Connections

The previous post directly linked The Merman's Children back to The Broken Sword which is one of Poul Anderson's five Norse fantasies:

The Broken Sword

Hrolf Kraki's Saga

The Demon Of Scattery

War Of The Gods

Mother Of Kings

The Merman's Children is one of three novels by Poul Anderson set in the fourteenth century:

Rogue Sword

The Merman's Children

The High Crusade

Sean M. Brooks found an unexpected connection between Rogue Sword and The High Crusade.

The five Norse novels are separated chronologically only by Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy:

The Golden Horn

The Road of the Sea Horse

The Sign of the Raven

- which is preceded by Poul and Karen Anderson's The King of Ys Tetralogy:

Roma Mater

Gallicenae

Dahut

The Dog and The Wolf

- which in turn is preceded only by Poul Anderson's three novels set B.C.:

Conan The Rebel

The Dancer From Atlantis

The Golden Slave

Every time that I try to summarize a part of Anderson's past fiction, I wind up summarizing all of it.

The End Of Faerie

The Merman's Children, Book Two.

Hauau, the were-seal, foresees that a mortal woman will bear him a son but will then marry a man who will kill both him and the son:

"'I'm na afeared. Sad for the bairn, aye. Yet in those days Faerie will be a last thin glimmer ere it fades oot fore'er. Thus I can believe 'tis a mercy for him; and mysel', I'll be at one wi' the waters.'" (III, p. 88)

Thus, Hauau anticipates the end of Faerie, which Poul Anderson had already predicted:

"As for those who were still alive at the end of [The Broken Sword], and the sword, and Faerie itself - which obviously no longer exists on Earth - that is another tale which may someday be told."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), FOREWORD, p. 12.

But it was not, despite Anderson's prolificity. However, The Merman's Children moves the inter-textual narrative much closer to that end. Most Mediterranean countries are inhospitable to merfolk. Only one, eastern, shore is otherwise. In Dalmatia:

"...Faerie was not wiped out as it had been in, say, Spain." (I, p. 75)

Vanimen's merfolk had tried to cross the Atlantic in their stolen ship but the (cursed?) storm has driven them the other way, towards the Mediterranean. Thus, Book Two at last links back to the Dalmatian Prologue.

Self-Rule

Sf writers both imagine other planets and describe the universe that we are in fact living in. In particular, Poul Anderson shows us how imaginary rational species - Ythrians, Diomedeans etc - have evolved and how their evolution has affected their rationality, social organization etc. 

Here is a different perspective:

"'There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair - or one trying to see over a whole country when he is on a level with it - like a female trying to beget young on herself.'"

-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 1-144 AT 16, p. 91.

beasts = animals

hnau = rational animals

eldila = angels

Maleldil = God

"These creatures..." = Terrestrials

We must learn how to rule ourselves. That learning is still in progress. We are not on a level with our surroundings but have raised ourselves above them. Rationality transcends animality which transcends unconscious organicism and inanimate matter. What did Lewis think that we would find on other planets? In fact, he was against us going there.  

Mars And Martians

(I have maligned CS Lewis but first let us follow through the logic of the current post.)

Wells, Lewis and Anderson: what a trio of different imaginative authors!

Mars and Martians can be detachable items. Thus, HG Wells' The War Of The Worlds and Poul Anderson's The War Of Two Worlds are about Martians but are set on Earth - because, in both cases, the Martians have invaded Earth, obviously. Anderson never set an entire novel on the surface of Mars although there are scenes on the planet in a few of his works. Readers are invited to remember which. 

When Heinlein or Anderson wrote about Martians, it must still have been scientifically possible that Martians existed? - although Isaac Asimov acknowledged in The Early Asimov that Martians, Venerians and inhabitants of other Solar planets remained a convention in sf after they had ceased to be feasible. So much has been learned so recently with probes. 

Lewis, writing Out Of The Silent Planet before World War II - thus, in a very different era - does a very good job of explaining why Mars, which had been fertile a long time ago, appears inhospitable when observed by Terrestrial astronomers although air, water and life still persist within deep crevasses - the canali. Similarly, Lewis' oceanic Venus was no more counterfactual at the time of writing than versions of the planet written by Heinlein or Anderson.

So I was wrong to put Lewis in the same category as Bradbury.

Words

Verbal

Homer worked only with spoken words. Authors of prose fiction work only with written words.

Audiovisual

Oral narrative became drama with the addition of extra speakers and actions. Film replaces stage sets with locations.

Visual-Verbal

Representational art becomes sequential art story-telling with the addition of extra pictures, captions and speech balloons.

Nowadays, two main creative groups work only with words: poets whose works are meant to be heard or read and authors of prose fiction which is meant to be read.

The paradox that I find is that Poul Anderson in particular vividly describes natural phenomena so that his readers should be able to imagine the colours of a sunset, the brilliance of the Milky Way etc. One problem with this is that some of us, maybe only a very few, lack any ability to visualize. The more basic question is whether the prose author is trying to do with words alone what can only really be done by pictorial art or on film.

Exotic Settings

The Merman's Children.

When Vanimen kills a watchman in order to steal his ship, the dying watchman calls on God to curse and St. Michael to avenge. When Vanimen and his people sail across the Atlantic, a freak storm batters the stolen ship. Might the curse have caused the storm? Vanimen thinks so and so should we because supernatural agencies are a premise of this fantasy novel.

We appreciate exotic settings in imaginative fiction. Thus, concurrently in my present reading:

the mid-Atlanic as explored by Poul Anderson's merfolk;

the version of Mars, called Malacandra, in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy;

Larry Niven's Smoke Ring;

Neil Gaiman's continuation of Alan Moore's Miracleman series.

The Smoke Ring is an environment with a breathable atmosphere but no ground underfoot.

Lewis, like Ray Bradbury, presents an unscientific, humanly habitable, Mars. Anderson presents several races of Martians but always on versions of the planet that were scientifically accurate at the time of writing. What are we to make of unscientific Marses? We can only conclude that they exist in parallel universes. (Bradbury offends, in my opinion, by stating that his Mars is cold by night but hot by day! See Hard And Soft SF II.)

Gaiman's graphic novel makes us want to see visual adaptations of the other works mentioned here. 

The Nets Of Ran

The Merman's Children, Book Two, I.

Fiction is about life and death, our lives and deaths.

"No matter how long a life you might win for yourself, who in the end escaped the nets of Ran?" (p. 72)

Drowned sailor are caught in the nets of Ran. Everyone has an appointment in Samara.

This reflection is relevant to works by two of Poul Anderson's colleagues, James Blish and Robert Heinlein.

Blish's Okies have anti-agathics which prevent death by disease or old age but Blish wants to make the point that even they must die sooner or later so he shows them surviving until the end of the universe which, for fictional purposes, he brings closer to the present than expected. Time triumphs.

By contrast, the implication of Heinlein's Methuselah's Children is that Lazarus Long, a mutant, will survive indefinitely. Neil Gaiman's Hob Gadling manages this as well but that is in a work of fantasy.

Anderson's mutant "immortals" in The Boat Of A Million Years agree to rendezvous after a million years but how many of them will survive that long?

Wind And Waves

The Merman's Children, Book Two, I.

Having embarked on Book Two, we must now specify that we are in that Book because the chapter numbers recommence from I.

The merfolk have stolen a ship named Pretiosissimus Sanguis. Authors test our knowledge of Latin, some more than others.

Sail rattles, hull creaks, yaws, rolls and pitches, spray sheets, passengers jostle and cry out, waters crest, wind spills, hoots, shrills, strains, smites and strikes, rain walks, a cloud cavern gapes, lightning flares and thunder tones. We are in our elements.

The previous post listed three multiverses. As we have noted before, Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End is comparable to Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix. However, Worlds' End connects a multi-authored multiverse.

We want to see Anderson's works adapted not only to screen but also into the graphic medium commonly called comic strips where we would not only read but also see Pretiosissimus Sanguis amid wind and waves.

Three Multiverses

See Averorn. 

We compared three place-names:

Averorn

Meldilorn

Tanelorn

Each of these three authors:

Poul Anderson

CS Lewis

Michael Moorcock

- created a fictional multiverse.

Anderson's multiverse has a common point in the Old Phoenix. 

Lewis' multiverse includes the world of Narnia, the Wood Between The Worlds and Othertime.

Moorcock's Multiverse incorporates his several series.

All are united by creative imagination.

Mermen And Ythrians

The Merman's Children, IX.

Every part of a dead merman returns to nature where it wanders widely at one with the world. His spirit goes into sunlight, spindrift and sea-surge, his flesh into fleetness of fish and fowl, his bone and blood-salt back to the Bearer. I am paraphrasing a song of farewell that ends:

"The sky take you.

"The sea take you.

"And we will remember you in the wind." (p. 60)

At an Ythrian funeral, a Wyvan speaks the words of the New Faith which end:

"'Go hence now, that which [God's] talents left, be water and leaves, arise in the wind; and spirit, be always remembered."

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT X, p. 559.

Two intelligent species on two planets in two timelines in one author's imagination.