China

Tomorrow, Lancaster will celebrate Chinese New Year, complete with street procession and dancing dragon. It is good to live in a multicultural society.

China is a big country that maybe does not get a lot of attention in Poul Anderson's works?

In "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the large quadrupedal alien, Adzel, performs the Chinese dragon in street parades while he is a student on Earth.

In The Broken Sword, the supernatural beings of different national traditions coexist and (I think that) Chinese beings are mentioned.

In Rogue Sword, Lucas has returned from Cathay.

China is more civilized than Europe here.

In The Boat Of A Million Years, one of the immortals is Chinese. See here. Thus, his introductory chapter is set in China.

In "SOS," Pitar Cheng leads a Great Asian space fleet.

Finally, not to ignore our ever-growing food thread, in exchange for his dragon performances, Adzel:

"...has an unlimited meal ticket at the Silver Dragon Chinese Food and Chop Suey Palace."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Technic Civilization Saga: The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 195.

What have I missed? (See comments.)

The Boat And The Sword

In Europe, if a man still looked in his twenties when his wife died of old age, then he would be accused of deviltry and attacked by a mob whereas, in China, if a man remained youthful in appearance after many decades, then he would be regarded as a master of the Tao and invited to advise the Emperor! Poul Anderson shows us both of these outcomes in The Boat Of A Million Years. Neither of these deductions is correct but the Chinese inference is less harmful to say the least.

In Anderson's Rogue Sword, a man who has returned to Europe from China has become familiar with the idea that there is more than one way to God. Also, he knows that a Western Christian can accuse his neighbor of Devil-worship, then plant evidence, whereas the Chinese know how to protect a crime scene.

Thus, in two novels, we get the impression that the ancient Chinese civilization was more civilized than Western Christendom. 

What Else?

What else can I write about Lucas Greco, hero of Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword (New York, 1960)?

(i) He is nicknamed, or surnamed, "the Greek."
(ii) He has a knack for learning languages quickly so he is able to work as an interpreter.
(iii) He is a poet and we read one of his compositions (in other words, Anderson again writes verse as well as prose).
(iv) Combining linguistic and poetic skills, he has rendered the poem that we read in eight languages.
(v) In those days, poems praising beauty had practical seductive uses.
(vi) Although, as noted earlier, he is of indeterminate social status, he fights and wins so the author, at the end, bestows nobility upon him:

"He took her arm and they walked down toward their ship, the victorious knight and his lady." (p. 283) 

Wider Perspectives

Pulling back from a single volume by Poul Anderson presents an amazing perspective.

The single novel, Rogue Sword (New York, 1960), shows us imperial and military changes in the early fourteenth century.

" '...the Pope has summoned their Grand Master to reply to certain grave charges...' " (pp. 228-229)

That is the Grand Master of the Knights Templar but the reader might not realise that this is the prelude to the suppression of the Templars the following year. This Order, which had pioneered banking, was to be suppressed by a centralised state that wanted its wealth so these events were the modern age in the making.

Meanwhile, the rival military Order, the Hospitallers, plans to take possession of Rhodes, a step towards, centuries later, becoming the still extant Knights of Malta. At the same time, the once mighty Eastern Empire can no longer defend itself against rebelling mercenaries and its enemies include Muslims. This is either the end of civilisation or the beginning of a new one.

The novel shows us all this while, quite properly, remaining within the bounds of historical fiction. But also set in the fourteenth century are a historical fantasy novel showing us the end of Faerie and a science fiction novel showing us the beginning of interstellar contact. Receding away into earlier periods are several novels about Faerie, four other volumes of historical fiction, a tetralogy about the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, a time travel novel set in Atlantis and a heroic fantasy about a character not created by Anderson.

Moving the other way, into the future, we find many works featuring interstellar travel and several about the Fall of the Terran Empire. All these works cannot fit into a single timeline but we also find four volumes and some short stories acknowledging the existence of multiple timelines! Can we ask for more? (There is a more, one contemporary fantasy novel, three mystery novels and many contributions to other writers' science fiction series.)

Changing Times

Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword (New York, 1960) shows the fourteenth century as a time of change. Is every century?

Lucas, the hero of Rogue Sword, is a transitional figure and a modern man:

the illegitimate son of a Venetian father and a Cretan mother;

 
learned the handling of boats from his stepfather;

learned Greek and Latin from mother's uncle, a monk;

at eleven, thanks to his natural father's family, was apprenticed to a Venetian counting house;

learned half a dozen languages in the cosmopolitan Republic but left urgently because of an affair with his employer's wife;

became a knight's attendant;

travelled with a Venetian merchant to the Crimea, Bokhara and Samarkand;

 
was captured and imprisoned by the Genoese but escaped;

travelled with a Tartar merchant and spent time in Cathay;

homesick, returned to the West but no longer felt at home there;

familiar from childhood with Catholic-Orthodox conflict, was influenced by the Cathayan belief in many (or no) roads to God;

 
found no reasonable answer to the question of what God wanted of men;

valued Oriental hygiene and Cathayan police procedures that prevented the planting of evidence after an accusation had been made;

gains an ambiguous social standing -

" 'If you were clearly of gentle rank...you're no simple commoner who must be punished for assaulting a cavalier. Confound it, Lucas, you aren't anything! Neither in birth nor nation nor way of thinking. Does anyone alive understand you? Do you understand yourself?' " (p. 146)

Maybe he is an American?

How To End A Thriller

Sometimes, near the end of a thriller, the villain has the hero at gun point and could kill him but delays, giving the hero a chance to turn the tables. The classic example is Donovan Grant and James Bond in From Russia, With Love.

The conventions of this genre require that:

the hero's life is threatened;
nevertheless, he survives;
his survival is not too implausible.

At the end of Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword (New York, 1960), Gasparo, the villain, points a cocked crossbow at Lucas, the hero, and tells him to drop his sword, which Lucas does. So:

(i) Why does Gasparo not kill Lucas immediately?
(ii) How does Lucas survive?
(iii) Is his survival reasonably plausible?

(i) Gasparo does not shoot immediately because he wants to make Lucas hate him and die unshriven (a horrible inversion of Christian belief in damnation) so he starts to tell him how he will torture and kill Djansha, the heroine.

(ii) Djansha, who had been lying bound behind the standing Lucas,"...had cut her bonds with his sword while Gasparo's attention was diverted." (p. 279) She leaps up and throws the sword at Gasparo who shoots but misses...etc.

(iii) Verdict: Gasparo's motivation is horribly plausible; Djansha cutting her bonds with the sword less so.

Slavery

Does Christianity prohibit slavery? Maybe not always. St Paul taught that both master and slave could be spiritually freed in Christ but did not oppose the continuation of the master-slave relationship as such. In fact, slaves should obey masters who should be kind to slaves. (Of course, it did not matter greatly if the Kingdom was imminent.)

A character in Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword set in 1306 mentions that the Church has forbidden Christians to enslave fellow Christians, thus motivating slave traders and owners to withhold Christian propaganda from their slaves - a strange inversion of the injunction to spread the Word to all creation.

It is possible to pursue a self-interested agenda within a framework of Christian belief. An Evangelical believes that he is saved whatever he does. A Catholic believes that, as long as he has confessed any mortal sins, he need only endure a temporary spell in Purgatory before, equally, being "saved." Both beliefs leave room for much self-interested behavior which, for Catholics in 1306, could include buying and selling foreign slaves.

Finishing Rogue Sword

OK: "Boniface" is a word applied to innkeepers and is derived from the name of a dramatic character of that profession, like calling a traitor a "Judas" etc.

Since Rogue Sword is the only Poul Anderson volume in my possession while spending four nights away from home, I will probably run out of new additions to make to this blog. Slightly longer term, I might acquire some (to me) new material that will have to be read for the first time, not just reread, before it can be commented on.

Setting Rogue Sword in 1306 was, for those who know the relevant history (I suppose not many of us), kind of like setting a twentieth century novel in 1913 or 1938: it is already known what will happen next. In this case, the Templars will be suppressed; the Hospitallers will take possession of Rhodes where they will rule for over two hundred years before, after another period of homelessness, being given Malta and becoming known as the Knights of Malta. Great events are about to occur.

In fact, just as the Western Roman Empire had fallen a thousand years earlier in Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys tetralogy, the Eastern remnant of the Empire is now in terminal decline.

Lucas, evading the Inquisition, is hidden, fed and helped to escape by a woman called "Xenia." Because the name is familiar, I googled it to check whether Anderson was cameoing an existing character. He wasn't but "Xenia" turns out to be a Greek word for hospitality.

Perspectives In Rogue Sword

In Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword (New York, 1960), the introductory Author's Note states that the main source of information about the Grand Catalan Company is a chronicle by Company member, Ramon Muntaner.

Muntaner is a character in the novel so the novel's hero, Lucas, knows this Muntaner and even fights alongside him. A reader of historical fiction once told me that he disliked the incorporation of historical figures into such fictions. I cannot think why. Surely nothing is more satisfying than reading about a fictitious character's conversations and interactions with individuals who are known to have had a historical existence?

Anderson refers to Marco Polo twice, in the Time Patrol story, "The Only Game In Town," and in the historical novel, Rogue Sword, but I don't think he brings Polo on stage anywhere?

The first three pages of Chapter XI, like some passages in the Time Patrol story, "Star Of The Sea," simply inform us of historical facts, mainly who fought whom then and with what result. The combatants include Muntaner and this purely historical passage ends with a quotation from his chronicle:

"And I have told you this fine adventure in order that you should all understand that it was due to nothing but the power of God, and that this was not done through our worth but by the virtue and grace of God." (p. 160)

The very next paragraph begins:

"That was the only warlike action Lucas saw during this time." (p. 160)

- so we are back in the historical fiction. But fiction is about life. At the end, Lucas (and the author) reflects:

"If a man is fortunate, there are a few pure moments in his life. They do not last; the doubts and fears, guilt, loneliness, and all the grubby little weaknesses return; but he has had those moments and knows life is joyous." (p. 283)

I am preparing a talk on Zen meditation and this is one of the points that I want to make.

Still Reading Rogue Sword

I am not away from a computer this week after all but maybe with less time to spend on it.

Often the context gives some idea of the meaning of a word but sometimes also we think we know what a term means until asked. When asked by a fellow pupil at school what "enigma" meant, I suggested "mystery" and was told that that would fit the context but I remained unsure. The dictionary said, "A mysterious person or thing," which is more specific.

Anderson has a knack of using some vocabulary that remains baffling - until it is checked in a dictionary. Here is some more in Rogue Sword (New York, 1960):

"...morion..." (p. 172);
"...shallop..." (p. 174);
"...periplus..." (p. 222)
"...palomer..." (p. 261).?

The aspects of Anderson's works that I have come to monitor while rereading are:

wealth of vocabulary, as above;

clever use of language, particularly the disguising of verse as prose;

 
the author's control and deployment of the narrative point of view;

his occasional humor;

 
references to the seasons as showing the passage of time and also as displaying the "pathetic fallacy," i.e., the literary conceit that natural conditions reflect human feelings (in fantasy, they can also reflect divine feelings);

mastery of, and sometimes merging of, different genres;

connections between his works whether or not they belong to the same trilogy, tetralogy, series or even genre;

comparisons with Wells, Heinlein, Niven, Blish and Gaiman;

Anderson's values, with which he rightly challenges his readers;

his treatment of issues concerning the longer term development of society and humanity;

 
facts learned by reading his historical fictions;

his ability to render his characters' pre-scientific world views.

That list is longer than I expected it would be when I started to write it.

There is an odd momentary lapse in control of point of view in Rogue Sword. Lucas' return to his master's house is described from his point of view. However, as he approaches the opening gate, we are told that:

"The gatekeeper's mouth fell wide at the sight of the men in armor and the black-robed Dominican friar who accompanied them." (pp. 200-201)

The gatekeeper sees these men approaching behind the viewpoint character so they are described to us before he turns around and sees them. But, immediately after that, the narrative returns to Lucas' single point of view.

Terminology

I have said before that reading Anderson requires a dictionary - sometimes more than others. During a battle in Rogue Sword (New York, 1960):

"...heaumes..." (p. 100);
"...gonfanon..." (p. 101);
" 'Desperta ferres!' " (p. 102);
"...poitrail..." (p. 102).

I think there were similar words earlier but I did not note them at the time. We miss new vocabulary as we continue reading through a passage instead of pausing to focus on an individual word.

" 'Desperta ferres!' " is immediately followed by "Wake the iron!" which turns out to be the English translation of the Latin. Not knowing this yet, I continued to read with incomprehension that the Almugavares, whose war shout was "Desperta ferres!," struck their spearheads against the stones, raising sparks. What stones? Were the enemy shielded with stones? Why blunt and damage spearheads by striking them on the ground - if that is what they were doing?

Anderson does not explain. Apparently, however, this group, the Almugavares, did shout that war cry to frighten the enemy and to invoke the military use of iron. Further, they did strike the stones underfoot in order to intimidate their enemies by raising sparks.

Like the wedge formation described in War Of The Gods, this is a detail of military history that I have learned by reading Anderson. I have yet to google the other odd words quoted above.

Addendum, 10/12/12:

"...mangonel..." (p. 115);
" '...pourpoint...' "(p. 116).

Earlier:

" '...QUEAN!' " (p. 72) (I thought this was a miss-spelling but I have googled it and it is a word.)
"...tasses..." (p. 76)
"...Turcopol..." (p. 76). ?

Further on:

"...leny...lugsail..." (p. 119); ?
"...boniface..." (p. 123)

Rogue Sword V

In Rogue Sword (New York, 1960), Poul Anderson imagines an interesting extension of Norse mythology into Christian cosmology. The simple, superstitious Pedro imagines that, if his side loses a battle:

" '...we'll be enrolled in good St George's host. I daresay fine booty can be had from a raid on Hell...seeing how many bishops and moneylenders dwell there.' " (p. 94)

But they don't take it with them, Pedro! Pagan chiefs were buried with personal possessions but not bishops. A raid on Hell sounds absurd but does happen in Anderson's fantasy, Operation Chaos. Both Anderson, in Operation..., and Neil Gaiman, in a Sandman story, followed Robert Heinlein's Magic Inc. By contrast, the blurb on an edition of James Blish's Black Easter described the demons as making a raid on the universe.

Pedro's theology continues. He knows that his side fights in God's cause because:

" 'Priest says so. Priest knows about these things. A mercy of Heaven, that common folk like me needn't bother our heads.' " (p. 94)

It does not occur to him that because, in this battle both sides are Christian, the enemy has priests as well.

Pedro suggests that Lucas thinks too much and Lucas agrees but the obvious rejoinder is that Pedro thinks too little or not at all. When he guffaws at an absurd joke, Lucas envies him his simplicity. I do not. Better to be Socrates unhappy than a pig ecstatic.

Rogue Sword IV

In Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword (New York, 1960), the chase sequence is followed by another Anderson interest, a summary of some quite complicated military history. An historically genuine but perhaps little known military outfit called the Grand Catalan Company has been employed by, but come into conflict with, the Eastern Empire and we are told many of the details, although we would need to study the text to retain them.

Lucas joins the Company but also refers to a more famous organization:

"Lucas reflected that anyone cast out of so notoriously lax, greedy, and violent a brotherhood as the Knights Templar must have been a bandit indeed." (pp. 82-83)

Yet the Catalan Company welcomes this "bandit" into a leading role.

Reading about the Templars, it becomes necessary to check dates. Rogue Sword, Chapter I, begins in April 1306. The Templars were suppressed, in France to start with, on Friday 13th October 1307, an event covered by Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Death And The Knight." (That story deals quite plausibly with the Templars, explaining their secret rituals without transforming them into anything absurd like a branch of the Patrol, yet still writes one Patrolman's intervention into recorded Templar history.)

Like the same author's The Golden Slave and The Last Viking Trilogy, Rogue Sword is pure historical fiction. These five volumes could be read by historical fiction fans without any reference to Anderson's other works but, reading Rogue Sword instead as part of its author's complete works, we notice its resonances with what I call his "historical science fiction":

Crusaders had sacked Constaninople - that happened in the time travel novel, There Will Be Time;
the Templars will be suppressed - that happens in the Time Patrol story, "Death And The Knight."

A (valid) cliche: the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Rogue Sword III

I will be away from a computer for most of this coming week.

Rogue Sword has got into a long chase sequence as our hero and his mistress run away from the forces of the state mobilised against them by the hero's old enemy, a merchant of Venice. I commented before that I thought chase sequences consumed too many pages in other works.

A hundred years previously, Crusaders had sacked Constantinople, an event described in Anderson's time travel novel, There Will Be Time.

The political geography of Rogue Sword includes exotic place names familiar from poems by James Elroy Flecker: Famagusta; Cyprus; Samarkand.

Anderson's title Fleet Of Stars is a quotation from a Flecker poem. Quotation from Flecker is another similarity between Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman.

Sorry, folks. Just a few random observations before departure tomorrow morning.

Rogue Sword II

In the Prologue of Rogue Sword (New York, 1960), Cretan-born Lucas, aged fifteen, leaves Venice for Constantinople. In Chapter I, aged twenty nine, he is in Constantinople for the second time after fourteen years in Cathay. The date is April, 1306.

In Cathay, he had learned some meditation techniques or martial arts from a Ch'an Buddhist monk and in Constantinople has befriended a Christian military monk of the Knights of St John. Unfortunately, on page 36 (which is as far as I have reread) Lucas and the Knight have got into a sword fight with the wronged merchant from whom Lucas had escaped in Venice. It is to be hoped that the novel will soon move beyond action fiction and sword fights but I might find out tomorrow.

Fourteen years in Cathay occur off-stage between the Prologue and Chapter I. Lucas remembers:

"...graceful red roofs, willows and arched bridges above garden ponds, a philosopher who had been his friend and many gentle beauties who had been his loves...music in violet nights when the cherry trees bloomed, and a certain mountain seen through clouds, and temple bells that rang in his dreams just at sunrise...what had driven him back to the filthy West?" (p. 30)

- but he realizes that he had returned  because "...he could not change himself into an Oriental." (p. 30)

Later in the novel, we realize that his time in China had broadened his perspective.

On page 36, the sword fight is interrupted by the unwelcome approach of the Varangian Guard. I have only just googled and learned that, despite serving in Constantinople, the Varangians were what we call "Vikings." This connects with Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy, Volumes I and II of which I will be able to reread after Rogue Sword.

Rogue Sword

My study of Poul Anderson's works of fiction set in the past will have to end with the historical novel Rogue Sword until I can acquire copies of The Sign Of The Raven and Mother Of Kings.

How many Anderson heroes do we first meet as they evade pursuit by diving into water? At least two. I think there may be one more?

The Winter Of The World, Chapter II, set during a future Ice Age, begins as Josserek Derrain bursts from his prison cabin, fights his way across the deck, dives overboard, remains underwater as long as possible and emerges under the dock of a harbor in a fictitious future city.

Rogue Sword, Prologue, set in the late thirteenth century, begins as Lucas springs through a window into a canal, remains underwater as long as possible and emerges under a house in Venice.

Of course, we must next be told who they are and what they are about but the narrative emphasis is clearly on action.

The Dominic Flandry story, "A Plague of Masters," could have commenced thus. Flandry does spring through a broken window and roll down a slanting roof into a canal on a colonized planet in the future but this time Anderson first describes the build up to Flandry's escape. And, of course, this is not the first Flandry story but a sequel to "A Message In Secret" which also was not the first.

Three different well realized imaginative settings: past Earth; future Earth; a future extra-solar colony. Anderson enjoyed action-adventure fiction and wrote it well but fortunately wrote a lot more than that.

The Fourteenth and Twenty Fourth Centuries

As far as I can see without having reread it yet, Poul Anderson's historical novel Rogue Sword is set in about 1306. His historical fantasy novel, The Merman's Children, ends in 1322 but its main action had been set decades earlier. His science fiction (sf) novel The High Crusade describes a sequence of events that began in 1345 but its framing passages are set more than a thousand years later. Although these three works do not form a series, I think that an appropriate reading order for them would be:

first, The Merman's Children because it describes the end of Faerie which features in other Anderson novels;
secondly, Rogue Sword because its background is simply historical with no fantasy or sf;
thirdly, The High Crusade not only because its framing passages are set in the future but also because its main action features faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel and alien contact which are major themes of Anderson's futuristic sf.

In The High Crusade, the alien imperialists are like blue Merseians but not quite. Their FTL involves quasi-velocity with gravity control and no FTL equivalent of radio so it sounds like the FTL in Anderson's Technic History. There is a reference to St Dismas, van Rijn's patron saint. The collapse of the interstellar empire is followed by feudalism as happened on Earth after the Roman Empire in The King Of Ys.

The passages set in the future mention an Israeli Empire which does not exist in any of Anderson's other fictitious futures but also mention a sociotechnician which is a kind of scientific advance that he does envisage in other works.

The Three BC

I have reread The Dancer From Atlantis, am rereading Conan The Rebel and will reread The Golden Slave. These are Poul Anderson's three novels set BC:

Conan The Rebel (heroic fantasy), past events and supernatural beings;
The Dancer From Atlantis (science fiction), past events and future technology;
The Golden Slave (historical fiction), past events and the origins of myths.

Next to be reread might be the three novels set in the fourteenth century:

The Merman's Children (historical fantasy), past events and supernatural beings;
The High Crusade (science fiction), past events and extraterrestrial technology;
Rogue Sword (historical fiction), past events.

A single long novel covering these themes, except the supernatural, is:

The Boat Of A Million Years (historical fiction and science fiction): past, present and future events and a mutation.

Anderson smuggles science fiction into the past via time travel, an early alien invasion and immortality. His works give the impression of systematically covering every possible implication of an idea as if they had been preplanned with this purpose in mind.

Finding an Unexpected Connection by Sean M. Brooks

I recently reread (June, 2011) Poul Anderson's historical novel ROGUE SWORD. The book is set in the waning days of the Eastern Roman Empire of the early 1300's. The Catalan Grand Company of mercenaries was then ravaging the dying Empire. Because the Eastern Emperor Andronicus II had treacherously murdered the Grand Company's leader.

A secondary but important character in ROGUE SWORD is Brother Hugh de Tourneville, a knight of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem/Rhodes/Malta. Brother Hugh's name seemed familiar, and I found his surname in THE HIGH CRUSADE.

A few quotes are indicated. The protagonist is Lucas Greco, who is waiting at the beginning of Chapter I to meet a new friend: "He stood in the Augustaion, waiting for Brother Hugh de Tourneville to meet him as they had agreed." Later in the same chapter I read: "this gentle, drawling second son of a Lincolnshire baron..."

Next I found this in Chapter I of THE HIGH CRUSADE (Brother Parvus narrating): "I was born some forty years before my story begins, a younger son of Wat Brown. He was blacksmith in the little town of Ansby, which lay in northeastern Lincolnshire. The lands were enfeoffed to the Baron de Tourneville..." (Baron Roger).
I was surprised ROGUE SWORD and THE HIGH CRUSADE had a connection of any kind. For one thing, THE HIGH CRUSADE, while a serious book, is often rollicking. ROGUE SWORD, by contrast, is a fierce, grim, and bloody book.

It was the year 1306 when Lucas Greco first met Brother Hugh de Tourneville. THE HIGH CRUSADE begins in 1345. My guess is Brother Hugh was the younger brother of Baron Roger's grandfather Nevil de Tourneville (mentioned in Chapter IX of CRUSADE). The Tourneville family was also said to be descended from a bastard son of William the Conqueror.

THE HIGH CRUSADE was first published as a magazine serialization in 1959 and published as a book in 1960. ROGUE SWORD was published in 1960 and reprinted by Zebra Books in 1980.

I also thought of how, in Chapter XV of ROGUE SWORD (and various other pages) Poul Anderson seems to have accepted the hostile view of the Knights Templar spread by their enemies. However, the last Time Patrol story Anderson wrote: "Death and the Knight," gives a less starkly negative view of the Templars.