Etienne Fourre II

When I summarized Fourre's career, my sources were:

"Marius" (published 1957; set approximately 1964);

"Un-Man" (published 1953; set approximately 2004).

What I omitted was the point of "Marius":

Fourre forcibly replaces Reinach with Valti as chairman of the European Council;

this is to prevent Reinach from becoming another Marius, a general who wins a war but is a disastrous politician;

also, according to Valti's equations, leaving Reinach in power would have led to World War IV and probably an end of humanity in another fifty years.

Fourre appeared in "Un-Man," then Anderson wrote the prequel, "Marius." Are they consistent?

According to "Un-Man," Fourre was in the French Resistance of World War II and was "...high in the Western liaison with the European undergrounds of World War III...," entering the occupied countries on several missions (The Psychotechnic League, New York, 1981, p. 54);

according to "Marius," he represents France in the European Council after World War III.

OK. This can fit together. He was in France during World War II and after World War III but was based in Britain or the US during World War III?

Of Fourre, Naysmith thinks:

"Such a man...would in earlier days have stood behind the stake and lash of an Inquisition, would have marched at Cromwell's side and carried out the Irish massacres, would have helped set up world-wide Communism...Thank God he's on our side!" (pp. 54-55)

Do we want such a man on our side? He arranges an assassination and a coup. But the assassinated man is a dictator, not a campaigner or reformer. The overthrown regime was anti-UN, not anti-US! And "UN" here means a peaceful, rational world government, not the institution with which we are familiar.

So maybe Fourre was the man for his time, after all?

Etienne Fourre

The future that we try to imagine is being formed now. One way to show this in speculative fiction is to present a character in a near future scenario who shares a past with the author and his readers. Thus, in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Etienne Fourre:

in World War II, was in the French Resistance;

in World War III, liaised with the European undergrounds;

after World War III, was chief of the Maquisard Brotherhood, therefore also French representative in the Supreme Council of United Free Europe;

in the Years of Hunger, fought with the liberals against the neofascists;

in the Years of Madness, fought with the gendarmerie against the atomists;

ran a spy system that suppressed the Great Jehad;

fought with UN troops in the Near East;

became head of the UN Inspectorate secret service;

engineered a successful coup against the anti-UN Argentinian government;

thwarted a faked Mongolian revolution;

had the Chinese dictator assassinated;

initiated the Rostomily Brotherhood.

Fourre first appeared as head of the secret service in "Un-Man," (1953) then as chief of the Maquisard Brotherood in the prequel, "Marius." (1957) "Marius," although set in the near future, presents the all too familiar environment of a war-torn Europe as a prelude to the high tech future of subsequent stories.

Fourre, appearing only twice, is a seminal figure, remembered centuries later:

"'Times have changed. If Fourre were alive today, he would agree that action is necessary.'
"'It's always convenient to use a dead man for a character witness, isn't it?'
"'What?'
"'Never mind.'" (Cold Victory, New York, 1982, p. 254)

One Past And Two Futures

Because Poul Anderson's The Golden Slave (New York, 1980), set during the Roman Republic, is unadorned historical fiction that "...might have happened..." (p. 5), its timeline could incorporate our present and any of Anderson's fictitious futures. In fact, it resonates with two of the latter.

Anderson's first future history begins with a short story called "Marius" that refers to the Roman general Marius' victory over the Cimbrians which is the subject matter of The Golden Slave, Chapter II.

Eodan, a captured Cimbrian, describes enslavement:

" 'Not clean death, but marching in triumph, shown like an animal, while the street-bred rabble pelted us with filth! Chained in a pen, day upon day upon day, lashed and kicked, till we finally went on a block to be auctioned! And afterward shoveling muck, hoeing clods, sleeping in a hogpen barracks with chains on every night!' " (p. 50)

Anderson's second future history describes enslavement in the Terran Empire. In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (London, 1987), the law requires slaves to wear a bracelet audiovisually linked to a global monitor net through which direct nerve stimulation to the brain can be administered. Not an auction block but a recording room where an enslaved woman is filmed to a running commentary:

" '...human female, age twenty-five, virgin, athletic, health and intelligence excellent, education good though provincial. Spirited but ought to learn subordination in short order without radical measures...' " (p. 24)

Anderson shows us that even slavery can be modernised and technologised. Eodan's plight does not seem remote.

More On Marius

In Poul Anderson's The Golden Slave (New York, 1980), before the battle at which the Romans led by Marius are to annihilate the barbarian Cimbri, a Roman slave gives a chief of the Cimbri a brief description of the Roman general:

" 'Gaius Marius...A plebeian, a demagogue, a self-righteous and always angry creature who actually boasts of knowing no Greek...His one lonely virtue is that he is a fiend of a soldier.' " (p. 18)

That fits with the account in Anderson's "Marius" which relates that the general used his military reputation to enter politics without understanding it, thus causing fifty years of corruption, murder and civil war. It also suggests that the viewpoint character of "Marius," Fourre, unjustly maligns his opponent, Reinach, when he says that the latter could have become another Marius.