A Man To My Wounding II

Poul Anderson, "A Man To My Wounding" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, August 1983), pp. 187-209.

See also:

A Man To My Wounding.

Robert Crane's Solution

The opening phrase is also a Biblical reference:

"His names were legion..." (p. 187)

Here is another story where war has become too destructive so alternative forms of violence have had to be found. In an inept narrative device, particularly for Anderson, the first person narrator, apparently an assassin waiting to make a hit although we will have to read on to be sure of what is happening, listens to a broadcast address by a University president which explains the background.

This speaker summarizes some military history:

limited conflicts between the Peace of Westphalia and the French Revolution;

relative chivalry in the post-Napoleonic nineteenth century;

trench warfare in WWI;

indiscriminate aerial bombardments in WWII;

atomic WWIII;

current assassinations of political leaders.

There are Libertarian and Enterprise political parties. This story is extremely condensed and is getting to be too much for this late at night but we have made a start. 

High IQ Unnecessary?

"Backwardness."

Is it credible that a high average IQ is unnecessary for social progress because:

"The most fundamental advances, fire- and tool-making language and clothing and social organization, were made by apish dim-bulbs. It simply took a long time between discoveries.

"Given a million years, much can happen. Newton founded modern physics in one lifespan. A hundred less talented men, over a thousand-year period, could slowly and painfully have accomplished the same thing...

"It is only some freak of mutation which has made the Earthman so intelligent; he never actually needed all that brain." (p. 166)?

Could less talented men have accomplished the same over longer time? Are sudden intuitions, inspirations, insights and illuminations not necessary to shift paradigms? A quantitatively lower IQ would be incapable of initiating qualitative transformations of understanding.

Sean commented here that the low-IQ Galactics seem to assume that their technology, once in place, would continue to run indefinitely. Higher alertness and intelligence are necessary to cope with breakdowns, diminution of resources, the unexpected etc. We have to run as fast as we can just to stay where we are. Our behavioural adaptability and versatility in response to environmental changes made human beings intelligent and also made some individuals above-average geniuses.

"Backwardness": Summary

 

"Backwardness."

pp. 154-156: A conman sees a group of Galactics on a New York street.

pp. 156-159: The Secretary-General of the United Nations converses with the Galactic spaceship captain and learns that the Federation exterminates human races that are not eligible for membership.

pp. 160-162: The conman befriends the Galactics.

pp. 162-164: The Cardinal Archbishop of New York converse with the Galactic quartermaster who is the "chaplain" insofar as he is the one that kills animals to feed the gods - although, while he is a guest of the Cardinal, he is more interested in watching TV.

pp. 164-166: the conman cons his group of Galactics.

A short story that makes its point.

Superiority Or Simplicity?

"Backwardness."

I got some details wrong working just from memory, of course. This Galactic Federation comprises fifty million self-sufficient terrestroid planets.

"'A board of experts with a computer...'" (p. 158)

- handles any problems or complaints, charging for its services rather than collecting taxes, detects vibrations from any new star drive and sends a mission like the one that has recently arrived in the Solar System where a newly invented faster-than-light engine was being tested. If a newly discovered human race still wages wars, then a police ship blows:

"'...every planet in this system to smithereens.'" (p. 159)

Otherwise, the new race joins the Federation, borrows up to date machinery to start its own factories and can then participate in interstellar trade:

"'The more planets, the better for us.'" (p. 158)

Does such a simple, straightforward system signify superiority or something sinister?

Late-Night Other Reading, Always Relevant

(It is hard to choose between cover images.)

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it."

-Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (London, 1965), CHAPTER 1, p. 7.

This is the opening paragraph of its author's first novel. The opening sentence of the second paragraph marks the first appearance of a certain central character:

"James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired." (ibid.)

My point here is that, in this and in many subsequent passages, Fleming writes autobiographically. He has experienced the scent, smoke, sweat and soul-erosion, the nausea, greed, fear and nervous tension. He merely has to commit them to paper.

By contrast, Poul Anderson's description of Dominic Flandry's visit to the Crystal Moon cannot be based on experience! Instead, it is an exercise in its author's vivid creative imagination and we appreciate it as such while also, in a different mood, enjoying Fleming's experiential account.

The TV news is on.

Speculations And "Backwardness"

The word from Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop:

Do major powers have blackmail material on Western political leaders?

What will the world be like a week from now? 

We lack a Time Machine but can wait. This works. Born in 1949, I now know what is happening in 2026. But how much of what is happening now is hidden from us? If blackmail works, then we won't know.

Poul Anderson, "Backwardness" IN Anderson, Kinship With The Stars (New York, 1991), pp. 154-166.

Having mentioned this story, let's reread it.

It is set at a time when there is a Greenland Resort and a Luna City. Regular sf readers have learned to deduce: the future but probably the near future; interplanetary travel but not yet human interstellar travel unless of course we are about to be told otherwise. 

Because the only point of this particular story is to make an observation about how much or how little intelligence is necessary for human evolution, Anderson makes a simplistic and entirely implausible story assumption:

"'Same plants grow on every Earth-like planet, just like the same people and animals. Not much difference...'" (p. 157)

A Terrestrial, in this case the Secretary General of the United Nations, automatically asks, "'Why?'" (ibid.) adding, "'...it can't be coincidence!'" (ibid.)

- whereas the captain of a Galactic spaceship is completely uncurious:

"'I don't know. I'm just a practical spaceman. Never worried about it.'" (ibid.)

How "practical" is it for a spaceman not to wonder about a question like that? Maybe on some cosmic scale this can be coincidence but, if so, then that is something that we urgently need to learn about! But already, in Captain Hurdgo's cheerful indifference, we approach the crux of the story. If his spaceship engine works, then that is all that concerns him... His men - and they are "men" - do not make enquiries in Terrestrial laboratories, libraries or museums but buy junk jewelry in Macy's...

I have not drunk alcohol - at least not regularly or in any large amount - for decades but Andrea (with my consent) put brandy in my coffee. I suddenly felt very tired and this might be my first and last post for today but I must watch some TV news at 10:00 pm. 

Which is stranger: fact or fiction?

Short Stories And Collections

A very large number of short stories have been republished in many collections with overlapping contents. It is possible to recognize a title while remembering nothing of the story or to remember a story while forgetting its title. I had to search this blog to find the title, "Backwardness." I thought that I had not reread "Among Thieves," which is in Conflict, recently but was mistaken. I had reread it in Strangers From Earth. The title, "Among Thieves," does not seem appropriate to this story and suggests instead the theme of "License." We will continue with collections despite their confusions. There are two stories left in Conflict, having concluded "Turning Point" and eliminated "Among Thieves," but regular blog readers know what I am going to say at this time of night.

Good night as long as it is not the Long Night.

Resolution And Transcendence

"Turning Point." 

The solution that is adopted is to disperse the Jorillians among scattered human societies where they will give a lead, scientifically, socially etc, and thus will advance human civilization but not build a Jorillian civilization. I think that this will work but will also go beyond itself. The Jorillians are canny enough to realize what has happened to them/been done to them and therefore will respond to that. Some or all of them will reestablish contact, then reconvene and either return to Joril or find somewhere else suitable. There they will be able to make scientific discoveries and to create new technologies unhindered by less intelligent humanity. If such a move were to provoke any hostility from human beings, then they would withdraw further. There is a lot of space out there as we were shown when the McCormac rebels fled outside known space in the Technic History.

Zen monks guide lay meditation groups but, if they were ostracized or persecuted, then they would withdraw and continue their own practice elsewhere, a good analogy for the Jorillians.

Every SF Premise

Poul Anderson gives the impression that he systematically considers every possible sf premise. Thus:

humanoid aliens that are many times more intelligent than us;

humanoid aliens that are many times less intelligent than us (title?);

militarily superior humanoid aliens who do not conquer Earth militarily but sell their military services to the highest bidder among Terrestrial governments and thus conquer Earth economically;

aliens whose psychic powers and occult knowledge exceed ours;

humanoid aliens who meddle in Terrestrial affairs but only cause a deterioration in the course of events;

a sudden increase in human intelligence;

the first humanoid robot is unemployed;

organisms can be immortal only if they are sheltered from all radiation, deep underground.

Nothing turns out as expected?

Superiority

Poul Anderson's "Wings of Victory" and "Turning Point" are spaceship stories. One criterion for such a categorization is that they could be adapted as episodes of Star Trek although, of course, they are better as they are.

In "Turning Point," the problem - at least it is perceived as such - is a humanoid planetary population whose every member from the youngest to the oldest is many times more intelligent than Einstein or even than whichever individual currently possesses the highest IQ on Earth. 

Having rapidly learned technology from humanity, these Jorillians can be expected to build an interstellar civilization that we will neither understand nor be able to participate in. I would say let them get on with it but the human characters believe that such a development would demoralize mankind. I have been told that, in Battlestar Galactica, parts of the galaxy are inhabited, or at least used, by vastly advanced beings whom the regular characters simply avoid. Peaceful coexistence seems perfectly possible. Human beings used to believe that they shared their Terrestrial and cosmic environments with superior beings. Maybe in future they can live with that as a fact?

Familiar Andersonian touches -

Biblical quotation: "'...what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'" (p. 278)

A dramatic pause in a conversation is punctuated or underlined by the wind:

"There was a stillness. I heard the forest sough in the night around us." (p. 279)

The night signifies: no answer yet.

A problem is solved by a sudden moment of realization:

"Haraszthy stiffened. He sat like stone for an entire minute before he raised his face and whooped aloud.

"'Why not?'" (p. 282)

Four stages: stiffening; stillness; whooping; solution revealed later.

Possible solutions: Exterminate or quarantine the Jorillians? Something else?

On Joril

 

The Quest For The Perfect Planet by WE Johns was a juvenile sf novel about an attempt to find an extrasolar planet with an environment that would be perfect for human beings to colonize. Surely impossible?

In Poul Anderson's "Turning Point," a survey ship from Earth finds the planet Joril:

"...with more water than Earth, it offered a mild climate everywhere. The biochemistry was so like our own that we could eat native foods, and there didn't seem to be any germs that UX=2 couldn't handle. Seas, forests, meadows made us feel right at home..." (p. 268)

UX=2?

Eat native foods? Surely impossible when those foods are end products of an entirely separate evolution? Anderson usually writes about incomers at least needing dietary supplements.

A five-man gravboat team comprises:

Jacques Lejeune, pilot;

the first person narrator, unnamed as yet, engineer;

Commander Ernest Baldinger of the Solar Peace Authority Space Force, Federal militechnic representative;

Walter Vaughan, Federal civil government representative;

Don Haraszthy, Trader agent -

- all skilled planetographers like our Adzel on whom be peace in his alternative timeline.

That gives us some idea of the political setup and is as much as I am going to write over toast and coffee this morning before going out to gym. Zen group this evening and Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop tomoz.

Ad astra.

Addendum: The following page names the narrator as Cathcart.

Some Turning Points

Poul Anderson, "Turning Point" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, 1983), pp.267-284.

In the Acknowledgements:

"Turning Point," Worlds of If, copyright 1963 by Digest Production Corporation.

On the Contents page:

The Turning Point         267

On p. 267:

TURNING POINT

At the head of the even-numbered pages, 268-284:

The Turning Point

On the opening page, the first person narrator quotes:

"The die is cast"

"In this sign conquer"

"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident"

"The Italian navigator has landed in the New World" (This was a surprise.)

"Dear God, the thing works!" (I can't find this.)

That opening passage is sufficient to determine that we will consider this story next.

The narrator reminds us that:

"...every planet is a complete world!" (p. 267) How many Anderson characters say that? If I had known that the question was going to come up, I would have counted.

He was on a ship that was surveying a planet that had been noted by the Traders - or maybe by another group called "...the Federals." (p. 267) All will be explained, of course. The crew had been surveying for a year and were "...jaded." (ibid.) This reminds us of Poul Anderson's Grand Survey ship, the Olga, and we have encountered interstellar Traders often enough before, of course.

It is good to know where we are going next.

All Of Poul Anderson's Future Histories

See Poul Anderson's Future Histories.

Maurai: post-nuclear-war Earth

Flying Mountains: asteroid colonization

Rustum: extra-solar colonization

Kith: interstellar trade

These four series sound like successive stages of a single sequence. Indeed, the asterites (asteroidal colonials) begin extra-solar colonization at the end of Tales Of The Flying Mountains. But it is not Rustum that they set out to colonize. These are four alternative timelines. However, a single future history can incorporate a Terrestrial future, staged extraterrestrial colonization and inter-systemic contact/communication/commerce. Thus, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

post-nuclear-war Earth

colonization of Mars and Venus

colonization of extra-solar planets, including Nerthus

the Stellar Union and its Coordination Service

Technic History:

The Chaos on Earth (off-stage)

exploration of the Solar System

the Grand Survey of extra-solar planets

the Solar Commonwealth, the Polesotechnic League and their successors

The Psychotechnic and Technic Histories demonstrate two ways to construct a future history series.

Psychotechnic: Follow Heinlein by compiling a future history time chart, then fit a series of stories into successive periods of the chart.

Technic: Link two previously independent series, then explain what happened between them. Why does Technic civilization have an early period of commercial expansion and a later period of imperial decline?

The two remaining future histories:

Harvest Of Stars: human-AI interaction.

Genesis: post-human AI.

These also sound like successive stages although they are alternative histories but they present ideas that could be combined with the other ingredients into one comprehensive future history series. 

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

We have learned that:

futuristic sf becomes dated but -

the future does not turn out as expected. 

Thus, after the first Moon landing, many of us expected a period of regular, routine interplanetary travel with bases and tourism on the Moon and flights to Mars. In that case, a lot of interplanetary sf would have become dated very quickly but it hasn't done. Well, the habitable Venus with oceans or swamps and jungles and Heinlein's frog-like Venerians has gone. But lunar bases have not happened yet and are still taking a long time to happen. Is our Musk like Heinlein's Harriman or Anderson's Guthrie? Will time tell?

Whatever happens, it will not not be as anyone had expected. (I say this also about a hereafter in the extremely unlikely event that there is one.)

Our entire supply of bags of crisps, chocolate bars and glowsticks was not enough. Twice the amount needed for next year.

Tomorrow, I will be away from home for most of the day and might not post. Next week, we might return to rereading Poul Anderson's collections but let's see how that pans out.

With the Time Traveller, into futurity -

Diversity And Hallowe'en

We anticipate the diversity of Poul Anderson's Terran Empire - although I do not really expect anything like that interstellar civilization to come to pass. (Are FTL and multiple extraterrestrials going to happen?) My recent and current inter-faith dialogues comprise those with:

a woman Methodist minister last weekend;

a Muslim layman today;

Soto Zen Buddhist monks tomorrow;

Fortuna-devotee, Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop, this Tuesday.

We are well prepared for Hallowe'en visitors. A lit pumpkin head outside the front door invites them to call. Each will receive a packet of crisps, a bar of chocolate and a glow-stick/bracelet. Anything not handed out will be kept for Christmas. Three young Asian boys have just called. I want to write one more post after this one, then get back to rereading Ian Fleming who is an extremely underrated good writer. He needs a new series of films based exactly on what he wrote - just as Poul Anderson needs a first-time-ever series of films based on exactly what he wrote. 

Graphic adaptations of Time Patrol and "Flight to Forever" could be visually spectacular.

Another three at the door. I also have a journal of current political analysis to read. Let me try to wind up this post now.

Different Directions In Hypertime

When our consciousness has expanded to encompass Poul Anderson's Technic History in its entirety, it can continue to expand in perhaps three directions. We need a multi-dimensional mega-verse to incorporate everything. 

(i) Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse fills four novels and two short stories and connects with the Technic History to the extent that Nicholas van Rijn from the Polesotechnic League period of that future history visits the Old Phoenix, the inter-universal inn, in one of those two short stories. The Old Phoenix also interacts with Robert Heinlein's Future History, with William Shakespeare's major plays, with other works of fiction and literature and with much of the history of our timeline.

(ii) The Technic History, albeit important, is only one Andersonian future history. These alternative fictional histories address contradictory theoretical possibilities. Thus:

there is faster-than-light interstellar travel - two different versions of "hyperspace" - only in the Psychotechnic and Technic Histories;

there is a near-future nuclear war only in the Psychotechnic and Maurai Histories;

intelligent life is commonplace in the Technic History whereas any organic life is rare in Genesis;

in Genesis, only post-organic intelligences are able to traverse interstellar distances;

and so on.

(iii) The Maurai History provides one of the future periods visited by time travellers in Anderson's There Will Be Time, thus linking this future history to one of the author's several, mutually incompatible, time travel scenarios.

Thus, a direct link between the Technic History and the Time Patrol, no, but a direct link between the Maurai Federation and mutant time travellers, yes.

And I advise everyone to read or reread all that.

The Whole Technic History

Recent posts have shown (no surprise) that Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization divides into two main parts and that each of these parts can be analyzed almost, although not completely, on a tripartite basis. Thus:

(i) League

The People Of The Wind, in the early Imperial period

Earth Book

(ii) Young, Captain and Admiral Flandry in the later Imperial period.

The Earth Book covers some, although not all, of a pre-League period and some, although not all, of an intermediate period. Flandry has his contemporaries and his successors. Indeed, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, is Flandry's Legacy, covering both his later life and three post-Imperial periods:

Long Night;

Allied Planets;

Commonalty.

And now we have referred, however briefly or tangentially, to the entire contents of the Technic History.

Some might call this obsession but I call it fascination. (We alternate between referring to Saga and pre-Saga reading orders.)

Kinds Of Series: TV; Fleming; Anderson

Arthur Conan Doyle invented the series as a new kind of serial to be published in a periodical in which each episode is a complete story with continuity provided by characters (Holmes, Watson), setting (Baker St, Victorian England) and genre (detective).

In a typical TV series, the episodes are interchangeable with few or no cross-references and consequently no required viewing order. They are like axes radiating from a common centre rather than like successive segments of a progressive sequence.

Ian Fleming and Poul Anderson write in sequence. Bond tells Viv Michel that the top man of SPECTRE escaped and got it going again. Aycharaych congratulates Flandry on l'affaire Nyanza.

Anderson added a Young Flandry prequel and Admiral Flandry sequels to his Captain Flandry series and began to tell us about Flandry's daughter whereas Fleming, like the increasingly inauthentic films, began to keep Bond impossibly young but then rewrote the continuity. Bond is unchanged at the end, now fighting neither SMERSH nor SPECTRE but the KGB and:

"For James Bond, the same view would always pall."

-Ian Fleming, The Man With The Golden Gun (New York, 1965), p. 158.

That is the concluding sentence of the posthumous novel and a fitting epitaph. 

Flandry gets Diana started on her career which, unfortunately, we do not read.

LONGevity

We saw in Untold Series that Lazarus Long lived a long time. This highlights something else that Poul Anderson did better than Robert Heinlein with:

Hugh Valland

Hanno and the other mutant immortals

Hanno etc live right through history, then into a fictional future. A guy that I know disliked that future section of The Boat Of A Million Years. However, Anderson had prepared his regular readers to combine historical fiction with sf.

Anderson followed Heinlein with:

future history

longevity

time travel

magic treated as technology

- and, in each case, improved on Heinlein's performance. Read (the early) Heinlein first. Then read and reread Anderson.

This might be the last post for this month but let's see how that pans out. 

Untold Series

Reading Robert Heinlein's Future History Time Chart in The Man Who Sold The Moon decades ago, we were intrigued to notice first that the lifetime of one character, Lazarus Long, extended for the length of the Chart and secondly that six titles were bracketed as "Stories-to-be-told." We wondered whether these stories had by now been told in some other volume. Now we know that five of them would have filled one extra volume but they have never been told. 

Poul Anderson's Technic History implies entire potential series that have never been told although it is down to us readers to identify them. The following periods have either one or no stories set during them:

the first and later Grand Surveys

young van Rijn

Adzel's student days on Earth

Jim Ching's career

the trade pioneer crew with Coya in it

the second crew that Chee Lan joined

van Rijn patching up the League

his expedition outside known space

his visits to the Old Phoenix

the Time of Troubles

the reign of Manuel I

Aycharaych if he escaped from Chereion

Diana Crowfeather's career

the last days of the Empire and of the Roidhunate

the Long Night

the Allied Planets

Rangers of the Commonalty

But Poul Anderson would have to have devoted a lifetime to just one maxiseries. (We remember one other such author.)

Beginnings In The Technic History

History is one beginning after another.

Beginnings

In "Wings of Victory": human-Ythrian interaction.

In "The Problem of Pain": Ythrian and human involvement with Avalon; human knowledge of Ythrian religions.

In "The Three-Cornered Wheel": David Falkayn's career.

In "A Sun Invisible": Falkayn's employment by SSL.

In "Esau": human-Baburite interaction.

In "The Trouble Twisters": van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew.

In "Day of Burning": League-Merseia interaction.

In "Lodestar": the Supermetals company; Falkayn's and Coya Conyon's relationship.

In "Wingless on Avalon": colonization of the Hesperian islands on Avalon.

In "Rescue on Avalon": colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon.

In "The Star Plunderer": the Terran Empire.

In Ensign Flandry: Dominic Flandry's career; his recruitment to Intelligence.

In "Tiger by the Tail": involvement of the Scothani in the Terran Empire.

In "Honorable Enemies": Flandry-Aycharaych contact/conflict.

In A Stone In Heaven: Flandry-Miriam Abrams relationship.

In The Game Of Empire: Diana Crowfeather's career (we don't know what it is yet).

In "Starfog": a new age of prosperity in one human civilization.

Never The End.

New Beginnings

A series begins with its first episode. Right? But sometimes an author backtracks and tells us what had happened before, beginnings before the beginning. Let us consider four by now familiar authors, culminating of course with Poul Anderson.

Ian Fleming's novels just follow each other chronologically, starting with Casino Royale. In that novel, Bond recounts how he had earned his 00 number so there is no later need to backtrack to that.

CS Lewis tells us how the Pevensies first went to Narnia, then later tells us how, earlier, people had started to travel between worlds.

Watson tells us how Holmes and he met, then later Holmes tells Watson about his first case and the case that had started his career.

See:

The Structure Of A Series: Conan Doyle (merely introductory)

The Structure Of A Series: Conan Doyle II

When Poul Anderson's Technic History began to be collected, Volume I, Trader To The Stars, opened by quoting Shelley: "The world's great age begins anew." However, this volume did not include, although it quoted, the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit." Also, the van Rijn novel, The Man Who Counts, and some other Technic History installments are set earlier than the first story in Trader..., "Hiding Place."

The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins with "Wings of Victory."

The Technic Civilization Saga begins with "The Saturn Game."

At last, the chronologically earliest story is presented first. 

Some Past Futures

Robert Heinlein's Future History began the day after tomorrow. The first thing that happened was a series of technological innovations.

Backtrack: CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, published in 1945, is set after the war, another day after tomorrow. There was one technological innovation, a pragmatometer, an information processor, described as a marvelous gadget. (I am not about to seek out the precise quotation at this time of night.) That Hideous Strength is not a future history but is a Christian response to Wellsian and Stapledonian secularist future histories.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, modelled directly on the Future History, begins very soon, in the aftermath of World WAR III. The world has regressed - except that a new science of society is being applied and is helping the recovery.

Anderson's Technic History started with FTL interstellar exploration - except that a single story about interplanetary exploration in the outer Solar System was added later.

This is a partial history of future histories and is all that I am going to write tonight!

(Past futures are big time nostalgic.)

Setting The Stage

Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978).

"Then came the Terran War, and when it had passed by, ruined landscapes lay underneath skies gone strange." (p. 14)

A major event, a war, has happened but it is finished. Either we have read about the Terran War in the previous volume or we must wait to learn more. Our human author, Poul Anderson, has to allow for either of these two possibilities. Meanwhile, however, the Ythrian author of this passage has identified himself on the preceding page:

"It is Hloch of the Stormgate Choth who writes, on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother." (p. 13)

Another scene-setting sentence greets us on the facing page:

"Our part in the Grand Survey had taken us out beyond the great suns Alpha and Beta Crucis." (p. 15)

This is a human, not an Ythrian, narrator. The Ythrians are just about to be discovered. The phrase, "...great suns...," evokes great events to come and indeed great events will occur in Sector Alpha Crucis many centuries later.

It is worthwhile to possess copies both of the Earth Book and of the Saga even though the entire contents of the former are reproduced in the latter. We keep looking both forwards and backwards in time.

A Dynamic Future History

(There will be little or nothing in this post that has not been said before on this blog but for me it is a major part of appreciating Poul Anderson and certainly bears repetition.)

A series is by its nature linear. Poul Anderson's Technic History is not only linear but also partly dynamic which is a very strange thing for a series to be, even partially. This partial dynamism is achieved in four stages:

(i) A linear tetralogy (two collections and two novels) about the Polesotechnic League reaching a definite conclusion in Mirkheim.

(ii) A single novel, The People Of The Wind, set centuries later in the period of the early Terran Empire and focusing on the human-Ythrian colony planet, Avalon.

(iii) An omnibus collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which perfectly synthesizes (i) and (ii). Thus:

the Earth Book is published on Avalon shortly after the events of (ii);

the twelve collected installments are introduced by an Avalonian Ythrian, Hloch;

five of the installments feature or involve human-Ythrian interactions;

eight installments not only are set during the League period but also do an excellent "now it can be told" operation on matters that had been mentioned but not fully explained in (i).

The Earth Book is both the fifth League volume and the second Ythrian volume.

(iv) The seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga rearranges all the installments of the Technic History into chronological order of fictional events so that stories that are set earlier are now read earlier. However, Hloch's introductions to the twelve installments that had been in the Earth Book are retained so that, e.g., Hloch now refers to the Terran War on Avalon not immediately after we have read about it but long before we are due to read about it. We know that we are reading a complicated and multi-faceted fictional history and will have to wait before every passing reference is clarified. The entire series should be read in full at least twice, first in pre-Saga order, then in the Saga.

And I will probably say this all again some time. But it is a unique future history series.

A Multi-Layered Narrative

This blog rotates around Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate and sometimes gravitates towards it. One reference generates more. My paperback Earth Book became powder so I acquired a hardback which now has a torn and battered dust cover.

The narrative of this volume is multi-layered:

Emil Dalmady works for Nicholas van Rijn on Suleiman;

he recounts his experiences to van Rijn back on Earth;

a generation later, on Avalon, Dalmady's daughter, Judith, writes "Esau," presenting an account of her father on Suleiman and in conversation with van Rijn;

also on Avalon, Hloch includes "Esau" and two other stories by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren from the periodical Morgana in the Earth Book which is read by members of his choth and presumably also by other Avalonians of both species;

we read the Earth Book because we exist in an alternative timeline where all of the above is fiction written by Poul Anderson!

OK. I need to shut down the computer and get across town to a meeting.

A Time Travel Series And A Future History Series

To summarize many previous posts, my two main interests in sf are time travel and future histories. Poul Anderson excels at both and combines them in There Will Be Time which might, on that account, be regarded as his culminating volume except that his canon culminates several times. If we were to take just one Anderson volume onto a desert island, should it be:

Time Patrol, which collects the entire Time Patrol series excluding only the long novel, The Shield Of Time, -

- or:

The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which "spans, illuminates and completes" the first main section of Anderson's longest and most detailed future history series, the History of Technic Civilization?

For many years, I would have said Time Patrol but I now favour the Earth Book because of its more complicated structure and double-layered narrative. The twelve collected installments, including one novel, take us from First Contact with Ythri during the first Grand Survey to the human-Ythrian colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon. Thus, they begin before and end after the entire Solar Commonwealth-Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History, which they also incorporate. Hloch's twelve introductions and single afterword transport his readers even further into the future, into the early Terran Empire period and the aftermath of the Terran-Ythrian War which is recounted in the Earth Book's companion volume, The People Of The Wind.

The Earth Book is followed by the Young Flandry Trilogy if read as a discrete volume or by "The Star Plunderer," about the Founder of the Terran Empire, when its contents are incorporated into The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III (of VII). Thus, there are two alternative but equally valid reading orders.

The Earth Book is the kind of detailed future history series that Robert Heinlein had envisaged when he began to write the original Future History which inspired Anderson's Psychotechnic History.  

Fictional Texts

What is the status of a fictional text? If it has a first person narrator, then that narrator might be mistaken, lying or composing a fiction within a fiction. Usually this is not an issue but it can be made into one. Poul Anderson's War Of The Wing-Men has an omniscient narrator. However, when this novel was republished under its proper title, The Man Who Counts, in the omnibus Technic History collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the fictional editor of the Earth Book, Hloch, informed his Avalonian readers that this text was a historical novel about Nicholas van Rijn and that it had originally been published either on Terra or on Hermes with a different author's name and date given in each case! We know from later installments that van Rijn had been on Diomedes but we read only a fictional account of what he did there. Three other Technic History installments collected in the Earth Book are based on fictional "facts" but, we are told, had originally been published as short stories in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana. Immediately after the Earth Book, a scholar in a much further future informs us that John Henry Reeves' account of the Founder of the Terran Empire, Manuel Argos, is either an authentic memoir or a historical fiction.

A discerning blog reader might suspect that this breakfast post is occasioned by late night other reading. Thus, Ian Fleming's The Spy Who Loved Me, narrated by its heroine, is, prima facie, contradicted by the following Bond novel. However, that narrator tells us what Bond had told her that the Secret Service had believed at the time! Thus, multiple narrative layers intervene between the readers and any fictional "facts." In the eleventh of the twelve Bond novels, an obituary written by M informs readers of The Times that the previous ten novels and one collection had been grossly inaccurate popular accounts written by a former friend and colleague of Commander Bond. Thus, all the inconsistencies - which are certainly present - are instantly smoothed over.

In two concluding volumes by Dornford Yates, his familiar characters discuss all his previous novels and collections as works of fiction written by one of them. Boy Pleydell, who had narrated the Berry books, now turns out to have been the author of these and other works attributed to Dornford Yates.

Fictional narratives disappear.

Present And Future

The King of Spain has just been on TV, expressing support for relatives of people killed in a massive train collision. Does the Terran Emperor do likewise when the screen field generators of a luxury liner approaching Callisto fail, killing everyone on board? How much of our experience would be reproduced in the Terran Empire? Their tourists include extraterrestrials although not Ythrians because that species cannot fly in Terrestrial gravity. I do think of Ythrians when pigeons proliferate in Market Square.

In other fictional narratives by Poul Anderson, aliens, immortals and time travellers are among us now. A fan could walk around town comparing real and fictional experiences although I do not know how many people do that. Not me all the time. Remember that fictional characters experience their worlds. Jim Ching sees a blue Alfzarian in an airbus just as I see foreign students in a ground bus when I travel locally with a free pensioner's pass.

(Attending the Gregson last night, I learned of an upcoming fiftieth anniversary! Life is good when it's not bad and I am now about to switch off from Poul Anderson and reread some more Ian Fleming before turning in. Laterz.)

Contemporary And Futuristic Fiction: 007 In New York And Flandry In Archopolis

Ian Fleming wrote "007 in New York" about where James Bond eats, drinks, sleeps and does other things while he is in New York. He gives Paris the same treatment in several paragraphs of "From A View To A Kill," e.g.:

"Since 1945 [Bond] had not had a happy day in Paris. It was not that the town had sold its body. Many towns have done that. It was its heart that was gone - pawned to the tourists, pawned to the Russians and Roumanians and Bulgars, pawned to the scum of the world who had gradually taken the town over. And, of course, pawned to the Germans. You could see it in the people's eyes - sullen, envious, ashamed."

-Ian Fleming, "From A View To A Kill" IN Fleming, For Your Eyes Only (London, 1964), pp. 7-37 AT pp. 12-13.

We get the impression that Fleming knows the score - and I think that he did. My question is: would Poul Anderson have been able to write a comparable "Flandry in Archopolis" passage? Yes, but not as easily. An author of contemporary fiction has it easy. He can refer to Russians, Romanians, Bulgars and Germans and know that we know what he means. Anderson would have had to have written several earlier Technic History instalments to establish the reality of four or more social/ethnic/national/planetary groups that he would then have been able to refer to in the same kind of way. Not easy. But we appreciate what Anderson did do with Ythrians, Merseians, Wodenites, Cynthians etc. The Technic History is the most "lived in" future history series.

I love these far gone comparisons.

"Drawn In"

We are still with "The Pugilist" although probably not for much longer!

Why would anyone join a revolutionary organization? Dowling's two guards give different answers:

(i) "'What brought me into the Society in the first place was...well, one damn thing after another, like when I was a miner and they boosted our quota too high for us to maintain safety structures and a cave-in killed a buddy of mine.'" (p. 113)

(Proof enough that the "People's Republic" is governed neither by nor for the People.)

(ii) "'I believe in God.'" (ibid.)

This guy is not prevented from going to church but he objects to all the clergy being spokespersons for the state: "'The Social Gospel...'" (ibid.) I would not object to a Social Gospel but I would object to state-controlled clergy but, in any case, we are not talking about me! The present point is that motives differ.

At a recent gathering, I met a guy who said that he was a Marxist who believed in God. I looked forward to some interesting conversations but then he stopped coming! Our paths cross and part for diverse reasons.

CS Lewis as fictional character and first person narrator tells us that he was:

"...afraid that I might get 'drawn in'. I suppose everyone knows this fear of getting 'drawn in' - the moment at which a man realises that what had seemed mere speculations are on the point of landing him in the Communist Party or the Christian Church - the sense that a door has just slammed and left him on the inside."

-CS Lewis, Voyage To Venus (London, 1978), Chapter One, p. 6.

I do not think that everyone knows this fear but obviously some of us do. Sometimes people say, "There was no turning back..." In "The Pugilist," some people who joined the Society would have started with speculations...

When I first read Voyage To Venus, I was leading a very sheltered life in a boarding school and was astonished that Lewis would link together the Communist Party and the Christian Church like that. I started learning about people and the world after leaving school.

John Henry...

Sometimes, by a slip of the tongue or the pen, we get a word, name or phrase wrong and sometimes we worry and have to check whether we did. Checking, I find that I did write "John Henry Reeves," not "John Henry Irons," in The Lessons Of Life.

John Henry Reeves is a character in Poul Anderson's "The Star Plunderer" whereas John Henry Irons is a completely different character in a different medium. See Steel (John Henry Irons). One of the things that we like to do on this blog is to compare Anderson's works with other authors' works or with works in other media. 

The character, Steel, exists because Superman was, temporarily of course, dead. Series characters rarely die, even in a concluding episode, if there ever is a concluding episode. 

In Anderson's canon, van Rijn must be long dead when Flandry is alive and Flandry must be long dead when Daven Laure is alive but we are not shown any of these characters' deaths. Harald Hardrada is the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy and he has to die at Stamford Bridge in 1066 in Volume III because that is historical. And what a great cast of characters this post has mentioned:

John Henry Reeves

John Henry Irons

Superman

Nicholas van Rijn

Dominic Flandry

Daven Laure

Harald Hardrada

Read and reread.

Addendum: I have conceptualized two retellings of Superman in one of which he dies. See:

Getting Superman Right

The Lessons Of Life

David Falkayn, promiscuous in his youth, learns to be monogamous with Coya Conyon. 

Dominic Flandry, promiscuous in his youth, settles down with Miriam Abrams although she understands that he does not "wait" for her when she is away from home for extended periods.

Manse Everard and Janne Floris learn that they should not stay together but, later that same year, Everard meets Wanda Tamberly.

Gaius Valerius Gratillonius rejects Mithras, accepts Christ and begins to build feudalism when the Roman Empire has withdrawn from Northern Europe.

John Henry Reeves learns that the destiny of the human race lies with the leadership of Manuel Argos.

Christopher Holm learns not to be an idiot.

In "License," Rheinbogen learns that he can "hunt" academically instead of literally. 

In "The Pugilist," Dowling learns too late that he was wrong to turn against the rebel cause.

Nicholas van Rijn had learned everything that he needed to know long before we first saw him.

The discerning blog reader will have realized that this has been a pretext to divulge my own life lessons which are:

"Seek and ye shall find." (Mt. 7:7)

"To thine own self be true." (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.)

An Englishman finds inspiration in the Bible and Shakespeare even though his seeking takes him elsewhere.

Keeping The Future World As It Will Be

"The Pugilist."

The Decaturist rebels are embedded in the US military. Their plan is to seize control of the US missiles in order to prevent those missiles from being used to intervene in the Russian civil war. Without any outside help given to either side, that civil war will weaken Russia, thus enabling the US to become the dominant partner in the alliance. However, thanks to the turncoat, Dowling, the People's Republic of the United States retains control of its missiles and, on this basis, is able to issue threats that make the Kunin faction back down. As in a contemporary thriller, the status quo is preserved but, in this case, that is not a good outcome. But Poul Anderson explored every kind of possible future, good and bad. I must eat and get out to the Gregson.

Keeping The World As It Is

In Good Guys, Bad Guys, we discussed fictional ambiguity about "good guys and bad guys" and, in this context, referred to:

Poul Anderson's Technic History;

Ian Fleming's James Bond;

Anderson's "The Pugilist."

I now see a wider issue that connects Bond and "The Pugilist" in a more roundabout way. First, let us differentiate several kinds of fictional narrative:

in a contemporary novel, our familiar contemporary world exists at the beginning of the narrative and still exists unchanged at the end - anything else would take us out of the realm of a "contemporary novel"!;

in some sf novels by HG Wells, the Time Machine, Cavorite, invisibility etc is invented but then lost so that the world remains unchanged (and the impressionable reader understands why it is that he still lives in an unchanged world!) - Wellsian novels set in the future do not fit into this category;

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave begins in the (then) contemporary world but major changes happen and the human race winds up in a transformed future;

in some contemporary thrillers, there is a threat that would have caused major changes but the threat is averted - thanks to Bond, London is not nuked, the British Secret Service is not discredited by a double killing and a scandal on the Orient Express, the gold is not stolen from Fort Knox, hijacked nukes are not detonated with great loss of life and Britain is not devastated by biological warfare.

And here is the connection. In "The Pugilist," there has been a nuclear war and the US is now ruled by the USSR. Thus, the "Pugilist" is set in one of those possible futures that the heroes of contemporary thrillers, like Bond, strive to prevent. The task of MI6, CIA etc is to ensure that the world remains exactly as it is.

Another Bar

"The Pugilist."

Poul Anderson's characters frequent many taverns and also low drinking dives. Here is another of the latter:

a village bar

a shack

dim

dingy

run by two workers on their own time

tough end of town

very loud music from a taper

rotgut booze

seldom-washed glasses

crowded

tobacco and pot smoke

smell of sweat

a prostitute

That is all but we get the idea. Anderson's many bars are either pleasant or unpleasant.

Later today, we will either squeeze something more out of this story or move on. Time will tell.

Good Guys, Bad Guys

Popular fiction is usually unambiguous and unequivocal about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. If our hero works for the government, then the rebels are the bad guys. If our hero is a rebel, then the government are the bad guys. 

However, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, we are with some characters against the Terran Empire and with others for it. The Day Of Their Return sympathetically presents both the government guy, Desai, and the rebel, Frederiksen, and we have to read to the end to find out what happens.

In his opening novel, Casino Royale, James Bond has an existential crisis and wonders which side is good and which is bad but, by the end, he has identified SMERSH as the bad guys and that defines the rest of the series although, when he has to prevent arms from getting to Castro:

"He hadn't wanted to do the job. If anything, his sympathies were with the rebels..."

-Ian Fleming, "A Quantum of Solace" IN Fleming, For Your Eyes Only (London, 1964), pp. 84-108 AT p. 85.

In Anderson's "The Pugilist," the first person narrator, a rebel, changes sides and does not, as we might have expected, change back again. The rebel leader is that fictional convention, a mysterious background figure who remains off-stage until the end - when our hero kills him. Then he reads:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." (p. 126)

- etc for the very first time and realizes that he has backed the wrong side but by then it is too late.

Rome And Computers

"The Pugilist."

We learn that the title, "The Pugilist," is, like "Marius," a reference to Roman history.

In this fictional future, millions of computers, interconnected nationally:

keep records;

process bills;

operate automated factories;

calculate;

integrate;

monitor citizens;

transmit messages.

Sf prophecy. We knew that men would land on the Moon and that all human knowledge, stored in interconnected computers, would be accessible at the press of a button.

Whether our hero, Dowling, winds up in a happy place is another matter.

But this is just one story. We move on to the next. But not tonight.

Oppressive Conditions

"The Pugilist."

The bodily details of how Dowling has been transformed into a human weapon are distasteful. This had put me off rereading the story but I had forgotten every other detail.

Dowling, now a treble agent, is in the back of an enclosed car with three other Decaturists. There is a paragraph of four sentences that does not advance the action. However, these sentences are part of the text because, in them, Dowling's physical circumstances exactly match the restrictions placed on him by the oppressive society that he unfortunately lives in:

"Wind hooted around the shell. A slight vibration thrummed through my bones. The overhead light was singularly bleak. The big man on my left and the small man on my right crowded me." (p. 110)

Hooting wind.

Intrusive vibration.

Bleakness.

Crowding.

Unpleasant.

Two Fictional Futures

I am comparing and contrasting two volumes:

Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1, (Riverdale, NY, October 2017). See here.

Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, Miracleman: The Silver Age (New York, 2024). See attached image.

Differences

Prose fiction and graphic fiction.

(Usually prose books are considerably smaller than graphic works. However, in this case, the Anderson volume is outsized and nearly as big as the other.)

Similarities

Collections.

Colourful covers.

Set in the futures of alternative timelines.

Aliens.

Enhanced human beings.

Attempts to improve society.

Poul Anderson is an American sf writer. Miracleman, formerly Marvelman, began as a British superhero comic strip but is now published by Marvel and acknowledges its American origins.

I advise readers of fantastic fiction to enjoy both and I now definitely need a break from blogging.

My upcoming events to look forward to:

two restaurant birthday meals, one for an eight year old, the other for an eighty year old;

visits to the Gregson Institute, Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop and the Buddhist monastery.