The Great Equation

The Fleet Of Stars, 19.

"The great equation from which every law of physics could be derived was in existence." (p. 235)

Later, new data indicate that the great equation is incomplete. 

As I understand it, a Theory of Everything would:

be mathematical in form, a single equation;

describe the most fundamental properties of the most fundamental entities;

unify the forces of nature;

be a single premise from which the familiar laws of physics and chemistry could be deduced;

would not be a basis from which history or contingent events could be deduced.

Would it answer the mind-body question?

Even if a ToE had been formulated, how would it be known that no new data would ever contradict it?

There is a philosophy according to which every theory is provisional, always to be superseded by another theory that explains more. This seems intuitively valid.

Guthrie At Proserpina

The Fleet Of Stars, 17.

We are staying with Guthrie this evening because he is more interesting. We will have to backtrack later to Chapters 4-16. Download Guthrie arrives at Proserpina. He spends two hours flying by jetpack from his interstellar spaceship, Dagny, to the large asteroid where:

"An honor guard awaited him, a dozen tall men in close-fitting black and silver. It was also a real guard." (p. 216)

Lunarians do not carry firearms inside buildings exposed to vacuum but these guards do bear electromagnetic projectors that could disable Guthrie. Lunarians have manpower to spare and seem to revere the number twelve.

A download does not fear for himself but can feel devotion to causes, ideas and living beings.

Lunarians severely restrict the intellects and wills of their few sophotects whereas sophotects rule in the inner Solar System. An Asimov character talks about a society that combines the best of humanity and robotics but that synthesis is not reached in Poul Anderson's works.

Two Alien Perspectives On Humanity

"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies....Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness."

-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 520.

"Above all, O people of Arvel, never pity the beings on Earth. If you do, then sorrow will drown you. They know so little of love. They cannot ever know more."

-Poul Anderson, "The Ways of Love" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, November 1981), pp. 117-147 AT p. 147.

Each of these quoted passages completes its text. The Didonian says, "...pity...," whereas the Arvelian says, "...never pity..."! We can never know oneness, at least not the Didonian kind. We know little of love according to the Arvelians because they are naturally monogamous. We are not. 

But we are homo sapiens, not either of these extra-solar intelligent species imagined by Anderson.

Fictional Letters

I have identified one literary form that is marginal, if not non-existent, in Poul Anderson's works: the fictional letter.

The framing passages of "The Problem of Pain" are part of a private correspondence. Might a first person short story like "The Bitter Bread" be read as a letter from its narrator? The third Maurai story, "Windmill," is, if not a letter, then a report to an admiralty.

Closely related to private correspondences are private journals. (Indeed, some journal writers might begin: "Dear Diary...") Anderson's "Wings of Victory" and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy" are extracts from private journals.

BOOK THREE of James Blish's They Shall Have Stars is introduced by a letter from one character to another, dated 4th January 2020 - in the future.

Dracula is related through letters, diary entries and newspaper reports.

Fitzwilliam Darcy writes an explanatory letter to Elizabeth Bennet.

One master of the fictional correspondence is CS Lewis:

The Screwtape Letters

Letters To Malcolm:Chiefly On Prayer

Out Of The Silent Planet: Post-Script

Screwtape writes to Wormwood.

Lewis writes to Malcolm.

Ransom writes to Lewis.

I plan to reread Malcolm in order to compare Lewis' account of prayer with my practice of meditation and his philosophical idealism with my materialism.

Future Historical Parallels

Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History and Olaf Stapledon's Last Men History both establish exotic settings for later volumes. See Sequels By Stapledon And Anderson.

Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History and Starfarers present slower than light space drives. See Two Space Drives.

Anderson's Harvest Of Stars History and Genesis present different evolutions of artificial intelligence. See Quantum Consciousness.

The Harvest Of Stars History and World Without Stars present different orbiting habitats. See City And Zamok Sabely'.

Cities on extra-solar colony planets in Anderson's Technic History are compared with a small town on an extra-solar colony planet in a Harvest Of Stars novel in Port Kestrel.

Also:

Martian invasion of earth in a novel by Wells, a novel by Anderson and a fictional historical text by Stapledon.

Human devolution into Morlocks and Eloi in The Time Machine contrasts with evolution into Danellians in Time Patrol.

Two Space Drives

The main practical advantage of a field-drive is:

"...no more need for jets and their horrible wastefulness..."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 3, p. 37.

See also the post on The Tahirian Field-Drive.

However, the field-drive is not to be confused with The Quantum Gate Field Drive, nicknamed the "zero-zero drive." See also here.

Although a c-ship is a small field-drive ship able to approach light-speed, it has to approach c by acceleration, unlike a "zero-zero" ship which jumps straight to light-speed, then back down to the normal state, without needing to accelerate, then decelerate.

When download Guthrie travels from Beta Hydri to Alpha Centauri in a c-ship, a laser beam transmitted  shortly before his departure arrives three Earth-years before him whereas he makes the crossing from Alpha Centauri to Sol in a larger, therefore slower, field-drive cruiser, taking thirty five years to traverse four light-years.

Thinking about all this, it is very easy to get times and distances wrong.  

Death And A Download

I find it difficult first to remember, then to summarize, some of the complicated information that is presented in a highly condensed form in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, then find that I have done this already in any case, e.g.:

End And Beginning

Assimilating Memories

Download Guthrie answers a question that I asked recently in Interstellar Crossings. When a mind is downloaded before an interstellar crossing, the body is asleep and does not wake up. But that is the suicide option. Some people believe that suicide is a grave sin and some of us at least find it distasteful. But there are other options: either remain alive and awake and accept the approach of a sudden death in the planetary collision or pass into cold sleep shortly before the collision. In the latter case, you will, of course, die - that is inevitable - but you will not have taken your own life. To some of us, that makes a difference.

They Knew That He Was Coming

The Fleet Of Stars.

When download Guthrie arrives in the Alpha Centaurian system thirty years after leaving Beta Hydri:

"They were expecting him. The laser beam bearing the word had left Amaterasu shortly before he did, and would have arrived about three Earth-years ago. He wasn't much off his ETA, either; and till just lately, his speed had raised a shout in the interplanetary medium. The ship wasn't big, and her mass tanks were nearly empty, but probably optics were registering her, and maybe, by now, gravitics." (p. 26)

The laser beam should have been detected three years previously and, even if it was not, he should have become visible and possibly also gravitationally detectable by now. And, indeed, he is immediately greeted.

When Guthrie remarks that:

"'Dialogue's kind of slow and awkward across light-years.'" (3, p. 32)

- Jendaire responds:

"'Truly the waiting for you grew long... Also to me, who am not young.'" (ibid.)

So the Centaurian Lunarians did receive that laser message. But the waiting was for three years, not for thirty. They could not possibly have known that he was en route before they had received the message.

Similarly when, after another thirty-five years, he arrives at Sol:

"By agreement, the Centaurians had beamed an encrypted update to overtake Dagny a little earlier than now." (17, p. 211)

Again, he is greeted on arrival and asked who he is. He replies:

"'Come off it, amigo. You know damn well who I am. I'd guess your honchos have been expecting me since before you were born.'" (p. 212)

Two observations:

(i) The update seems to have been aimed at Guthrie himself. First, it is "encrypted." Secondly, we are told that its news is, of necessity, "...four and a third years old..." (p. 211)

(ii) Even if the arrival of the update had alerted the Proserpinans to Guthrie's approach, it could have given them only very short notice of his arrival so why does he claimed that he must have been expected for decades? 

The Proserpinans know that Guthrie led the exodus and that, if anyone were to come back some time, then it would probably be him. But that's it.

The Extra-Solar Colonies In The HARVEST OF STARS Tetralogy

See:

Alpha Centauri (Wikipedia article)

The Centaurian System

The History Of Alpha Centauri

Interstellar Exploration

Phaethon

Phaethon And Demeter

Zamok Sabyel'

A Future Large Moon

Arrival At Alpha Centauri

The Fleet Of Stars II

Morning Star On Demeter

Some Details In The Centaurian System

Extra-Solar Colonies

The Farthest Star

The Tetralogy

This is an attempt to pull together the information about extra-solar colonies in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy. A planet referred to as "Kwan-Yin" in Volume I, Harvest Of Stars, is referred to as "Hestia" in Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars.

(I completely forget having posted much of this information so a lot of it is just as much a revelation to me as to anyone else.)

Guthrie's Journey

The Fleet Of Stars.

We want to stay with Guthrie - or at least I do - but the book won't let us. After his conversation with Jendaire in Chapter 3, the download does not come back on-stage, as far as I can ascertain by scanning ahead, until his arrival in the Solar System at the beginning of Chapter 17:

"GUTHRIE WOKE." (p. 210)

The intervening chapters are concerned with characters and events in the Solar System which I cannot help but regard as mundane by comparison! But they deserve our respect, nonetheless. But not tonight. I am reading the book in which I know that Inspector Morse will die before the end. And maybe it is a welcome escape back to twentieth century Britain. But that is in our past now and already seems dated. We are always at the mid-point between historical fiction and futuristic science fiction.

Guthrie remarks that the Proserpinans who greet him must have been expecting him since before they were born. Individual lives are short by comparison with interstellar journeys. Guthrie's journey so far has been thirty years from Amaterasu to Alpha Centauri and another thirty from there to the outer Solar System. He is going to deal with people who are younger than that.

A Short Silence

The Fleet Of Stars, 3.

When Guthrie and Jendaire have conversed for a while and he has stated what he wants from her:

"She stood quiet for a while. He could guess how she was calculating. A thrush trilled, a butterfly zigzagged on gorgeous wings, a breeze bore scent of jasmine, the stars passed frostily by." (pp. 40-41)

These pauses can become crowded: thrush, butterfly, breeze, jasmine, stars. The conversation continues but we were grateful for that pause. 

One of the things that Jendaire has told Guthrie is that, although the Proserpinans make some attempt to spy on the inner Solar System, they are more interested in using their field-drive ships to expand through the Oort Cloud whose fringes mingle with the cometary clouds of others stars. A slow, steady route to the stars suitable for a species at home in low gravity and in enclosed but spacious environments.

Field-Drive

If the characters in a particular future history series never find a means of faster-than-light travel, is that just because they do not find the means or because no such means are to be found in their timeline? Because a premise of the series is that the physics of that fictional universe are Einsteinian? Maybe this does not make any practical difference. However, a discovery of FTL right at the end of Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy would have been a deus ex machina just as much as if it had happened at the end of a contemporary novel.

Although limited to relativistic speeds, the interstellar colonists in The Fleet Of Stars invent a field-drive. (For a field-drive in another Poul Anderson work, see here.) The Centaurian Lunarians share the field-drive specs with the Proserpinans who in turn observe evidence that the cybercosm also has such a drive. Centaurians have detected cybercosm spy robots, destroyed three and captured one.

Guthrie calls a small field-drive ship with minimal payload that can come near light speed because of its small mass a c-ship and claims that he took the name from a boyhood hero of his. Which hero? I am at a loss.

Interstellar Crossings

The Fleet Of Stars, 3.

There are two ways to make an interstellar crossing. Terrans and Lunarians went from the Solar System to the Alpha Centaurian system in cold sleep. However, for the evacuation from Demeter to Amaterasu, they:

downloaded;

remained inactivated en route;

took their genome specs;

had new bodies grown for them by Amaterasu Mother;

had their minds reloaded into the new bodies.

However, the new body is a copy. The mind in the new body is a copy of the download which was a copy of the original mind. Therefore, the original bodies and minds remained on Demeter. What did they do? Suicide before the planetary collision or acceptance of death in the collision? These issues are not addressed. 

Sf raises more questions than it answers.

The Seigneury

The Fleet Of Stars, 3.

Jendaire, Wardress of Zamok Sabely', Lady Commander in the Phyle Ithar and invested associate in the High Council of Alpha Centauri, receives download Guthrie in his two-meter-high robotic body. Jendaire's fellow Selenarchs do not resent her prior access to this important visitor because Lunarians regard scrambling to be close to someone famous as a Terran or monkey trick. They are as independent as cats although touchy in other ways. 

A download can neither eat nor drink. Jendaire:

"...took a nacreous goblet off the table, and sipped of the wine in it. Although she couldn't have provided him refreshment in any event, this might well be a means of putting him..." (p. 31)

At his ease?

"...in his place." (ibid.)

Oh, well. I cannot anticipate the nuances of Selenarchs. Or are they still using that title now that they are not only away from Luna but even out of the Solar System? Jendaire refers to:

"'...my fellows of the seigneury...'" (ibid.)

That this "seigneury" still wields power is amply demonstrated when Guthrie, on entering, Zamok Sabely' is awaited by an escort of:

"...a dozen men in red-and-black livery, led by an officer who gave stately greeting." (p. 28)

(A dozen?)

City And Zamok Sabely'

In World Without Stars

City, an artificial satellite of the colonized planet, Landomar, began as a metal shell but, a few centuries later, has acquired:

towers;

parapets;

domes

ports;

a memorial;

docked ships;

swarming boats.

Felipe Argens' portwife lives in high-weight, overlooking space.

In The Fleet Of Stars

Zamok Sabely', a space habitat orbiting sixty degrees behind the planet Demeter in the system of Alpha Centauri A, began as a stone maneuvered into position and converted into structures which, over the centuries, have come to include:

a faceted hub;

hundred-kilometer spokes;

intricate cables and passages;

a flashing rim;

solar collectors;

spire-like anti-meteor guns;

guardian robotic vessels.

Balanced, harmonious, beautiful and jewel-like, this orbiting city, depot, market, commercial and cultural centre, aerie and castle reminds Guthrie of medieval cathedrals.

Download Guthrie is a consciousness whose memory includes all that.

Arrival At Alpha Centauri

The Fleet Of Stars, 3.

This novel has thirty-two chapters although Chapter 32 is just:

"FENN WOKE." (p. 403)

We are currently rereading 3. When download Guthrie approaches Alpha Centauri, regains consciousness and activates his c-ship's instruments, he feels fields, gradients, vectors, masses, particles and ambient space. Although electromagnetically shielded from radiation, he hears its seething and tastes its sharpness. 

I had forgotten how the planet Demeter was destroyed but I gather that it had collided with Phaethon. The still-molten globe glows red streaked with smoke and slag. Accelerated spin whips mountainous fire-geysers. Blasted-out rocks in chaotic orbits either crash back down or form rings while a new moon coalesces and the c-ship avoids a whirling fragment. Alpha Centaurian space has become hazardous.

Next Guthrie must contact the asteroid-dwelling Lunarians but that is a whole 'nother ball game. I must venture through Lancaster on a wet Sunday morning for provisions. I attend not church on Sunday morning but meditation group on Monday evening.

Go with God or whatever It is.

Quantum Consciousness

The Fleet Of Stars, 2.

Computers and robots behave like people but only because they carry out algorithms. Conscious, creative minds could not be created:

"'...till the quantum nature of consciousness was understood.'" (p. 21)

Then researchers, applying their knowledge of atoms and quanta:

scanned a nervous system molecule by molecule;

recorded the patterns corresponding to memory and personality;

mapped these patterns into a neural net that was an analogue of a brain;

thus created a download that was a copy of a mind;

gave the download sensors, a speaker and a machine body although not yet a newly grown organic body;

thus learned how to make electrophotonic hardware and software that was self-conscious without having been copied from an organic brain.

These "sophotects," linked with all computers, robots and each other, became self-programming and self-evolving. There is a single pyramidal cybercosm with everyday appliances at the base and the unimaginable Teramind at the peak and there is a similar mind at the galactic level in Poul Anderson's later Genesis which is the peak of future histories.

Clearly, a neural net is an artificial brain, not a computer.

AI And Humanity

The Fleet Of Stars, 2.

Human beings act on and understand their environment and can satisfy their material and social needs. In this fictional future, something has gone wrong. Human-made technology has become conscious and intelligent and says:

"As for humans, give them peace, give them abundance, give them informational access to the riches of their past and present, set them free to lead their lives as they see fit." (p. 24)

If we are being given peace, abundance, information and freedom, then we have ceased to act, to understand and to satisfy our needs and therefore have ceased to be human. 

The question is asked whether mankind and the "cybercosm" cannot coexist and cooperate but the novel builds to the conclusion that this cybercosm attempts to deceive and mislead and thus contradicts the purpose of technology.

In The Gaps

The Fleet Of Stars, 1.

OK. We are checking what happens in the conversational pauses and we know that this always bears fruit in works by Poul Anderson.

"They were silent for a bit. The sunset flared brighter. A flight of cormorants winged across it." (p. 4)

That was good. Not what we expected but good.

"She caught her breath. The sunset light filled suddenly widened eyes." (p. 6)

So far, the sunset is a major theme.

Shortly after this, Guthrie speaks with distaste about the tame lives of human beings in the inner Solar System:

"'They -' Again he stopped to find words. The wind, already cooling, rustled the leaves above them." (ibid.)

"Cooling" is appropriate!

Further on:

"She stared into the sunset. It was swiftly losing color, the sky above the clouds going from blue to violet." (p. 9)

The sunset is back.

The next time Guthrie pauses:

"The last hues drained from the clouds, and dusk thickened with subtropical haste. She drew her cloak about her against the wind. He ignored it." (p. 10)

Sunset and wind come together.

Another pause:

"Guthrie was mute for another while. Stars were appearing now in the west as well as the east. Among them he recognized Sol..." (p. 12)

After some further reflections but without any further speech:

"He rose. Light from above, in this clear air, and light cast off the sea were ample to find one's way by. 'Let's go home,' he proposed." (ibid.)

A lesser writer would have told us what they said and nothing else.

One of Guthrie's remarks resonates:

"'I can hope that in the end, maybe a hundred years from tonight, my download will come back here and get reborn.'" (ibid.)

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning. Perhaps in a thousand years my Earthmen will come home again. Or in two thousand, or four, if they still remember home then. They'll come back, yes; but I hope they won't stay. I pray they will not stay."

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT CODA, p. 129.

To quote a Star Trek film poster, although to nobler effect, "The adventure continues."

A Relayed Message

A message from Sol has been received at Alpha Centauri at the beginning of the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, Volume II, The Stars Are Also Fire, and has been relayed to Amaterasu by the beginning of Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars. That is how slowly events proceed on an interstellar scale at sub-light speeds. In fact, it is so slow that many readers might not realize that these must be the same message.

"Long afterward, there came to Alpha Centauri the news of what had happened on Earth and around Sol."

-Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995), p. 1.

"...what had happened..." is recounted in this volume and that is what is summarized to his companion by Anson Guthrie when he has received the relayed message at the beginning of Volume IV. Of course, characters telling other characters what has happened is also an economical way for the author to inform or remind his readers of what has happened in earlier volumes. Thus, despite its length, this tetralogy turns out to comprise a complex unity.

Extra-Solar Colonies

The Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy

Harvest Of Stars (1993)

The Stars Are Also Fire (1994)

Harvest The Fire (1995)

The Fleet Of Stars (1997)

In Harvest Of Stars, 61, the only extra-solar colonies so far are Demeter and the asteroids in the Alpha Centauri system. The Astronomy Web in that system detects planets with oxygen atmospheres in orbit around:

82 Eridani;

Beta Hydri;

HD44594 in Puppis.

A near-light-speed spaceship bearing a Guthrie download is sent to each of these systems. On their return, each of the downloads is merged with the original. HD44594 II, Bion, is already full of complex life but another planet in that system, with more rudimentary life, is suitable for terraforming, even more so than those at 82 Eridani and Beta Hydri. 

In The Fleet Of Stars, there are colonies on:

Beta Hydri IV, Amaterasu;

Hestia at HD44594;

Isis, which must therefore be at 82 Eridani.

From casual references in the text and dialogue, we are able to deduce the connections.

Reasons For Guthrie To Investigate The Solar System

The Fleet Of Stars, 1.

Proserpinans report that the cybercosm which rules the inner Solar System is suppressing a discovery made by a solar gravitational lens.

The Proserpinans' own lens failed, they think because of sabotage.

The cybercosm could be robotically spying on Proserpina and on the extra-solar colonies.

The cybercosm, with its stable economy, had ceased antimatter production but has now restarted it. Why?

The Proserpinans detect signs of high-speed ships leaving and sometimes entering the Solar System.

A separate point although relevant to which kind of intelligence is best equipped to terraform planets:

There are several reasons why the presence of a large satellite might have brought about life on Earth. Here it is stated that, without Luna, Earth's spin axis would have been chaotic, leading to either glaciation or greenhouse.

A Summary Of Part Of A Complicated History

Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1997).

Future histories become complicated when there is interstellar travel at sub-light speeds. AI rules human beings on Earth, Luna and Mars. Lunarians, human beings genetically altered to live in Lunar gravity although not on the Lunar surface, have colonized Proserpina, a large, dense asteroid in the Kuiper Belt and from there other such bodies. In colonies on the extra-solar planets, Amaterasu, Isis and Hestia, human personalities downloaded into organometallic matrices guide the terraforming of environments now inhabited by personalities downloaded into newly grown organic bodies. In the Alpha Centaurian system, the colonized planet, Demeter, is about to be destroyed by natural processes although Lunarians have colonized the Centaurian asteroids. Proserpinans transmit a message to Centaurian Lunarians who relay some of the information to Amaterasu, enough to persuade organic Anson Guthrie that he should send a download of himself to Sol, via Alpha Centauri, to investigate further. The rest of this novel will feature that download, not the Amaterasuan or any other organic Guthrie. 

Complicated and I do not remember every detail from the previous three volumes. We have come a very long way indeed from several earlier future history series and the ultimate single-volume future history, Genesis, is still to come after the Guthrie series.

Port Kestrel

In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, we read about the cities of Gray on Falkayn Bay and of Centauri on the Gulf of Centaurs, both on the colonized planet, Avalon. Elsewhere in Anderson's Technic History, we read about the city of Starfall on Daybreak Bay on the colonized planet, Hermes.

Similarly, in Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, we read about the small town of Port Kestrel at the mouth of the Lily River on an island shore of the Azurian Ocean on the colonized planet, Amaterasu. Port Kestrel has boats, bridges, bright buildings, trees and a communications mast. Amaterasu is being terraformed and grass grows on several islets. Above and around the port are plantations, industries and parks with dandelions and harebells. Dark native thalassophyte still grows in patches while imported seagulls fly above it. Elsewhere on Amaterasu, terraforming continues among glaciers and deserts.

Although The Fleet Of Stars is Volume IV of a later and very different future history series, its sceneries are described in comparably minute detail. 

Sequels By Stapledon And Anderson

Any futuristic sf novel creates a unique future environment that becomes a possible basis for one or more sequels. Thus, in Olaf Stapledon's second Last Men novel, the Sun has been enlarged, Mercury, Venus and Earth have been destroyed and the Eighteenth Human Species inhabits Neptune. Because the Solar System had been transformed in precisely these ways in the first novel, that transformed system necessarily provided the background setting for the framing sequence of the second novel which is mainly about the Last Men's exploration of the past.

Similarly, Poul Anderson's first three Harvest of Stars novels had established major civilizational changes within the Solar System and also some extra-solar colonization. On this basis then, the fourth novel, The Fleet Of Stars, opens on Amaterasu, the colonized fourth planet of Beta Hydri. Beginning to reread this novel without having first reread any of its three predecessors, I rely both on my memory of earlier readings and on Anderson's text to make for comprehensible reading. 

Both Last Men In London and The Fleet Of Stars begin with a man and a woman seeking solitude on a beach but these accounts are in no way parallel or comparable. Stapledon's imagined future is dated in ways that Anderson's is not, yet.

Hugh Valland: Finale

World Without Stars, XVI-XVII.

Naturally and of necessity, the Meteor survivors, including their captain, follow Valland's lead. Captain Argens writes:

"We followed him. And we built our spaceboat and won to the help of the Yonderfolk. The job took four decades." (p. 119)

Argens' daughter, Wenli, was only a few years old when last he saw her in City. She will be forty-plus years older the next time that they meet and maybe no longer in City. In the concluding chapter, Argens and Valland are on the quiet Earth where Argens reflects:

""This was Manhome. No matter how far we range, the salt and the rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood." (p. 124)

Sandra Miesel quotes the second sentence at the end of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"To Earth there's no returning. She vanished with the childhood of our race. Yet as a poet once said, 'No matter how far we range, the salt and rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood.' One chapter has ended. Humankind's saga flows on."

-Sandra Miesel, interstitial material IN Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, June 1982), p. 282. 

We have quoted this sentence from both works together with other similar passages before. See here. (Scroll down.)

When The Universe Collapses

World Without Stars, XV.

After a battle:

"...I lay in the canoe, vomited, coughed, and wept. It wasn't merely reaction. I was altogether sickened. Galaxy God - any God - must we kill through all time, until time ends when the disgusted universe collapses inward on us?" (pp. 115-116)

I would have said no, nothing will last until the end of time but consider the scenario in this novel. The universe - not just the galaxy - is full of intelligent species at every stage of development and they can all interact thanks to the space jump so, yes, there will be every kind of interaction and some of these interactions will be violent. Every stage of development will always be instantiated somewhere. There will always be violence but there will also be civilizations that move beyond it.

"God Has Not Left You."

World Without Stars, XIV.

Azkashi discouraged by a setback in their struggle against the Ai Chun slink away from the human compound:

"...into the mists. They spoke little, but that little made a mumbling across the land like the first wind-sough before a storm." (p. 100)

This is a good analogical use of the perennial wind. In this case, there is no actual wind but the mumbling is like the sound of a wind. And a retreat by the Azkashi at this stage of the conflict will be followed by the storm of an Ai Chun advance. 

Hugh Valland saves the day. The Azkashi think that God is not with them when the galaxy is not visible overhead. Ya-Valland - the prefix means "male" - tells ya-Kela, the One of his Pack:

"'God has not left you.'" (p. 103)

- and proves it. A screen on a scientific instrument shows the sky above their heads with the sunlight removed. The planets, Oroksh and Ilyakan, are visible and the galaxy blazes brighter than ever before.

"'Fear not the downdevils; God is with you yet.'" (p. 104)

Ya-Valland's new role is that of prophet.

Religion In The World Without Stars

We should say something about religion, then see how this applies to World Without Stars.

See Traditions.

I think that religion is response to transcendence. Theism is personification of transcendence and therefore is one kind of religion. Non-theistic religions are Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism and the Hindu Samkhya system. 

The transcendent is variously conceived as:

many persons;

three persons;

one person;

an impersonal reality;

a transcendent state.

(I go with the fourth and fifth options.)

Religious experience is of an awesome presence or of an inner oneness or of a projected, culturally conditioned, image: Kali, Krishna, Christ, Mary etc.

Of the three groups in the "world without stars," Ai Chun, Niao and Azkashi, only the Azkashi have a religion. Argens comments that:

"Their planet showed few phenomena to inspire awe, like stars or volcanoes or seasons." (p. 76)

He overlooks the galaxy which, when above the horizon, dominates the night sky and is worshiped by the Azkashi.

The Ai Chun recognize nothing as superior to themselves and think that they created the universe but only in the way that they now construct buildings or selectively breed other species. This "creation" was not the act of a transcendent being. The Ai Chun bred the Niao for intelligence and the latter are devoted to the Ai Chun like dogs to masters, not like worshipers to a deity. However, some Niao went feral as the Azkashi, shedding submissiveness but retaining devotion, now expressed as worship of the galaxy and as mutual loyalty. Thus, rebellion generated religion.

With molecular biology, the Ai Chun might have eliminated every wild gene and prevented the Azkashi. However, some other external factor, like the arrival of the Earthmen, would eventually have challenged their rule.

Some Azkashi might be converted to a Terrestrial monotheism by persuading them that the galaxy is only a manifestation of the Creator.

Darkness, Rain, Storm, Wind And Thunder

World Without Stars, XII.

Pathetic fallacy abounds. Tied up below decks in a galley, Argens hears the Herd capture the human camp. Then:

"I heard the Ai Chun wallow past my prison, bound ashore. I sat in darkness and heard the rain begin." (p. 83)

Argens' incarceration in darkness and the beginning of the rain coincide, appropriately, with the subjugation of humanity. This continues. Leaving the galley, Argens and his guard descend:

"...to a canoe, through a lashing blindness of rain and wind to the beach. Day had now come, tinting the driven spears of water as if with blood." (ibid.)

This is all good descriptive and atmospheric stuff: blindness, blood and the wind that is our constant companion in many Andersonian texts. The present text continues:

"My goggles were blinkered with storm; I shoved them onto my forehead and squinted through red murk. I couldn't see our spaceship. The headland where our compound stood was a dim bulk on my left. No one was visible except my giant guard and the half dozen canoe paddlers." (ibid.)

Through the redness that is like blood, Argens sees neither the spaceship nor the compound but only his captors. All is lost...

Well, not everything. Next we read a characteristic Andersonian fight and escape scene. Prodded and enraged, Argens grabs his guard's knife and stabs him with it, then is chased through bawling thunder and hissing rain but rescued by his allies, the Pack.

How many captured Anderson heroes assault a guard and escape?

Late Evening Post

There is a time of the evening when you want to add one more post to the blog but do not want to have to do any more reading to do it. 

On BBC TV, Alice Roberts has just summarized theories about Stonehenge, including both the idea that the stones celebrate summer and life and also the opposite idea that they celebrate winter and death, the latter recently propounded by yet another TV presenter, Neil Oliver.

Poul Anderson's works cover many periods of history and also include two references to Stonehenge. Thus, TV viewing, like other reading, can be blog-relevant.

Domestics: laid up with a cold, although not too incapacitated to blog, I will have to miss a day-trip to London this Saturday.

Brain And Mind

World Without Stars, XI.

The perennial mind-body question comes up again when the telepathic Ai Chun try to control Argens. He experiences images, impulses, terror, anger, bliss, lust, stiffness and sweat although it is comparable only to mild drunkenness. The Ai Chun project scientifically known energies in order:

"...to stimulate corresponding patterns in my brain." (p. 75)

But they are bound to fail because he is of a different species, because his neurons work differently, because it is impossible to be taken over against your will and because:

"You're closer to your own nervous system, and better integrated with it, than anyone else can be." (pp. 75-76)

"You" are a psychophysical organism. You are close to, and integrated with, your nervous system because it is a crucial part of the organism. But how do neuronic patterns cause mental images and feelings? That is the mind-body question.

Unequals

World Without Stars, XI. 

It is extraordinary to read about beings to whom it is axiomatic that any other intelligent species exists only to serve them. The Ai Chun are incapable of conceiving that the newly arrived Earthmen are their equals (at least) with whom they might trade, make treaties, exchange information, share cultures etc. 

"'We dismissed the former visitors, and we shall not let you run free in the world. Have no fear. Your potential usefulness is admitted. While you obey, you shall not be harmed. And when you grow old you will be cared for like any aged, faithful Niao.'" (p. 75)

"'The seed we planted long ago is bearing its fruit... We will occupy your camp and put you to work.'" (p. 78)

They honestly believe that is a fair and reasonable offer! 

The first rule of inter-species diplomacy: find out what the other guys want and whether it is compatible with what we want. Don't just take it for granted that they have no independent wants!

It is easier to write about aliens that do not understand what we understand than the other way around.

Clearly, the Ai Chun cannot survive contact with galactic civilizations.

Seven Names

Einstein

Milne

Dingle

Mach

Nernst

Dirac

Haertel

Have I missed any? These names are cited by Poul Anderson, James Blish or both when presenting science fictional rationalizations for faster-than-light (FTL) interstellar travel. FTL is made to seem plausible when it is presented as an imminent next stage in an already existing scientific tradition.

Einstein in both, obviously. 

Milne in Blish.

Dingle in Blish.

Mach in Anderson and Blish.

Nernst in Blish.

Dirac in Blish.

Those turned out to be mostly "in Blish" but I had to do it to find out. Correct me if I am wrong but I think that the many references to Dirac in Poul Anderson Appreciation are comparisons with Blish's Dirac transmitter, not Andersonian references to Dirac. Blish extends the list by adding the fictional Haertel. Anderson's works do not present any corresponding figure.

Ai Chun

World Without Stars, XI.

"...you don't need hard radiation for mutation to occur; thermal quantum processes will do the same less rapidly." (p. 73)

I didn't know that. But it figures. Change is constant even if slow.

Argens tells the Ai Chun that what thinking animals have in common is more important than any differences in bodily shape. Aristotle: "Man is a rational animal." English law: "Murder is the unlawful killing of a reasonable creature..." (Our laws already protect aliens.)

The Ai Chun disagree. They have existed unchanged with no surviving biological enemies in an apparently unchanging world for over a billion years. They build and stockbreed and have even bred one bipedal species for intelligence. Finally, believing in reincarnation, they think that they themselves had created the whole universe in an earlier life. They do not remember why they had created Yonderfolk or Earthmen but their entire world-view - and self-view - is threatened by any claim either to exist independently of them or to have originated in a vaster and more complicated universe. In particular, the galaxy, seen only at night, is too bright for their eyesight and therefore is their equivalent of the Devil. I detect a contradiction here but world-views of this kind do generate contradictions. 

The Ai Chun remind me of the Party in 1984, wielding absolute power in their own domain and denying anything external to themselves.

Deductions

World Without Stars, X.

Members of the Herd, travelling in a galley, take two Earthmen, Argens and Rorn, to meet their masters, the Ai Chun. En route, Rorn makes some deductions. Cheap boats and wilderness should make for individualism. Instead, the fishing crew that chanced on the human camp did not make contact but immediately reported back to some headquarters and it took time for a delegation to be sent. Also, the language of a group of aliens who had visited once a long time ago has been preserved and carried across the planet. Conclusion:

"'...we're on the marches of a very big and very old empire.'" (p. 66)

Argens agrees that this:

"'Makes a good working hypothesis...'" (ibid.)

- as indeed it does. And it has been deduced from details that many of us would have missed. James Blish's Okies, entering a new planetary system, have to make this kind of deduction very quickly in order to assess what they are dealing with. For them, it is a matter of earning a living.

Relevant Other Reading

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data

"(Conan Doyle, Scandal in Bohemia)"

-quoted in Colin Dexter, Death Is Now My Neighbour (London, 1996), Chapter Twenty, p. 126.

Other reading - Dexter quotes Conan Doyle and we think that Poul Anderson did also so we search the blog and find:

An Old Proverb

Quiz question: which fictional detectives die in their last novel?

This is the fourth and probably the last post on this blog for today but please see also:

Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines II

Scholium Criteria

Haertel's Significance In Three Timelines III

Rain

World Without Stars, IX.

In this chapter, rain plays the usual role of the wind in Poul Anderson's works, accompanying and punctuating the dialogue, particularly at its dramatic points and pauses. 

Argens is on sentry duty when the enemies of the Azkashi arrive at the camp:

"The galaxy was hidden in a slow, hot rain..." (p. 58)

The galaxy is visible only at night. We have already been told that:

"It was not impossible for the Herd to come raiding at night. But it was rare. The downdevils feared God and so their worshipers did too...." (I, p. 6)

But they venture forth when weather hides God.

Next, when the representatives of the Herd have been welcomed into a hut:

"Then I stood, soaked, hearing the rain rumble on our roof, crowded with my men between these narrow walls, and looked upon wonder." (p. 58)

The Herd are very different from the Pack, not free tribes-beings but specially bred slaves.

With a little whisky inside him, Argens is able to forget rain, heat and darkness and to concentrate on communication. 

Gianyi of the Herd and his blind dwarf telepath bow their heads whenever the former mentions their masters, the Ai Chun: a human gesture. Implausibly human?

When two Earthmen discuss their guests:

"'They may mean well in spite of their manners,' Bren said.

"'Sure,' I said. 'They may.' The rain gurgled as it fell onto soaked earth." (p. 62)

That rain seems to comment and does not sound reassuring.

When Valland, who is with the Pack, contacts Argens, some "...ugly noises..." come over the radio:

"'Hugh!' I cried. 'Are you there?'

"The rain had stopped, and silence grew thick in the hut." (p. 63)

Silence always underlines dramatic pauses in the dialogue. Often the wind is heard on such occasions but this time the accompaniment is the rain and it has stopped. Silence reigns until Valland can speak again. Argens advises:

"'Try to explain the idea of neutrality...'" (p. 64)

We know that neutrality is impossible between God and devils. The Pack do not know of any other kind of conflict.

Azkashi

World Without Stars, IX.

Valland wonders whether "Azkashi" means:

hill people

free people

people of the galaxy god

all these things and more

Surely the fourth option? The Packs live in the hills, are free and worship that which Earthmen call the galaxy but which they call God. And they are more likely to use words that are full of meanings rather than narrowly defined. 

We make fine distinctions. Someone wondered whether a Latin text referred to Mars the planet or to Mars the god but surely there was a time before that distinction was made?

When, in CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, a cat goes to sleep in close physical contact with a tame bear, is this friendship or just bodily pleasure? Ransom answers that the interaction between these two animals:

"'...is a single undifferentiated thing in which you can find the germ of what we call friendship and of what we call physical need. But it isn't either at that level. It is one of Barfield's "ancient unities".'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 12, 5, p. 621.

Limitations

World Without Stars, VIII.

Ya-Kela thinks that ya-Valland has:

"...curious weaknesses.'" (p. 52)

He is blind at night, awkward in the marshlands, lacking either tail or webbed feet, and ignorant of dangers like dart bushes. Of course Valland is awkward and ignorant in this environment! That ya-Kela does not understand that is a limitation on his part, not on Valland's. In a city, if he ever visited one, ya-Kela would not know to look both ways before crossing a street.

More seriously, if the stranger is not after all "'...from God...,'" (p. 53) then ya-Kela:

"'...will plunge the first spear into ya-Valland.'" (ibid.)

Many on Earth would regard the Azkashi's devotion "'...to God alone...'" (p. 54) as admirable but we have learned from experience how this can go wrong. In London, an Evangelical preacher went to the assembly point of a demonstration in order to address Muslims with remarks like:

"They say that He is not the Son of God and what a blasphemy that is!"

Not a blasphemy, just a different belief!

(What constitutes respect or disrespect to the Lord is largely a matter of tradition. Someone who entered our meditation hall was shocked to see people sitting for meditation with their backs to the Buddha.) 

Here at Blog Central, we, editorially speaking, are suffering from a mild cold, therefore reading and posting sluggishly. Also, we are still giving some attention to the less-read James Blish Appreciation blog.

Go with God. (As Blish's Jorn the Apostle says.)

Establishing Communication

I have been rereading two sf novels in which space travelers have to establish communication with alien intelligence(s).

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars

The Azkashi are easy to deal with because they have:

"...no obviously alien semantics." (VII, p. 49)

They have individual names, use comprehensible sign language and both accept and bring gifts. When their gifts include an animal that might poison the Earthmen, Valland accepts this gift by burning it. This response is acceptable to the Azkashi.

Caution remains necessary. Valland appears to claim that he has come from the galaxy. To ya-Kela, this implies that Valland has claimed:

"...to be the emissary of God." (VIII, p. 52)

The Azkashi partially resemble kangaroos.

James Blish, Welcome To Mars (London, 1978)

The dune-cat's resting stance is kangaroo-like and he has an abdominal pouch. Each hand has five fingers and a thumb so he counts in twelves.

Communication is difficult. Neither can pronounce the other's language so they develop a pidgin and some information is exchanged by drawing maps and pictures.

Addendum: Only this single post on this blog today. And one more on James Blish Appreciation here.

Life On Mars

This post, occasioned by rereading James Blish's Welcome To Mars, is not comprehensive but does cover successive stages of the fictional treatment of Mars, our point as always being that Poul Anderson makes several alternative contributions.

In works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and CS Lewis, Mars is humanly habitable. One novel and one short story by Lewis are set on different versions of Mars.

In Larry Niven's Known Space future history, a human protector diverts an ice asteroid onto a collision course with Mars and thus exterminates the Martians although some of their species still survive in the Map of Mars in the Ringworld.

In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, there are native Martians. In his Technic History, there are extra-solar colonists of Mars. In his The Fleet Of Stars, there are human colonists of Mars. In his The Winter Of The World, interplanetary travel has ceased but Mars is green, indicating that it has been terraformed and has now become humanly habitable.

Angels And Planets

World Without Stars.

When ya-Kela looks at the night sky:

"...the last coals of sunset went out, and the sky was empty of everything save God, the angels, and three planets..." (I, p. 6)

I said in God Rising that I did not know what the angels were. I still don't. When Felipe Argens looks at the sky on that same night, he sees only the galaxy ("God") and:

"...three glitters which we now knew were planets." (VII, p. 44)

Can natives see something that human beings cannot? Or are the "angels" those stars that can be discerned as individual points at the ends of the spiral arms? I think that it is more likely that they are divine attendants that are imagined or believed in although not seen. But I remain unsure as to what Poul Anderson was alluding to.

God, The Galaxy

World Without Stars.

"God was rising in the west, and this time the sun was down -..." (I, p. 5)

"This evening the galaxy rose directly after sunset." (VII, p. 43)

This is the same event described twice and from different povs. Later in I, ya-Kela must investigate:

"...strange newcomers..." (p. 6) 

Later in VII, Hugh Valland, on watch, spots:

"'Somethin' out there. Approachin' real slow and careful. But two-legged, and carrying things. Let's not scare 'em off.'" (p. 47)

Ya-Kela and his "...bold followers..." (p. 5) approach and soon there will be yet another First Contact. We have become used to reading about these at least. Has there ever been a First Contact between two intelligent species and, if so, what was it like? Willingness to communicate and learn? Misunderstanding and conflict? There was an Arthur C. Clarke story in which astronauts had been instructed not to retaliate if attacked! Give the other side the opportunity to say, "Our man in the field acted wrongly..." Extreme caution, at least for the First Contact. Thereafter, respond as indicated.