A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

In Poul Anderson's "The Virgin of Valkarion," it had been prophesied that, when the Thirty Ninth Dynasty ends at an eclipse of the Two Moons, a heathen will arrive, overthrow both church and state, Temple and Imperium, and found the glorious Fortieth Dynasty.

Thus, when the old Emperor is dying without an heir and as the eclipse is approaching, Temple priests order their slaves to kill a barbarian approaching the city and the young Empress orders a captain of the guard at the city gate to direct an approaching barbarian to a particular inn where she will await him.

Sure enough, a barbarian seeking employment arrives, has to defend himself against the Temple slaves and then has no choice but to lead the fight to prevent a Temple theocracy after the death of the Emperor. Then, with both Emperor and High Priest dead and with both Temple and Palace destroyed, the barbarian becomes the new ruler, marrying the widowed Empress. But, if no prophecy had been made, then no Temple slaves would have tried to kill him, the Empress would have made no preparations to receive him and he would either have found employment in the city or continued his wanderings.

So did the prophetess know that her prophecy would cause the prophesied events?

Virgin?

Interrupted by other (welcome and necessary) activities, I have yet to finish reading Poul Anderson's "The Virgin of Valkarion." However, if our heroine is also our title character, then she is not a virgin! The young wife of the old, dying, heirless Emperor, she has sex with the barbarian usurper as soon as he arrives, even before he knows of his own prophesied role.

And here is another feature of the strange universe:

apparently supernatural feats are mental accomplishments;
"magic" is hypnosis;
"prophecy" is precognition;
gods are invoked but do not intervene;
a sibyl wrote a "future history" by space-time projection, not by divine inspiration.

It follows that these stories are not fantasies. And, in fact, their being set on other planets entails that they are science fiction, as is also implied by the title Planet Stories, but of a rather strange kind that merely provides extraterrestrial settings for swords and sandals action-adventure fiction. The old Empire had "machines" and spatiotemporal physics so there had after all, to my surprise, been some progress before the (inevitable) decline and regression.

Our hero, Alfric, shows how religion can be reformed instead of rejected. Fighting the priests of the Two Moons, he thinks, "All honor to the Moons, but not to tyrants and murderers in their name." That is the point. Let's not fight about whether the gods exist, just about whether priests should rule. Freedom of religious assembly and worship but church-state separation! And I did not expect to end this post with a political slogan!

A Strange Universe

Planet Stories printed "Strange Adventures On Other Worlds."

Poul Anderson's "Witch of the Demon Seas" and "The Virgin of Valkarion" suggest a very strange universe indeed:

there are habitable planets in orbit around different stars - the planet in "Witch..." has a large red sun whereas the planet in "The Virgin..." has two moons;

these planets are inhabited by human beings and possibly also by other intelligent species, e.g., the amphibians in "Witch...";

on each of these planets, there is a kind of animal that has the same name as a mythical being on Earth - erinyes in "Witch..." and garms in "The Virgin...";

these planets seem never to have an industrial revolution - Valkarion is a city on a dying planet where there was an Empire hundreds of thousands of years ago;

everyone fights with swords;

this strange universe is quite different from those in which human and other beings invent technology that enables them to traverse space faster than light and thus to build interstellar empires.

Street Life In Valkarion

Maybe I should read Rudyard Kipling's Kim for the first time?

It is recommended.
Poul Anderson pays homage to it in The Game Of Empire.
I quote a Kipling verse here.
Kipling describes Indian culture whereas sf writers like Anderson describe human and non-human cultures on others planets in the future.
It would be appropriate to compare Kipling and Anderson on this blog.

Meanwhile, I have found yet another of Anderson's list descriptions of busy street life. In the old Imperial city of Valkarion, there are:

merchants in cloaks and robes;
workers and artisans in tunics;
peasants in homemade clothes and fur caps;
soldiers in tunics and metal;
painted harlots;
beggars;
slaves;
tonsured priests of the Moons;
foreign traders on "dromads" (we are on another planet);
black-skinned men;
feather-cloaked mercenaries;
barbarians from different regions.

"...all the world seemed to meet at Valkarion, in a babble of tongues and a swirl of colors...A trading center like Valkarion necessarily tolerated all creeds..." (Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook.)

As ever, the emphasis is on human life and activity - and the civilizing influence of trade.

The Virgin Of Valkarion

Poul Anderson's "The Virgin of Valkarion" is yet another mixed genre pulp short story. Human beings fight with swords but on another planet where there are two moons and the hero rides not a horse but a beaked "hengist." A long gone Empire has left an Imperial Way and a Temple of the Two Moons although the northern barbarians worship wind and stars and the nameless powers of winter and death.

There are not only temples ruined for thousands of years but also the sand and salt of dead sea-bottoms so that the feeling of being on an old and dying planet that has never had an industrial civilization is palpable. I have not read far into the story yet but, when I do finish it, I will have exhausted the ebook and will have to await the arrival of the second NESFA collection. There is no suggestion as yet either that magic works or that the gods intervene in human affairs although the Temple priesthood is clearly powerful and dangerous so read on but not tonight.