Two Moments Of Realization

For discussion of Andersonian moments of realization, see here.

In "Holmgang"
"Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of two.
"For a moment he lay there, rigid..."
-Poul Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), p. 160.

I did not know that about orbital velocity and that is the sort of technical detail that I usually read past without noticing it. This is the moment when the hero of this story realizes that he can fight his armed enemy on a small asteroid by flying right around the asteroid and attacking him from behind. Orbital velocity...

The view point character going rigid immediately after thinking about his situation is a sure sign to regular Anderson readers that the solution to the current problem has just been recognized but also that we will not be told what that solution is until we are shown its implementation.

In "Brake"
"Banning groaned. Per Jovem, it was too much to ask of a man!
"And then he stiffened.
"'What is it, sir?' Nielsen looked alarmed.
"'By Jupiter,' said Banning. 'Well, by Jupiter!'
"'What?'
"'Never mind. Come on.'" (p. 263)

This is quite explicit. They have a problem while they are approaching Jupiter. Banning will somehow use Jupiter to solve the problem but he will not tell his crewman, and therefore will not tell the reader either, how he is going to do it. And I do not remember, despite having read this story more than once before. Maybe posting a summary of the story's conclusion will help to fix it in memory.

Sagittarius

"Theoretically, one man can run a spaceship..."
-Poul Anderson, "Holmgang" IN Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), pp. 112-163 AT p. 123.

As in his Technic History, Anderson writes as if he is familiar with future spacecraft.

"...unemployed spacemen available for immediate hiring are found once in a Venusian snowfall." (ibid.)

A good future simile, although it should be "...a Venerian snowfall."

"...there was the hill he had left, stark against Sagittarius." (p. 162)

This is Sagittarius as seen not from Earth but from an asteroid during the Solar Union period of the Psychotechnic History.

"'The Union, both as a cultural and a semipolitical unit, is expanding inward toward Galactic center, Sagitarri...
"And where are we? On the Sagittari-ward frontier of the Union...'"
-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1978), Chapter II, p. 15.

"'You will go the Sagittarian frontier of the Stellar Union...'" (Chapter IV, p. 23)

This is Sagittarius as perceived by interstellar travelers during the Stellar Union period of the History.

"'You haven't seen starlight till you've been by Sagittarius.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 253-281 AT p. 262.

"'...there'll be Hulduvian colonies between Sol and Sagittarius...'" (p. 268)

This is Sagittarius as perceived by interstellar travelers in a much later period of the History when human civilization has moved from the Solar System to the Galactic center. Thus, successive references to Sagittarius show us how far humanity travels in this future history.

The Solar Union: Physics And Politics

The climax of Poul Anderson's "Holmgang" is a neat solution to a technical problem: how to fight an armed man on a small asteroid? Solution: use one of your air tanks to propel yourself right around the asteroid so that you can smash into his back. Similarly, "Brake" also builds towards the solution to a technical problem: how to decelerate a spaceship on a hyperbolic orbit and with insufficient reaction mass? Solution: jettison non-essentials and brake by skimming the Jovian atmosphere until the ship can float in the atmosphere and await rescue.

However, I am currently rereading these Psychotechnic History installments not for their hard sf but for their information on the political opposition to the Solar Union. "Holmgang" tells us that the Humanists have an asteroid base and plan a military uprising. Why?

A Humanist argues that:

three ideologically motivated World Wars ruined Earth;
therefore, populations emotionally reacted against ideology in favor of reason;
by applying reason, scientists produced goods, machines, space travel, new food sources, new cures for old diseases and a workable plan for socioeconomic unity;
however, this New Enlightenment has created new practical problems that it cannot solve;
these are mass unemployment on Earth and cultural resistance both from Asia and from the extra-planetary colonies;
the psychotechs are making enemies by responding oligarchically and unconstitutionally to these insoluble problems created by themselves.

Before we continue to discuss Solar Union politics, let me quote a speculative passage from The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 4:

"Seen from space, Ganymede was bleaker than Luna herself - seamed with mountains, pocked with craters, mottled light and dark over her sterile face." (p. 21)

This story was originally published in 1954. Now we have close up photos of Ganymede (see image). Anderson described it before we saw it.

Judgment Day And Valkyries

Religious ideas remain in language long after they have passed from belief. In Poul Anderson's "Holmgang," a spaceman, buried at Helmet Hill on the asteroid Achilles, is said to be waiting unchanged till Judgment Day. When two spacemen agree to "holmgang" combat on a small asteroid, one of them imagines "'Valkyries in spacesuits...'" (Cold Victory, p. 153)

Spiritualists say that each human being is an immortal soul that will survive his/her body. Some Biblical sects say that immortality can only be in a resurrected body. Orthodox Christianity combines these ideas so that there is both an immaterial hereafter immediately after physical death and a future resurrection of the body at Judgment Day. Valhalla was a cycle of fighting, dying, rising and feasting that would end at the Ragnarok.

References to these ideas remain in language even though many of us no longer entertain such notions.

"...Earth!"

"Man, but it was a long time since he'd been on Earth!"
-Poul Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), p. 119.

Anderson's character does not mention "The Green Hills of Earth" but could have done especially since this phrase was not original with Heinlein. The song is mentioned in a much later "high frontier" story by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. That story is in our future so its characters could have been quoting Heinlein.

The interplanetary period of Anderson's Psychotechnic History is like the "Green Hills of Earth" period of Heinlein's Future History transposed to a nearby timeline. Both fictitious histories have:

hard sf treatment of interplanetary flight;
Luna City;
a future Revolution on Earth;
an oppressive colonial regime overthrown on Venus;
colonized asteroids;
the peace guarded by monopolized nuclear weapons (the Patrol/the Guard);
an interstellar generation ship;
psychodynamics;
longevity;
off-stage Martians;
a later period of faster than light interstellar travel.

Heinlein, implausibly, has several other intelligent species within the Solar System but keeps them also off-stage so that the main impression generated is that of a realistic account of near future space travel by human beings. He sets several of his stories in Luna City, giving the future a daily life, as someone said, whereas Anderson concentrates more on the political conflicts leading to the Humanist Revolution and its aftermath.

Causes Of The Humanist Revolution

I argued here and here that mass technological unemployment would not suffice to explain a Revolution capable of overthrowing the utopian economy of the Solar Union. Probably when the Humanist conspirator comes on-stage in "Holmgang," he will explain his cause more fully but I have not reread that far yet. However, I remembered that The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1954) had included a relevant passage. In fact, this passage identifies three threads:

(i) "...a deep cultural resistance in a majority of Earth's population..." (Chapter 5, p. 49) to the scientific remaking of mankind. Such a remaking:

"...involved the scrapping of traditions which had existed since prehuman times. In many ways, it went against animal instinct..." (ibid.)

Traditions from prehuman times? I think that our oldest traditions go back a few thousand years at most. All human society goes against animal instinct. We neither fight nor flee but find other responses.

Continuing this point, Anderson says that "...peoples without the technological bias of the West..." (ibid.) were prepared to change so far and no further. This problem was exacerbated when Asia became the economic center.

(ii) "...the bulk of humanity simply was not fitted to absorb the new attitudes." (ibid.) But is this not point (i) in different words?

(iii) Mass unemployment.

On top of all this, the balance of military power shifted from centralized government to small groups when cheap energy sources for weapons became generally available. Thus, given motives for dissent, technology worked against the system. And exposure of Psychotechnic Institute malpractices fanned the flames.

Holmgang

"Holmgang" is like the "Green Hills of Earth" period of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

asteroid prospectors and miners are the last private enterprisers;

there are bases on the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter orbit;

ships leave the trailing group for the outer planets and the leading group for the inner System;

Achilles and Patroclus "...have a permanent boom town atmosphere..." (Cold Victory, p. 115);

Guardsmen visit the Last Chance bar on Achilles in threes;

some bars centrifuge for artificial gravity;

Johnny Malone from Luna City says that the whole System is getting too civilized except Venus;

spaceships have upgraded to the ion drive;

the Sirius, crewed by Malone and Bo Jonsson, carries cargo and passengers.

We recognize this as an old-fashioned story about the future. Unfamiliar word: "tommicker." (p. 118)

Opening Sentences

These are the opening two paragraphs, also the opening two sentences, of Poul Anderson's "Holmgang":

"The most dangerous is not the outlawed murderer, who only slays men, but the rebellious philosopher; for he destroys worlds.
"Darkness and the chill glitter of stars, Bo Jonsson crouched on a whirling speck of stone and waited for the man who was coming to kill him."
-Poul Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), p. 112.

Is the first sentence necessary? Or appropriate? Should the story not make its point so that the reader realizes it at the end without having to be told it, especially not at the beginning? Is the omniscient narrator moralizing instead of unobtrusively imparting fictional "facts"? Darkness and stars are what Jonsson sees but does he also reflect on slayers of men and destroyers of worlds? In fact, how many rebellious philosophers have destroyed worlds?

Ideas can become destructive if (a) they gain a mass following and (b) they generate conflict. But, on the basis of recent posts, I question whether conflictive ideas would gain a mass following in the utopian economy of the Solar Union. Instead, the conflicts described in "Quixote and the Windmill" would die out as new generations grew up accustomed to the changed social conditions - which, to them, would be not "changed" but normal, just as we accept democracy and the market whereas our ancestors accepted hierarchy and serfdom.

The Solar Union

In the incomplete three volume collection of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History series, are Sandra Miesel's interstitial passages consistent with Anderson's texts and is the future history internally consistent? In her Foreword to Volume II, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), Miesel paints a utopian picture:

peace;
plenty;
unsurpassed output;
automation compensating for depopulation;
demand after decades of want;
soaring economy;
solar power;
synthetic fuels;
energy-storing superdielectrics;
power-beaming satellites;
regreened Earth;
ecological awareness;
Pancosmic religion;
undersea settlements;
interplanetary colonization;
domed lunar, asteroidal and Ganymedean cities;
terraformed Mars and Venus;
the Order of Planetary Engineers;
human potential maximized by the Tighe Synthesis, "...an elaborate holistic conditioning system..." (p. 12);
the science of psychodynamics;
the Rostomily Brotherhood (Miesel uses the word "cloned");
Venus liberated from dictatorship in 2065;
a clan-based Venerian society with celebrated romantic folkways and experimental local autonomy;
a powerful, prestigious Psychotechnic Institute;
high technology triumphant;
universal benefits of the Second Industrial Revolution;
no hunger or homelessness;
work a privilege, no longer an obligation;
a common rigorous language, Basic;
the Solar Union space navy guarding colonies from Venus to the asteroid belt;
the New Enlightenment;
"But there were shadows..." (p. 13)

Why shadows? If everything is so good, then why does anything go bad? Is this a consistent picture? The Solar Union period of the History comprises three "social" and four "political" stories. (See here.) One "social" story tells us about mass technological unemployment. The four "political" stories inform us of political opposition to the Psychotechnic Institute. It is necessary to reread these works in order to assess the consistency and plausibility of the History.

Historical Processes

Poul Anderson wrote about historical processes:

in the past, e.g., 1307;

in the middle ages as they might have been if they had perpetuated themselves into the twentieth century, i.e., the alpha and beta timelines;

the future, e.g., the Psychotechnic History -

There are economic reasons to build bases on the Trojan asteroids where one bar has three ecdysiasts. One spaceman is from Luna City, a place name that we recognize from Robert Heinlein's Future History. One space transport company is called "Fireball," a name that we now recognize from Anderson's own much later Harvest Of Stars future history.

There are Lunarites, violent Venusian clansmen, stiffly correct Martians, asteroid rockhounds and mysterious Jovians. Earth has survived three World Wars but now has machines, automation, new food sources and socioeconomic planning that works at least for a while. However, there is also mass dislocation and alienation and fanatical conspirators plan the Humanist Revolution.

Thus, in Anderson's works, we read about historical processes whether in the past, the future or an alternative present.