There are:
This is yet another story built around:
a seemingly insurmountable technical problem;
what I have come to call an Andersonian moment of realization - in this case, one character leaps up, startling another, when he suddenly realizes what the solution must be;
a later disclosure of the solution to the readers;
meanwhile, a human problem that must also be recognized and overcome before the technical solution can be implemented.
However, since, in this case, both the technical problem and its solution are even more complicated than usual, I will not attempt to summarize them here but instead will advise blog readers to read or reread the story - which I always do anyway.
Meanwhile, in parallel reading, in the "FIRST TALE" in Clifford Simak's City, rapid transportation for commuting, replacement of agriculture by hydroponics and new easy building techniques enable populations to move to the countryside, making cities redundant. In Poul Anderson's The Peregrine, a similar situation is described as making the entire Earth a single city.
(If City continues to display such parallels, then I might continue to reread it.)
"...echoes down long resonant passageways. It was like being swallowed alive by some giant fish, he thought, and hearing its metabolism close in. He strangled on the wish to escape." (p. 82)
Again the paradox of travel through infinite space contrasted with enclosure. However, this time, the image is not of a metal coffin but of a giant fish which can only recall Jonah - and Anderson, writing this, must have thought of Jonah?
Jonah refused to travel to the ends of the Earth because he did not accept that the Word of God should be taken to foreigners. Svoboda and his companions have had to travel away from Earth because of the intolerance of its current rulers. Maybe there is some common message there or maybe I just see messages where they aren't?
But it is time for us to return to Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited which has given me a new insight into the potential depth of state corruption. Jan Svoboda dislikes what a state school is teaching his son so he goes and beats up his son's teacher, Mr. Tse, and is arrested. When Svoboda's fellow philosophical dissident, Theron Wolfe, intervenes, a respectful policeman not only apologizes for the mistake of arresting the son of a Federation Commissioner but also asks Wolfe, a civilian:
"'Do you wish to file any charges against the Tse person?... We'll take care of him, sir.'" (p. 31)
Tse, beaten up for doing his job, might now be "taken care of" by the police! Fortunately, Wolfe wants his friend out of police custody but not to perpetrate any further injustice. But just think of the attitude of that policeman! And then think about how often such an attitude is reproduced on Earth Real.
Svoboda, Wolfe and their fellow Constitutionalists leave Sol.
We imagine that we are living in the Chaos of Anderson's Technic History although without believing that this is going to be followed either by a Solar Commonwealth or by a hyperdrive. But how will we, in our timeline, get through our version of the Chaos? At what point will the two timelines diverge?
Wisdom from Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop today:
US politics - everything has already been said about this so now we can only wait and see;
despite all the current escalation, no one wants to start throwing nukes around because of the uncontrollable consequences.
We must hope that that second point, which has held since 1945, remains valid. Of course, Anderson created fictional futures both with and without nuclear wars. For every conceivable option, read Anderson.
Last night, unable to sleep, I wanted to sit up and read but not to return to the prose text of Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited. I needed a visual medium but not TV, something to see and read on a page, not to see and hear on a screen. The perfect answer was Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid (1988-1989) in three volumes which, fortunately, was easily to hand on a bookshelf.
Gaiman does not write sf but we need a break from sf which I also find in contemporary thrillers by Stieg Larsson. Apart from stunning art by Dave McKean, Gaiman's script gives us the kind of texture that we find in Anderson's prose texts, e.g., skillful deployment of already existing characters and settings:
the "Principle" of a criminal organization turns out to be Mr. Lex Luthor;
a train departs to Gotham City...
After visiting Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop today, we will return to Orbit Unlimited this evening.
Sometimes we appreciate a complicated passage in a work by Poul Anderson by summarizing it in a blog post but this passage is extra complicated so please bear with us.
The fleet of spaceships enters planetary orbit at a safe distance from the planet, Rustum. Winged, thermally propelled ferries take some of the crew and all of the colonists to High America, the habitable plateau on Rustum. Some of the crew on the planet refine reaction mass for the return journey while the others help the colonists to get settled.
To unload cargo, each ship in turn is brought to a lower orbit and therefore spirals down through a radiation belt in the planetary magnetic field. To save time, colonist Jan Svoboda, ferried back up, begins preparing cargo for discharge in the flag ship, the Ranger, while it is still descending. The autopilot gives a few seconds of 5G blast to avoid an approaching meteorite just as Svoboda has unslung an object massing more than a ton. Crashing through a deck and smashing a hole in the engine room wall, the object activates the fail safe system of the nuclear plant, thus stopping fusion reaction. The radiation screen goes off and it becomes immediately necessary to:
"'Abandon ship!'" (p. 71)
Maybe that was easier than I had expected.
Tomorrow, once more: a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. That means hours away from the computer but probably something worth reporting later.
I apologize for brevity but I am suddenly in a rush. Laterz.
(Meanwhile, think about North Americas and Federations.)
In Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, the spaceship Astra has only just set out towards Alpha Centauri.
In Anderson's Orbit Unlimited, there are four parts:
at the end of part one, it has been decided that a dissident group will be exiled to an extra-solar planet, Rustum;
in part two, the group is in interstellar space and must decide whether to turn back;
in part three, they are in orbit around Rustum;
in part four, they are finally settling the surface of Rustum.
In later volumes, there are four more stories set on Rustum and a ninth set on a second extra-solar planet, Roland, in the same timeline.
A spaceman returns to Earth to find an idol where a church had been. To him, the idol is an abomination. To some of us, the church and the idol are alternative approaches to the eternal.
I read about a Hindu religious leader, name forgotten, who, as a child, was taken to a Shiva temple where he saw a mouse eating food offered to the deity. He thought, "This god cannot even protect his offering from a mouse," and became an iconoclast, like the Hebrew prophets, whereas the normative Hindu vision is of God in the idol, the food, the mouse and the congregation.
See:
Breakfast post before real world activities.
There is a technical problem in the not-yet-launched interstellar spaceship, Astra.
While his friend is in mid-sentence, the first person narrator, Winston Sanders, starts:
"The drink leaped from my hand and splashed across my lap." (p. 244)
Sanders' first moment of realization: the problem might be not technical but human, indeed criminal.
Second moment:
Poul Anderson has a spaceship named the Astra. James Blish has a spaceship named the Per Aspera.
That might not look like much of a post but a certain amount of research went into it. I remembered (so I thought) recently rereading a Blish text about the Per Aspera so I spent quite a while looking through The Seedling Stars before I thought instead to look in They Shall Have Stars and there it was.
Stars and Mars are the two commonest words in sf titles, I think. I have somewhere listed the Anderson and Blish titles with Stars in them but tonight I leave that as an exercise for blog readers or you could google their bibliographies.
I will be elsewhere for a while early tomorrow.
(Mostly) different characters in each story; a team of continuing characters in the Prologue, six Interludes and Epilogue.
"Say It With Flowers" is set during the war of asterite independence.
"Ramble With A Gamblin' Man" recounts one remaining territorial adjustment after the war.
"Sunjammer" shows that (i) resentments persist after a war but also that (ii) people move on and can view events from different perspectives. Not all Earthmen are North Americans... And so on.
Only one more story and the Epilogue to reread. There is no sequel about extrasolar colonization but there are other works by Poul Anderson on that theme.
The usual range of extracurricular activities looms ahead this coming week. Rereading continues in the gaps...
"Sunjammer," like "Que Donn'rez Vous?" before it, is a highly technical story. The single sf premise, apart from the gyrogravitics which are basic to the entire series, is isonitrate.
Several characters race against time to prevent a disaster. By now, we know in advance that it is only a matter of time before one of these characters has an Andersonian moment of realization and devises a quicker and more economical solution. Sure enough, Golescu stops speaking in mid-sentence:
Fictions refer to earlier fictions. References accumulate. Many works are remembered although many more are forgotten. We all know Sherlock Holmes but not Cyril Saunders. (In fact, we recognize Holmes even when he appears unnamed in Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol.")
Here is a beautiful literary reference:
Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, which features Ythrians, is what Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune series should have been: a detailed history of interstellar civilizations with a vast cast covering multiple periods. What matters is the details of personal lives in planetary environments, not political manipulations by powerful cliques. James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume III, Earthman, Come Home, shows us the Mayor and City Manager but not the population of New-York-in-flight but Blish - partly - made up for this in the later-written Volume II, A Life For The Stars.
Cities In Flight, like Robert Heinlein's Future History, would have matched the Technic History if lengthened whereas the Foundation series and the Dune series would have needed total rewrites. Thus, this blog ranks sf works.
Blish's major disadvantage vis a vis Anderson is a much smaller output.
"'The equipment in orbit, man! There're a couple of hundred assorted devices near Earth these days.'" (p. 199)
There are 16,400 active satellites today.
No sf writer predicted our future in 2026 with an International Space Station, 16,400 satellites, some unmanned interplanetary probes and massive new knowledge about exo-planets. What is a plausible extrapolation from our 2026? One without sf cliches? I do not have the slightest idea. Posts will be sparse tomoz because of a coach trip.
Characters express opinions which are not necessarily those of the author but sometimes are. I have just had that by now familiar experience of thinking that Don Bell had said something derogatory about the name of the Social Justice Party, then rereading dialogues in "Rambles With A Gamblin' Man" and not finding the derogatory remark. Maybe someone else will find it or it will come to light.
The following story, "Sunjammer," contains two characters' opinions that might be said to balance each other.
Sam Storrs:
"There isn't a government of any importance on Earth these days that isn't based on some version of 'social justice.' So of course independent thinking, conscientiousness, ordinary competence have gone by the board." (p. 191)
Social justice is incompatible with independent thinking, conscientiousness and competence? We know that there are people who think like this so it is an authentic opinion.
Edward West:
"That's another thing I don't like about the Republic. They can brag as much as they want about free enterprise, but it still amounts to the rawest, most cold-blooded kind of capitalism. Maybe the welfare states on Earth have gotten stuffy and overbureaucratized - nevertheless, we don't let the devil take the hindmost!" (p. 195)
A Brit thinking "gotten"? Well, this is the future. But a nineteenth century Englishman says it in "Time Patrol."
Poul Anderson's attitude to the asterites is generally positive so it is good to read another perspective. People always compare societies, in this case, the Republic versus the welfare states. Why compare? Assess each in its own terms. Both address survival but in very different environments.
Tomorrow: a coach trip to Southport Flower Show.
This story begins and ends with two men playing chess.
Jupiter is different every time we visit it. My understanding of gas giant planets is that they have no surface, just a turbulent atmosphere increasing in density all the way down to an eventual core. The Jupiter of ...Flying Mountains does have a surface but not one that anyone can walk on:
"The greenhouse effect operated. Jupiter's surface was warm enough to have oceans like Earth's. No man had seen them. The weight of atmosphere would have crumpled any hull like tinfoil. Even at this altitude, Mary Girl sped through an air pressure several times that of sea-level Earth." (p. 158)
Scoopships skim in and out of the upper atmosphere. (See the attached Analog cover.) Any action on Jupiter in this story, "Que Donn'rez Vous?," can only be at a very high altitude. The description of Jupiter has maybe moved towards the gas giant model - and goes all the way in Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave"? (Except that "Hunters..." was published earlier than "What'll You Give?") (See Bibliography.)
In their conversation with the Social Justice government representative, Don and Avis Bell make some pointed remarks about the North American public. Since there is mass unemployment, why can some people not work as domestic servants? Some might but that would be a big adjustment even for the wealthier citizens who have become used to gadgets and appliances that no longer require them to employ servants. In any case, merely returning to master-servant relationships is no way forward for a technological society.
Don:
"'If they'd bred a little less eagerly, they wouldn't be so hard up today...'" (p. 129)
Sure. Birth control can be encouraged. My understanding is that births do decrease when standards of living increase.
IIRC, conditions on Earth generally improve later in this volume.
Mainly, "Ramble With A Gamblin' Man" is a problem story.
The representative of the North American Social Justice government gets on our nerves:
"'Too much that was too expensive was too badly overdue at home. And that's what Social Justice is all about. Rebuilding the country, first internally, afterward in its foreign relations; regaining our position as a first class power.'" (p. 129)
Capitalized words and phrases change their meanings. It is possible to be "conservative" without being "Conservative." "Social justice," just as a phrase, has nothing to do with becoming a "power" in foreign relations. However, we must listen to a representative of the Social Justice Party to learn what that party's policies are. Years ago, on British TV, a Government minister laughed at a young man who spoke about "communism" but then denied that he was talking about the Communist Party. I thought that the young man was quite right to make this distinction. No organization is entitled to appropriate a word or to identify all the meaning of that word just with itself.
Our Social Justice guy continues and claims that his asterite hosts, the Bells, and he:
"'...already bear a greater guilt: that we are glutted while others are poor.'" (ibid.)
No. Those who are comfortable or prosperous are neither glutted nor guilty. I am not guilty if my income is greater than someone else's. I am not even guilty if some of my income is profit that I have made from his labour because that is the economic system that we happen to be living in - at least as of now. Having said that, there is plenty of guilt in our society and it is not just on the lowest stratum where the poor are imprisoned for theft! But let's leave that issue there for the time being. I respond to whatever we find in Poul Anderson's texts, including his characters' conversations - which turns out to be all of human life and more, past, present and future.
Once again, good night. A family reunion and BBQ tomorrow.
(ii) ...because goals occur to us as we develop our capabilities;
(iii) ...when "'...individuals fearlessly work out their private destinies.'" (ibid.);
(iv) ...because "'...things simply happen.'" (ibid.) - and could have happened differently.
In Tales Of The Flying Mountains, Interlude 4, Lindgren summarizes others' views, (i)-(iii), then states his own, (iv). In denying that there are "'...any general rules....,'" (ibid.) he contradicts characters in some other future histories, including two by Anderson, but sf is about exploring alternative possibilities.
"...things simply happen..." is a sound empirical theory of history and society.
Recently on this blog, we contemplated fictional accounts of Jupiter in Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" and in James Blish's "Bridge," then hypothetical discoveries of antigravity in "Bridge" and in Anderson's ...Flying Mountains, mentioning other works en route. Soon we will again see Jupiter, in ...Flying Mountains.
We have just read past yet another Andersonian moment of realization. Don Bell says:
"'...it's difficult to see how we could -'" (p. 139)
- then drops his cigarette, stares and says:
"'Or could we?'" (ibid.)
We know the signs but as usual will have to wait to be told the answer.
The Milky Way is still with us together with other heavenly bodies:
"...uncountably many frost-cold stars, the curdled ice of the galaxy, and Jupiter." (p. 153)
("Curdled" appears a few times in The Milky Way Thread.)
I must eat and run across town to the Gregson.
The War of Asterite Independence is over quickly for us readers, introduced and concluded in a single story, but not for the asterites:
"...the despair of the war years." (p. 119)
And the war does not end as we expect. There is a stable group of asteroids in each of the two Trojan points in the Jovian orbit, sixty degrees before and behind Jupiter. The peace treaty lets North America keep the leading Trojan group while the new Asterite Republic gets only the trailing group. As conditions continue to deteriorate in North America, the government of that continent puts more economic pressure on those asterites whom it still governs. The issues that the war was fought over have not been resolved. I will have to reread this story to the end to get all its ramifications.
The main leading Trojan asteroid, Odysseus, has a Lake Circe and a "...zoo island, Aeaea..." (p. 120) The other large asteroids in this group are Hector, Achilles, Nestor, Agamemnon and Ajax. These are powerful mythological references, particularly in the wake of the film, The Odyssey.
Don and Avis Bell have a domestic staff of ten, including a cook and a butler, in their sealed house on Mount Ida above the Oddyssean atmosphere. I like the asterite attitude explained by Don Bell. The pioneers had had to be both self-reliant and mutually helpful. The successful felt obliged to employ the unsuccessful who accepted employment because all work contributed to survival and improvement. If I were there, then, lacking entrepreneurial skills, I would willingly work as a butler.
The Milky Way is always with us:
"Stars crowded the blackness, unwinking and winter-cold; the Milky Way girdled the universe with diamond dust; Jupiter blazed enormous, not many astronomical units to port." (p. 95)
From the waist-height dome atop the Bell house:
"When the sun happened to be away, as it was at the moment, every spot overhead was diademmed with stars, nebulae, Milky Way and sister galaxies." (p. 126)
Orloff, who had come to the Asterite Republic from the Soviet colonies, asks whether the Astra cannot do better than "'...the extreme libertarianism...'" (p. 115) which had produced selfish, materialistic individuals unconcerned about society.
Lindgren responds:
"'I don't imagine we have room aboard for unregulated capitalism... But I'd hate to see an outright socialism evolve. Not simply because its stifling. I think it'd discourage the creativity this ship will need for long-range survival.'" (ibid.)
Lindgren says more which is worth reading but I try to limit the lengths of quotations. Phrases like "'...an outright socialism...'" should never be used without some explanation. If it were self-evident and if everyone were in agreement that something called "socialism" was stifling and discouraged creativity, then why would anyone call themselves "socialist" as many do in response to current crises? Because they're mad, of course... Let's not go down that road. Since many people argue that democratic (not bureaucratic) control of economic resources will not stifle but liberate, this argument should be engaged with, not treated as if it did not exist, which is what happens when the phrase, "outright socialism," is simply identified with "stifling" and discouragement of creativity. I imagine Astra crew members calling themselves "socialists" arguing for a greater degree of democratic decision-making in the ship and others replying that this is impractical, of course. That would be a more constructive debate.
Action-adventure heroes are captured and escape. In "Say It With Flowers," Robert Henry Flowers, Lieutenant in the Space Force of the Asterite Republic, does it. Having been captured by a cruiser of the North American Navy, he escapes in one of their space boats, taking three hostages with him. Thus, the North Americans cannot shoot at the escaping Flowers without killing their own men. But there is more to this story than that: several twists and turns which can be found by reading the story. One of the twists is that this War of Asterite Independence is over very quickly:
"Trade boomed after independence was won..." (p. 111)
The next story will be post-war. Future histories can be long or short. A single-volume history is short. Four stories, four Interludes and one Epilogue remain to be (re)read.
Ad Astra.
All of these narratives project our past onto our future and I think that we can expect the future to be different - and unpredictable. Maybe someone could write a novel about what is likely to happen on Earth over the next few centuries? Will space travel continue and become more important? Sf narratives focus on that whereas the bulk of mankind - if, indeed, there continues to be a "bulk" - are likely to remain on Earth. But we do not even know that.
The only thing that is certain about sf is that its authors need to keep thinking of new premises which Poul Anderson did continue to do.
This post is occasioned by rereading Tales Of The Flying Mountains even though it lists that book among several works by other authors. Sf is really a collaborative enterprise.
We do not remember the names of the characters in Poul Anderson's many works, particularly not in all of his short stories. However, I should remember Mike Blades' surname because we lived on Blades St for forty-five years before moving here to Lincoln Rd.
Mike Blades does not complete a thought and drops a bottle - which his secretary catches in asteroidal low gravity. This is a sure sign that Blades has just had an Andersonian moment of realization and one that I do not remember having read about before. However, searching the blog for "Moment of Realization," we find that it is the first one that comes up! Painting myself into a corner, I have more than once posted about some detail in a work by Anderson without realizing that I had posted about it before. However, while rereading, much comes across as new, as if read for the first time.
Another blog theme is: "Reread!"
Science Fiction: Isaac Asimov's Future History
James Blish Appreciation: James Blish: Okies
Poul Anderson Appreciation: Poul Anderson’s Future Histories
Science Fiction: Larry Niven's Future Histories
Science Fiction: An Unexpected Future History
Science Fiction: Future Histories
See also:
(i) "...the shining belt of the Milky Way." (p. 13) (See The Milky Way)
(ii) "The galactic belt glistened, diamond against infinite darkness." (p. 50) (For other references to "galactic belt," see here.)
This description of the galaxy is followed, as happens sometimes, by a reference to another galaxy:
"...the far mysterious shimmer of the Andromeda Nebula..." (ibid.)
(iii) "The Milky Way turned her hair frosty and glowed in her eyes." (p. 65)
This description is unique: the galaxy reflected in a woman's hair and eyes.
We have noticed most Andersonian descriptions of the Milky Way by now but it is always possible to find a few more except that that is enough for this evening.
Tomorrow: rain or more gardening and Zen in the evening; blogging on an as and when basis.
The Advisory Council of the spaceship Astra clarifies the need for selection and interpretation of historical facts. The examples given are reasonable. They could obviously be discussed further but here they are offered only as examples. "Mohammedanism" should be "Islam" but that is the kind of historical detail that is always with us.
"'...man being what he is, moral judgments are inevitable. Was it right, was it desirable that Christianity take over Europe...?'" (p. 16)
Do we need to discuss whether this was right or desirable? It happened and we certainly need to understand why. One question in a future history takes us back into past history and, within the works of the Andersons, to the times when merfolk fled from an exorcism or when the last King of Ys converted to Christianity.
I have a Religion and Philosophy blog for such questions but fewer people read it.
We are still with the inexhaustible subject of future histories and there is more to be said than can be fitted into this lunch break. As ever on this blog, our focus is on Poul Anderson even if we first refer to the earlier Campbell future historians: Heinlein, Asimov and Blish.
Blish's Adolph Haertel discovers antigravity in Welcome To Mars and has invented the first faster-than-light interstellar drive in "Common Time." These are different achievements. See Gyrogavitics. The discoverer of antigrav and the inventor of FTL need not have been given the same name.
Heinlein's Future History, Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, opens with Heinlein's Time Chart, a PREFACE by the author and an INTRODUCTION by John Campbell. None of these three texts, with the partial exception of the Time Chart, is a fictional introduction written as from a future historical perspective whereas Asimov has Encyclopedia Galactica and Blish has Acreff-Monales, The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits.
In Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, a committee, meeting in interludes between the stories, discusses how to teach history and explains to its newest member that teachers must select and interpret facts and raise children to become "'...intellectually trained and emotionally mature...'" (p. 17) adults who can debate interpretations of historical events "'...with pleasure and profit.'" (ibid.)
Early in the second story, "The Rogue," the narrator refers to himself and his readers as "We..." (p. 43) That single pronoun shows that this speaker/author is not the omniscient narrator of most fiction but a counterpart of the narrator in Heinlein's Future History, Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth, who comes across as the writer of popular magazine articles published during the "Green Hills" period of the Future History.
In haste. Will expand as necessary later.
