The Future Through The Past

By reading science fiction, we learn how the future was viewed in the past:

a character in Robert Heinlein's Future History has a mobile phone but also shares the Solar System with Martians, Venerians, Callistans etc;

Dan Dare's timeline had a world government and an Interplanetary Space Fleet but neither Sterling decimalization nor inflation;

characters in Poul Anderson's The Star Fox/Fire Time diptych use "infotrieves" to access what we would call the internet but also travel in the ubiquitous "aircars" of much futuristic sf;

characters in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history have multipurpose pocket computers but write on them with styluses.

Thus, sf, coming from our past, moves forwards but also sideways in time.

(In 1956, while the overweight spaceman, Nicholas van Rijn, was being introduced in Poul Anderson's "Margin of Profit," I was being introduced to sf by Dan Dare, which featured the overweight spaceman, Digby. Heinlein, Anderson and Pournelle are, of course, three successive American future historians.)

Texts And Contexts II

Poul Anderson's Gunnar Heim stories:

"Marque and Reprisal,"
"Arsenal Port" and
"Admiralty"

- can be read either collected as The Star Fox, in which case they have a sequel, the novel Fire Time, or scattered among NESFA's The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, in which case each story is in a different volume and Fire Time is not mentioned since it is not a short work.

Some fans might even prefer the latter reading experience, unexpectedly re-encountering Gunnar Heim after reading a considerable number of different kinds of works in between. Several other series, e.g.:

Time Patrol;
Wing Alak;
Flying Mountains;
the Rustum History -

- are also to be found in whole or in part among The Collected Short Works... My preference would be for each of the series to be collected as a unit and for any additional Short Works volumes to contain only non-series stories. However, the NESFA collections prompted me to reread, and also to re-post about, what I call the Star...Time series. While hoping for an eventual Complete Works of Poul Anderson, we can meanwhile derive considerable enjoyment from reading the many overlapping volumes that have been published so far.

A Framing Narrative

Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977).

The Foreword and Afterword of Fire Time are a ten page narrative in their own right. The novel has third person narration but one of its viewpoint characters is the first person narrator of these framing passages.

Daniel Espina, on stage only in the Foreword and Afterword, is a "president" but this title is confusing since it makes us think of the President of the United States. In fact, Espina, also called a Tribune, is the president of the Federation Tribunal, thus a judge. However, when he and his colleagues on the Tribunal have passed judgment, he has the power to grant an unconditional pardon. Surely this power should reside in the equivalent of the US President, not in the chief Tribune?

The narrative inclines us to respect and admire Espina but I have some reservations. He contemptuously dismisses large sections of the population as "'...monkeys...'" (p. 253), not an appropriate attitude in a judge.

Espina says:

"'Don't fear...that you need become fashionable radicals. Leave oratory, demonstrations, riots, denunciatory articles in chic magazines, solidarity with every grubby Cause that wants to hitch a ride, sermons which don't mention God because he isn't relevant - leave such things to the monkeys. Better, disown them, reject them.'" (ibid.)

If Espina is a Christian, then he should be concerned about whether God is mentioned in sermons but this is neither a legal nor a political issue. Reject riots? Yes. Demonstrations? No, not always! Reject causes as "grubby"? Of course, I don't know what causes are espoused in the Federation but I would expect to regard some of them as legitimate - and probably also as interconnected rather than as just "hitching a ride" with each other. On riots: in the Federation, each city has a large Welfare district and such districts have gang lords (p. 9), so there will be some violence until society is re-organized on a different basis.

Addendum: Granted that "...fashionable radicals..." can be nuisances! However, true radicals must be prepared to be decidedly unfashionable. Try to oppose a war, if you disagree with it, while it is still popular...

Ishtar, Eleutheria And New Europe

(It will be explained why the cover of a novel set on Avalon in the Technic History illustrates a post about three planets in the Star Time history. Star Time = The Star Fox + Fire Time.)

"...I can foresee that kind of affair leading to secession [of the human colony on Ishtar], like Eleutheria's and New Europe's except that Primavera [human beings on Ishtar] would join the Gathering [an Ishtarian alliance]. And next I can see Earth either losing us or having to send occupation troops it can ill afford..." (Fire Time, p. 226)

These are excellent future historical references to earlier events in the previous volume, New Europe, and to current events in the present volume, Eleutheria. Although we read a much shorter segment of the Star Time history, we know that it is as solid a fictitious history as the History of Technic Civilization - presenting major events, exotic environments and imaginative aliens.

In The People Of The Wind, Ythrians and human beings live on Avalon while there is interstellar war between the Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri. In Fire Time, Ishtarians and human beings live on Ishtar while there is interstellar war between the World Federation and the Naqsan League. Some human beings have divided loyalties. Do these sound like the same book? That is only because I have summarized a few very general parallels while omitting all the details.

Anderson understands that generals send their men (or males) into action knowing that a large percentage will die. Hence questions like: how many lives is it worth to capture the city? Some fictitious military heroes survive every battle but, in The People Of The Wind, an Ythrian female loses her fiancee to friendly fire and, in Fire Time, a human woman loses her brother to the Naqsans and her Ishtarian friend to the barbarians. The barbarian leader dies also.

War On Ishtar

Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977).

Poul Anderson describes warfare convincingly while also showing us that "War is Hell." (This phrase is not Anderson's but is appropriate.)

Anderson displays a sound grasp of military terminology:

"...bartizans alternated with bastions. Each of the latter held a catapult throwing several darts at once, or a mangonel with incendiary ammunition." (p. 209)

Of the highlighted words, two were unfamiliar and I needed to check the precise meaning of the third.

"Valenneners worked catapults and trebuchets to cast heavy missiles..." (p. 211)

Trebuchets, like catapults, cast missiles so how do they differ?

The sounds of battle:

arrows whistle;
stones make a sound like "...whoo-oo-thump..." (ibid.);
there are howls, screeches, horn blasts and drum-thunder.

Other sensations:

grit stings eyes and crunches between teeth.

We are there, almost.

The battling Ishtarians are quadrupeds (see image) but earlier, on pp. 197-198, Anderson had described T-life (and see here), so alien that I find it difficult to summarize the description:

spherical torso;
five limbs;
the top limb culminating in five petals that are chemosensors and tongues for five jaws;
a sound-receiving tendril under each petal;
five symmetrical fingers on each arm;
one self-darkening eye under each arm and a third co-ordinating eye under the top limb;
protuberances of variable shape, color and odor to indicate the three sexes -

- but I may have misunderstood some of these details. We need more bizarrely shaped aliens in sf. Picture a Pierrson's Puppeteer, then imagine that Puppeteers write sf in which the galaxy is full of beings that look like them. As JRR Tolkien said to CS Lewis about Father Christmas and a talking lion in the same story, "It won't do..."

Easter Agenda

(Lancaster Priory Church. Some friends and acquaintances will be there today. I will meditate at home.)

Agenda
Family and social activities.
Finish reading SM Stirling's The Sky People.
Finish interrupted rereading of Poul Anderson's Fire Time.
Order further NESFA collections and "Lords of Creation" installments.
(Have now finished the third Stieg Larsson novel. Recommended.)

Although the NESFA collections contain much familiar material, I nevertheless reread the first Gunnar Heim story in NESFA collections vol 2. This led to rereading The Star Fox, then Fire Time. Moral: do not dismiss collections containing familiar material. None of these works should be read just once or even twice.

The next post will probably be about the conclusion of The Sky People but this is not always predictable.

An Embarrassment Of Riches

While still rereading Poul Anderson's Fire Time, I have started to reread Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire and have also received SM Stirling's The Sky People (New York, 2006) from Amazon. (It should have been Stirling's Dies The Fire.)

Stirling harks back to the kind of inhabited Venus that Stapledon, Burroughs, Heinlein, Anderson and others wrote of in previous decades. Stirling's way of doing this is to locate his inhabited Venus in an alternative timeline, thus combining interplanetary adventure in an inhabited Solar System with a different, usually unrelated, sf concept.

Stirling's "Acknowledgments" refer to:

John Carter (of course);
Northwest Smith (I recognize the name);
"Wrong Way" Carson of Venus.

Did ERB call Carson Napier "'Wrong Way' Carson"? In any case, he did go the wrong way, departing from Earth towards Mars, pulled off course by the Moon, falling towards the Sun, then landing on Venus - celestial acrobatics almost as implausible as Carter's astral projection. Since ERB's Martians knew of intelligent beings on Mercury, since Carter traveled from Mars to a Martian moon, then to Jupiter, and since later space travelers, also aiming at Mars, instead found a civilization inside Earth's Moon, ERB was well on his way towards presenting a fully inhabited Solar System - a concept that Stirling nostalgically revives, at least as regards Venus and Mars.

A metafiction is a fictional text that somehow acknowledges its fictional status. For example, a work of fiction set in an alternative timeline might obliquely refer to our version of the "real world." Stirling approaches such metafiction at the end of his Prologue when a scientist, looking at video images broadcast from Venus, exclaims:

"'A Neanderthal...What the fuck?'" (p. 6)

This could be more elegantly translated as:

"How has our timeline happened to diverge from any of the more probable timelines in which Venus either is uninhabitable or at least certainly is not inhabited by any species recognizable from Terrestrial evolution?"

However, as a first approximation, a four letter word suffices!

Recent Posts

A moment that has become very familiar to regular readers of Poul Anderson's works is reached at the end of Chapter XVI of Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977):

"A thought went through him like an electric shock. She sensed it in his body. 'What is the matter?' she asked timidly.
"'Nothing, nothing.' He spoke with his voice alone; his mind was elsewhere. 'I just got a notion...'" (p. 179)

The viewpoint character:

has a practical/personal problem;
has suddenly realized a possible solution;
will not confide this notion to his wife or, by implication, to the reader until he has implemented it.

Having reread to this point, I know what the problem is but do not remember what the solution was. I have been posting about, and am still rereading, Fire Time. However, I previously posted about this novel just over two years ago. Thus, much of the ground has already been covered.

I have also recently mentioned CS Lewis in relation to Poul Anderson. Readers of this blog might like to check out my Science Fiction blog, where I discuss Lewis a few times. See here.

Sharing A Planet

Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977).

Ishtar, like several planets in Anderson's Technic History (see here), is inhabited by more than one intelligent species. Anderson helps us to imagine coexistence of different rational species as a norm of life.

"...Larreka glimpsed a small flyer parked in a shed. Ng-ng, we've got a human visitor, he thought. I wonder who." (p. 137)

"The room was chiefly floor space, a  long table, mattresses strewn about, some chairs for occasional humans." (p. 138)

"Presently he was sprawled on a mattress beside Meroa, his pipe alight, a mug of hot spiced jackfruit cider to hand. A couple of family elders lay nearby." (p. 140)

(Quadrupeds smoke pipes and drink cider but lie on mattresses instead of sitting on chairs.)

"'Who's our human guest?' he asked.
"'Jill Conway,' Meroa said." (ibid.)

Larreka knows Jill and so do we. She has been a viewpoint character but now is discussed by Ishtarians. Human lives are so short that an Ishtarian must befriend a human bloodline rather than a single individual.

A man from Earth is surprised that the Ishtarians have not exterminated the semi-intelligent species, their equivalent of Australopithecus, but Jill tells him that:

"'Ishtarians wouldn't. Not even the most warlike barbarians have our casual human bloodthirstiness. For instance, nobody has ever tortured prisoners for fun or massacred them for convenience. You probably think of the Gathering of Sehala as a sort of empire. It isn't. Civilization has developed without any need for the state. After all, the Ishtarians are a more advanced form of life than us.'" (p. 82) See here, here and here.

Rereading Fire Time

Continuing to reread Poul Anderson's Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977), we find on p. 137, another (to me) unfamiliar word, "...finial..." and yet another characteristically long, detailed Andersonian list-description. An Ishtarian ranch has:

barns
stables
kennels
mews
storehouses
granaries
workshops
bakery
brewery
cookhouse
laundry
surgery
school
ateliers
observatory
library

(Another unfamiliar word there.)

This ranch publishes texts and trades with ranches specializing in other kinds of production like rope and iron.

I am posting in haste because possibly going out for the day soon but encouraged by over 150 page views early in the day.

Two Kinds Of Life On One Planet

Rereading Poul Anderson's Fire Time reminded me of his short story, "Interloper," because:

In Fire Time, there are two independent kinds of life on Ishtar, native and T-life;

in "Interloper," there are two independent kinds of life on Earth, ordinary and nocturnal;

Ishtarians regard T-life as supernatural just as human beings regard nocturnal life as supernatural.

Arnanak alone among Ishtarians has traveled far into the T-life realm at the risk of his life - he could eat nothing there and there was less water. The dauri showed him ruins and gave him some sort of incomprehensible artifact. Thus, it seems that the Tammuzians did colonize Ishtar. However, that extra-Ishtarian race is as mysterious to the dauri, who have evolved on Ishtar from Tammuzian microbes, as it is to the Ishtarians and to the human colonists. Arnanak knows that the latter would pay well for more information.

To learn more about T-life will be one objective while continuing to reread the novel although such rereading currently competes with several other activities. Tomorrow, I would, with a coach load of other Lancastrians, have made a round trip to London for a national anti-racist march. However, Sheila continues to need support in the wake of her hip operation so we might instead drive around Morecambe Bay. Today, I watched the second Stieg Larsson film and another of Michael Portillo's train journeys and finished reading Shadowlands about CS Lewis. Meanwhile, SM Stirling's The Sky People should now be en route by post.

T-life

Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977), pp. 128-129.

In a trinary star system (see here), life somehow migrated from Tammuz, a now dead planet of the red giant, Anu, to Ishtar, an inhabited terrestroid planet of the Sol-like Bel, but using opposite amino acids and sugars.

Maybe:

a Tammuzian colony failed;
Tammuzians colonized Ishtar but then discovered FTL and left the system;
Tammuzian explorers left microbes;
Tammuzians seeded Ishtar;
Tammuzian spores crossed on meteoroids.

In any case, only microscopic T-life survived but it evolved new multicellular species that cannot interact biologically with Ishtarian life. T-life on Ishtar has evolved in the north of a single continent, possibly originally a separate island. Thus, Ishtar has two intelligent species but the T-life intelligences also evolved on Ishtar. Native Ishtarians rarely see the T-intelligences and have no communication with them until Arnanak, a barbarian war-leader, makes an alliance with the uncanny, petal-headed "dauri."

"The road goes ever on..."

What is next to read that is relevant? Quite a lot.

(i) I have yet to finish rereading Fire Time by Poul Anderson.

(ii) In SM Stirling's Conquistador, Alexander the Great's empire endures for longer than it did in our timeline. Thus, this novel connects with works by Poul Anderson and by Greg Bear that have already been discussed on the blog.

(iii) I am told that Poul Anderson cameos in Stirling's In The Court Of The Crimson Kings but that first I must read the prequel, The Sky People! Also, that both these works display Andersonian influence.

So, if you are still with me, then we are here for the long haul.

Eclipse And Universes

We have a near total eclipse due next Friday morning - a sufficiently Andersonian event, I think - so I will be asked to drive the family to a suitable observation point.

Right now, I am passing back and forth between several fictional universes:

the Terran Federation of Poul Anderson's The Star Fox and Fire Time;

the Angrezi Raj of SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers and "Shikari in Galveston";

Stieg Larsson's Millennium;

the Smallville, Metropolis and Arctic Fortress of the Smallville TV series.

Copyright permitting, a fictional character would also be able to travel between these and other such universes. If I were able to write fiction, I would do Jane Austen's Mr Collins en route to dine with his Patroness the Right Honorable Lady Catherine de Burgh at Rosings only to encounter a time traveling Batman who would need his help but whom he would regard as a demon.

Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix scenario easily allows for any and all such bizarre inter-cosmic encounters.

Hexapodality

"The fact of hexapodality versus quadrupedality appears to be fairly trivial, a biological accident."
-Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977), p. 83.

On Earth, quadrupeds became bipeds or two-legged, two-winged flyers. On Ishtar, hexapods became quadrupeds, four-winged, two-legged flyers or two-winged, four-legged flyers.

Someone said that, if we were quadrupeds, it would cost more in trousers. However, Anderson's intelligent quadrupeds on different planets are always, like mythical centaurs, hardy enough not to need clothes. In fact, it is difficult to imagine appropriate garments. Larry Niven's tripedal Puppeteers also go naked.

Anderson's Ishtarians can trot, gallop, sleep out of doors and live off the land or their own bodily foliage while traveling long distances. Porters are strong, messengers are fast and ranchers pull their own wagons. In fact, why are human beings so helpless in their natural environment? We make up for this by cooperation and intelligence and have constructed vast artificial environments instead.

I am getting back into rereading Fire Time but am also just about to go out to a meeting so will be back online later.

Blogging

Someone might view a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog for the first time and wonder why some recent posts are not about Poul Anderson. The posts need to be read in sequence since each is a, sometimes very brief, reflection on a book that is currently being read or reread. As recently remarked (see here), there is a lot of comparison with other writers.

Recent posts have not only compared a particular novel by SM Stirling with two series by Anderson but have also argued that Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson (which in turn means that he is an original, not an imitator). In this context, some posts will continue to focus on details in Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers just as many earlier posts had focused on the details in Anderson's Technic History, Time Patrol series etc.

After ...Lancers, we might return to the interrupted rereading of Anderson's Fire Time or might instead move in some other direction but I trust that we will never wander too far from the blog theme of "Poul Anderson Appreciation."

Literate Cultures

Intelligent beings might build and live in a literate and technological society that is not urban, therefore not describable as a civilization. Poul Anderson maybe presents more examples of this than we might realize:

In the Technic History
Ythrians;
Freeholders;
nomadic Altaians.

In the "Star Time" Diptych
Staurni;
Ishtarians.

(Another list that grew in the writing.)

Ishtarians are not only townless but even stateless. Rarely violent, they recognize just one criminal act: "...failure to obey the judgment of the jury that tried a lawsuit." (Fire Time, p. 107) Public services provided by the "legions" include arbitrating disputes, maintaining records and lighthouses, policing (slight) and a fire service (rarely needed since most buildings are stone or adobe). Sehala is not a capital city but a convenient rendezvous point because it is a prosperous area where certain activities are concentrated. Buildings are spread about with no streets between them. The Ishtarian physiology has little need of sanitation but anyone who runs an establishment disposes of whatever wastes there are as necessary because otherwise his neighbors would sue him.

Gunnar Heim's Consistency

Rereading Poul Anderson's Fire Time while remembering its prequel, The Star Fox, underlines what might be seen as Gunnar Heim's inconsistency. While the World Federation appeased the belligerent Aleriona, Heim gave a lead by waging a private war - literally private, as a privateer. Thirty years later, when the Federation did wage war against the Naqsa League, Heim denounced this war as imperialistic. A man can certainly change his views over thirty years but Heim hasn't. The two situations are entirely different.

The circumstances of the second interstellar war are worth spelling out:

each Terrestrial city has a large ghetto of the unemployable;

emigrants from some of these ghettoes have worked hard to build a colony in the inhospitable environment of the planet Mundomar;

another part of Mundomar has been colonized by the Naqsa, a species regarded as physically disgusting by many human beings;

declaring that possession of a second continent is necessary for their security, the human colonists occupy that continent and expel Nasqans from it;

the human colonists are backed by a powerful lobby and vested interests on Earth;

the Federation gives military support to the colonists.

Sounds familiar?

The Second Interstellar War III

Rereading Poul Anderson's Fire Time, I have reached Gunnar Heim's caustic comments on the war between the World Federation and the Naqsa League. However, searching the blog reminds me that I discussed this very chapter exactly two years ago! See here and here. So there is not much more to be said, except that - Anderson shows us how conflicts can differ. The Aleriona had wanted to eliminate humanity; Naqsa does not.

It is, of course, the job of military intelligence services to discover the enemy's motives and thus how any given conflict might be ended, not just to issue propaganda along the lines of "My country right or wrong!" Heim grasps the realities and replies to the propaganda:

"(Joy tumultuous in Shanghai Welfare. Gigantic on a wallscreen, the image of a politician pledges solidarity with the gallant Eleutherians. He is himself wealthy, but he needs these votes.)"
-Poul Anderson, Fire Time (St Albans, Herts, 1977), p. 98.

Ishtarian Evolution

I had a rough idea what "theroid" (Fire Time, p. 83) meant but I was wrong about it.

Ishtarian theroids:

are warm-blooded;
give live birth;
suckle their young;
grow alternatives to hair and placentas;
have endless other variations.

"'The fact of hexapodality versus quadrupedality appears to be fairly trivial, a biological accident.'" (ibid.)

Really? We could just as well have been four-legged? What a thought! (Mike Carey wrote a few stories about traditional centaurs in Lucifer because one of the artists had included one in a crowd scene.)

Periodic scorchings by Anu prevented cold-blooded animals so there were no dinosauroids. Theroids got an early start and are older than Terrestrial mammals. An Ishtarian sophont is a symbiote:

the pelt is a plant;
mane and brows are like ivy, making armor for the back and head;
the plants remove animal wastes in exchange for oxygen, are a fast-growing emergency food supply and free Ishtarian genes for other functions;
Ishtarian brains are better integrated than human, with no insanity.