Large Objects

Regular blog readers know my philosophy. Fully to appreciate Poul Anderson, we compare or contrast him with many diverse authors, including other cosmically-themed hard sf writers. Anderson, Larry Niven and Gregory Benford have all written major sf series and have interacted in different ways. For a comment by Gregory Benford on one of my posts about his Anderson-related short story, see here. For comments on Anderson's contributions to Niven's Man-Kzin Wars subseries, see here.

Benford's and Niven's Bowl Of Heaven (TOR, New York, 2013) is like getting Niven's Ringworld back. I mean an artifact bigger than planets. Ringworld initiated a tetralogy and a co-written trilogy which, like the Man-Kzin Wars, are subseries of Niven's Known Space future history. Bowl... launches a new series. The authors think big and their alien characters build big.

On the title page of Part II, the authors quote Lord Dunsany:

"Man is a small thing, and the night is large and full of wonder." (p. 79)

I think that I can improve that:

"Man is small; night is wide and wondrous."

(Scottish English gives us "Man is wee..." but that sounds twee.)

We can also compare all these series with Star Trek:

"They left a skeleton crew aboard SunSeeker, with [Captain] Redwing plainly sorry that proper ship command protocols demanded that he stay aboard." (p. 81)

Captain Kirk, take note.

Unusual Heavenly Bodies In The Man-Kzin Wars Series

Poul Anderson imagined unusual heavenly bodies and added three more in his Man-Kzin Wars trilogy. Each of these three works describes an expedition to an unusual astronomical object.

In "Iron," a rogue red dwarf star and its planetary system, almost as old as the universe, have gathered nebular and intergalactic matter that forms a single multiplex molecule on one planetary surface.

In "Inconstant Star," an artifact surrounding a radiating mini black is used as a weapon.

In "Pele," a star not yet fully formed has six eccentrically orbiting planets, including one inwardly spiraling super-Jovian, its atmosphere distended into a long ovoid, that will soon break up and collide with its primary.

Thus, endless cosmic imagination. Of course, man-kzin conflict happens at all three because that is the series we are in but Anderson's imagination transcends petty matters like interstellar empires!

Limits On Interstellar Communication

"The 'instantaneous' pulses emitted by a ship in hyperdrive are detectable at an extreme range of about a light-year. They can be modulated to carry information. Unfortunately, within a few million kilometers quantum effects degrade the signal beyond recovery; even the simplest binary code becomes unintelligible."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 132.

However, the interstellar civilization in Anderson's For Love And Glory has an instantaneous hyperbeam. I remember that there was some limitation on the use of hyperbeam but not what it was.

In the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space History:

"'Someday they'll miniaturize hyperwave equipment to the point where it'll fit into a spaceship.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Inconstant Star" IN Niven, Ed. Man-Kzin Wars III (New York, 1990), p. 211.

And, later in that history, Beowulf Shaeffer, exploring the galactic center alone in a spaceship, speaks to his puppeteer employer instantaneously by hyperphone. (Too easy.)

Anderson's Starfarers features an instantaneous and transtemporal communicator and Ursula Le Guin's future history has the instantaneous ansible. However, the true master of interstellar communication is James Blish:

his ultraphone is FTL but not instantaneous;

his CirCon radio and Dirac transmitter are instantaneous;

in one application of the Dirac transmitter, it receives messages from the past and future as well as from the present;

his Heart Stars empire and Angels also have instantaneous interstellar communication.

This is the kind of systematic treatment of a theme that we often find in Anderson's works.

Smoking

Attitudes and laws regarding homosexuality and smoking have reversed in my lifetime. What else can change? In the SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, John Varley suggested: to write futuristic sf, think of something that is now shocking, imagine that it has become commonplace, deduce its social implications and write from the viewpoint of characters living then, not from the perspective of a shocked time traveler arriving from our present.

I do not think that easy organ transplants would lead to an increase in capital punishment for minor offenses and the obsolescence of prisons as in Larry Niven's Known Space future history. Too many other social and moral factors would counteract this. In his Known Space/Man-Kzin Wars story, "Inconstant Star," Poul Anderson considers smoking. It no longer causes cancer or emphysema. However, puritanism is cyclical so the practice is again disapproved of on Earth whereas, on Wunderland, it has become a symbol from the occupation era because the kzinti disliked it and disallowed it in their presence. Meanwhile, Robert Saxtorph, from Earth but immune to puritanism, has become famous and therefore so has his pipe. These are plausible background details in a future history series.

Economical Writing

A sentence needs a subject and a predicate which are usually a noun or pronoun and a verb. Poul Anderson's descriptive passages are usually economical, e.g.:

"Wind whittered." (The Man-Kzin Wars, p. 101)

Elsewhere, wind wails, whines, wakes and wuthers. (See here.)

"Rain roared." (Here.)

Short sentences, maybe too short for some of us to think of, but they serve their purpose and therefore are right in their contexts. One rule of writing is never to write a longer sentence, paragraph, text or series if a shorter one will suffice. Anderson's novels are compact, usually quite short. When they are longer, it is because they have more content, not just more words.

Googling Words And Phrases

"'...a Pournelle rapid-fire automatic...'" (The Man-Kzin Wars, p. 99)

I googled this phrase (see link) and found this phrase. I think this means that Poul Anderson has imagined a rifle named after Jerry Pournelle rather than there being a rifle named after Pournelle. Either way, a nice touch.

"...the glacier had gouged a deep, almost sheer-walled coulee..." (p. 100)

"The bottom was talus..." (ibid.)

"...wave patterns spreading from countless centers to form an ever-changing moire." (p. 109)

Sometimes a word is familiar but not its precise meaning. Sometimes even the word is unfamiliar. How can a writer wanting to imitate Poul Anderson acquire such a large vocabulary?

"Stars thronged..."

"Stars thronged, the Milky Way torrented..." (The Man-Kzin Wars, p. 74)

(My laptop does not recognize the verb "torrented" but readers have no problem with it.)

Poul Anderson found many ways to describe the galaxy as seen from space. Two kinds of writers could profitably imitate Anderson. An established hard sf author would be able to write a perfect pastiche and a new writer would be able to practice many effective techniques while finding his own voice. (Aristotle wrote Platonic dialogues, which have not survived, before developing his distinctive philosophy.)

Techniques
(i) New combinations of words to describe stars and galaxies.
(ii) The Pathetic Fallacy, understated but also dramatic.
(iii) Always appeal to at least three senses in descriptive passages.
(iv) Write about competent problem-solvers who suddenly realize the solution but do not divulge it to the reader until it works.
(v) Use scientific knowledge to describe each new planetary environment in detail - What color are the plants? Which human dietary requirements do they lack? What is the local equivalent of grass?
(vi) Describe seasons and the weather.
(vii) Understand both sides in any conflict.
(viii) Address basic issues of human freedom and social organization even in action-adventure fiction.
(ix) In successive works, address each concept from different angles.
(x) Either avoid cliches or make them work for you.

The Current Agenda

Ketlan has got another old laptop working for me so it seems that we are back in business. It is late so I am not sure how much will be done in what is left of today. I have continued to reread "Iron" by Poul Anderson and will post more about this story, then about Anderson's second and third Man-Kzin Wars stories while rereading them. I might also post a little more on Mars since this topic has recurred recently. I will definitely post about story-telling media and Superman on Comics Appreciation. (Links added later.)

While driving to Ketlan's cottage on the Marsh Estate, Lancaster, to collect the laptop, I found Laburnum Grove (see image) cordoned off by police conducting a murder investigation in one of the houses shown here. I occasionally mention notable events in the City of Lancaster so I thought that this qualified. The tower of the Priory Church, which we have featured before, can be seen in the background behind the tree.

Rereading "Iron"

Poul Anderson, "Iron" IN Larry Niven, Ed, The Man-Kzin Wars (London, 1989), pp, 27-177.

Ulf Reichstein Markham and Tyra Nordbo first appeared in Man-Kzin Wars stories written by Poul Anderson, then reappeared in the fictionally earlier although later-written Man-Kzin Wars stories of Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling. I thought that Pournelle and Stirling had introduced Markham but that was just me getting confused between the publication history and the fictional chronology.

Markham respects the "'...valiant, loyal, disciplined...'" (p. 44) kzinti. This sounds like Anderson's Olaf Magnusson respecting the Merseians.

Dorcas Saxtorph accuses Markham of uttering "'...an intolerable racist insult.'" (p. 56) I missed it but maybe his generalization about flatlanders counts. Before that, they had been having an interesting discussion about society. In a healthy society, according to Markham, lesser persons accept guidance from superior persons for the longer term social good. For the leader, power and glory are not ends but means to:

"'...the organic evolution of the society toward its destiny, the full flowering of its soul.'" (p. 55)

Sounds patriarchal? The kzinti are ruled by a Patriarch. Markham uses obscure terminology:

"'...we are replacing living Gemeinschaft with mechanical Gessellschaft.'" (p. 55)

Juan Yoshii of the Rover crew wants "'To be a poet.'" (p. 60)

- like Jesse Nicol in Anderson's Harvest The Fire.

Yoshii asks:

"'In the centuries of spaceflight, how much true poetry has been written?'" (p. 60)

- and Nicol, en route to the outer Solar System, exclaims:

"'The inhuman may be what's mine, stars, comets, hugeness, a universe that doesn't know or care but simply and gloriously is - but humans are there -'" (Harvest The Fire, New York, 1887, p. 190).

Anderson, a novelist of the space age, also recognized the need for poetry.

Just after the purchase of the hyperdrive, mankind is on the verge of "'...great adventures,...the age of discovery that must come...'" (p. 45) This reminds us of:

"The world's great age begins anew...
"...it is enough that we are on our way." (The Van Rijn Method, New York, 1997, pp. 555, 556)

A red dwarf moving through the galaxy at over a thousand kilometers per second is nearly as old as the universe. (p. 65) Such Andersonian cosmic sf transcends Known Space and the Technic History and is also to be found, e.g., in the "Pride"/Tau Zero diptych.

"'Every explorer is an amateur by definition.'" (p. 46)

This reminds us of the opening and closing chapters of The Boat Of A Million Years, set respectively before Christ and in an indefinite future.

Does anyone do it better than Anderson?

Picking Up The Threads

Where were we? I was reading Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's third Man-Kzin Wars story, "In The Hall Of The Mountain King," realizing that I had not read it before. Pournelle's and Stirling's Man-Kzin trilogy is integrated with Poul Anderson's and I will probably reread the latter next.

However, when the laptop died, I temporarily stopped reading the Man-Kzin series becaue I had stopped being able to blog about it simultaneously. Also, wanting a change of genre, I instead reread Garth Ennis' graphic series, The Boys, which ingeniously integrates the fantastic concept of superheroes into an alternative twentieth century history of American business, politics and warfare. The Twin Towers still stand but not the Brooklyn Bridge. 9/11 happened but differently.

Ennis knows his comic book stuff and his real world stuff and also writes a lot of straight war fiction. Although he presents different genres in a different medium from the different perspective of an Ulsterman living in New York, Ennis' graphic fictions are comparable to Anderson's, Pournelle's and Stirling's militray sf - and he even wrote some sf in a Dan Dare revival. Common themes are military hardware, the experience of combat and the causes of conflicts. What more could we want?

Well, I would like an end to such conflicts but even then we would still have to study and read about military history. Larry Niven's ARM are out of order trying to suppress that history. The FTL interstellar scenarios of Anderson, Niven, Pournelle etc would at least ensure that humanity can survive even when weapons can wreck worlds.

Next, we must return to the Wars Against Men.

"The Shadows, Like Life..."

ADDENDUM: To read something new, see here and HERE.

AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
I am borrowing Ketlan's lap top because the second hand computer that I have been using has died and there will be a delay before it is replaced. Consequently, blog activity will become sporadic although hopefully will continue. Thank you for recent page views and comments.

I hope that recently I have inspired or revived in some blog readers an interest in future histories. I have been fascinated by this sf sub-genre for decades and it just gets better. Parts of the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space future history are mini-histories within the longer history, as are the early Imperial and post-Imperial ages of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Remember that Wells and Stapledon wrote future histories before Heinlein but did it differently and that Anderson, following Heinlein, made immense and unique contributions - but I have demonstrated this repeatedly.

I am continually reminded of the comprehensiveness of Sean M Brooks' contributions to this blog (see here) and hopefully these also will continue.

Overlapping Trilogies II

See here.

The Correct Reading Order?
"The Children's Hour"
"The Asteroid Queen" (FTL introduced)
"Iron"
"In The Hall Of The Mountain King" (Tyra's father referenced)
"Inconstant Star" (Tyra's father rescued)
"Pele"

My only uncertainty is whether "Iron" belongs before or after "In The Hall..." If the latter, then the reading order can be summarized as:

the Pournelle-Stirling trilogy
the Anderson trilogy

Further rereading and other readers' comments should clarify this point.  

Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War, a tetralogy by Hal Colebatch, is also relevant. These ten works could be re-presented in three volumes. But there are many more Man-Kzin Wars installments. Meanwhile, Ringworld has become a tetralogy and the Fleet of Worlds has become a trilogy. Known Space is vast indeed.

Contrasts And Continuities

(Good Friday. Good weather. Long walk along the River Lune. See image.)

I am impressed by the contrast yet continuity between HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come and Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars franchise universe, also by the extent of Poul Anderson's contribution to this literary sequence:

not just one future history but eight or nine and of different types;

a Man-Kzin Wars trilogy that is a sequel to Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's Man-Kzin Wars trilogy;

one War World work.

Wells presents twentieth century conflicts and a twenty first century resolution, a World State, as do some American future historians - the Space Patrol,  the Un-Men, the ARM etc. The Man-Kzin Wars are an interstellar conflict with a longer term resolution: tamer kzinti, although don't tell them that. The kzinti are like the barbarians in Anderson's Technic History, savages given spaceships and nuclear weapons by another race. Trotsky called this "uneven but combined development": Native Americans given rifles by Europeans; large factories in Tsarist Russia - serfs proletarianized in a single generation; not gradual change but sudden upheaval and social revolution.

Contemplate:

Wells' airmen;
Stapledon's seventeen successive sapient species, including winged Venerians and Neptunian Last Men, then his Cosmic Mind and Star Maker;
Heinlein's astrogators;
Bradbury's Martians;
Asimov's robots and psychohistorians;
Blish's medieval monks, modern magicians, Lithians, Okies, pantropists, Angels, Traitors and Service agents;
Anderson's Un-Men, Ythrians, Maurai, asterites, Rustumites, Kith and sophotects;
Niven's Belters, ARM's, kzinti and protectors;
Pournelle's mercenaries;
Niven's and Pournelle's Moties -

- and, in the words of one Blish character, go with God! (In fact, He is already on the list.)

Future History Building

"'The humans must have either great luck, or more knowledge than is good...'" (Man-Kzin Wars III, p. 60)

"Was General Early a military genius, or incredibly lucky?" (Man-Kzin Wars V, p. 15)

Twice, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling mention luck. Later in Larry Niven's Known Space History, the Puppeteers, theorizing that luck is a psychic power, successfully breed human beings for luck by influencing the UN to establish a Birthright Lottery. Although human acquisition of the hyperdrive just in time to defeat the kzinti looks like very good luck, it was in fact arranged by the Puppeteers as part of their project to breed tamer kzinti. (Of course, it was lucky for humanity that Puppeteers existed and interacted with kzinti in just this way. Also, the kzinti attack was lucky because it saved humanity from stagnation.)

The Thrintun's three-armed slave technicians remind us of Niven's and Pournelle's three-armed Moties while the Jotoki, even more versatile, have five arms. (I would never have thought of giving aliens an uneven number of limbs.)

Harold's Terran Bar is an excellent invention. The characters who meet there even include one unemployed veteran and two defeated kzinti who then seek work together. The Bar, invented (I think) by Pournelle & Stirling, is also visited by Poul Anderson's characters. It will be illuminating to trace the connections between Pournelle's & Stirling's and Anderson's contributions to Niven's future history. We have come a long way from a single author writing a single novel comprising an entire future history.

Sensory Descriptions

Currently, this blog contemplates multiple future histories of three kinds: Wellsian, Heinleinian and later Andersonian. See here. Future historical issues range from the ultimate fate of the universe to the details of military strategy. In Anderson's Technic History, Aeneans ambush Terrans whereas, during a Man-Kzin War, human guerillas ambush kzinti.

On Aeneas, the ambushers see many-colored leaves while their leader shivers, hears a rustling tree and flowing water and smells the faint odor of the native equivalent of grass. On Wunderland, the guerillas feel cold, see native squidgrass growing under imported roses and orange kzinti raaairtwo among green mutated alfalfa and smell the roses.

Thus, when presenting the viewpoints of individual conscious beings, Anderson and Pournelle & Stirling sustain the literary technique of appealing to at least three of the senses. At the opposite end of the spectrum of future historical writing, Stapledon summarizes historical eras in a few sentences and Anderson recounts millions of years of Solar history on a single page. See here.

Not Only Times But Also Places

A future history series should feature places where some of the characters live, work or spend time so that the reader vicariously experiences not only the passage of time, biographical, generational, historical - even geological and cosmological - but also a number of fully realized physical locations. History is temporal but historical events are spatiotemporal and sometimes contemporaneous. John Ridenour is on Freehold and Chunderban Desai is on Aeneas while Dominic Flandry pursues his career in Intelligence. Earlier, some Polesotechnic League stories had overlapped.

The Rebel Worlds introduces some locations on Aeneas, then most of The Day Of Their Return is set on that planet. Nicholas van Rijn has a penthouse in Chicago Integrate and Dominic Flandry has an apartment in Archopolis. However, these characters move around so much that what we get is a quick succession of places and planets although each of these is realized in detail. We see Flandry in his office at Intelligence Headquarters only once in his entire series.

In the Man-Kzin Wars series, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling take the trouble to establish the setting of Harold's Terran Bar which Anderson reuses. In one scene, we see this nightspot when it is empty in daylight. Only the proprietor and the bribe-accepting police chief meet and eat:

wurst;
egg and potato salad;
breads;
shrimp-on-rye;
gulyas soup -

- although the police chief has only a croissant and espresso. More for our food thread.

Multiple Authorship

In a future history series, we value length and complexity. Multiple authorship increases both. I used to think that future histories should be multiply authored. Now that franchise universes have been published, what do we think?

(i) Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization achieves both length and complexity with single authorship.

(ii) The Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space History is considerably enhanced by (at least) three long contributions from Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling and (just) three long contributions from Poul Anderson.

Anderson's contributions, set in the FTL period, build on Pournelle's and Stirling's contributions, set in the earlier STL period. For example, Pournelle and Stirling introduce a bar and a character that Anderson reuses. Thus, these six works, which could be collected in two volumes, comprise a substantial section of this future history.

It becomes even less feasible to consider one author in isolation from others. We might attempt a comprehensive assessment of the Pournelle/Stirling/Anderson joint contribution to the Niven future history.

A Bar With Food

A Bar With Food

Harold's Terran Bar. A World On Its Own. humans only -

- is in Munchen on the human colony planet of Wunderland in the Alpha Centauri System during the kzinti occupation of that system. It is a known underworld hangout with strictly human service. Human labor, displaced from kzinti estates, is cheap.

Food served includes dark green, many-eyed, translucent-shelled, grilled grumblies. You break off the head with your fingers and dip it in sauce.

We have documented hostelries and meals and might hear more from Harald's.

Three Master Races

Shwylt Shipsbane remarks, "'I suspect you actually like [Terrans].'" Brechdan Ironrede replies, "'Why, that's no secret...They were magnificent once. They could be again. I would love to see them our willing subjects...Unlikely, of course. They're not that kind of species. We might be forced to exterminate.'"
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 92.

Forced, indeed! You might be forced to reconsider, Brechdan.

Djana (human) is horrified when she overhears Ydwyr (Merseian) discussing her as if she were an animal:

"'A reconditioning. It improved her both physically and mentally.'" (p. 351)

Under Ydwyr's tutelage, she had begun to see him as her father and to imagine a Merseian Christ or even that the Merseians did not need redemption... A reconditioning.

Chuut-Riit (kzin) thinks:

"With a fully-domesticated human species at their disposal, his son's son's sons could even aspire to...no, unthinkable"
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Children's Hour" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars II (New York, 1991), pp. 133-306 AT p. 155.

I would have preferred if Chuut-Riit had completed that sentence, though. Finally, he sounds exactly like one of Stirling's Draka looking forward to the subordination of the rest of the human race.

Time Travel, Dilation And Stasis

We have learned three ways to:

"...survive the re-contraction of the primal monobloc and its explosion into a new cosmic cycle..."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Children's Hour" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars II (London, 1991), pp. 133-306 AT p. 149 -

- by (i) time travel, (ii) time dilation and (iii) temporal stasis.

(i) In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," one man in a "time projector," i.e., a kind of time machine, circumnavigates space-time. We owe the idea of a temporal vehicle or "time machine" to HG Wells and it is because of Wells that we retain such archaic terminology. I remember that, in the 1960s, a friend's grandfather used the phrase, "flying machine."

(ii) In Anderson's Tau Zero, the crew of an exponentially accelerating Bussard ramjet survives cosmic contraction and explosion. We owe the idea of an interstellar ramjet to Robert Bussard.

(iii) In "The Children's Hour," it is merely stated that a Slaver stasis field "...would probably survive..." (op. cit., p. 149) Stasis fields are an sf prop but we owe two very unpleasant species, the Slavers and the kzinti, to Larry Niven. Thank you, Mr Niven!

However, the current cosmological model is not cyclical. Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis ask whether consciousness can survive the heat death of a universe that does not re-contract and re-explode.