Reaving, Grieving

The Broken Sword, X.

Leea sings to Skafloc and concludes:

"...when the sea their life is reaving.

"And their women will be grieving." (p. 66)

Does this sound a bit like Dies Irae?

1 Day of wrath and doom impending.
David's word with Sibyl's blending!
Heaven and earth in ashes ending!

7 What shall I, frail man, be pleading?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing?

-copied from here.

Something resonates when lines end in "-ing"!

This also reminds us of another verse by Kipling:

What is a woman that you forsake her,

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

-copied from here.

I have quoted the two best parts of Kipling that I know and unfortunately will sail no further with Skafloc tonight.

Theology

Lunarians need a source of energy - antimatter - whereas elves just need to know the right spells. Poul Anderson's creative versatility and literary skills enabled him to construct, with apparent ease, fictional narratives based on either of these two very different sets of premises. Fantasies can assume either polytheism or medieval monotheism. Sf features characters who at least believe either in diverse monotheisms or in alternative religious metaphysics. Norse and other deities can appear as fictional characters in novels or short stories. The One God of several well known scriptural traditions intervenes less frequently but can be there when needed. 

Thus, the content of religious beliefs is at least a major background issue in Poul Anderson's works. For what it is worth, my most recent foray into theology, an attempt to improve on an earlier version, and now entitled "Prophecy And Contemplation," is here.

Embarkation

The Broken Sword, X.

How can we convey the detail of Poul Anderson's descriptions without quoting some at length? Instead of composing the following paragraph, Anderson could simply have written that the warriors embarked:

"On a night just after sunset, the warriors embarked. A moon newly risen cast silver and shadow on the crags and scaurs of the elf-hills, on the strand from which they rose, on the clouds racing eastward on a wind that filled heaven with its clamour. The moonlight ran in shards and ripples over the waves, which tumbled and roared, white-maned, on the rocks. It shimmered off weapons and armour of the elf warriors, while the black-and-white longships drawn up on the shore seemed but shapes and light-gleams.

"Skafloc stood wrapped in a cape, the wind streaming his hair..." (p. 65)

Two paragraphs: two references to wind. Colours, clamour, cape, wind, waves, white manes, weapons, warriors... And at last a conversation in which Leea warns Skafloc not to go. He goes.

We know only that doom awaits.

Many Winds

 

The Broken Sword, IX.

When Asgerd, Aelfrida's daughter, agrees with her betrothed that the garth is hollow with its men gone:

"A cold sea-wind, blowing fine dry snowflakes, ruffled her heavy locks." (p. 59)

Then:

"As night fell, a strong wind came with snow on its wings, to howl around the hall. Hail followed, like night-gangers thumping their heels on the roof." (ibid.)

Almost immediately, Valgard and his Vikings arrive, kill men, burn the hall, abduct the sisters, Asgerd and Freda, and depart by sea:

"...rowing against a wind which blew icy waves inboard." (p. 61)

But Valgard, following the witch's instructions, unties a sack that releases a favourable wind. Back at Orm's garth, among the women and children left behind, Aelfrida sits:

"...with hair and dress blowing wild..." (ibid.)

A gale drives the ships and wind whoots in the rigging. The cliffs of Finnmark bear "...wind-twisted trees." (p. 62) The wind blows the ships into a fjord where the waiting trolls, visible only to Valgard's with-sight, wear little or nothing:

"...however freezing the wind." (p. 63)

As already agreed with Valgard, the trolls attack and kill his men who cannot see them.

I have skipped past some details like the disgusting appearance of the trolls and the description of the troll-king's hall. However, for the most part, focusing on the winds has given us a good summary of the action.

Valgard gives Asgerd and Freda to Troll-King Illrede. 

It is my time of night for other reading. But I think that we have done justice to Poul Anderson's winds.

What The Priest Says

The Broken Sword, IX.

Looking at the dead bodies of her husband and sons, Aelfrida whispers:

"'The priest says it would be a sin, or I would slay myself now and go to my rest beside you...'" (p. 58)

I agree with the priest although not for his reasons! By remaining alive, Aelfrida can later appreciate life although differently from before and even though this seems impossible to her at the time. More fundamentally, we are the organisms through which reality is known/knows itself. As such, our role is to remain conscious as long as possible, not to give up when times are bad.

The most fundamental question of philosophy is the relationship between being and consciousness and the most fundamental question of life is: "To be or not to be," - in Shakespeare and also here.

Two Winds

The Broken Sword, VIII.

When Valgard sees the witch not as a beautiful woman but as the hag that she really is, he burns her hovel. Then:

"...there were only the leaping flames and the piping wind and the snow hissing as it blew into the fire." (p. 55)

The wind, with its appropriate sound effects, punctuates the main action scenes and plot turning points.

When Valgard announces that his fleet will raid Finnmark, one of his captains suggests instead:

"'...England, Scotland, Ireland, Orkney, or Valland south of the channel...'" (p. 56)

- but Valgard's axe settles the matter.

(Hugh Valland is a character in an sf novel by Poul Anderson.)

For a winter voyage to Finnmark, Valgard can:

"'...snuff a good wind coming.'" (p. 57)

But first he will plunder Orm's garth where he had grown up as Orm's son. The changeling's:

"'...league with the lands of darkness...'" (p. 55)

- seems to be complete.

Every chapter advances the action.

Long And Cold, Blown On The Wind

The Broken Sword, VIII.

The witch asks her familiar, a rat:

"'...how went the journey?'" (p. 50)

He replies:

"'Long and cold... in bat shape, blown on the wind, I fared to Elfheugh...'" (ibid.)

That is as much as I plan to quote this evening but it suffices.

First, we notice that the wind takes a reasonably active role in the proceedings. By now we expect it to.

Secondly, the familiar's first three words sound familiar. I have read very little of Rudyard Kipling but have always been impressed by the following verse:

What of the hunting, hunter bold?

   Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill?

  Brother, he crops in the jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride?

 Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

Where is the haste that ye hurry by?

 Brother, I go to my lair to die!

-copied from here.

In a Poul Anderson text, there is always something to post about. Until some time tomorrow.

Wind-Driven Sleet And Stars

The Broken Sword, VII.

See Bluster, Chill, Whine.

When Valgard, who, of course, is a changeling, not really Ketil's brother, approaches the house where he will kill Ketil:

"A thin wind-driven sleet stung his cheeks." (p. 44)

The wind becomes fiercer as the action intensifies.

Ketil's younger brother, Asmund, finds Ketil's body under a cairn:

"'...with naught but wind and the stars for company.'" (p. 48)

- and with Valgard's axe in its head.

Asmund returns to the hall with the body, thus provoking a fight in which Valgard kills Orm, Asmund and several others and escapes into the woods.

The witch's vengeance seems to be complete but what happens next? I do not remember despite several previous readings (!) and, as frequently happens, I have to go out before possibly reading and posting more later this evening.

Life is good, especially with Poul Anderson in it.

Bluster, Chill, Whine

The Broken Sword, VII.

"On a blustery fall day, with the smell of rain in the keen air and leaves turned to gold and copper and bronze, Ketil and a few comrades rode forth to hunt." (p. 42)

They feel bluster and keenness, smell rain and see colours: three senses.

After chasing a huge noble white stag, Ketil is separated from his companions and:

"A thin chill wind whimpered through dusk." (ibid.)

Later, when Valgard seeks his now lost brother, Ketil:

"Wind whirled dead leaves through the air like ghosts hurrying down hell-road, and its whine gnawed at Valgard's nerves." (p. 44)

Wind blusters when the hunt is good, whimpers when Ketil is separated and whines when Valgard follows him. Poul Anderson's winds always follow his narratives. Will these autumnal Northern winds whirl two brothers down hell-road? Maybe but not tonight. I am going back to Stieg Larsson, then to bed.

Good night if you are in a part of the world where it is dark right now...

Truth

The Broken Sword, VI.

Odin disguised as Satan tells the witch:

"'...that truth is a thing which bears as many shapes as there are minds which strive to see it.'" (p. 39)

Not exactly. Something that was completely different for everyone would not be truth. It would be entirely subjective with no objectivity.

Science has become our way to discern some measure of empirical objectivity although it cannot tell us everything. When a man is diagnosed with cancer, that is his objective medical condition but it does not tell us everything about him. Two men with the same diagnosis can be in very different mental/psychological/spiritual states. 

When I was at University, a religious dogmatist proclaimed, "Truth is one. Error is manifold!" I replied, "Truth is one. Its expressions are manifold!" Those propositions are a classical Hegelian thesis and antithesis. We approach truth through syntheses. And at most we know only partial truths. "Truth is one" has a very different significance depending on who says it.

Mythological Metaphysics

The Broken Sword, V.

Imric's fleet raids a troll town:

"Though war was still not declared, such forays and tests of strength were growing common on either side." (p. 36)

Does that sound familiar to us now? There are powers that do not want to break a ceasefire but cannot make peace either. War and life become synonymous. 

This novel has a complex metaphysics. How do beings from all the mythologies coexist with each other and with the new god Whom elves etc cannot name? Alfheim is not just one of the Nine Worlds in the Tree but is also coterminous with the human world, Midgard.

Imric's elves defeat:

"...a group of exiled gods, grown thin and shrunken and mad in their loneliness but wielding fearsome powers even so." (pp. 36-37)

Who are these gods, neither Aesir nor Olympians? Maybe they are some that we have never heard of.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman remains the most appropriate parallel text for Poul Anderson's fantasies that I know of. All gods exist as long as they are believed in. They begin and end in the Dreaming and linger in a Dream Country after their worship ceases.

Meanwhile, Escape...

In Poul Anderson's "The Queen of Air and Darkness," natives of an extra-solar planet entice children of human colonists into the wilderness where they create an illusory fairyland. Although these telepathic natives masquerade as Terrestrial "fairies," they are completely unlike them when seen as they really are. 

However, two other works by Anderson present more satisfying escapes from mundanity. 

Skafloc tells the Erlking:

"'I am wholly thankful to Imric that he rescued me from the dullblind round of mortal life. I am elf in all but blood, it was elf breasts I suckled as a babe and elf tongue I speak and elf girls I sleep beside.'"

-The Broken Sword, V, p. 35.

And, returning to an sf context, Diana Crowfeather runs away in:

Meanwhile Tigeries...

Many readers would gladly accompany Skafloc or Diana.

Some Elvish Dialogue

The Broken Sword, V.

"'...Imric, earl of Britain's elves...'" (p. 34)

- addresses the Erlking:

"'Were it not that men must never be sure their children are stolen, so that they would call their gods to avenge them, elves would make no changelings.'" (p. 35)

I am having trouble understanding this sentence. Imric means that, if men ever did know for sure that elves had replaced human children with changelings, then the men would call on their gods to avenge the loss of those children and, if that were to happen, then elves never would make changelings to exchange with human children. Elves make changelings only for this purpose and would not make them otherwise because of their:

"'...wild and evil nature...'" (ibid.)

Seeking illumination in the original text of the novel, we are even more confused because there we read:

"'Were it not that men must never be sore their children are stolen, so that they would call their gods to avenge it, elves would make no changelings at all.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1988), 5, p. 27.

I have very carefully reread this sentence in both editions in order to make sure that there are no copying errors on my part.

We learn some of what human beings can do that other intelligent species cannot:

use every metal;

touch holy water;

walk on holy ground;

speak the new god's name.

The Erlking points out that, if Skafloc turns to the new god, then the elves will lose him. In the original text, the Erlking had spoken not of Skafloc turning to the new god but of him turning Christian but presumably this part of the dialogue was changed because it involved the Erlking speaking the new god's name even though not as a noun but as the first syllable of an adjective.

Three Redes

Illrede is the troll-king in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword.

Harald Hardrada (and here), King of Norway, is the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy.

Brechdan Ironrede is the Hand of the Vach Ynvory and the Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council in Anderson's Ensign Flandry.

"Rede" means "counsel or advice." Thus, these three characters -

a large, green, humanoid troll;

a tall, white, European man;

a large, green, humanoid Merseian -

- are respectively "ill," "hard" and "iron-like" (although not ironic!) in their counsel or advice.

Three similar, if not almost identical, names in works of heroic fantasy, historical fiction and science fiction, respectively, although readers recognize one creator.

Trolls come from legend, men are us, hostile green aliens were a space opera cliche before Anderson made much more of them with his Merseians.

All one multiverse.

Human Superiority In Fantasy?

The Broken Sword, V.

Sometimes, in sf, human beings are noticeably superior to other intelligent species. See a blog search result for human superiority. (Scroll down.) But see also More Ishtarian Superiority.

Can this also happen in fantasy? A dwarf tells Skafloc:

"'Let me tell you, boy, that you humans, weak and short-lived and unwitting, are nonetheless more strong than elves and trolls, aye, than giants and gods. And that you can touch cold iron is only one reason...'" (p. 33)

So what are the other reasons? Maybe we will be told. More generally, human beings ourselves are aware of our ambiguous status, weak and short-lived but able to reason and comprehend. In Indian philosophies, neither animals nor gods but only human beings can practice the way to liberation. The Buddha teaches gods and men.

What will come of this theme that human beings are stronger even than gods in Anderson's narrative about Skafloc?

(BTW, I have returned to rereading Stieg Larsson later in the evening when I want to stop blogging. Anderson and Larsson: what a combo! Larsson shows us how much can be done without venturing into history, the future or alternative histories. Here and now can be enough.)

Skafloc At Sea

The Broken Sword, V. 

Imric raises a wind for his black longship whose warrior crew will deal with any trolls or kraken. Skafloc, who has been given witch-sight, sees, whether by night or day:

porpoises;

an old bull seal acquaintance;

a broaching whale;

sea maidens;

"...the drowned tower of Ys..." (p. 31) (see Versions);

a gleam of Valkyries overhead.

There are also sounds. First, there is a hawk-scream from the Valkyries.

Secondly, because the voyage goes well:

"Wind sang in the rigging..." (ibid.)

- although, also:

"...and waves roared at the strakes." (ibid.)

Roaring wind would have conveyed a different message from singing wind although maybe the roaring waves should be seen not as a threat but just as one of the natural elements easily mastered by Imric's magic.

When the elves reach land, they visit dwarves and we are told that:

"The bandy-legged men scarce came to Skafloc's waist..." (p. 32)

The height difference between men and dwarves generated some minor comedy in one of the The Lord Of The Rings films although not in Tolkien's texts. Despite their shortness, Anderson's dwarves are broad-shouldered and long-armed with dark, bearded, angry faces. No comedy here, either.

Blog readers might be forgiven for thinking that my attention is not always on the text. Indeed. Life continues here. Today is a Bank Holiday Monday which meant that the gym was closed although that did not prevent me from walking to it! It also meant that the Friends' Meeting House was closed. Therefore, there was no Zen group. However, there was, in a nearby Methodist Community Centre, a launch meeting for a new book to mark the centenary of the British General Strike. All of this means that I can't just stay here and blog! Nevertheless, we will persevere with the tale of Skafloc.

The Edge Of The World

The Broken Sword, V.

Skafloc, the human boy raised by elves, hunts stags and boars and:

"There was other and trickier game, chased crazily through the woods and across the crags, unicorns and griffins which Imric [the elf-earl] had brought from the edge of the world for his pleasure." (p. 29)

So there is an "edge of the world" from which even more exotic creatures can be brought. 

"Ah, there must be terrible queer creatures at the latter end of the world."

-James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. (On the last page.)

"...he heard the wind at the edge of the world forever calling."

For that third quotation, see:

Wind, World's Edge And Time

- where we find that we have already connected the Time Patrol with The Broken Sword through wind and time.

Aesir And Others

The Broken Sword.

The Aesir are the Norse pantheon. As As is a god. "Aesir" is the plural: "gods." Asgard is the enclosure of the gods. Thus, a dweller in Asgard is an As, not an "Asgardian," as in Marvel Comics.

Imric the elf-earl:

hears Thor ("Thunder...great wheels across the sky...," III, p. 23);

sees Odin ("...long gray beard...shadowing hat...spear...single eye...," p. 24);

receives Skirnir ("...messenger of the Aesir...," IV, p. 25).

Although I did not remember Skirnir's name, Wikipedia reminds us that he is in both Eddas.

Odin will reappear in this novel.

The omniscient narrator informs us that gods, giants and trolls are "...others..." (ibid.) of the same sort as elves, whatever sort that is. This sort has in common that they do not age and have:

"...few children, centuries apart..." (ibid.)

The text proceeds to mention dwarves, sprites, gnomes, goblins, a faun, Pan, the new god, dryads, nymphs and Olympians. For some of these beings, see:

Out In The Weather

Autumn Leaves, Snow, Life And Gods

The Broken Sword, III.

Rereading a novel by Poul Anderson, we notice not macro-features like the plot but micro-features like anything interesting in the text and we always find the latter although we must remember to check whether we have posted about any particular detail before. Thus, we appreciate a troll woman's summary of life, beginning:

"'Hurry and hurry...'" (p. 22)

See:

A Changeling In Elfland

She says that:

autumn leaves hurry on rainy wind;

snow hurries out of the sky;

life hurries to death;

gods hurry to oblivion.

Autumn leaves mean change and death. Snow symbolizes transience. ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?") Gods personify life. It is all about life and the imminence of death.

Our old friend, the wind, is ever present. When Imric rides to change the child, a storm is mountainous, lightning is runes and:

"Wind hooted and howled." (p. 23)

What else was it going to do?

Brythons And Goidels

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), II.

An sf writer can extend a list into the future. See:

From An Odyssey To An Elegy

Can a fantasy writer extend a list into the past? 

When:

"Imric the elf-earl rode out by night to see what had happened in the lands of men." (p. 18)

- a witch told him that the Danes had come to eastern England to kill, loot, burn and seize. Imric replied that that was not bad because several groups had done likewise earlier. 

Imric's list:

Angles and Saxons;

Picts and Scots;

Romans;

Brythons and Goidels;

still others before.

Brythons and Goidels?

However:

Brythons are Celtic Britons - in Welsh, Brythoniaid;

Goidels are Gaels.

So Imric was using unfamiliar (to me) terminology, not referring to fictional populations like Robert E. Howard's Cimmerians.

THE BROKEN SWORD

Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages was published in 1952.

Anderson's Brain Wave was serialized in 1953 and novelized in 1954 by Ballantine Books.

His The Broken Sword was published in November 1954 by the obscure Abelard-Schuman and republished by Ballantine in 1971 with an introduction by Lin Carter entitled "A CHANGELING IN ELFLAND."

This introduction begins with two paragraphs that summarize the plot before Carter discusses the author who was then of course a very much younger man than when we knew of him later. (My only contact with Anderson was when he apologized for squeezing past me at a party during the Worldcon in Brighton in 1987.)

The second paragraph of Carter's introduction ends by informing us that the character named Skafloc:

"...was reared to manhood in the twilight fields and whispering woods of timeless and shadowy Faerie...."

-Lin Carter, "A CHANGELING IN ELFLAND" IN Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), pp. 5-9 AT p. 5.

I am unsure of the status of this passage. Is Carter just writing lyrically or quoting the blurb from the original edition? (There are no quotation marks.)

Got to go. Things to do. Busy weekend. May Day and Wesak. Back here some time later.

From Aliens To Elves

Poul Anderson presents a scientific rationale for why Ythrians, winged extra-solar aliens, can have bodies heavy enough for intelligence and yet be able fly in terrestroid environments and also explains that the elf-like Lunarians are human being genetically modified to live in Lunar gravity although not on the Lunar surface but there is no need to explain the elves and trolls in The Broken Sword because such beings are simply assumed to exist in works of fantasy. However, to our surprise, in his FOREWORD, Anderson suggests that:

magic is control of external phenomena by means not yet known to science but maybe coming under "parapsychology";

an alien metabolism able to live indefinitely, change shape etc might be vulnerable to actinic light or to electrochemical reactions with iron;

such immortals might resort to nonferrous metal and alloys and, e.g., sail like the wind in almost frictionless ships;

they might have built castles earlier than human beings but would not have developed science, e.g., gunpowder or steam engines, in their long-living, aristocratic, conservative, warrior culture.

However, I don't think that any of these rationalizations appear in the text of the novel?

A Joke And An End

 

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 14.

"'Would you please fill me in?' the download requested.

"Falaire's look suggested she would like to fill him with concentrated sulfuric acid." (p. 187)

I think that that counts as humour. I am rereading a recent novel by Alan Moore whose prose is rich in similar turns of phrase.

Jesse Nicol has completed the anti-matter hijack, has the Lunarians who had duped him at gunpoint and has freed their prisoner, the Federation intelligence agent, Venator, so he could return to the Federation in triumph with the rescued anti-matter and two prisoners but instead opts to accompany the Lunarians to Proserpina where it is always night because theirs:

"'...is a new world, in a heroic age.'" (p. 190)

- where he might become a poet. 

Homer: the Trojan age;

Shakespeare: Cleopatra, Macbeth etc;

Fitzgerald: Omar Khayyam;

Kipling: India;

Nicol: stars, comets, unknowing universe but humans there.

(Observation: the universe knows through us.)

Linking Quotations

Something said by Venator in Harvest The Fire reminds us of something said by Manse Everard in "Time Patrol." However, searching this blog reveals that we have already connected these two passages not only with each other but also with something said by Nicholas van Rijn in Mirkheim. See:

Venator, Everard and Van Rijn On Misery

Opinions expressed by characters are not necessarily those of the author. However, sometimes they are and usually we can tell. Anderson also gives sympathetic treatment to characters that he clearly does not agree with in Mirkheim, The Devil's Game and Murder Bound.

Everard's saying could be included in "The Quotable Time Patrol." See Quotations which links to quotations both from the Time Patrol series and from The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson). The Anderson multiverse is vast, encompassing both "scientific" and "supernatural" non-human intelligences (see Blurring A Distinction) as we might soon see depending on which direction this blog takes next.

Multiverses

See Anderson And Andrea. 

In addition to discussing the state of this world, Andrea and I also watch superhero TV series that involve inter-universal crossovers within a fictional multiverse.

Worthwhile prose sf that I have read about multiverses includes:

Conquistador by SM Stirling;

Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest in which -

the Prince Rupert of the Rhine from the Shakespearean universe of this novel (A Midsummer Tempest),

Holger Danske from Carolingian myth and from Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions,

and Valeria Matuchek from the magical universe of Anderson's Operation Otherworld -

- meet each other in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, from Anderson's "House Rule" and "Losers' Night," the first cameoing Nicholas van Rijn from Anderson's Technic History and the latter featuring among others Winston Churchill.

We can't get enough of it. (But fortunately Anderson gives us quite a lot.)

Addendum, 29 April: Life has gotten busy here. (I use an Americanism out of respect for Poul Anderson.) So far this year, we have had 440 posts in 4 months so maybe that is enough until some time early next month? On Saturday, there will be a May Day March and Rally in Lancaster and, on Sunday, I might get a lift to a Wesak (The Buddha's Birthday) Festival in Northumberland. Did both last year. (Maybe not many people celebrate both.) Anderson-wise, we are still rereading Harvest The Fire. After that, who knows? Onward through the multiverse.

Anderson And Andrea

 

(That is a neat post title, literally meaning "Son of Andrew and Andrew.")

Regular readers remember that Andrea is a male friend of Italian descent who lives above his brother's Old Pier Bookshop (see the attached image) where I visit him once a month.

The word from Andrea this month:

The world is in a bad state and getting worse. I think that each of us can fill in some of the details.

Reality reflected in Poul Anderson's works:

Time Patrol

"It was a peculiar feeling to read the headlines and know, more or less, what was coming next. It took the edge off, but added a sadness, for this was a tragic era."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.

"Here also it was fall, the kind of crisp and brilliant day New York often enjoyed until it became uninhabitable..." (my emphasis)

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 342.

"[Manse Everard] didn't like dirt, disorder, and danger any better than I did. However, he felt he needed a pied-a-terre in the twentieth century, and had grown used to these lodgings before decay had advanced overly far." (my emphasis)

-"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" AT 1980, p. 352.

The Technic History

"The Technic Civilization series...begins in the twenty-first century, with recovery from a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos."

-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 611.

We are in the twenty-first century and entering the Chaos. Anderson's fantastic fiction resonates now.

Verbals And Visuals

We read descriptions of Valles Marineris in Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, would see the Valles in a film adaptation of The Fleet Of Stars and do see it in Alan Moore's Watchmen.

This post revisits the three story-telling media. A story can be narrated, enacted or depicted. We still value narrative, whether heard or read, although it is the one of these three media that is not visual. Of course, most writers and readers have some visual imagination which I lack, being auditory digital, according to a Neuro-Linguistic Programming trainer. (You get that kind of input if you work in certain kinds of jobs.)

It is getting to that time of the evening when I turn from blogging to "other reading," in this case from Anderson's Harvest The Fire to Moore's Watchmen. And tomorrow will be a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop which means that I will be very well informed about the state of the world although not posting about it until later in the day.

Knife Thrust

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 9.

We like secret organizations in fiction and the Scaine Croi is a good one. We think of SPECTRE but I find that I have already made that comparison.

When a bribed pilot delivers a hijacked plane to SPECTRE, he receives a stiletto through his chin, mouth and brain and experiences momentary surprise, pain and light. Then he ceases to be the viewpoint character and the omniscient narrator describes his murder's subsequent actions. We remember this when we read that Falaire's affection for Nicol, prospective space pilot hijacker for the Scaine Croi:

"...meant he could hope to get his pay in money, not a bullet or a knife thrust." (p. 138)

Indeed.

To give Nicol more positive motivation, Falaire immerses him in a "dreambox" simulation of the Lunarian colony planet, Proserpina, so far away that the sun is only the brightest star.

Antiagathics And FTL

The premises of James Blish's Cities In Flight Tetralogy are that both an indefinitely prolonged lifespan and faster than light (FTL) space travel are necessary for interstellar travel. Both have been achieved:

by the end of Cities In Flight, Volume I;

by the end of Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume IV;

before the beginning of Poul Anderson's World Without Stars;

before the beginning of Anderson's For Love And Glory.

Many sf characters have FTL without immortality and the characters in Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years have immortality with STL.

There needs to be a very long novel or series about what immortality would be like over a very long period of time. As we count our age not in months but in years, immortals would come to count theirs in decades, then in centuries, then in millennia... Knowing that they had endless time in which to perform any given task, they might never get around to doing it. 

Procastination is the thief of endless time? How else might their psychology change?

Addendum: John Amalfi briefly considers the psychological effects of longevity somewhere near the end of Cities In Flight but I can't find the passage right now.

Time And The Ship

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 9.

This chapter opens:

"Time and the ship passed onward through space." (p. 137)

The ship moved through space over a period of time. Motion is change of the spatial relationship called position. Without change, there would be no time. Time does not move anywhere. It is the relationship between states changed from and states changed to. States include spatial relationships.

However, "Time..." in the opening sentence refers to the succession of experiences of a viewpoint character and the second sentence identifies the viewpoint character of this chapter:

"Nicol's waking hours went almost entirely to preparing himself." (ibid.)

It is his experience of preparation that moves through space with the ship. The third and fourth sentences take us as readers further into Nicol's experience and into a particular personal relationship:

"Sometimes, though, nature demanded he take a few of them off.

"He lay with Falaire in her cabin." (ibid.)

Nicol and Falaire are enclosed not by bare bulkheads but by a moving 3D forest with a night sky and a breeze bearing spicy odours. Lunarians' lives are spent entirely within artificial but nevertheless spacious and colourful environments.

They All Meet

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 6.

Continuing characters converge when Venator (download), a brain in a box hidden in a concealed cupboard, spies on Falaire (Lunarian) and Nicol (Terran) meeting Lirion (Lunarian), Seyant (Lunarian) and Hench (Intellect) to discuss the Lunarian heist of Federation anti-matter. Big one! (Lunarians and Intellects are two kinds of metamorphs.) Since, immediately after this clandestine meeting, Lirion apprehends Venator, the latter is unable to report the conspiracy. Nice one!

The only other item that I want to record this evening is Falaire's apartment in CHAPTER 5 but that is already here.

Harvest The Fire is a compact short narrative contrasting sharply with the three other Harvest Of Stars volumes. As far as I can remember, Nicol is destined not only to pilot the ship used for the hijack but also to write epics about Proserpina and the edge of interstellar space. Humanity triumphs.

Alternative Fiction

Alternative history fiction is a kind of science fiction written by HG Wells, Poul Anderson, SM Stirling, Harry Turtledove and others. Imagine that a familiar event happened differently and has been remembered that way by fictional characters. In a BBC TV series, a character who was a TV script writer had agreed to write a series set during what to him and his contemporaries was the historical 1940's when the Germans invaded and conquered Britain after the death of Churchill. Asked how he would handle it, he replied, "Well, I can't rewrite history," whereas, of course, history has already been rewritten to bring such a character and his entire social context into (fictional) existence.

Anderson's main alternative historical speculations are in "The House of Sorrows," "Eutopia" and some installments of his Time Patrol series. More fanciful alternative histories feature not just events happening differently but also alternative laws of physics allowing magic to work. But, even here, historical events, Einstein originating relativity and Planck originating quantum mechanics, are given an alternative twist: Einstein and Planck cooperated in originating "rheatics," which led to the degaussing of cold iron and thus to practical magic.

See:

Magic And Goetics

Imagining Alternative Histories

Characters in that alternative timeline imagine ours.

We sometimes draw attention to works by other authors in which ideas discussed here have been taken further or developed differently. Thus, our familiar fictional narratives might have taken alternative directions. Superman, as written by Alan Moore, experiences a scenario in which Krypton did not explode. A heckler interrupts a political speech by Jor-El, asking which catastrophe is coming now, the planet blowing up again or just floods and plagues this time. Jor-El laments the passing away of a noble and proud Krypton - the Krypton of the old comics! In Moore's Watchmen, superheroes in the real world caused comic books to switch from superheroes to pirates. A news vendor remembers that there used to be SUPER-MAN and FLASH-MAN...

Imaginative writers take us out of our reality and back into it.

Backtrack

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Let's backtrack. In Production Of Anti-Matter, we summarized a conversation between Venator and Lirion but missed one part. 

Lirion says that, without more energy from anti-matter, the Lunarians at Proserpina will be imprisoned in sameness. Venator asks whether they have:

"'...no inner resources.'" (p. 69)

Lirion scoffs. Machine intelligence admires its own:

"'Abstractions, mental constructs...'" (ibid.)

- but that is not:

"'...for living creatures...'" (ibid.)

Like passivity versus violence, this is another false dichotomy. Organic intelligence encompasses pure mathematics and its application to the empirical universe and everything else: emotions, social interactions, artistic creativity, spirituality, whatever else we might think of. Stop splitting up the truth and fighting over the parts!

A parable told by Jiddu Krishnamurti:

The Devil's friend saw a man picking up a small piece of the truth. The Devil said, "It doesn't matter. He is only going to organize and systematize it."

From The Pacific To The Moon

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 4.

Jesse Nicol had spent time on a shiptown of the Lahui Kuikawa. It was there that he decried unoriginal art.

There was a sunset:

"The sun, become a red-gold shield, was on the horizon. Glade blazed from it across the waters." (p. 84)

Some Lahui:

"'...swim down the sunset road with the Keiki.'" (ibid.)

During a silence after a fight:

"The sun dropped from sight, the sea-road faded into darkness." (p. 88)

Nicol saw the Moon above the deckhouse and wondered whether he should seek employment by the Lunarians there, which is where we have already seen him. CHAPTER 5 will return us to Nicol with Falaire on the Moon but not tonight, folks. The sun has long set here as well.

From An Odyssey To An Elegy

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 4.

Sometimes an sf writer presents a list, for example of familiar names or events, but then continues that list into the future. Thus, Poul Anderson's Jesse Nicol asks:

"'What's the sense in producing an imitation Odyssey, The Trojan Women, Hamlet, The Waste Land, Elegy at Jupiter?" (p. 83)

We know four of these titles. Nicol knows them and the fifth. He tells us what all five have in common:

"'Those spoke about love, strife, triumph, grief, terror, mystery, in the language of the people and their gods, or people who'd lost their gods but were gaining a universe.'" (ibid.)

Nicol's problem is that, for centuries, all writing, music, art and science has been nothing but variations on old forms and themes, trying to revivify:

"'...something...that was worn-out before their grandparents were born.'" (ibid.)

It is appropriate that his list ends with an elegy.

Production Of Anti-Matter

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

The Federation stops production of anti-matter on Mercury because it has stockpiled enough for foreseeable contingencies in its stable economy. 

Unlike in other fictional futures, including some by Poul Anderson, no living being has been on Mercury, only specialized armoured machines. Installations on the surface and in orbit captured and focused solar energy. Photons striking nucleons caused quantum convulsions that generated new positive and negative particles which magnetic lines of force conducted to separate destinations, thus creating masses of anti-matter. 

Lunarians took anti-matter to Proserpina but their supply has become low and they have no way to generate any more whereas "...a single large consignment..." (p. 68) from the Federation would enable them to:

"'...build a fusion-powered factory to make more...'" (pp. 68-69)

Proserpina's iron core is rich and a source of industrial wealth but difficult to hollow out for habitations so more energy is needed.

Venator, representing the Federation, is appalling:

"'Do you feel we owe you access?...Your folk chose to go live on the fringe of deep space because they wanted no part of our civilization.'" (p. 68)

Sure. Having been made different, the Lunarians wanted to live differently. Is that a reason not to help them? Is their request not an opportunity for rapprochement?

Even worse:

"'Have you then concluded that altruism is, after all, a virtue?'" (ibid.)

Well, it is, isn't it? In the following volume, a representative of the cybercosm compares that entity to Jesus and the Buddha. (The cybercosm dominates the Federation despite Venator's denial.)

Venator continues:

"'You want this Federation that you loathe to supply you, when you have nothing to exchange that we need.'" (ibid.)

The Federation supplies its own needs and can afford to give, whether "loathed" or not. (Surely beside the point?)

Venator again:

"'I ask you again, why should we? You're not dying of hunger or cold.'" (p. 69)

Is that the only time when the Federation would help them? Indeed, would it help them even then?

Lirion's reply is that the Federation would gain a new and strange society shaking it out of its stagnation. Anderson's readers think, "Yes!" Venator thinks:

"Yes...that is exactly what we fear." (ibid.)

It has to be made clear to readers why this is feared. Lirion remarks that the cybercosm has:

"'...its own ends, which are not remotely human.'" (p. 72)

Venator thinks:

"How could they be?" (ibid.)

What are they then?

Malcontents And Troublemakers

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Venator continues his line of thought quoted in the previous post:

"It was the metamorphs and their few full-human adherents who were the malcontents, the troublemakers - Lunarians above all, but others too, more dangerous because less obvious...." (p. 63)

Dangerous to what? Is this made sufficiently clear? The cybercosm does not maintain a social equilibrium because it thinks that that is in the best interests of all human beings. The way to serve the best interests of all human beings would be to find out what the malcontents want and help them to do it. They in turn would lead humanity forward - after argument and debate, of course. No, the cybercosm itself has some long-term cosmic plans that require it, if not to control, then at least to be able to predict, everything else that happens, including what organic intelligences do. 

OK. Then let's communicate and cooperate with the cybercosm. But it does not allow that. But I wonder whether Poul Anderson has created an artificial conflict for the sake of the narrative. Another future history - which I cannot write! - might show beneficial human-AI interaction on a cosmic scale.

I did not know where I was going with this post until I had finished it.

The Hunter's List

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Venator asks himself:

"Who in their right minds would want a return of...?" (p. 63)

- and then inwardly recites a list of horrors which I will reproduce as a list:

war

poverty

rampant criminality

disease

famine

cancerously swelling population

necessity to work no matter how nasty or deadening the work might be

mass lunacy

private misery

death in less than a hundred years

Thank you, Venator. That is a very good list of very bad things, a comprehensive list of horrors inflicted on human beings, some by themselves, others not. There is nothing in this list that mankind cannot in principle end in the future although right now we are stampeding the other way - either denounce or applaud mass destruction, depending on who perpetrates it.

We can certainly reply to Venator:

No one in their right mind wants war etc but we also want individual and collective self-determination and we should not be compelled to accept your peace at the expense of that.

I think that we can have it all - but let's find out.

Extinction

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2.

"...extinction had claimed some splendid creatures, mammoth, saber-tooth, great-antlered Irish elk; and it seemed to Nicol that eagles or tigers, existing on narrow ranges under strict protection, were not what their natures meant them to be." (p. 52)

Sure. If we had resources enough, then we could populate a terrestroid planet with birds of prey and wild animals. But protecting them is better than letting them become extinct and every species eventually ceases to exist in one way or another in any case. Individual eagles or tigers do not instantiate Platonic Ideas of eaglehood or tigerhood. Their natures are temporary and changing but scientists can observe and record. Nothing is meant to be but it is for a while.

Space Pilots In Two Timelines

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2.

In On The Moon, we listed Robert Heinlein's Future History stories which are set on the Moon but did not mention "Space Jockey" which is about a rocket pilot who regularly flies between Earth and Moon and, at the end of the story, accepts a job that will involve flying only between the Moon and Lunar orbit provided, of course, that he and his wife move house and live permanently in Luna City. This is the daily life of the future as depicted in the Future History.

This parallels Jesse Nicol's work. Nicol flies between points on the Lunar surface or between Luna and the orbiting Habitat. He is employed by Lunarians although some of his flights:

"...demanded higher accelerations than Lunarians could readily tolerate...." (p. 50)

Alienated from the period he lives in, Nicol is lucky to work among alien-like Lunarians and even has a relationship with a colleague, Falaire, who is of Selenarchic descent.

Again, reading Anderson, we remember Heinlein.

Resemblances And Outmoded Ideas

A Superman comic reminded me of a Robert Heinlein novel and Poul Anderson's The Night Face reminded me of another superhero, Green Lantern. See:

Words And Texts

Poul Anderson's World Without Stars reminded me of another Superman comic. See:

Hugh Valland And Superman

Yet another Superman comic, this one written by Alan Moore, reminded me of James Blish's Mission To The Heart Stars. In this case, the connection was that Superman's antagonist, Mongul, physically resembled Blish's Hegemon of Malis. 

Blish's Heart Stars federation, self-designated "the Hegemony of Malis," has become, like Asimov's planet Trantor, an outmoded sf concept. Blish's idea was that, since stars are much closer at the galactic core, an interstellar federation might develop more quickly there. Now, instead, it is generally accepted that there is a massive black hole at the centre as in Larry Niven's A World Out Of Time and Anderson's For Love And Glory.

(Asimov had the Galactic Imperial capitol at the galactic centre but a later contributor to Asimov's Foundation series moved Trantor further out so that the black hole could occupy the centre.)

See also Parallels.