To Become Like It

The Fleet Of Stars, 19.

"Always suspicious, the Selenarchs never found it reasonable that the cybercosm would withhold observations simply because they were enigmatic. If the great equation proved in need of amendment, what harm in that? Or...what promise, which the Teramind did not want humans to know of, lest they become like it?" (p. 237)

That concluding phrase is a covert Biblical reference: Genesis 3:22.

("...like one of us..." and some similar passages imply the polytheism that had preceded monotheism.)

Unlike at Alpha Centauri, the Lunarians in the outer Solar System have revived the title, "Selenarch," implying that they have never dropped their claim to the Moon. Political conflicts continue, just very slowly.

Early Space Travel?

In our childhoods - I refer to people of a certain age - , sf writers envisaged, barring a nuclear war, early space travel in the late twentieth century and routine interplanetary travel in the twenty-first century. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the first rocket to the Moon is in 1978 and the The Green Hills Of Earth stories are all set around 2000. Larry Niven's Known Space future history - a bit later than my childhood - presents interplanetary exploration in the last quarter of the twentieth century. 

In Poul Anderson's Maurai future history, the War of Judgment - a version of what we call World War III - delays space travel for centuries whereas, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Mars and Venus are colonized in the immediate aftermath of WWIII and, in the same author's Twilight World, it is mutants resulting from the radiation of World War III that go to Mars. Thus, after all, nuclear war and space travel were not necessarily incompatible. 

But what I am leading up to is: what has meanwhile happened on Earth Real? A later Anderson future history series has to acknowledge that:

"The human space endeavor came near dying soon after it was born."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 19, p. 234.

And it is a private enterprise that restarts it:

"...Fireball Enterprises kindled fresh vitality..." (ibid.)

Any future history always reflects the time in which it is written even if its opening instalment is set in a further future. 

In less than half an hour, I will watch TV news to find out whether Artemis II launched today.

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.