Interstellar Slavers and AIs

Larry Niven's Thrintun or Slavers enslave other rational species with hypnotic telepathy. Poul Anderson's Merseians enslave other rational species. Ydwyr, a Merseian, was trained by the telepath, Aycharaych, and reconditions a human women hypnotically. Thus, the Merseians and their Chereionite ally cannot match the Slavers but are the next best thing.

In several of Anderson's works, artificial intelligences generate virtual realities which, when experienced, are indistinguishable from actual realities. An AI in "The Asteroid Queen" by Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling simulates an exploding monobloc and senses it across multiple spectra. Objective nanoseconds but subjective eons later, the simulated matter dissipates as monatomic hydrogen across just ten light years. The AI reruns the program with altered constants.

Is this possible? A mathematical limit is endlessly approached but never reached. Light speed is this kind of limit for any particle with mass. If, between the objective times, t1 and t2, an AI runs a program for which t2 is a mathematical limit, then the AI lives forever in the finite time t1-t2 (I think).

Aycharaych And Ignatieff

Two Science Fiction Villains

(i) Aycharaych is a humanoid from an extrasolar planet whereas Ignatieff is a human being in an alternative history.

(ii) Aycharaych is a universal telepath whereas Ignatieff is served by a timelines-discerning clairvoyant.

(iii) Aycharaych preserves his Chereionite heritage whereas Ignatieff wants the destruction of life.

(iv) For Aycharaych, conflict and unrest are means whereas, for Ignatieff, the infliction of pain is a pleasure.

(v) Aycharaych's commitment is to his heritage, not to the Roidhun, while Ignatieff's commitment is to the Peacock Angel, not to the Czar.

(vi) Aycharaych and Flandry enjoy their conversations whereas Ignatieff and King fight to the death from their very first meeting.

(vii) Aycharaych subverts Flandry's son whereas Ignatieff had killed King's father.

(viii) Ignatieff unequivocally died whereas we can never be sure with Aycharaych...

Heroes And Villains

Four classic pairs:

Holmes and Moriarty;
Bond and Blofeld; (and here)
Dominic Flandry and Aycharaych;
Athelstane King and Count Ignatieff.

Holmes, Moriarty, Bond and Blofeld are universally known, the two sf pairs less so. My point is that King and Ignatieff are worthy of inclusion on this list.

King gradually learns that he has a major adversary:

Ibrahim Khan reveals that a tall white fakir wearing an eye-patch paid him to kill King;
King learns that, a generation earlier, a fakir with one blue eye and one brown eye had preached jihad and killed his, King's, father;
when King meets an adversary with an eye-patch turned up above a blue left eye, that man introduces himself as Count Vladimir Obromovich Ignatieff and they immediately try to kill each other;
Ignatieff is indeed evil, a Devil-worshiping cannibal.

Villains

Interesting villains are an important aspect of popular fiction. I have posted about them on other blogs. Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry has Tachwyr and Aycharaych.

When SMERSH is disbanded, some of its members join SPECTRE which Bond destroys twice before killing its founder and chairman, Blofeld. However, Bond must then fight Scaramanga in order to undo the harmful consequences of his final showdown with Blofeld. Thus, from SMERSH to SPECTRE to Blofeld to Scaramanga.

There is a comparable progression of villainy in Anderson's Time Patrol series:

the Nine who discover time travel in 19352 want to change the past but are prevented by the Danellians;

 
Rozher Schtein (Stane) from 2987 is an individual  time criminal;

the two-hundred-fifth millennium is an age of "Neldorian" bandits;

two Neldorians change history but the Patrol changes it back;

thirty-first millennial Exaltationists are more sophisticated than Neldorians;

even though the Exaltationist leader, Merau Varagan, has been apprehended, his clone-mate, Raor, remains at large;

even when the remaining Exaltationists have been killed or captured, the Patrol must fight against temporal chaos;

chaos is focused through the new concept of a personal causal nexus, a man who, tragically, is not a villain but must be eliminated by the Patrol;

thus, from the Nine to Stane to Neldorians to Exaltationists to Varagan to Raor to chaos to Lorenzo de Conti.

Aycharaych and Varagan join the august band of Moriarty, Carl Peterson, Blofeld, Zala and Max. For these last two, see here. They are all later joined by SM Stirling's Count Ignatieff.

Meaning In Mystery And Death As Completion

While exploiting other races’ religions, Aycharaych himself sees meaning in mystery and death as a completion. He pities God, the immortal and omniscient. (The Chereionites, who were also the Ancients, were not necessarily theistic. Aycharaych, the last Chereionite, might speak figuratively either because he works for Merseia or because, in the Sky Cave, he addresses the Terrestrial, Flandry. As a telepath, he knows how to influence his opponents.)

This italicized passage has been copied from an article on CS Lewis and James Blish. See here. One section of the article, called "Ten American Future Historians and Four Related Authors," summarizes coverage of religion in several future histories, including Anderson's. 

Why does Aycharaych pity God? If God is omniscient, then He lacks mystery. But, if meaning is in mystery, then God has no meaning. And, if God is immortal and death is completion, then God is incomplete. I think that Aycharaych's conclusions follow from his premises although I do not accept the premises.

Where Did The Ancients Go?

(Aeneas killing Turnus.)

Cosmenosists hope, then believe, that the Ancients went beyond and will return. Several volumes later, Fr Axor hopes that the Ancients had a divine incarnation. He cleverly puts a Christian slant on the mysticism surrounding the Ancients. We would like to know more about his researches.

Meanwhile, the Ythrian Erannath presents a perfectly plausible theory about what happened to the Ancients but it is so understated that we might miss it or have forgotten it by the time we read about Axor. The small, three-eyed lucks or slinkers are found on planets with Ancient remains. Kept as pets, they telepathically amplify their owners' emotions. Tinerans, addicted to perpetually amplified and re-amplified emotions, act like psychopaths. Possibly, the Ancients developed the lucks as pleasure sources but died from their effects.

This theory is not proved but fits the evidence and makes sense so it will suffice as a hypothesis until a better explanation is found. Accepting Aycharaych's identification of the Ancients with the Chereionites also explains what happened to the Chereionites. Meanwhile, however, Axor might still find what he regards as sufficient evidence that there was an Ancient/Chereionite Incarnation.

Honorable Enemies

"Honorable Enemies" (1951) by Poul Anderson introduced three alien species:

large green Merseians, sitting on their tails;
tall golden Chereionites, with feathers instead of hair;
small blue Betelgueseans, playing off Terrans against Merseians.

Merseians are the collective continuing villain of the Dominic Flandry series and Aycharaych of Chereion became the main individual continuing villain. Compare SMERSH/SPECTRE and Blofeld.

The story assumed a large inhabited planetary system in orbit around a red giant star and later had to be revised to explain this anomaly. See here.

It refers to two previous exploits of Dominic Flandry:

his single-handed conquest of Schotania, described in Anderson's "Tiger by the Tail" (1951);

his recent discovery of how to nullify Merseian robolocks, an untold story.

The entire action of "Honorable Enemies" is incorporated into the time scale of "The Game of Glory" (1958), which, in turn, is referred back to in "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1959). Thus, the Flandry series grew and this process continued with the addition of novels, prequels and sequels.

Can anyone read what is printed on the cover of FUTURE between "Honorable Enemies" and "by Poul Anderson"?

Later: It says "Feature Novelet."

Aycharaych In Conversation II

In conversation with Dominic Flandry on the neutral planet, Talwin, Aycharaych refers to Bach's St Matthew's Passion, to Rembrandt and to Tu Fu. When Flandry mentions a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that begins:

"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
"Down in the reeds by the river?"

- Aycharaych is able to recite the concluding stanza:

"'Yet half a beast is the great god, Pan,
'To laugh as he sits by the river,
'Making a poet out of a man:
'The true gods sigh for the cost and pain -
'For the reed that grows nevermore again
'As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 464.

Here explicitly, as Flandry surmised, Aycharaych justifies the suffering of others in the cause of his supposed art:

"'In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby we may seek to win an atom deeper into the mystery.'" (p. 463)

Not when the actions are as despicable as Aycharaych's in The Day Of Their Return, although, even there, he claimed that he had not really harmed the man whom he made schizophrenic in order to use him as a prophetic dupe.

Aycharaych In Conversation

We see Aycharaych of Chereion in conversation with Chunderban Desai once and with Dominic Flandry twice. He lies to Desai, claiming to be from a planet called Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran of the Terran Empire. Despite this dishonesty, we have no reason to doubt his stated interest in humanity:

he knows of the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping Rebellion and Christianity;

he has studied Aeschlyus, Li Po, Shakespeare, Sturgeon, Mikhailov, Bach, Richard Strauss, Rembrandt and Hiroshige;

he borrows and reads a volume of Tagore while waiting in Desai's office.

Fictitious characters are usually fictions to each other. Anyone can refer to Sherlock Holmes and many do (although, in the case of Anderson's Time Patrolmen, Holmes is not a fiction). We have to accept that, in the Technic civilization timeline, there was an American science fiction writer called Theodore Sturgeon but not one called Poul Anderson. (Beowulf Shaeffer in Larry Niven's Known Space future history refers to Heinlein and also to Carter (?). Known Space does have a John Carter on Mars, obviously an ironic reference to ERB's Warlord of Mars.)

Aycharaych tells the philistine Flandry that Johann Strauss is not to be compared to Richard who is more misunderstood than Xingu. He admires an orchid seen against a null-gee sphere of water with the universe beyond:

"'Black against the quicksilver water globe...the universe black and cold against both. A beautiful arrangement, and with that touch of horror necessary to the highest art.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 162.

I do not agree about the horror but thus Aycharaych rationalizes his art "'...of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings...'" (p. 391)

- to quote Desai in conversation with Flandry.

By calling the violet flower black, Aycharaych lets slip that Chereion's sun "'...is cooler and redder than [Flandry's].'" (p. 162)

Aycharaych Revisited

For his last novel featuring the Intelligence agent Dominic Flandry, The Game Of Empire (IN Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012), Poul Anderson revived Flandry's recurring opponent, Aycharaych of Chereion, neither by revealing that the latter had survived the bombardment of his home planet nor by writing a new story set earlier. Instead, a flashback reveals some of the Chereionite's much earlier activities. This was an appropriately understated way to re-use the character.

Like "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows," Aycharaych influences events from off-stage. When the Magnussion rebellion begins, Tachwyr of Merseia reflects that the original plan had been Aycharaych's and that the latter had directly participated in the early preparations.

"But Aycharaych died...At least, he vanished; you could never be altogether sure of anything about the Chereionite." (p. 267)

Tachwyr invokes the "...ghost of Aycharaych..." when he resolves that the Race will fulfill its destiny (p. 268).

Flandry deliberately mentions Aycharaych twice when sounding out the rebel Magnusson, who clearly recognizes the name but denies ever having met him. Finally, we learn that Aycharaych did take charge of Magnusson's conditioning on Merseia:

"The Golden face, the uttered wisdom..." (p. 436)

Cynically, the Chereionite made this human being a loyal Merseian:

"...dedication to a God unknowable..." (ibid.)

(Again, no personal relationship with "the God," just a racial destiny.)

Thus, although they do not realize it, Targovi, Diana and Axor have foiled yet another plot of Aycharaych.

Know Your Enemy

Flandry and Aycharaych are like Holmes and Moriarty or Bond and Blofeld. However, Poul Anderson does more than merely reproduce this perennial hero-villain conflict. He cleverly motivates Aycharaych. The latter is neither a master criminal nor a loyal agent of Flandry's enemies, the Merseians. He works with them but entirely for his own purposes.

Flandry prolongs Technic civilization. Aycharaych preserves the Chereionite heritage. Both succeed, for a while. Flandry succeeds to the extent that the Terran Empire does not, we think, fall in his lifetime, which is the most that he can hope for. Aycharaych, unfortunately, lives to see Chereion destroyed and probably dies with it.

Aycharaych's exalted and exemplary end in no way justifies his manipulative and murderous means. What he does to living beings and planetary populations is inexcusable. I think that this character's tragedy is that he did not find any better way to achieve his aims.

But it gets worse. Perhaps he did not want to find a better way? I have not got the passage to hand but I am fairly certain that, in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, Flandry suspects that Aycharaych regards the fomenting of discord not as a necessary evil but as a work of art from which he derives aesthetic pleasure. This, if true, sounds like a refined form of sadism.

I would have liked to have read a novel in which Aycharaych, surviving the destruction of Chereion and without any input from Flandry, decided what to do next. Undoing some of the damage that he himself had caused would have been a good start.

Flandry has another recurring opponent who is closer to being an opposite number and, indeed, whose career exactly parallels Sir Dominic's. Further, Nicholas van Rijn has a "nemesis" although we have to reread carefully to extract this character from the texts of the trader team novels. Thus, there might be further "Know Your Enemy" posts.

Aycharaych

Aycharaych:

is first mentioned, by a senior Merseian to Flandry, in A Circus Of Hells;
first appears in The Day Of Their Return;
first meets Flandry in "Honorable Enemies";
is first seen on his home planet of Chereion in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Defeats
Aycharaych is captured by Flandry but immediately released in a prisoner exchange at the end of "Hunters of the Sky Cave." His usefulness to Merseia, his motivation for working with the Merseians and possibly also his life are ended when Flandry orders the bombardment of Chereion at the end of A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. A senior Merseian speculates about Aycharaych's possible return in The Game Of Empire.

Thus, Aycharaych appears in just four works and is referred to in another two. Surprisingly, he and Flandry meet in only three works although they meet twice in two of these.

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows ends Aycharaych's conflict with Flandry if not also his life but other questions remain. Why was he the last Chereionite? I think we must accept his claim that his people were that ancient star-faring race that left ruins in many planetary systems but is there any truth behind the myth that these Ancients or Elders went beyond and will return? Some writers would have answered such questions but Anderson's fictitious history resembles real history to the extent that mysteries remain.

Anderson went on to write other speculative fiction in which post-organic intelligence hopes to "go beyond" by using either the energy of particle decay or some even more obscure mechanism to survive the heat death of the universe.

Religion in Poul Anderson II

This is a second short extract from "CS Lewis and James Blish" (here) with a cover illustration of Flandry and Aycharaych added.

Returning briefly to Anderson’s Technic History, whose religious themes we have by no means exhausted, red-blind beings, unable to see the light of a proto-sun from within a nearby nebula, regard the, to them, entirely dark nebula as the Sky Cave and the Gate of the Dead. 

Aycharaych manipulates this race’s leaders by meeting them on a nebular proto-planet. While exploiting other races’ religions, Aycharaych himself sees meaning in mystery and death as a completion. He pities God, the immortal and omniscient. (The Chereionites, who were also the Ancients, were not necessarily theistic. Aycharaych, the last Chereionite, might speak figuratively either because he works for Merseia or because, in the Sky Cave, he addresses the terrestrial, Flandry. As a telepath, he knows how to influence his opponents.)

Longer Term Questions

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows is a pivotal novel for two main characters in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. Flandry of Terra loses his son and his fiancee. Aycharaych of Chereion loses his planet and his heritage. Flandry carries on. We do not know what happens to Aycharaych. Two volumes later there is a hint that he might have survived but that is all.

Was Aycharaych killed in the bombardment of Chereion? He could have escaped but might not have wanted to. If he did escape, he would have had no reason to continue working either for Merseia or against Terra. Might he instead have worked against Merseia? Could that be why, when the Empire falls, its space is not filled by an expanded Rhoidunate?

How could the Ancients/Chereionites have become extinct? If they are not, then where are they and could Aycharaych have joined them (although his anguish in the face of Flandry's questions does strongly suggest that he is indeed the last Chereionite)? (1) Another science fiction writer might have planned and presented a multi-volume series raising, then answering, these questions. Instead, Anderson wrote a long sequence of stories and novels about various characters living and working in many different well conceived planetary environments.

Longer term questions about history and the Ancients form the background for these works but do not become the prime subject matter. Thus, we get an approximation to real history. What is the later course of the career of Flandry's daughter? What will Fr Axor discover when he continues to examine Ancient ruins? Since the League and the Empire fell, will the Commonalty fall also? Such questions could have been answered if Anderson had just written this one series and had not devoted such attention to details in individual works but had instead concentrated on an Asimovian perspective of big galactic events. However, I think we should be very grateful that Anderson followed the course that he did.

(1) Anderson, Poul, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, London, 1978, p. 215.

Chereion

The planet Chereion is in the Merseian Rhoidunate. Landing on it is forbidden by each new Rhoidun. Merseian warcraft protect its system to the death.

Chereion's sun is a red dwarf star, billions of years older than Sol or Zoria, with seven planets. Chereion has polar caps, barren deserts, uncultivated saline plant life, a few shrunken seas and a small scarred moon. Chereionite gravity is half terrestrial. Much atmosphere and hydrosphere have been lost. There is overwhelming age and desolation. Cities are in good repair with fusion power but little energy use and with no visible traffic or ground or satellite defenses. There are lighted towers in the middle of rock and sand wastes.

A Chereionite city is surrounded by low glittering rainbow bushes, then by lifeless desert and eroded mountains. The city, enclosed in an ellipse, comprises, at the perimeter, single-storied, slenderly colonnaded buildings. Beyond these, other buildings lift towards slim towers. There are harmonious colors but few windows and no sounds. Landscape erosion has revealed the city's azure foundations.

Streets are broad and blue. Man-sized floating ovoids with tentacles holding tools and sensors maintain the buildings. In a mosaic plaza, computer-generated holograms of extinct Chereionites walk in apparent contemplation and mind to mind communication, preventing the Merseians from realizing that only one Chereionite survives. Aycharaych, who trained high ranking Merseians in his castle at Raal, preserves recordings not only of his planet's art and literature but also of its spiritual leaders and philosophers. He says that the Chereionites were the Ancients whose ruins are found on many planets. 

Sources: Anderson, Poul, The Day Of Their Return, Doubleday, 1973; A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, London, 1978; A Circus Of Hells, London, 1978, p. 116.