Winding Up January In Life And Fiction

The Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire, representing the King of England (who is also the Duke of Lancaster), attended the Holocaust Memorial event. The Mayor of Lancaster attended Holocaust Memorial and the Chinese New Year concert. Sheila was one of the raffle winners who went up on stage for a photo. There was a display of Shaolin Kung Fu moves, including with weapons.

Adzel, the Wodenite convert to Buddhism, does not need to learn any self-defence or martial arts. Jim Ching tells him that his rented hut is in a crime area but Adzel, surprised, replies that he has never been molested. That has something to do with looking like a Tyrannosaur. But Adzel fights when necessary on Dathyna, Tametha and Hermes. 

Crown Prince Josip receives at the Coral Palace for the Emperor's Birthday. 

 (We experience twenty-first century events and parallel them with Technic History events. And we attend the Town Hall and the Grand Theatre rather than the Coral Palace.)

Tomorrow will be another month.

Last Year

Last year, while at the Chinese New Year concert, I was wondering which work by Poul Anderson to reread and post about next and decided on The Boat Of A Million Years, a gratifyingly lengthy read that would certainly consume more time than any single short story. Boat is a past and future history. Aliens, time travellers, mutants or immortals in the past make for historical science fiction and Anderson covers all these options in different works. The protagonists of Boat are mutant immortals like Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long. Although we are not supposed to make comparisons between works with different purposes, a long series like the Technic History is so much more satisfying than even the lengthiest single novel. In the Technic History, we read short stories like "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," novels like The People Of The Wind and even a trilogy of novels, Young Flandry, which in turn is just one of seven volumes in The Technic Civilization Saga. I can return to instalments of the Technic History more often than to chapters of Boat.

Now it really is time to move.

Tabitha Falkayn On Falkayn Bay

The People Of The Wind, XVIII.

I am revisiting one of my favourite scenes in Poul Anderson's Technic History and finding that I have already quoted it three times:

Livewell On The Wind

In Gray

Back In Gray

We know Gray and Falkayn Bay and the mixed vegetation of Avalon. Poul Anderson conveys a sense of place as some mainstream writers have been able to do for London, Paris, Dublin etc and as Poul and Karen Anderson did for Ys.

The time for walking across town to the Chinese New Year concert approaches.

Laterz.

Climax And Completion

Six successive Technic History volumes:

(i) three short stories about Nicholas van Rijn

(ii) three short stories about David Falkayn

(iii-iv) two novels about both

(v) one novel about Ythrians

(vi) twelve instalments about Ythrians, van Rijn, Falkayn and more

The twelve instalments are, obviously, The Earth Book Of Stormgate which "Spans, illuminates and completes the magnificent Future History of the Polesotechnic League."

To this day, I remain impressed by the way that this first section of the Technic History starts small and builds to its climax, a single volume, the Earth Book, that is a future history in its own right. That opening volume, (i), Trader To The Stars, a short trilogy about a single character, stands on its merits as a complete collection giving no indication of how much is still to come. And, of course, regular readers know that there is yet more to come again, ten further volumes, after the Earth Book.

An intricately structured future history series.

Three Celebrations In The Technic History

Chinese New Year happens in Poul Anderson's Technic History and in Lancaster. This evening, we will attend the concert and the street procession will be next week.

Christmas happens everywhere on Earth and on the planet Ivanhoe in the Technic History. Poul Anderson's Christmas story is a conceptual sequel to Arthur Conan Doyle's.

The Terran Emperor's Birthday happens only in the Technic History: carnival; crowds; pleasure houses; near riot; the court following daylight around the globe. A hundred years before Flandry's time, Birthday had meant something. Fathers showed their sons the Imperial stars.

Seven Covers

It has occurred to me how well the seven covers of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga summarize Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

The Van Rijn Method names Nicholas van Rijn in its title and shows van Rijn in its cover illustration;

David Falkayn: Star Trader names Falkayn in its title and shows him on the cover;

Rise Of The Terran Empire names the Empire and shows Ythrians;

Young Flandry names and shows Flandry;

Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire stays with Flandry and explicitates his relationship to the Empire;

Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra stays with Flandry and continues to refer to his advancing career;

Flandry's Legacy shows an older Flandry with his daughter and refers also to his legacy.

Two Kinds Of Impossibility

See Not To Be Pessimistic But

Are other kinds of universe possible? What is possible or impossible? Having studied philosophy, I have some understanding of logical impossibility. Not having studied physics, I do not understand physical impossibility except insofar as physicists are able to explain this to the rest of us.

Logical Impossibility

A proposition is logically impossible if it is internally inconsistent/self-contradictory like many statements made about time travel in sf. In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Brave To Be A King," Manse Everard, addressing Keith Denison at a particular time and place in a single timeline, states that it might come to be the case that Keith Denison does not exist at that time and place in that single timeline. Clearly, Everard contradicts himself. Of course it is logically possible that Denison exists at a particular time and place in one timeline but does not exist at that time and place in another timeline. This is what we mean by different timelines: alternative sequences of events. The Germans lost World War II in our timeline but might have won it in another timeline but it cannot come to be the case that they did win it in our timeline. 

Physical Impossibility...

...seems to combine observation with logic. Thus, constants like G (gravity) and c (the speed of light) are discovered and measured by empirical observation, then incorporated into logically consistent mathematical equations.

A material body can increase its mass over time but cannot increase to infinite mass over finite time. Speed increases mass. A body moving at light speed would have infinite mass. Therefore, a body can accelerate towards c but never reach it. That conclusion follows logically from the preceding propositions but why does speed increase mass and why must a body moving at c have infinite mass? Could these data be different in another universe? Are there alternative universes where there is regular faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel?

Poul Anderson's quantum hyperdrive sidesteps the light speed barrier and is the cleverest FTL drive in sf. 

Not To Be Pessimistic But

It is as if this universe has been designed to produce life, consciousness, intelligence, civilization and technology but to prevent interstellar contact. Technological civilizations do not coexist closely enough in space to detect and visit each other within their lifetimes. Distances and necessary energy expenditures are too great. The vacuum and radiation outside of atmospheres and of magnetic and gravitational fields and at relativistic velocities are too destructive of complex organic and artificial systems. A galaxy full of intelligent species some of them equipped with the quantum hyperdrive is not the galaxy that we inhabit. A universe full of interstellar civilizations and empires seems to be as fantastical as an Earth inhabited by Elves and orcs. It seems that those who said, "That is just science fiction," were correct. We need first to survive our current destructive activities and secondly to learn what is really feasible which will be a lot but not what we had thought.

We Ythrians

The People Of The Wind, XI.

Tabitha Falkayn uses the phrase, "'...we Ythrians...'" and explains:

"'What else? Avalon belongs to the Domain.'" (p. 106)

See also: Some Details On Avalon.

Words are not necessarily used consistently. I differentiate between human and Ythrian Avalonians whereas all Avalonians are "Ythrians" in the way that Tabitha uses that word. But language does not change the fact that Tabitha and her enemy, Rochefort, are of the same species whereas her partner, Draun, is of a different species. 

Decades ago, a Conservative Member of Parliament said that there could not be "black Englishmen" - whereas there could be white South Africans. Some of this is just a matter of how we are used to using words. There is certainly a black Irishman. A black pop singer performed in Ireland and left a young woman pregnant. Their black son grew up in Ireland, speaking English with an Irish accent. These examples have taken us away from different intelligent species - but we lack experience of any such as yet. On a galactic scale, maybe, we are Solarians.

It is the hundredth anniversary of the British General Strike so I have bought a new political analysis of that event. I am also reading Colin Dexter's third Inspector Morse novel and rereading Poul Anderson's Technic History which still manages to match reality to a remarkable extent.

Kinds Of Novels

Some novels have a single central character, like Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry, whereas others have multiple characters, like Anderson's The People Of The Wind or CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength. However, does even a multiple character novel have one main character whom we follow through the narrative and, if so, the how do we identify that character? 

That Hideous Strength opens and closes with Jane Studdock but I think that this novel can be accurately characterized as the story of the salvation of the soul of Jane's husband, Mark. The People Of The Wind opens with Daniel Holm addressing his son, Christopher, and ends with Christopher's Ythrian friend, Eyath. I think that Christopher/Chris/Arinnian is the main character who Learns Better and, at the end, is able to marry Tabitha Falkayn.

In Anderson's The Man Who Counts, the title character is Nicholas van Rijn whereas the main viewpoint character is Eric Wace who Learns Better about Who Counts.

Novels do not fit into precise categories. As an Aesthetics lecturer who had proposed a definition of art replied when asked, "What would you say about the borderline case where...?," "Why should I say anything about it? It is a borderline case."

A Large Cast

This morning, gym. We remember that Dominic Flandry forever loathes physical exercises and sometimes does them under double gravity to halve the time.

The People Of The Wind is a short novel with a large cast, each character individually realized. If we try to include even spear carriers:

Daniel Holm

Christopher Holm

Daniel's wife/Christopher's mother mentioned

Eyath

Lythran

Blawsa

Ferune

a sailor

a herder

Tabitha Falkayn

Vodan

Ekrem Saracoglu

Luisa Cajal

a Gorzunian guard/chaperone

Philippe Rochefort

Wa Chaou

Abdullah Helu

Eve Davisson

Matthew Vickery

Liaw

Quenna

a woman called by Arrinian who is at work

a second whose husband is home

a third who is available

Admiral Cajal

Ferune's aide

a captain of Cajal's staff

other men on his staff

Draun

six Ythrians following Tabitha and Draun

Ferune's widow, sons, daughters and their families

the new Wyvan of Mistwood

Liaw's colleagues

a North Coronan rancher

Marchwarden Rusa

High Wyvan Trauvay

Captain Ion Munteanu

Ensign Ozumi

Corporal Ahmed Nasution

ten men attacked by lycosauroids

a Terran major

a medical officer

a commandant

a civilian planetologist

Nyesslan

forty Terrans reading or bitching in an Avalonian ward

A wide cross-section of humanity and Ythrianity plus one Gorzunian and one Cynthian. 

Parallel Institutions

The People Of The Wind, XI.

Human and Ythrian institutions operate in parallel on Avalon. The President of the Parliament of Man tells Daniel Holm:

"'Oh, the war faction won't bring in quite the majority of Parliament that it did of the Khruath.'" (p. 104)

Nevertheless, however:

"'You'll get your emergency powers, the virtual suspension of civilian government you've been demanding.'" (ibid.)

Holm has not joined a choth but believes in defending his planet.

What will happen if Parliament and Khruath disagree? We do not see that happen. On the contrary, we are told that later government becomes irrelevant to all Avalonians. See Information On Avalon.

Ythrians In The SAGA

Seven instalments of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization feature Ythrians or, in the last case, a single Ythrian.

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, includes "Wings of Victory" and "The Problem of Pain."

Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader concludes with "Lodestar."

Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire, includes "Wingless" and "Rescue on Avalon" and concludes with The People Of The Wind.

Saga, Volume V, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire, opens with The Day Of Their Return.

Also, a single Ythrian, Hloch, fictitiously writes the twelve introductions and single afterword to The Earth Book Of Stormgate. These thirteen additional passages are scattered throughout Saga, Volumes I-III.

Now try to imagine the Technic History without these five short stories, two novels and thirteen additional passages.

There would probably not have been a Grand Survey story. 

Nicholas van Rijn and Coya Conyon would not have travelled to Mirkheim in an Ythrian ship.

Captain Hirharouk would not have seen God's shadow across van Rijn's way of life.

Human beings and Ythrians would not have jointly explored, then later colonized, Avalon.

Avalon would not have resisted the Empire.

The pre-Saga Earth Book collection would not have existed.

Erannath, an Avalonian Ythrian, would not have helped the Empire against Merseia.

Ythrians unify the History by linking the Grand Survey, Polesotechnic League and Terran Empire periods.

Howling Wind And Beating Rain

Yesterday Britain had a storm major enough to be named ("Chandra") with high winds and floods. In Lancaster, the Holocaust Memorial "service"/event had to be moved from outdoors at the Cenotaph to indoors inside the Town Hall.

Entirely because of Poul Anderson, I now notice descriptions of the weather by other authors, Dornford Yates, Arthur Conan Doyle and today Colin Dexter:

"...they lay awake that night listening as the wind howled and the rain beat down relentlessly."

-Colin Dexter, Last Seen Wearing (London, 1977), Chapter Fifteen, p. 140.

Well, of course wind howls and rain beats in the real world and in fictional universes. I ought to stop making an issue of this. And I ought to get into today instead of reading and belatedly blogging in a dressing gown. Outside, the sun shines and a bird sings.

Names Of Avalonian Choths

Mistwood

Sea fog blows across its wooded homeland.

Stormgate

Its territory is located in the Weathermother mountain range.

The Tarns

Its territory is among crags near a glacier so there must be small mountain lakes.

Many Thermals

We know only the name which implies an area of more than usual Avalonian atmospheric turbulence. 

Highsky...

...occupies a long archipelago where Ythrians must naturally look up and also fly between the many small islands.

Weathermaker...

...is a single extended household near the (turbulent) sea.

Wryfields on Ythri

?

There are many that we do not know. The more we know, the more we realize how little we know.

Khruath And Choths

The People Of The Wind, XI.

See: Great Khruath, Admirable Brevity

Two million enfranchised adults electronically attend the Great Khruath of Avalon. In just under six hours, 83% vote to continue resisting Terra.

The Great Khruath is attended not only by delegates from every region but also by individual members of every choth who, even if they do not speak, do listen, decide and vote. Thus, the Khruath expresses the will of a planetary population. 

I infer from this that no choth is either anti-democratic or abstentionist. No choth either forbids its members to attend a Khruath or insists that only its chief Wyvan can vote. Choths are diverse but unite.

What Counts

The People Of The Wind, IX.

Avalon and Esperance are so close that their constellations are mostly the same. Philippe Rochefort reflects:

"Three or four parsecs hardly count in the galaxy.

"Does a life? I must believe so." (p. 87)

Two questions: 

Does a life count to living beings? Yes. 

Does a life count to anything other than living beings? I do not see how it can but why should it? That we "count" to ourselves surely suffices? It is we who decide whether to stay alive.

Rochefort subscribes to a world-view that projects the source of value onto a reality outside conscious organisms.

Electric light is valuable whether its source is supernatural or material, as are brains that generate consciousness.

Wind And Homer

The wind howls around the house as I type this. We remember many howling, roaring or, alternatively, soothing or singing winds in Poul Anderson's works.

Tabitha Falkayn had not heard of Homer but can screen him when she returns to her hotel. See Tabitha And Arinnian. We find that we have referenced Homer, as the beginning of European literature, numerous times.

After Chapter VI set in Centauri, the action of The People Of The Wind shifts to Admiral Cajal explaining the Terran strategy, so current rereading pauses. Too big a wrench! The scenes on Avalon are the real substance of this novel.

Retired people need not venture out into the blustering wind although we will have to cross town to the Cenotaph early this evening. Forecasts refer to wind warnings. There is a police siren in the distance. Life and reading continue in parallel. We have begun the second Inspector Morse novel.

Salvation

Real life is becoming somewhat intense, don't you think? At least it is for a lot of people. On this blog, we refer to current affairs when they are relevant to works of fiction. Any discussion (just about!) is acceptable in the combox. (Any racist remarks would be removed but we never get any of them, anyway.)

I have twice referred to a gaunt man who shouts of some obscure salvation in Centauri on Avalon in Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind. That detail resonates with our current experience. An Evangelical propagandist tells me that his deity is transforming him from within. If this is so, then I judge that he himself is currently impeding that transformation by over-confidence and arrogance and by propagating divisive falsehoods, accusing some of his hearers of transgressions of which they are certainly innocent. Some of what is said comes from the Devil - to use that apocalyptic language.

"By their fruits you shall know them."

Poul Anderson conveys the sense of street life in many cities past, present, future and extraterrestrial. Walking through Lancaster, I think of Centauri. Shouted salvation is just one detail.

Choth Rank

The People Of The Wind, VI.

Draun is Tabitha Falkayn's Ythrian business partner and a fellow member of Highsky Choth.

"Her partner was her superior in the guard; she was in Centauri as his aide. But the choth concept of rank was at once more complex and more flexible than the Technic." (pp. 58-59)

So let's learn more about those complexities and flexibilities... Unfortunately, we can't.

A Circus Of Hells (I think) contrasts the distanced formality of officer-men relationships in the Terran Navy with something more relaxed, more like a dance (?), between ranks in a Merseian ship. I have had a quick search through the text at this late hour but have not found that passage although CHAPTER ONE of this novel does inform us that Merseians are:

"...variously bemused or amused by the rigid Terran concept of rank..."

-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverside, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT p. 198.

(Whether bemused or amused, Merseians respect alien traditions.)

We find parallels between Anderson's treatments of different intelligent species. He also reminds us that they will have as many cultural differences as we do.

Addendum: The passage that I had sought is in Ensign Flandry:

"Flandry was getting used to the interplay of formality and ease between officers and enlisted personnel in the Merseian service. Instead of the mutual aloofness on Terran ships, there was an intimacy which the seniors led but did not rigidly control, a sort of perpetual dance."

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry, pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 105.

Chris/Arinnian And Tabitha/Hrill

The People Of The Wind, VI.

Chris/Arinnian asks Tabitha/Hrill why she speaks Anglic and addresses him by his human name. She reminds him that he and she are human and that they do not have feathers, which are part of the Planha language, and asks him why he minds. His inner reflection on this question is revealing:

"That personal a question...an insult, except between the closest friends, when it becomes an endearment.... No, I suppose she's just thinking human again." (p. 56)

Two Observations, The First Minor, The Second Major

(i) At school, a friend who had borrowed Time Patrol came across a short italicized passage and asked me, "Who says this?" I thought that it was obvious but I explained that Poul Anderson always italicizes inner thoughts to differentiate them clearly from dialogue between his characters. Chris thinks, "That personal a question...," but Tabitha does not hear it. We read it because we are outside their universe and are informed by an omniscient narrator.

(ii) Of course Tabitha is thinking human again, Chris. She is human as she has just reminded you! But Arinnian of Stormgate Choth has an idee fixe. Poul Anderson presents very clearly both the outer and the inner problems faced by his characters.

OK, folks. Food, then an evening elsewhere and some other reading in between.

Laterz.

Centauri

The opening paragraph of The People Of The Wind, VI, might be my favourite passage in Poul Anderson's Technic History. We have quoted from it in whole or in part nine times.

"Where the mighty Sagittarius flows into the Gulf of Centaurs..." (p. 55)

Now ten times.

Centauri, human town and spaceport, is like a gateway to the Empire. Arinnian must be Christopher Holm while there and the West Coronan home guard and the Seamen's Brotherhood confer there. Afterwards, Arinnian and Hrill eat in the Phoenix House (not to be confused with the Old Phoenix) and drink in the Nest. (Unfortunately, for blog searching purposes, there are two "Nests" in Anderson's multiverse.) I hope to find previously unnoticed details but will shortly depart to the gym with the first Inspector Morse novel to read in the cafe.

Tomorrow evening, a proposed family meal has had to be postponed because it would have clashed with Holocaust Memorial at the Cenotaph. We still live real history and read future history.

Some Facts About Ythrians

The People Of The Wind.

Of course, these "facts" are really fictions but we know what we mean or at least I hope that we do. I once suggested to a University graduate that a good fictional premise for a sequel to The Time Machine could be that Wells wrote a true account that has been mistaken for fiction for all these years because the Time Traveller never returned. What would follow from such a premise? In no time, however, the guy with whom I had shared this idea had got so confused that he asked me, puzzledly, whether I though that The Time Machine was true? If we ask whether it is "true" that in 1984, the world was divided into three states, Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, that were perpetually at war, then the answer is "yes" provided that it is understood that this entire discussion takes place within the context of the fictional scenario in George Orwell's novel, 1984, and is not about the real world in 1984 AD, a year that had still been in the future when Orwell wrote 1984.

Obvious, we hope. Here is a "fact" about the Ythrians' usually regular sexual cycle. Grief can prematurely initiate female receptivity and fertility. Philippe Rochefort's training video informs him that:

"Doubtless this was originally a provision of nature for rapid replacement of losses. It seems to have brought about a partial fusion of Eros and Thanatos in the Ythrian psyche which makes much of the race's art, and doubtless thought, incomprehensible to man." (IV, p. 44)

I had to google "Eros" and "Thanatos" to get a more exact understanding of these terms as used in psychology. If (i) these principles are partially fused in Ythrian psychology and if (ii) this partial fusion makes much Ythrian thought incomprehensible to humanity, then surely there should be bigger communication problems than we are shown in these narratives? Yet this potential problem is mentioned only in this single sentence. We did see in In Oronesia And The Weathermother, that western Coronans and northern Oronesians would first confer human-to-human and Ythrian-to-Ythrian. Tabitha Falkayn judged that this procedure would initially avoid:

"'...the handicap of differing species.'" (III, p. 30)

Later, the omniscient narrator informs us that:

"...one is tempted to call [Ythrian Planha-speakers] 'Hellenistic.'" (V, p. 53)

However, is this an omniscient narrator if he speaks/writes about "one" being tempted...? Who is this "one"? An omniscient narrator should in no way obtrude into the text. Instead, he should be completely outside of the readers' sight and hearing like the supposed invisible, omnipresent deity. This sentence reads more like one of our many Technic historians and commentators reflecting on his subject-matter.

Lastly, for now, Khruaths, assemblies which any free adult can attend, work for Ythrians because members of that species differ from humanity in the following ways. They are less:

talkative

busybody

easily bullied

crowded

Modern communications spread Khruaths planet- and Domain-wide.

Your blogger needs a food break.

Detective Fiction

Anyone who reads a lot of Poul Anderson leads some particular lifestyle (in the case of the present blogger, retired) and also reads other authors. Consequently, over time, some other stuff should could come through in a blog. We can focus on details within Anderson's works but can also appreciate those works in their wider literary contexts of the Bible, Eddas, Sagas, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Arthur Conan Doyle, HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Robert Heinlein, James Blish etc. 

Detective fiction is relevant to Poul Anderson Appreciation, first, because Anderson wrote three novels and at least one short story about a fictional detective, Trygve Yamamura, and would have continued to write detective fiction if sf had not paid better and, secondly, because of the Holmesian influence on several of his works. (An alternative literary history: Anderson writes a long Trygve Yamamura series and many other detective novels and only a few sf works!)

In the course of blogging, we have mentioned some other fictional detectives, e.g., Father Brown and Inspector Montalbano. (Scroll down.) Here is one more before we return to Ythrians, maybe, this evening. Today, while out for a walk, we bought for £10 in a charity shop a boxed set of all thirteen Inspector Morse novels by Colin Dexter. That might constitute my late night other reading for a long time to come. Early in the opening novel, a minor viewpoint character compares Morse unfavourably to Holmes and Poirot. And Holmes referred disparagingly to Poe's Dupin. Detective fiction authors always acknowledge their predecessors. British ITV dramatized Morse and cleverly created both a sequel and a prequel.

As Kevin, whom I meet in the Gregson Institute, once said, "It's endless, i'n't it?"

Telephone Conference

The People Of The Wind, V.

Matthew Vickery, President of the Parliament of Man on Avalon

Liaw of The Tarns, Wyvan of the High Khruath of Avalon

Ferune of Mistwood, First Marchwarden of the Lauran System

Daniel Holm, Second Marchwarden

Liaw discloses, confidentially because this is a deathpride matter for the choths concerned, that three choths had refused to support the latest defence measures but yielded when the Wyvans threatened to call Oherran against them.

A choth's possessions can be a single stretch of land or sea but can also be scattered. For a second time, we are given an implausible sounding list of the possible diversity of choths:

"Tradition determined what constituted a choth, though this was a tradition which slowly changed itself, as every living usage must. Tribe, anarchism, despotism, loose federation, theocracy, clan, extended family, corporation, on and on through concepts for which there are no human words, a choth ran itself." (p. 53)

United action is difficult but this is where Khruaths come in but we in this household are about to set out on a walk.

Good And Empire

The People Of The Wind, IV.

Eve Davisson to Philippe Rochefort:

"'Do you believe the Terran Empire is a force for good?'"  (p. 47)

Rochefort replies:

"'On balance, yes. It commits evil. But nothing mortal can avoid that. Our duty is to correct the wrongs...and also to recognize the values that the Empire does, in fact, preserve.'" (ibid.)

This is not like any empire on a single planet. If a human colony or a non-human intelligent species practices communism or anarchism, it can be incorporated into the Terran Empire under the minimal conditions that:

it pays modest taxes;

it receives Imperial protection;

it is free to, although not compelled to, trade with other Imperial planets.

The human colony on Esperance tries to set an example of pacifism. Eventually, Esperance is used as a naval base in the war between Empire and Domain. But the Empire has made no attempt to suppress Esperancian pacifism.

Eventually, we see Dominic Flandry involved in the violent Imperial annexation of the non-human planet, Brae. At that stage, Rochefort, your Empire has not only committed evil. It has transgressed the conditions that I outlined above.

Philippe Rochefort And The Ythrians

The People Of The Wind is an important novel by Poul Anderson. It is one volume of this sf author's main future history series, the History of Technic Civilization. However, The People Of The Wind belongs neither to the Polesotechnic League sub-series nor to the Dominic Flandry sub-series. Instead, it is one of only five instalments, and the only novel, to be set between these two main Technic historical periods. It has no characters in common with any other instalment but nevertheless presents a broad cast of newly introduced characters on both sides of an interstellar conflict.

Chapter IV introduces a sympathetic Terran character, Philippe Rochefort, who informs himself, and thus also us, by watching a training video about the enemy Ythrians. Because these beings are winged carnivores, their:

"Society remained divided into families or clans, which seldom fought wars but which, on the other hand, did not have much contact of any sort." (p. 45)

Ytrhians did not have any equivalent of the human need to cooperate in large numbers to dig pits for mammoths or to stand together against charging lions. When, eventually, herding generated a food surplus that did lead to leisure, culture and larger, more complicated social units, these were not based in anything corresponding to cities and that is all that we are told here. We expect to read something about "choths" but are disappointed.

Evening On Esperance

The People Of The Wind, III. 

Not for the first time (!), we reread Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind. However, this time, we try to grasp not every rich and colourful detail in Poul Anderson's text but, more specifically, any information to be gleaned about the Ythrian institution of choths and, by extension, the related concepts of Khruath, Wyvan, Oherran and deathpride. 

However, some other details still catch our attention. I want to skip past:

"Ekrem Saracoglu, Imperial governor of Sector Pacis..." (p. 34)

- having found him unpleasant before, although there was some combox disagreement about that, but I cannot ignore a summer evening in an Esperancian garden:

"By then they were strolling in the garden. Rosebushes and cherry trees might almost have been growing on Terra; Esperance was a prize among colony planets. The sun Pax was still above the horizon, now at midsummer, but leveled mellow beams across an old brick wall. The air was warm, blithe with birdsong, sweet with green odors that drifted in from the countryside. A car or two caught the light, high above; but Fleurville was not big enough for its traffic noise to be heard this far from the centrum." (pp. 34-35)

There is much here to divert our attention from current pursuits.

No traffic noise. Perfect. 

Four senses: light; warmth; birdsong; odours. 

We have become accustomed to aircars as part of the scenery in the Technic History. On another humanly colonized planet, Hermes, French doors left open at night allow the Tamarin-Asmundsens to appreciate:

light from two moons;

cool air;

flower odours;

trills of a local bird equivalent;

city sky-glow;

aircars -

"...like many-colored glowflies."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT X, p. 152.

Four senses: light; coolness; odours; trills.

On Terra, in Flandry's time:

"White cloud wandered through blue clarity; aircars sparkled in sunlight. A breeze brought coolness and a muted pulse of machines in the service of man. And here came the souffle."

-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT III, p. 32.

Four senses: light; coolness; muted pulse; taste.

To return to Esperance, planets in the Technic History are made more real partly by being mentioned in more than one context. Nicholas van Rijn had worked on t'Kela with Joyce Davisson from Esperance. Now there is action on the surface of Esperance. It is such a prize colony planet that it reads exactly like Earth. Roses and cherries grow there as if on Terra. But there must be some difference. When Saracoglu plucks and eats a grape:

"The taste held a slight, sweet strangeness; Esperancian soil was not, after all, identical with that of Home." (p. 38)

And the evening proceeds:

"The sun was now gone from sight, shadows welled in the garden, an evening star blossomed." (ibid.)

Again, like Earth.

Fantasies And Street Life

When I was at secondary school in the 1960's, I read John Milton's Paradise Lost. It was not on the curriculum but I read it anyway because I like epic cosmic narratives. As has happened before, when thinking of posting about a topic, I search the blog and find that I have posted about it several times already. See the above link. There might not be a lot left to say this time.

At that time, in the 1960's, I was impressed by Milton's idea that demons, escaping from Hell and travelling to Earth to tempt human beings, posed as the various pantheons of pre-Christian religions. It makes sense, sort of, that one belief can explain others.

So - might the destructive Gods of Ys in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy be numbered among the many demons of James Blish's Black Easter/The Day Of Judgement? There are definite similarities.

We who write or read this blog appreciate such ideas in works of fantasy but they are very real in some people's heads. Today in Lancaster, a Christian Zionist preacher interrupted and denounced the regular weekly Palestine Solidarity rally in Market Square. It was that intervention with its apocalyptic language that has turned my thoughts back to Milton, the Andersons and Blish. (I had been having a friendly, if one-sided, conversation with that preacher before he did that.)

Afterwards, one of the Muslim stall-holders told me about their Antichrist equivalent. This reminded me of a Blishian demonic pronouncement about the Antichrist which I have quoted five times on this blog, a powerful statement implying that human beings are bad enough already without needing to be misled by an Antichrist!

Our fiction resonates with some of our fellow citizens' mental constructs. And Lancaster street life is sometimes pertinent. Next we should return to Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In Oronesia And The Weathermother

The People Of The Wind, III.

The Western Coronan Khruath decided that its region must cooperate with northern Oronesia to defend the Hesperian Sea. This means that mountain-dwellers must confer with island-dwellers and ornithoids (Ythrians) with "birds" (human choth members). To facilitate early mutual understanding, Oronesian "birds" first meet with Coronan "birds" and ornithoids with ornithoids. Christopher Holm is a delegate because he is one of the few human beings in Stormgate. He contacts Tabitha Falkayn because they are already acquainted and because she is a descendant of the Founder which matters in Stormgate if not in Oronesia.

In the Weathermother, while Eyan and Vodan fly together:

"A wind sang..." (p. 33)

We expect it to. We must remember that the Ythrians are the title characters, the people of the wind:

"The Ythrians drank of the wind's cold and swam in its swirling, thrusting, flowing strength. It stroked their feathers till they felt the barbs of the great outer pinions shiver." (ibid.)

Eyath catches a downdraught, glides, flies back up, traces a thermal, catches that and is carried higher. She would not trade this to be human.

(Each species wonders what it would be like to be the other.)

Highsky Choth

The People Of The Wind, III.

Choths regard guests as sacred. This is relevant because Arinnian of Stormgate visits Hrill of Highsky.

Highsky occupies a long stretch of the Oronesia archipelago and controls the fisheries at latitude 30 degrees North. Choth members are conventional as far as the term applies to Ythrians but how far is that? There are 100+ sovereign choths on one planet. Military leaders find unified action almost impossible.

A quarter of Highsky membership is human. Hrill, human, and Draun, Ythrian, run a private commercial fishery. 

Hrill lives on the island of St. Li where:

"A wind blew, warm but fresh, full of salt and iodine and fragrances." (p. 30)

This sentence concludes a paragraph full of colours and other visuals. We notice: wind (of course); minutely detailed descriptions; perhaps five senses, if we can count salt as both smell and taste.

Hrill/Tabitha Falkayn later tells Arinnian/Christopher Holm that Highsky is mostly of the Old Faith. Human beings have been integrated into a society very far removed from the Terran Empire which harks back to the Roman Empire and which is the present embodiment of Technic civilization which has succeeded Western and Classical.

Wyrfields Choth

While rereading relevant passages in "Lodestar," we missed one detail about a choth. It is possible to trace every stage in the authorship and publication of each of the texts that Hloch included in his Earth Book. In the case of "Lodestar":

van Rijn and Falkayn had transferred data units from the Solar System, where the Troubles were brewing, to the care of the Grand Ducal House and the Falkayns on Hermes;

post-League, the lack of a decipherment program meant that these units remained unread and almost forgotten;

Hloch's mother, Rennhi, compiler of The Sky Of Stormgate, obtained permission to transfer the molecular patterns to Avalon;

her code-breaking effort was supported by the Avalonian armed forces because war between Domain and Empire had become imminent;

the records included the log and other data from the Ythrian ship that had carried van Rijn and Coya Conyon to Mirkheim;

these documents illuminate some references in surviving letters from Coya to Falkayn;

since the documents also identify both the ship and its captain, Rennhi becomes able to approach his choth on Ythri;

Stirrok, Wyvan of Wryfields Choth, locates Hirharouk's journal which the latter's descendants allow to be read;

Hloch and Arinnian write "Lodestar."

Thus:

an unusually long process links van Rijn's discovery of Mirkheim to the publication of the Earth Book;

the process involves a named choth on the home planet, Ythri, although, as in the other short stories, we are nevertheless told nothing about the nature of choths.

Mainland And Oronesian Choths

The People Of The Wind.

In the Stormgate Choth, Eyath's and Vodan's parents think that their marriage would:

"'...be so good an alliance between houses.'" (I, p. 17)

The family remains the basic social unit among Ythrians. If Eyath were to marry out of her choth, then she would live elsewhere on Avalon. However, flying Ythrians can revisit home more readily than Terrans who walk the earth.

In Chapter III, the omniscient narrator, as opposed to a historian like Hloch or Arinnian, informs us that the mainland choths are diverse in three ways: size; organization; tradition. Their members are in the thousands at least which means that some are even larger. Apparently, they can be roughly analogous to:

clans

tribes

baronies

religious communes

republics

etc

We are not shown that amount of diversity among the choths that are prominent in the narrative: Stormgate, Mistwood and Highsky.

In the Oronesia archipelago, there are very small choths, some constituting only a single household, but also the very large Highsky whose human members include Tabitha Falkayn/Hrill. We would like to write more about this but are being interrupted by twenty-first century Terrestrial activities.

More Clementian Passages

We saw that Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts is a Hal Clement-style novel. We also find Clementian passages in Anderson's Technic History instalments set on the planet Avalon. However, we then find that we have already summarized this information over a decade ago in Who Knows Of Avalon? - so that we do not need to do it again.

Good night.

Explanations

Each of the seven volumes of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga opens with an Introduction by the Compiler of the Saga, Hank Davis. 

After the first story collected in Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, readers find what purports to be an INTRODUCTION to the second story, "Wings of Victory." However, this passage is an Introduction not just to this single story but to the entire The Earth Book Of Stormgate whose twelve instalments are distributed in their appropriate chronological places from near the beginning of Volume I until the mid-point of Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire. 

The fictional author of the Earth Book Introduction introduces himself as "Hloch of the Stormgate Choth," refers to himself in the third person and informs the "people" whom he addresses that:

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

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

This can mean nothing to readers at this stage, especially if this volume is their first encounter with Poul Anderson's Technic History. Hloch means that a "Wyvan," whose name is Tariat, has asked Hloch both to compile and to introduce the Earth Book. The title or rank of "Wyvan" does not recur until the third instalment in Volume III and is not explained properly until the sixth and last instalment in that volume.

However, in that last instalment, The People Of The Wind, Christopher Holm/Arinnian flies to Lythran's aerie where, after a communal meal in the dining hall, Arinnian's Ythrian friend, Eyath:

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

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 443.

This contextualizes Tariat. He is the son of a head of a household and the brother of Eyath although neither he nor Hloch appear in The People Of The Wind. (At least, I do not think that Tariat appears but will check.)

Even after centuries in the Weathermother on Avalon, members of the Stormgate Choth remain mostly hunters, not herders. Although Ythrians have become an interstellar power, they remain not omnivores but carnivores who must herd or even still hunt. Their biology affects their psychology, sociology and theology.

Four Choths

 

The People Of The Wind, I-II.

Chris/Arinnian lives neither with his parents - his father must speak to him on screen - nor with any of the extended households that make up Stormgate Choth - he must fly for several hours to Lythran's aerie in the Andromedas mountain range named in Planha the Weathermother. (Stormgate was taking possession of the Weathermother in "Rescue on Avalon.")

After one night at the aerie, Arinnian flies with the extended family to the mountain where the regional Khruath, attended by other Stormgate families and by members of other choths, meets. His friend, Lythran's daughter, Eyath, will become betrothed to Vodan who is also of Stormgate although she had previously thought of marrying into a less strict choth. These choths at last begin to develop some individuality.

Vodan has launched a silvicultural engineering firm in partnership with young members of Stormgate, Many Thermals and The Tarns. Daniel Holm's colleague, Ferune, is of Mistwood Choth, progressive, mechanized, large and prosperous.

Our present purpose is to gather data about choths but that is far as we go this evening. Remember these names:

Stormgate

Many Thermals

The Tarns

Mistwood

Three Centuries Later

Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind (New York, 1973).

This novel plunges into midst of things, into the middle of a conversation and at a time of impending war. Daniel Holm addresses his son. We infer from Holm's name that he is a human being and this inference is correct although names will shortly become less definitive. Holm's son - names to be disclosed soon - uses two Planha terms: "Khruaths" and "choth." "Khruath" is a Planha word given an Anglic plural form. We have been tracking choths (Anglic plural) through the preceding short stories but have not encountered Khruaths before. These democratic institutions are discussed in previous posts and explained here. Nor have the preceding stories shown us any human members of choths. However, the younger man says that he will go to his choth because Khruaths are being called. He is both Chris Holm and Arinnian, a member both of a human family and of an Ythrian choth.

Avalonian Anglic pronunciation is already influenced by Planha. In addition, when Chris/Arinnian speaks of his choth, he sounds as if he is translating Ythrian thoughts for human hearers.

Choths have been accepting human members for a hundred years and human recruitment is accelerating. According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, three centuries separate the two short stories about the colonization of Avalon from this novel. A lot has happened. In fact, the Terran Empire has replaced the Solar Commonwealth and Avalon is now part of the Domain of Ythri.

The People Of The Wind will at last give us a reasonably detailed account of what choths are. 

Anti-Racist Statements

Whether or not this was his intention, I think that Poul Anderson did in fact make two very powerful anti-racist statements in his Technic History. 

First, although he had originally introduced the Merseians as standard sf pulp villains, he later presented the integration of beings of Merseian descent into the political and economic life of the human colony planet, Dennitiza. See:

Dennitzan Cultural Blending

A Powerful Anti-Racist Statement By Poul Anderson

Khyrwhedin

When Dominic Flandry and Kossara Vymezal enter the Dennitzan Parliament as part of an ychani (Merseian) demonstration and delegation, Flandry knows that his only certain ally in the Parliament is Merseian by descent.

Secondly, Anderson introduced the Ythrians as primarily alien and different: flying carnivores, therefore territorial, therefore possibly waging a war for territory. Surprisingly, Avalonian Ythrians welcome large numbers of human beings, flying with antigravity belts, into full membership of choths. If there was ever any opposition to such recruitment, then it has been left far behind between instalments.

Jack's Allergy And Ayan's Choth

We must read to the end of "Rescue on Avalon," the last story in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, in search of any further information on the Ythrian social units called choths.

Despite his allergy to feathered Ythrians, Jack Birnam must approach and treat Ayan and even carry and bundle him into a sleeping bag in order to save his life. After that, neither being is in good shape but both are alive. They become "galemates" through shared suffering and struggle for survival. 

We appreciate the view through Ayan's open hospital ward window which we have described before:

lawn

tall trees: Avalonian king's-crown; Ythrian windnest; Terrestrial oak

distant snowpeaks

light from heaven

singing air

Ayan looks out wistfully. Of course. He wants to fly through that view, not just walk on the lawn.

He says that his choth will send Jack off-planet for a complete cure of his allergy and, just before that, that it is time for human and Ythrian Avalonians to mingle freely. So far, they have settled different areas in order to avoid friction especially since Ythrians are territorial. The next steps will be for some Ythrians to adopt human lifestyles, as atomic individuals in a global community, and for many human beings to join choths.

But what is a choth? 

Fictional Planets

Which is the most fully realized fictional planet in Poul Anderson's Technic History?

Avalon

Dennitza

Merseia

Hermes

There are other candidates. More details can be found by searching these blogs. I am inclined to favour Dennitza because of the Obala, the Kazan, Zorkagrad etc and also Avalon because of the details of choth life in Oronesia, Corona, Centauri etc. But there is endless space for comparisons and contrasts. We would like to visit or to live in some of these imagined places.

The Technic History presents not just one fictional world but many.

The Weathermaker Choth

In Mirkheim, we also see the birth of David and Coya Falkayn's second child, Nicholas, whose son, Nathaniel/Nat, is the viewpoint character of "Wingless" in the Earth Book.

In "Wingless," the Weathermaker Choth (scroll down) is an extended household. Peter Berg tells us that Ythrians live in small groups, either single families or extended households, and also mentions, without explaining, "choths." 

See:

Families, Households And Choths 

Now we are told that one choth, Weathermaker, is identical with an extended household and vice versa. However, choths vary in size and scope so that "Wingless" and Weathermaker do not tell us the whole story of choths but that is as far as we are going to go this evening.

This evening, at our small and informal sf group meeting in the Gregson Institute, two guys said that they were unfamiliar with Isaac Asimov's Foundation books but had appreciated the Foundation TV series online. I replied by extolling Poul Anderson, the Technic History, Ythrians, choths, Khruaths, antlibranches, Oherran, deathpride etc. Let us see all these on screen.

Choths In "Lodestar"

Seeking information about choths, we come to "Lodestar" which is simultaneously a trader team story, a Nicholas van Rijn story and, to a lesser extent but nevertheless genuinely, an Ythrian story. Van Rijn and his granddaughter, Coya, travel in an Ythrian spaceship. The Ythrian captain, Hirharouk, observes and comments on the confrontation between van Rijn and his team, led by David Falkayn. A fourth status of "Lodestar" is that it was written to be a concluding Polesotechnic League story. There are problems and conflicts within the League and Hirharouk sees God's shadow across it. (In Anglic, that means that the League is about to be struck down.) This explains why so many plot elements are brought together and summed up in a single story.

Fortunately, despite  its author's original intention, "Lodestar" acquired a longer sequel, Mirkheim, which is like "Lodestar" writ large. In Mirkheim, we see more of van Rijn, his team, his granddaughter, Grand Duchess Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen of Hermes, Baburites and Merseians. We also see Hermes, David Falkayn's home planet, for the first time and other members of Falkayn's family as well as the surface of Mirkheim for the first and last times.

But what does "Lodestar" say about choths? Van Rijn tells Coya that, when Hirharouk had picked his crew for this highly secret mission, he had:

"'...tried but was not able to recruit everybody from his own choth.'" (p. 346)

Hloch and Arinnian, our narrators, explain:

"The Planha word designated a basic social unit, more than a tribe, less than a nation, with cultural and religious dimensions corresponding to nothing human." (pp. 346-347)

The editors and authors of the Earth Book would not have had to explain "choth" to their Avalonian audience. Human Avalonians live alongside Ythrian choths and many have joined them.

Van Rijn continues:

"'Some, even, is from different societies and belong to no choths at allses. Ythrians got as much variation as the Commonwealth - no, more, because they not had time yet for technology to make them into homogeneouses.'" (p. 347)

Similarly, there are Merseians with surnames and no Vachs. But we have not yet been told exactly what a choth is.