Alternative Literatures

We recently referred to CS Lewis. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed, originally as NW Clerk. There is an A Grief Observed in SM Stirling's Draka timeline but it is written by Yolande Ingolfsson.

In our timeline, EP Thompson wrote The Making Of The English Working Class and Eric Hobsbawm wrote The Age Of Revolution, The Age Of Capital, The Age Of Empire and The Age Of Extremes. In the Draka timeline, EP Hobsdown wrote The Age Of Domination.

In Stirling's Angrezi Raj timeline (as far as I remember), Kipling continued to write after the divergence, recounting the Exodus, while Conan Doyle instead wrote detective stories set in the London of an alternative timeline where there had been no Fall.

It is logical that fiction set in an alternative timeline should refer to and even quote fiction written in that timeline. Sandra Miesel's interstitial passages in Anderson's Psychotechnic History mention "What if there had been no World War III?" fictions.

In a British TV drama set in Nazi-occupied Britain, the writer of a TV historical drama about World War II remarked, "Well, I can't rewrite history!"

In Archona

Regular readers know that this blog locates Poul Anderson in a literary tradition from Mary Shelly through Olaf Stapledon, HG Wells and Robert Heinlein to Anderson and SM Stirling. Wells wrote one of (almost) everything, including one alternative history, Men Like Gods. Anderson, of course, wrote several alternative histories whereas Stirling, specializing in this sf sub-genre, develops it further than Anderson.

Stirling's account of a guest suite in the von Shrakenberg townhouse in Archona, capital city of the Domination of the Draka, displays the meticulous attention to detail that is frequently appreciated on this blog:

Coromandel sandalwood screens in pearl and lapis;
a round water bed on a canopied marble dais;
a wall of frosted glass balcony doors, delicately etched with traceries of fern and water-fowl, slightly opened to admit diffuse city light fragmented by wind-stirred leaves;
smells of water, stone and frangipani blossoms;
air warm enough for nakedness.
-SM Stirling, The Stone Dogs (New York, 1990), p. 264.

Three senses!

I am ignorant about Classical music. How much of the information in the following passage is common to our timeline and how much is particular to the Draka timeline? -

"Her mind still glowed from the impossible beauty of Gerraldson's music... Why had he killed himself, at the height of his talent? Why had Mozart, for that matter?" (ibid.)

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.

The Logic Of The Draka

(i) The ancestors of SM Stirling's Draka were defeated soldiers who were granted a territory but had to conquer it for themselves.

(ii) There were too many natives to exterminate so the settlers "had to" enslave them - although they also had to avoid the terminology of slavery.

(iii) Thus, the Draka wound up putting all of their own children through intensive military training so that they will be able to maintain a permanent grip on a much larger population of "serfs."

(iv) For the survival of the Draka as "the Race," serfs must be kept permanently subordinated, uneducated and (mostly) illiterate. If serfs were liberated, then some would kill all Draka and also all former serfs who remained loyal to the Draka.

(v) The Draka state also needs a much larger Jannisary army of comparatively able and privileged serfs.

(vi) Treating serfs essentially as property, Draka men take concubines from among serf women. However, the young Eric von Shrakenberg, given a concubine by his father at the age of fifteen, is, according to Draka values, at fault when he values her as an individual.

(vii) Abandoning any pretense at Christianity, the Draka explicitly base their collective philosophy on writers like Nietzsche.

(viii) Rebel serfs escape to surrounding free areas from where they hope to return better armed so the Draka "have to" conquer more and more territory.

(ix) They conquer all of Africa and, after their participation in the Great War, much of Asia.

(x) Other civilized countries disapprove of Draka values and are inclined to boycott the Domination.

(xi) Consequently, the Draka, acknowledging their own incompatibility with all other social systems, realize that they must eventually conquer the whole Earth, reducing all other populations to serfdom.

(xii) My opinion: this is completely impossible. But: what happens in the rest of the tetralogy? I am only half way through reading Volume I. This is all relevant on a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. Anderson speculated about diverse social systems, some of them in alternative histories. Stirling develops the idea of alternative histories much further and his Draka are an extreme example of social/political speculation.

A black work colleague described himself to me as a "field nigger." He explained that "your house niggers" are your maids, nannies and cooks who regard themselves as part of the family whereas "your field niggers" are plantation workers who want to burn down the whole estate. I use this usually offensive word, inside quotation marks, only because he did. The Draka create and preside over a population of "field niggers." I cannot see this lasting for very long but then I must read on to find out what happens next...