The Incorporated State And The United Protectorates

"The Innocent Arrival" (1958) by Poul and Karen Anderson established a version of a future Earth which Poul Anderson reproduced in the sequel, "The Moonrakers." (1966)

"'...you won't find find many people who wish to leave. They wouldn't be able to see the Teamster Hour on Mars...'"
- Poul and Karen Anderson, The Unicorn Trade, New York, 1984, p. 59.

"'...the Incorporated State has naturally produced a, uh, gullible type of citizen. His life's so thoroughly regulated that his main freedom lies in fantasies, which the sensies and the advertisers are quick to supply. Maybe for the average Earthling, those hackneyed old show motifs are more real and meaningful than his own life.'"
- Poul Anderson, Beyond The Beyond, London, 1973, p. 149.

Fantasies realer than life? Once, when I was waiting in a hospital, two porters walked past. One showed his colleague a tabloid newspaper headline. The colleague smiled in appreciation of the story, whatever it was (we call news reports "stories"), then asked this crucial question, "Wha'? In real life or in t'soap?" So - first he appreciated the story, then he checked which of the two parallel narratives it belonged to, "real life" or fiction.

On the other hand, social conventions like money, laws, rights, obligations, contracts and personal and family names are creations of human minds; they do not exist in the physical reality shared with other species and with inanimate objects. Thus, human beings are protoplasm with a creative imagination? However, everything outside ourselves is not fiction. We encounter both external reality, in the universe studied by science, and internal reality, when we understand the workings of our own and others' minds.

The Innocent Arrival And The Moonrakers

Poul Anderson's "The Moonrakers" (Beyond The Beyond, London, 1973) was unsatisfactory, at least to me, the first time I read it because it referred to events that had occurred between our pre-space travel present and the story's interplanetary future but did not tell the reader where he could read about those intermediate events or even confirm that they had been recounted in any published text. However, see the comments to the previous post.

James Church in "The Moonrakers" says, "Matheny was a great-uncle of mine..." (p. 150). That completely opaque statement makes sense when we discover that Peter Matheny, together with discussion of the financial poverty of a Martian colony, features in "The Innocent Arrival" by Poul and Karen Anderson, which is included in their collection, The Unicorn Trade (New York, 1984). This collection is a mixed bag, to say the least, but its main emphasis is on fantasy, as its cover demonstrates, so it is the last place where I would have searched for a prequel to the hard sf short story, "The Moonrakers."

I will shortly read "The Innocent Arrival," I think for the first time, before returning to "The Moonrakers," which is now making a lot more future historical sense. Some initial comments on "The Moonrakers": it is solid Andersonian economics, politics and sociology in a hard sf setting. As usual, Anderson applies his knowledge of history to a speculative future. Having just read about the Nomads in his Psychotechnic History, we now read Church's comparison of the asterites, asteroid colonists (Larry Niven says "Belters"), with ancient nomads. The latter were not progenitors but offshoots of civilization - survivors and warriors.

An enthroned asterite Chief of the Keep is described as a throwback to earlier times on Earth although his opulent cave is like a forerunner of the exotic lairs of Anderson's much later Selenarchs.

The Moonrakers

In Poul Anderson's "The Moonrakers" (Beyond The Beyond, London, 1973), Mars, colonized and terraformed, handles most Solar merchant shipping. The asteroids, colonized and hollowed out with barbaric opulence, have broken free from Mars, prey on Martian ships and sell to the Incorporated State on Earth.

The terraforming of Mars was financed by "the Great Swindle." (p. 143) I will have to reread the rest of the story but what I remember from before is that this "Swindle" was never explained, thus, I thought, implying that this story is a sequel to another. I will be interested if any blog reader can comment?

Back To The Collections

Randomly taking another Poul Anderson hard sf collection from a shelf, we find:

Beyond The Beyond (London, 1973)
"Memory" (Galaxy SF, 1957)
"Brake" (Astounding SF, 1957)
"The Sensitive Man" (Fantastic Universe SF, 1954)
"The Moonrakers" (If Worlds of SF, 1966)
"Starfog" (Analog Science Fact-Science Fiction, 1967)

We recognize "Brake" and "The Sensitive Man" as installments of Anderson's Psychotechnic History and "Starfog" as an installment of his Technic History. Thus, there are at most only two non-series stories present and this is yet another collection that can be liquidated into others in a rationalized Complete Works.

"Memory," as discussed very early on this blog (see here), is a story that looks as if it is part of the Technic History but turns out not to be. That leaves only "The Moonrakers" still to be discussed. When I read it once years ago, it seemed to be a sequel to something else but I will see what I think this time.

It starts with a guy in a space boat salvaging a wrecked spaceship containing crates with the manufacturer's date of 2000.