish is post-Lewisian whereas Pullman is anti-.
Lewis' The Problem Of Pain is a work of Christian apologetics. Anderson's "The Problem of Pain" is a short story about a Christian man confounded by an Ythrian response to suffering and death.
Mike has read some Lewis and commended his psychological insights. He has also read Anderson's Genesis and thinks that mankind will be superseded not only by AI but even by unconscious AI and, furthermore, that this will be a good thing! Consciousness causes suffering and is a curse. If this is the real meaning of Buddhism, then I have to affirm that I am not a Buddhist although Zen meditation is beneficial for consciousness.
If Lewis' God exists, then He knows that He created both Wells and Lewis. We are all in this thing together, somehow. (That is not always true but it is here.)
Merfolk Mortality
Merfolk do not age but have high infant mortality because of:
shark
orca
sperm whale
ray
sea serpent
many other killer fish
wind
wave
poisonous fangs and spines
cold
sickness
hunger
Agnete had seven children of whom four survive. One is too weak to survive a long sea journey so she is taken ashore where she is baptized, thus becoming physically mortal although gaining an immortal soul. That leaves three "Merman's Children" in the sea. What will become of them? Only time and further reading will tell.
Poul Anderson Writes A Sequel
OK. I get it, I think. The introductory Author's Note refers to a Danish verse tale:
"...'Agnete og Havmanden' ('Agnete and the Merman...') (p. vii).
In Chapter I, the bishop of Viborg's archdeacon summarizes a version of this story, then exorcises the undersea town where Agnete's grown children live. Chapter II opens with the oldest of those children, twenty-one year old Tauno. Thus, Poul Anderson writes a sequel to the Danish story. Where will the merman's children go when they have been compelled to flee from their cursed town and how will this impact Dalmatia which was introduced in the Prologue? We remember some answers to these questions from previous readings, of course, but there are always unremembered details and we will shortly travel to a family reunion event that will last until some time this evening.
Laterz.
Saturday, 16 August 2025
Poul Anderson And SF Themes
time travel
space travel
alien invasion
future history
invisibility
telepathy
teleportation
immortality
robots
a science of society
generation ships
Perhaps invisibility is the only one of these themes not addressed by Poul Anderson?
Another theme neither on this list nor addressed by Anderson is miniaturization:
Ant-Man (Marvel superhero)
The Atom (DC superhero)
In "Nor Iron Bars" by James Blish, an interstellar spaceship gains negative mass and collapses into the microcosm.
In The Great Divorce by CS Lewis, characters travel by changing size but this is a metaphor for spiritual progress or regression.
New Copies
Changing the subject before finishing this post - sf characters used to set off to the Moon or Mars in homemade spaceships:
Wells, The First Men in The Moon;
Heinlein, Rocket Ship Galileo;
Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet;
Blish, Welcome To Mars.
Poul Anderson never did it that way - correct me if I am wrong - although he did do it with time travel in "Flight to Forever."
Forward, onward, upward, outward.
Hunting The Wind?
Mihaljo and his men chase a stag which exhausts their horses, then disappears. One of his attendants says:
"'Sir, this is no place for Christians. Old heathen things are abroad. That was no buck we hunted, it was the very wind, and now it has vanished to wherever the wind goes. Why?'" (p. 3)
Indeed, why? Is the wind taking an even more active part than usual in an Andersonian narrative? Well, no. It transpires that a vilja that had been a young woman known to Mihaljo is responsible. This experience sends Mihaljo into a monastery to the dissatisfaction of his father, the zhupan. It remains to be shown how this prologue connects with the main text of the novel which begins with:
"The bishop of Viborg..." (I, p. 9)
Read on, pilgrims.
Page 1
A league inland from the steep Dalmatian coast, the town of Shibenik stands on a hill above the river Krka with mountain peaks visible to the east. The Krka and other rivers enter a lake from which water falls, then narrows, towards the sea. Land around the lake and falls was wooded except where it had been cleared for agriculture around the Krka. Upriver, where the Chikola enters the Krka, were the village of Skradin and its zhupan's stronghold. The wilderness was home to:
wolves
jackals
deer
boar
elk
aurochs
Leshy
vodianoi
a vilja
The zhupan, Ivan Subitj, was kin to Ban Pavle. Ivan's son, Mihajlo, educated at the abbey in Shibenik, had travelled to the ports of Zadar and Split and across the Aegean to Italy. In search of wealth and fame, Mihaljo joined:
"...the retinue of Pavle Subitj the kingmaker." (p. 1)
I have paraphrased the opening page of which Poul Anderson novel?
The Fourteenth Century In Fact And (Mostly) Fiction
In "Death and the Knight," (historical science fiction/time travel), Manson Everard of the Time Patrol intervenes when the Knights Templar are suppressed in 1307.
In The Merman's Children (historical fantasy), Pavle Subitj dies in 1312 and there is civil war in 1322.
In The High Crusade (historical science fiction/space travel), extra-solar aliens attack Earth in 1345.
An eventful century. These events occur in a minimum of three timelines. But their protagonists can all meet for a drink in the Old Phoenix.
Friday, 15 August 2025
Lucas, The Wind And Polaris
We have reread to the end and will shortly have to find another Poul Anderson work to reread although it is going to have to compete for time with renewed gym, other reading and, from tomorrow, a week of family reunion events, beginning with a canal cruise and a barbeque.
When En Jaime realizes that he is being attacked by his old friend, Lucas:
"'Is that indeed you?' he said..." (p. 270)
There is nothing unusual about that but does the wind have any say in the matter? Yes, the quoted sentence continues and concludes:
"...so low that the wind in the trees nearly smothered it." (ibid.)
This wind serves to emphasize surprise.
When Lucas tries to barter:
"The wind skirled.
"'Well?' Lucas' voice cracked over.
"'No, I cannot.'" (p. 272)
Skirling wind accompanies turbulent thoughts.
When the battle has been won:
"Lucas went out onto the portico. The wind bit and whistled." (p. 282)
The violence has just finished but everything has not settled down yet.
When Djansha joins him:
"The wind filled his lungs and blew the ache from his head. A good wind for their voyage. Northward glittered his oldest friend, Polaris, the wander-star." (p. 283)
The wind is good at last and there is another welcome reminder of the stellar universe. Enough Said Department.
A Moment Of Realization And The Sea Horse
"Hugh laid a hand on [Lucas'] arm, and then released it as he felt the muscles go rigid under his palm.
"'What's happened?' he asked, a little alarmed.
"Lucas raised his head and stared into emptiness. The hair stirred on his scalp.
"'Dear Mother Mary!' said Hugh. 'What are you seeing?'
"Lucas drew a slow breath. His eyes focused on the knight, as if he were awakening from dreams." (pp. 252-253)
Regular readers recognize the signs. Lucas has just had an Andersonian moment of realization about how to address his current problem.
His first step is to enquire in some harbour taverns so Anderson describes yet another of those:
the Sea Horse;
dingy;
near warehouses and Famagusta harbour;
bad reputation;
cheap;
frequented by Western oarsmen and dockers;
a rendezvous known across the Mediterranean;
a blind eye turned to killings;
bad food;
sour wine;
bedbugs;
a dull heathfire;
darknesses relieved by a few lamps;
floor rushes overdue for change;
smoke haze;
moving shadows;
rough, pigtailed, bearded Genoese, Sclavonians, Frenchmen, Iberians and a Swede drinking, dicing, yarning and squabbling;
a harlot who reminds Lucas' companion of his mother.
Quite a detailed description can be extracted from Anderson's text.