AI Alternatives

Artificial Intelligence:

is impossible;
is possible but impractical;
will supersede organic intelligence.

These are possibilities considered by Poul Anderson. Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling suggest a fourth:

conscious computers quickly go insane.

This might be because a consciousness able to think in nanoseconds and to control its sensory input prefers to make a universe that will last subjectively forever in a few objective milliseconds.

In Anderson's A Circus Of Hells, an abandoned conscious computer alone on an isolated planet for five hundred years plays robotic chess and war games in order to preserve its sanity. Thus, it is moving in the direction of Pournelle's and Stirling's AI's.

Anderson covers nearly every possibility.

Expectations

An opening passage generates expectations that are confirmed or confounded by the ensuing narrative. Unusually, the opening paragraph of A Circus Of Hells tells us exactly what we are about to receive:

"The story is of a lost treasure guarded by curious monsters, and of captivity in a wilderness, and of a chase through reefs and shoals that could wreck a ship. There is a beautiful girl in it, a magician, a spy or two, and the rivalry of empires."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 197.

However, the reefs, shoals and magician are not exactly as we expect them to be.

The opening sentence of the main text of A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows also unusually directly addresses the reader about the contents of the novel, like a friend recommending or lending the book:

"Every planet in the story is cold..."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 342.

Both openings use the word "story," although an omniscient narrator usually presents us with fictional "facts" and does not draw attention to their fictionality. If we did not know it already, the opening of A Knight... makes clear that this is a science fictional novel involving interplanetary travel - and the word "cold" sets the tone.

In his Prologue to The Mercenary (London, 1977), Jerry Pournelle raises two subsequently confounded expectations. First, we expect John Falkenberg to be forcibly transported to a hellish colony planet. Next, when a mistake has been rectified, we expect Chapter I to describe the beginning of his Space Navy career. Instead, Chapter I jumps to twenty seven years later and addresses CoDominium politics - although we do learn that meanwhile Colonel Falkenberg has built a distinguished career. Pournelle has two stories to tell: the career of an individual and a history of the future.

The Green Of Earth And Home

Let us follow a chain of associations through the works of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, James Blish and Poul Anderson.

"We pray for one last landing
"On the globe that gave us birth;
"Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
"And the cool, green hills of Earth."
-Robert Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth (London, 1967), p. 141.

Asimov: a story called "Mother Earth."

Blish: a novel called Earthman, Come Home and, in another work, sister planets called "Home" and "Rathe."

"...Homelike splashes of green."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 273.

"...a longing seized her for the cool green hills of home."
-Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), p. 178.

I propose the Terrestrial tricolor:

blue for the oceans;
white for clouds;
green for life.

Further, alternative human traditions could be celebrated by an optional symbol in the lower corner of the green band. I favor a red star but expect blog readers to have other ideas.

Hibernation

Presumably extreme seasonal variations and natural selection could generate hibernation in intelligent beings? A few posts back, I learned that the Martians of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History survive their winters not only comatose but even with frozen blood. In Anderson's A Circus Of Hells, although hibernating Talwinians accidentally roused by a Merseian scientist instantly kill the scientist, the latter's colleagues do not retaliate, understanding that the reaction is automatic.

SM Stirling deduces a logical implication of his Martians' ability to hibernate. Martian jailers usually starve long term prisoners, thus forcing them to hibernate. Comatose prisoners are no trouble and cheaper. A doctor must warn jailers not to treat a Terrestrial prisoner in this way...

Thus, both authors think that hibernation makes sense on Mars and Stirling goes further by deducing how this might affect the behavior of intelligent beings.

Fictional Games

Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game" focuses on a role-playing game. Anderson mentions chess twice, in "The White King's War," incorporated into A Circus Of Hells, and in "The Immortal Game," although only the latter describes the moves of a game.

(Addendum: Of course, Anderson "mentions" chess more than just twice. See comments.)

Science fiction provides opportunities for imagining new games or variations of games in the future or on other planets, although Anderson did not do this. We would expect the Merseians to play a combat-based board game. However, the winged Ythrians would not think in two dimensions.

Reading on, I have learned that SM Stirling's Martian board game, atanj, the Game of Life, can be played by up to eight and that its board is octagonal with sixty two squares on a side. These and other differences remove it far from any real comparison with chess. Another difference is that the Martians play it virtually all the time, hardly the case with chess. These Martians are unempathetic characters and I much prefer Stirling's Venus.

Iain M. Banks Culture novel, The Player Of Games, centers on extremely elaborate board games but we are not told any of their rules which I think we should be.

Chessmen Of Four Worlds

On Earth, when a red chess piece is moved onto a square already occupied by a white piece, the white piece is "taken," i.e. removed from the board.

On Wayland, in Poul Anderson's A Circus Of Hells, when an intelligent computer plays chess against itself, the large, robotic pieces fight for possession of squares.

On Barsoom, in ERB's The Chessmen Of Mars, jetan pieces (with 100, not 64, squares) take each other, except when the game is played with armed men who fight to the death.

On Zho'da, in SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, dice determine which atanj piece wins the fight for a square.

Thus, atanj combines skill with chance. Players can agree to throw dice on whether a Coercive piece will defect but we are also told that not exercising Coercives increases the odds of their defection - as if they had a mind of their own? Atanj also seems to include some role play. Three threes on the dice give the paratroops in a Flier Transport time to emerge and capture the Chief Coercive whose square they have invaded. Three ones mean that the paratroops have persuaded the Chief Coercive to turn against his Despot.

By moving together to another square, the Flier Transport and the defected Chief Coercive confront the Despot who must therefore either restore Sh'u Maz or abdicate. In the game described, he abdicates. Thus, the other Despot has proved his superior fitness both to perpetuate his lineage and to establish Sustained Harmony. Atanj pieces include Coercives, Clandestines, Blockade, Boycott, Flier Transport and Despot.

Barsoom and Zho'da are two fictional versions of Mars.

Curious Beginnings

These are curious beginnings for novels:

"The story is of a lost treasure guarded by curious monsters, and of captivity in a wilderness, and of a chase through reefs and shoals that could wreck a ship. There is a beautiful girl in it, a magician, a spy or two, and the rivalry of empires. So of course - Flandry was later tempted to say - it begins with a coincidence."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), pp. 197-365 AT p. 197.

"Every planet in the story is cold - even Terra, though Flandry came home on a warm evening of northern summer. There the chill was in the spirit."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT p. 342.

"The story is of a man, a woman, and a world. But ghosts pass through it, and gods. Time does, which is more mysterious than any of these."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), p. 3.

All three inform the reader about "the story" that he is about to read but who is the informant? The omniscient narrator of third person narrative is usually invisible, off-stage, not acknowledging that a "story" is being told but placing information inside the reader's mind without making him reflect on how that information came to be there. The reader shares the narrator's omniscience about the fictional world but without in any way thinking about him.

By contrast, the first of these three narrators is in our face with his conversational style, "...a spy or two..." He can hardly be the author, Poul Anderson, directly addressing his readers. Anderson does occasionally do this but in an introduction or foreword, not in the text. The first narrator knows what "...Flandry was later tempted to say..." so, if this narrator is not omniscient, then he must be a friend or confidante of Flandry's who is relating the latter's adventures to some third party?

The first narrator misleads us with that word "...magician..." The character in question is a mystic, occultist and hypnotist. And those "...reefs and shoals..." are a gravitational field so that the "...ship..." is a spaceship. By contrast, the second narrator acknowledges that his narrative is science fiction with his second word.

Is This Possible?

Dominic Flandry, one of many Intelligence agents sent to investigate the crisis in Sector Alpha Crucis, captains a spaceship that is shot down and crash lands on the planet Dido. Despite this contretemps, Flandry manages to:

lead his surviving crew and their single prisoner on a long trek through an inhospitable environment with native help;

learn to communicate with a Didonian;

hijack a rebel spaceship, thus acquiring the enemy's secret code;

fly the ship to the sector capital, thus ensuring that loyalist forces, possessing the enemy's code, will be able to win any space battle and to destroy the rebel fleet;

murder the Sector Governor, whose injustices had provoked the rebellion;

return his prisoner to her husband, the rebel leader, warning the latter to flee and stay away;

conceal all this malpractice, including murder and treason, from his superiors, some of whom realize that they need men as capable and successful as Flandry.

But can one man really do all this? (If enemy codes are that easy to steal, then I am surprised that it has not been done before.)

On Talwin, Flandry, surviving with limited supplies in another hostile environment, had managed to:

persuade the native Ruadrath to radio the Merseian explorers, alleging that they were puzzled because they had found a frozen alien non-Merseian corpse;

hijack the airbus in which the chief Merseian scientist, Ydwyr, travels to parley with the Ruadrath;

fake a call from Ydwyr to base saying that Flandry was barely alive and that his captured ship should be flown to the Ruadrath so that Terrestrial medical supplies could be accessed;

recapture his ship;

escape from Talwin, taking Ydwyr as hostage;

evade Merseian pursuit by flying through a Talwinian storm, then orbiting around a neutron star;

conspire with Ydwyr to smooth over everything, including his own misdemeanors that had led to his capture by the Merseians.

Merseian Understanding Of Humanity

Chunderban Desai explains the periodic decline of human civilizations to Dominic Flandry. See here. Both suspect that the Merseians and their agent, Aycharaych, know of this historical analysis. In fact, the datholch Ydwyr the Seeker echoes Desai:

"'The breakdown of legitimate authority into weakness or oppression - which are two aspects of the same thing, the change of Hands into Heads - is a late stage of the fatal disease.'"
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 331.

Desai does not use the metaphor of a disease but does speak of a process with stages and implies that the loss of legitimacy is a later stage. What Ydwyr calls Hands becoming Heads, I call accountable leaders becoming despotic rulers. This occurs when a revolution goes wrong or when a revolution happens, depending on your view of revolution - and I am not going to discuss that here! I see that I have quoted Ydwyr on this before.

Desai wants to come to a comparable understanding of the Merseians. Might they also already be decadent? But what would that mean for them? We, the readers, know, with the benefit of historical hindsight, that their Roidhunate does not succeed in replacing the Empire after the latter has fallen and we have speculated on two possible causes of the Merseians' decline:

resentment of their racial supremacism among their subject races/junior partners;
demoralization caused by the failure of the Starkad scheme and of Magnusson's rebellion.

Some Very Obscure Planets

For the sake of completeness, let us consider some of the planets that are mentioned only tangentially in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.

(i) When Dominic Flandry is based on Irumclaw, his pilot's data list several nearby habitable planets, including a few with intelligent natives, although none of these worlds has ever been revisited. Imagine that: so much life on so many planets that several intelligent species can be ignored.

(ii) The fourth planet in the system of Irumclaw has an unbreathable atmosphere with dust clouds in a purple sky but is mined and therefore has a small human colony with a floating population and a shabby spaceport "...in the middle of an immense rusty desert..." (Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 356), where a tube stretches from airdome to airlock, but that is all that we see as Flandry's single human passenger disembarks.

(iii) Irumclaw is not on any liner routes but a Cynthian tramp freighter transports two human passengers to Ysabeau which has cities and is a transfer point to the rest of the Empire although, again, we learn nothing further of Ysabeau.

(iv) All that we know about Therayn is that it is on the opposite side of the Roidhunate from the Empire and that it is conquered by the Merseians.

How many such tangential planets are there in the History?

Ruadrath

Poul Anderson casually, or so it seems, creates yet another rational species for just three of the twenty chapters of A Circus Of Hells. The dominant species of the Talwinian winter is called the Ruadrath, approximately "Elf-folk," by Merseian explorers.

Ancestors of the Ruadrath:

inhabited the continental shelf;
developed both lungs and gills to cope with annual floods and droughts;
sheltered from summer heat in the sea;
however, being better walkers than swimmers (spending more time on land), came to estivate at sea.

A Ruad is unintelligent all summer and a mere swimming animal until the seasonal return to land triggers memories and intelligence. Then Rrinn remembers that he leads Wirda's pack and is married to Cuwarra, that supplies and equipment have been left in a building a safe distance from shore etc.

Different packs protect themselves from predators in different ways during estivation, e.g.:

boulders rolled across crevices;
finsnake guards;
cages.

When Rrinn awakes, he is too deep for sunlight but sees other swimmers "...as blurs of blackness." (Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 317) I wondered whether Rrinn had rediscovered John Milton's "...no light, but rather darkness visible..." However, it is explained that illumination comes from organisms planted at the sides of the cage.

Most of Chapter Sixteen has the awakening, swimming, remembering, then land-traversing, Rrinn as its viewpoint character but, before that, the omniscient narrator explains:

"When first they woke, the People had no names. He who was Rrinn ashore was an animal at the bottom of the sea." (p. 317)

Anderson's vocabulary again: "...hyaline clarity..." We might remember the Splendor Hyaline from Narnia. (My computer does not recognize this adjective.)

How To Survive On Talwin

How to hibernate without being exterminated by winter carnivores:

camouflage;
shells;
spines;
poisonous tissues;
tunneling deep;
tunneling under rocks;
lying under glaciers;
prolificity;
the Domrath, large and armed, go berserk if roused;
constructing shelters;
sleeping in gated caves.

Flandry explores with civilian Merseian scientists who have learned precision from military service. He is unarmed but they can protect him, e.g., from Domrath berserkergang, if necessary.

In fact, thanks to Flandry and Ydwyr, a joint Merseian-Terran scientific base comes into existence on Talwin but it is mainly useful as a location for secret meetings between the rival Intelligence services since Siekh is in the Wilderness between Empire and Roidhunate and is a more discrete venue than the neutral power, Betelgeuse.

An Argument About Flandry

Where Terrans say "hand in hand," Merseians say, "'...tail-entwined...'" (Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 280), even when speaking of tailless Terrans.

Morioch Sun-in-eye thinks that the prisoner Flandry should be interrogated first because he worked tail-entwined with the troublemaker Max Abrams against Brechdan Ironrede in the Starkad affair and secondly because it seems too big a coincidence that, of every possible pilot, Flandry was the one who went to the lost planet.

The datholch Ydwyr the Seeker replies that:

Flandry cannot have any information not already known to the Merseians;
"interrogation" would leave him of no use for anything else;
there is no connection between his previous association with Abrams and his adventure on Wayland:

"'He is precisely the type to whom such things occur. If one exposes oneself to life, qanryf, life will come to one.'" (p. 280)

When we can see past his (subtle) racism, Ydwyr is wise. A Wiccan high priest recently taught me that, if we go out to meet life, then life comes to meet us. The gods respond if we approach them.

The Merseain authorities agree with Ydwyr. Rather surprisingly, I thought, no order comes to interrogate Flandry although Ydwyr pretends that such an order has come in order to manipulate Djana. Here again we lose sympathy with Ydwyr.

How Djana Sees The Merseians

Djana thinks:

"...they did not dream of conquering the galaxy, that was absurd on the face of it, they simply wanted freedom to range and rule without bound, and 'rule' did not mean tyranny over others, it meant just that others should not stand in the way of the full outfolding of that spirit which lay in the Race..."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 296.

Then why say "rule"? Where is the line between truth and propaganda? The Merseians will not attempt to impose a single galactic government, which "'...'d collapse under its own weight...'" (p. 83), as Hauksberg says, but they do want the galaxy to become "'...a set of autonomous Merseian-ruled regions. The race, not the nation, counts with them...'" (ibid.), as Abrams says. In fact, we know that they conquered and enslaved another race in the previous volume so their "rule" is "tyranny over others."

Djana sees a Merseian Christ leading an army including human beings as junior partners but this is because Ydwyr's reconditioning builds on her childhood Catholicism. Ydwyr says that their ultimate endeavor is "'...to impose Will on blind Nature and Chance.'" (p. 331)

- an endeavor in which all intelligent beings could join but, again, he emphasizes that he means specifically Merseian Will.

Flandry And Merseians

Dominic Flandry's education about the Merseians continues while he is their prisoner on Talwin. He explains to his aristocratic master, Ydwyr the Seeker, that:

he was electrocrammed with Eriau in haste;
his stay on Mersiea was brief;
his Academy training dealt mainly with the Merseians as military opponents.

I suspect that, in accordance with his own earlier reflections, Flandry downplays the extent of his existing knowledge first to make Ydwyr underestimate him and secondly to gain the opportunity of learning as much as he can in this new situation. He had been unfamiliar with Ydwyr's rank of datholch because it is civilian, not military, although Mersians separate these roles differently and less clearly than Terrans.

A datholch is an aristocratic leader of an enterprise to expand the race's frontiers and it probably does not matter whether the frontiers are scientific, commercial, territorial etc. So a philosopher and an entrepreneur might be accorded the same status? Ydwyr is the Roidhun's nephew and a xenologist, currently studying the Domrath and Ruadrath, two intelligent species on Talwin. He learns from other races, and has even studied under Aycharaych in his castle at Raal on Chereion, but unfortunately he does still regard all other races as inferior and manipulable. Djana thinks that he has befriended her but he says that he has reconditioned her and he is prepared to see Flandry die in order to clinch his hold over Djana, who can be made useful to the Roidhunate.

Ydwyr sounded good but he remains an implacable adversary.

Rax

I have remarked before on how strange it would be to live in a civilization where intelligent beings met in the course of everyday work or business could have any size or shape of body. People who got used to such a situation really would inhabit a world different from ours. In Poul Anderson's A Circus Of Hells, Djana, a prostitute, goes, as she thinks, to meet a client.

Instead, she faces Rax, the sole member of his species on Irumclaw: a lumpy, gray body on four thin legs, the head at its middle level with her waist, one tentacle holding a vocalizer converting buzzes and whistles from the lower beak into Anglic. Djana thinks that inter-species sex is wrong although Rax suspects that she could be bought. However, as it happens, sex between his species and human beings is impossible and he wants to conduct a different kind of business - although an extremely dangerous one, nevertheless.

Imagine going anywhere to meet a new business contact or make a new acquaintance and being faced with something like Rax. But this can happen all the time in the Terran Empire:

"...many autochthons were present and space travelers of numerous different breeds circulated among them."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 205.

Irumclaw II

In the pioneer days on Irumclaw, beehive-shaped native adobes were remodeled for other lifeforms but are now crumbling. As Flandry enters Old Town at night, Poul Anderson as ever addresses three senses. There are glowsigns, noises and smells. The last of these are unpleasant: body odors, garbage and smoke, although there also incense and dope, but why not some cooking smells?

An Irumclagian chanting with a vocalizer advertises games, stakes, food, drink, stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers and sex with seventeen intelligent species. Thankfully, he does not mention unintelligent species although presumably anything goes.

Flandry seeks to enrich himself and a local vice boss but everything that he does has a purpose. That the Empire will abandon Irumclaw and let the Merseians move nearer has become a self-fulfilling prophecy:

an increasingly incompetent garrison;
able citizens withdrawing themselves and their capital;
defensibility and economic value spiraling downward.

But an enriched local boss with a stake to protect and a reason to stay will lobby and bribe to keep the Empire on Irumclaw.

Irumclaw

In Ensign Flandry, there are Irumclagians and, at the beginning of the following volume, A Circus Of Hells, Flandry is on Irumclaw.

Any sf writer can tell us that an interstellar empire is declining and withdrawing from its periphery but Poul Anderson is also able to present imperial decline in social terms with a hint of the pathetic fallacy to back it up.

First, the pathetic fallacy - Flandry leaves the naval compound:

"Soon after the red-orange sun had set..."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 203.

Anderson gets his readers to imagine sunset colors - not only has the sun just set but it was red-colored to begin with - immediately before he discusses declining empire. I have used the accompanying color illustration, although we have had it recently, because of its appropriate background coloring.

Next, as Flandry walks between the homes and private parks of the wealthy, he reflects that "...they epitomized man's trajectory." (p. 204) When the settlement had been large, prosperous and well inside the Imperial boundaries, it had attracted both mercantile commerce and aristocratic culture but now the mansions are either empty or owned only by those who prey on the declining numbers of spacemen and Navy personnel while, outside the treaty port boundaries, the natives revert to barbarism.

"Tonight Irumclaw lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire." (ibid.)

It is appropriate that Flandry's somber reflections occur just after nightfall. They prefigure the Long Night of Empire that haunts Flandry's life.

Know Your Enemy

How well does Dominic Flandry know the Merseians?

He fights them on Starkad;

en route to Merseia, he is electrocrammed with Eriau and Merseiology;

he is introduced to Brechdan Ironrede, Protector of the Roidhunate's Grand Council;

he helps Abrams with intelligence work on Merseia;

he is shown around the planet by Tachwyr the Dark and Lannawar Belgis (see here);

he is captured by Merseians and spends time with them exploring Talwin;

he captures and negotiates with Ydwyr the Seeker, the Roidhun's nephew;

he is part of the Terran delegation that opposes the Merseians at Betelgeuse;

throughout his career, he periodically meets Tachwyr the Dark, until Flandry becomes an Admiral and Tachwyr becomes the Protector (see here).

I would say that Flandry is an expert on the Merseians.

Human Beings With Merseians

Why do Merseians say, "'Kraich'" (p. 367) or "'Khraich'" (p. 473)?
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012).

This interjection occurs repeatedly but is never translated or explained. Only by seeking out two examples did I notice a difference in spelling.

Flandry's experience on Talwin demonstrates that there are circumstances in which he is able to cooperate with, and even to become friendly with, Mersians of the Roidhunate but also that, despite all this, they will casually kill him if it suits their purposes.

In a recent post, I tried to imagine inoffensive human beings living within the Roidhunate but such a description certainly does not apply to Muhammad Snell, Eriau name "Kluwych," who suggests to his superior officer, Glydh the Far-Farer of the Vach Rueth, that Kossara Vymezal be not only interrogated but also used by the men under Glydh's command.

The most positive interaction between individuals of Terran and Merseian descent is that between Kossara and Trohdwyr, chief gamekeeper to three generations of Vymezals, who accompanies her on a hunt and says:

"'There I stood, you in my line of fire, and that beast - Dama, don't do such things.'" (p. 368)

Anderson created the Merseians to be standard space opera villains. This broadening of our perception of them is very welcome.