Texts And Contexts II

Poul Anderson's Gunnar Heim stories:

"Marque and Reprisal,"
"Arsenal Port" and
"Admiralty"

- can be read either collected as The Star Fox, in which case they have a sequel, the novel Fire Time, or scattered among NESFA's The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, in which case each story is in a different volume and Fire Time is not mentioned since it is not a short work.

Some fans might even prefer the latter reading experience, unexpectedly re-encountering Gunnar Heim after reading a considerable number of different kinds of works in between. Several other series, e.g.:

Time Patrol;
Wing Alak;
Flying Mountains;
the Rustum History -

- are also to be found in whole or in part among The Collected Short Works... My preference would be for each of the series to be collected as a unit and for any additional Short Works volumes to contain only non-series stories. However, the NESFA collections prompted me to reread, and also to re-post about, what I call the Star...Time series. While hoping for an eventual Complete Works of Poul Anderson, we can meanwhile derive considerable enjoyment from reading the many overlapping volumes that have been published so far.

Fifty Years Ago

Did I say this before? (I think I did.) I read Poul Anderson's first Gunnar Heim story, "Marque and Reprisal," when it was first published in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction in 1965. Little did I know that, fifty years later, I would discuss this story and its sequels on a worldwide computer network.

But I did imagine a worldwide computer network, not laptops but many large computers permanently linked to form something called the Central Computer or Cencom. I do not remember whether I got this terminology from an sf story or invented it but the idea of linking computers was around. We are living in one sf future, not the one we imagined with routine space travel but nevertheless an sf future. And maybe something is starting to happen in space rather belatedly despite Branson's problems?

Discussing Poul Anderson's works never ends. NESFA Vol 3 is in the post.

Familiarity And Novelty

Extraordinary. I was disappointed that the second NESFA collection of Poul Anderson's shorter works contained so many stories already familiar from previous collections and even from series that had been collected in full, including the first Gunnar Heim story about which I had already posted several times.

However, I reread "Marque and Reprisal" out of interest and found far more new things to say about it than I would have thought possible. Further, it has made me want to continue rereading and posting about that series so the next item on the agenda is The Star Fox, Part Two, "Arsenal Point," Chapter One. Each of the stories was divided into numbered sections which become full "Chapters" in book format. I originally thought that The Star Fox was a single narrative, not a trilogy.

Onward, spacefarers.

Thirteen

In Poul Anderson's "Marque and Reprisal," the World Federation Capitol is in Mexico City. We are told this only once so we could easily forget it.

The Aleriona representative answers thirteen questions on 3V and flaunts his knowledge that thirteen is regarded as an unlucky number on Earth. He mentions the thirteenth who betrayed or the thirteenth who was killed. He does not mention that the Knights Templar were suppressed on Friday October 13 1307 but we know this from Anderson's "Death and the Knight."

The French representative in the World Parliament makes a thirteen point speech. Can I summarize it?

1. The Peace Control Authority, vested with sole military power, must prevent aggressive acts and the individuals responsible must be tried by the World Court.

2. Earth is a sovereign state because it has authorized the space naval branch of the PCA to act outside the Solar System and has negotiated agreements with alien races.

3. Alerion has committed territorial aggression by attacking and occupying the humanly colonized planet, New Europe.

4. If Alerion is not a sovereign state, then the PCA must act against Aleriona banditry.

5. If Alerion is a state, then either (a) it is obliged to refrain from territorial aggression or (b) it is not so obliged because it is not a member of the Federation.

6. If (a), then Alerion is subject to military sanctions by the PCA. If (b), then the PCA must protect the interests both of individual human beings and of Federation member states.

7. In either case, there is now an automatic state of war between Alerion and the Federation.

8. Member states are obliged to assist the PCA.

9. There is a duty to provide armed assistance to the New European colonists although no member state may make or own nuclear weapons.

10. Individuals may acquire such weapons outside the Solar System.

11. A member state may authorize a private military expedition. The banning in 1856 of letters of marque and reprisal is binding on signatories to that treaty but these do not include the Federation, which is a sovereign state (point 2), or some of its members, like the USA.

12. The Federation can issue letters of marque and reprisal.

13. In accordance with 7, 8 and 9, France can and should issue letters of marque and reprisal in the name of the Federation and has done so.

Points 4, 7 and 13 are greeted with uproar.

At some stage, we must cease to argue about what needs to be done and begin to do it. Anderson illustrates this point dramatically. The privateer is almost out of the Solar System by the time that Parliament is informed about it.

Is the argument valid? I would say that France has a duty to argue in Parliament that the Federation should either deploy the PCA or issue a letter of marque, not that France has a duty to issue a letter in the name of the Federation, knowing that most (all but one?) member states disagree with this or at least have not yet voted on it!

However, the argument is an excellent device for doing what must be done in the circumstances. It is all too easy to read through the argument quickly, then to move right on to the action-adventure passages. Every part of Anderson's text deserves to be studied (there is no other word for it) with equal care and attention.

Double Climax

(This cover: words fail me.)

Poul Anderson's "Marque and Reprisal" climaxes with two different kinds of drama: a Parliamentary debate and an escape from the Solar System. It also links the two dramas. The debate must be delayed because the French representative in the World Parliament will announce that his country has issued letters of marque and reprisal and meanwhile the privateer ship is hastening to leave the System before the Federation realizes what is happening and tries to stop it.

Mach faster than light travel is not hyperspatial but nevertheless has the usual hyperspace requirement that the ship be far enough out of a gravity well before the drive is activated. As in some other such works, our heroes have an exceptionally well tuned drive, enabling them to escape while the pursuing Federation vessel dare not follow. The ship begins its voyage while the legalities are still being argued back in Parliament.

En route to the orbiting ship, Heim flies up through storm clouds into a blue sky. I once had a meditation session that felt exactly like that: from unhappiness to instant, unforced and genuine elation. I knew then that there was a place above the clouds, that I was in it, that I would soon be back down beneath the clouds and that that did not matter.

No Stone Unturned

Gunnar Heim, founder and head honcho of Heimdal Motors, is a no stone unturned kind of guy and it pays. Early during the Aleriona Crisis, he wangles a private interview with the Aleriona war leader. The conversation seems to go nowhere. However, it means that they have at least started to communicate and now know each other slightly.

This proves to be useful later when Heim kidnaps that very same Aleriona in order to persuade him to lean on the peace militants who have kidnapped Heim's own daughter! The Aleriona, Cynbe, is a no holds barred kind of guy. When he has been shown that it is in his interests to cooperate with Heim, he coerces the peace movement leader by threatening war! It is sickening to see the pacifist leader deferring to the manipulative alien when he has nothing but contempt for his fellow human being.

I often oppose war as a solution to inter- or intra-national problems but Anderson makes the point that it can be necessary.

"'It's so awful,' Lisa said. 'That there has to be war.'
"'There doesn't, pony,' Heim answered. 'In fact, that's what we're trying to prevent.'
"She regarded him in bewilderment." (NESFA collections, Volume 2, p. 426)

Prevention is by showing Alerion that Earth is strong, not weak, and, here again, Heim displays his talent for leaving no stone unturned. No national government can act independently of the Federation, where the peace party prevails. National military action is neither legal nor even possible because the Peace Control Authority monopolizes heavy weapons. However, no government can prevent a private individual from privateering. It can even be argued that, in some circumstances, this is legal! Preposterous argument? Sure, that is what lawyers are hired for.

Finally, from his time in the Deepspace Fleet, Heim knows where to buy nuclear weapons outside the Federation. I definitely disapprove of instruments of genocide but these nukes are to be used only against hostile spacecraft, not against planetary populations.

The Star Fox: Miscellania

A stylized Aleriona?

Heim sees his own reflection in "...an optex..." (NESFA collection 2, p. 417). What's one of them?

He lands his space boat at the Mojave Port. Isn't that where Branson is trying to get into space?

An Aleriona speaks:

"'...little enclaves are significanceless; and Alerion has ways to integrate them into civilization; ways slow, as you look upon time, ways subtle, ways quite, quite certain.'" (p. 401)

Creepy.

Gunnar Heim speaks:

"'...space really is big enough for everybody, as long as they respect each other's right to exist.'" (p. 427)

Much better. Alerion is an old, inflexible civilization. If it cannot coexist with a dynamic society, then it should not continue to exist.

Uthg-a-K'thaq

The USS Enterprise has a Scottish Engineer and a Vulcan Science Officer. The Star Fox II will have a Naqsan Chief Engineer because Gunnar Heim recruits Uthg-a-K'thaq, a distressed spaceman stranded in New York Welfare.

A Naqsan is like a tall, naked, chemosensor-tendrilled, three eyed, green, yellow spotted, two armed, swamp-smelling dolphin standing upright on two short legs, that is also a successful space merchant. (Human beings tend to dislike them.) Unfortunately, human beings and Naqsans will go to war in the sequel.

Aleriona and Naqsans play the same sorts of roles in Star...Time as Merseians and Ythrians do in the Technic History and, just as the Technic History features the quadrupedal Wodenites and Donarrians, Fire Time introduces an interesting race of quadrupeds. (See here.)

WORLDWEEK

Section 6 of Poul Anderson's "Marque and Reprisal" is six news items from WORLDWEEK:

31 October. Gunnar Heim has bought a starship from British Minerals and plans to search for new planets to colonize.

7 November. Senator Twyman issues a statement about negotiations with the Aleriona.

14 November. Peace militants attack and seriously injure Admiral Piet van Rinnekom.

21 November. Cynbe ru Taren of the Aleriona delegation answers questions on 3V.

28 November. The Aleriona Craze sweeps through upper-class teenagers and some in Welfare.

5 December. Gunnar's daughter, Lisa, disappears.

The sequel, Fire Time, set a generation later, has a 3V interview with Gunnar Heim. These are all good future historical touches, making us feel part of Federation society. The Technic History would have benefited from a few such news reports and 3V interviews. One character does mention that he has seen van Rijn on their equivalent of television.

A Series

The being with its face on its body (see here) is a Naqsan, not an Aleriona. (Several of these The Star Fox covers are downright weird.)

As I keep saying, a frequent scene in Anderson's works is a character with a problem suddenly realizing the solution but not yet articulating it. By contrast, Gunnar Heim suddenly realizes and immediately articulates:

"'I'd like to go out myself!' he shouted.
"'This would be piracy,' Coquelin sighed.
"'No...wait, wait, wait.' The thought flamed into being. Heim sprang to his feet. 'Privateers. Once upon a time there were privately owned warships.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Marque and Reprisal" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson (Framingham, MA, 2009), pp. 385-435 AT p. 405.

A space privateer is a perfect premise for an sf series. This story did become a series although nowhere near as long as it could have been. Anderson tells us how Heim's privateering began and how it ended but merely summarizes what happened between so there is potential for other authors to fill in this gap.

Aleriona

I cannot visualize but I can at least understand verbal descriptions of some fictional aliens, like Merseians or Puppeteers. Niven's and Pournelle's Moties are more difficult because they are asymmetrical. Ythrians are quite difficult and I cannot form a clear idea of Poul Anderson's Aleriona:

long legs;
forward-leaning body;
150 centimeters tall;
deep chest;
spare waist;
mobile counterbalancing tail;
sleek, silver, sparkling fur;
digitigrade feet;
three long toes;
gracious, gesturing arms;
slim neck;
furless head;
marble-hued face;
enormous eyes with long lashes and nictitating membranes;
arching brows;
small nose;
vividly red lips;
wide cheekbones;
narrow chin;
muliebrile features;
pointed ears;
a long golden mane extending down the back and half way down the tail.

Does that give you a coherent picture? Inhuman perfection, as we are told, or just an odd jumble of disparate features?

Literary Lineages Etc

Are Rudyard Kipling, Poul Anderson and SM Stirling a kind of literary lineage? Having recently compared Anderson's The Game Of Empire to Kipling's Kim, I will shortly read Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, to be discussed either on this blog or on the Science Fiction blog as appropriate. Of course, Stirling could be influenced by Kipling directly as well as, or instead of, via Anderson.

Returning to the present, it was unpredictable either that the second NESFA collection would include "Marque and Reprisal" or that this unexpected inclusion would generate further discussion of Gunnar Heim. Thus, the blog cannot possibly have any planned direction.

Continuing the summary from the previous post, the Aleriona artificial environment includes both a fountain and a bosket. Anderson cannot have expected his readers to understand every word that he used but did trust them to appreciate a vocabulary richer than usual in popular fiction. Over the course of nearly three years of blogging, I have learned to look out for:

words for which I need a dictionary;
uses of Latin;
moments when a character realizes without yet stating the solution to a problem;
equivalents of grass on extrasolar planets;
different means of faster than light travel;
the almost systematic application of alternative approaches to major themes like immortality, time travel, artificial intelligence and interstellar civilization.

In section 4 of "Marque and Reprisal," Gunnar Heim interviews another politician, the French minister for extraterrestrial affairs and chief representative in the World Parliament. That completes preliminary discussions. Heim will soon take action. Returning to a conversation listed in the previous post, I think that he is way too hard on his daughter.

The 3000th Post

This is the 3000th post on this blog.

The first third of Poul Anderson's The Star Fox was originally published as a discrete story called "Marque and Reprisal" so it is interesting to re-encounter it in that earlier format in the second NESFA collection of Anderson's shorter works. Gunnar Heim is restored to the status of a series character rather than the hero of a single novel.

In section 1, he interviews the man who has evidence of a governmental conspiracy of silence;

in section 2, he converses with his teenage daughter and with a politician who refuses to help him;

in section 3, he interviews one of the enemy alien Aleriona who cantillates.

Heim and Cynbe must use English although Heim knows a few words of the High Speech. While on Earth, the Aleriona need an artificial environment with a thin, dry atmosphere beneath simulated red dwarf star sunlight, surrounded by leaves, vines and writhing flowers. Its location must be kept secret because of the strength of feeling on Earth.

Readers familiar with Anderson's Technic History recognize that here is a different interstellar scenario full of rich details clearly differentiating the Aleriona from the Ythrians or Merseians.

Gunnar Heim

See here.

Gunnar Heim, an exemplary Poul Anderson hero:

was born to Norwegian parents on the extrasolar colony planet, Gea, Tau Ceti II;

grew up with alien Sindabans;

served in the Deepspace Fleet of the Earth Space Navy;

helped to put down the Hindu-German trouble on Lilith;

spent four months recuperating on New Europe;

 
fought the Aleriona off Achernar;

learned about the Aleriona two-phase control system from a captured ship;

left the Navy, became naturalized as an American and founded the Heimdal nuclear motor company;

lives in a suite on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco and employs domestic servants but drinks in the ghettos of the unemployable;

contributes to the Libertarian Party whose senior senator from California is majority leader of US representatives in the World Federation Parliament;

keeps contact with his Greenland Academy classmates, some now admirals;

is a widowed single parent;

heeds governmentally discounted evidence that human colonists are still alive on New Europe resisting Aleriona occupation;

decides to do something about it.

What a man!