Twenty Strong Women Characters In Poul Anderson's Works

Betty Riefenstahl

Coya Conyon

Tabitha Falkayn

Persis d'Io

Djana

Aline Chang-Lei

Luang

Kit Kittredge

Ella McIntyre

Kathryn McCormac

Tatiana Thane

Fraina of Jubilee

Miriam Abrams

Diana Crowfeather

Graydal

Dagny

Yasmin

Evalyth Sairn

Janne Floris

Wanda Tamberly

As usually happens, I am finding that there are more than I had bargained for and I do not want to go and look up names at this time of night. However, I have just found several on the blog instead of going upstairs to check future history volumes.

Contrast James Bond's attitude:

"These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men."

-Casino Royale, CHAPTER 15, p. 105.

(I said that it was difficult to choose between cover images so here is another.)

It is worse in Goldfinger: homosexuality results from giving women the vote.

Some More Fictive Discussion

"A Man To My Wounding."

Next, the first person narrator and a ten-year-old shoeshine boy discuss the assassination system - so it is still being discussed, not yet demonstrated. The narrator, although he does not tell the boy this, is a field agent or trigger man for the Bureau of National Protection and the boy gets some of his ideas about how the BNP operates from a TV character called Secretive Operative Dan Steelman.

Fleming tried to develop Bond for TV and I should have commended his appeal to three bodily senses when I quoted the opening sentence of Casino Royale here. In fact, it is late enough to return to that novel now so we might get some more from the BNP over breakfast tomoz. That is an unfortunate set of initials in Britain although googling discloses that it can have other meanings as can many TLA's.

Poul Anderson's short stories are systematic logical developments of alternative sf ideas. Comprehensive though he was, Anderson did not cover every possibility. SM Stirling imagined the slave-owning mentality and ideology surviving through the present and into the future. Dystopias warn us what to avoid. Sf, covering every option, should also present utopias.

Rationalization

An author can address an issue either in an article or in a work of fiction. Articles discuss; fiction dramatizes. An author can also express a viewpoint either directly in nonfiction or indirectly in fiction. Both characters and readers hold viewpoints and discuss issues. Hence, blog comboxes.

The broadcast address heard by the first person narrator of "A Man To My Wounding" acknowledges that MAD is mad but also (literally) rationalizes violence. I try to avoid lengthy quotations but sometimes a text is so dense and compact that selection is difficult. The address includes the following proposition:

"'At the same time, force remains the ultima ratio.'" (p. 189)

Here is a dictionary definition:

"Ultima ratio" means the final argument or last resort, often implying the use of force when all other measures fail."

-Merriam-Webster.

It was the use of "ratio" that made me describe this address as a "rationalization." The passage continues:

"'It is no use to preach that killing is wrong, that human life is infinitely valuable, and so on. I'm afraid that in point of blunt, regrettable fact, human life has always been a rather cheap commodity. From a man defending his wife against a homicidal maniac, on to the most complex international problems, issues are bound to arise occasionally which cannot be resolved. If these issues are too important to ignore, men will then fight.

"'The need of the world today is, therefore, not to plan grandiose renunciations of violence.'" (ibid.)

Solutions

In Poul Anderson's "Kings Who Die," war is still waged but beyond Earth and Moon.

In his "License," crime is legalized.

In this story, political leaders are assassinated.

My point, however, is that the broadcast address, which fills more than a page, reads too much like an article and not enough like a fictional dialogue in which a character expresses his viewpoint. The narrator approves of what he hears, thus reinforcing the message. That message is reasonable but is this how to present it?

I remember a British children's TV series with a lot of sword fights. The theme song ended:

"For life and love and happiness are well worth fighting for.

"They're well worth fighting for!"

They are but this was a blatant rationalization of a series that was all about fighting and not about life, love or happiness!

A Man To My Wounding II

Poul Anderson, "A Man To My Wounding" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, August 1983), pp. 187-209.

See also:

A Man To My Wounding.

Robert Crane's Solution

The opening phrase is also a Biblical reference:

"His names were legion..." (p. 187)

Here is another story where war has become too destructive so alternative forms of violence have had to be found. In an inept narrative device, particularly for Anderson, the first person narrator, apparently an assassin waiting to make a hit although we will have to read on to be sure of what is happening, listens to a broadcast address by a University president which explains the background.

This speaker summarizes some military history:

limited conflicts between the Peace of Westphalia and the French Revolution;

relative chivalry in the post-Napoleonic nineteenth century;

trench warfare in WWI;

indiscriminate aerial bombardments in WWII;

atomic WWIII;

current assassinations of political leaders.

There are Libertarian and Enterprise political parties. This story is extremely condensed and is getting to be too much for this late at night but we have made a start. 

High IQ Unnecessary?

"Backwardness."

Is it credible that a high average IQ is unnecessary for social progress because:

"The most fundamental advances, fire- and tool-making language and clothing and social organization, were made by apish dim-bulbs. It simply took a long time between discoveries.

"Given a million years, much can happen. Newton founded modern physics in one lifespan. A hundred less talented men, over a thousand-year period, could slowly and painfully have accomplished the same thing...

"It is only some freak of mutation which has made the Earthman so intelligent; he never actually needed all that brain." (p. 166)?

Could less talented men have accomplished the same over longer time? Are sudden intuitions, inspirations, insights and illuminations not necessary to shift paradigms? A quantitatively lower IQ would be incapable of initiating qualitative transformations of understanding.

Sean commented here that the low-IQ Galactics seem to assume that their technology, once in place, would continue to run indefinitely. Higher alertness and intelligence are necessary to cope with breakdowns, diminution of resources, the unexpected etc. We have to run as fast as we can just to stay where we are. Our behavioural adaptability and versatility in response to environmental changes made human beings intelligent and also made some individuals above-average geniuses.

"Backwardness": Summary

 

"Backwardness."

pp. 154-156: A conman sees a group of Galactics on a New York street.

pp. 156-159: The Secretary-General of the United Nations converses with the Galactic spaceship captain and learns that the Federation exterminates human races that are not eligible for membership.

pp. 160-162: The conman befriends the Galactics.

pp. 162-164: The Cardinal Archbishop of New York converse with the Galactic quartermaster who is the "chaplain" insofar as he is the one that kills animals to feed the gods - although, while he is a guest of the Cardinal, he is more interested in watching TV.

pp. 164-166: the conman cons his group of Galactics.

A short story that makes its point.

Superiority Or Simplicity?

"Backwardness."

I got some details wrong working just from memory, of course. This Galactic Federation comprises fifty million self-sufficient terrestroid planets.

"'A board of experts with a computer...'" (p. 158)

- handles any problems or complaints, charging for its services rather than collecting taxes, detects vibrations from any new star drive and sends a mission like the one that has recently arrived in the Solar System where a newly invented faster-than-light engine was being tested. If a newly discovered human race still wages wars, then a police ship blows:

"'...every planet in this system to smithereens.'" (p. 159)

Otherwise, the new race joins the Federation, borrows up to date machinery to start its own factories and can then participate in interstellar trade:

"'The more planets, the better for us.'" (p. 158)

Does such a simple, straightforward system signify superiority or something sinister?

Late-Night Other Reading, Always Relevant

(It is hard to choose between cover images.)

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it."

-Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (London, 1965), CHAPTER 1, p. 7.

This is the opening paragraph of its author's first novel. The opening sentence of the second paragraph marks the first appearance of a certain central character:

"James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired." (ibid.)

My point here is that, in this and in many subsequent passages, Fleming writes autobiographically. He has experienced the scent, smoke, sweat and soul-erosion, the nausea, greed, fear and nervous tension. He merely has to commit them to paper.

By contrast, Poul Anderson's description of Dominic Flandry's visit to the Crystal Moon cannot be based on experience! Instead, it is an exercise in its author's vivid creative imagination and we appreciate it as such while also, in a different mood, enjoying Fleming's experiential account.

The TV news is on.

Speculations And "Backwardness"

The word from Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop:

Do major powers have blackmail material on Western political leaders?

What will the world be like a week from now? 

We lack a Time Machine but can wait. This works. Born in 1949, I now know what is happening in 2026. But how much of what is happening now is hidden from us? If blackmail works, then we won't know.

Poul Anderson, "Backwardness" IN Anderson, Kinship With The Stars (New York, 1991), pp. 154-166.

Having mentioned this story, let's reread it.

It is set at a time when there is a Greenland Resort and a Luna City. Regular sf readers have learned to deduce: the future but probably the near future; interplanetary travel but not yet human interstellar travel unless of course we are about to be told otherwise. 

Because the only point of this particular story is to make an observation about how much or how little intelligence is necessary for human evolution, Anderson makes a simplistic and entirely implausible story assumption:

"'Same plants grow on every Earth-like planet, just like the same people and animals. Not much difference...'" (p. 157)

A Terrestrial, in this case the Secretary General of the United Nations, automatically asks, "'Why?'" (ibid.) adding, "'...it can't be coincidence!'" (ibid.)

- whereas the captain of a Galactic spaceship is completely uncurious:

"'I don't know. I'm just a practical spaceman. Never worried about it.'" (ibid.)

How "practical" is it for a spaceman not to wonder about a question like that? Maybe on some cosmic scale this can be coincidence but, if so, then that is something that we urgently need to learn about! But already, in Captain Hurdgo's cheerful indifference, we approach the crux of the story. If his spaceship engine works, then that is all that concerns him... His men - and they are "men" - do not make enquiries in Terrestrial laboratories, libraries or museums but buy junk jewelry in Macy's...

I have not drunk alcohol - at least not regularly or in any large amount - for decades but Andrea (with my consent) put brandy in my coffee. I suddenly felt very tired and this might be my first and last post for today but I must watch some TV news at 10:00 pm. 

Which is stranger: fact or fiction?

Short Stories And Collections

A very large number of short stories have been republished in many collections with overlapping contents. It is possible to recognize a title while remembering nothing of the story or to remember a story while forgetting its title. I had to search this blog to find the title, "Backwardness." I thought that I had not reread "Among Thieves," which is in Conflict, recently but was mistaken. I had reread it in Strangers From Earth. The title, "Among Thieves," does not seem appropriate to this story and suggests instead the theme of "License." We will continue with collections despite their confusions. There are two stories left in Conflict, having concluded "Turning Point" and eliminated "Among Thieves," but regular blog readers know what I am going to say at this time of night.

Good night as long as it is not the Long Night.

Resolution And Transcendence

"Turning Point." 

The solution that is adopted is to disperse the Jorillians among scattered human societies where they will give a lead, scientifically, socially etc, and thus will advance human civilization but not build a Jorillian civilization. I think that this will work but will also go beyond itself. The Jorillians are canny enough to realize what has happened to them/been done to them and therefore will respond to that. Some or all of them will reestablish contact, then reconvene and either return to Joril or find somewhere else suitable. There they will be able to make scientific discoveries and to create new technologies unhindered by less intelligent humanity. If such a move were to provoke any hostility from human beings, then they would withdraw further. There is a lot of space out there as we were shown when the McCormac rebels fled outside known space in the Technic History.

Zen monks guide lay meditation groups but, if they were ostracized or persecuted, then they would withdraw and continue their own practice elsewhere, a good analogy for the Jorillians.

Every SF Premise

Poul Anderson gives the impression that he systematically considers every possible sf premise. Thus:

humanoid aliens that are many times more intelligent than us;

humanoid aliens that are many times less intelligent than us (title?);

militarily superior humanoid aliens who do not conquer Earth militarily but sell their military services to the highest bidder among Terrestrial governments and thus conquer Earth economically;

aliens whose psychic powers and occult knowledge exceed ours;

humanoid aliens who meddle in Terrestrial affairs but only cause a deterioration in the course of events;

a sudden increase in human intelligence;

the first humanoid robot is unemployed;

organisms can be immortal only if they are sheltered from all radiation, deep underground.

Nothing turns out as expected?

Superiority

Poul Anderson's "Wings of Victory" and "Turning Point" are spaceship stories. One criterion for such a categorization is that they could be adapted as episodes of Star Trek although, of course, they are better as they are.

In "Turning Point," the problem - at least it is perceived as such - is a humanoid planetary population whose every member from the youngest to the oldest is many times more intelligent than Einstein or even than whichever individual currently possesses the highest IQ on Earth. 

Having rapidly learned technology from humanity, these Jorillians can be expected to build an interstellar civilization that we will neither understand nor be able to participate in. I would say let them get on with it but the human characters believe that such a development would demoralize mankind. I have been told that, in Battlestar Galactica, parts of the galaxy are inhabited, or at least used, by vastly advanced beings whom the regular characters simply avoid. Peaceful coexistence seems perfectly possible. Human beings used to believe that they shared their Terrestrial and cosmic environments with superior beings. Maybe in future they can live with that as a fact?

Familiar Andersonian touches -

Biblical quotation: "'...what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'" (p. 278)

A dramatic pause in a conversation is punctuated or underlined by the wind:

"There was a stillness. I heard the forest sough in the night around us." (p. 279)

The night signifies: no answer yet.

A problem is solved by a sudden moment of realization:

"Haraszthy stiffened. He sat like stone for an entire minute before he raised his face and whooped aloud.

"'Why not?'" (p. 282)

Four stages: stiffening; stillness; whooping; solution revealed later.

Possible solutions: Exterminate or quarantine the Jorillians? Something else?

On Joril

 

The Quest For The Perfect Planet by WE Johns was a juvenile sf novel about an attempt to find an extrasolar planet with an environment that would be perfect for human beings to colonize. Surely impossible?

In Poul Anderson's "Turning Point," a survey ship from Earth finds the planet Joril:

"...with more water than Earth, it offered a mild climate everywhere. The biochemistry was so like our own that we could eat native foods, and there didn't seem to be any germs that UX=2 couldn't handle. Seas, forests, meadows made us feel right at home..." (p. 268)

UX=2?

Eat native foods? Surely impossible when those foods are end products of an entirely separate evolution? Anderson usually writes about incomers at least needing dietary supplements.

A five-man gravboat team comprises:

Jacques Lejeune, pilot;

the first person narrator, unnamed as yet, engineer;

Commander Ernest Baldinger of the Solar Peace Authority Space Force, Federal militechnic representative;

Walter Vaughan, Federal civil government representative;

Don Haraszthy, Trader agent -

- all skilled planetographers like our Adzel on whom be peace in his alternative timeline.

That gives us some idea of the political setup and is as much as I am going to write over toast and coffee this morning before going out to gym. Zen group this evening and Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop tomoz.

Ad astra.

Addendum: The following page names the narrator as Cathcart.

Some Turning Points

Poul Anderson, "Turning Point" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, 1983), pp.267-284.

In the Acknowledgements:

"Turning Point," Worlds of If, copyright 1963 by Digest Production Corporation.

On the Contents page:

The Turning Point         267

On p. 267:

TURNING POINT

At the head of the even-numbered pages, 268-284:

The Turning Point

On the opening page, the first person narrator quotes:

"The die is cast"

"In this sign conquer"

"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident"

"The Italian navigator has landed in the New World" (This was a surprise.)

"Dear God, the thing works!" (I can't find this.)

That opening passage is sufficient to determine that we will consider this story next.

The narrator reminds us that:

"...every planet is a complete world!" (p. 267) How many Anderson characters say that? If I had known that the question was going to come up, I would have counted.

He was on a ship that was surveying a planet that had been noted by the Traders - or maybe by another group called "...the Federals." (p. 267) All will be explained, of course. The crew had been surveying for a year and were "...jaded." (ibid.) This reminds us of Poul Anderson's Grand Survey ship, the Olga, and we have encountered interstellar Traders often enough before, of course.

It is good to know where we are going next.

All Of Poul Anderson's Future Histories

See Poul Anderson's Future Histories.

Maurai: post-nuclear-war Earth

Flying Mountains: asteroid colonization

Rustum: extra-solar colonization

Kith: interstellar trade

These four series sound like successive stages of a single sequence. Indeed, the asterites (asteroidal colonials) begin extra-solar colonization at the end of Tales Of The Flying Mountains. But it is not Rustum that they set out to colonize. These are four alternative timelines. However, a single future history can incorporate a Terrestrial future, staged extraterrestrial colonization and inter-systemic contact/communication/commerce. Thus, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

post-nuclear-war Earth

colonization of Mars and Venus

colonization of extra-solar planets, including Nerthus

the Stellar Union and its Coordination Service

Technic History:

The Chaos on Earth (off-stage)

exploration of the Solar System

the Grand Survey of extra-solar planets

the Solar Commonwealth, the Polesotechnic League and their successors

The Psychotechnic and Technic Histories demonstrate two ways to construct a future history series.

Psychotechnic: Follow Heinlein by compiling a future history time chart, then fit a series of stories into successive periods of the chart.

Technic: Link two previously independent series, then explain what happened between them. Why does Technic civilization have an early period of commercial expansion and a later period of imperial decline?

The two remaining future histories:

Harvest Of Stars: human-AI interaction.

Genesis: post-human AI.

These also sound like successive stages although they are alternative histories but they present ideas that could be combined with the other ingredients into one comprehensive future history series. 

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

We have learned that:

futuristic sf becomes dated but -

the future does not turn out as expected. 

Thus, after the first Moon landing, many of us expected a period of regular, routine interplanetary travel with bases and tourism on the Moon and flights to Mars. In that case, a lot of interplanetary sf would have become dated very quickly but it hasn't done. Well, the habitable Venus with oceans or swamps and jungles and Heinlein's frog-like Venerians has gone. But lunar bases have not happened yet and are still taking a long time to happen. Is our Musk like Heinlein's Harriman or Anderson's Guthrie? Will time tell?

Whatever happens, it will not not be as anyone had expected. (I say this also about a hereafter in the extremely unlikely event that there is one.)

Our entire supply of bags of crisps, chocolate bars and glowsticks was not enough. Twice the amount needed for next year.

Tomorrow, I will be away from home for most of the day and might not post. Next week, we might return to rereading Poul Anderson's collections but let's see how that pans out.

With the Time Traveller, into futurity -

Diversity And Hallowe'en

We anticipate the diversity of Poul Anderson's Terran Empire - although I do not really expect anything like that interstellar civilization to come to pass. (Are FTL and multiple extraterrestrials going to happen?) My recent and current inter-faith dialogues comprise those with:

a woman Methodist minister last weekend;

a Muslim layman today;

Soto Zen Buddhist monks tomorrow;

Fortuna-devotee, Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop, this Tuesday.

We are well prepared for Hallowe'en visitors. A lit pumpkin head outside the front door invites them to call. Each will receive a packet of crisps, a bar of chocolate and a glow-stick/bracelet. Anything not handed out will be kept for Christmas. Three young Asian boys have just called. I want to write one more post after this one, then get back to rereading Ian Fleming who is an extremely underrated good writer. He needs a new series of films based exactly on what he wrote - just as Poul Anderson needs a first-time-ever series of films based on exactly what he wrote. 

Graphic adaptations of Time Patrol and "Flight to Forever" could be visually spectacular.

Another three at the door. I also have a journal of current political analysis to read. Let me try to wind up this post now.

Different Directions In Hypertime

When our consciousness has expanded to encompass Poul Anderson's Technic History in its entirety, it can continue to expand in perhaps three directions. We need a multi-dimensional mega-verse to incorporate everything. 

(i) Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse fills four novels and two short stories and connects with the Technic History to the extent that Nicholas van Rijn from the Polesotechnic League period of that future history visits the Old Phoenix, the inter-universal inn, in one of those two short stories. The Old Phoenix also interacts with Robert Heinlein's Future History, with William Shakespeare's major plays, with other works of fiction and literature and with much of the history of our timeline.

(ii) The Technic History, albeit important, is only one Andersonian future history. These alternative fictional histories address contradictory theoretical possibilities. Thus:

there is faster-than-light interstellar travel - two different versions of "hyperspace" - only in the Psychotechnic and Technic Histories;

there is a near-future nuclear war only in the Psychotechnic and Maurai Histories;

intelligent life is commonplace in the Technic History whereas any organic life is rare in Genesis;

in Genesis, only post-organic intelligences are able to traverse interstellar distances;

and so on.

(iii) The Maurai History provides one of the future periods visited by time travellers in Anderson's There Will Be Time, thus linking this future history to one of the author's several, mutually incompatible, time travel scenarios.

Thus, a direct link between the Technic History and the Time Patrol, no, but a direct link between the Maurai Federation and mutant time travellers, yes.

And I advise everyone to read or reread all that.

The Whole Technic History

Recent posts have shown (no surprise) that Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization divides into two main parts and that each of these parts can be analyzed almost, although not completely, on a tripartite basis. Thus:

(i) League

The People Of The Wind, in the early Imperial period

Earth Book

(ii) Young, Captain and Admiral Flandry in the later Imperial period.

The Earth Book covers some, although not all, of a pre-League period and some, although not all, of an intermediate period. Flandry has his contemporaries and his successors. Indeed, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, is Flandry's Legacy, covering both his later life and three post-Imperial periods:

Long Night;

Allied Planets;

Commonalty.

And now we have referred, however briefly or tangentially, to the entire contents of the Technic History.

Some might call this obsession but I call it fascination. (We alternate between referring to Saga and pre-Saga reading orders.)