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.

Arts

Solarian
Braganza Diane touches keys on a multiplex and the tape plays back stimuli-color patterns, music, scents and tastes conveying an abstract impression of mountains. Because genuine cold would be too distracting, she settles for appropriate colors and notes.

Nomadic
Nomad artists and artisans make goods to trade internally or externally. Peregrine Thorkild Nicki makes a clay vase in the form of two battling dragons to be cast in bronze, then sold or swapped.

Alorian
To attend a festival that will start when everyone arrives several Alori walk for two days, sleeping in the open and not minding when it rains. About a hundred Alori gather in a small valley surrounded by trees. It is night but two moons are full. Branches, water, birds and animals make music. Alori dancers accompanied by luminous birds express the seasons, then the end of all things. Afterwards, the audience sits in silence before leaving quietly.

Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979).

Fifty Thousand Years

According to the Chronology of the Psychotechnic Series prepared by Sandra Miesel, the Third Dark Ages begin in 3200 and "The Chapter Ends" is set post-4000. Miesel's interstitial note introducing "The Chapter Ends" reads:

"By the uncertain dawn of the fifth millennium, Earth's farflung children had all but forgotten her." (Starship, p. 252)

However, "The Chapter Ends" itself says:

"'The Sirius Sector has been an isolated, primi - ah - quiet region since the First Empire fell, fifty thousand years ago.'" (p. 263)

The time scale and also the references both to a fallen First Empire and to Sirian Sector planets inhabited by peasants place this work more in the milieu of Anderson's "Flight to Forever." Again, the reference to Sol City as the capital of the First Empire (p. 272) prima facie links this work to Anderson's "The Star Plunderer," although that pulp short story was instead shoehorned into the author's later Technic History.

The political units in the Psychotechnic History are Unions (Solar and Stellar), not Empires. We are told enough about the First Empire to know that it is not the Stellar Union remembered under a different name.

What links "The Chapter Ends" to the Psychotechnic History? References to psychotechnicians, an Integrator and a trained nervous system. Also, in The Peregrine, humanity is expanding towards the Sagittarii. In "The Chapter Ends," the bulk of humanity has migrated to the Galactic Center and one, visiting Earth, says:

"'This part of space means nothing to us any more; it's almost a desert. You haven't seen starlight till you've been by Sagittarius.'" (p. 262)

A concluding note on an unfamiliar word:

"...he went with the Nomads through that abatis of woods." (The Peregrine, Chapter XX, p. 178)

Philosophical Fiction: Hegel

Does Hegelian dialectical philosophy not match up to the Alorian wholeness-principle?

Wanting to start philosophy at the beginning, Hegel reasoned that the most abstract concept, the most general category of thought, was "being" because everything is. However, to say of anything only that it is is not to say what it is, thus is to say nothing about it. Therefore (?), the thesis, being, implies and is even identical with its antithesis, nothing, although at the same time they remain contradictory because, if there is nothing, then there is no being. However, the less abstract/more concrete category of becoming synthesizes the notions of being and nothing while also producing being determinate, that which has become one thing rather than another. In human activity, an artisan might want simply to create an artifact but must then create a particular artifact, chosen either by commission or by his own creativity. On the cosmic level, when potential becomes actual, it must become a particular universe, not any other possible universe. (I suggest that potentiality is more abstract than Hegelian "being.")

Being determinate differentiates itself into many thesis-antithesis pairs, notably:

quality and quantity;
reality and appearance;
subject and object -

- all synthesized in the Absolute, the total reality, although, because Hegel was a philosophical idealist, he called this the Absolute Idea.

The three basic principles recognized by Hegel are:

interpenetration of opposites, as in the Taoist yin-yang symbol (see second image) and in Heraclitus' "The way up is the way down";

transformation of quantity into quality, e.g., when water boils, a quantitative increase in temperature becomes a qualitative transformation of liquid into gas;

the negation of the negation, i.e., antithesis negates thesis but is in turn negated by synthesis which incorporates opposites and becomes a new thesis.

This fits with the Alorian view of the universe as not isolated data but an organic whole.

Philosophical Fiction: Bergson And Hegel

Ilaloa says that life is:

"'...like a river, and you are a wave which rises and will sink back again, but the river flows on.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), Chapter XII, p. 106.

Trevelyan compares Ilaloa's ideas to those of:

"'Bergson...A philosopher of Earth, 'way back when.'" (ibid.)

Bergson follows Heraclitus, as does Hegel whom I referenced here and here. Anderson's Psychotechnic History presents further Hegelian processes -

Thesis: the Nomads;
Antithesis: the Coordination Service;
Synthesis: Coordinators becoming Nomads, directing and restraining without disrupting;
Antithesis: the Third Dark Ages;
Synthesis: a later civilization reaping seeds of knowledge borne by the Nomads;
Antithesis: interference between uses of cosmic energies;
Synthesis: peaceful coexistence of humanity and Hulduvians.

Wholeness

"The Alorian mind did not analyze into factors; it saw the entire problem as one unified whole." (The Peregrine, Chapter XVIII, p. 158)

"[The Alori's] wholeness-principle was something which had never been properly formulated in Union logic. It should be possible to make integrators which would not fit isolated data together but consider a local complex - society and its needs, physical environment, known scientific laws - in its entirety. Alori science, with the knowledge it had of the nervous system, would indicate ways to build such computers." (p. 161)

How much does the Coordination Service rely on its computers to understand society? Surely the brains of economists and ecologists do more than "...fit isolated data together..."? Each datum is not "isolated" but is as it is because of its relationships to every other datum, including the many that we do not know - although we do try to identify the principle factors. We cannot change one part of society without changing others accordingly. While the British transport system was nationalized, someone thought that it had nothing to do with profit. I replied that it moved workers to where they produced or consumed and therefore had everything to do with profit. He regarded the economy as a number of merely coexisting systems whereas I had got into the habit of regarding it as an interactive totality. (I did this with the help of a lot of reading and discussion, not just by my own efforts!)

Addendum, 20/12/15: Given the meaning of "data," I should not have written of "data" that are unknown to us! However, I hope that the meaning is clear enough.

Idyllic Planets?

Space explorers come to an extrasolar planet that is superficially idyllic but essentially problematic:

Methuselah's Children by Robert Heinlein (Future History);
A Case Of Conscience by James Blish (After Such Knowledge);
"Tiger Ride" by James Blish and Damon Knight;
The Peregrine by Poul Anderson (Psychotechnic History);
The Night Face by Poul Anderson (Technic History);
more than one Star Trek episode.

Obviously, these works differ considerably. Nevertheless, there is a discernible common theme. The two Anderson novels could even be adapted as Star Trek episodes although they would be considerably diminished in the process. As I wrote about the Blish/Knight collaboration (see above): 

Knight writes that the story asks, “What is a man?”  Like Star Trek, though not as tritely, it answers that men need the conflict of unsatisfied desire.

Alori Houses

Alori tree houses are like incomparably more advanced versions of the naturally hollow trees used as dwellings by the Nerthusian natives. This tells me something. I have yet to read the Psychotechnic History installment about the human colonization of Nerthus.

Nevertheless, later installments make clear that human beings had been living on that planet for a while before they realized that it was already inhabited. No wonder, if the aborigines were sheltering or even hiding inside trees on a planetary surface where there were no artificial structures like houses or villages. Indeed, the Nerthusians living in the native quarter of Stellamont themselves resemble trees: tall, green and four-armed with no machine technology.

An Alori house has:

a large, light, airy, cylindrical room;
hard, beautiful wood;
windows closable with transparent flaps;
a heavy curtain for a door;
a warm, springy, moss-like carpet and bed on the floor;
extruded shelves;
flowering vines;
bladders that are luminous at night but can be covered;
an inward-growing branch yielding clear water with a drain beneath;
a nearby bush growing a soap surrogate.

The Alori have developed the biological sciences as far as the Stellar Union has developed the physical sciences. However, mutually incompatible world-views underlie the scientific and social differences.

The Ancient War

"'If you were killed,' she said, 'I'd steal a ship and go hunting for the killer till I found him.'
"'You'd do better to help correct the conditions that led to my being killed.'
"'You're too civilized,' she said bitterly.
"The ancient war, he thought, the immemorial struggle of intelligence to master itself. Nicki could never stay on Earth."
(The Peregrine, Chapter XIV, pp. 127-128)

Over a thousand years previously, an Un-man had identified the old enemy as:

"...man himself...the revolt of a primitive against the unnatural state called civilization and freedom." ("Un-Man" IN The Psychotechnic League, pp. 31-129 AT pp. 125-126)

So has nothing been gained in a millennium? Yes, the ancient war has been won on Earth - and, millennia later, will be won in the rest of the Galaxy.

Trevelyan and Nicki discuss options:

he could join her Nomad ship (this is what later happens);
he might need an assistant on one of his jobs?

Answering that second suggestion, he says that, when he needs an assistant, he gets another Coordinator, usually an otherling. That is the basis on which "The Pirate," written later but set earlier, was built. Reading the Psychotechnic History in chronological order of fictitious events, we find in The Peregrine references to three earlier installments:

the origin of the Nomads;
the colonization of Nerthus;
a mission by Trevelyan and the Reardonite, Smokesmith.

Hyperdrive Fields

Does Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History present any rationale for the sf cliche of "hyperspace"? His later Technic History presents a beautiful rationale: a ship in hyperspace is not in another space or another dimension but is making many instantaneous quantum jumps through normal space. Thus, it has a "pseudo-velocity" in a very real sense:

it disappears at point A and appears at point B without having traversed the space between them;
however, points A and B are very close so that many such jumps must be made.

Hyperspace in the Psychotechnic History has the following features, some of them familiar from other works -

(i) A spaceship generates "hyperdrive fields."
(ii) While building up, the fields cause a twisting sensation in human bodies.
(iii) The ship then moves at a pseudo-velocity.
(iv) It is safer to go hyper in a weak gravitational field.
(v) Too close to a star and planet, the drive builds up "...with distressing irregularity." (The Peregrine, Chapter XIV, p. 126)
(vi) Any hyperdrive ship is elongated because "...field generators must be mounted fore and aft." (p. 123)

I am reminded of a humorous sf novel by Bob Shaw. An interstellar spaceship, shaped like a long trailer or a railway carriage, has a teleportation transmitter at one end and a receiver at the other. Thus it is seen continually turning around in space as it repeatedly transmits itself to itself.

Advanced Technology

I suggest that a rich text is one in which it is possible to discuss almost every sentence.

"'...when a technology has advanced to the point of interstellar drive, it doesn't need an empire.'" (The Peregrine, Chapter XIV, p. 124)

Right on. Intelligent beings capable of crossing an interstellar distance would have to carry their environment with them and therefore would not be dependent on finding such an environment on arrival - and how likely would that be in any case?

"'...green vegetables from an E-planet would help morale...'" (p. 119)

No doubt they would but is the universe full of Earth-like planets growing humanly edible green vegetables? Human beings have evolved in, and are adapted to, the ecology on only one planetary surface.

A technology capable of regular, faster than light interstellar travel implies an immense amount of both knowledge and energy. Beings capable of applying such knowledge and deploying such energy would hardly need to find other intelligent beings to conquer and exploit? They would already control more than enough wealth for their own needs and purposes.

As Alan Moore’s extraterrestrial character, Zhcchz (“Skizz”), says:

“You…refuse to…understand. When technology…has reached…a certain level…weapons…are redundant. When you already have…all that you need, then…why fight? We…have devices…that you would call weapons. To us…they…are tools.”<sup>21

-copied from here.</sup>

Conflicting Cultures

Over two years ago, I discussed four conflicting cultures in Poul Anderson's The Peregrine here.

On Erulan, there is slavery and cruelty. Three bodies hang from a gallows in a market square. Ilaloa of the Alori comments:

"'There is no need for this endless strife and suffering. But it is still more - right - than that which is in the city Stellamont.'" (The Peregrine, Chapter X, p. 89)

Stellamont is on a human colony planet and thus represents a fifth culture distinct from Sol, Nomads, Erulan and Alori:

Sol, Nomads and Stellamont are human;
Alori are humanoid (see image);
Erulan is human beings enslaving (other) humanoids.

I can only remark that I disagree with Ilaloa. Technology-using urbanites are indeed "...shut away..." (p. 88) from nature but that does not make a slave-owning society better than they are!

Navigating

Imagine navigating across interstellar space on the basis of visual observations like the Kirkasanters in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Here is another example from the Psychotechnic History. Looking at a drawing, a Nomad captain says:

"'Let's see. The shiningness is a bright gaseous nebula, of course, and the remote spiral is probably the Andromeda galaxy. That very bright star can only be Canopus, if you're in the Cross region, and here's the same dent in the Milky Way you can see from here.' He gestured to a view-screen overhead, blackness and the ghostly bridge of stars." (The Peregrine, Chapter XII, p. 101)

So it is a bit like recognizing a landmark or a familiar mountain range.

(I must go to a party. The holiday season interrupts blogging.)

Later: The captain, giving the drawing to the astrogator, tells him to use all the star tables and computers to find that part of space as accurately as possible.

The Need For Coordination?

Trevelyan Micah, field agent of the Stellar Union Coordination Service, outlines the problem:

"'A dozen or more highly civilized races, scattering themselves over this part of the Galaxy, intercourse limited to spaceships that may need weeks to get from one sun to the next - and nothing else. Not even the strong economic ties which did, after all, bind Europe to its colonies. Cross-purposes are breeding which are someday going to clash - they've already done so in several cases, and it's meant annihilation." (The Peregrine, Chapter XII, p. 105)

By why? If there is no economic competition, then what is there to fight about? Can different racial spheres not interpenetrate neutrally or peacefully like those of oxygen-breathers and hydrogen-breathers in the Technic History? If there is no mutual comprehension, then a few scientifically inclined beings will try to observe and study the "otherlings" whereas most perhaps will continue with their version of "business as usual," so why should there be any cross-purposes or clashes? The Peregrine shows us one fundamental conflict but why should such conflicts be the norm?

When we read that some of the slave-owning Erulanites are selling spaceships to human beings "'...from somewhere in the Cross...'" who "'...don't wear clothes...'" and "'...have the ways of natives...'" (Chapter IX, p. 84), we might begin to suspect that the Lorinyans are the enemy and have already planted a spy on the Nomads.

In A Nomad Ship Library

Epics were composed to be recited and heard. Drama was written to be performed, seen and heard. Thus, Hamlet means whatever a theater company can make it mean. The text is merely their working document. However, libraries rightly contain translations of Homer and copies of Shakespeare.

The library of the Nomad ship, Peregrine, is a long, double-tiered room lined with shelves holding micro-books from civilized planets, not just from Earth, "...an incredible jackdaw's nest of anything and everything." (The Peregrine, Chapter XI, p. 92)

references
philosophies
poetry
fiction
belles-lettres
the history of the Nomads

The history "...began with the memoirs of Thorkild Erling, first captain of the Nomads." (p. 93)

Thus, it begins with the short story, "Gypsy," which is narrated by Thorkild.

"...reading Thorkild's words, Trevelyan caught something of the glamour which had been in those first years." (ibid.)

Having read "Gypsy," we remember that glamour. However, we learn more:

"There was a note of disappointment in Thorkild's later writings; his new society was evolving into something other than what he had imagined." (ibid.)

Thorkild and his crew had wanted endless wandering so I am not sure how he was disappointed.

"More Lasting Than Bronze"

If the two missing stories were to be included in a future edition of Poul Anderson's Starship, then the Psychotechnic History would be complete in five regular volumes: three collections and two novels. There are two ways to publish a future history series: either in single novels and standard-sized collections or in omnibus volumes.

In the thirty second century of this future history, the depopulated, forested Earth is the human center of scientific research, education, the arts and the Stellar Union Coordination Service. It follows that there are libraries of all surviving literature. A Nomad ship has a library and its captain's cabin has a shelf of well used micro-books in various languages. So what will still be read? I suggest at least:

Homer - epics, myths;
Shakespeare - drama (histories, comedies, tragedies), sonnets;
the Bible - many kinds of writing edited to present a continuous narrative from creation to new creation, albeit based in a prescientific cosmology.

Shakespeare was referenced and quoted earlier in this future history. When a Coordinator traveling with a Nomad sees the stars from space, he quotes:

"The heavens declare the glory of God...and the firmament showeth His handiwork."
-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), Chapter VII, p. 52.

The Nomad, puzzled, asks, "'What's that?'" and is told, "'An old Terrestrial book...Very old.'" (ibid.)

In fact, the Old Testament. The Nomad captain is familiar with the Bible. When reflecting that those who have enslaved a planet of barbarians are gradually becoming barbarized, he quotes:

"What shall it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul." (Chapter IX, p. 77)

Despite the change of cosmology, what could be more appropriate? They have gained a planet but are losing their identity.

Literature lasts. Horace (see image) wrote, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius," "I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze."

Nomads

Ship: Peregrine.
Family: Thorkild.
Personal name: Sean.
Rank: Ensign.
Service: Flier pilot and gunner.

He says not, "I am Ensign Sean Thorkild of the Peregrine," but "This one is called Peregrine Thorkild Sean." (The Peregrine, p. 43)

Nomads have not dispensed with the grammatical first person because he also says "my" and "we." Ship, family, rank and service can be read from his outfit.

Sean plays a stringed instrument called a "lorne" (p. 65) but what is it like? His song includes the word "dree," (p. 66) but apparently as an adjective, not as a verb.

In flight, the Nomads maintain their ship with minimal automatic or robotic machinery and make artifacts to trade either internally or externally. Floors are green and soft, not metallic. Walls have murals or carved panels. Apartments have plants. There is a park and three taverns. It does not sound like the inside of a spaceship.

Interstellar trade and travel is a big idea in American sf:

Heinlein's Free Traders;
Asimov's Foundation Traders;
Blish's Okies;
Anderson's Nomads, Kith and Polesotechnic League;
no doubt others.

Contrasting Aspects Of A Future History Series

Formulaically, so to say, Poul Anderson's The Peregrine is hard sf about the consequences of technological advances in a fictitious future. However, three of its premises -

easy, regular, faster than light interstellar travel;
many habitable, easily colonizeable, Earth-like planets;
an alien race differing from humanity only in greater physical beauty -

- make me think of it more as set in an alternative reality verging on fantasy. Some of Anderson's early pulp stories, like "Witch Of The Demon Seas," present an alternative universe where human and other beings inhabit planets of different stars and there is the possibility of interstellar travel but at the same time magic works. The Peregrine is not in that category but not far from it either.

Any future history series links near future stories to far future stories. Near future stories, like "Marius" and "Un-Man," are much closer to our reality and present problems that we recognize. An Un-Man breaks into the apartment of an Americanist Guardsman, interrogates him, then kills him, making it look like suicide. He justifies this as an act of war and indeed the UN and "the gang" are waging an undeclared covert war. Many people believe that the mere declaration of a war justifies any killing ordered by our government - although, as soon as I write that, moral and even legal considerations intrude. There are such things as war crimes. Personally, I would not trust any existing government to tell me when to kill and would not have joined in the slaughter of 1914-'18 but would have seen the need to oppose Hitler, although not by mass bombing of German cities.

Back to the further future: although a Coordinator cooperating with Nomads thwarts a particular alien plot, the Coordination Service and the Stellar Union are soon to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of external threats:

"'The overworked integrators are years behind in correlating information...A thing can grow to monstrous proportions before they learn of it.'" (The Peregrine, p. 30)

What follows is the Third Dark Ages, similar to the Long Night in the Technic History, although in this series there are no stories set in the period following the breakdown.

Interstellar Fiction

Poul Anderson's The Peregrine, about the interstellar Nomads, was originally called Star Ways. Two of the Nomad spaceships are called Trekker and Voyageur. Anderson wrote this novel decades before the existence of Star Wars, Star Trek or Star Trek: Voyager. However, certain words and terminologies recur in an interstellar sf context.

We recognize the scenario from Star Trek and from other sf works, e.g., by James Blish. A large spaceship with a crew of hundreds or thousands enters a planetary system and goes into orbit around an inhabited or colonized planet. Crew members shuttle to the surface in ship's boats. Star Trek introduced the transporter (teleporter) in order to avoid scenes involving boats. Extrasolar planets are either colonized from Earth or inhabited by surprisingly humanoid natives. One Nomad "marries" (not legally) a very beautiful native woman with white skin and long silver hair.

Thankfully, at least, the Nomad and his new wife are not interfertile - although Star Trek does allow even that in the case of Vulcan. The Vulcans should have been a separated colony, not the result of independent evolution, just as the Time Lords should have been not aliens but future humanity.

Poul Anderson is able to write convincingly and to address significant issues despite such sf cliches, which he later transcended.