Yet To Come

See here for the alpha timeline, here for the beta timeline and here for both. I will search the blog again for any other earlier descriptions of these timelines and will also reread the relevant passages in Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time.

Meanwhile, Sean M Brooks has sent me a copy of Guy Consolmagno SJ and Paul Mueller SJ, Would You Baptize An Extraterrestrial? (New York, 2014). This book addresses six cosmological/theological conundra, including the title question. I will read this work for any light that it might throw on the theological issues raised in four works of sf:

The Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis;
A Case Of Conscience by James Blish;
"The Problem of Pain" by Poul Anderson;
The Game Of Empire by Poul Anderson.

Poul Anderson is to be appreciated both in his own right and in relation to other such sf writers. Both the Ransom Trilogy, Volume III, and Anderson's The Shield Of Time refer to Frederick Barbarossa (Fred Red Beard) (see image).

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.

Lewis, Anderson, Blish And Stirling

The Problem Of Pain by CS Lewis and "The Problem of Pain" by Poul Anderson share a title and a theological argument.

Perelandra by Lewis and The Game Of Empire by Anderson each address the question of God's relationship to extraterrestrial intelligences.

Perelandra by Lewis and A Case Of Conscience by James Blish are each set on a sinless planet.

In Perelandra, a demon speaks through the possessed body of Edward Weston but Weston momentarily breaks through:

"...for one second something like the old Weston reappeared - the old Weston, staring with eyes of horror and howling, 'Ransom! Ransom! For Christ's sake don't let them -'"
- CS Lewis, Voyage To Venus (London, 1978), p. 86.

In The Sky People (New York, 2006) by SM Stirling, also set on Venus, an alien mechanism speaks through the controlled brain of Franziskus Binkis but Binkis momentarily breaks through:

"For a moment Franziskus was her man again...'Help me, Judviga! Help me!'" (p. 216)

Four neat parallels?

The Religious Quest

Both Rudyard Kipling and Poul Anderson respected the religious quest. One Jungle Book story describes a successful Indian professional giving up everything to go into the homeless life. (I think that we can both seek spiritually and enjoy the benefits of civilization but spirituality involves different approaches.)

Kim (London, 1944) begins:

"Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way
"By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
"Be gentle when the heathen pray
"To Buddha at Kamakura!" (p.1)

Although Kim's lama's quest for the river that will wash away his sins is obviously mad, the sympathetic Catholic chaplain, "...wise in the confessional..." (p. 131), is "'...sure he's a good man'" (p. 130) whereas the unsympathetic Anglican chaplain is described humorously:

"'But this is gross blasphemy,' cried the Church of England." (p. 126)

Anderson fans will not need to be reminded of:

Peter Berg, the Christian who continues to question when he has encountered the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter;

Fr Axor whose quest for the Universal Incarnation is combined with scholarly study of Ancient relics;

the Protestant spaceship captain in Tau Zero who kneels and thanks God when he is shown the monobloc of a new universe.

Even van Rijn's piety is more sincere than I originally gave him credit for and the agnostic Flandry addresses his dead fiancee, thus becoming the first to pray to St Kossara.

To Compare Great Things To Small

Sometimes a phrase in a short story contains an idea that is developed at greater length in a novel.

In "The Problem of Pain," the Ythrian Enherrian is puzzled when the Aenean Peter Berg buries his wife because:

"On Ythri they cast them from a great height into wilderness."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 131.

And Ythrians still do this centuries later when they, together with a greater number of human beings, have colonized the planet that Enherrian and Berg were exploring. See here. A great height turns out to mean as high as Ythrians can fly.

In "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," James Ching, hard at study, has told friends and colleagues that:

"...they shouldn't bother me about anything much less urgent than a rogue planet on a collision course." (p. 177)

A throwaway line. However, rogue planets play major roles in "A Sun Invisible," Satan's World and Ensign Flandry. In particular, in this third work, a rogue planet is on a collision course not indeed with Sol or Terra but with Saxo, the sun of the inhabited planet, Starkad. The consequences are such that they would make Ching think twice about making flippant remarks about rogue planets or collision courses...

On Lucifer

The planet Lucifer is inhospitable but might be marginally habitable and has mineral wealth. Both days and nights are long, storms are frequent, there is no green vegetation and the violent blue sun continually disrupts electronics. A uranium-concentrating root causes a unique ecological cycle in one area.

While on Lucifer, Peter Berg, a Christian, wonders not for the first time whether the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter offers a better answer to the theological problem of undeserved pain:

"'Our noblest moment is when we, knowing He is irresistible, give Him a good chase, a good fight.
"'Then he wins honor.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 133.

This story, "The Problem of Pain," ends when Berg's unbelieving colleague responds:

"'Maybe you can find a text in Job. I don't know, I tell you, I don't know.'" (p. 134)

Would "'...I don't know...'" have made a satisfactory conclusion to the story? As it happens, Anderson follows the colleague's response, and ends the story, with one more sentence:

"The sun lifted higher above the burning horizon." (ibid.)

I would have called this "a burning image" but that is obvious. And I do think that it is a more satisfactory ending. But what does it tell us? It seems to be a pathetic fallacy. Nature, in this case the inhospitable environment of Lucifer, confirms that there is no answer? Or, by its deadliness, it confirms the Ythrian concept of God as the Hunter Who will strike us down?

The Exploration Of Gray IV

See previous posts.

Like some later Terran invaders of Avalon, Olga Berg is dying of hell shrub poisoning, although Pete and his Ythrian companions do not yet know the cause. Pete leaves the camp so that he can be alone when he screams at heaven:

"'Why did You do this to her, why did You do it?'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 26-48 AT p. 44.

After kneeling for an hour, he is able to say, "Your will be done," (p. 45) and return. Like an Ythrian, he has fought with and honored God, although Pete would not see it like that.

"Israel" means "he struggled with God"?

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
"to mould me man? Did I solicit thee
"From darkness to promote me? -"
(Adam in Paradise Lost, quoted by Frankenstein's Monster.)

"Lord who made me as I am,
"Would it upset some divine plan,
"If I were a wealthy man?"
(Fiddler On The Roof, from memory.)

I ask similar questions although I cannot address them to a personal Creator.

After the death of Arrach, the crippling of Enherrian and Olga's mortal illness, the climax of "The Problem of Pain" is reached when Pete returns to the camp. He had sedated Olga so that she would sleep peacefully till death. Instead, he finds her awake and in extreme pain and a second injection has little effect. He must hold her till she dies:

"...it was like seeing a light blown out." (p. 45)

Enherrian says it is well that she is fallen. Thinking that Pete had miscalculated, he gave her a stim shot. Enherrian honors both Pete and Olga too much to deny Olga her deathpride. Did Pete not want her "'...to give God a battle?'" (p. 46)

The Exploration Of Gray III

The second tragedy hits the stranded explorers. See previous post. When Enherrian leads the sky dance in honor of Arrach, he swoops low and a surgeon tree cuts off his left wing. An Ythrian who cannot fly does not live long. Enherrian can flap his right wing and left stump to oxygenate his blood stream but cannot use the extra energy.

What are the options?

(i) Human medical technology can regrow severed limbs but only for human beings.

(ii) A proper prosthesis will not be engineered in Enherrian's lifetime.

(iv) Ythrians scorn grav belts.

(v) Pete asks Whell whether the New Faith allows suicide but the suggestion is shocking. Enherrian has deathpride and would never rob God of honor.

Pete will not fully understand his Ythrian friends' attitude to death until his own wife, Olga, dies.

The Exploration Of Gray II

A boat departs. See previous post. Higher solar energy and rapid planetary rotation make storms more violent than on Earth and the unfamiliarity of the planet makes its weather unpredictable. An unexpected hurricane drives the boat into the gulfstream currents around the outer islands. The Bergs have not brought grav units but don life jackets and strap equipment and supplies to themselves because they can carry more than the Ythrians, who spread their wings for shelter.

When the boat strikes a rock, the Bergs go overboard but the Ythrians fly. Arrach pulls Pete away from a reef that would have killed him but she goes under and is lost. Everyone else gets ashore, where they have their first misunderstanding.

To Pete, a Christian, Arrach died saving him and her spirit is in heaven. Rusa, her brother, searches but finds neither the boat nor Arrach. To Rusa, Arrach died saving the needed equipment and supplies that Pete was carrying; she had deathpride. Enherrian, her father, assures Whell, her mother, that Arrach fought well and gave God honor. To Enherrian, her spirit will be remembered in pride. How could it outlive the body? Why should it?

Pete wonders: does giving God honor mean praying and confessing while drowning? The answer will turn out to be no.

The Exploration Of Gray

One Grand Survey crew from Earth discovered two terrestroid planets about eighty light years apart:

Ythri, inhabited;
Gray (later Avalon), potentially colonizable by human beings, Ythrians or conceivably both.

After first contact, Ythrians:

looked outwards;
attracted traders and teachers;
acquired capital;
sent students to the University of Nova Roma on the nearby human colony planet, Aeneas;
bought spaceships;
employed human beings for their technical expertise;
explored Gray scientifically and for its colonization prospects.

One spaceship left about a hundred explorers, Ythrian and human, who made base on the largest continent, later Corona, then dispersed across Gray. From a camp on the southern shore, a boat containing:

the Ythrian, Enherrian, and his wife, Whell;
their son, Rusa, and daughter, Arrach;
the Aenean, Peter Berg, and his wife, Olga -

- departed to explore immense floating islands of interwoven vegetation grazed by large marine animals. Olga named the vegetation "atlantis weed" and the animals were later called "krakens." Everything summarized so far builds up to a tragic experience for these four Ythrians and two human beings.

The Problem Of Pain II

The argument in the preceding post was not: God (fore)knows our actions, therefore our actions are unfree. It was:

God (assuming that He exists etc) creates everything, including our dispositions, motivations, mental and physical abilities, will-power, environmental interactions etc, thus causes our actions, therefore cannot judge our actions in the way that we can and do judge ourselves and each other;
caused actions are free if they are unconstrained;
uncaused actions would be random, therefore not morally significant.

Such arguments are presented on a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog because Poul Anderson's fiction addresses these issues. In "The Problem of Pain," i.e., Anderson's short story, not CS Lewis' work of apologetics with the same title, the Christian Peter Berg and his unbelieving colleague discuss both the problem of evil and the problem of pain.

The Problem of Evil
Why does God allow (I would say cause) moral evil? Berg thinks that Christian free will apologetics is a perfect answer whereas the Ythrian response, that God allows wickedness so that we can gain honor by fighting it, is weak.

The Problem of Pain
"'Why does a merciful God permit [I would say cause] undeserved agony?'"
- Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 46.

"'Why? What possible end is served? It's not adequate to declare that we'll receive an unbounded reward after we die and therefore it makes no difference whather a life was gutsy or grisly. That's no explanation.'" (p. 47)

My answer is that no end is served because we evolved and were not created. Pain exists because it has survival value but this does not prevent it from often continuing long after it has served that function. Anderson presents an excellent alien response to the human belief in a hereafter. When asked whether he believes that the spirit outlives the body, Enherrian of the Ythrian New Faith, whose daughter has just drowned, snaps, "'How could it?...Why should it?'" (p. 38) (Despite this, we later learn that the Old Faith did involve a hereafter with a deity.)

Berg wonders whether the Ythrian response to the problem of pain is better:

"'...at last He comes after us. Our noblest moment is when we, knowing He is irresistible, give Him a good chase, a good fight.
"'Then he wins honor.'" (p. 48)

Berg's colleague, the narrator, says:

"'I looked into the abyss once, and saw nothing, and haven't looked since. You keep looking. Which of us is the braver?'" (ibid.)

The narrator's look into the abyss is another of Anderson's many untold stories.

Berg's priests tell him "'...to deny a false creed and to acknowledge a mystery.'" But he thinks that, "'Neither instruction feels right.'" (ibid.)

I would say: acknowledge mysteries but keep looking and do not call alien creeds false. The narrator points out that the New Faith has been held for centuries by millions of beings and that it solves some paradoxes, if not all.

The Problem Of Pain

In Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 26-48, the characters, discussing theology, differentiate the problem of (moral) evil from the problem of (psychophysical) pain.

On the problem of evil, the Christian Peter Berg says:

"'Why does God, if He is a loving and personal God, allow evil? Well, there's a perfectly good Christian answer to that. Man - intelligence everywhere - must have free will. Otherwise we're puppets and have no reason to exist. Free will necessarily includes the capability of doing wrong. We're here, in this cosmos during our lives, to learn how to be good of our unforced choice.'" (p. 46)

The unnamed first person narrator replies, "'...your logic is right, regardless of whether I accept your premises or not.'" (ibid.)

I do not agree that Berg argues logically from his premises. First, I suggest that every event, including every human action, is either caused or random. A random event has no moral significance. When an action is caused by a conscious decision - a decision which, in turn, had previous causes -, then we may morally judge the action and we do so for a practical purpose, to influence future actions. Of course, we find that we are caused/compelled/obliged to judge actions, including our own, but this compulsion or obligation has evolved for the suggested practical reason.

God has no reason to judge our actions. If the theistic hypothesis is correct, then He is the omnipotent creator from nothing of everything other than Himself. In fact, according to the doctrine of theistic creation, God did not merely create the material universe once long ago and leave it to run its course. That is Deism. He sustains cosmic existence at every moment. And he exists entirely outside our spatio-temporal framework. I think it follows from this that, from His trans-temporal perspective, there is no difference between creating the universe at its first moment, if it even had one, and sustaining it at any later moment. Thus, He timelessly causes/creates us performing our current actions here and now.

This does not make us puppets as we would be if a fellow human being were controlling our actions against our wills. "Free will" can only mean "absence of constraint" and "constraint" means an intra-cosmic factor thwarting our wills, not the extra-cosmic creator creating/sustaining our wills as He creates and sustains everything else.

An aggressive drunk automatically kicks a dog that bites him whereas a pacifist saint does not. If we know the drunk and the saint well, then we confidently predict how each of them will respond to any given stimulus. Our predictions might sometimes be inaccurate because, however well we know them, we do not know all the factors causing their conscious decisions. However, God not only knows but causes/creates those factors. Thus, He could have created the man who is a drunk in such a way that he never had any interest in alcohol and would never have kicked a dog.

Creating a man so that he is the kind of person who always freely makes morally right decisions does not negate his freedom. When we confidently predict how the saint will behave, we do not infer that he is unfree or a "puppet." In fact, he is freer than the man who is addicted to alcohol and unable to restrain his own aggression.

Historical Background Details III

Call Me Joe has arrived but meanwhile I have become re-engrossed in the History of Technic Civilization.

Of the twelve works collected in Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), we have so far attributed:

one to James Ching;
one to Arinnian/Christopher Holm;
two to Hloch and Arinnian;
three to Judith Lundgren -

- but what of the remaining five?

Both "Margin of Profit" and "Rescue on Avalon" are taken from Tales Of The Great Frontier by AA Craig, a Terran writer of historical fiction who traveled widely and visited Avalon during a pause in the Troubles. AA Craig was a pulp pen name of Poul Anderson. Stories that are science fiction by Poul Anderson are historical fiction by AA Craig. May these authors meet in the trans-temporal Inn.

"The Man Who Counts" is a novel, a "...full sky-dance portraying Nicholas van Rijn..." (p. 146), originally published on either Terra or Hermes, with different authors and dates cited. We also know of another title, War Of The Wing Men.

"Wings of Victory," describing the Discovery - human-Ythrian First Contact - and therefore opening the book, is taken directly from "...Far Adventure by Maeve Downey, the autobiography of a planetologist." (p. 23)

The genesis of "The Problem of Pain" is more complicated:

Peter Berg, a Christian from Aeneas, explored Gray, later renamed Avalon, with Ythrians;
later, he described this experience to a colleague on Lucifer;
that colleague recounted his conversations with Berg in private correspondence long preserved by the recipient's heirs on Terra;
a visiting historian transcribed a copy of the recorded correspondence;
the copy was preserved in the archives of the University of Fleurville on Esperance;
Rennhi of Stormgate Choth on Avalon acquired the account for her Earth Book.

At least six planets interact here: Aeneas, Ythri, Gray/Avalon, Lucifer, Terra, Esperance.

We know from The Day Of Their Return that religious feelings ran deep on Aeneas and that a new Jihad almost began there.

Berg divides the evolution of religion into three stages:

primitive faiths - the gods are power;
higher faiths - God is justice;
the highest faith(s) - God is love.

But then he meets the Ythrians for whom God is the Hunter.