Tachyons

"The Pirate."

A spaceship in the normal mode can be tracked by:

amplified sight;

thermal radiation;

radar;

neutrinos from its powerplant.

- on the tachyon mode by:

"...a weak emission of super-light particles..." (p. 219)

When Trevelyan Micah and Smokesmith in the Genji followed Murdoch Juan and his crew in their Campesino, Murdoch's crew detected the Genji's tachyons while faster-than-light and her neutrinos while slower-than-light.

Tachyons are faster-than-light particles. (Theoretical, as yet.) When in the tachyon mode, a spaceship emits super-light particles/tachyons. But what is the "tachyon mode"? Are the ship and its contents transformed into tachyons? Or, at least, are they endowed with whatever property of tachyons makes them move faster than light?

Have there been two hyperdrives in the Psychotechnic History, the first involving multiple dimensions and discontinuous psi functions, as in "Gypsy," and the second involving tachyons, as in "The Pirate"?

Who can possibly say?

An Existential Conflict And A Creative Tension

In the first part of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, there is an existential conflict between the Un-Men and the "protean enemy" whereas, in the second half of this future history series, the conflict between the order-preserving Coordination Service and the unintegrated Nomads is more like a creative tension. Civilization has advanced to a stabler level. Coordinators and Nomads are a perfect thesis and antithesis and the perfect synthesis is provided when some Cordies join the Nomads, bringing with them knowledge and expertise that will survive through the Third Dark Ages and inform later civilizations. 

If "The Chapter Ends" is to be believed, then the next level of thesis and antithesis is between human and Hulduvian ways of controlling cosmic energy and this conflict is resolved by agreeing to divide the galaxy between oxygen- and hydrogen-breathers. 

The Slain Race

"The Pirate."

Poul Anderson devotes six pages to what Trevelyan learns about the slain race from their architecture, art, pictorial record and decayed technology. They had not used automobiles, had avoided pollution and had clearly thought ahead about such problems. It pays to reread these pages carefully. Trevelyan and the readers want to know what it had been like to be those people but the whole point of the story is that this entire race is not discovered until it is extinct so its legacy must be preserved:

"We guard the great Pact, which is the heart of civilization, of society, and ultimately of life itself: the unspoken Pact between the living, the dead, and the unborn, that to the best of our poor mortal abilities they shall all be kept one in the oneness of time. Without it, nothing would have meaning and it may be that nothing would survive. But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

In another Andersonian universe, Time Patrollers have an even closer experience of the oneness of time.

Sheila is at choir and I am about to go to Zen. Next week, Monday to Friday, we will be in a hotel in Wales and I will be without my laptop.

Two Kinds Of FTL And One Of Time Travel?

 

In "Gypsy":

"The principles of the hyperdrive are difficult enough, involving as they do the concept of multiple dimensions and of discontinuous psi functions." (p. 20)

But, in "The Pirate":

"...once [another spaceship] went over to the tachyon mode, only a weak emission of super-light particles was available." (p. 219)

- "available" for tracking purposes.

Sound like two completely different means of faster than light travel although in the same future history series?

Elsewhere in space and time:

"'...discontinuity is entirely possible.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 10.

This speaker replies to someone who, he says, insists on:

"'...only continuous functions.'" (ibid.)

He is talking about time travel but it sounds like the "Gypsy" account of FTL.

All of this is inside Poul Anderson's multiverse, however.

I Have Found That Passage

 

Worth quoting in full:

"'The Narodna Voyska has been a, a basic part of our society, ever since the Troubles. Squadron and regimental honors, rights, chapels, ceremonies - I'd stand formation on my unit's parade ground at sunset - us together, bugle calls, volley, pipes and drums, and while the flag came down, the litany for those of our dead we remembered that day - and often tears would run over my cheeks, even in winter when they froze.'

"Flandry smiled lopsidedly. 'Yes, I was a cadet once.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT V, p. 409.

Not glorification of the military as in Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

No way am I militaristic but Dennitzans would have had to defend their planet during the Troubles and, in Kossara's time, they are on the marches facing the Merseian Roidhunate. Fortunately, Anderson also shows us peaceful inter-species interactions. In the Technic History, human beings and Ythrians amicably share Avalon. In the Psychotechnic History, human beings and Hulduvians amicably share the Galaxy.

Have I said before that Poul Anderson covers every option?

Farewells

We recently posted about the elegiac tone of Poul Anderson's "The Pirate" and quoted from the opening pages but missed a sentence that straddles two pages:

"'You don't have to go, not yet,' Braganza Diane said, a little desperately because she cared for him and our trumpeter blows too many Farewells each year." (pp. 212-213)

How could we have forgotten that? Well, we do remember tones but misremember details. And this reminds us of a passage in Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where Flandry and Kossara, as members of their respective armed forces, speak of remembering their dead... (Can anyone out there locate this passage?)

There are other details to notice in the opening pages of "The Pirate." The Dordogne country is not only:

"...in the fullness of time..." (p. 212)

- but also:

"...steep, green, altogether beautiful..." (ibid.)

As in The Peregrine, written earlier but set later, Trevelyan is summoned by a "machine" (p. 212) but this time he updates his terminology, referring to his summoner neither as a computing machine nor an integrator but as a "computer"! (p. 213) (We still use the archaic phrase, "time machine," because of Wells.)

After all this build-up, all that remains is to reread the story and to re-accompany Trevelyan and Smokesmith on their mission to the planet called Good Luck.

Time Passing

See the previous post. 

The theme of time passing, past and to come continues on the following page. Diane asks Trevelyan to add the rest of this leave to his next and to spend it with her but he avoids a promise.

"...he...phoned good-bye to some neighbors - landholders, friendly folk whose ancestors had dwelt here for generations beyond counting." (p. 213)

Then Diane flies Trevelyan to Aerogare Bordeaux. I thought that "Aerogare" sounded futuristic but it is just French for "Air terminal."

When he flies to Port Nevada:

"His timing was good. Sunset was slanting across western North America and turning the mountains purple when he arrived." (ibid.)

Slanting sunset, endlessly evocative, fits the elegiac tone of a story about actual and anticipated endings.

The Oneness Of Time

"The Pirate."

In the Dordogne country -

Braganza Diane lives in an internally renovated medieval stone house built against an overhanging cliff;

in front of her house, bushes cover:

"...a site excavated centuries ago, where flint-working reindeer hunters lived for millennia while the glaciers covered North Europe." (p. 212);

every day, the Greenland-Algeria carrier flies overhead;

every night, spaceships visibly lift towards the stars where men now travel.

A future history series shares our past history which can be shown sometimes. In this passage, Poul Anderson lays on multiple layers of time:

"Middle Ages"

"ancientness"

"centuries ago"

"millennia"

"glaciers"

"daily"

"at night"

And to sum all this up:

"In few other parts of the planet could you be more fully in the oneness of time." (ibid.)

That sums up Poul Anderson's works also. 

Two Future Histories

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories have parallel structures:

Psychotechnic

World War III.

UN world government, then Solar Union.

The Second Dark Ages.

The Stellar Union.

The Third Dark Ages.

Galactic Civilization.

One story about post-War reconstruction.

No stories set during either Dark Ages.

One story (disputed) set in the Galactic Civilization.

Technic

The Chaos.

The Solar Commonwealth.

The Troubles.

The Terran Empire.

The Long Night.

Civilizations in several spiral arms.

One Story about post-Chaos reconstruction.

One each during the Troubles and the Long Night.

One in the civilization of the Commonalty.

A Future History Outline

In recent posts, we have referred to just a few instalments of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History but these few have indicated an interesting future history:

conflicting sovereign nations were a disruptive factor on Earth;

the bulk of the population became technologically redundant;

when the hyperdrive was discovered, there was mass emigration from Earth;

the Traveller became lost in space, searched unsuccessfully for Earth, then settled on Harbor but some of its crew resumed their endless voyage and became the first Nomads;

the Coordination Service served the Stellar Union;

Coordinator Trevelyan Micah intervened in the Good Luck case, then later worked with and joined the Nomads;

the Nomads carried knowledge through the Third Dark Ages and influenced later interstellar civilizations whether or not those civilizations include the Galactic Civilization of "The Chapter Ends."

Anderson later added "The Pirate" because that story fitted into that background but it was the story that counted. "The Pirate" refers to the planet Nerthus which is a common setting and reference point in the series although the stories referring to it are quite dissimilar.

The Case

"The Pirate."

This story is not only about Trevelyan Micah and the other individuals listed on its opening page. (See the above link.) It is also:

"The case of the slain world named Good Luck..." (p. 211)

- which we are told:

"...is typical." (ibid.)

So a world is slain? Someone commits global genocide? And this is typical? Well, no. A planetary population has died from natural causes, has been killed by the radiation from a supernova. (In the Technic History, another planetary population is saved from such a fate.) But the dead must be respected. The physical remains of their civilization must be studied. So the depopulated planet must not be immediately exploited for commercial gain. That is what the young generations so often do not understand.

Guarding The Pact

In the first part of Poul Anderson's Technic History, six stories and two novels were published as the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy which was followed by one Ythrian novel, The People Of The Wind. Then, eight further League instalments and four Ythrian stories were collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate but this time an extra layer of commentary was contributed by the twelve introductions and one afterward fictitiously written by the Ythrian, Hloch. 

Something similar although on a much smaller scale happened in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. "Gypsy" and The Peregrine are two instalments about the Nomads. The latter also features Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service. "The Pirate" is a later written story about Trevelyan set between "Gypsy" and The Peregrine but it also contains an extra layer of commentary contributed by its first person narrator who remains off-stage and speaks from one generation later than the events involving:

"...Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, red Faustina, and the rest..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 211-251 AT p. 211.

We are partially prepared for the narrative by the enunciation of the names of its main protagonists. The tone is reflective and elegiac. The narrator, a Coordinator (Cordy) begins:

"We guard the great Pact: but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand." (ibid.)

- and ends:

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

These sentences match Hloch's commentaries. It is as if the unnamed narrator mourns in advance for the end of the Stellar Union which we know will come later in this future history series.

Poul Anderson

In the previous post, we compared Poul Anderson to Mark Twain and L. Sprague de Camp regarding time travel to a historical period.

In the post before that, we compared Anderson to Larry Niven and James Blish regarding faster than light interstellar travel.

We can also make the following comparisons -

Mary Shelley: the creation of life.

HG Wells: time travel to the future; Martian invasion; future society.

Olaf Stapledon: cosmic history.

Robert Heinlein: future history; immortality; generation ships; circular causality; magic as a technology.

Isaac Asimov: robots; a science of society; detective fiction.

James Blish: historical fiction; fantasy.

Hal Clement: extraterrestrial organisms.

Neil Gaiman: an inter-universal inn.

Nothing that we have not said before. Poul Anderson deserves to be promoted and not just by me. He was a visionary of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. His values were freedom and diversity. He looked backward, forward and outward - to history, the future and the universe. We move forward with Andersonian vision, to learn about exo-planets and receding galaxies.

A Debate In Three Stages

James Blish said in private correspondence that sf writers borrow and copy from each other in a way that would be regarded as plagiarism in any other genre.

Example: 

Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee..., Premise:

A twentieth century man is mysteriously transported to an earlier period.

Twain

Applying modern knowledge, he made big changes which were not recorded in the Dark Ages.

de Camp

Applying modern knowledge, he made big changes and changed the course of history.

Anderson

Lacking knowledge and skills appropriate to the period, he did not survive.

A debate in three stages.

(Other reading: I bought Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business. It's good.)

Twenty Years In The Traveler

"Gypsy."

Even faster than light spaceships take time to move between stars so sf writers need to be clear about how much time and whether there are different rates of FTL. In Known Space, Larry Niven has Quantum I and Quantum II hyperdrives. The latter takes Beowulf Shaeffer to somewhere near the galactic core and back. In Cities In Flight, James Blish simply forgot what the Okies' top speed was meant to be and described a fleet of cities moving at impossible speeds across the galaxy. Blish acknowledged that this was an error. Then a dirigible planet went all the way to the Metagalactic Centre. Greater mass is meant to enable greater speed but the Metagalactic Centre, if such exists, is a long way.

In just two decades plus, Poul Anderson's Traveler visits:

a blue hell of a planet;

pirates on a red sea;

tournaments on Drangor;

immense cities on Alkan;

a cephalopod philosopher;

a planet with beautiful but hostile natives;

barbarians;

ancient laboratories and libraries;

a methane storm;

paradisal Luanha;

centauroids attacking an aerial city;

Hralfar;

Atlang;

Thyvari;

New Jupiter -

- and the crew quickly learned how to communicate and converse on each inhabited planet.

Too much.

Psychology And Other Races

"Gypsy."

This is a psychological story. It is not explicitly stated but should be obvious to any attentive reader that Thorkild Erling's wife, Alanna, is happy on Harbor and does not want to resume spacefaring but nevertheless proposes this and pretends to want it because she knows that it is what her husband and several others want. I meant to quote some passages that clearly demonstrate that this is the case but it would have meant copying out large chunks of the text. Just read or reread the story!

The Traveler had been launched toward Alpha Centauri soon after the invention of the hyperdrive but the ship went off course and became lost in interstellar vastness. How does Thorkild know that there are other "...races..." (p. 32) in the Galaxy?

Three ways:

the fifth planet in the same system as Harbor is inhabited;

in Spacecamp Cove on Harbor, there are traces of non-human visitors who had hyperdrive;

the Traveler visited many inhabited planets during its twenty plus years searching for Earth.

These proto-Nomads know what kind of Galaxy they inhabit.

Relevance Or Irrelevance Of Psychotechnics

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, far from applying a predictive science of society, the Stellar Union Coordination Service is perpetually behind in its intelligence-gathering. 

Although there are many intelligent species in the Galaxy, none is more intelligent than mankind because there is a natural limit to the complexity of nervous systems and particularly of brains. An overcomplex brain becomes unable to control itself. The same limit applies to computers and to systems of computers. Terminologically, Coordinator Trevelyan Micah refers not to "computers" but to "computing machines" (or just "machines") and "integrators." He tells Diane:

"'The overworked integrators are years behind in correlating information... A thing can grow to monstrous proportions before they learn of it.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), CHAPTER IV, p. 30.

So predictive social science has gone by the board. The Service deals not only with human colonies but also with non-human species to which the equations of psychotechnics can never have applied.

However, some aspects of psychotechnics remain applicable:

"...tediously worked-out equations indicating psychological probabilities..."

- CHAPTER VII, p. 51

- had preceded Trevelyan's approach to the Nomads. But, when those equations and his other preparations are "behind him":

"...for what followed, he had no data, no predictions -" (ibid.)

Another indication of the continued relevance of psychotechnics at least on the level of individual psychology is given when some intelligent beings are classified as:

"'...unintegrate.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 211-251 AT p. 22.

The Peregrine informs us that, with the invention of the hyperdrive, many people emigrated from the Solar System because they had been made technologically redundant. This ties in with the earlier Psychotechnic History instalment, "Quixote and the Windmill." Trevelyan reminds Diane of what had happened in Terrestrial history:

"'...when there were sovereign states working at unintegrated cross-purposes.'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER IV, pp. 28-29.

This ties in with the suppression of nationalism and the enforcement of a UN World government in the earlier instalment, "UN-Man." However, the Coordinators are unable to enforce a unified government on a Galactic scale.

In "The Chapter Ends," Jorun not only is a psychotechnician but also is responsible to:

"...the Integrator on Corazuno..." (p. 256)

- so there are some connections between this story and earlier instalments.

The TRAVELER And The Nomads

In "Gypsy"

The Traveler was a single early faster than light interstellar colony ship, lost in space. Its crew spent some years looking for Earth but did not find it. Therefore, they settled on an uninhabited terrestroid planet, Harbor, where they used automatic machinery to farm and a spaceboat to trade with another inhabited planet in the same system. However, some Harborites realize they they had preferred spacefaring so they set off on an endless voyage, becoming the first Nomads. Some of them will colonize planets whereas others will use automatic machinery to build more ships, thus becoming:

"...a fleet, a mobile city hurtling from sun to sun."

-Poul Anderson, "Gypsy" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 12-34 AT p. 32.

They expect to become:

"...the bloodstream of the interstellar civilization which was slowly gestating in the universe." (ibid.)

This is the role of James Blish's flying cities although they are instead compared to pollinating bees.

In The Peregrine

An interstellar civilization exists, protected by the Coordination Service. Within that civilization, each Nomad ship flies around its own trade circuit and they periodically meet at a planet outside known space called Rendezvous. The original endless voyage has been lost. 

The Nomads will survive the Stellar Union.

Civilizations

We casually use the word, "civilizations," when discussing a minor future history series whereas in fact all the literature on Earth would not be enough to capture every aspect of a single civilization. There will be not just one-off novels but entire schools of literature written and set inside the Galactic civilization of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." We can think in the abstract about such literary schools but cannot possibly imagine what it would be like to read and understand future narratives, just as we can think about a fourth dimension but cannot visualize it.

See:

Historians Of Civilization II

We need to read about dwellers in future civilizations, not just about space explorers or others with special missions on the frontiers.

STARTLING STORIES, Winter, 1955

"A CHRONOLOGY OF THE PSYCHOTECHNIC SERIES" IN Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 283-284.

"Prepared by Sandra Miesel, based in part on the chronology published by Poul Anderson in Startling Stories, Winter, 1955." (p. 284)

Anderson followed Robert Heinlein's lead by publishing not only instalments but also a chronology of a future history in an sf magazine. We, in this generation, need to know how much of the Starship Chronology is "in part." I have just ordered Startling Stories, Winter, 1955, on eBay.

Until that arrives, we can continue this discussion. Not all of the stories presented as "Psychotechnic" fit equally well together as a future history series. The appropriateness of "The Chapter Ends" is disputed. I propose three instalments as a framework for the later part of the History:

"Gypsy" introduces the Nomads

"The Pirate" introduces Coordinator Trevelyan Micah

In The Peregrine, Trevelyan joins the Nomads

We accept that, after The Peregrine, the Nomads carry seeds of knowledge through the Third Dark Ages, thus contributing to later civilizations, and we can continue to disagree as to whether "The Chapter Ends" represents one of those later civilizations.

Original publication dates:

"Gypsy," 1950

"The Chapter Ends," 1953

Star Ways/The Peregrine, 1956

"The Pirate," 1968

We expect more from "The Pirate" since it was written later and, in fact, it describes the "hyperdrive" as:

"...tachyon mode [with] only a weak emission of super-light particles..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Starship, pp. 211-251 AT p. 219.

Starward!

Psychophysiology

"The Chapter Ends." 

See blog search result for "psychohistory."

Psychotechnics as it is presented in the opening instalments of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History is both a predictive science of human societies and a practical science of human psychophysiology. However, those are too very different projects and only the latter is mentioned in "The Chapter Ends." Therefore, it is not certain that the earlier and the later psychotechnics are identical. After all this time, that is a new realization at least for me. 

We may have exhausted "The Chapter Ends" at least for the time being. Who knows what we will contemplate next?

The White Tower

"The Chapter Ends."

Can we grind this story into even finer particles? We can try.

Might the "steely pillar" of the spaceship count as a "dark tower" to which the Terrans come? (When we start looking for imagery, we find it everywhere.)

I ask this because "The Chapter Ends" also presents a white tower:

"One tower still stood - a gutted shell, white under the stars, rising in a filigree of columns and arches which seemed impossibly airy, as if it were built of moonlight." (p. 274)

Airy, built of moonlight - the antithesis of "dark." This tower is a vantage point that becomes a meeting place when Cluthe and Taliuvenna arrive to sightsee after finishing their work in an African district. However, their attitude is frivolous whereas Jorun's is serious. He is a more suitable viewpoint character for this solemn occasion, the departure of mankind from Earth.

50 Or 60 Millennia

"The Chapter Ends."

Sol City, capital of the First Empire, was built:

"'...fifty or sixty thousand years ago...'" (p. 275)

- according to the Galactic called Cluthe. And Jorun says that that Empire:

"'...fell, fifty thousand years ago.'" (p. 263)

The earliest Terrestrial, interplanetary and interstellar civilizations had to have been a long time before that. Thus, nothing from any earlier period is mentioned in this story - except that the science of psychotechnics has been revived and fully developed. Only when Jorun is very tired does he feel his:

"...psychosomatic control slipping." (p. 264)

This story shows a human apotheosis after a history of conflict. The equivalent story in Poul Anderson's later Technic History is "Starfog."

Ruined City

"The Chapter Ends."

When Jorun flies above the ruined imperial palace:

"An owl hooted somewhere, and a bat fluttered out of his way like a small damned soul blackened by hellfire." (p. 274)

So the Galactics retain myths and metaphors of souls and hell. Is this black bat a fitting image for those who had dwelt in Sol City and its palace? Jorun has just been reflecting on their nobility, splendour, evil and wistfulness. The current dwellers are cats, owls, bats and hawks.

"He didn't raise a wind-screen, but let the air blow around him, the air of Earth." (ibid.)

Jorun wants to experience the Earthly elements like the couple who stepped out into the rain here.

He meets Taliuvenna who:

"...came from Yunith, one of the few planets where they still kept cities, and was as much a child of their soaring arrogance as Jorun of his hills and tundras and great empty seas." (p. 275)

We want to be shown more of this Galactic civilization.

Future histories have different aliens. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, human beings build a Solar Union, then a Stellar Union, and encounter Nerthusians, Alori etc whereas, in Anderson's Technic History, human beings build a Solar Commonwealth, then a Terran Empire, and encounter Ythrians, Merseians, Cynthians, Wodenites etc but really there is no reason why the same aliens cannot exist in different future histories as human beings do. In James Blish's Haertel Scholium, the inhabited planet Lithia is destroyed in 2050 in A Case Of Conscience but exists millennia later in The Seedling Stars.

Some Literary Links

See King Lear in Poul Anderson's works here.

In Shakespeare's King Lear, a character disguises himself as Tom O'Bedlam.

The Tom O'Bedlam poem includes the phrase, "...a knight of ghosts and shadows..." which became an Anderson title.

The character posing as Tom in King Lear speaks the line:

"Child Roland to the Dark Tower came..."

- which became the title and concluding line of a poem by Robert Browning.

A "Dark Tower" recurs in the titles of many other works, including The Dark Tower by CS Lewis which is Lewis' response to The Time Machine. Lewis' characters argue against the possibility of physical time travel as described by Wells, Anderson and others.

Tom O'Bedlam is not to be confused with Tom Fool.

Literary links run in every direction but let's stop there.

Units

"The Chapter Ends." 

"Because this world, out of all the billions, has certain physical characteristics, [Jorun] thought, my race has made them into standards. Our basic units of length and time and acceleration, our comparisons by which we classify the swarming planets of the Galaxy, they all go back ultimately to Earth. We bear that unspoken memorial to our birthplace within our whole civilization, and will bear it forever." (p. 264)

This same point is made in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy at least as regards units of time. See Future Standard Measurements.

The permanent legacy of Earth is expressed more than once:

"'[Earth] is a fair world,' [Jorun] said slowly.

"'It is the only one,' said Kormt. 'Man came from here; and to this, in the end, he must return.'" (p. 255)

In her concluding italicized passage, Sandra Miesel quotes a poet who said:

"'No matter how far we range, the salt and rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood.'" (p. 282)

This end is a new beginning. Miesel's concluding words are:

"One chapter has ended. Humankind's saga flows on." (ibid.)

The Spaceship And Earthly Weather

 

"The Chapter Ends."

Terrans move in a line towards the ship that will take them away from Earth forever:

"The spaceship was a steely pillar against a low gray sky. Now and then a fine rain would drizzle down, blurring it from sight; then that would end, and the ship's flanks would glisten as if they were polished. Clouds scudded overhead like flying smoke, and the wind was loud in the trees." (p. 276)

We notice "space ships" on p. 260 and "spaceship" on p. 276. At least, I notice this difference because I am quoting so many passages from a single text.

Why is the spaceship a pillar? I am sure that the means of propulsion no longer require the rocket shape. However, the "steely pillar" seems appropriate and might be favoured for purely cultural and historical reasons. The last Terrans should depart in vehicles of the same shape as those that had been used by the earliest astronauts.

Earth reminds the voyagers of its environment and its weather:

gray sky

fine rain

scudding clouds

loud wind

trees

The rain is "fine." It does not pound or batter but does remind. Some Galactics fly above the line generating:

"...a shield against the rain." (ibid.)

However, one couple leaves the line because they want a last tactile experience of Earthly rain.

And, of course, the wind is loud...

Brains And Space Ships

Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends" seems to be inexhaustible.

When Jorun has explained to Julith that artificially mutated brains enable Galactics like him to control cosmic forces and thus to "'...fly between stars...'" (p. 26) by an act of will alone, he has to add:

"'But your people don't have that brain, so we had to build space ships to take you away.'" (ibid.)

A technology that enables people who do not usually use spaceships to build a fleet of faster than light ships for a single evacuation job across thousands of light years! Although we read this sentence casually, its implications are anything but casual. What else is achieved by the great multi-species civilization at the Galactic Centre? We always feel that we are reading only a very small part of a much vaster story that can never be completed.

Twentieth Century Space Travel

Andrea thinks that NASA could have paid for itself by selling and profiting from its discoveries and technological off-shoots, also that Projection Orion would have been able to send a large craft to Alpha Centauri in 99 years. Maybe sf ideas of the later twentieth century and early twenty-first century could have come about after all?

Back home from Andrea's place overlooking Morecambe Bay, I need to clear my head from a bus journey (no longer driving a car), meditate and read or blog or maybe just read. 

Back here later today or tomoz, maybe.

Loa And Other Planets

Loa is the name of a moon of the planet Nyanza in Poul Anderson's Technic History and the name of a planet in his "The Chapter Ends." See blog search result for Loa. (Scroll down.) The planet Loa is "...jeweled with islands..." (p. 256) These posts also mention other planets. 

In "The Chapter Ends," the Galactics evacuate Terrans to an unnamed planet which is:

"'...the most Earthlike world we could find that wasn't already inhabited.'" (p. 261)

However, its trees, grasses, soil, fruits, animals, birds, fish and every sensation are subtly different because no two planetary evolutions can be identical.

Here, we are:

writing this post over breakfast;

about to drink a second coffee after beans on toast;

reading Colin Dexter's fourth Inspector Morse novel;

preparing to visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop for most of the afternoon;

appreciating existence.

Onward and upward.

Merseian Language And Psychology

In Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry, A Circus Of Hells and The Game Of Empire, there are scenes where Merseians converse among themselves. I think that, on screen, CGI-generated Merseians speaking to each other in English would not be credible. The dialogue would have to be in Eriau with subtitles. Unlike Tolkien, Anderson did not create any nonhuman languages so that someone else would have to invent some Eriau, Planha etc. And, of course, Merseian, Ythrian etc voices must not sound human.

The Gethfennu is Merseian organized crime, therefore comparable to the Mafia. However, having just read:

Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia (London, 1997) -

- I can confidently assert that the psychology of individual Merseian criminals would not be remotely like that of the Italian-Americans described by Pistone! (That guy is still alive. What an achievement!)

Free Flight

William Atheling, Jr./James Blish, "Things Still To Come: Gadgetry and Prediction" IN Atheling/Blish, More Issues At Hand (Chicago, 1970), pp. 41-50.

Atheling/Blish asks why no one is imagining "free flight" (p. 46) any more.

"...[Jorun] held out his arm, and [Julith] clasped it with one hand while her other arm gripped his waist. The generator inside his skull responded to his will, reaching out and clawing itself to the fabric of forces and energies which was physical space. They rose quietly, and went so slowly seaward that he didn't have to raise a windscreen."

-"The Chapter Ends," pp. 259-260.

Free flight. 

However, "The Chapter Ends" was published in 1953 whereas "Things Still To Come..." was originally published in 1964 so maybe Atheling/Blish was right that no one, except comic strip and film script writers, was still imagining free flight when he wrote the latter.

Free flight is one of our "impossibles" - for the time being.

A Rich Story

What a rich story is Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends."

We have posted about:

Solis Township (and here)

Sol City

Earth Seen From Space

Super Powers

a house interior

a metaphorical mountain (and here)

the galactic periphery

the statue on the fountain in the market square

the beach

uninhabited regions

a sunset

(In Market Square, Lancaster, we no longer have a fountain but a plinth on which people perform or demonstrate and from which they speak or preach.)

After appreciating many details in this single story, we can:

discuss whether the story really belongs in Anderson's Psychotechnic History;

in any case, discuss that entire series as well as its relationships to other future history series written by Anderson and by other sf authors;

imagine inhabitants of these alternative histories visiting Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

Anderson informs us that both Heinlein's Rhysling and his own van Rijn have been in the Old Phoenix.

Adzel and Axor, two Wodenites from different periods of Anderson's Technic History, have converted to alternative Terrestrial religious traditions and therefore might meet to discuss their differences.

This post has rambled but it is all one multiverse.

On Another Beach

"They landed on the beach."

-"The Chapter Ends," p. 260.

See: On The Beach

This broad beach comprises white dunes separating salty grass from roaring, tumbling surf. Damp air blows. Sand grits as Jorun sits. Sun sets at sea, a huge gold disc. Wet wind rumples hair. Jorun feels the intricacy of a conch and hears "the sea" in it. Rolling waves boom and spout.

"The Terrans called [the waves] the horses of God. A thin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold." (p. 261)

For more horses in the sea, see also:

Elves And The Sea

The End

Depopulated Earth

See:

Oceans Rush...

The Quiet Earth

Forests Green And Fair

In "The Chapter Ends," Jorun flies over uninhabited expanses on Earth:

wind-rippled plains like oceans of grass;

herds of wild cattle darkening the plains;

hoof beats like thunder in the earth;

hundreds of kilometers of old, mighty trees;

gleaming rivers piercing the forests;

fish leaping in lakes;

sunshine spilling like warm rain;

eye-hurting radiance;

swift cloud shadows;

all empty of man;

frightening vitality;

life covering earth, filling oceans and making heavens clangorous.

Jorun's grim planet has moors, crags and spindrift seas.

Three Market Squares On Two Planets

We have discussed the market squares (scroll down) in Lancaster and in Olga's Landing on Imhotep. Today Lancastrians had a procession with two lions and a dragon around the town centre, then music and food in Market Square.

There is also a market-square in Solis Township on Earth in the far future of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." The statue of the dancing girl on the fountain in the centre of this square is one of the memorable images in Poul Anderson's works, I think because mankind is about to evacuate Earth so that the statue will be left to crumble without ever again being seen.

Searching this blog for "dancing girl" (scroll down) brings up two references to this fountain and two others to a living dancing girl in Tyre.

First And Last

We can think of perhaps eight sf authors who have each written one or at most two future histories and we can then compare their works with no less than eight future histories written by one author, Poul Anderson. Further, Anderson's first future history, the Psychotechnic History, and his eighth, Genesis, are so dissimilar as to seem to belong to different fictional categories.

In the Psychotechnic series, many planets bear life and many intelligent species cross space faster than light whereas, in the single text of Genesis, life is rare and post-organic intelligences emanating only from Earth cross space slower than light. Interstellar travel is the only common idea and these two conceptions of it are diametrically opposed.

Also, the fictional history of the Psychotechnic series has been superseded by the ongoing course of events whereas Genesis looks like standing indefinitely - except that so many exoplanets have now been detected that maybe unicellular life at least is quite common? But how much of it has made the difficult transition to multicellular life? Hopefully, much more will be learned in our lifetimes. New future histories begun now might be superseded quickly.

Some Short Future Histories

Future histories differ in length. A long future history series is multi-themed, dealing only with whatever happens in the future, whereas a shorter series can have a single theme with a definite conclusion. Although Poul Anderson's Twilight World is not listed as one of his future histories, it is a collected series covering more than one generation and concluding in a further future. Its single theme is that World War III causes so many mutations that some are beneficial and even enable subsequent generations to colonize other planets so that the outer Solar System is inhabited after Earth has become uninhabitable. Without that War, would the race have survived?

James Blish's The Seedling Stars is a single volume in four parts, originally five stories, about the single theme of pantropy, the science of adapting human beings to other planetary environments. It conclusion is that, when Adapted Men have filled the galaxy, Earth has changed so much that it is colonized by Adapted Men.

Twilight World and The Seedling Stars both address changes to the human form and extraterrestrial colonization.

Anderson's Maurai And Kith is a collection of only three Maurai stories and two Kith stories although later a third story was added to the Kith series and a long novel to both series. The theme of the Maurai Federation series is that, after a nuclear war, seafaring people of the Southern Hemisphere become the world power. We get a sense of Poul Anderson exploring every possibility.

James Blish's Okie series was complete as four stories in one volume. However, Blish added a prequel, a juvenile novel and a sequel. Okie culture ends in Volume III and the universe ends in Volume IV.

Larry Niven's Known Space is a long future history series with a definite ending. Because human beings are artificially selected for the inheritable psychic power of luck, Known Space and the Thousand Worlds become utopian societies of lucky people about whom Niven becomes unable to write any more stories! As Fran Cobden remarked, "...an amazing idea!"

Other short future histories:

The Moon Maid by ERB (a sequel to John Carter);

City by Clifford Simak;

Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand by Brian Aldiss.

Future History Parallels

See Inner And Outer Conflicts.

In future histories, society has to change and the changes have to be explained.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, technology progresses but society regresses, leading to a theocracy and the Second American Revolution.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the currency for interstellar trade is the germanium-based Oc dollar so that, when the germanium standard fails, there is widespread bankruptcy and the end of the Okie culture.

(No cities fly in Volume I.)

Heinlein, Blish and Anderson had to think about how society works and about how that would affect the lives of their characters. We can think of several future histories in parallel.

Inner And Outer Conflicts

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, when a civilization collectively makes a wrong decision - the cartelization of the Polesotechnic League -, the resultant conflicts lead to the Troubles, then the Empire, then the Long Night. The later civilizations are technological but no longer of the post-Western "Technic" culture.

In Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History, the conflicts that bring down the Solar Union, leading to the Second Dark Ages, then the Stellar Union, leading to the Third Dark Ages, are not only social but also psychological. Sandra Miesel's interstitial commentary informs us that, although external enemies could be defeated:

"...against the enemy within there was no defense. Given the prevailing stage of psychodevelopment, the innate contradictions with individuals and societies could not be resolved."

-Star Ship, p. 252.

Millennia later, a psychotechnician not only mentally controls cosmic forces with his artificially mutated brain but can also control his emotions with:

"...his trained nervous system..." (p. 258)

- so it sounds as if psychodevelopment has at last resolved the contradictions.

Ad astra.

How To Write A New Time Travel Series

Poul Anderson's works include a time travel series based on the possibility of causality violation, "changing the past," and some single works based on the circular causality paradox. It would be difficult to write a series set in a single immutable timeline although that is what I would prefer.

Write some independent historical, contemporary and futuristic novels without any overt references to time travel, then show that some of the characters had been disguised time travellers. If a time traveller, for example, had worked in the bar at the Cavern Club knowing in advance that the Beatles were about to make their first appearance there, then that time traveller's experience would, for me, be a sufficient basis for an intriguing narrative. We do not need causality violations, attempts to change the past etc.

Of course that is just my personal opinion.

How To Write A New Future History Series Now?

I don't know. I am a reader, not a writer, of fiction. Anything suggested by me will lack the essential element of originality. But maybe readers can make some suggestions based on their experience of reading Heinlein, Anderson etc?

(i) Avoid sf cliches as much as possible. Write like this might really be the future.

(ii) Set the earliest episode at a time when your current readers should be dead.

(iii) Do not just assume interstellar travel. That is one big assume. And a lot can/has to happen on Earth and in the Solar System first.

(iv) Imagine a resolution or at least an outcome of present conflicts, then imagine a later period, then link the two periods.

(v) Imagine technological consequences of future scientific paradigms.

(vi) Write stories that are independent of each other except for occasional background references.

(vii) Refer to some historical events that readers do not understand although they might learn more later. (We often refer to "the War," meaning the Second World War, but do not need to explain this to each other.) 

(vii) Above all, be original which is beyond my scope.

Comparing Universes

Of course we might have concluded Intergalactic Travel by comparing Poul Anderson's Tau Zero and The Avatar with James Blish's The Triumph Of Time whose immortal characters use their antigravity drive to fly to the Metagalactic Centre where, after the cosmic collision, their bodies become new monoblocs. Blish, like Anderson, followed Heinlein and wrote cosmological sf and a future history series as well as fantasy and historical fiction. Anderson contributed to several other authors' series whereas Blish contributed to one other, Star Trek - as also did post-Heinleinian future historian Larry Niven. We are talking about a pool of authors and subject matters here.

I was a Blish fan long before I became an Anderson fan and my James Blish Appreciation blog would have been longer if Blish's output had been bigger. Having said that, there are depths in Blish's works that we have not penetrated on either blog.

See:

David Ketterer, Imprisoned In A Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish (The Kent State University Press, Ohio, 1987).

The next three days in Lancaster (for some of us) -

Sunday: Chinese New Year street procession and event;

Monday evening: Zen group or choir;

Tuesday: visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop (we hope).

A Clean Sky

When mankind, except for a single aged individual, has evacuated Earth:

"Toward evening, the clouds lifted and the sky showed a clear pale blue - as if it had been washed clean - and the grass and leaves glistened. Kormt came out of the house to watch the sunset. It was a good one, all flame and gold."

-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Star Ship (New York, 1982), pp. 253-281 AT p. 278.

Andersonian pathetic fallacy:

when mankind has gone, the clouds of illusion lift?;

the sky is washed clean - that is explicit;

the renewed Earthly environment glistens appropriately;

the sunset of mankind on Earth but a suitably colourful one.

All the detail that action-oriented sf readers might miss.

Read everything at least twice.

Starward.

Intergalactic Travel

Earth, which mankind has left behind, was on:

"...the outer fringe where the stars thinned away toward hideous immensity."

-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Star Ship (New York, 1982), pp. 253-281 AT p. 257.

In Anderson's Technic History, the humanly colonized planet Serieve is even further out on the northern edge of another spiral arm with only the galactic halo and ancient globular clusters beyond. We naturally wonder whether anyone has ventured beyond.

In Anderson's World Without Stars, the instantaneous space jump does enable immortal spacemen to visit Yonderfolk in a planetary system between galaxies and also in other galaxies although unfortunately we are not shown the latter.

In Anderson's Tau Zero, a relativistic spaceship accelerates between groups of groups of galaxies but does not make planetfall until after the universe has collapsed and re-expanded.

In Anderson's The Avatar, a technologically advanced race, the Others, influences the monobloc of a newly forming universe.

Again, a towering and comprehensive imagination.