Parallels

Reading one work can remind us of another although we may have to analyze why. In a twelve page comic strip written by Alan Moore, a member of the Green Lantern Corps visits a very old planet that was, long ago, the center of an empire spanning three galaxies but that now is occupied only by entombed malign immaterial intelligences. In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows by Poul Anderson, an agent of Terran Naval Intelligence visits a very old planet that was, long ago, the center of an interstellar civilization but that now is occupied only by a single survivor who simulates a still living population hologramically.

I may be alone either in reading both of these works or in being reminded of one by the other despite their manifold obvious differences. Summarized as above, Moore's fictitious planet, Ysm-Ault, sounds like a more fantastic version of Anderson's fictitious Chereion although I am sure that there is no connection.

I am enjoying both rereading Alan Moore's comic strips and starting to read the first Modesty Blaise novel. Meanwhile, I am at the uncomfortable pause between September and October. This note, written late on 30 September, will be saved and posted on 1 October.

Between the Young Flandry trilogy comprising Ensign Flandry, A Circus Of Hells and The Rebel Worlds and the Captain Flandry series starting with "Tiger By The Tail," there are two "Outposts of Empire" works, "Outpost of Empire" and The Day Of Their Return. These works follow the Young Flandry trilogy. "Outpost..." refers to Starkad. ...Return refers to Starkad, Talwin and the McCormac rebellion. ...Return also prefigures later Flandry works by introducing Aycharaych and Chunderban Desai.

John Ridenour is seen entirely externally in Ensign Flandry, where he addresses the title character curtly by his surname, but is the viewpoint character of some passages in "Outpost...," so these contrasting views of Ridenour are a possible subject for an October post.

Parallel Narratives

EE Smith has Arisians, Eddorians and Galactic Patrol;

Poul Anderson has Danellians, Neldorians and Time Patrol.

Parallel narratives, except that:

"Galactic Patrol" means space travel whereas "Time Patrol" means time travel;

the difference in the quality of writing could not possibly be greater.

I have compared Isaac Asimov unfavorably with Anderson and must do this even more so with Smith. The subject of EE Smith came up when I explained to some fellow comics fans that the Green Lantern called Arisia gets her name from Smith's Lensman series.

In fact, the Guardians of the Universe, the Weaponers of Qward and the Green Lantern Corps provide another parallel with Arisians/Eddorians/Galactic Patrol and Danellians/Neldorians/Time Patrol, especially since the first Time Patrol collection was called Guardians Of Time - and Green Lantern is better than Lensman.

I suggested earlier on this blog that Poul Anderson's squirrel-like Chee Lan flying into combat with a gravity harness resembles one GLC member who is squirrel-like and, of course, flies into combat with a power ring. But Anderson also explains the entire social and economic basis of the conflict. Fans of Lensman or Green Lantern can find more in the Time Patrol and the Technic History.

Words And Texts

Sometimes one book reminds us of another, then reflection reveals the similarities. When a Superman comic had reminded me of a Robert Heinlein novel, I was surprised to realize the similarities: both works had a lunar setting and both referred to parallel universes.

Poul Anderson's The Night Face made me think of the science fiction-based superhero series, Green Lantern. Both works involve regular faster than light interstellar travel and a mysterious planet, peaceful but with a hidden conflict. This description makes them sound closely parallel, which is entirely misleading. In fact, it was another minor feature of The Night Face that initially evoked Green Lantern.

Any word can have a specific denotation, a general connotation and accidental associations. Thus, the phrase, "the Pope":

denotes the present incumbent, Bergoglio;
connotes an entire historical institution in the Catholic Church;
reminds me of my single visit to Rome decades ago.

An author skilfully deploys denotations and connotations but cannot control the accidental associations in his readers' minds. By the same token, a reader must not let his associations get in the way of the author's meaning. That I disliked something in Rome is irrelevant when reading an account of a Pope.

The unusual word "Oa" is the name of the mysterious planet in Green Lantern and is also an interjection used by a character in The Night Face. Associations cannot be more accidental than that.

Superhero Parallels

Two minor comparisons between the DC Comics Universe and Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization -

(i) Members of the superhero team, the Green Lantern Corps, wear "power rings" that bestow super powers, including flight. One Corps member resembled a squirrel.

Members of the trader team sometimes fly using personal gravity harnesses. One team member resembles a squirrel.

(ii) Thanagar is inhabited both by winged, feathered, avian-headed humanoids and by fully humanoid beings whose policemen fly with artificial wings and belts of anti-gravity metal and wear hawk-like helmets. Two Thanagarian police officers came to Earth as the superheroes, Hawkman and Hawkwoman.

Avalon is colonized by winged, feathered Ythrians and by human beings some of whom fly with gravbelts.

Imperial Thanagar joined an Alien Alliance attack against Terrestrial superheroes whereas Avalon successfully resisted annexation by Imperial Terra.

Comments:

Here the resemblances end. Graphic fiction can be as rich and dense as prose fiction can be but usually it is not because of its monthly publishing schedule.

Anderson's characters do not fight crime but earn a living and, when necessary, keep the peace.

Colorful Fictions Continued

The Green Lantern Corps is part of the DC Universe which also includes Superman and Batman. The Trader Team is part of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation which also includes Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry. The DCU is bigger because older and multi-authored. However, the Technic History is impressive as a long narrative by a single author.

When comparing an Anderson character to a Green Lantern, it is appropriate also to mention Larry Niven, like Anderson an American sf writer, future historian and successor of Robert Heinlein.

The Joker from the DCU makes a guest appearance in Larry Niven's Known Space future history (although, when I first read Known Space, I had not yet got back into reading comics so I missed this explicit reference);

Niven wrote an article on Superman and plotted a Green Lantern story;

Niven's psychic detective and protectors have features of superheroes.

In fact, superheroes originated in sf, with Superman's scientifically rationalized extraterrestrial origin, then incorporated both fantasy, with Captain Marvel's supernaturally explained magical origin, and action-adventure fiction, with non-super powered masked avengers and costumed adventurers. The version of Green Lantern that has existed since 1960 defends not a single city, country or planet but an entire space sector and interacts with the GL's of neighboring sectors, all of whom take their orders from immortal Guardians of the Universe, or did the last time I looked although these scenarios can change and change again very quickly. Thus, this superhero series is more sfnal than most and was appropriate material for the application of Larry Niven's cosmic imagination.

Either this cover or another GL crowd scene features a Puppeteer GL. GL's are fearless whereas Niven's Known Space aliens the Puppeteers are cowardly unless insane so a Puppeteer GL must be mad indeed.

See "Comics And Science Fiction" on www.sciencefiction.blogspot.co.uk

Colorful Fiction

Like a lot of people, I enjoy novels, films and comics, thus verbal, audiovisual and visual-verbal fiction. Films and comics have the advantage of full color visuals but prose fiction can be "colorful." First, it generates book covers and each new edition of a text can have a different cover.

Secondly, the writing can be "colorful." Many of Poul Anderson's descriptive passages are multi-sensory. We see, hear and smell a scene.

Chee Lan, a member of Anderson's "Trader Team" is squirrel-like, small with a large tail and white-furred except for a black nose and a dark mask around golden or green eyes. Thus, not only is she described colorfully. She also resembles a member of the DC Comics Green Lantern Corps, pictured lower left.

To complete the resemblance, Chee flies with a gravity harness in "Day Of Burning" and she and her team mates engage flying soldiers in a forest on another planet in Mirkheim. The Trader Team and the Green Lantern Corps, both interstellar multi-species outfits, differ in almost every respect. However, by basing an extraterrestrial on a terrestrial life form, Anderson and a comics script writer have generated visually similar characters.   

A Missing Ancient Race

In some works of fiction, an older, wiser race intervenes benevolently in the destinies of less evolved beings.

(i) In EE Smith's badly written Lensman series, the Arisians organize the Galactic Patrol against the Eddorians.

(ii) In the Green Lantern comics, the Oans became the Guardians of the Universe who organize the Green Lantern Corps against the Qwardians.

(iii) In Julian May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy, the Lylmik organize the Galactic Milieu.

(iv) In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, humanity will evolve into the Danellians who will organize the Time Patrol against Neldorians, Exaltationists and chaos.

(v) Isaac Asimov's humans only galaxy did not allow for any older race but the mentally powerful Second Foundation usurped its functions, guiding history to a greater goal.

(vi) In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, many believe that the Ancients Went Beyond and Will Return.

However, Anderson maintains a credible ambiguity about the Ancients. Their expected Return is merely a belief, a fiction within the fiction. One version of the belief even divides the Foredwellers into consciousness-affirming Elders and entropy-embracing Others. But that is merely a ruse by an agent of a foreign imperialism who is trying to foment strife and even to incite an Empire-destroying jihad.

The agent, Aycharaych, is the last surviving member of an ancient race, the Chereionites, who, he privately claims, were indeed the Ancients whose ruins are found on many planets. It seems that they have departed not into transcendence but into extinction, leaving Aycharaych the sole heir of their technologically preserved heritage. But why should that have happened?

It seems that Anderson created Aycharaych as a telepathic opponent for Dominic Flandry merely to give Flandry the problem of how to lie to a telepath. However, Aycharaych, like Flandry himself, was a sufficiently interesting character that he returned several times. It became necessary to provide him with an origin and appropriate to locate that origin on an ancient, dying world. It was then logical to identify the ancient Chereionites with the Ancients. But that was sufficient for Anderson's story purposes. He did not present surviving Ancients secretly guiding or guarding galactic history. Instead, he left the idea of the Ancients as a myth in his characters' minds so that, in the last Flandry novel, a Wodenite convert to Jerusalem Catholicism seeks among Ancient inscriptions for evidence of an extraterrestrial Incarnation. We do not think that Fr Axor will find such evidence but it is plausible that he and others continue to look for it. While Flandry engages in Imperial conflict, his fellow beings continue to believe in Christianity and other religions. That is what we expect. This reads like real history.

Added, March 2012: 

There is always more to be said about Anderson. I am reminded that in "The Horn of Time the Hunter," a spaceship of the Kith interstellar traders travels at a relativistic sub-light speed ten thousand light years to the fringes of the galactic nucleus and back in search of "...the Elder Races that must dwell somewhere..." but does not find them. (1)

In Tau Zero, another relativistic spaceship, accelerating uncontrollably, survives this universe and settles on a planet in the next universe. A character comments:

"...I'd like us to become - oh, the elders. Not imperialists; that's ridiculous; but the people who were there from the beginning and know their way around, and are worth learning from. Never mind what physical shape the younger races have. Who cares? But let's make this, as nearly as possible, a human galaxy, in the widest sense of the word 'human.' Maybe even a human universe.
" I think we've earned that right." (2)

They have not. To me, "a human universe" does sound imperialistic. But here we see a potential Elder Race in an early universe.

(1) Poul Anderson, The Horn of Time, New Jersey, 1968, p. 16.
(2) Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, London, 1973, p. 186.