Politics On Rustum

In the concluding Rustum story (Poul Anderson, New America, New York, 1982, pp. 117-157), we read two political speeches about how the Rustumites should respond to a new wave of immigrants from Earth. Dan Coffin wins the argument that new immigrants should be welcomed but let us consider the counterargument, which is in part:

"...since they are alien, since there are bound to be offenses and clashes, they could become the victims of hatred, even outright persecution. We are not saints on Rustum. We are not immune to the ancient diseases of xenophobia, callousness, legalized robbery, and mob violence. Let us not inflict upon our home the same unhealable wound which was inflicted on Mother America.

"Lead us not into temptation." (p. 149)

The speaker cannot claim an academic neutrality. He is leading into temptation. By speaking as he does, he encourages the most xenophobic tendencies in Rustumite society. If both Coffin and O'Malley had welcomed immigration, then individuals who wanted to articulate xenophobia would have felt isolated and might have been silenced. Instead, O'Malley gives them the opportunity to argue, "We are not saints. There are bound to be clashes (so let's cause some). We cannot help hating aliens. We have support in the Constitutional Convention where O'Malley said, 'We are not immune...'"

Thus, O'Malley could have found his proposed exclusion policy supported by demonstrations expressing that xenophobia that he does not want to "...inflict." If that tendency does exist on Rustum, then it should be opposed, not appeased, and it should be the duty of Convention representatives to unite against it.

I am making a speech here but I think that Anderson's story (rightly) invites, or challenges, each of us to be clear about where we stand on this issue.

A Future History Or Not?

In "The Queen Of Air And Darkness" by Poul Anderson, human beings in slower than light spaceships have colonised several extrasolar planets, including Rustum, Beowulf and Roland. In "Home" by Anderson, human beings in slower than light spaceships have established but are now terminating scientific bases on several extrasolar planets, including Mithras.

These stories are the last two in Anderson's collection New America and the first two in his The Queen Of Air and Darkness and other stories. Anderson collections include redundancies that would have to be edited out of any Complete Works editions.

In New America, these two stories are preceded by four about the colonisation of Rustum. Those four in turn are sequels to the four Rustum History stories collected as Orbit Unlimited. In The Queen..., the two stories are followed by four others, all but one also featuring slower than light interstellar travel and extrasolar colonies.

Do these thirteen stories form a continuous sequence? Nine are definitely connected by common references to Rustum. Further, slower than light travel, extrasolar colonies and their related economic, political and ecological issues are strong common themes. However, the author's Foreword to The Queen... states that the stories in the book do not project a single future history. An italicised "Publisher's Note" in New America implies that both "The Queen Of Air And Darkness" (agree) and "Home" (disagree) fit into the Rustum History timeline. However:

in the Rustum series:
 there have been Atomic Wars;
Earth is ruled by a Federation;
there are enduring extrasolar colonies.

In "Home":
there has been a Solar War;
Earth is ruled by a Directorate;
there are terminated extrasolar bases.

These are different timelines. "Home" could have been called "Earthman, Come Home," which is the title of a James Blish collection. Anderson's characters reflect on history and argue about whether the terminated Mithran base should be turned into a colony. Would human beings expanding across the planet displace the pacific native Mithrans? In one chilling passage showing a Mithran point of view, we, though not the human characters, learn that if the human beings were to exceed certain limits, then a Mithran:

"...would be forced to kill. But he would continue to love as he did." (1)

Although "Home" is not consistent with Rustum, it might just form a very loose tetralogy with the three other interstellar stories in the collection. In "The Alien Enemy," the Directorate has a failed colony on Sibylla but surviving colonies on Zion, Atlas, Asgard and Lucifer. Did the Directors, after terminating bases, reverse their policy and initiate colonies?

"The Alien Enemy" has a remarkable surprise ending in which Anderson characters succeed against all the odds. Unable, with their limited resources, to survive on the inhospitable Sibylla, the colony's leaders had faked an alien attack in order to be recalled home. On Earth, they are given the challenge of developing the Sahara where, hardened by Sibylla, they succeed and, decades later, when a spaceman has returned from his next voyage, they are making a difference to Earth itself.

"The Faun" is set on Arcadia which could be another of the Directorate's colonies. "Time Lag" involves relativistic travel between Chertkoi and Vaynamo which could also have been colonized by the Directorate. I suggest that the nine Rustum History stories be collected in one volume and the "Home" four in another.

(1) Anderson, Poul, New America, New York, 1982, p. 253.

Three Paperbacks III

I now understand why the blurb of Poul Anderson's New America (TOR, New York, 1982) wrongly described the Rustumite colonists as "Jeffersonians" although their self-description, fully explained in the previous volume, Orbit Unlimited, is "Constitutionalists."

First, although the term "Constitutionalist" is present, it is not used a lot in the second volume. Secondly, the Rustumites have convened a Constitutional Convention to devise a libertarian government now that their population has grown enough to need more than a mayor and a council in a single town. We are not told the outcome of the Convention because the story is about a more urgent matter that must be settled first.

However, while preparing to participate in the Convention, Dan Coffin reads the Federalist Papers and thinks of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison. A group of extrasolar colonists in James Blish's future history are called "Hamiltonians" and someone reading or browsing through New America must have thought that the Rustumites were "Jeffersonians" if not, indeed, "Washingtonians."

Of the four Dan Coffin/Rustum stories collected in New America, the third, "A Fair Exchange," is an extended discussion of economics while the fourth, "To Promote the General Welfare," is a discussion of both economics and politics. We read conversations in "A Fair Exchange" and speeches in "To Promote the General Welfare." Does this spoil them as stories? On the contrary, Anderson addresses basic issues while considering both the future of Earth and the idea of a new colony. We see Rustumite issues grow from physical survival to social well being. On a personal level, we see a bullied and frightened schoolboy grow into an old, respected, influential public figure and we see his large lowland dwelling, empty and haunted after his wife's death, filled again with younger members of his family. There is a sense of completion.

Between "To Promote the General Welfare" and "The Queen Of Air And Darkness," is this curious italicized passage:

"Publisher's Note:

"Here ends the story of High America. But other worlds than Rustum were to receive the seed of Earth. Each responded in its own way to the men and women who had fled their own ruined planet..." (p. 158)

Even odder, after the last story:

"And so end these chronicles of the folk who took the long road to the stars. And long it is, not at all like those here, nor the highways of other fictional universes. It is unlike them in another way, too. It is a road that is always open. It is real..." (p. 260) 

Who wrote these passages, Anderson or a TOR editor? The passage on p. 158 could be part of the fiction whereas the passage on p. 260 stands back from the fiction and refers to the possibility of a real interstellar voyage as discussed in the concluding article. The passages seem to be a rather contrived attempt to make a unity out of four Rustum stories, two non-Rustum stories and one piece of non-fiction?

Three Paperbacks II

New America by Poul Anderson collects seven items:

four stories set on the planet Rustum which had been introduced in Orbit Unlimited;

two other stories, "The Queen Of Air And Darkness" and "Home," which are also the first two stories collected in The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories;

an article on interstellar travel.

The four Rustum stories were first published in issues I-IV of Continuum, edited by Roger Elwood, 1973-'74. All are about the, now older, Dan Coffin who had been the child rescued from the Rustumite lowland in the concluding story of Orbit Unlimited. Thus, these four stories form a continuous sequence that is a sequel to the four that had been collected in Orbit Unlimited.

At the end of Orbit Unlimited, it had been discovered that Dan was a rare individual who could survive comfortably without needing a helmet in the high air pressure at Rustumite sea level and it had then seemed to be a foregone conclusion that he and his descendants would colonize all the surface of the planet that could not be reached by the majority of colonists who were confined to the plateau of High America.

However, Dan had for many years afterwards suffered from nightmares of his ordeal when lost in the lowland and threatened by a spearfowl. The new stories chronicle four further stages of his life:

first, he must be persuaded to join a mission to the lowland before he realizes that it is a place that he will return to again;

secondly, he realizes that, having settled in the lowland, he must marry a woman who shares his tolerance for the high air pressure, not Highland Mary but Eva;

thirdly, Eva and he have children and live well but need economic help, which Dan negotiates, from the more industrially developed High America;

fourthly, Dan, widowed but now a great grandfather, proposes that Rustum welcome five thousand new immigrants approaching from Earth and that their arrival be preceded by a joint research effort to find a way to enable anyone to live in the lowlands so that the new immigrants will not have to crowd the plateau.

We now know of five generations of Coffins. We first encountered Dan's father Joshua as a spaceship captain on Earth in the opening story of Orbit Unlimited where he conversed with the man who later became the first mayor of Rustum. Dan, not born until that concluding story of Orbit Unlimited, ends the first volume as a lost boy and the second as an elder statesman.

In an earlier post on Anderson's future histories, I wrote that all but one of the six stories in The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories were not incompatible with the Rustum History but will now reread that collection to confirm or disconfirm that statement.

Three Paperbacks I

I am looking at three paperbacks by Poul Anderson:

Orbit Unlimited (Pyramid Books, New York, 1961);

New America (TOR Books, New York, 1982);

The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (NEL Books, London, 1977).

Orbit Unlimited collects four stories set respectively on Earth, in space, in Rustum orbit and on Rustum. The fourth story describes life on the plateau and a rescue expedition to the lowland. This concluding story, and thus also the book, has a positive ending:

a lost child is rescued;

his rescuers, the child's father and another man, are heroes;

the father, a strict puritan, has resolved some personal issues during the rescue;

the mayor had blackmailed the second man to accompany the father in order to counteract the colonists' tendency towards isolated agricultural selfishness - public duties performed freely from a sense of responsibility will minimize the need for coercive laws as the colony grows;

the boy, an exogene formerly bullied by his peers, is now a hero to them;

more importantly, he is a rare individual who can live comfortably in the high air pressure at sea level, thus he and his descendants will colonize the rest of the planet.

This positive ending is well expressed by the concluding sentences as the blackmailed but now happy rescuer recuperates:

"Svoboda didn't return to his book at once. He lay for a while gazing out the window, toward the horizon where the snowpeaks of Hercules upheld the sky." (p. 158)

I am currently rereading New America but can comment now that the title and the blurb are misleading. The latter refers to "...freedom-minded Jeffersonians..." whereas the book features not Jeffersonians in a place called New America but Constitutionalists on a plateau called High America. This book, a sequel to Orbit Unlimited, continues the story of Rustum and introduces other extrasolar colonies.