Why Empires?

Why are there so many interstellar "Empires" in American sf? Notable examples are the works of Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Frank Herbert, H Beam Piper and Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle. Although James Blish's Cities In Flight features an interstellar "Hruntan Empire," the main emphasis of this series is on trade by the flying cities.

Empires resonate with much past Terrestrial history. The word "empire" evokes a realm both vast and powerful - although also oppressive and militaristic. It seems both implausible and unimaginative as a future form of social organization.

Poul Anderson wrote well about interstellar empires, then moved on to other kinds of fictional futures. "The Star Plunderer" makes the founding of the Terran Empire by Manuel Argos seem plausible and the Dominic Flandry novels make interstellar Imperial administration seem credible.

Greg Bear wrote:

"...Rome has been much abused. Lay off Rome for a while. And give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson, but you are most likely not."
-Greg Bear, "Tomorrow Through The Past" IN SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, pp. 38-41 AT pp. 40-41.

I agree that Poul Anderson made even feudalism with spaceships work. I can accept Niven and Pournelle's Empire of Man as part of a literary tradition and as the setting for their First Contact novel but sf must move on, as Anderson did.

Praising Fiction

"The best novel about human beings making first contact with intelligent but utterly nonhuman aliens I have ever seen, and possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read."
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

"A spellbinder, a swashbuckler...and best of all it has a brilliant new approach to that fascinating problem - first contact with aliens."
FRANK HERBERT

-both on the back cover of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote In God's Eye (London, 1959).

High praise from the highest places in American sf!

My Comments

It is difficult, if not impossible, to say which is the finest sf novel we have ever read but, if I were to try, several by Poul Anderson would compete for top place, e.g., The People Of The Wind makes the human-Ythrian planet, Avalon, feel like a real place.

Contact by Carl Sagan is a major first contact novel.

Herbert's Dune, widely praised as a major sf novel, contains inconsistencies of point of view, a flaw which I have also found in Mote.

The Structures Of Series

Frank Herbert's six Dune novels are not two trilogies but a trilogy, a sequel and an unfinished second trilogy.

SM Stirling's four Draka novels are not a tetralogy but a trilogy and a sequel.

Stirling's New Virginia history is in one novel.
His Angrezi Raj history is in one novel and one story.
His Lords of Creation history is in two novels and one story.
His Domination history is in four novels and one anthology.
His other series I have yet to read.

Stirling explains the rationale of the Domination well in the Introduction to SM Stirling, Ed., Drakas (Riverdale, NY, 2000). I am not big on themed anthologies but will see how I manage with Drakas. Poul Anderson was a major contributor to themed anthologies and, of course, I appreciate, e.g., his Man-Kzin Wars stories and his Robot story as parts of his complete works.

Look at that Draka's face!

The Future

Sf is often about the future and sometimes features characters learning about their futures:

the Time Traveler can describe human devolution and the end of life on Earth because he has traveled through time and returned;

The Shape Of Things To Come begins with a man dreaming that he is reading a history of the future;

in Stapledon's Last And First Men, a time traveler mentally influences the author who thinks that he is writing fiction and in fact distorts most of the future history that he receives;

Heinlein's Future History begins with the inventor of a machine that can accurately predict the date and time of anyone's death;

Asimov's Seldon and Anderson's Valti and Desai predict the futures of their civilizations;

Anderson's psychic time traveler, Jack Havig, describes the future periods of the Maurai Federation and the Star Masters to Anderson's relative...;

Anderson's Starfarers will build holontic time communicators;

Blish's Dirac transmitter receives messages from the future;

Herbert's users of the drug, melange, exercise prescience -

- a substantial list with Wells appearing twice and Anderson four times.

Happy Christmas, page viewers, and thank you for so far 225 page views on Christmas Day.

Foresight And Desert

SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), pp. 362-374.

Athelstane King's band fights nomads in the Thar, the Great Indian Desert. Yasmini responds to the nomads' movements from foresight, not from physical sight. Desert dwellers and foresight based on perception of multiple timelines recall Frank Herbert's Dune. However, the two works are otherwise dissimilar - apart from the use of the term Padishah, which further reminds us that both novels also present fictional empires.

As ever, reference to a work like Dune prompts from me the observation that Poul Anderson addressed such themes far better than some better known authors. See here.

More Details On Nyanza

Poul Anderson's ocean-covered planet, Nyanza, is the diametric opposite of Frank Herbert's desert planet, Dune. I prefer Nyanza. Whereas Dune appears in six novels by Herbert, many more novels by his successors, one feature film and one TV series, Nyanza is the setting of only a single short story, "The Game of Glory."

This story presents a wealth of information about the fictional Nyanzan environment. Several of the details are presented only once and very briefly but they nevertheless demonstrate that a series of novels could have been set on this single planet.

Tessa Hoorn, Lightmistress of Little Skua in Jairnovaunt, tells Dominic Flandry that:

Jairnovaunters harpoon the kraken, a beast with more bulk than the harpooner's boat;
"'...T'Chaka Kruger farms a great patch of beanweed in the Lesser Sargasso...'" (Captain Flandry, p. 314);
commons and sometimes captains scrape low-tide reefs for shells or dive for sporyx;
there are many professions common to society on any planet;
"'...wandering boats of actors...'" (ibid.) come and go as they please.

A focus of the action of the story is the permanently submerged area of Uhunhu but only one part of one sentence tells us the nature of this place:

"...the weed-grown steeps of Uhunhu rose beneath him, monstrous grey dolmens and menhirs raised by no human hands, sunken a million years ago..." (p. 336)

Aeneans And The Ancients

The previous post mentioned the tineran shrine, public ceremonies and secret rites. Another aspect of tineran religion is shown when two tinerans pass an Ancient wall and columns, undimmed by age. First, they refer to that ancient star-faring race variously as the Builders, Elders, La-Sarzen or the High Ones. (Another name used on Aeneas is the Old Shen.) Next, the tinerans dismount, kneel, raise arms, chant, rise, cross themselves, spit and hail the ruins while riding away.

They derive the sign of the cross from Christianity although Anderson tells us in his Time Patrol series that it was originally a Mithraic solar symbol. Spitting is a sacrificial act on a dry planet, as in Frank Herbert's Dune. Earlier, one of the tinerans had expressed contempt by making a spitting sound but without wasting water.

Having previously argued that Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization History is more convincing and imaginative and better written than Isaac Asimov's more widely known Foundation Trilogy, I will now make exactly the same comparison with Dune. To mention just one difference, both Asimov and Herbert describe powerful cliques cynically manipulating superstitious populations by constructing religions as instruments of social control whereas Anderson clearly understands the inner appeal of religious hope and belief. In the Roman Empire, Saul of Tarsus preached a message that many wanted to hear and Constantine adopted it as a state religion three centuries later. In the Terran Empire, Ancient ruins inspire awe which Aycharaych can then manipulate.

One Aenean tries to think himself towards Oneness - many meditators would comment that thinking is not the way but maybe he uses the word in a different sense? - whereas another denounces that as heathenish talk and trusts in God but then wonders whether the Aeneans are His chosen instruments to cleanse the Empire... The developing Aenean beliefs become more elaborate as the novel proceeds.

Four Series And Poul Anderson

Several times on this blog, I have referred to Isaac Asimov's Foundation, and less often, though in the same vein, to Star Trek, Star Wars and Frank Herbert's Dune. (EE Smith's very badly written Lensman series is perhaps in the same category but let's leave that out of the discussion.)

Star Wars is films with book and comic spin-offs. Star Trek is multi-media but primarily TV and film. Dune moved in the opposite direction. First, it was famous, at least among sf fans, as a long novel with several sequels. Then, it was adapted for both cinema and TV. Of the series mentioned so far (outside brackets), only Foundation has not yet appeared on screen but is well known nevertheless.

Both Asimov and Herbert present a humans-only galaxy but add altered human beings and artificial intelligences. (Asimov has one Galactic Empire story where non-human intelligences flee the galaxy and Foundation And Earth ends with the threat of extra-galactic intelligences.)

All four series present the rise and fall of interstellar civilizations, usually "Empires," with FTL travel. In other words, as I have said before, they do what Poul Anderson's less well known History of Technic Civilization does far better. Thus, a good way to present Anderson's main future history series is to say precisely this.

Compare:

Anderson's Terran Empire with the Galactic Empire(s);
Dominic Flandry with James Kirk;
Merseians and Chereionites with Klingons and Vulcans;
Chunderban Desai with Hari Seldon;
Hans Molitor with Paul Atreides;
the Polesotechnic League with Foundation Traders;
Aeneas with Arrakis;
the sincere religious beliefs of Adzel and Axor with the cynical manipulation of popular religion by the Foundation, Bene Gesserit and Atreides - as well as by Anderson's Aycharaych; 
the Long Night with Asimov's post-Imperial period;
etc.

AI, Desert Planets and Jihads

In Robert Heinlein's Red Planet, the colonised desert planet Mars rebels against Earth and, in Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land, a new religion emanates from Mars.

In Isaac Asimov's future history, artificial intelligence and interstellar empire interact and later the Empire falls. AI is resisted, because of the "Frankenstein Complex," but covertly plays a leading role.

In Frank Herbert's future history, there is an interstellar jihad against thinking machines. Later, the colonized desert planet Dune initiates a second interstellar jihad and conquers the Empire.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, the colonized desert planet Aeneas rebels against the Terran Empire and, later, almost initiates an interstellar jihad. Much later, the Empire falls. In Anderson's Harvest of Stars future history, some Martian colonials rebel against the AI controlling Earth because the priorities of pure intellect differ from those of organic societies with lived and living traditions. In Anderson's Genesis, post-human galactic AI debates whether the presiding intelligence of Earth had been right to re-create humanity.

This post alludes to two novels by Heinlein, one future history each by Asimov and Herbert and three future histories by Anderson. Heinlein, Asimov and Herbert are better known but Anderson does it better.