Star Ship III

Poul Anderson's "Star Ship" is about endings. The planet Khazak is in its Iron Age. Five human couples were stranded there fifty years ago. Two human generations have grown up on Khazak and, mostly, have adopted Khazaki culture. Dougald Anson of the third generation has adventured and fought around the planet with his close friend and comrade, the Khazaki Janazik. We would like to read those adventures.

The human beings have organized enough industry to built a rocket for the return journey to their orbiting exploratory faster than light interstellar spaceship. Because of the warlike Khazaki culture, there is a fight for the rocket. A usurper who can reach the Star Ship will be able to conquer the planet, then invade other planetary systems. This must be prevented.

There are human beings and Khazaki on both sides of the conflict. Masefield Ellen is with Anson, Janazik and the loyalists but Ellen's brother, Carson, is with the rebels. Ellen is Khazaki enough to regard anyone who kills Carse as a blood foe. Anson loves Ellen but kills Carson...

Janazik claims to have killed Carson. This means the end of his comradeship with Anson. But, in any case, contact with interstellar civilization will end the Khazaki Iron Age so Janazik loses not only his friend but his culture. Anson's prolonged adolescence ends when he marries Ellen. The three generations long isolation of the small human community on Khazak also comes to an end. In fact, the story is about nothing but endings.

It is implied that there is a Galactic civilization out there whereas, at this stage of the Chronology of Psychotechnic History, I think it is truer to say that humanity is just beginning to explore nearby planetary systems: a story of endings in an era of beginnings.

Star Ship II

In Poul Anderson's "Star Ship" (IN Anderson, Starship, New York, 1982, pp. 36-81), any exploratory faster than light interstellar spaceship on a mission of several years is crewed by married couples, in accordance with Service policy. (p. 53) This is more than a century before the founding of the Coordination Service. We are not told the full name of this earlier Service, although we do gather that there are "Galactic Coordinators" (p. 55) at this early stage.

Detecting a Sol-like sun orbited by an Earth-like planet with primitive inhabitants, the five couples in a particular Star Ship descend to the planet in their gravity-controlled lifeboat only to have its atomic convertors go out of control and destroy the boat, stranding them on the surface with nothing but their clothes and a few hand weapons. Fifty years later, two human generations have been born on the planet Khazak and most have adopted the local Krakenau culture although a few have tried to remain Terrestrial.

The Khazaki are violent, predatory dwellers in early Iron Age city-states. In order both to survive and to construct a rocket for the return journey to their orbiting Star Ship, the human families have had to:

ally with Krakenau;
teach the Krakenaui military principles and how to make new weapons;
build chemical plant;
mine and refine manganese, chromium and other elements;
manufacture superalloys able to withstand the combustion of rocket fuel;
design a long obsolete rocket ship;
conduct years of research, with only a handful of sufficiently interested humans and Khazaki;
test a rocket that exploded during acceleration ten years before;
build a second, which is yet to be tested when there is a coup in Krakenau.

Could they have done that much in just fifty years?

The view point character, Dougald Anson, close friend of a Khazaki, adventuring around the planet, able to speak Krakenaui, Volgazani and several other Khazaki languages as well as spaceman's Terrestrial, is yet another potential series character although he appears only in this single story.

Star Ship

According to the Chronology of the Psychotechnic History (Poul Anderson, Starship, New York, 1982, pp. 283-284), "Star Ship" is set in 2875. Fifty years previously, thus in 2825, ten Terrestrial married couples had been marooned on the inhabited planet Khazak.

Also according to the Chronology, the hyperdrive was invented in 2784. According to "Gypsy," a few years later, the Traveler left Sol for Alpha Centauri with "'...a load of colonists...'" (p. 19). Thrown thousands of light years off course by an unexplained phenomenon, later revealed to be a trepidation vortex, the Traveler spent over twenty years looking for home before settling on Harbor. The narrator, Thorkild Erling, was born and raised in the Traveler. His son, Einar, nine years old, is growing up on Harbor. The Chronology says that "Gypsy" is set in 2815.

If "...a few years..." is three, if over twenty years means twenty one and if Einar was born soon after the arrival on Harbor, then that would give us 2817, approximately, as the date of "Gypsy." Thorkild and his companions take another year to prepare for their return to space as the first of the Nomads. The similarity to James Blish's flying cities becomes explicit when Thorkild reflects that:

"When our descendants were many, they would build other ships until there was a fleet, a mobile city hurtling from sun to sun." (p. 32)

Blish's Okie cities are compared to pollinating bees of the galaxy. The Nomads will be "...the bloodstream of the interstellar civilization..." (ibid.)

If we try to put more detail into this section of the Chronology, then, leaving out a few minor events, we get something like:

2784 Hyperdrive invented
2787 Traveler lost because of a trepidation vortex
2800 New Hope, lost because of a trepidation vortex, crash lands on Atlantis
2808 Traveler colonizes Harbor
2818 Traveler initiates Nomadism
2825 Star Ship marooned on Khazak
2875 The events of "Star Ship" on Khazak
2900 Stellar Union and Coordination Service founded
3040 Nerthus colonized
3100 A survey man from Nerthus discovers the isolated Atlantean colony
3120 A Coordination Service field agent turns Nomad
3200 The Third Dark Ages

Lost Starships

Even with an FTL drive, it would be easy for interstellar spaceships and even for entire extrasolar colonies to become isolated both from each other and from mainstream galactic civilization, if there were any. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

the Traveler, thrown off course by a trepidation vortex, founds a colony on Harbor, then initiates the Nomad culture;

the New Hope, thrown off course by a trepidation vortex, founds a colony on Atlantis that remains isolated for three hundred years;

the crew of another Star Ship is stranded on an inhabited planet for an indefinite period and I am about to reread "Star Ship," in Starship, about this third scenario.

"Gypsy," about the Traveler, and "Star Ship" are set between the invention of the hyperdrive in 2784 and the founding of the Stellar Union with its Coordination Service in 2900 whereas Virgin Planet, about the discovery of the Atlantean colony, is set in 3100 which means that the New Hope was lost about 2800, approximately 15 years before "Gypsy" and 75 before "Star Ship," in the period when FTL travel had just begun and there was as yet no knowledge of trepidation vortices.

The Chronology of the Psychotechnic History should include the loss of the New Hope about 2800 as well as the events of Virgin Planet about 3100. After Virgin Planet, there is a rapid succession of a few stories before the Stellar Union collapses:

3110 "Teucan"
3115 "The Pirate"
3128 The Peregrine
3200 The Third Dark Ages