Pollution Of Space?

Comments on the post "Mountebanks And Bacaudae" raised the question: can space be polluted? Googling "Pollution of Space" reveals some articles on the subject. See here. The passage in Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise (London, 1988) that I had in mind was:

"'...we will never, never see Earth turned into a residential garden supplied by industrial parks throughout the Solar System. It is in the nature of man that he fouls his own nest.'" (p. 337)

The first sentence says not that space will be polluted but that space industries will not be used to make a pollution-free environment on Earth. However, the second sentence does imply that mankind will generate waste and destruction in any environment, here or elsewhere. If parts of the Moon are colonized but others are used to dump nuclear waste, will these areas encroach on each other - especially if rival groups are involved? We need palaces, not slums, off Earth. Anderson gave us the example of the Selenarchs in Harvest Of Stars. His "Sunjammer" shows how orbiting instruments could be damaged by chemical contamination of near-Earth space.

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.

Dives

How many "low dives" do fictitious characters frequent? Quite a lot. Remember the bar scene in Star Wars and Larry Niven's Draco Tavern. I have already celebrated the "Pey d'Or" meeting place in Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise. One of Anderson's time traveling characters recruits a traveling companion in a stereotypical underworld haunt in "Flight To Forever" and, in three other Anderson works, there is a (more respectable) inn between the worlds, the Old Phoenix.

The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1994) introduces a "Downright medieval" dive, the Asilo, a bistro with a surrealistically dancing lightsign above the door (p. 169). Blue-hazed air reeks of tobacco, marijuana, opium and sniph. The Asilo is "...a hangout for metamorphs...," Titans, Tinies, Drylanders, Chemos, Aquatics, Chimpos, bulge-headed Intellects and Exotics - "...genomes modified for purposes of science, industry, war, pleasure...," continuing to procreate (pp. 170, 171).

Titans were gene-bred for strength and endurance as infantry. Chemos are hardy against radiation and pollution. Drylanders' bodies store water so that they can survive in deserts. Having projected a cosmos in which human beings do not meet any aliens, Anderson then imagined altered, and alienated, forms of humanity.

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.

There Will Be Time

What have Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise and There Will Be Time got in common? Each has a title that is a full sentence in the future tense (one refers to space; the other to time) and the Foreword to There Will Be Time refers to the Maurai, one of the future nationalities in Orion Shall Rise.

In this very strange Foreword, the author, Poul Anderson, directly addresses the reader. He convincingly describes a relative, Dr Robert Anderson, who, we come to realise, must be fictitious. This fictitious Anderson (fictitiously) inspired both the Maurai series and the present novel. Could this fictitious inspiration, Robert Anderson, partly represent a real inspiration, Robert Anson Heinlein? (I don't know.)

Robert addresses the narrator of the Foreword as "Poul" and refers to "Karen" so we are in no doubt that, in this case, narrator and author are identical, but, for the rest of the novel, Robert is the narrator though not the central character. He mediates between Poul and Jack Havig, a time traveller. In fact, there are perhaps five layers here:

you and me reading the novel;
Poul Anderson, the author of the novel;
Poul Anderson, the narrator of the Foreword;
Robert Anderson, the narrator of the rest of the novel;
Jack Havig, the central character of the novel.

Poul Anderson the narrator is a strong link between reality and fiction.

There Will be Time is a very good time travel novel of which there are few. I used to think that Poul Anderson's two volume Time Patrol series, considered as a unit, and Jack Finney's two Time novels, also considered as a unit, were the two culminations of the time travel fiction that had been initiated by The Time Machine and wondered if there could be a third. Later, I accepted that Audrey Niffeneger's The Time Traveler's Wife was a third. However, a few other novels, like The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers and this one by Anderson, are certainly comparable.

Orion Risen

I am quite certain that orbiting astronauts radioing an appeal for international cooperation would not affect terrestrial politics in the slightest, unless, of course, those politics were already moving in that direction, as Anderson tries to show. For one thing, the conflict has killed its own chief architects. Further, nuclear missiles and laser beams fired from the stratosphere are not weapons but instruments of genocide. The War of Judgement had left a deep disquiet at the idea of destruction on such a scale. That destruction has started again precisely because of Maurai attempts to suppress it so now it is easy to argue that Federation policies must change. (This cover makes the (spherical) aerostat resemble an attacking flying saucer but accurately conveys its capacity for destruction.)

Also, in the interests of realism, the character Plik, a sort of auctorial spokesman within the text, reminds his friends and thus us that all will not be sweetness and light despite the popular revulsion against continued hostilities. Anderson, as always, shows us every point of view. A scientist helping to design a spaceship is idealistic about how resources from the Solar System will transform the Earth, poorer countries included, whereas the Intelligence chief protecting the project expects space traveling human beings to continue polluting their environments but wants the military applications of spacecraft for his country in particular.

Designing spacecraft secretly without the benefit of a large scale ground control system, the Norrmen must build from scratch a ship that is more maneuverable than the old NASA capsules. Thus, this ship carries a crew and supplies, can be controlled from within, can orbit Earth indefinitely, fly once round the Moon and land back on Earth to be reused - kind of like an experimental spaceship in an old sf novel!

The behavior of a Gaean teacher confirms my earlier characterization of this future philosophy as "green fascism." When it is suggested that lasering entire territories will damage Gaea, he responds:

"We are Gaea." (Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 459)

Indiscriminate destruction of life in the name of all life: the reader is relieved when this character is among the fatalities.

Although I wrote earlier that the Pey d'Or tavern becomes a familiar venue in the novel (and it does), closer reading reveals that it appears only three times - and the surviving characters do not rendezvous there again at the end. Nevertheless, Anderson's writing makes the setting familiar to the reader. Iern tells Plik:

"I used to carouse in Kemper, on furloughs while a Cadet, often in this very den..." (p. 45)

- so the place has a history for the characters even though we are, in that passage, seeing it for the first time. As I remarked before, Anderson combines wealth of imagination with economy of writing.

Anderson's vocabulary continues to be broad. I googled "maintruck" (p. 466) only to be informed that there is no definition recorded. Blogging about a novel while rereading it is slower but more meaningful. I retain more of the details and can refresh my memory on the blog.

The Pey d'Or

Not for the first time, I have tried to summarize all that Poul Anderson tells us about a fictitious place and have found that there is a lot more detail than I had realized.

Kemper, spared in the War of Judgement, became the largest town and chief seaport in Brezh and the capital of Ar-Mor. It has a multi-denominational Cathedral of St Corentin and a museum housing ancient relics.

The Pey d'Or, a basement tavern in Kemper, mostly for labourers and sailors, has smoke-blackened beams, low ceiling, clay floor, a dusty clerestory (high window above eye level), four tables with benches and stairs from a door to the street. The balladeer Peyt "Plik" Rensoon, an Angleyman from Free Church-governed Devon in southern Angleylann across the Channel, sings in Angley, plays his lute, drinks from a goblet of wine, smokes a clay pipe, addresses the Francey-speaking barmaid Sesi as "Vineleaf" and, at different times, drinks with sailors, laborers, farmers, psyans (peasants), the Stormrider Iern and visitors from the Northwest Union.

Two members of a new green-uniformed force, the Terran Guard, enter the tavern with an announcement from the new Captain of Skyholm, thus provoking political argument among the sailors from ships in port and other patrons present. The tavern becomes a familiar setting to which the narrative returns and where some of the major characters meet for the first time.  

Orion Rises

 When I wrote that Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson (London, 1988) was "Rooted In The Past," I had not yet reread to pages 306-308 where a hundred women - maidens, wives and grandmothers - meet at standing stones to curse a usurper who:

"...claimed his world-view embraced eons, but...had no real conception of ancientness. He could not admit that a people may have a right to preserve their own nature..." (p. 306)

The curse, in the names of Deu, Zhesu-Crett and all saints, is Christian. A distinction is made between saints "...on high..." and "...in the Afterworld..." "...on high..." must refer to the aristocrats in the aerostat who, we have been told, are commonly regarded as "saints."

This curse takes us right back to the earliest European history and even reminds us of the Nine Witch-Queens in Poul and Karen Anderson's historical fantasy tetralogy, The King Of Ys. The town that was Quimper in the Ys period has become Kemper in the Orion period. Orion Shall Rise encapsulates the past of Europe and a future for the world. The old religion Christianity, represented by a Bishop in Devon, clashes with the new philosophy of Gaeanity, represented by the cursed usurper.

We had known from early in the novel that "Orion" was a top secret prohibited technology project in a country defeated by the conservationist Maurai. On page 311 of 468, we are finally told exactly what it is although perhaps I should not state that here? The Maurai go to war to suppress Orion but are resisted by their adversaries' peculiar "Lodge" system. What seemed to be a population fleeing from invaders turns out to have been a population mobilized to use hidden weapons to destroy the Maurai Marine Corps. Any population outnumbers any invading army so that, if the population is motivated, armed and organized, then invaders beware. Anderson knew the importance of different kinds of social organization.

The Pey-d'Or is a tavern introduced early in the novel and a place that becomes familiar as characters meet and return there. They include "the Stormrider" Iern and the balladeer Plik. Anderson endows the latter with a (slightly implausible?) poetic/prophetic ability to mythologize the historical events occurring around him and to predict in general terms how they must go. Although an archaic Nicene Christian, he knows that:

"...the gods are doomed - everybody's gods - and what new ones will come striding through their ashes, we shall not live to understand." (p. 316)

 And:

"The Apollonian Domain and Arthurian Maurai are up against Orphic Gaeanity and the Faustian Northwest...the Norrmen are demons readying to overthrow the gods of sky, sea, and earth - though chthonic gods have always had their own dark side - and the war that is coming will bring an end to the world." (p. 270)

The Norrmen of the Northwest are industrial demons challenging European aerostatic government (sky), the Maurai (sea) and Gaeans (land).

Although in this instance writing sf, Anderson, through Plik, applies the language of mythological fantasy and ensures that the reader does not miss the significance of seemingly small events that will have enormous consequences later in the narrative. By "...an end to the world..." is meant an end to the present world order. A four sided conflict is an improvement on the twosidedness often seen in popular fiction. A Gaean, secretly helped by the Northwest Wolf Lodge, has seized control of the Domain but is provoking civil war.

Rooted In The Past

Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise (London, 1988) is set many centuries in our future. We do not know how many centuries because (it seems that) the old style of dating ended with the (nuclear) War of Judgement, almost certainly to be replaced by many different local dating systems but we are not told about those either.

Despite being set so far in the future, the events of the novel are firmly rooted in our common past. In the first place, the devastation of the War had thrown entire continents back into earlier ways of living from which they then advanced in new directions both scientifically and culturally, generating a rich fictitious history as we often observe when commenting on Anderson's works.

Secondly, there are several historical references. Printed texts had been dispersed too widely to allow a loss of knowledge. There are new religions and new forms of Christianity but one character is able to identify himself as a Nicene Christian. There is a Cathedral dedicated to St Corentin who was a character in Poul and Karen Anderson's King Of Ys tetralogy set during an earlier social collapse, the Fall of the Roman Empire (as opposed to the larger scale Fall of the Terran Empire chronicled by Anderson in another series and in an alternative fictitious timeline).

Not only was the Christian Corentin canonised. The atheist Lenin has been deified! Mong gods include "...Oktai, Erlik, Lenin..." (p. 267) That deification of Lenin combines in a single word Anderson's treatment of social evolution, including his concerns about social revolutions, and his interest in the historical development of mythology - two themes addressed fully in his Time Patrol series.

Readers have a privileged relationship to characters. We can compare the Maurai Federation and the Time Patrol although they cannot know about each other. A subsequent volume, There Will be Time, informs us that, unknown to the Maurai and to us when reading about the Maurai, time travellers do move through the history of the Federation but their form of time travel differs from that used by the Patrol. The historical dimension is emphasised further when a man from the twentieth century visits both the Constantinople of his past and the Maurai in his future.

The Heautontimoroumenos

I have said before that reading Poul Anderson requires a dictionary but he surpasses himself on page 258 of Orion Shall Rise (London, 1988):

"The Life Force is also the Heautontimoroumenos, the Self-Tortured."

The Gaean speaker defines the term as soon as she uses it but it is convenient to be able to Google for further elucidation. (An unusual term used in another series, the Time Patrol, was "psychopomp.")

Gaeanity is one of many future philosophies imagined by Anderson. Characteristically, he shows it as neither simply good nor simply bad. Gaean meditation is not trance but merging of being with world, thus opening senses, heightening perceptions and, in one case, hearing approaching strangers who are still afar. (p. 246)

Iern, conversing with the Gaean, comments that ruling classes favor Gaeanity because it encourages submission among restless populations:

"...never mind liberty or traditional rights, just retreat into your head. Or it can be useful in marshaling forces against a rival...as I found out." (p. 258)

The philosophical is also the political. Gaeans address all life on Earth as "Gaea, Great All-Mother..." (p. 102) and regard human beings as "organelles," another word that might need a dictionary. (p. 84)

For me, Gaeanity in and of itself, not just its ideological/political applications, is shown to be a negative force by the following passage. Of someone seeking fissionables, a Gaean directive states:

" - whoever is responsible for this must be found out and annihilated. You are the defensive cells of Gaea. Through you, now, acts the Life Force." (p. 183)

This is green fascism.

"Orion Shall Rise"?

Half way through Orion Shall Rise, the slogan has been repeated but we have not yet been told what "Orion" is. However, there have been several clues:

it is a technology prohibited by the Maurai but developed secretly by the Norrmen in a remote mountainous region;

it requires nuclear energy but is not a nuclear weapon;

it will "rise";

when it is tested, there is volcano-like sound and vapour followed by a bright light in the sky and a ship crew expects to be busy;

this is a novel by Poul Anderson and it is not difficult to think of a technology that he would want his characters to develop.

Meanwhile, however, the narrative continues. By (slightly contrived?) means, Anderson has brought two characters from the Federation, two from the Union and two from the Domain together in a Mong wilderness where they will have to cooperate to survive. Thus,we now embark on a passage with further character interaction and some information about survival techniques.

Parallel Narratives

In a hospital waiting room, one porter showed another a tabloid headline. The second smiled at the story, whatever it was, then asked, "Wha'? In real life or int' soap?" In other words, the story applied either to an actor or to that actor's character in a TV serial. First, the porter appreciated the story. Then, he checked which of our two parallel narratives it belonged to, news or fiction.

My daughter, overhearing her parents discussing the then current Mayor of our City, asked a question about a former ruler of Narnia - "while we were on the subject," as her mother commented.

My rereading of Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise has been interrupted by a weekend spent learning something about current economic problems and political conflicts in several European and Middle Eastern countries. Returning to the novel, I again appreciate Anderson's ability to present his fictitious world with plausible complexity and density.

Centuries in our future, the Northwest Union, defeated in war by the Maurai Federation, must accept, but successfully misleads, Maurai Inspectors checking wilderness areas for prohibited technology. Meanwhile, both Union and Federation spies are present in the Domain of Skyholm when one viewpoint character, a Gaean, stages a coup with Espaynian support while his opponent, another viewpoint character otherwise expected to be the next Captain of Skyholm, evades arrest, becoming a fugitive. For a second time in this series, Anderson makes us think that a Maurai spy has telepathy, then presents yet another explanation for the phenomenon. And so far I have reread only to page 177 of 468.

Episodic blogging provides an excellent opportunity to record an appreciation of a long novel in the course of rereading it, effectively presenting snapshots of the text rather then waiting to comment on the entire reading.

The Maurai In Orion Shall Rise

In Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise, the Maurai Federation comes on-stage in Chapter Two, still powerful enough to enforce on nearby nations its policies of ecological balance and no nuclear power, now engaging in a series of wars (a Whale War, a Power War) with the Northwest Union, to the north of the Mericans, where government is minimal and society is mainly organized around Lodges (Wolf, Fish Hawk, Polaris):

"A local Lodgemaster could field a regiment overnight, and disperse it to anonymity when its mission was completed." (1)

It seems that the Mong are still in North America (maybe that is one of the inconsistencies mentioned in the Author's Note?) and we learn that their ancestors had crossed from "Sberya" over a channel frozen for several months each year because

"...nuclear detonations had filled the upper air with dust." (1)

I think the idea of the nuclear winter is that radioactive dust would fill the entire upper atmosphere causing endless winter and night everywhere on Earth?

Again, Anderson presents a detailed account of how different countries might recover from a limited nuclear exchange and of how they would understandably and plausibly disagree about international policies for centuries afterwards.

"...mostly, those who survived kept going by creating new versions of savagery or barbarism. Few of them have yet climbed any further back. Few, if any, ever will, unless-" (2)

But some have climbed further, in different directions from different starting points, and we are bound to reflect that even savagery and barbarism are preferable to extinction. The world is in nowhere near as bad a state as it might have been. The Maurai impose their policies but are nevertheless benign, not imperialistic. A qualitatively different culture has emerged from the lessons taught by the War of Judgement.

We learn that the Maurai pantheon of Tanaroa the Creator with Lesu Haristi the Saviour on his right and shark-toothed Nan the Destroyer on his left is called the Triad. In the Prologue and Chapter One, we had learned that:

European peasants call the Aerogens "saints" and believe that they are endlessly reborn in Skyholm;

many believed that Deu Himself placed Skyholm in heaven to prevent a new Judgement;

Aerogens believe that the present generation carry their "ancestral anims";

 
the agnostic Iern attends services as a Clansman but shrugs at the blessing "Zhesu ward you";

there is a new philosophy called Gaeanism;

the name of the Aerogens' First Captain, "Great Charles," can be used as an oath.

Thus, almost subliminally, we are taught more than we might realize about European and Maurai religion.

Finally, a Maurai visiting the Northwest Union hears without understanding a defiant slogan cried by a child:

"Orion shall rise!" (3)

1. Anderson, Poul, Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 38.
2. ibid., p. 34.
3. ibid., p. 41.

Skyholm

In other works, Poul Anderson describes large, spherical faster than light spacecraft capable of waging pitched battles in space with force fields and nuclear missiles. "Captain to all officers and men! Captain to all officers and men! Merseian warcraft sighted! Stand by for hyperdrive! Stand by for combat! Glory to the Emperor!" (Here I quote from memory but that is the sort of thing.) This reads like stirring stuff but Anderson always makes sure that we know what it means when a single sentient being dies.

We can vicariously enjoy faster than light space battles, described with technical precision, first because they are unlikely and secondly because, with humanity, in that period, spread across a vast volume of space, no war can threaten racial survival. Despite the deaths, it all seems like a game: "The Game Of Glory"; The Game Of Empire. Later, in the Commonalty period and on an even vaster interstellar scale, humanity might have left war behind.

I mention large, spherical faster than light spacecraft in order to contrast them with their comparatively low tech counterpart in Orion Shall Rise. Skyholm is a two kilometer wide aerostat hovering above clouds, mist and rain. Sunlight penetrating its double skin heats the air at its center that keeps it aloft. Solar collectors and thermal convertors generate electricity which:

runs the jets counteracting stratospheric winds;
supply on board needs;
beamed below, power synthetic fuel plants and other industries.

(Apart from Skyholm and a few local generators, the Domain lacks electricity because metal for conductors is too expensive. Anderson imagines a part past, part future period.)

Energy is stored for war or tempest. Skyholm lasers break a hurricane.

After the nuclear war, its international crew, the Thirty, moved this one surviving aerostat from its position above a now obliterated Paris to its present position above Tours and protected that city from desperate outsiders. The locals restarted the industries needed to maintain Skyholm whose skin, weakened by stratospheric ozone and ultraviolet, must be replaced piece by piece once a decade. Other areas accepted the protection of the Aerogens, now Thirty Clans: aerial surveillance provides safe borders, free trade, public safety, detection of crop diseases and rich fishing grounds, updated maps, weather forecasting and weather modification.

So, while the Maurai restored civilization in the Southern Hemisphere, this is what occurred in Uropa.

Man Versus Nature

Anderson often describes combat but, in Orion Shall Rise, he presents an inspiring variation - or alternative.

Observers in Skyholm, a two kilometer wide stratospheric aerostat above Tours, alert the Weather Corps when they detect, approaching Uropa, a Force Twelve hurricane that will:

"...flatten the Etang area, drown a score of fishing villages, and probably wreck Port Bordeu..." (1)

  - disrupting shipping and killing the two thirds of the inhabitants who cannot be evacuated in time.

Weather Command orders all of its Stormrider jet aircraft to Port Bordeu for a briefing before flying to the hurricane. Three jets enter the storm at different points. Ascending from the middle of the storm to an altitude of ten kilometers, Stormrider Iern probes with radar, infrared sensors, calibrated magnifiers and a Maurai television camera. Having located the eye of the storm, he then maps it by spiraling in loops of three kilometer's radius, two kilometers apart. Enclosed in night, wind, lightning, thunder, rain and sleet, he fights to keep his craft intact and in the air. Entering the calm at the center, he returns to the fight while instruments gauge and an ultrahigh-frequency beam transmits pressures, velocities, ionizations, potentials and gradients to the Domain's single, powerful computer at Skyholm.

Finished transmitting and now close to hill-high waves, he returns to the center and climbs. At Skyholm, solar collectors continually refill accumulators powering lasers focused on well-chosen parts of the storm, either drilling and eroding or upsetting the balance. The core, still active but reduced in force, veers northwest, causing strong winds and heavy rains along the coast for two or three days but nothing disastrous. Further energy input might drive the core against Eria (Ireland) so Skyholm desists.

Combat skills and techniques, a fighter jet but without weapons and no human beings killing each other. Why can't it always be like that? Earth also needs an asteroid defense system. Ierne reflects that:

"A storm so great that men fought against it came but twice or thrice in a career." (2)

But there must be other kinds of hazards and disasters that they can fight?

He might also see human combat. There have been conflicts in Espaynia, Italya and Iberya. However:

"Iern hoped the peace would endure. He didn't relish the idea of killing men. He didn't even hunt -" (3)

Iern is a good contrast to warrior heroes. His battle against the storm is a hopeful precursor of a peaceful future when jet aircraft no longer fight each other.

(1) Anderson, Poul, Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 14.
(2) ibid., p. 16.
(3) ibid., p. 15.

From Maurai To Skyholm

If not for the early Author's Note mentioning the Maurai, the reader would not immediately know that Orion Shall Rise connects with that series. The 468 page text begins on page 1. The Maurai are first mentioned on page 7 and then only in a list of five or more other nations with which "the Domain" must deal. On page 13, we learn that, although our hero still uses a large, crude, vacuum tubed radio set powered by his castle's coal-fired generator, transistorised portable radios can be bought from the, obviously more advanced, Maurai Federation.

Thus, this novel is set in a later period when more nations have become prominent. Also, its narrative net has been cast more widely so that we initially view the Maurai from a foreign perspective.

The Domain, covering much of Europe, is controlled by aristocratic families, the Thirty Clans of the Aerogens, from a stratospheric aerostat called "Skyholm" or "Ileduciel." The Domain includes households like that of Mael the Red whose farm is worked by himself, his family, his tenants and their families. The account of how Mael's household receives an Aerogen visitor with a feast would fit into one of Anderson's historical novels.

The Aerogen and his host's daughter have a son who is brought up in Mael's household until his father takes him away to be his heir. Thus, Chapter One, starting on page 10 (so far we have read only a Prologue), begins with the son, Iern, now grown, taking his place in the world.

We realize both that the Domain is a powerful realm with which the Maurai will have to deal and that winds of change blow yet again. As Iern grew up, many centuries in our future but nevertheless surrounded by medieval city walls, Stone Age tombs, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens and passage graves:

"...he got into him a sense of time as an endless storm-wind, on which men and nations and gods were blown like autumn leaves, forever." (1)

(1) Anderson, Poul, Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 8.

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.