Life And Blogs

I have not blogged for the last few hours because we have attended a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the courtyard of Lancaster Castle. Previously, we have seen this play three times in Williamson Park, Lancaster, twice as a "promenade," walking around to see scenes in different parts of the Park. Other promenades in the Park have included The Tempest.

I mention this both to show life going on outside the blog and also because these two Shakespeare plays are relevant to Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest - and are a main parallel between Anderson's works and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. (The second image shows the ornamental lake in Williamson Park.)

Meanwhile, in relation to Anderson's futuristic science fiction, the previous three posts on this blog and the previous two on the companion blog, Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments (see here) have focused on "Hunters of the Sky Cave." Further, we have yet to exhaust "Hunters..." and, when we have done so, will proceed to other installments of the Captain Flandry series.

Not as yet having any new Anderson-related material to read is helping me to realize how much can still be said about works that have already been discussed.

An Escape

How does this grab you as an escape sequence? By an elaborate deception, Flandry has wangled permission for himself and his fellow prisoner, Kit, to see inside a small Ardazirho (see link) spaceship while its engines have been disconnected. Four armed guards accompany them into the ship though not into the control room. Alone with Kit, Flandry gives her a pre-arranged signal.

Returning down the companionway, Kit passes the guards while Flandry distracts them. Kit grabs a guard's knife, stabs him, grabs his rifle and shoots another. Two down, just like that. Flandry, prepared, dodges a shot aimed at him, knocks that gun aside and strikes the fourth guard, who has turned towards Kit, on the back of the head. That leaves standing only the third guard who, while springing back to get room for a shot, is blasted by Kit. Finally, Flandry kicks the stabbed guard who is down but reaching for a rifle.

All neatly choreographed so that an unarmed Terran and an unarmed Vixenite can neutralize four heavily armed Ardazihiro. One or two Ardazihiro should have watched Kit as she walked past them despite any distraction from Flandry. And how easy can it be for Flandry to dodge a point-blank shot and to knock that gun aside before a second shot is fired?

Flandry and Kit instantly escape in the ship's lifeboat. Flandry can handle the controls even though the wolves squat instead of sitting and have their thumbs on the other side of their hands and, also, he has to look for the release switch. But, nevertheless, the lifeboat controls are sufficiently similar to the spaceship controls that he has just taken time to study.

It is far more likely that such an escape attempt will either not get off the ground or end in two quick deaths.

Wolves On Vixen

(This image is of Flandry's daughter, not of him, but I considered it worthy. Diana is not an Imperial agent (yet).)

To spy on his enemies, Dominic Flandry allows himself to be captured and taken into a frighteningly alien environment. The lupine Ardazirho, having conquered the human colony planet, Vixen, construct their headquarters just below the arctic circle by blasting artificial tunnels into the hills, fusing rocks with atomics and installing equipment with robots in a layout rougher and less private than men or Merseians would want.

Flandry is surrounded by:

painful blue light;

Ardazirho, sprawling, not sitting, gambling for stakes up to a year's slavery or wrestling with teeth and nails;

a barbaric chapel of pungent leaves and a burning wheel;

a gloomy, straw-strewn office with a stream of water running down one rock wall;

a mess where soldiers eat raw meat and howl "...in chorus with one who danced on a monstrous drumhead."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 242.

Our hero takes all this in his stride. Experienced in outmaneuvering aliens, he is soon able to compare the "wolves" with other species that he has met and knows how to get on friendly terms with his interrogator.

An Occupied Planet

This post continues a line of thought started here.

Dan Dare: The Reign Of The Robots;

Doctor Who: Dalek Invasion

and Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave" -

- all recall World War II:

occupation;
street patrols;
underground resistance.

In Anderson's story, the Ardazirho have invaded and occupied the human extrasolar colony planet, Vixen. Unlike Dare's Treens and the Doctor's Daleks, the Ardazirho are not continuing villains. However, Aycharaych is behind them.

After landing covertly on Vixen and joining the resistance, Dominic Flandry reflects that a local man's hunting skills are transferable to resistance fighting. But surely such skills are also part of Intelligence work? In a Frederick Forsyth novel, a British secret agent organizing resistance in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait remains hidden and motionless but alert for eight hours while watching a possibly compromised dead letter drop before concluding that it is safe to approach it. Sure, his life depends on it. Nevertheless, this is admirable. To remain motionless and alert for eight hours is not only a day's work but a skilled day's work, and the skill is transferable to meditation, in particular to zazen. I try unsuccessfully to remain focused for half an hour.

How is Intelligence gathered? Flandry allows himself to be captured in order to learn the enemy's language, then escape. The easiness of escape is implausible. Of course, escape from capture by armed enemies is a familiar routine in action-adventure fiction and Anderson always writes his escape scenes well although their frequency diminishes their plausibility.

The Frontier

Here is another indication of what will happen after the Terran Empire has fallen. Dominic Flandry says to Catherine Kittredge of the colony planet, Vixen:

"'You frontier people are the healthy ones. You'll be around - most of you - long after the Empire is a fireside legend.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 206.

We know that Vixen, having been a frontier planet, will later found its own colony, New Vixen, that will participate in an interstellar civilization much vaster than the Empire. Some colonies, like Altai and Unan Besar, have survived for centuries without any contact from Terra so there is no reason why they should revert to barbarism merely because the tenuous interstellar rule from Terra ceases.

The basic information about Vixen is summarized here. Another detail is that cattle cannot survive there. Consequently, the Vixenites have no dairy industry and Flandry is able to introduce Kit to ice cream. On one extrasolar colony world in Julian May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy, there is milk but something in the grass makes it a different color. This is the kind of detail that matters when persuading readers to imagine daily life on a new planet.

Aycharaych In Conversation

We see Aycharaych of Chereion in conversation with Chunderban Desai once and with Dominic Flandry twice. He lies to Desai, claiming to be from a planet called Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran of the Terran Empire. Despite this dishonesty, we have no reason to doubt his stated interest in humanity:

he knows of the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping Rebellion and Christianity;

he has studied Aeschlyus, Li Po, Shakespeare, Sturgeon, Mikhailov, Bach, Richard Strauss, Rembrandt and Hiroshige;

he borrows and reads a volume of Tagore while waiting in Desai's office.

Fictitious characters are usually fictions to each other. Anyone can refer to Sherlock Holmes and many do (although, in the case of Anderson's Time Patrolmen, Holmes is not a fiction). We have to accept that, in the Technic civilization timeline, there was an American science fiction writer called Theodore Sturgeon but not one called Poul Anderson. (Beowulf Shaeffer in Larry Niven's Known Space future history refers to Heinlein and also to Carter (?). Known Space does have a John Carter on Mars, obviously an ironic reference to ERB's Warlord of Mars.)

Aycharaych tells the philistine Flandry that Johann Strauss is not to be compared to Richard who is more misunderstood than Xingu. He admires an orchid seen against a null-gee sphere of water with the universe beyond:

"'Black against the quicksilver water globe...the universe black and cold against both. A beautiful arrangement, and with that touch of horror necessary to the highest art.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 162.

I do not agree about the horror but thus Aycharaych rationalizes his art "'...of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings...'" (p. 391)

- to quote Desai in conversation with Flandry.

By calling the violet flower black, Aycharaych lets slip that Chereion's sun "'...is cooler and redder than [Flandry's].'" (p. 162)

A Flandry Tetralogy

Poul Anderson's "A Handful of Stars" (1959) was lengthened as We Claim These Stars! (1959), then re-entitled "Hunters of the Sky Cave." At the beginning of "Hunters...," Flandry, in the Solar System, says that he has returned Home after the Nyanza business, i.e., after the events of "The Game of Glory." (1958) A few pages later, Aycharaych says:

"'Congratulations upon your handling of l'affaire Nyanza... We are going to miss A'u on our side.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandery: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 160 -

- thus confirming that the events of "...Glory" immediately preceded those of "Hunters..."

Early in "...Glory," Flandry "...discovered how to lie to a telepath." -Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 303. Thus, the entire contents of "Honorable Enemies," (1951) Flandry's first meeting with Aycharaych, occur between the beginning and the end of "...Glory."

In "Honorable Enemies," Flandry is referred to as "'...the single-handed conqueror of Scothania...'" -Captain Flandry, p. 280. This happened in "Tiger by the Tail." (1951)

Thus, these four works:

"Tiger by the Tail" (1951)
"Honorable Enemies" (1951)
"The Game of Glory" (1958)
"Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1959)

- form a continuous tetralogy although they are not presented as such in the Chronology of Technic Civilization. Flandry captures Aycharaych at the end of "Hunters..." but the Merseians insist on a prisoner exchange, so the story of Flandry versus Aycharaych continues.

A Fascinating Artefact

The Crystal Moon, a large, transparent artificial satellite constructed a hundred years previously for Lord Tsung-Tse, then sold by his son for gambling debts, was bought by the then Merseian ambassador who moved it into the Jovian system which belongs to the Dispersal of Ymir, not to the Terran Empire. Massive artificial rubies, emeralds, diamonds and topazes are held in orbit around the Moon by planar gravity fields. Spaceship passengers enter the Moon through transparent tubes.

On the Moon's surface, a domed zero gee conservatory holds a single large sphere of water surrounded by a jungle of mutant ferns and orchids. Tropical fish and visitors to the Moon swim in the water. (In an Arthur C Clarke story, a satellite hotel has a similar zero gee spherical swimming pool but Clarke's version additionally encloses a bubble of air large enough to contain a bar serving drinks to swimmers.) Aycharaych of Chereion, descended from birds, glides gracefully through the zero gee air.

When Dominic Flandry walks through the central part of the Moon with its artificial gravity field, Orion is beneath him.

The current Merseian ambassador buys human slaves to serve in the Moon. The Terran Empire is so decadent that it has not only revived slavery but also allows the sale of human slaves to a Merseian. Would such a slave retain any loyalty to the Empire if her owner involved her in his race's plans to overthrow that Empire?