Succession And Simultaneity

Future histories sometimes convey not only succession but also simultaneity, not only events occurring successively over historical periods of time but also some events occurring in different places simultaneously:

in Robert Heinlein's Future History, "Gentlemen, Be Seated" is a background event in "The Black Pits of Luna";

in Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Poul Anderson's Technic History, stories featuring van Rijn, Falkayn and others overlap in the 2420s and 2430s;

in Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship, characters on Prince Samual's World know that something important is happening in the Trans-Coalsack...and, if we read Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye, we know what.

Succession, or chronological linearity, generates series whereas simultaneity adds three dimensionality. Their combination confers narrative substantiality.

Meeting The Alien

A Multi-Species Civilization
A Multi-Species Civilization II
Items About Falkayn
Meeting An Alien

In Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), Chapter II, a woman and a large, tyrannosaur-like being meet a man and "...an anthropard...," (p. 12) as yet undescribed. Although the man is unfamiliar with the tyrannosaur-like species, he easily greets the woman and her companion with:

"'Greeting, my lady, sir.'" (p. 16)

- and asks, in Anglay, which language "Karl" prefers. When told that "Karl" is known as such only for human purposes and that he is from a planet called "Gargantua," the anthropard (cat-woman?) then easily addresses him as "'...Karl Gargantuan.'" (p. 17)

My point is only that it is no mean feat to converse so easily with intelligences whose bodies can be any size or shape. I have discussed this point in relation to Anderson's History of Technic Civilization (see the links above) and it arises again in connection with his later work, FLAG.

There are two problems:

getting used not only to all the different body shapes and sizes but also to the fact that any new acquaintance might look completely different from any that you have already met;

getting used to the minds that might differ as much as the bodies.

Lissa, the woman with the Gargantuan companion, reflects that:

"...she would never understand the nuances of his personality, nor he hers." (p. 12)

And Noah Arkwright, introducing an exploit of David Falkayn, writes:

"The nonhuman...can only show us those facets of himself which we can understand. Thus he often seems to be a two-dimensional, even comic personality." (The Van Rijn Method, pp. 264-265)

Despite this, Falkayn manages to converse with some pretty strange guys as if they were human.

Strong Central Characters

Poul Anderson wrote strong central characters who make a difference in their respective historical milieus:

Manse Everard defends the Danellian timeline;
Dominic Flandry defends the Terran Empire and makes what provision he can for the Long Night;
Gunnhild defends her and Eirik Blood-ax's bloodline.

In this sequence, there is a progressive narrowing of focus from an entire history to a single Empire to a single family. Constrained by Viking views and values, Gunnhild learns what she can of shamanism and Christendom but, of course, lacks the scientific knowledge of either the Danellian future or the Terran Empire.

Let us consider three other strong central characters:

Gratillonius defends the Roman Empire and tries to preserve civilization after Imperial withdrawal;
Nicholas van Rijn founds Solar Spice & Liquor and enriches himself;
David Falkayn makes a career in Solar Spice & Liquor but also founds both Supermetals and Avalon.

Thus, Falkayn builds something for others instead of merely defending a status quo.

The six characters represent three timelines:

the Danellians;
Technic Civilization;
a fantasy history of Europe.

Cartels And Chaos

The Polesotechnic League
Nicholas van Rijn's protege, David Falkayn, is a series character in his own right, with one story set before he works for van Rijn's company, another before he meets van Rijn, four about the trader team led by Falkayn and a grand conclusion.

The Terran Empire
Dominic Flandry acquires a protege, his own daughter, Diana Crowfeather, who stars in what I call a "proto-series," i.e., a single work that was potentially the opening installment of a new series.

The Time Patrol
Manse Everard's protege, Wanda Tamberly, becomes a new continuing character in The Shield Of Time.

League, Empire and Patrol each confront their external opponents, most notably:

the Merseian Roidhunate aims to destroy the Terran Empire;
Neldorians and Exaltationists try to change the history guarded by the Time Patrol.

However, civilizations face not only external threats to their continued existence but also internal causes of their own decline. Chunderban Desai tells Dominic Flandry that:

"'...wrong decisions bring breakdown...Technic civilization started on that road when the Polesotechnic League changed from a mutual-aid organization of free entrepreneurs to a set of cartels. Tonight we are far along the way.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), pp. 388-389.

We last saw van Rijn and Falkayn trying to hold the League together for a while after the fatal wound inflicted by cartelization. What had seemed to be an external threat had really been engineered by one cartel.

The most fundamental threat to the Patrol is internal not merely to the time-traveling civilization but to the cosmos: quantum chaos changes history unpredictably. We last see Everard and Wanda shortly after they have counteracted one accidental quirk in the temporal flux.

Four Significant Characters

In his Editor's Introduction to the fourth NESFA collection, Rick Katze writes that Manse Everard, David Falkayn and Nicholas van Rijn are in this volume and that Dominic Flandry will also be in the fifth. These are Poul Anderson's four most significant characters. Every dedicated Anderson fan has already read everything that there is to be read about each of the four. Anderson also has many comparable characters in other series and in single works.

Between them, the four named characters represent three institutions:

the Time Patrol, founded by Danellians and staffed by human beings;
the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire, founded by human beings and incorporating other species.

Van Rijn and Falkayn live in the same period;
Flandry lives in a later period of the same history;
Everard lives in a different kind of history.

Everard's timeline is single and mutable, hence the need for a Time Patrol, whereas the timelines connected to the Old Phoenix Inn are many and static with no direct contact. Thus, we read seven omnibus volumes of the Technic History with no reference to the Old Phoenix but do find van Rijn in the Inn elsewhere in the Anderson canon. Thus also, Anderson imagined both a Time Patrol universe and an Old Phoenix multiverse.

Analyzing The Technic History

3 installments set before the Polesotechnic League
5 set between the League and Dominic Flandry
4 set after Flandry
2 set in the League period but not featuring van Rijn or any member of his trader team
   (although one of the 2 quotes van Rijn)
2 set during Flandry's lifetime but not featuring Flandry
   (although one of the 2 quotes Flandry)

Thus, 16 installments without any of the continuing characters, leaving:

14 featuring van Rijn, Falkayn, Adzel or all three
13 featuring Flandry

43 installments in total

Careers In Space And Time

(Including "The Chronic Argonauts" transforms the "conceptual sequence" into two pre-Wells, two Wells, two pre-Anderson and two Anderson items, for what that's worth. See previous post.)

One of my job titles was Careers Adviser. See here.

Readers of Poul Anderson's works view the careers of:

David Falkayn from apprentice to Nick van Rijn's confidante;
Dominic Flandry from Ensign to Fleet Admiral;
Manson Everard from Time Patrol recruit to experienced Unattached agent.

We first see Everard while he is being recruited aged 30 in 1954. His pre-Patrol career was:

lieutenant, US Army Engineers;
design and production work in America, Sweden and Arabia.

In 1952, he had visited Amsterdam and returns there on Patrol business in 1986:

"Thirty four years was a long absence. (Longer than that on his personal world line, of course. He had meanwhile joined the Patrol and become an Unattached agent and snaked around through the ages, across most of the planet. Now the London of Elizabeth the First or the Pasargadae of Cyrus the Great stood him nearer than did the streets he would walk today. Had that summer really been so golden, or had he simply been young, unburdened with too much knowledge?)"
-Poul Anderson, The Time Patrol (New York, 1991), p. 300.

Anderson reminds us of a previous story involving Pasargadae while for the first time informing us that Everard has also visited Elizabethan London. Loss of innocence is the persistent theme of this series. 

 "The Midwest of his boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost, already one with Troy and Carthage and the innocence of the Inuit. He had learned better than to return."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 178.

We last see Everard in 1990 and his career will go on because he has received Patrol anti-age treatment.

After Mirkheim

Happy Christmas. I might not post tomorrow.

The concluding, twenty first, chapter of Mirkheim recounts three conversations:

Eric with Falkayn;
van Rijn with Sandra;
Adzel with Chee Lan.

After Mirkheim, there is a period, with no stories set in it, when David Falkayn runs Solar Spice & Liquors and Nicholas van Rijn travels around in Muddlin' Through, a total role reversal except that:

van Rijn is not trade pioneering but repairing the damage caused to the Polesotechnic Leagueby its recent civil war;

he is not accompanied by Adzel or Chee Lan - they have returned to their home planets to prepare against the times to come, for which they will often confer with each other.

During this period, van Rijn and Falkayn transfer records from Earth to Hermes, thus providing material for the later Earth Book Of Stormgate (see also here).

Next there is a period when:

David and Coya lead the colonization of Avalon;
van Rijn (we think) leads an expedition outside known space, possibly accompanied by Sandra who would by then have been succeeded on Hermes by Eric.

"Wingless," (see also here) in which Nat Falkayn remembers Ythrians visiting his grandfather David in Chartertown, is set towards the end of this further period but presents the perspective of a young human Avalonian visiting an Ythrian choth. We do not see David or Coya on Avalon.

Hopewell

In haste en route to Christmas Eve party. Will extend this post later. Poul Anderson fans, please correct me when I get something wrong. I have spotted one definite error...

Later:

See here.

The error is that Hopewell was mentioned in "A Sun Invisible" and in Mirkheim. It must be difficult to appreciate all of the interconnections in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization on a single reading. I notice many of the internal cross-references because I continually reread and blog about the series.

For example, Vixenite colonists, like Donarrians and Ymirites, feature in the Imperial period of the History and therefore are appropriately referenced in Mirkheim which was written later although set earlier.

The Seven In Space (see here)
Galactic Developments
XT Systems
Interstar Transport
Sanchez Engineering
Stellar Metals
Timebinders Insurance
Abdallah Enterprises

Abdallah Enterprises guards its centrum on Hopewell with a single orbiting corvette which is unexpectedly attacked by the Hermetian destroyer, North Atlantis. Because the approaching destroyer beams a warning, the corvette replies with missiles and an energy beam. The Hermetian dodges, disintegrates the pursuing torpedoes, then counterattacks with an energy weapon and pursues the fleeing corvette while destroying or diverting missiles and absorbing cannon shots until the survivors surrender.

Meanwhile, Muddlin' Through enters atmosphere with Falkayn broadcasting that the Free Hermetian Navy is about to destroy the installations of a company that has conspired with the Baburites. With Falkayn steering and van Rijn manning the weapons control turret, Muddlin' Through destroys a swarm of defense aircraft, lets staff evacuate the centrum, then destroys it with a fifty kiloton torpedo. Centrum becomes crater.

Again the theme of the novel: looking down at the centrum's "...splendid towers..." before destroying them, Falkayn thinks:

"This was a grand era in its way. I too will miss it."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 266.

Forever

In a roof garden on a floating city at night, David and Coya Falkayn hear music, smell Terrestrial and imported flowers and see ship lights like "...fireflies that had wandered far from land..." (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 31) and stars that "...seemed almost near enough to touch." (ibid.)

Coya wishes that this could go on forever and they discuss different hypothetical infinities. David reflects that even the best antisenescence will give them only a hundred years - although I heard recently that people now being born in developed countries are expected to reach a hundred and twenty, other things being equal, of course.

Although nothing is forever, the Falkayns' evening in that garden is more permanent for us than for them because we can reread it. At the outer rail, they are screened by "[v]ine-heavy trellises..." (p. 32), Luna lights the waves, water is "...like fluid obsidian..." (ibid.), leaves shine in the shadows, the deck pulses and the breeze is slightly chill. Rereading, I pause here rather than rushing on to the imminent interstellar war.

What The Technic History Leaves Out

We see the trader team led by David Falkayn on only one typical mission and nothing of:

the five years when Coya was a member of the team;
Chee Lan's time as the xenobiologist of another trade pioneer crew;
Adzel's three years as a lay brother in a Buddhist monastery in the Andes;
van Rijn's years in Muddlin' Through, delaying the decline of the League;
his later expedition beyond known space, if it happens;
the Falkayns' life on First Island in the Hesperian Sea on Avalon;
the retired Adzel and Chee Lan conferring to protect their planets "...against the evil days" (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 290);
the careers of Diana Crowfeather and her companions;
the last days of the Terran Empire or of the Merseian Roidhunate;
the Second and how many other Empires?;
the later careers of Roan Tom or of Daven Laure;
the effects on human civilization of the wealth mined from the Cloud Universe...

We want the History to go on forever. However, it is remarkable first that it tells us as much as it does and secondly that this includes pointing towards all these further events that the author could not have incorporated into his texts unless he had written nothing else and, even then, we would still have wanted to know what happened after the Commonalty period and when was the period of the Galactic Archaeological Society?

Historical Achievements

Dardanus migrated from Italy and founded Troy.

When Troy fell, Aeneas migrated to Italy where his descendent, Romulus, founded Rome and Augustus Caesar founded the Empire.

As the Roman Empire declined, Gaius Valerius Gratillonius built defensive systems that would become feudalism.

As the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League declined, David Falkayn founded Avalon.

After the Commonwealth had fallen, Manuel Argos founded the Terran Empire.

As the Terran Empire declined, Dominic Flandry prolonged its existence and strengthened certain planets that would hopefully survive its Fall.

After the Terran Empire had fallen, Roan Tom formed an alliance of Kraken, Sassania and Nike.

While the Commonalty was still strong, Daven Laure opened up the Cloud Universe whose owners will command more wealth than many civilizations.

Thus, after three declines and subsequent periods of impoverishment, Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization ends with a period of expansion and enrichment.

What Could Happen

Falkayn spells out the effects of a supernova three light years away:

nuclei and electrons recombining generate asymmetrical magnetic pulses;

those forces will blast through a planet's magnetic field;

intolerable voltages will wreck unshielded electric motors, generators, transmission and telecommunications lines and computers;

every memory bank will be wiped and every operation stopped;

synchrotron radiation will blanket any surviving electronic apparatus;

there will be years of radioactive fallout, many times greater than from any war, and ecological disaster;

no food moves into the cities so the dwellers move out in starving hordes but the specialized farmers will not even be able to feed themselves;

there will be famine and fighting without medical services and, consequently, pestilences;

extra-planetary colonies will die when their apparatus is destroyed and space travel will cease;

Merseians will survive, if at all, only as a few starving primitives.

Falkayn And Merseians

Anyone who starts to read Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization now can read the entire series in chronological order of fictitious events in Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis. Many of us in the past have of necessity read later installments before earlier installments. Anyone who followed the entire series as it was first published (before it was even recognized that many of its parts did belong to a single series) read of:

Dominic Flandry and Merseians in 1951;
Flandry's first encounter with Merseians in 1966;
David Falkayn's centuries-earlier encounter with Merseians in 1967.

Thus, when Falkayn conversed with Morruchan Long-Ax, the Hand of the Vach Dathyr, we were already familiar with Merseian personal names, nick-names, Vachs and Hands. It was as if an entire section of the Dominic Flandry/Terran Empire series had intersected with the Polesotechnic League/David Falkayn/trader team series whereas, to anyone reading the series chronologically now, this is their first knowledge of Merseians.

Morruchan has to be persuaded that the nearby supernova, Valenderay, poses a threat. He says:

"'The radiation, when it comes to us, will equal a mere one-third of what comes daily from Korych. And in some fifty-five days' (Terrestrial) 'it will have dwindled to half...'"
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 218.

The omniscient narrator intervenes awkwardly at this point. We know that Morruchan speaks Eriau whereas we read English. The author wants us to know that the radiation will be halved in the equivalent of fifty-five Terrestrial days even though "fifty-five" is not the number spoken by Morruchan. Another way to do this would have been for Morruchan to state the number of Merseian days and for Falkayn, the viewpoint character of this passage, to recalculate mentally.

Falkayn spells out the effects of radiation on electronics. And the story began with the omniscient narrator's account of the supernova and its generation of transuranic elements, including technetium, which may be appropriate for the Technic History?

Having said that, this is not really an omniscient narrator because he states:

"This was the first chance in our history to observe a new supernova." (p. 212)

Two words, "...our history...," make him one of us. He is someone living later in the Technic History and reflecting back on this period.

Falkayns And Holms

The Falkayns are Hermetian aristocrats whose next Duke will be an illegitimate son of Nicholas van Rijn;

Poul Anderson's Mirkheim presents three successive generations of Falkayns: Athena, David and Nicholas (other family members are mentioned but the focus of this post is on one from each generation);

the following work, "Wingless," adds a fourth generation: Nathaniel;

the later work, The People Of The Wind, introduces a descendant, Tabitha;

David marries a granddaughter of Nicholas van Rijn;

Tabitha marries Christopher Holm, son of Marchwarden Daniel Holm;

the Holms came to Avalon with David Falkayn;

they are represented in the intermediate short story, "Rescue on Avalon," by one Ivar Holm.

And that is our only information about the generations of van Rijns, Falkayns and Holms. After The People Of The Wind, the narrative follows neither Hermes nor Avalon but Dominic Flandry and his contemporaries and their children. After the Flandry period, the four remaining works are too widely spaced to have any personal or familial connections although the very last work does introduce remote descendants of rebels expelled by Flandry.

History is about people; Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization demonstrates this very effectively.

Concentric Series

The Technic History begins with "The Saturn Game."
The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins with "Wings of Victory."
The Polesotechnic League series begins IMO with "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."
The Nicholas van Rijn series begins with "Margin of Profit."
The David Falkayn series begins with "The Three-Cornered Wheel."
The trader team series begins with "The Trouble Twisters."

This has to be unique: six series, each incorporating its successor. How do they end?

The trader team series ends with "Lodestar" (although the team temporarily reconvenes for a different purpose in Mirkheim).
The Falkayn, van Rijn and League series end together in Mirkheim.
The Earth Book ends with "Rescue on Avalon."
The Technic History ends with "Starfog."

However, between "Rescue on Avalon" and "Starfog":

the Dominic Flandry series begins with Ensign Flandry and ends with A Stone In Heaven;
the potential Diana Crowfeather series, The Game Of Empire, cameos Diana's father, Dominic Flandry.

Rich and complex, like real history.

What Is To Be Got From Ikrananka

At least two new intoxicants;
several antibiotics;
potential spices;
spectacular furs;
other goods to be identified;
a civilization to trade with.

Robots brought pictures and samples so the trader team investigates but, of course, must solve problems with the natives first.

On T'Kela, the carnivorous dominant species could not understand charity but could understand profit-making whereas, on Ivanhoe, the idealistic dominant species could not understand mere profit-making and had to be shown that human beings also valued something transcendent. Fortunately, some of the traders celebrate Christmas.

What is the problem on Ikrananka? I am about to reread "The Trouble Twisters" to remind myself.

Satan

David Falkayn explains "Satan" to Chee Lan:

"'The enemy of the divine, the source of evil, in one of our terrestrial religions.'"
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 457.

The Cynthian replies:

"'But any reasonable being can see that the divine itself is - Oh, well, never mind.'" (ibid.)

Why does Chee break off and how would she have continued? Surely she could only have said, "...the divine itself is the source of evil"? And I agree. If the divine is the source of everything other than itself, then it is the source of evil. And, if it is not the source of evil, then it is not the source of everything other than itself. If Satan sinned through pride, then he could have been created without the pride or with enough good motivation and will power to resist any temptation towards pride.

We confidently predict that a good man will perform good actions without believing that his predictability precludes his "free will." Thus, an omnipotent and omniscient creator could have created a host of angelic free agents knowing that none of them would rebel.

Falkayn's Legacies

Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), compiled by Hank Davis.

(First, local stuff. When we visit the Cumbrian town of Kendal, I meditate in a side chapel of the Parish Church. Today, I learned that that chapel contains the tomb of the grandfather of the sixth wife of Henry VIII. As John Constantine said, Americans have geography; we have history. I also learned that a Christian meditation group meets once a week in that chapel.)

David Falkayn made two provisions for the future, Supermetals and Avalon. No Ythrians are involved in Supermetals. Later, Vixen, which funded weather stations from its share in Supermetals, was in the Terran Empire whereas Avalon, jointly colonized by human beings and Ythrians, fought the Empire to remain in the Domain of Ythri. Later again, another planet that had been in Supermetals participated in a post-Imperial civilization, the Allied Planets. (Addendum, 18 October 2020: I do not know which planet I was referring to but will try to find out.) (Same date: Lochlann. See Lodestar IV.) Still later, a Vixenite colony participated in a post-Allied Planets civilization. Thus, Falkayn has had more visible long term consequences than either van Rijn or Flandry.

So far, Falkayn himself is the only, indirect, link between Supermetals and Ythri. However, it is an Ythrian, Hirharouk of the Wryfields Choth, who spells out the implications of Supermetals to van Rijn. When van Rijn confronts his trader team, who had organized Supermetals behind his back, it is "[s]urprisingly..." (p. 679), Hirahraouk, whose ship has brought van Rijn to the supermetals source, that speaks:

"'They seek to win that which will let their peoples fly free...In the end, God the Hunter strikes every being and everything which beings have made. Upon your way of life I see His shadow. Let the new come to birth in peace.'" (pp. 679-680)

Planets that were not helped by the Polesotechnic League are now, legitimately, helping themselves. And, meanwhile, the League's days are numbered. It is appropriate that The Earth Book of Stormgate begins with the first human-Ythrian contact in "Wings of Victory" and that The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, ends with the van Rijn-trader team-Hiraharouk confrontation in "Lodestar."

The Falkayns

David Falkayn, younger son of a baronial house on Hermes, became a protege of Nicholas van Rijn.

Van Rijn's granddaughter, Coya Conyon, admired Falkayn because of his involvement in the Satan episode.

David and Coya married between "Lodestar" and Mirkheim.

Their son, Nicholas Falkayn, was born on Earth near the end of Mirkheim.

Nicholas Falkayn advised his son, Nat, on Avalon in "Wingless."

Their descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, lived on Avalon three centuries later in The People Of The Wind.

Unfortunately, that is all that we learn about the Falkayn lineage. However, the Avalonian colony founded by David plays a role centuries later during Dominic Flandry's lifetime.