Alternatives

Poul Anderson's Operation... series and SM Stirling's Draka series each feature an alternative version of World War II. However, these are different kinds of alternatives because Operation... is a "fantastic alternative history" whereas the Draka inhabit a "realistic alternative history." (See here.) The dystopian Drakan Domination could have emerged in our timeline, requiring only an alternative course of events in recent world history, whereas the magical technology of Operation... would have required different laws of physics.

In our timeline, my parents' generation lived through World War II into the Cold War which involved a nuclear arms race that also incorporated a space race. In the Draka timeline, Eric von Shrakenberg and his contemporaries live through the Eurasian War into the Protracted Struggle that involves different kinds of arms and space races.

In Draka Vol III, The Stone Dogs, we appreciate seeing Eric again. We also unexpectedly see the inside of a Draka Citizen girls' boarding school. However, earlier volumes had informed us about the educational system so it makes sense that, as the series proceeds, we are shown a school as perceived by a pupil, in this case Eric's niece.

The Damnation of the Draka continues.

I have frequently mentioned aircars and now learn that the Draka had them in 1969. Their versions of the Alice books have slightly different titles. Do they have some writers of fiction that we do not? Do we have a Lalique, Halgelstein or Dobson? Conversational use of prepositions is arbitrary and changeable over time. Thus, the Draka have come say "to home" where we say, "at home." Their horrible society is convincingly detailed. Might it really exist in a parallel universe? It is good when at last we hear some anti-Draka sentiment from a serf, even though he is immediately killed.

Another serf who accepts her servitude nevertheless observes that the Draka are arrogant and cruel without realizing it. She takes pride in the fact that it is the serfs, not their masters, who build everything, also that the serfs will survive whether or not the Draka win against the Alliance. She likes some individual Draka but is not a Draka-lover. This favored serf and her Landholder "owner" agree that the serf's son is sullen and difficult but we learn that he is anti-Draka. Point of view matters.

As in Stirling's Conquistador, dangerous animals have been imported into conquered territories. While hunting and killing a large leopard in Italy, some Draka disregard the nearby cave that must be its lair. Is it not obvious that the leopard's mate will emerge from the cave?

A Draka landholder heir says:

"'The Race makes possible the only way of life I know, the only world I feel at home in, the only contentment I can ever have.'"
-SM Stirling, The Stone Dogs (New York, 1990), p. 92.

We really do need to see the Draka lose everything but I suspect that the series remains consistently dystopian. Still reading, I have yet to learn the significance of the title.

We vicariously enjoy Drakan luxury and must remind ourselves that it is built on slavery. The Draka do not need to remind themselves. They glory in it.

I have just reached a point where the viewpoint character not only has finished school but also has completed pilot training. I feel a distaste for continuing to read not because of any defect in the writing but only because the dreaded Draka are described so vividly.

Oblique Commentaries

Works of fiction set in alternative histories obliquely comment on what we regard as real history.

(i) In a British TV play with the premise that the Germans won World War II, a man making a TV drama about the War said, "I can't rewrite history..."

(ii) In Poul Anderson's Operation Luna, cooperation between Einstein and Planck released forces previously regarded as magical. What would have happened if they had continued to work separately?

(iii) In Alan Moore's Watchmen:

when a superhero has won the Vietnam War for the US, someone remarks that, if we had lost this war, we would have gone mad as a nation;

two journalists called Bernstein and Woodward are found dead;

the headline "RR to run for President?" is greeted with the question, "Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House?" Of course the headline refers to Robert Redford.

(iv) In SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Warburton remarks that, if the Fall had not thrown back progress, then by 2025 the world would be beyond the possibility of a World War and might even have been united by the British Empire. Yasmini, a clairvoyant who sees alternative realities, stirs, then subsides... "Ask later, [King] thought." (p. 315)

Norse Myths In Modern Fiction II

It is easy to remember books featuring Odin and the Aesir in diverse forms. However, I was reminded of Anderson's understated use of another aspect of Norse myth. Operation Chaos, like its inspiration, Heinlein's Magic Inc, had climaxed with an expedition to Hell, where Valeria Matuchek's parents rescued their kidnapped baby daughter. In a far less dramatic chapter of Operation Luna, Valeria's mother visits Yggdrasil to consult the oracular severed head, Mimir, who regularly advises the Aesir. Ginny and her guide, a dwarf, see the path trodden by Odin when he descends Yggdrasil to visit Mimir but they neither meet nor want to meet the Hanged God.

I remembered this as I was rereading Mike Carey's Lucifer which also mixes mythologies - Michael and Lucifer fight above Yggdrasil, Fenris Wolf attacks the angelic city etc. Also, the Nine Worlds featured in a recent Thor film. The myths live as fiction.

Multiverse

Poul Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, is the setting for:

"House Rule"
"Losers' Night"
A Midsummer Tempest, xi THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX.
A Midsummer Tempest, xii LATER.
A MidsummerTempest, Epilogue THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX.

In A Midsummer Tempest, the inn is a meeting place for:

Prince Rupert from the Shakespearean universe of the same novel;

Holger Carlsen from the Carolingian universe of Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions;

Valeria Matuchek from the magical universe of Anderson's Operation Chaos and Operation Luna.

In "House Rule," the inn is a meeting place for:

Nicholas van Rijn from the hard sf universe of Anderson's Technic History;
Sancho Panza from Don Quixote;
Erik the Red, possibly from our universe.

Other guests from our universe or nearer ones include:

the first person narrator of the two short stories;
Leonardo da Vinci;
Albert Einstein;
Heloise and Abelard;
Francois Villon;
Winston Churchill;
an unnamed but identifiable Irish political leader.

Anderson wrote that he hoped to return to the Old Phoenix again...

The inn could have provided a framing sequence for a collection of new stories to display each of the different genres that Anderson wrote. Neil Gaiman used his Inn of the Worlds' End as a Chaucerian venue.

Today, I have read in Latin Caesar's and Tacitus' accounts of the Druids and their resistance to Roman rule.

Peter And Poul II

The previous post highlighted some parallels between A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson and The Alchemist's Revenge by Peter Cakebread. Both novels can be characterized by saying that the English Civil War of the seventeenth century is being fought in a version of history where magic works. (Such a historical difference presupposes a corresponding cosmological difference but let's not go that far right now.)

One difference between the novels (so I initially thought) was that A Midsummer Tempest also places more recent technology in the seventeenth century. But so does The Alchemists' Revenge! Reading further, I find that not all of the anachronistic mechanisms are alchemically empowered. Some of them are merely ingenious engineering - although still suspected of Satanic influence, of course.

Each of these novels is one part of a vaster fictional universe but the ways in which this is done could not be more different.

A Midsummer Tempest...
...is set in a universe where all of Shakespeare's plays were literally true. Specifically, it is a sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. Further, this Shakespearean universe coexists with the Carolingian universe of Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions and with the magical universe of his two Operation... volumes. Prince Rupert meets Holger Danske and Valeria Matuchek in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

The Alchemist's Revenge...
...is the "First Book of the Companie of Reluctant Heroes." Further, this series is set in the universe of the Clockwork & Chivalry Role Playing Game (RPG) by Peter Cakebread and Ken Walton. Since RPG's are interactive dramas, maybe there is some connection with Old Will after all!

In both cases...
...the fiction must be understood in the context of the history:

"...for all the differences, much remains the same as the real history. Traditional society and values are crumbling; religious and political factions vie for supremacy; kin fight kin, in a bitter struggle for England's future; and ordinary folk struggle to get by, in a world turned upside down...
"...if we were going to do history, even alternate history, we needed to get the history right, before going on to change it."
-Peter Cakebread, The Apprentice's Revenge (Swindon, 2013), pp. 214-215.

Right on.

Wolf

There are, apparently, two ways for a man become a wolf. Either he is born a werewolf or he utters a transformation spell while wearing a magic skin. Poul Anderson, of course, gives us both. His two Operation... novels are narrated by a werewolf and the hero of The Broken Sword (London, 1977) transforms. The same close thinking goes into describing the experience in both cases.

Anderson realises that the wolf brain would not be able to carry all the memories and purposes of the man. His werewolf is trained to retain enough self-control to fulfill his human purposes in animal form and not simply to hunt or go wild. This character tells his readers that words cannot describe the experience but then describes it very well.

There is a vivid description in The Broken Sword:

"It was strange, being a wolf. The interplay of bone, muscle, and sinew was something else from what it had been. The air ruffled his fur. His sight was dim, flat, and colourless. But he heard every faintest sound, every sigh and whisper, the night's huge stillness had turned murmurous - many of those tones too high for men ever to hear. And he smelled the air as if it were a living thing, uncounted subtle odours, hints and traces swirling in his nostrils. And there were sensations for which men have no words.

"It was like being in a new world, a world which in every way felt different. And he himself was changed, not alone in body but in nerve and brain. His mind moved in wolfish tracks, narrower though somehow keener. He was not able in beast shape to think all the thoughts he did as a man, nor, on becoming man again, to remember all he had sensed and thought as a beast." (pp. 127-128)

He smells a frightened hare but his human soul drives him on because his purpose is to spy, not to eat. To enter a castle, he transforms into an eagle and Anderson also describes that experience.

Until it happens to someone, this is the best description that we will get.

Narratives And Their Conclusions

The nature of a narrative is shown by the kind of climax or conclusion to which it leads. I concurrently reread Poul Anderson's Matuchek/Old Phoenix sequence and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994) because both series have an inter-cosmic inn.

These four Anderson novels each have a foregone conclusion: the triumph of good over evil. Three Hearts And Three Lions does not describe its climactic battle, just the hero setting off to it. Operation Luna ends with a battle against demons. In each individual skirmish, a good guy dispatches a demon until the demonic survivors flee. Hardly surprising. In Black Easter, James Blish simply reverses this conclusion: the demons win Armageddon.

Worlds' End tells different kinds of stories with a different kind of ending. The "handsome cabin boy" ends her story by saying that she will continue to masquerade as a boy as long as she can:

" '...for now - - you can call me Jim.' " (p. 90)

Brant Tucker narrates from the first word and we assume that he directly addresses the reader. To our surprise, on the last two pages, 161-162, he is seen to be addressing a bar maid in an otherwise empty bar. The conclusion is them saying, "Good night," and him walking away down a dark city street. We are left to reflect on their lives.

The Valeria Matuchek Trilogy

It is almost a trilogy.

Volume I
In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, Valeria's parents meet and marry. Valeria is born and grows to the age of three. A demon kidnaps her but her parents rescue her from Hell.

Volume II
In Anderson's Operation Luna, Valeria turns fifteen and is the first human being on the Moon in her timeline.

Volume III
In his A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria, now a graduate student travelling between timelines, advises other travellers, including Holger Danske from Three Hearts And Three Lions, whom she meets in the inter-cosmic inn.

Epilogues
In "House Rule," we meet a regular of the inter-cosmic inn.
In "Losers' Night," the regular lists spectacular women including Moll Flanders, Sojourner Truth and Valeria Matuchek.

The writing order of the Volumes was I, III, II so Anderson filled in an account of Valeria's teenage years after he had included the adult Valeria as a supporting character in A Midsummer Tempest.

Maybe her flight to the Moon qualified her as a spectacular woman or perhaps there was more later? We would like to know the rest of her career but, as far as it goes, this trilogy, or tetralogy if we include Three Hearts And Three Lions, and its Epilogues is already a comprehensive, and not merely linear, narrative sequence.

Many Gods

(This post, copied from the Religion and Philosophy blog, starts with religion and philosophy but ends with fantasies by CS Lewis, Neil Gaiman and Poul Anderson.)

It is a premise of Paganism that all gods exist. A newly encountered tribe or nation worships either different gods or our gods under different names - Zeus and Thor are Jupiter - so that, either way, the gods exist. There is no difference in meaning between asking which gods are worshiped in Northern Europe and asking which gods are active there. Human interaction with divinity and divine interaction with humanity are a single process. Divine activity is (regarded as) experienced so the abstract question of divine existence does not arise.

Polytheist pantheons can be incorporated not only into each other but also into monotheist and even "atheist" world views. In Paradise Lost, John Milton identified Pagan gods as demons, thus as fallen angels, thus as rebellious creatures of the One God. CS Lewis, a Miltonic Christian, incorporated Spiritualism into Christianity by acknowledging that dead souls might revisit Earth to haunt buildings or contact mediums although they really should go somewhere else. Hindus can incorporate Christianity by recognising Christ as one of many divine incarnations.

In Hinduism, the many gods can be seen as aspects of one God. However, Hindu philosophical systems include Samkhya which is "atheist" as accepting that one material substance and many reincarnating souls are beginningless and uncreated. This kind of atheism denies the one God of monotheism but not the many gods of polytheism. The latter are among the many reincarnating beings.

Patanjali based his Yoga Sutras on Samkhya philosophy but wanted to include the widespread popular devotion to a personal deity in his list of yogic practices so he described Isvara, the personal God, as a special kind of soul, permanently free from reincarnation, not a Creator but nevertheless a God incorporated into an essentially atheist philosophical system - really clever.

Some works of modern fantasy accept as a premise of fiction, not of belief, that all gods exist and that all mythological realms coexist somewhere somehow. In CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy and Narnia Chronicles, Pagan gods are necessarily subordinate but nevertheless enjoy a surprising degree of autonomy. Narnia is jointly liberated by a Greek god and by the Christian god in animal form. That alliance is unique in imaginative fiction.

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman graphic novels, gods exist because they are imagined, then worshiped. They fade away as their worship declines. In Poul and Karen's The King Of Ys Tetralogy, Mithras, the Olympians and the Three of Ys withdraw before the advent of the new god whose messengers, like their successor Milton, regard those earlier deities not as non-existent but as demonic.

In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, a traveller between alternative timelines finds one where the Aztec gods exist. In Anderson's Operation Luna (New York, 2000), the universe containing the World Tree of Norse mythology:

" '...was once closely entwined with ours, and surely with others. Or, rather, the crossing was easy from Northern lands. The belief factors...Christianity changed things. In a way, Beings like you, Fjalar, were left stranded here, like their counterparts in other universes.' " (p. 319) (Fjalar is a dwarf.)

So belief is a factor there too.

"...the old Norse...gods...'d withdrawn before the One God..." (p. 319)

Again, withdrawal, not non-existence.

Comments Across The Timelines

An author comments as his character speculates. Steve Matuchek, narrator of Operation Chaos and its sequel Operation Luna (New York, 2000), says:

"...think of the persecution of the Jews right up till the last century, and how readily it could revive - say in a strong, modern country that'd lost a major war and proposed to take its grudges out on the whole world, beginning with them. Or maybe a big but backward country, captured by an ideology that claimed human nature itself could be changed, setting out to do this with secret police, concentration camps, mass slaughters... Such things can happen." (p. 265)

Imaginative writers both comment on this our world and create their other worlds. Steve continues:

"Demons with a lunar stronghold, striking out of it with tricks, temptations, lies, illusions, disruptions, despair, to set man against man, could make them happen." (p. 265)

So readers simultaneously appreciate both social commentary and apocalyptic fantasy.

Operation Chaos began with absurdities like the magical medical practice of staring at germs through a microscope with the Evil Eye! But such entertaining absurdities do not prevent the same series from later addressing serious issues.

To Steve's hypothetical cases, we could add two more:

a big but backward country where an attempt to change social relationships had been defeated, leaving in power a self-serving bureaucracy whose industrial/military competition against more advanced countries compelled it to suppress and exploit its own population with secret police etc justified by an ideology about changing human nature;

a strong, modern country supporting dictatorships and threatening or waging wars in order to protect its own economic interests and access to sources of fuel.

The Unpredictable

Rereading Poul Anderson, it is unpredictable what there will be to blog about. I am rereading Operation Luna (New York, 2000) in order to complete what I call Anderson's Old Phoenix Sequence. Because this sequence is about alternative timelines, rereading it led to a comparison of the very different treatments of this theme in three Anderson works: the Old Phoenix Sequence, the Time Patrol Series and the single novel, Genesis.

Because the narrator of Operation Luna makes two rather disparaging remarks about comic book characters, I also posted about how some recent comic books measure up to these remarks and also mentioned the more prominent visual medium of films. This led to a discussion of whether a particular Dominic Flandry story, "The Game Of Glory," could be filmed. I had already envisaged a film version of Section 1 of this story, perhaps as part of a TV program about Anderson's works and not necessarily as part of a dramatization of the entire story.

I had not previously considered articulating this proto-screen treatment but why not since it has come up in discussion? Further, the appreciation of the City of York in both Operation Luna and Genesis was worthy of comment. Thus, there have been four unexpected spin-offs.

Meanwhile, in Operation Luna:

a clever play on words - Congress members take their constituents' pulses, then their purses (p. 110);

Dr Fu Ch'ing is a formidable enemy of the US but, pleasingly, not against our heroes in this affair;

he mentions yet another difference between the timelines - CIA means "Centrum for Illicit Arcana";

Steve Matuchek makes an ill-advised remark about Oliver Cromwell on page 189 - we do not joke about Hitler with Jewish friends, indeed with anyone, and Cromwell ("the curse of Cromwell") is a very bad name in the Republic of Ireland.

York Minster

Poul Anderson celebrates the English City of York twice:

York exists in an alternative timeline in Anderson's novel, Operation Luna (New York, 1999);

the York of 1900 in an alternative timeline is "emulated" by an inorganic intelligence on a far future post-human Earth in Anderson's novel, Genesis (New York, 2000).

According to the narrator of Operation Luna, no town surpasses York in beauty and charm:

"Mellow gold-hued sandstone of ancient walls and towers, crooked narrow streets with names like Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate, half-timbered houses whose arcades line them and galleries lean over them...history reaching back beyond the Romans and not embalmed but alive, here all around you -" (Operation Luna, p. 196).

The church that the characters seek:

"...lay almost in the shadows of the Minster. That most glorious of churches rose above roofs like God's personal benediction." (p. 197)

They walk on the city wall at night:

"A staircase led onto the city wall. Most of the medieval circuit remains. The top has been paved for easy footing. We wandered...between battlements. Beneath us slept the town. Opposite gleamed the river, and outlying homes gave way to broad countryside. Steeples, portals, the strong delicate towers of the Minster reached for the stars...stillness and ghostly fragrances from gardens. The east had gone pale..." (pp. 202-203)

We deduce that Poul and Karen Anderson did this. Although this passage is set in an alternative timeline, it describes the York we know.

In Genesis, an "emulation" is an elaborate computer/artificial intelligence simulation in which the simulated inhabitants of York are conscious, perceive the city and believe that they are living in it. Two characters entering the emulation as a virtual reality visit York Minster because it was:

" '...one of the loveliest churches ever built, in the loveliest old town.' " (Genesis, p. 184)

- although it had been " '...in sad condition...' " when last seen in reality. (p. 184)

In this alternative 1900, there is a Latin Roman Catholic Mass in the Minster. Anderson describes the interior of the church. Outside, the characters admire:

"...the carven tawny limestone of the front...The delightful narrow 'gates', walled in with half-timbered houses..." (p. 185)

There is a steam train but no automobiles and vehicles are pulled by diapered horses. The flag is a St Andrew's cross with an eagle. Soldiers march through to orders in German.

In this emulated timeline, generated as of its fifteenth century, the conciliar movement reformed the church sufficiently to prevent the Protestant Reformation and absolute monarchies. Thus, however, Germany was unified and became dominant, provoked rebellions and decayed.

" 'This Europe went through less agony, and invented and discovered less.' " (p. 188)

Anderson imagines a timeline that was better but only for a while. Meanwhile, he twice celebrates the ancient but transient beauty of York.

Poul Anderson On Comics

Poul Anderson wrote many works of fiction in prose but not in the visual media of cinema or comic books. I have found three references to comics in his novels.

(i) In There Will Be Time, time traveller Jack Havig comments that, despite Superman's telephone kiosk, the most convenient place in a modern city for a time traveller to disappear is a public toilet cubicle.

Greek dramatists sometimes commented on and corrected errors or implausibilities in the works of their predecessors. In this vein, in the first Superman film, Clark Kent, responding to an emergency, approaches a public telephone that is not even enclosed in a kiosk, realises that it would afford him no privacy for a costume change and instead uses a revolving door at super speed.

Thus, the film, like Anderson, comments on a familiar scene from earlier Superman comics.

(ii) In Operation Luna (New York, 2000), Steve Matuchek remarks:

"It's only comic-book heroes and their ilk who bounce directly from one brush with death to the next, wisecracking along the way. Real humans react to such things." (pp. 158-159)

Yes, real humans in real life and in realistically written novels or comics. There is nothing in the latter medium that obliges that it be written unrealistically.

(iii) Matuchek also speaks against vigilantism even if conducted in "...comic book costumes" (p. 140). Right. Again, comics comment on earlier comics. Frank Miller's Batman is a vigilante wanted for assault, breaking and entering, child endangerment and, when the Joker's dead body has been found, murder. In Alan Moore's Watchmen, the public demonstrates and the police strike ("Badges, not Masks") until anonymous vigilantism is banned. In Garth Ennis' The Boys, superheroes are untrained and get a lot of people killed on 9/11. So the critique of comic book implausibilities is conducted in comics.

I would like to see high quality film and graphic adaptations of Anderson's works.

Later: For a fourth reference to comics, see here.

Alternative Literatures

Literary references become strange when a text is set in an alternative reality. Here is one that remains unchanged. In Poul Anderson's Operation Luna (New York, 2000), Ginny Matuchek's new familiar is a raven called Edgar. At one point, he says, "Nevermore," and she addresses him as "...you Edgar Allan Crow!" (p. 105)

Edgar Allan Poe's dates are 1809-1849, safely before the Operation... timeline overtly diverged from ours in 1901. Therefore, their life and works of Poe are indistinguishable from ours.

However, Ginny wears, as a talisman, a cloak in which Fritz Leiber had played Prospero. (Ginny's daughter will encounter a timeline where Prospero was real.) Leiber's dates are 1910-1992. What he wrote in the Goetic Age has to differ from what he wrote in our twentieth century.

It seems that, in that timeline, Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) continued to write under his early pen name of Lyle Monroe - unless there was another writer of that name?

What would Poul Anderson (1926-2001) have written in the Goetic Age? First, he might not exist in that timeline. Changing history changes the lives of individuals, therefore changes whether or when they have children. In Anderson's "Delenda Est," there is a timeline in which Carthage won the Second Punic War. Therefore, all of history is different from that point onwards. Therefore, soon after that and certainly by the twentieth century, the world population is entirely composed of different individuals.

There would be timelines in which:

exactly the same Poul Anderson exists because those timelines diverge after his death;

the same Anderson exists but his life and experience differ from a certain point onward;

a different version of Anderson exists, e. g., genetically identical but with life and experience differing from birth;

no Poul Anderson exists because his parents did not exist or did not meet or came together in other circumstances and had different children etc.

The Goetic Age Anderson could have written:

the same historical fiction as in our timeline;

futuristic fiction about goetically powered interstellar travel, time travel and artificial intelligence;

speculative fiction about the timeline in which Einstein and Plank independently originated relativity and quantum mechanics instead of cooperating on rheatics.

Differences Between Timelines, Continued

Tom Lehrer sang:

" 'If rockets go up,
" 'Who cares where they come down?
" 'That's not my department!'
" Says Werner von Braun."

In Poul Anderson's Operation Luna (New York, 2000),a comedian says of the von Braun equivalent, al-Bunni:

" 'He wants to put horses in the sky. Never mind whose heads the manure lands on.' " (p. 87)

In our timeline, Murphy's Law is "Whatever can go wrong, will" and O'Brien's Law is "Nothing is ever done for the right reason" but, in the Operation... timeline, O'Brien's Law is the former.

A language unfamiliar to the speaker has greater magical/goetic power so a Seven-Up is called a Hepta-Up (Greek). Instead of televisions, they watch "farseers." (p. 86) They "doppel" or "dopplegang" documents. (pp. 107, 111) They distinguish between hardware and spookware. Electric lights are called edisons or saintelmos. Instead of the Pentagon, they have the Pentacle. Telephones are operated by sprites who announce that there is a call. The phone user "resonates," then "disempaths." (pp. 137-138)

Werewolves can survive in sunlight but, before flashlights, only a full moon generated the right wavelength to enable them to transform so a were still in animal form at dawn had to wait till the next full moon and to survive by any means until then. Therefore, they operated mainly at night. Hence, the belief that they were nightgangers. Chinese have less weres, whether from genes or from culture.

Eleven years have passed since Operation Chaos so, of course, the witch's familiar, a cat, is aged and she has a new familiar, a raven. Rheatic forces transmit at infinite speed - which raises the possibility of instantaneous communication as in some sf.

Anderson maintains these and similar background details throughout a 438 page novel.

Magic And Goetics

Poul Anderson's "Operation..." series began with the same premise as Robert Heinlein's "Magic, Inc.":

magic works and is practised like a set of technologies.

The series presents not any new premise but some new implications of Heinlein's premise. However, the concluding novel, Operation Luna (New York, 2000), changes the premise.

First, new terminology is coined. The characters practise "goetics"; magic was merely protogoetics.

Secondly:

"...goetic quantum-wave transference across a potential difference..." (p. 99)

 - is a new energy source and all energy, whether from fuel, goetics, a waterfall etc, is conserved. Thus, Operation Luna,and retroactively the earlier "Operation..." stories, are science fiction (sf) whereas their inspiration, "Magic, Inc.," about supernaturally based magic, was fantasy.

Operation Luna presents a history of goetics.

The Stone Age

There were mammoths, bears and cave men but also dragons, centaurs, elves and even "half-world...plants..." (p. 126) Dead half-world organisms dissolve in sunlight and natural chemistry and therefore leave no fossils. This difference caused human fear or abhorrence so that Stone Age art shows little or nothing of the half-world. Some shamans contacted it but warlocks and witches mainly tried to control the elements.

The Bronze Age

Warrior aristocrats discouraged any magical challenge to their power but diviners etc practiced their arts and paranatural Beings flourished beyond areas controlled by humanity.

The Iron Age

As ferrous materials spread, ferromagnetism cancelled rheatic forces, the paranatural ecology withered and the Beings began their Long Sleep. European dwarfs withdrew underground because, although unharmed by iron, they had lost their trade with gods and Faerie and their goetically charged jewelry, weapons etc became unacceptable to human beings now abhorring paganism and witchcraft.

The Goetic Age

Instead of Einstein originating relativity theory and Planck originating quantum theory, they cooperated to originate rheatics. Moseley applied rheatics to degaussing the effects of cold iron, thus releasing the goetic forces from their electromagnetic inhibition. The Sleepers Awoke but to a changed world:

"...wilderness reduced to a few enclaves...goetics...essentially a new set of technologies..." (p. 48)

Some of the Fair Folk fled to the Moon. To avoid sunlight, they must travel back and forth between Earth and Moon only during an eclipse.

Thus, Operation Luna considerably extends the story as told in Operation Chaos.

"Hard Fantasy"

(I have copied this post from the Science Fiction blog because it was written as an introduction to some further comments on Poul Anderson's Operation Luna.)

The premise of Robert Heinlein's "Magic, Inc." is that magic works and is practised like a set of technologies. Magical practice is based on the reality of supernatural entities and forces, not on any new theory, discovery or application of the natural sciences. Thus, "Magic, Inc." is fantasy, not science fiction (sf).

We might call it "hard fantasy" to indicate that the implications of the premise are deduced as rigorously as are the consequences of any new technology in hard sf.

Two other "hard fantasies":

in The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, there is time travel to historical periods with circular causality as in an sf novel but here the time travel is one of several applications of magic;

in Black Easter/The Day After Judgement by James Blish, demons are real.

Blish wrote mostly hard sf. It is possible, when reading his fantasies, to forget that they are a different genre from his sf. Indeed, some of his characters find it hard to believe that their high technology coexists with demons. In fact, Black...Judgement is the second volume of a trilogy about the conflict between secularism and supernaturalism. Volumes I and III remain ambiguous but it is a premise of Volume II that demons exist and are neither technological nor extraterrestrial but supernatural.

More Differences Between Timelines

"Lyle Monroe" was an early pen name for Robert Heinlein. Thus, a new Magister Lazarus novel by Lyle Monroe is the Operation... universe equivalent of a new Lazarus Long novel by Robert Heinlein. Personally, I like only the first Lazarus Long novel, Methuselah's Children, but maybe the Magister Lazarus series is better? And probably, in the goetic universe, Magister Lazarus not only lives long but pulls a resurrection stunt?

Japanese authorities are Shinto, not secular;

Chinese are Taoist, not Maoist;

IRS means "Inquisition for Revenue Securement," not "Internal Revenue Service." (There is an obvious remark here so let's not make it.)

Their equivalent of von Braun is al-Bunni. My wife, a Modern Languages graduate, tells me that "braun" is German for "brown." Steve Matuchek tells us that "bunni" is Arabic for "brown," despite the rabbit connotation which the reader must notice and which a satirical cartoon exploits.

The Operation... timeline includes an equivalent of someone who is real to us and also of someone who is fictitious to us. They have an "...insidious Dr Fu Ch'ing..." (Operation Luna, New York, 2000, p. 61). Googling "Fu Ch'ing" discloses that there was a real one and that he was a Manchu. This fictitious Dr Fu is a Chinese secret agent operating so independently that:

" 'There are times when he is the Chinese government." (p. 62)

Mycroft Holmes coordinated so much government intelligence that in a sense it was true to say that he was the government.

I am in haste on a sunny Sunday afternoon but Operation Luna continues to entertain.

Imagining Alternative Histories

Characters in Poul Anderson's Operation Luna speculate -

If Einstein and Planck had not cooperated in 1901, then they might have developed distinct, mutually incompatible, theories of relativity and quantum mechanics instead of the single theory of rheatics.

Next, if Moseley had not released goetic forces by applying rheatic equations and thus degaussing cold iron, then:

fossil fuels and electricity would have been major energy sources;
transport would have been by horseless carriages or dirigibles;
astronomers would have analyzed spectra, not specters;
paranature would have remained Asleep, concealed;
witches and warlocks would have been cranks, not respected professionals;
werebeast DNA would not be understood;
those who had maintained magical traditions (Africans, Australians, Native Americans) would not have had their head start in practical goetics.

Imagining inhabitants of other timelines speculating about our timeline is a way of commenting on our timeline. I have found some comparable examples of this in graphic fiction.

A DC Comics supervillain, traveling between alternative Earths, claims to have found one where no one has gained any super powers. A colleague comments that that sounds unlikely.

Superman flying between parallel Earths passes briefly through the sky of Earth Prime, where superheroes are fictions. A man looking up shouts, "Look, up in the sky, it's...it's nothing!"

Alan Moore's Watchmen universe had real superheroes so their comics were about pirates, then horror, and a comics shop was called "Treasure Island," not "Forbidden Planet."

A Watchmen universe newspaper headline asks "RR for President?" A character asks, "Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House?" We realize that they mean Robert Redford.

One of the "Watchmen" comments that the US would have gone mad as a nation if it had lost in Vietnam.

Operation Luna

In Poul Anderson's Operation Luna, Valeria Matuchek is fourteen so eleven years have elapsed since Operation Chaos. We learn some differences between our timeline and theirs.

In our timeline:

James Joyce wrote Ulysses;

Ford and Jaguar manufacture motor cars;

after World War II against Germany, rocket designer Werner von Braun went to the US and later worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration;

astronauts/cosmonauts are mostly men;

Apollo was the NASA Project to land a man on the Moon which is uninhabited;

President Kennedy said, "I am a Berliner," in German.

In the Operation... timeline:

James Joyce wrote Odysseus;

Ford and Jaguar manufacture flying broomsticks with windfields and comfortable seats;

after World War II against the Caliphate, flying bronze horse designer Haris ed-Din al-Bunni went to the US and later worked for the National Astral Spellcraft Administration;

celestonauts are mostly women;

Selene is the NASA Project to land a woman on the Moon which is known to be haunted;

President Lambert said, "I am a Rio do Janeiran," in Spanish.

I have reread to page 17 of 438 so there should be plenty more comments to make about the second Operation... volume.