Very Short Future Histories

Literary Stages

(i) Two very short unrelated "future histories," Maurai (three stories) and Kith (two stories), short enough to fit into a single collection.

(ii) The Maurai history acquires a long novel, Orion Shall Rise, and is incorporated into the time travel novel, There Will Be Time.

(iii) Kith acquires one new story, "The Tale of the Cat," which would fit between the existing stories, "Ghetto" and "The Horn of Time the Hunter."

(iv) A future historical novel, Starfarers, incorporates "Ghetto" and "The Tale of the Cat" though not "The Horn of Time the Hunter."

Observations
The Maurai are one period in a time travel history as the Kith are one period in the Starfarers history.
As a tidying up and gathering together exercise, the Maurai and Kith collection should become just a Maurai collection and "The Horn of Time the Hunter" should be included as an appendix in Starfarers.
There would then be four volumes where there were previously just five short stories.
"Ghetto" is a harrowing story of class conflict destroying a personal relationship and I am not sure that I want to reread it.
However, I will reread "The Tale of the Cat" and maybe some other chapters of Starfarers for discussion on this blog.

Sorting Series

Maurai and Kith, Poul Anderson collection, three "Maurai" stories, two "Kith" stories, sea people and star people, not successive periods but alternative futures, two (very short) "future histories." Third Kith story, set between the first two, written later. Maurai And Kith (five stories) could split into Maurai (three stories) and Kith (three stories)?

The Maurai stories are followed by Orion Shall Rise and There Will Be Time. The first and third written Kith stories are incorporated into Starfarers, to which the remaining story could be appended. Thus, four volumes where there was one.

The High Crusade acquired a sequel, "Quest," which could be appended to the novel. Tau Zero acquired a prequel, "Pride," which adds a lot and could be included as Prologue. "Death And The Knight" follows The Shield Of Time, the Time Patrol novel, so should be appended to it, not to Time Patrol, the Time Patrol omnibus collection.

There are two (or three?) stories about a character called "Wing Alar" that could be collected together. I will have to reread to confirm but I think that "A Bicycle Built For Brew" and "Captive of the Centaurianess," and maybe some other early stories, share background details? There are probably other connections that I do not know about.

Post-Maurai Space Travel?

After the Maurai, will there be space travel? (The space travelling Kith who share the title of Poul Anderson's collection Maurai And Kith exist in an alternative future.) Yes, Orion shall rise and yes, there will be Star Masters, although these predictions seem to apply to alternative post-Maurai futures. In one sequel to the Maurai series and in an Author's Note to a second, Anderson adequately accounts for any inconsistencies with the original series.

Several Anderson characters, including some in the Maurai series, express a wish not only to traverse space but even to travel to the stars. Why? Decades ago, I felt embarrassed when an American teacher (a Trekkie?) addressing a World Science Fiction Convention, tried to express optimism about the human condition by proclaiming, "We're going to the stars!" Are we? Not yet. But why should we and what would we do on arrival?

Earth is the only place in the universe where we do not need to be protected from everything outside our own skins. Even here, in most climates, we need clothing, shelter and heating. Of course, we have spread across the globe, changing local environments to suit our needs and also adapting ourselves, even changing skin colour in the Northern Hemisphere. This process will continue and need not be confined to Earth.

On the other hand, a planet on which humanity has not evolved, ie, any planet other than Earth, will not be a new North America or Australia and its inhabitants, if any, are unlikely to be either remotely humanoid or humanly comprehensible. I agree that there are compelling reasons to get some human beings off Earth and out into the Solar System in self-sustaining habitats but that means taking our environment with us, not traversing interstellar distances hoping to find that environment duplicated elsewhere.

We can observe and study the universe from any point within it, from here as well as from there. I agree that we will learn more if we can travel further and that this should be done if possible. What Anderson's characters really mean about going to the stars is that we should accept no physical or mental limits to our activities and I agree with this completely.

Maurai In There Will Be Time

 I think that the best reading order for Poul Anderson's Maurai series is:

(i) the three short stories which are collected in Maurai And Kith but should now be a single volume, just Maurai;

(ii) the long (486 pages) novel, Orion Shall Rise;

(iii) the much shorter time travel novel, There Will Be Time.

In each volume, in fact in each individual work, the perspective broadens, first geopolitically, the historically. The Maurai rule in the Southern Hemisphere. Then we learn progressively more about the Northern Hemisphere: the Northwest Union; Uropa. Finally, the entire Maurai period is placed in a longer historical context. Jack Havig, born 1933, visits, among other eras, Constantinople in 1204, the Maurai Federation and the further future of the Star Masters.

I was surprised to realize that, despite my preferred reading order, Orion is copyright 1983 whereas Time is 1973. Thus, only the first three stories informed Time. (Addendum: Only the first two. See combox.) In fact, Orion acquired the surname of a character, Terai Lohannaso, and that of a country, the Northwest Union, from Time. The Domain of Skyholm did not exist until Orion.

Time both informs us that Poul Anderson invented the name "Maurai" for a future civilization visited by Havig and continues to use that fictional name so there is a real history that we are not being told. In one of the three stories, Poul predicted something that Havig discovered later but he "...guessed wrong more often than right." p. 129.

Havig comments:

"If anybody who knows the future should chance to read this, it'll look at most like one of science fiction's occasional close-to-target hits...Which are made on the shotgun principle...These stories never had wide circulation. They soon dropped into complete obscurity." (p.129)

Let us hope not.

A Science Of Society?

The premise of both Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic future history is that a group of experts can apply a science of society to society, thus ensuring that a government, or a clandestine group monopolising the science, would be able to achieve its aims (an Empire can be rebuilt on schedule; discontent can be managed so as to prevent social breakdown) as readily as an engineer can build a bridge. The same idea occurs in works by Heinlein and in other works by Anderson.

Anderson's Maurai Federation has made some moves in this direction. Their paramathematical psychology is at an early stage but "...helps control population..." (1)

Ruori of the Maurai sees evidence that his current enemies sometimes fight each other and reflects that:

"The Federation's political psychologists were skilled at the divide-and-rule game." (2) 

Ruori, understanding social processes, sees that the settled Meycan civilisation can conquer the "Sky People" raiders not with an army but with priests (Christian missionaries), merchants, culture and learning. He advocates this because he wants to preserve the Sky People's scientific approach which the Meycans, for all their rote learning from ancient texts, lack.

How plausible is the idea of an applicable science of society as practised by Asimov's "psychohistorians" and Anderson's "psychotechnicians" and approached by Anderson's Maurai? The premise of the Maurai series is that the industrial technological civilisation of the Northern Hemisphere had destroyed itself in a nuclear war so that the Islanders in the Southern Hemisphere, lacking metal to cannibalise, have had to survive by applying scientific method not to oil, iron or uranium but to wind, sun and life. This could include their paramathematical and political psychology.

However, society is us, not an external substance or process that we can observe from outside and perform experiments on. Maybe we, by cooperation and education, can together acquire a better understanding and control of our own activities? The idea of the applicable science of society as presented in these works of sf seems to be the idea of a minority manipulating the majority. And, since society is divided into conflicting interest groups, this controlling minority is likely to serve either its own interests or the interests of whichever other group pays its salaries and funds its activities. Anderson's Psychotechnic History does show the Psychotechnic Institute being overthrown and society preferring to live without that kind of minority control.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "The Sky People" IN Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 9-71 AT p. 22.
(2) ibid., p. 34.

Maurai Civilization

The basis of the Maurai civilization:

the Southern Hemisphere suffered less in a nuclear exchange ("the War of Judgment");

Islander populations did not outrun the sea's ability to feed them;

having less metal to cannibalize than mainlanders, they instead applied scientific method to sun, wind and organisms;

by applying genetics, they created useable seaweeds, plankton and fish;

scientific forest management gives them adequate timber, organic-synthesis bases and some fuel;

they develop and apply solar, wind and tidal energy;

wood, ceramics and stone replace metal for most purposes;

early paramathematical psychology helps to control population;

having mastered nautical techniques, they can sail large ships fast, almost into the wind;

their whale ranchers keep large herds;

unlike mainland populations, they preserve printing, universal literacy, scientific medicine, a healthy diet, spacious living and personal freedom.

I have gathered this much so far by rereading a few pages into the first story, "The Sky People." The Maurai, the "Sea People," are about to meet others, the Sky People of the title, who have rediscovered and are applying scientific method so that it will be more appropriate to form an alliance with them than with a superficially more attractive culture that is declining back towards barbarism because it merely applies rote knowledge bequeathed by the ancients, depends on muscle power, has a peon class, tears down old ruins and does no research on new energy sources.

Published in 1959, "The Sky People" was one attempt by Anderson to show a recovery of civilization after a nuclear war. Much later, information about a "nuclear winter" implied that such a war would not be survivable.

A Curious Parallelism

Two unrelated series by Poul Anderson had curiously parallel evolutions.

(i) Two very short future histories, "Maurai," three stories about sea traders, and "Kith," two stories about star traders, fitted into a single collection, Maurai and Kith, which turned out, when read, to be not about two groups interacting with each other but about two groups each existing in a different speculative future.

(ii) The Maurai series acquired a long novel and the Kith series acquired a third short story.

(iii) The entire period covered by the Maurai history was incorporated into the time travel novel, There Will Be Time, and the entire period of the Kith history was incorporated into the interstellar novel, Starfarers.

That is quite some parallelism, although presumably coincidental. In any projected Complete Works of Poul Anderson, I think that Maurai and Kith should be split up and that the two sequences should be read in their entireties. A Maurai trilogy would comprise first a collection of the original three Maurai stories, then the long Maurai novel, then the time travel novel. This would be a substantial reading experience surprising the reader twice with new perspectives. In There Will Be Time, one time traveler gives the time travel idea to HG Wells and another gives the Maurai idea, indirectly, to Poul Anderson.

Starfarers already incorporates two of the three Kith stories as chapters so it would simply be a matter of adding the remaining story as, e.g., an epilogue describing a long interstellar journey different from the one featured in the novel.