Texts And Contexts

Each story can be considered from more than one angle. For example, I regard "The Saturn Game" and "The Problem of Pain" as the first and third stories in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization and "The Master Key" as a later story in that same History. However, in the retrospective collection, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), these stories are presented among others and in a different order:

"The Saturn Game" reflects Anderson's life-long interest in astronomy and, in particular, the fact that Voyager One was about to scan Iapetus shortly before this story, set on that Saturnian moon, was due to be published;

"The Master Key" is included because "This book would be incomplete without a van Rijn yarn..." (p. 153);

"The Problem of Pain" is included to showcase the Ythrians, a fictional species that had resulted from a suggestion made by John W Campbell.

When introducing "The Problem of Pain" in Going For Infinity, Anderson does at last mention that:

he had been writing stories about Flandry of the Terran Empire;

he had realized that van Rijn could have lived centuries before Flandry;

this generated further stories about how the libertarianism of the earlier period had devolved into the decadence of the later period and about what came after that;

in this history, human beings and Ythrians jointly colonized a planet which some of them explore in "The Problem of Pain."

Thus, much of the History is briefly summarized but almost as an afterthought and the involvement of "The Saturn Game" is not mentioned, nor is Flandry included in this volume. These three stories could also be reprinted in anthologies covering, respectively:

exploration of the Solar System;
alien species;
treatment of theological issues in sf.

Treacherous Behavior?

On Cain, the dominant species, the Yildivans, has no social group larger than a family. Cubs leave their parents as soon as they are old enough. A young male, accompanied by his Lugals, claims a territory where he is later joined by one or more young female Yildivans. Each household is a patriarchal forest settlement in a hut or cave. There is occasional barter, joint hunting or conflict between individuals but that is all.

Lugals are like: if, instead of domesticating and breeding wolves, early homo sapiens had domesticated and bred another hominid species; thus, bipedal, talking dogs, so many that each Yildivan, even each child, has several.

Yildivans are hunters, artists, magicians etc whereas Lugals are laborers and messengers but, if intelligent, boss other Lugals and teach the Yildivan young.

"'The Yildivans are the creators and innovators, the Lugals the communicators and preservers.'"
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 287.

And both species are biologically adapted to these roles, thus incapable of questioning or defying them. Essentially hunters, the Yildivans practice primitive cultivation and metallurgy and farm for fabric. The Yildivan Shivaru chases a large horned animal, jumps on its back and kills it with an ax. Then his Lugals cut and carry the meat, edible by human beings but lacking some vitamins.

Having been friendly, the Yildivans suddenly buy modern weapons, leaving Lugals as security, then attack with the weapons, aided by the Lugals. This would be treacherous behavior, by their standards as well as by ours, except that they have come to believe that the human traders are the equivalent of wild dogs. See here.

On Cain

Copied from Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments, 28 Dec 2014.

On Cain, why did the dominant species, the Yildivans, suddenly attack van Rijn's traders, then back off?

Per's and Yuschenkoff's Theory
The Yildivans feared that the traders were the spearhead of an invasion. However, when the traders treated prisoners decently and used stunners instead of blasters, they realized that they had been mistaken.

Manuel's Theory
Because the Yildivans must struggle to survive, they value courage and combat skills above anything else. Therefore, they despised human beings who used machines and weapons that killed at a distance. However, they changed their minds when they had experienced how terrible human beings are in warfare.

Van Rijn's Explanation
The Yildivans are intelligent wild animals with no idea of a tribe or an army, therefore no fear of invasion. They accepted human beings as their equals until they saw other traders taking orders from Per Stenvik, then concluded that all but Per were equivalents of their Lugals, intelligent domesticated animals. Then Per introduced the idea of God, a master above Per, making Per also a Lugal. Finally, he denied that he took orders from God or from anyone else, making him a wild Lugal, the equivalent of a wild dog.

They changed their minds because they saw Per's men disobey an order, which no Lugal would have been able to do, and also act with restraint, which no wild Lugal would be able to do.

Corollary About Religion
Yildivans have no gods because, as wild animals, they acknowledge no masters.

Aliens And God

Would it be advisable to introduce Terrestrial religious ideas to extraterrestrials who did not already entertain similar ideas? In science fiction, the answer to this question depends on the religious beliefs of the author.

CS Lewis' Elwin Ransom, stranded on another planet, wonders whether he should begin the "religious instruction" of the natives. When they say that Oyarsa must decide his case, he hypothesizes that Oyarsa is either a ruler in a palace or a god represented by a priest in a temple. To test the latter idea, he asks whether Oyarsa made the world and receives a shocked response. Do the people of Thulcandra (Earth) not know that Maleldil made and still rules the world? Where is Maledil? He is with the Old One. Where is the Old One? It is not his nature to be in any place... They are telling Ransom what he had been going to tell them.

In a short story by Harry Harrison, literal-minded extrasolar beings are puzzled because a newly arrived missionary preaches the omnipresence of God whereas the established trader, when asked, denies the existence of God. How to resolve this contradiction? Crucify the missionary to see whether he is raised up... And thus learn guilt.

In Poul Anderson's "The Master Key," the Cainites treat another intelligent species as domesticated animals. In their world-view, every intelligent being is either a master or a slave and escaped slave would be dangerous. One of van Rijn's men explains the idea of God but, when asked, denies that God or anyone else ordered the traders to come to Cain. The traders had a master but no longer obey him. They are escaped slaves and must be attacked without warning. (Addendum: I have expressed that slightly wrongly and will return to it in a later post.)

In Anderson's Technic History, two Wodenites convert to Terrestrial religions. See also here.

Terrestrial Society

What is Terrestrial society like in the Solar Commonwealth? Surely they have school education for everyone until the age of maybe sixteen or eighteen? No, Eric Wace, Nicholas van Rijn's factor on Diomedes:

"...had begun as a warehouse apprentice at the age of twelve..."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 346.

Have social conditions retrogressed that far? A technological economy needs literate, numerate, computer-literate and healthy workers and consumers. I would expect the Solar government to provide universal compulsory school education and the Polesotechnic League corporations to pay taxes for public schools rather than to fund and administer elementary training of their employees.

The forty three installments of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization are our only window on this fictitious universe but we can make reasonable inferences from the texts. Van Rijn asks rhetorically and scornfully whether the urban masses are free. They can be if they understand and make decisions about their lives and careers, even though they are not all merchant princes; not everyone can be or wants to be that!

I would like to read a novel about ordinary life on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth period. For some reflections on the period, see here and here.