Organized Crime

The Polesotechnic League protects Merseia from the effects of a nearby supernova. Merseia is not yet politically united so the League deals with the Merseians' only international organization, the Gethfennu, organized crime. Thus, humanity earns the enduring enmity of the Merseian aristocratic party.

Flandry enriches a vice boss on Irumclaw but only so that the vice boss will then pressurize the Empire to continue defending that Imperial frontier - against the Merseians.

In Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's "The Children's Hour," the Yakuza, Japanese organized crime, still operate in the Solar System and have also moved to the Alpha Centaurian colony where they will help UN agents against the kzinti occupation without charge. Kzinti estates are squeezing out human society. Yakuza can try to deal with either but are safer with the latter.

I think that the Mafia is a survival of feudal social relationships (tradition, protection, violence, personal loyalty, religious observance) into capitalist society. A survival and an adaptation: organized criminals want either to transfer into legitimate businesses or to continue to prey on legitimate society. Either way, they need to protect that society against any invader (Nazi, Draka, kzin) that would really try to change the rules of the game.

Merseians, Draka And Others

I compared SM Stirling's Draka to Poul Anderson's Merseians here. This had implications for Sean M Brooks' article, "Was The Domination Inspired By Merseia?" so Sean added a few new paragraphs. See here.

More generally, colonization and colonialism are issues common not only to Anderson's Terran Empire and Merseian Roidhunate but also to Stirling's:

Angrezi Raj;
Commonwealth of New Virginia;
Domination of the Draka;
"Lords of Creation" Solar System;
Nantucket;
Emberverse.

New Virginians include former white South Africans with racist attitudes comparable to those of the Draka. However, the Commonwealth is preferable to the Domination because it is not a slave state and is developing the North American continent of another Earth.

I have read Conquistador, about New Virginia, only once so might reread it before tackling the seventeen novels of the Nantucket-Emberverse sequence which, I gather, presents two ways of putting its characters into more primitive conditions: Nantucket is transported to the Bronze Age of what must be another timeline and technology stops working in the present. (See also the Changes series.)

I might reread Anderson's For Love And Glory, which I have also read only once. Posts about all the works mentioned here except Nantucket-Emberverse can be found by searching the blog, e.g., Angrezi Raj.

False Religions

I believe that:

human beings were naturally selected to help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return;

we experience this motivation as moral obligation, not as calculating self-interest;

extraterrestrials cannot bear the same genes but might help us in return and, in any case, as conscious beings should be protected from harm;

therefore, our morality should apply to them;

religions tell stories that are good if they express universal morality and bad if they do not;

thus, "Thou shalt not kill" is good whereas "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" is bad and the stoning of an adulteress is abominable.

"'By adversity, the God tempers the steel of the Race.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 447.

This is a racial, not a universal, religion. The God wants his Race to enslave or exterminate others. Fortunately, not all Merseians are in the Roidhunate.

"I thank thee, Tchernobog, for the gift of my enemy's pain. I feel their pain, finer than the sweetest of wine on the tongue!'"
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), p. 425.

Good God! If I had to fight and even kill Ignatieff, I would neither cause him unnecessary pain nor enjoy whatever pain he did experience.

Anderson and Stirling show us two bad religions. But how should we assess the New Faith of Anderson's Ythrians?

Merseia

Astronomical:

in the system of the Sol-like star Korych;
four moons - Neihevin, Seith, Lythyr and Wythna;
lethally close (about one parsec) to the supernova, Valendary.

When visited by a ship of the Grand Survey:

an industrial revolution starting by the Wilwidh Ocean in the northern hemisphere;
scientific method invented;
heliocentric astronomy;
post-Newtonian, pre-Maxwellian physics;
chemistry beginning;
a well-developed taxonomy;
speculations about evolution;
steam trains;
political power fragmented among the Vachs;
scientists, engineers and teachers each under the patronage of a Hand of a Vach.

When visited, two hundred years later, by the trader team:

the Vachs have confederated;
in the social dislocation following the industrial revolution, the baronial tradition survives as the Gethfennu, organised crime;
the most powerful Vach, Dathyr, is based in Castle Afon in the city of Ardaig;
other Vachs - Hallen, Ynvory, Rueth, Isthyr, landless Urdiolch;
the Republic of Lafdigu in the southern hemisphere;
interplanetary travel;
inconclusive space battles;
a Gethfennu colony on the planet Ronraud;
Star Believers regarding galactics as divine;
Demonists regarding them as demonic;
Adzel addresses a Believer gathering of clients, commoners and city proletariat. 

When visited, several centuries later, by Ensign Dominic Flandry:

the capital planet of an interstellar empire, the Roidhunate;
unified under the Roidhun, who is of Vach Urdiolch;
Brechdan Ironrede, current Hand of the Vach Ynvory, is Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council;
twin capitals, ancient Ardaig on the bay of the River Oiss on the Wilwidh Ocean and modern antipodal Tridaig;
Castle Afon, the Roidhun's official primary residence, and the newly built Admiralty House are in Ardaig.

When Flandry is an Admiral:

his opposite number, Tachwyr the Dark, has become Hand of the Vach Dathyr and Protector of the Grand Council.

Sources: "Day of Burning"; Ensign Flandry; The Game of Empire.

Understated Symbolism

Chapter One of Ensign Flandry begins "Evening on Terra -" and goes on to show that the Terran Empire is old and decadent.

Chapter Two begins "Night on Starkad - " and goes on to show that the Terran Intelligence Officer does not understand why his enemies, the Merseians, are present on Starkad.

Chapter Three begins "Morning on Merseia - " and goes on to show that the Merseians are beginning a long campaign ("We may need a million years."(1)) for racial hegemony with Starkad somehow playing a crucial role. (We are not told how yet. That is the mystery that is to be unravelled later in the novel.)

Chapter Four discontinues the references to times of day but introduces the missing Dominic Flandry whom the Intelligence Officer had thought was probably dead and who will thwart the Merseians. Any reader will be affected by this symbolism possibly without noticing it. Terra, Starkad and Merseia are different planets in orbit around different stars so their evening, night and morning cannot possibly form a chronological sequence. Anderson could have shown us events at any time of day or night on any of them. But it is appropriate that we think of Terra in the evening, its Intelligence Service in the dark and Merseians, as they think, in their metaphorical morning. Then, without further symbolism, we meet the individual who will upset their plans on Starkad and in many other places as the series continues beyond its opening novel.

(1) Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry, London, 1976, p. 31.

Something Is Rotten In Technic Culture?

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation presents several alien races in conflict with humanity: Shenna, Baburites, Gorzuni, Merseians. However, these are not all one-dimensional space opera villains. On the eve of the Baburite War, David Falkayn says:

"I have this gnawing notion that something in us, in Technic culture, is responsible." (1)

It is. The Polesotechnic League has divided into the Home Companies, the Seven in Space and the independents. The Home Companies are in cahoots with the government of the Solar Commonwealth. The Seven in Space have secretly armed the Imperial Band of Sisema on Babur and are not dealing fairly with them either. (Benoni Strang organises the Baburites. Bayard Story represents the Seven. The initials are a clue. They are the same guy.) Monopolies, cartels and state-business mergers strangle freedom. The days of the League are numbered.

A human being working for the Baburites tells Falkayn:

"...not many League people seem to understand what a cosmos of enemies it's made for itself over the years." (2)

The example he cites is the aristocratic party on Merseia resentful that the League dealt not with them but with Merseian organised crime. But Falkayn already knew that there were problems. Breaking his oath to the leading independent Nicholas van Rijn, he had secretly helped an alliance of Wodenites, Ikranankans, Gorzuni, Ivanhoans, Vanessans, Cynthians and human colonists who were being left behind by a Technic civilisation that would not invest in helping them onto the interstellar stage. The source of wealth that Falkayn had found and passed not openly to his employer but secretly to the deprived races is now to be fought for by the Baburites backed, although Falkayn does not know this yet, by the Seven.

Falkayn began his search for a supernova-generated source of supermetals immediately after visiting the planet Tametha where local tribesbeings (beaked with long, thin legs), brutally exploited by a League company and now rising against their oppressors from Over-the-Mountains, had nearly killed Falkayn and his crew as well.

Thus, Anderson while clearly approving of the free enterprise and ostentatious wealth of the early League, does a good job of showing us the inequalities, dissatisfactions, injustices and conflicts that destroy freedom and that eventually destroy the society that generates them.

(1) Poul Anderson, Mirkheim, London, 1978, p. 98.
(2) ibid., p. 72.

Unusual Heavenly Bodies

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

Planets

Jupiter has solid land masses because that was a reasonable assumption when Anderson wrote about it.
Diomedes' poles are in the ecliptic plane. Each spends half the year in winter and night. Intelligent Diomedeans are winged migrators.
Although the planet Woden has two and a half Terran gravities, its sun is so energetic that Wodenite life can grow massive.
Tidal action has forced one hemisphere of the small, eccentrically orbiting, librating planet Ikrananka to face its red dwarf sun but such slow rotation generates a weak magnetic field so that the planet retains an atmosphere although most of its water has frozen on the cold side making the warm side a slowly deteriorating desert whose inhabitants, struggling for survival in their season-less, rhythm-less environment, regard nature as hostile, believing in demons but not in gods, whereas dwellers on the edge of the Twilight Zone with rain, snow, day, night and constellations, more conventionally believe in an annually dying and rising god and a single devil whose power can be neutralized. The latter are easier to trade with.
Pressure and temperature gradients on Daedalus refract light around the curve of the planet so that there is no horizon. Sunset is a ring of fire.
Nike is very small but holds an atmosphere and biosphere because it is so old that its weak gravity has had enough time to pull heavier elements into an atmosphere-generating solid core. Age explains its sun's variability which adversely affects Nikean weather.

Giant Stars and Rogue Planets

The red giant Betelgeuse has planets, some of them with life, because that was a reasonable assumption when Anderson wrote about it.
David Falkayn brags of finding a rogue (sunless) planet between Tau Ceti and 70 Ophiuchi although this adventure really happened to someone else.
The Merseians keep a base on Vorida, a rogue planet in the Betelgeuse sector.
The rogue planet Satan bypassing the blue giant Beta Crucis in a hyperbolic orbit becomes a base for the industrially valuable transformation of elements into heavier isotopes when its cryosphere becomes atmosphere and hydrosphere, coolants for heat waste.
A condensing giant star's gravity prevents the condensation of planets but nebular friction around the condensing blue giant Beta Centauri converted the hyperbolic orbits of a cluster of passing rogue planets into eccentric elliptical orbits.
A rogue planet hitting the star Saxo causes it to explode destroying its planets, including the inhabited Starkad.

Giant Planets and Eccentric Orbits

The captured planets of the blue giant Beta Centauri have eccentric orbits. See above.
Another star passing near Siekh skews its planets' orbits. The planet Talwin's distance from Siekh varies from 0.87 to 2.62 astronomical units. Huge ice caps form and melt each twice Terran year. There are floods and rain storms. One intelligent race hibernates in caves. Another estivates at sea. They do not meet.
In the Cerulian system, resonance with the jovoid planet Ogre has multiplied perturbation and brought the eccentricity of the terrestroid Vixen's orbit close to one-half so that, with a 24 degree axial tilt and midsummer nearly at periastron, once every eighteen month year the northern hemisphere is scorched with four times the radiation that Terra receives from Sol - snow melts, rivers overflow, lakes bake dry, storms rage, fires break out, erosion prevents mountain formation, hot wind blows dust and ash across dry plains.
A subjovian planet, which lost most of its lighter gasses when an eccentrically orbiting moon crashed on it, now has 15 Terran masses concentrated in a solid globe called Paradox but 8% of its atmosphere remains helium which diffuses through any material, ruining unprotected equipment.
The Cloud Universe globular cluster's eccentric orbit passes through dense clouds near the galactic centre, gathering gas and dust which condense into heavy-metal-rich stars and planets.

Supernovae

When a superjovian planet of 1500 terrestrial masses orbits a star that goes supernova, the planetary core, now called Mirkheim, survives coated in valuable supermetals which are impossibly expensive to synthesize.
The massive star Valenderay, older than normal for its type in its region, must have come from elsewhere. Its supernova explosion will cause ecological disaster on the planet Merseia a parsec away unless artificial force screens protect the planet.
A nearby supernova causes a superjovian planet of 3000 Terrestrial masses to lose all its hydrogen and helium, over 90% of its mass, transforming it into Ramnu, a glacial globe of 310 Terrestrial masses, later inhabited by small, intelligent gliders.
A peak of radiation from the planet Dathyna's massive, metal-rich, irregularly variable sun, which probably condensed near a recent supernova, destroyed civilization but produced a killer mutation which exterminated the parent race, appropriated its technology and now threatens the Polesotechnic League.
Periodic ingestion of new matter by the Cloud Universe (see above) causes several supernovae per century for at least a million years.

Notes on the Above

Falkayn spells out why Satan alone is ideal for producing heavier isotopes. This cannot be done:

on inhabited planets because heat and radioactive waste would make them uninhabitable;
on uninhabited planets because heat waste added to solar radiation would vaporize the rivers needed for coolants;
on uninhabited planets with orbiting albedo-raising dust clouds because these would trap home-grown heat;
in newly formed systems because factories would be bombarded by meteors and asteroids;
on airless planets because the necessary heat exchangers are expensive and put engineering limits on the size of a plant;
on Jovoid planets because free hydrogen diffuses through materials and interferes with nuclear reactions;
on ordinary rogue planets because temperatures near absolute zero affect the properties of matter and because liquid water and gaseous atmosphere are necessary coolants.
 

Anderson invented several ways to disrupt familiar celestial processes:

a giant star capturing rogue planets;
a supernova transforming one of its own planets into the industrially valuable Mirkheim;
a supernova potentially devastating a planet in a nearby system;
a supernova transforming a planet in a nearby system into the massive but solid Ramnu;
a supernova affecting the condensation of another star;
a rogue planet causing a nova by hitting a star;
a rogue planet becoming the industrially valuable Satan by just missing a star;
a star causing eccentric planetary orbits by just missing another star;
an eccentrically orbiting moon transforming its planet into the massive but solid Paradox by hitting it;
an eccentrically orbiting globular cluster causing new stellar condensations and novae by gathering dust from clouds near the galactic center;
planets with eccentric axial tilts;
a planet with no horizon;
a planet with a very close horizon!

Unscientific readers forget technical details so it is good to summarize them. The explanations begin to sound similar but, in each case, they are used to create a unique effect. Supernovae:

usually destroy all their own planets;
can affect planets in nearby systems;
possibly affected the condensation of a nearby star. 
 

In "A Sun Invisible," Anderson planned to introduce the unexpected Beta Centaurian system as the solution of a puzzle so he had Falkayn mention rogue planets earlier in the story. Thus, it was not a deus ex machina when captured rogues turned out to explain why there are planets orbiting a giant star. In Ensign Flandry, Anderson introduced the planet Starkad only to reveal, near the end of the novel, that its sun was doomed to be hit by a rogue planet so, again, Anderson made sure that a rogue, Vorida, had been mentioned much earlier in the novel.
 

These features recur:
 

giant stars;
superjovian planets;
novae and supernovae;
industrially valuable planets;
massive but solid planets;
stellar and planetary condensations;
metal-rich stars and planets;
rogue planets;
collisions;
near misses;
eccentric orbits;
other odd planets;
intelligent fliers or gliders.

Responding to these phenomena, Anderson's characters:

negotiate with Ikranankans and Betelgeuseans;
let extra-solar hydrogen-breathers who have colonized Ogre colonize Jupiter;
colonize the Beta Centaurian system;
trade with Diomedeans;
save Merseia;
incorporate Wodenites and Dathynans;
evacuate some Starkadians;
exploit Satan, Mirkheim and the Cloud Universe;
study Talwin, Ramnu and Paradox;
live on Kirkasant (in the Cloud Universe), Vixen, Daedalus and Nike.

Added on 12/5/12: A revised text explains that the Betelguesean planets were seeded and colonized but should they have existed? 

Added, 23/5/12: Data on Diomedes that I missed above: the system is metal-poor though not old possibly because the electromagnetic action of a passing neutron star fractionalized the original cloud of dust and gas. Consequently, Diomedes has 4.75 terrestrial mass but a low density so its gravity is only 1.10.