New Connections

To anyone who may be interested in the Kipling connection, new correspondent, David Birr, has disclosed the source of Poul Anderson's title, "No Truce With Kings" (see Comment here).

And to anyone interested either in the Wells connection or in humorous sf&fantasy, David has drawn attention to a humorous story by Wells (see Comment here).

Thank you, David.

I had not known of the Kipling poem and had not remembered the Wells story so it is helpful to have these works drawn to our attention. There is bound to be more out there that other blog readers know about?

Manipulation Of History

I asked here: in which three stories by Poul Anderson do aliens among us manipulate Terrestrial history for good or ill? The stories that I had in mind were:

"No Truce With Kings"
"Details"
"Interloper"

Sean M Brooks suggested:

The War Of Two Worlds
"No Truce With Kings"
The Avatar
"Peek! I See You!"

I agree with the inclusion of The War Of Two Worlds.

However:

in The Avatar, do the aliens merely observe?;

 

 in "Peek! I See You!," do the aliens merely trade with one isolated community without intervening elsewhere?

"No Truce With Kings": Conclusion

Poul Anderson's "No Truce With Kings" (Winners, New York, 1981) presents a solid account of troop movements and engagements in a civil war with a man and his son-in-law on opposite sides, the latter killed leading a charge near the end of the story.

In this particular fictitious future, an army hex corps carries wands of power to counteract witchcraft not because magic has been found to work, as in some other works by Anderson, but because superstition has grown during the breakdown of civilization after a nuclear war. Thus, hexes can exist in science fiction whereas hexes that work exist in fantasy.

The young widow will not let her son grow up to be a soldier but will instead join a community dedicated to peace. Anderson, not a pacifist, here shows the central character's daughter opting for a path different from that of her father and husband.

We know that aliens have been involved behind the scenes because we have read two of their dialogues earlier in the story. Nevertheless, I find it a wrench when the human characters entering an enemy stronghold capture a small group of seven-foot, seven-fingered, avian-featured beings with rudimentary wings. The change of perspectives here is too abrupt. But I have got a lot more out of the story on a second reading.

Interim Report On "No Truce With Kings"

One question has been answered: the Espers are empowered by the aliens. Thus, the story does not arbitrarily assume two unconnected sf cliches. But here is another question: what is the significance of the title?

This story, "No Truce With Kings" (Winners, New York, 1981), makes the same point as the same author's "Details." In both stories, aliens, active on Earth but concealing themselves from humanity, try to direct history by applying to it a mathematically rigorous psychodynamic science (Asimovian "psychohistory"), here also called "'...the Great Science...'" (p. 24) and, also in both stories, the actions of individual human beings upset the apple cart of the aliens' machinations.
Moral: mankind is not manipulable.

Differences between the stories are that:

(i) "Details" deals with twentieth century history whereas "No Truce With Kings" deals with the long aftermath of a nuclear war;
(ii) the aliens of "Details" are humanoid enough to pass as Terrestrials whereas those in "No Truce...," when finally exposed, are not.

Conspiracy theorists present the secret manipulators of global society as virtually omnipotent whereas Anderson's aliens, conferring whenever their plans are thrown off course, reveal their limitations to the reader:

"'...the Great Science is only exact on the broadest scale of history. Individual events are subject to statistical fluctuation.'" (pp. 24-25)

Also, their interstellar travel is limited to below light speed. Thus, this story avoids the further sf cliche of "FTL," faster than light space travel. 

No Truce With Kings II

Poul Anderson's "No Truce With Kings" (Winners, New York, 1981) combines themes that Anderson more than once treated separately elsewhere:

military maneuvers;
ESP;
post-nuclear reconstruction;
interstellar travel;
covert alien manipulation of human society;
a practical science of society, in this case applied by the aliens.

So does it all hang together?

So far, twenty seven pages into the narrative, we have had:

autumn, the viewpoint of Colonel Mackenzie;
an italicized dialogue between two of the aliens;
spring, the viewpoint of Mackenzie's son-in-law, on the opposite side in a civil war, in conversation with an as yet unexplained Esper (they have communities and teachings, not just psychic powers);
winter, back to Mackenzie although (this is not the author's fault) without a warning gap in the text;
information about the complicated social set-up in North America.

Thus, a characteristically substantial Andersonian text, too early to say whether it is all coming together or pulling in opposite directions.

No Truce With Kings

As of 1981, Poul Anderson had won five Hugo awards for works of sf or fantasy, which were collected that year in Winners (New York, 1981), although, according to Wikipedia, his total eventual score for Hugos was seven so that Winners, if republished, could have two additions.

Another of the five in Winners is "No Truce With Kings" which, at 84 pages, must count as a "novella" or a "novelette" rather than a short story? (I tend to divide prose fiction just into "novels" (over 100 pages) and "short stories" (less)).

My memory from an earlier reading of "No Truce With Kings" is that it was rather disjointed with too many changes of perspective and also some sf cliches like taken for granted psychic powers. However, I am now giving it a second chance.

In the opening pages of a Poul Anderson work, we pick up clues as to the setting and nature of the narrative. Thus, in this one, there is a Pacific States of America which has existed long enough for an Army unit to acquire a story that its "...dead came out of the cemetery every September Nineteenth night..." (p. 11) Is this just a story? Then why does the unit have a "...hex major"? Are we reading a fantasy in which the dead literally return?

My memory tells me not but the point is to be tuned in to the nuances and implications of the text while reading it afresh and I still have 82 pages ahead of me.