The Astra And The Per Aspera

(i) Ad astra per aspera.

(ii) "We the people of the spaceship Astra..."

-Tales Of The Flying Mountains, Prologue, p. 11.

(iii) "...this ship, the Per Aspera..."

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT p. 108.

Poul Anderson has a spaceship named the Astra. James Blish has a spaceship named the Per Aspera. 

That might not look like much of a post but a certain amount of research went into it. I remembered (so I thought) recently rereading a Blish text about the Per Aspera so I spent quite a while looking through The Seedling Stars before I thought instead to look in They Shall Have Stars and there it was.

Stars and Mars are the two commonest words in sf titles, I think. I have somewhere listed the Anderson and Blish titles with Stars in them but tonight I leave that as an exercise for blog readers or you could google their bibliographies.

I will be elsewhere for a while early tomorrow.  

War And After

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

(Mostly) different characters in each story; a team of continuing characters in the Prologue, six Interludes and Epilogue. 

"Say It With Flowers" is set during the war of asterite independence.

"Ramble With A Gamblin' Man" recounts one remaining territorial adjustment after the war.

"Sunjammer" shows that (i) resentments persist after a war but also that (ii) people move on and can view events from different perspectives. Not all Earthmen are North Americans... And so on.

Only one more story and the Epilogue to reread. There is no sequel about extrasolar colonization but there are other works by Poul Anderson on that theme.

The usual range of extracurricular activities looms ahead this coming week. Rereading continues in the gaps...

Another Problem And Solution

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

"Sunjammer," like "Que Donn'rez Vous?" before it, is a highly technical story. The single sf premise, apart from the gyrogravitics which are basic to the entire series, is isonitrate. 

Several characters race against time to prevent a disaster. By now, we know in advance that it is only a matter of time before one of these characters has an Andersonian moment of realization and devises a quicker and more economical solution. Sure enough, Golescu stops speaking in mid-sentence:

"Golescu's words cut off. He stared before him, into the icy light of Jupiter, until its after-image danced through his vision.

"All the stars danced.

"'What's eating you now?' Storrs growled." (p. 212)

Something like that had to happen. We have learned to expect it. But we still have to wait to be told what the more practicable solution is. For some details on that, follow the "isonitrate" link above.

I also am racing against time here. Laterz.

Brobdingnagian

(A single word in an Andersonian text can inspire a blog post as I will now demonstrate.)

Fictions refer to earlier fictions. References accumulate. Many works are remembered although many more are forgotten. We all know Sherlock Holmes but not Cyril Saunders. (In fact, we recognize Holmes even when he appears unnamed in Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol.")

Here is a beautiful literary reference:

"The sail now nearly bisected the sky. Seven kilometers wide, the foam-filled members that stiffened it marching across the field of view like Brobdingnagian spokes with its slow rotation, that disk massed close to a hundred tons."

-Tales Of The Flying Mountains, p. 205.

I had intended to compare this passage with one by CS Lewis but find that I have already compared that Lewis passage with one by SM Stirling here. For other uses of the adjective, "Brobdingnagain," see here. (Scroll down.)

I must satisfy the inner man in two senses: first, eat; then, meditate.

Birds And Future Histories

There was a birds of prey display at the Southport Flower Show today as there has been in the past at Muncaster. Was I alone in Southport in thinking of Poul Anderson's intelligent flying carnivores, the Ythrians? They always come to mind on sight of peregrines etc.

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, which features Ythrians, is what Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune series should have been: a detailed history of interstellar civilizations with a vast cast covering multiple periods. What matters is the details of personal lives in planetary environments, not political manipulations by powerful cliques. James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume III, Earthman, Come Home, shows us the Mayor and City Manager but not the population of New-York-in-flight but Blish - partly - made up for this in the later-written Volume II, A Life For The Stars.

Cities In Flight, like Robert Heinlein's Future History, would have matched the Technic History if lengthened whereas the Foundation series and the Dune series would have needed total rewrites. Thus, this blog ranks sf works.

Blish's major disadvantage vis a vis Anderson is a much smaller output.

Satellites

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

"'The equipment in orbit, man! There're a couple of hundred assorted devices near Earth these days.'" (p. 199)

There are 16,400 active satellites today. 

No sf writer predicted our future in 2026 with an International Space Station, 16,400 satellites, some unmanned interplanetary probes and massive new knowledge about exo-planets. What is a plausible extrapolation from our 2026? One without sf cliches? I do not have the slightest idea. Posts will be sparse tomoz because of a coach trip.

Opinions

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

Characters express opinions which are not necessarily those of the author but sometimes are. I have just had that by now familiar experience of thinking that Don Bell had said something derogatory about the name of the Social Justice Party, then rereading dialogues in "Rambles With A Gamblin' Man" and not finding the derogatory remark. Maybe someone else will find it or it will come to light.

The following story, "Sunjammer," contains two characters' opinions that might be said to balance each other.

Sam Storrs:

"There isn't a government of any importance on Earth these days that isn't based on some version of 'social justice.' So of course independent thinking, conscientiousness, ordinary competence have gone by the board." (p. 191)

Social justice is incompatible with independent thinking, conscientiousness and competence? We know that there are people who think like this so it is an authentic opinion.

Edward West:

"That's another thing I don't like about the Republic. They can brag as much as they want about free enterprise, but it still amounts to the rawest, most cold-blooded kind of capitalism. Maybe the welfare states on Earth have gotten stuffy and overbureaucratized - nevertheless, we don't let the devil take the hindmost!" (p. 195)

A Brit thinking "gotten"? Well, this is the future. But a nineteenth century Englishman says it in "Time Patrol."

Poul Anderson's attitude to the asterites is generally positive so it is good to read another perspective. People always compare societies, in this case, the Republic versus the welfare states. Why compare? Assess each in its own terms. Both address survival but in very different environments.

Tomorrow: a coach trip to Southport Flower Show.

Men And Jupiter

Tales Of The Flying Mountains, "Que Donn'rez Vous?," pp. 151-179.

This story begins and ends with two men playing chess.

"K-B2.

"Q-K7. 'Check,' said Roy Pearson." (p. 151)

"Before long, Pearson had recovered enough self-possession to suggest a game of chess." (p. 179)

Between these start- and end-points, much occurs. No less than six men of different nationalities interact with each other and with the Jovian environment. There are technical problems which have technical solutions although there is also and always the human element. An author must know a lot of science to write this kind of science fiction. The only sf premise is the gyrogravitics. Everything else is physics. One-man "scoopships" scoop methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, water vapour, ethylene, benzene, formaldedehyde and other organics out of the Jovian atmosphere.

There is an Andersonian moment of realization when Master Pilot Charles de Gaulle d'Andilly springs up, knocks over his chair and shouts:

"'Mon Dieu!'" (p. 171)

However, on this occasion, precedent is broken because d'Andilly explains his rescue plan to his colleagues immediately instead of leaving it to us readers to learn what the plan is when we see it implemented.

D'Andilly is a recognizable kind of competent, hard-working, hard-living, hard-drinking Andersonian character and sings the same French song as Piet Van Sarawak in Anderson's "Delenda Est" (which has a Latin title).

In The Jovian Atmosphere

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

Jupiter is different every time we visit it. My understanding of  gas giant planets is that they have no surface, just a turbulent atmosphere increasing in density all the way down to an eventual core. The Jupiter of ...Flying Mountains does have a surface but not one that anyone can walk on:

"The greenhouse effect operated. Jupiter's surface was warm enough to have oceans like Earth's. No man had seen them. The weight of atmosphere would have crumpled any hull like tinfoil. Even at this altitude, Mary Girl sped through an air pressure several times that of sea-level Earth." (p. 158)

Scoopships skim in and out of the upper atmosphere. (See the attached Analog cover.) Any action on Jupiter in this story, "Que Donn'rez Vous?," can only be at a very high altitude. The description of Jupiter has maybe moved towards the gas giant model - and goes all the way in Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave"? (Except that "Hunters..." was published earlier than "What'll You Give?") (See Bibliography.)

Pointed Remarks And A Neat Solution

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

In their conversation with the Social Justice government representative, Don and Avis Bell make some pointed remarks about the North American public. Since there is mass unemployment, why can some people not work as domestic servants? Some might but that would be a big adjustment even for the wealthier citizens who have become used to gadgets and appliances that no longer require them to employ servants. In any case, merely returning to master-servant relationships is no way forward for a technological society.

Don:

"'If they'd bred a little less eagerly, they wouldn't be so hard up today...'" (p. 129)

Sure. Birth control can be encouraged. My understanding is that births do decrease when standards of living increase.

IIRC, conditions on Earth generally improve later in this volume.

Mainly, "Ramble With A Gamblin' Man" is a problem story. 

Problem

Despite the successful War of Asterite Independence, North America still controls the asteroids in the leading Trojan point of Jupiter's orbit and is about to start dispossessing the prosperous asteroid, Odysseus.

Solution

Use gyrogravitics to move Odysseus out of the Trojan point, thus out of North American space. Then the Asteroid Republic can stake a claim for it, supported by an Odysseusan referendum. This is the peaceful completion of the Asterite Revolution. And we should have seen it coming.

Social Justice

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

The representative of the North American Social Justice government gets on our nerves:

"'Too much that was too expensive was too badly overdue at home. And that's what Social Justice is all about. Rebuilding the country, first internally, afterward in its foreign relations; regaining our position as a first class power.'" (p. 129)

Capitalized words and phrases change their meanings. It is possible to be "conservative" without being "Conservative." "Social justice," just as a phrase, has nothing to do with becoming a "power" in foreign relations. However, we must listen to a representative of the Social Justice Party to learn what that party's policies are. Years ago, on British TV, a Government minister laughed at a young man who spoke about "communism" but then denied that he was talking about the Communist Party. I thought that the young man was quite right to make this distinction. No organization is entitled to appropriate a word or to identify all the meaning of that word just with itself.

Our Social Justice guy continues and claims that his asterite hosts, the Bells, and he:

"'...already bear a greater guilt: that we are glutted while others are poor.'" (ibid.)

No. Those who are comfortable or prosperous are neither glutted nor guilty. I am not guilty if my income is greater than someone else's. I am not even guilty if some of my income is profit that I have made from his labour because that is the economic system that we happen to be living in - at least as of now. Having said that, there is plenty of guilt in our society and it is not just on the lowest stratum where the poor are imprisoned for theft! But let's leave that issue there for the time being. I respond to whatever we find in Poul Anderson's texts, including his characters' conversations - which turns out to be all of human life and more, past, present and future.

Once again, good night. A family reunion and BBQ tomorrow.

Society Progresses...

(i) "'...because a few bold, inspired leaders have exalted goals.'" (p. 150);

(ii) ...because goals occur to us as we develop our capabilities;

(iii) ...when "'...individuals fearlessly work out their private destinies.'" (ibid.);

(iv) ...because "'...things simply happen.'" (ibid.) - and could have happened differently.

In Tales Of The Flying Mountains, Interlude 4, Lindgren summarizes others' views, (i)-(iii), then states his own, (iv). In denying that there are "'...any general rules....,'" (ibid.) he contradicts characters in some other future histories, including two by Anderson, but sf is about exploring alternative possibilities.

"...things simply happen..." is a sound empirical theory of history and society.

Some Familiar Ingredients

I am realizing that Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains is an elaborately constructed future history series which I have not appreciated in sufficient detail until now.

Recently on this blog, we contemplated fictional accounts of Jupiter in Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" and in James Blish's "Bridge," then hypothetical discoveries of antigravity in "Bridge" and in Anderson's ...Flying Mountains, mentioning other works en route. Soon we will again see Jupiter, in ...Flying Mountains.

We have just read past yet another Andersonian moment of realization. Don Bell says:

"'...it's difficult to see how we could -'" (p. 139)

- then drops his cigarette, stares and says:

"'Or could we?'" (ibid.)

We know the signs but as usual will have to wait to be told the answer.

The Milky Way is still with us together with other heavenly bodies:

"...uncountably many frost-cold stars, the curdled ice of the galaxy, and Jupiter." (p. 153)

("Curdled" appears a few times in The Milky Way Thread.)

I must eat and run across town to the Gregson.

After The War

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

The War of Asterite Independence is over quickly for us readers, introduced and concluded in a single story, but not for the asterites:

"...the despair of the war years." (p. 119)

And the war does not end as we expect. There is a stable group of asteroids in each of the two Trojan points in the Jovian orbit, sixty degrees before and behind Jupiter. The peace treaty lets North America keep the leading Trojan group while the new Asterite Republic gets only the trailing group. As conditions continue to deteriorate in North America, the government of that continent puts more economic pressure on those asterites whom it still governs. The issues that the war was fought over have not been resolved. I will have to reread this story to the end to get all its ramifications.

The main leading Trojan asteroid, Odysseus, has a Lake Circe and a "...zoo island, Aeaea..." (p. 120) The other large asteroids in this group are Hector, Achilles, Nestor, Agamemnon and Ajax. These are powerful mythological references, particularly in the wake of the film, The Odyssey.

Don and Avis Bell have a domestic staff of ten, including a cook and a butler, in their sealed house on Mount Ida above the Oddyssean atmosphere. I like the asterite attitude explained by Don Bell. The pioneers had had to be both self-reliant and mutually helpful. The successful felt obliged to employ the unsuccessful who accepted employment because all work contributed to survival and improvement. If I were there, then, lacking entrepreneurial skills, I would willingly work as a butler.

The Milky Way is always with us:

"Stars crowded the blackness, unwinking and winter-cold; the Milky Way girdled the universe with diamond dust; Jupiter blazed enormous, not many astronomical units to port." (p. 95)

From the waist-height dome atop the Bell house:

"When the sun happened to be away, as it was at the moment, every spot overhead was diademmed with stars, nebulae, Milky Way and sister galaxies." (p. 126)

Discussion

Tales Of The Flying Mountains, Interlude 3.

Orloff, who had come to the Asterite Republic from the Soviet colonies, asks whether the Astra cannot do better than "'...the extreme libertarianism...'" (p. 115) which had produced selfish, materialistic individuals unconcerned about society.

Lindgren responds:

"'I don't imagine we have room aboard for unregulated capitalism... But I'd hate to see an outright socialism evolve. Not simply because its stifling. I think it'd discourage the creativity this ship will need for long-range survival.'" (ibid.)

Lindgren says more which is worth reading but I try to limit the lengths of quotations. Phrases like "'...an outright socialism...'" should never be used without some explanation. If it were self-evident and if everyone were in agreement that something called "socialism" was stifling and discouraged creativity, then why would anyone call themselves "socialist" as many do in response to current crises? Because they're mad, of course... Let's not go down that road. Since many people argue that democratic (not bureaucratic) control of economic resources will not stifle but liberate, this argument should be engaged with, not treated as if it did not exist, which is what happens when the phrase, "outright socialism," is simply identified with "stifling" and discouragement of creativity. I imagine Astra crew members calling themselves "socialists" arguing for a greater degree of democratic decision-making in the ship and others replying that this is impractical, of course. That would be a more constructive debate.

Flowers Escapes

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

Action-adventure heroes are captured and escape. In "Say It With Flowers," Robert Henry Flowers, Lieutenant in the Space Force of the Asterite Republic, does it. Having been captured by a cruiser of the North American Navy, he escapes in one of their space boats, taking three hostages with him. Thus, the North Americans cannot shoot at the escaping Flowers without killing their own men. But there is more to this story than that: several twists and turns which can be found by reading the story. One of the twists is that this War of Asterite Independence is over very quickly:

"Trade boomed after independence was won..." (p. 111)

The next story will be post-war. Future histories can be long or short. A single-volume history is short. Four stories, four Interludes and one Epilogue remain to be (re)read.

Ad Astra.

Independence Days

Will colonists of planets, asteroids or space habitats have to fight for their independence from Earth? It is to be hoped not. I am conscious of not having read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy although I have found a lengthy summary of it on Wikipedia. Wars of independence occur in that trilogy, in three novels by Robert Heinlein, in Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains and no doubt in other sf works. When cities escape from Earth in James Blish's Cities In Flight, the Bureaucratic State collapses. However, cities and colonials must then overthrow the Vegan Tyranny which has been ruling this galactic sector, fortunately without knowing what has been happening in the Solar System.

All of these narratives project our past onto our future and I think that we can expect the future to be different - and unpredictable. Maybe someone could write a novel about what is likely to happen on Earth over the next few centuries? Will space travel continue and become more important? Sf narratives focus on that whereas the bulk of mankind - if, indeed, there continues to be a "bulk" - are likely to remain on Earth. But we do not even know that.

The only thing that is certain about sf is that its authors need to keep thinking of new premises which Poul Anderson did continue to do.

This post is occasioned by rereading Tales Of The Flying Mountains even though it lists that book among several works by other authors. Sf is really a collaborative enterprise.

Earth-Belt Politics

Economics: production and distribution.

Politics: power and resistance.

History: progress or regression.

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

Should wealth that is generated in the Asteroid Belt stay in the Belt or go back to Earth? Poul Anderson evokes political tension and conflict in the Belt after an election back in North America. New colonialism resembles old colonialism. Mike Blades refers to England and America in the eighteenth century but does not tell us which century he is in. There are two ways to write a future history: either vaguely or precisely, date-wise.

The resemblance cannot be complete. Future history is history but also future. Poul Anderson's narratives move through myths, legends, history, alternative histories and futures. (There are even two passages set between cosmic dissolution and re-creation.)

Later in Flying Mountains, as far as I can remember, increased production means less conflict about distribution. This should be the goal of any high tech civilization, especially one that can fully utilize solar energy.

(Different from UN-Belt politics in Larry Niven's Known Space History.)

Mike Blades' Moment Of Realization

Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

We do not remember the names of the characters in Poul Anderson's many works, particularly not in all of his short stories. However, I should remember Mike Blades' surname because we lived on Blades St for forty-five years before moving here to Lincoln Rd.

Mike Blades does not complete a thought and drops a bottle - which his secretary catches in asteroidal low gravity. This is a sure sign that Blades has just had an Andersonian moment of realization and one that I do not remember having read about before. However, searching the blog for "Moment of Realization," we find that it is the first one that comes up! Painting myself into a corner, I have more than once posted about some detail in a work by Anderson without realizing that I had posted about it before. However, while rereading, much comes across as new, as if read for the first time.

Another blog theme is: "Reread!"

Some Future Histories That Have Been Mentioned

Science Fiction: The Structure of a Series: Robert Heinlein

Science Fiction: Isaac Asimov's Future History

James Blish Appreciation: James Blish: Okies

Poul Anderson Appreciation: Poul Anderson’s Future Histories

Science Fiction: Larry Niven's Future Histories

Science Fiction: An Unexpected Future History

Science Fiction: Future Histories

See also:

Science Fiction: Strengths and Weaknesses of Isaac Asimov

Science Fiction: Strengths and Weaknesses of Larry Niven

Three Descriptions Of The Milky Way

Tales Of The Falling Mountains.

(i) "...the shining belt of the Milky Way." (p. 13) (See The Milky Way)

(ii) "The galactic belt glistened, diamond against infinite darkness." (p. 50) (For other references to "galactic belt," see here.)

This description of the galaxy is followed, as happens sometimes, by a reference to another galaxy:

"...the far mysterious shimmer of the Andromeda Nebula..." (ibid.)

(iii) "The Milky Way turned her hair frosty and glowed in her eyes." (p. 65)

This description is unique: the galaxy reflected in a woman's hair and eyes.

We have noticed most Andersonian descriptions of the Milky Way by now but it is always possible to find a few more except that that is enough for this evening.

Tomorrow: rain or more gardening and Zen in the evening; blogging on an as and when basis.

Flying Mountains And Known Space

"'The Belt's going to grow!...This is the real frontier. The planets will never amount to much. It's actually harder to maintain human-type conditions on so big a mass, with a useless atmosphere around you, than on a lump in space like this. And the gravity wells are so deep. Even given nuclear power, the energy cost of really exploiting a planet is prohibitive. Besides which, the choice minerals are buried under kilometers of rock. On a metallic asteroid, you can find almost everything you want directly under your feet.'"

-Tales Of The Flying Mountains, pp. 51-52.

Plus which, solar energy is so plentiful that the asterites do not need (dangerous) nuclear.

Some of the same arguments are deployed in Larry Niven's Known Space future history where gravity wells are called "holes":

"For reasons of economy the Belters concentrated on the wealth of the asteroids. With fusion-drive ships they could have mined the planets; but their techniques were more universally applicable in free fall and among the falling mountains. Only Mercury was rich enough to attract the Belt miners...

"...there were Belters who would never go anywhere near a planet."

-Larry Niven, Tales Of Known Space (New York, 1975), p. 81.

"'Belters learn to avoid gravity wells. A man can get killed half a dozen ways coming too close to a hole.'"

-Larry Niven, "At The Bottom Of A Hole" IN Tales Of Known Space, pp. 82-99 AT p. 83.

We have come a long way through several American future history series.

Interplanetary Periods

OK. A brief summary of the interplanetary periods of most relevant future histories.

Heinlein

The Green Hills Of Earth.

Asimov

In I, Robot, robots in a space station and on Mercury and on an asteroid, then giant robotic Brains controlling the Terrestrial economy and ecology. (In Foundation's Friends, Poul Anderson adds a robot on Io.)

Blish

Cities In Flight: Jupiter V and Jupiter.

The Seedling Stars: Ganymede.

The Haertel Scholium: Mars.

Anderson

The Psychotechnic History: Mars, Venus, asteroids, Ganymede, interplanetary space, Jupiter.

The Technic History: Iapetus.

Flying Mountains: asteroids, Jupiter.

Niven

Exploration of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto, then colonization of asteroids and the Moon.

Quite a list. 

Historical Interpretation

Tales Of The Flying Mountains, Prologue.

The Advisory Council of the spaceship Astra clarifies the need for selection and interpretation of historical facts. The examples given are reasonable. They could obviously be discussed further but here they are offered only as examples. "Mohammedanism" should be "Islam" but that is the kind of historical detail that is always with us. 

"'...man being what he is, moral judgments are inevitable. Was it right, was it desirable that Christianity take over Europe...?'" (p. 16)

Do we need to discuss whether this was right or desirable? It happened and we certainly need to understand why. One question in a future history takes us back into past history and, within the works of the Andersons, to the times when merfolk fled from an exorcism or when the last King of Ys converted to Christianity.

I have a Religion and Philosophy blog for such questions but fewer people read it.

Possible Reasons Why Christianity "Took Over"

monotheism, with an omnipresent deity

a universal morality

freedom from divisive dietary laws

a single blood sacrifice of a perfect victim, efficacious for all time

a divine incarnation

a death and resurrection

a triune deity

fulfilled prophecies (the historical element)

a Mother of God able to replace the Mother Goddess

angels and saints instead of gods and heroes

the Adversary as a rebel angel instead of an anti-God

canonization of saints replacing deification of emperors

the bishop of Rome becoming Pontifex Maximus (an already existing post)

scriptural and Classical scholarship

incorporation of Greek philosophical schools

monasticism as a retreat from a hostile secular world

the flexibility to shed some of these elements at the Reformation

Yes, Christianity is comprehensive, robust and still with us.

Is this a diversion? No. Poul Anderson's works incorporate every issue.

Narrators Who Address Us

I wanted to expand on what I had meant in the previous post about narrators who come across as writers of popular magazine articles. There are several examples in Narrators That Are In There. Two others are:

"Sure we had trouble building Space Station One - but the trouble was people."

-Robert Heinlein, "Delilah and the Space Rigger" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 7-19 AT p. 7.

"This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways - but not the official version.

"You sang his words in school..."

-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN The Green Hills Of Earth, pp. 131-141 AT p. 131.

The text continues to address its readers as if we were living in that era when Space Station One had recently been built and Rhysling's songs were sung in schools. Heinlein gives the future a daily life more solidly than anyone else although Anderson also approaches this same effect in works like "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "Lodestar."

Future histories affect each other - and Nicholas van Rijn and "blind Rhysling" both make it into Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix: an ultimate recognition of these two characters.

Future Historical Perspectives

(I have uprooted many weeds around the perimeter of our humble property. I am the unskilled labour. Others know what to plant where and when.)

We are still with the inexhaustible subject of future histories and there is more to be said than can be fitted into this lunch break. As ever on this blog, our focus is on Poul Anderson even if we first refer to the earlier Campbell future historians: Heinlein, Asimov and Blish.

Blish's Adolph Haertel discovers antigravity in Welcome To Mars and has invented the first faster-than-light interstellar drive in "Common Time." These are different achievements. See Gyrogavitics. The discoverer of antigrav and the inventor of FTL need not have been given the same name.

Heinlein's Future History, Volume I, The Man Who Sold The Moon, opens with Heinlein's Time Chart, a PREFACE by the author and an INTRODUCTION by John Campbell. None of these three texts, with the partial exception of the Time Chart, is a fictional introduction written as from a future historical perspective whereas Asimov has Encyclopedia Galactica and Blish has Acreff-Monales, The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits.

In Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, a committee, meeting in interludes between the stories, discusses how to teach history and explains to its newest member that teachers must select and interpret facts and raise children to become "'...intellectually trained and emotionally mature...'" (p. 17) adults who can debate interpretations of historical events "'...with pleasure and profit.'" (ibid.)

Early in the second story, "The Rogue," the narrator refers to himself and his readers as "We..." (p. 43) That single pronoun shows that this speaker/author is not the omniscient narrator of most fiction but a counterpart of the narrator in Heinlein's Future History, Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth, who comes across as the writer of popular magazine articles published during the "Green Hills" period of the Future History.

In haste. Will expand as necessary later.

Green Hills And Flying Mountains

Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth, is mainly about people living on the Moon although there is also information about Mars, Venus and life back on Earth. Interstellar travel does not begin until Volume IV.

Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains is a single-volume future history about people living on terraformed asteroids thanks to gyrogravitics, a technology not possessed by Heinlein's characters - who do gain control of gravity in one story set on Earth although this technology is not mentioned subsequently and later interstellar craft are spun to simulate gravity. A technology lost during the Interregnum of Volume III?

Interstellar travel has begun at the beginning of Tales Of The Flying Mountains. Indeed, it is the travellers themselves who review their asteroidal history for their own benefit and, of course, for ours.

There, if you want it, is a partial comparison between Heinlein's Future History and one of Anderson's eight future histories before I turn in for the night, looking forward to a morning of gardening. Good night.

Gyrogravitics

See The Rise and Fall of Gyro-Gravity by John G. Cramer.

It seems that Poul Anderson's gyrogravitics and James Blish's "spindizzy" arise out of the same set of observations and speculations about rotation, gravity and magnetism - and I cannot follow the technicalities. However, Blackett's predictions did not pan out and, even if they had done, they might have led to Anderson's control of gravity but there would have been no reason for them also to lead to Blish's faster-than-light drive. See Flying Mountains And Cities. Blish's They Shall Have Stars presents a keen sense of his characters experiencing conceptual and technological upheavals while anticipating consequent social transformations. However, Blish's prologue or prelude volume could be decoupled from the subsequent flying cities series and might instead presage something more like Anderson's terraformed asteroids. However, in any case, neither of these futures has come to be. Gravity remains uncontrolled.

Jupiter And Longevity

For the reason why James Blish's characters, unlike Poul Anderson's and Clifford Simak's, do not adapt human beings to live on Jupiter, see On Jupiter. And to reiterate:

"'We've sense enough - or humility enough, if you like that better - to know that we can't adapt men to a planet like Jupiter...'"

-James Blish, "Surface Tension" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 107-180 AT p. 109.

However, in the stories in question, Anderson and Simak had still been thinking of Jupiter merely as a bigger planet with a solid surface whereas Blish was working with the updated idea of a "gas giant," a large planet with a turbulent atmosphere merely densening but never solidifying all the way down to the eventual planetary core.

Sf writers discuss the same questions but give different answers:

Heinlein's Howard Families breed for longevity; 

Blish's characters say that this is impossible but develop antiagathic drugs;

Anderson has antisenescence in the Technic History, anti-aging treatment in the Time Patrol and three different kinds of immortality in other works.

Comparisons And Future Histories

We have compared James Blish's "Bridge":

first, with Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" because both are about exploration of Jupiter remotely controlled from Jupiter V;

secondly, with "Nothing Succeeds Like Failure," the first story collected in Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, because both are about the discovery of antigravity despite resistance from political bureaucracy.

See also:

Humor

Humor II

Humor III

"Bridge" is part of Blish's major future history series whereas Tales Of The Flying Mountains is in itself one of Anderson's eight future histories, which in turn reminds us of their diversity, e.g.:

the Maurai History, set almost entirely on Earth and linked to past history by time travel;

the Kith History, two versions, the second version a single long novel showing millennia of societal and civilizational change on Earth;

the Rustum History, eight stories focused on a single extrasolar colony planet although one other story about one other such planet is also set in this timeline.

This has given me an idea for a post on James Blish Appreciation. I will link to it from here when it is published.

Later: See Sweeney On Ganymede.

Politicians And Space

Politicians can:

(i) cut government spending on space technology because they want either to save money or to spend it on something else like welfare;

(ii) label all scientific research secret in case it has weapons applications and would benefit an enemy.

Both cuts and secrecy stifle research. (i) happens in Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains and (ii) in James Blish's Cities In Flight. However, in both cases, researchers develop antigravity despite the political restrictions.

Blish's scientific rationale is the little-known Locke Derivation followed by the Blacket-Dirac equations whereas one of Anderson's characters speaks more vaguely about:

"'...equations like those of a rotating force-field.'"

-Poul Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains (New York, 1971), p. 28.

When Senator Carter of Virginia expostulates against antigravity and says that he could reach Mars more easily by astral projection, we are reminded that all fiction is one and that Edgar Rice Burroughs preceded Anderson.

Flying Mountains And Cities

Two future history series with similar titles:

Tales Of The Flying Mountains by Poul Anderson

Cities In Flight by James Blish

Anderson's "mountains" are asteroids. In both series, a crackpot theory of gravity leads to antigravity. In ...Mountains, asteroids are terraformed and an inhabited asteroid is launched towards Proxima Centauri. In Cities..., cities are lifted from Earth and launched across space - but they also fly faster than light. The experimenters are:

"...astonished at the accompanying effects: the abolition of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald relationship inside the field, the intolerance of the field itself to matter outside its influence, and so on; not only at their occurring at all - the formula doesn't predict them - but at their order of magnitude."

-James Blish, They Shall Have Stars AT Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 7-129 AT BOOK THREE, p. 97.

"...the formula doesn't predict them..." So is it a deus ex machina by Blish when he suggests that the Blackett-Dirac equations could lead to a faster-than-light interstellar drive? Maybe I'll reread ...Mountains and check whether its gravitational theory connects with Blish's.

What better use of an sf blogger's time than to compare future histories by Anderson and Blish?

The Centrality Of Poul Anderson

Sometimes we focus on specific details in a single work by Poul Anderson, e.g., When They Sit Up. At other times, we seem not to focus on Anderson himself because we instead discuss, e.g., future histories in general, as in Narrators And Historians. However, from the perspective of this blog, Anderson is always at the centre. As a future historian, he is:

post-Wellsian and post-Stapledonian;

the fourth Campbell future historian, after Heinlein, Asimov and Blish.

But he also significantly extends all these traditions. Clifford Simak has been mentioned because his Jupiter story, "Desertion," bears some comparison with Jupiter stories by Blish and Anderson and because his City counts as a single-volume future history.

When discussing the future histories of Wells, Stapledon or Heinlein, Anderson is always important as not only succeeding but also surpassing all three! Mary Shelley initiated modern science fiction in 1818 with the question, "Would it be right to create a human being?" in her novel, Frankenstein, and Anderson both updated and re-presented this question in 2001 with his single-volume future history, Genesis. We discuss other authors, on this blog, in terms of their relationships to Anderson.

Following up on Narrators And Historians, a historiographer directly addresses his readers whereas an author who presents a fictionalized third person account of historical events steps aside to make way for the omniscient narrator (ON). Both of these literary processes occur in Anderson's Technic History.

Narrators And Historians

My copy of Clifford Simak's City ordered via eBay has yet to arrive by post although I have meanwhile reread the relevant story, "Desertion," on line. However, City bears another point of interest to which I will return. 

Who writes a future history series? - I mean apart from the author named on the cover. Do we imagine an historian or narrator living in a further future some time after the events recounted in the concluding instalment of the series? - someone who would be more specific than the omniscient narrator (ON) that:

is invisibly present in every third person narrative;

exists at no time or place;

expresses no opinions;

draws no attention to ON-self (there is no appropriate pronoun);

objectively recounts events, including experiences and thoughts of a viewpoint character;

is not to be identified with any character, not even with a hypothetical future historian whose name and other details remain unknown.

Such a historian would have a name, personal characteristics and opinions even if we never found out what they were whereas ON is an omnipresent, completely transparent, fictional device usually unnoticed because the reader's attention is entirely focused on what ON recounts.

So, apart from ON, is there a historical, spatiotemporally specific, narrator of a future history? Sometimes. yes. Sometimes, not. Sandra Miesel provides such a historian for Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Hloch of Stormgate Choth compiles and edits The Earth Book Of Stormgate but not the rest of Anderson's Technic History. But there are other historians in that series.

Philip Raven dreams Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come. One of the Last Men telepathically communicates Last And First Men to Olaf Stapledon although Stapledon thinks that he is writing speculative fiction.

The stories in City have individual introductions that bind them together and are written as from a later perspective which it will be interesting to reread so that is all for now, folks.

Again The Technic History (Plus THEY SHALL HAVE STARS)

interplanetary exploration

interstellar exploration

interstellar trade

interstellar imperialism

diverse interstellar civilizations

Five stages in a future history series that grew organically, the first and fifth stages each represented by only a single story with forty-one instalments including many novels between them. OK: I can never get over how good Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is, with The Earth Book Of Stormgate as its peak surpassing Robert Heinlein's The Green Hills Of Earth.

James Blish was my all time favourite sf writer before I really got into Poul Anderson whose output is so vast that it can take some time to get into him properly. A Dominic Flandry story read in a magazine and thought to be a one-off gives no hint of how much comes before and after.

The recent Jupiter Project got me into rereading James Blish's They Shall Have Stars for the first time in a long time which has enhanced my appreciation of this novel as the opening volume of a future history series - although not as vast as Anderson's. One major difference between these two authors is their outputs.

Future Freedoms

Interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom in American sf and, in several cases, is accompanied by escape from tyranny back on Earth. I could list titles but I think that we have been through them before:

Robert Heinlein's Howard Families escape persecution by hijacking a generation ship;

when SM Stirling's Draka conquer the Solar System, some Americans escape to found an extra-solar colony;

Poul Anderson's Technic History features the "Breakup" and, in another series, his extrasolar planet, Rustum, is colonized by ideological refugees;

the opening instalments of both of James Blish's future history series, Okies and pantropy, end with political refugees fleeing from the Solar System.

Six examples from four major sf authors. But this is wishful thinking. The bulk of humanity has to resist encroachments on its freedom here on Earth.

In a future history series, the opening instalment is a story complete in itself and the second story begins in a different time and place:

in the Technic History, the action moves from a Saturnian moon to an extrasolar planet;

Volume I of Blish's Cities In Flight ends with Senator Wagoner in his cell on the last day whereas Volume II opens centuries later with Crispin deFord waiting to watch the city of Scranton leave Earth (and, if we have read this series in publication order, then we already know deFord's fate);

Book One of Blish's The Seedling Stars ends with Sweeney on Ganymede whereas Book Two opens in a completely different milieu with Honath the Purse-Maker...

As James Blish once said, we grew up with science fiction...

References

Our parallel rereadings of four works set on Jupiter has carried us to some strange places. First, the four works in question are:

a non-series story by Poul Anderson;

one of the two opening instalments of James Blish's Cities In Flight;

an instalment of Clifford Simak's City;

ERB's last John Carter story.

Secondly, however, we have also referred to:

the opening story of Anderson's Technic History;

the closing story of his Psychotechnic History;

the opening and closing stories of Blish's The Seedling Stars;

CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown";

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy;

ERB's The Land That Time Forgot;

Anderson's The Devil's Game, Murder Bound and Mirkheim.

I think that that is the full list. In any case, it is all that I have time for tonight. Tomorrow, gym.

Some Relevant Passages In Works By James Blish

Even in James Blish's more accurate description of Jupiter as a gas giant planet, Helmuth finds life forms which resemble jellyfish floating through the atmosphere. Because Jupiter occupies four fifths of the sky of Jupiter V, the Bridge gang feel as if they are falling down onto the planet whereas, in Anderson's "Call Me Joe," Jupiter occupies a fifth of the sky of Jupiter V and, if there had been any significant gravity, Cornelius would have felt that the planet was falling onto him but instead he feels sucked upward. (Different sensations in different timelines.)

On Ganymede, an Adapted Man thinks:

"To an Earthman, nothing could have looked more desolate  - but no Earthman was looking at it."

-James Blish, "Seeding Program" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 5-66 AT p. 66.

In The Seedling Stars, the omniscient narrator spells out that the viewpoint character is living through a pathetic fallacy even though that character cannot realize this because he has never read any fiction!

There is bound to be a lot more that I have not noticed.

When They Sit Up

Some by now familiar features of Poul Anderson's prose texts:

descriptive passages addressing three or more of the senses;

pathetic fallacy, particularly focusing on the wind which can roar, shriek, moan or whisper as appropriate and once whips a villainous character immediately after a vile act;

comprehensive exploration of alternative answers to basic questions about consciousness, time, the future etc;

moments of realization when problem-solving heroes spot solutions but do not yet elucidate us.

In that last example, characters typically tense or stiffen. Twice in "Call Me Joe," they sit up:

"If he wasn't so tired...

"Joe sat up. Sleep drained from him as the realization entered. He wasn't tired, not to speak of. Anglesey was."

-"Call Me Joe," p. 26.

(That passage even uses the word, "realization.")

"'We speculate in a vacuum,' said Cornelius. 'Tomorrow, maybe I can tell you. Now I know nothing.'

"Viken sat up straight...

"'You know a good deal more than you've admitted,' said Viken. 'Don't you?'" (p. 28)

In the second case, Viken realizes that Cornelius has realized something.

On Jupiter

Hard to conceive of life out in the soupy maelstrom that was Jupiter, not knowing, of course, that through Jovian eyes it was no soupy maelstrom at all. 

The wind brushed against him with what seemed gentle fingers and he remembered with a start that by Earth standards the wind was a roaring gale, a two-hundred-mile an hour howler laden with deadly gases. Pleasant scents seeped into his body.

-clifford_d._simak_desertion (1).pdf

Poul Anderson's Edward Anglesey:

"'...I like it down there. I like being Joe...

"'What I can't put in[to my notes] is how Jupiter looks through a Jovian's infrared-seeing eyes....

"'...everything about Jupiter which is cold and poisonous and gloomy to us is right for Joe.'"

-"Call Me Joe," p. 24.

The psychologies of Anglesey and of James Blish's Robert Helmuth are (i) very different from each other and (ii) important to their stories.

Anglesey, crippled and incapacitated in his human body, is "'...strong!'" (ibid.) as Joe on Jupiter whereas Helmuth fears Jovian gravity. He anticipates and recurrently dreams that:

antigravity will be developed so that men can explore Jupiter up front;

he will feel obliged to volunteer;

the antigravity device will be a rush job, not working properly;

he will be crushed to death...

He wakes screaming from the nightmare.

A character in Blish's other future history series disposes of the idea of adapting men to live on Jupiter:

"'On worlds where only extreme modifications of the human form would make it suitable - for instance, a planet of the gas giant type - no seeding is attempted. The Council maintains that such worlds are the potential property of other races than the human, races whose psychotypes would not have to undergo radical change in order to survive there.'"

-James Blish, "Watershed" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 181-192 AT p. 190.

- as in Anderson's "The Chapter Ends" where human beings and gas giant dwellers divide the Galaxy between them.

It is all one multiverse.

Series And Non-Series Stories

It makes a difference whether an sf story is part of a series. In Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe," background details include a Psionics Corporation and a Federation Science Authority. These organizations do not need to be referred to or to be taken into account in any other work by Anderson since "Call Me Joe" is a one-off/non-series story. By contrast, James Blish's corresponding story of Jovian exploration, "Bridge," was specifically written to explain the discovery of the antigravity that is central to Blish's Cities In Flight future history. Antigravity becomes possible following experiments conducted in the higher gravitational field of Jupiter. In this respect, "Bridge" parallels "The Saturn Game," the opening story in Anderson's major future history series, the History of Technic Civilization. This story also recounts exploration in the outer Solar System before the commencement of interstellar travel and introduces a minor detail that gains significance later. There is a strong inclination on this blog to return to unravelling the intricacies of the Technic History. However, the current agenda remains to continue rereading "Call Me Joe" and "Bridge" which now will have to be some time tomorrow.

Clifford Simak's Jupiter, Part II

(Today, we have just seen a partial solar eclipse which seemed to me an anticlimax.)

We have reread to the end of Clifford Simak's "Desertion." Thus, of the four Jupiter narratives that were to be discussed, only those by Poul Anderson and James Blish remain to be reread to the end.

Like Anderson and Blish, Simak describes the Jovian environment as a perpetual maelstrom where the prevalent liquid is not water but ammonia. Like Anderson, Simak concludes his narrative with human minds in Jovian bodies happy to live on Jupiter. Unlike Anderson and Blish, Simak proposes not ice as a construction material but metal with increased electronic tension enclosed in tough quartz to protect it from the ammonia rain. 

Simak's characters possess  a technology that enables them to "convert" a human body into an organism able to live on another planet, then to re-convert that body back into human form! - so why are human explorers confined inside domes on the Jovian surface when they sound as if they are already Lords of Creation? Well, their conquest of Jupiter is delayed by the fact that those who are converted and released find their new existence so paradisal that they do not want to  return and do not even communicate this information to anyone else so that it seems to those back in the dome that the "converted" have been sent to their deaths. (In CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown," several men in succession are sent to the Moon and do not return but, in that case, the reason is deadly.)

Anderson's character on Jupiter has to struggle to survive. He does not find himself in a paradise. But Anderson and Simak are a hard and a soft sf writer, respectively. (Lewis also "soft.")