Adrienne Rolfe's Library

SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004), Chapter Thirteen, p. 356.

One shelf:

Into the Alternate Universe
A World Unknown
The Gates of Creation
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
The Complete Paratime
Three Hearts and Three Lions
A Midsummer Tempest
Chase the Morning
The Key to Irunium
Worlds of If
Sideways in Time
Lest Darkness Fall
Guns of the South 

We are pleased to recognize two, highly appropriate, titles by Poul Anderson.
The most evocative of these titles, and covers, is Chase the Morning, a quotation from James Elroy Flecker's Hassan:

"Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea..."

Hassan is also in Adrienne's library.
Stirling concludes his The Peshawar Lancers by quoting this same line from Hassan.
The title of Anderson's The Fleet of Stars is a quotation from another poem by Flecker.
Flecker is quite a poet. (See also here.)

Cosmography

The Solar System comprises:

the Sun;
four inner planets, including the Earth-Moon double planet;
the asteroid belt;
four outer planets;
the Kuiper Belt;
the Oort Cloud.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the Moon and two inner planets, Mars and Venus, are colonized;

in Larry Niven's Known Space future history, the Moon and the asteroid belt are colonized, the Belt becomes politically independent of the UN Earth-Moon government and a human protector hides in the cometary halo;

in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, two different extrasolar species are allowed to colonize Mars and the outer planet, Jupiter, respectively;

in Anderson's Harvest of Stars future history, Lunarians adapted to live in lunar gravity colonize the Moon and later Proserpina in the Kuiper Belt, from where they mine the comets of the Oort Cloud, and both Terrans and Lunarians colonize Mars;

the Oort Cloud "...mingled with the comet clouds of neighbor suns..." (The Fleet Of Stars, p. 38);

the nearest other star, Proxima Centauri, forms a triple system with Alpha Centauri A and B;

Lunarians have colonized asteroids of Alpha Centauri A whereas Terrans who colonized a doomed planet in that system have moved to systems further away.

Amaterasu

"In the ancient faith of her people, Amaterasu was the Sun Goddess, from whom flowed the light that gives life. The discoverers of a world far and strange named it for her because they hoped that someday their kind would make it blossom."
-Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1998), p. 1.

The opening sentence of Poul Anderson's fourth Harvest of Stars novel connects with my recent religious philosophical reflections.

The Sun gives light and life. Because of the Sun, there are living beings and the light by which they can see. Thus, the One (all that is) knows itself by the light of the Sun. I think that "One Sun Now" would be a meaningful mantra although zazen is awareness without mantras. The One cannot be prayed to - unless we want to talk to ourselves. We are each our own local representative of the One, although we are still learning how to fulfill this role. Much of the time, our biological inheritance and social conditioning make us think that we are separate selves with the sole goals of survival and pleasure or make us identify with a single aspect of the One as against others.

Although it makes no sense to address the One, hypothetical beings, lower than the One but higher than us, can be invoked. My morning prayer, so to say, is:

"We meditate on the lovely light of the god Savitri; may it stimulate our thoughts." (See here.)

Solar deities are important personifications of the source of light and life and the solar disc can symbolize the One. Higher beings might be our future selves or descendants. Anson Guthrie refers to "...the gods..." (p. 5) because, in the Harvest of Stars future history, downloaded human personalities now direct the terraforming of entire planets.

Today And Tomorrow

This morning, I have finished rereading Poul Anderson's Harvest The Fire. Today, while the sky is blue, I will walk, then swim. Tomorrow I might start to reread Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, unless a long awaited novel by SM Stirling at last arrives by post.

Proserpina is one of Anderson's most imaginative creations. Venator says that it is always night there but the Proserpinans carve vast colorful habitats inside this large asteroid and can simulate a sky on a ceiling. Jesse Nicol, dissatisfied in the Inner Solar System, goes to Proserpina to become one of their poets.

Mars And Martians

Mars and Martians are a big subject. In fact, they need not even be a single subject. Mars can be uninhabited. Alternatively, if Martians are imagined to exist, then they can be encountered elsewhere, e.g., on Earth in Wells' The War Of The Worlds. Heinlein's Red Planet is set on an inhabited Mars whereas his A Stranger In A Strange Land features a Martian-raised man back on Earth.

When recently I listed Larry Niven as an author of a composite Mars, I forgot to mention that Martians also appear in his Known Space future history where water poisons them - and they continue to exist in the Map of Mars on the Ringworld long after a human protector has exterminated them in the Solar System.

I have mentioned Poul Anderson's several races of Martians but Anderson also presents a Mars that was uninhabited until colonized by human beings. See:

"Martians"
AI, Desert Planets And Jihads
Visions Of Mars
Inrai

A desert planet where water is precious and where human bodies must be entirely covered to protect them from the environment - SM Stirling's Mars sounds like Herbert's Dune, except that Dune is hot whereas Mars is cold.

Philosophy II

In Aycharaych's fiction, Elders and Others have opposite approaches to the heat death of the universe: attempted transcendence as against resigned acceptance. In the terminology that I suggested in "Philosophy," Elders back energy and consciousness whereas Others back inertia and unconsciousness. In this kind of context, first letters are often capitalized. Thus:

Energy and Consciousness;
Inertia and Unconsciousness.

Aycharaych's fiction also posits a next stage for individual consciousness. Might it be recorded, duplicated and merged so that what had been a discrete personality becomes instead just one set of memories and skills within a more comprehensive node of consciousness, so to say? In The Day Of Their Return, these questions are fictions within the fiction whereas, in Anderson's later works, the Harvest Of Stars tetralogy and Genesis, they are addressed as real issues for the characters. As I have said before, Anderson gives the impression of addressing every possibility.

Aycharaych's fiction has Elders and Others waging a cosmic conflict. I cannot help asking whether the cosmos is not vast enough to incorporate many ways, as our single planet is. His attempt to mislead and misdirect on a cosmic scale is similar to that of the Teramind in The Fleet Of Stars, although the latter would not have entailed violence.

In these posts, I try to mention every point, however minor, in Anderson's works that catches my attention, knowing that other readers would focus on different details. On Aeneas, the nord use of Anglic without articles extends to Ivar writing, "Noneless..." instead of "Nonetheless..." (Captain Flandry, Riverdale, NY, 2010, p. 211).

In a previous post, I missed one expression of Aenean religiosity. When Jao explains that Riverfolk coffins float down the river to the Sea of Orcus, she adds that a seer who is there now "'...will call back the Old Shen from the stars. Will our dead then rise from the waters?'" (p. 169)

"The sea will give up her dead..." No one else mentions resurrection in connection with the Return but Jao, like, it seems, every other Aenean, has a creative religious imagination.

Spying

Who was the first spy, secret agent or intelligence officer? Moses sent Caleb and others to check the lie of the Promised Land. Odysseus, disguised, entered the besieged Troy where he saw the casus belli, Helen. Thus, our oldest Mosaic and Homeric traditions describe spying expeditions.

Military intelligence gathering was a feature of the ancient world. In Roma Mater (London, 1989) by Poul and Karen Anderson, the Irish King Niall sends "'...a trusty man...on many a mission...' - '...to wander as a harmless pedlar, watching, listening, sometimes getting a soul drunk or furious till his tongue ran free.' " (p. 189) Later, Niall's adversary, the King of Ys, has a handfast man, a reformed brigand, who performs the same service for him.

Intelligence is gathered by witchcraft. Forsquilis of the Nine goes as an owl and sees a man, " '...him that I espied...it is he!' " (p. 91) Later, Gratillonius remembers seeing an owl. Later again, Forsquilis asks him if he remembers seeing an owl. She shows him her equipment - a chamber lit only by a lamp in a cat's skull, scrolls, codices, a Tyrean figurine, inscribed bones, dried herbs, old flints - and he asks her to spy on events elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

Anderson fans know that Dominic Flandry is an Intelligence Officer of the Terran Empire but intelligence gathering continues in a later series. In Volume IV of the Harvest Of Stars tetralogy, Solar artificial intelligence sends robot probes to spy on the extrasolar colonies. A download of the leading character Anson Guthrie responds by flying to the Solar System to gather intelligence there. Guthrie is a remote successor of Odysseus in more ways than one.

Contrasts

I have gone directly from rereading Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars (1997) to rereading his Three Hearts And Three Lions (1953). The contrast could not be more complete: forty four years back through Anderson's career from late science fiction (sf) to early fantasy. Between the early fifties and the late nineties, there was an earlier period of very different sf.

The Fleet Of Stars is Volume IV of a hard sf tetralogy of imaginative speculation about the future of society, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel and the cosmos. Three Hearts And Three Lions is the first of four more loosely connected fantasy novels about parallel universes where history was different and magic works.

The Harvest Of Stars tetralogy, culminating in The Fleet Of Stars, uses the terms "chaos" and "chaotic" in their modern scientific senses whereas Three Hearts... presents a supernatural/magical cosmic conflict between Law and Chaos that is also to be found in Michael Moorcock's fantasies and, under the names of "Order" and "Chaos," in DC Comics including Neil Gaiman's The Sandman which I have previously compared to Anderson's works. (I have just found a character's name common to Three Hearts... and The Sandman: Alianora.)

Despite all the differences, the reader remains conscious of being in just another part of Anderson's  imagination. We need not worry that, if we enjoy one of the genres in which he works, we will dislike others simply because they are different.

Inrai

In Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, the Inrai are Lunarian freedom fighters/terrorists hiding in the Martian desert, attacking caravans. Anachronistic maybe but Anderson makes them plausible. Their cause is hopeless especially when one of their attacks has been repulsed with fatalities. However, they persevere and play a crucial role.

Fenn contacts the Inrai who contact the Lunarians on Proserpina who contact download Guthrie who is now exploring the inner Solar System. Fenn and Guthrie rendezvous in space where, combining their knowledge, skills and resources, they steal data from a gravitational lens and expose an attempted deception of the human race.

From that point on, the reader is concerned about the fate of Fenn, shot dead but possibly to be downloaded and resurrected, and about the consequences of the exposure of the attempted deception. It would be easy to forget the Inrai but they were inserted into the novel for a reason and, without them, Fenn would not have met the legendary Guthrie. The Inrai have in fact furthered the cause of Lunarian freedom.

"Fenn Woke"

Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1997) ends with a two word chapter: "FENN WOKE." (p. 403) What does this mean?

Fenn has been shot dead but his brain has been preserved and its contents will be downloaded into an artificial neural network that will be carried at sub-light speed to an extrasolar colony where technology will allow Fenn's personality to be re-incarnated in a newly grown human body. Does "FENN WOKE" mean that all this has happened or just that the download has been activated? I think that the former is implied but the latter is possible.

Does the conclusion of The Fleet Of Stars feel like a double anticlimax? The reported galactic civilisation does not, after all, exist. Further, not only has the cybercosm tried to deceive the entire human race but its attempted deception has been exposed quite quickly. Not that I wanted it to succeed but the cybercosm is now revealed to be both dishonest and incompetent. This means that:

I do not think that it lives up to its self-description of "pure intellect" - surely deception should be as unacceptable to it as violence?;

Anderson had carefully preserved a moral ambiguity about the cybercosm's interaction with human society but the question is now answered decisively - the cybercosm has become manipulative, therefore harmful, unless, of course, it is obliged to return to its original role of merely helping the majority who "...want to keep on in their familiar lives." (p. 401)

Download Guthrie calls the attempted deception a "...conspiracy." (p. 396) Chuan, a man who interfaces and communes with the cybercosm, replies that "conspiracy" is "...an ugly word..." (p.396) It is accurate. Chuan also describes "...organic beings..." as "...limited, fallible, reckless, greedy, often hideously cruel -" (p. 396) We need not remain so. Indeed, "greedy" is a one-sided cliche when we consider that cooperation is basic to humanity and that people, as Anderson shows, are capable of generosity, love and forethought.

Such organic beings, according to Chuan, "...should not run loose in the universe." (p. 397) But they have wrought wonders at Proserpina and beyond. Chuan refers to "...warriors, hunters, butchers, bandits, carousers, criminals, grovelers in superstition, blood sacrificers...leftover animality." (p. 399) Again, one sided. Humanity can certainly transcend superstition and blood sacrifice!

The outcome is favourable from Anderson's point of view. Observation of the galactic centre has not revealed life or intelligence but has shown that the cybercosm's theory of everything was incomplete so there is more to be learned. Some people will go back into space. The Lunarians will be able to negotiate enough antimatter to fuel interstellar journeys. (The Lunarians are unpredictable but that cannot be helped.)

Visions Of Mars

"The Structure Of A Series: John Carter" on www.sfappreciation.blogspot.co.uk is my attempt at a succinct summary of Edgar Rice Burroughs' four interconnected interplanetary series which are mostly Martian:

eleven volumes for Mars, with excursions to a Martian moon and Jupiter;
four for Venus;
one each for the Moon and an extrasolar planet.

(ERB's three Moon stories are two volumes in paperback and one in hardback so here I count them as one volume.)

In fact, I probably make these series sound better than they are. ERB's plots and characterisation do not fulfill the promise of his colourful, imaginative, exotic settings. In any case, his Mars is literary, not scientific. It has canals and is not only inhabited but humanly habitable. In the real universe, hard work will be needed to make Mars habitable.

Several chapters of Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars describe a colonised, though not yet terraformed, Mars, like a more realistic counterpart of Frank Herbert's Dune. We see the economic, political and cultural life of the colonists and even something that is more common in an ERBian universe, military conflict.

Anderson's "Martians" perform midsummer rites around the Dreamers' Craters and three "Dreamers" are named: Wells, Weinbaum and Heinlein. (I usually say that the three main British writers about Martians are Wells, Stapledon and Lewis and the three main Americans are Burroughs, Heinlein and Bradbury but, of course, there are many others and which are the main ones is debatable.) Would Anderson's Martians have included Burroughs among their "Dreamers"? Maybe, but, judging from the names mentioned, they seem to prefer a harder sf list.

Meanwhile...

Building on three previous volumes, Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars is a rich sf novel. By p. 221, we have seen:

one of three new extrasolar colonies;

the system of Alpha Centauri, now filled with flying rubble from a planetary collision but still inhabited by the asteroid-dwelling Lunarians;

interactions between Terrans and metamorphs in the Inner Solar System where Earth and Moon are free from poverty and wars and there is a plan to terraform Mars;

the vast domain of the Lunarians among the planetoids and comets of the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud;

the build-up to a confrontation between the free human beings in space and the artificial intelligence controlling the utopia-but-with-remaining-alienation-and-discontent on Earth and Luna.

Meanwhile over on www.comicsappreciation.blogspot.co.uk, I have posted about Garth Ennis' The Boys and have been sidetracked into rereading that series. While reading well-drawn graphic fiction, we simultaneously follow a narrative with characterisation and appreciate visual art.

Anderson's descriptive passages always appeal to several of the senses while presenting colourful, vivid accounts of natural or exotic scenes. The latter include for example Lunarian habitats where energy and space are devoted not only to survival but also to comfort and ostentation. Readers with good visual imaginations should be able to visualise what is described and to project how it could be filmed. However, since my thoughts processes are entirely abstract, "auditory digital" in Neuro-Linquistic Programming terminology, I remain very conscious of a qualitative difference between the verbal fiction of a novel and the visual-verbal fiction of a graphic novel.

Lunarians On Proserpina II

See Lunarians On Proserpina.

The Proserpinans have revived the old title of Selenarch because they still claim the Moon, now inhabited entirely by Terrans who must give birth in higher gravity in the orbiting Habitat. Three Selenarchs greet download Guthrie newly arrived from Alpha Centauri:

Velir, Convener of the Council of Forerunners, seigneur in Phyle Aulinn, Warder of Zamok Drakon, shareholder in spaceships and industries;

Catoul of Phyle Randai, who attends the Council for the Consultancy;

Luaine of Phyle Janou, Wardress of Zamok Gora, who attends for the Captains of the Outer Comets.

The tall, thin Lunarians usually stand in their low gravity, a telling detail that I have forgotten to mention till now. Of course, download Guthrie in his robot body does not sit, eat or drink.

Most Proserpinan buildings are on the surface because it is difficult to excavate in iron. Across the entirely urbanised surface, there are cultural and commercial nodes. Parks have outsize flowers, low gravity trees and fountains of water, fire or lightning. Passages and arcades with tiers of slender arches and colourful mirages on the ceilings are filled with softly moving Proserpinans accompanied by pets - birds, a squirrel, a monkey, a ferret, greyhounds, a dwarf bear, a leopard. Slowly falling water curtaining a door before flowing into a channel containing phosphorescent snakes stops falling when Guthrie approaches the door and resumes when he has entered a meeting room with an alabaster ceiling and gold-leafed walls where gems form calligraphic patterns.

The Proserpinans, who must always be inside an artificial environment, spaceship, spacesuit, space station, enclosed lunar or asteroidal dwelling, have moved to the cold and dark of the Outer System. Despite all this, they have materials, energy, technology, social and individual dynamism and ingenuity. Thus, they create and inhabit the kind of environment described here.

Lacking the copious solar energy of the Inner System, they must use all their fusion-produced antimatter except a reserve for emergencies and "defence" although it remains to be seen why defence is necessary.

Since the Oort Cloud overlaps with the cometary clouds of nearby systems, could the Proserpinans begin the colonisation of the Alpha Centaurian system in incremental stages falling short of a direct interstellar crossing?

Human beings by now inhabit six volumes of space, the inner and outer regions of the Solar System and four other systems, but it has not been easy and Anderson shows us this by taking four volumes to move his characters to this very early stage of galactic colonisation. 

Lunarians On Proserpina

Proserpina, a ferrous spheroid two thousand kilometers across, is on an eccentric two million year orbit that takes it between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Cometary impacts have deposited frozen water, organics and metal.

Lunarians, adapted to live and breed in lunar gravity, have inhabited Proserpina, now prosperous and populous, for centuries, covering its surface with domes, roofs, towers, masts, roads, rails and spacefields where ships come and go like fireflies. It is surrounded by satellites, habitats, factories, entrepots, supplementary harbours, naval bases, research centres and antimatter production facilities. A majority of Proserpinans are in lesser colonies on smaller bodies or in mining bases on comets.

Related families and their retainers form phratries. Related phratries form phyles to act cooperatively. Seigneurs, holding the balance of wealth and power, have strong bonds with their subordinate "companions." "Courai," either owned by seigneurial families or drawing their members from a single phratry, conduct most major enterprises. Because population is concentrated  on Proserpina, its phratries elect a Council of Forerunners which, by electronic consultation, sets policies, enacts safety regulations and organizes public undertakings, paid for by levies on their beneficiaries. The Council chooses a Convener. The Consultancy of seigneurs leading the phyles can review and veto the Council's acts.

Here is yet another of Anderson's carefully detailed future environments and societies.

Truly A Future History

At the beginning of Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, there is a World Federation on Earth and an Avantist dictatorship in North America, there are adapted human beings, Lunarians, on the Moon and robots on the doomed planet Demeter in the Alpha Centaurian system. There is no artificial intelligence yet although a first step towards AI has been taken with the downloading of human personalities into artificial neural systems.

Three volumes later, AI dominates the "Synesis" that has replaced the Federation. There are colonies on Mars, in the Outer System and in four other systems although Demeter, after a thousand years of colonisation, has been destroyed by the predicted planetary collision.

Between these points, we have seen how:

the Fireball company opened up space;

the Lunarians originated, gained and lost independence on the Moon but spread to Alpha Centauri, Mars and the Kuiper Belt;

Fireball and the Lunarians overthrew the Avantists, although this strengthened the Federation which later made way for the Synesis;

the Demetrian colonists learned how to guide a newly introduced ecology by integrating a downloaded intelligence into it;

such presiding intelligences learned how re-incarnate downloaded personalities in newly grown human bodies on each newly terraformed planet;

the Demetrian plan to fill the cosmos with unpredictably diverse organic life comes into conflict with the terrestrial cybercosm's plan to understand and control the cosmos in order ultimately to survive and transcend it;

cybercosmic robotic probes in light speed ships spy on the extrasolar colonies, thus setting the scene for open conflict between organic and inorganic intelligences.

We have come a long way from the faster then light interstellar trade and imperialism of Anderson's Technic History. However, Anderson continues to address fundamental questions about the nature of life, humanity and society.

The Fleet Of Stars IV

In Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1997), Chapter 3, download Guthrie is en route from Beta Hydri to Sol via Alpha Centauri. He crosses interstellar distances switched off, the download equivalent of suspended animation. Chapter 17 begins:

"GUTHRIE WOKE." (p.210)

Thus, he is entering the Solar System. Meanwhile, Anderson has used Chapters 4-16 to advance the future history. He has told us neither about the Lunarians in the Outer Solar System and at Alpha Centuari nor about the Terrans at three other extrasolar colonies but about new characters in the Inner Solar System:

Terrans on Earth, Luna and Mars;
metamorphic seals in the Pacific;
Lunarians on Mars.

Some Lunarian Martians are in armed resistance to the cybercosm on Earth. They know that the Lunarians who had colonized the asteroid Proserpina in the Kuiper Belt have spread through the Outer System. One Pacific community, inspired by reports from extrasolar colonies, wants to begin terraforming Mars. We are conscious of having moved into a later period although one that has followed by sociopolitical processes from events described in previous volumes. If only it could go on forever...

Kinds Of Future Histories

In Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, two young "Martians," a Terran and a Lunarian, go into the desert without entering a travel plan. Regular Anderson readers remember young human and Ythrian Avalonians taking risks in his Technic History but these are two different kinds of future histories.

Ythrians are aliens; Ythri and jointly colonized Avalon are extrasolar planets reached by hyperdrive whereas Mars is nearby and Lunarians are human beings adapted to live and breed in low gravity. First, Anderson worked well with sf cliches like aliens and FTL (faster than light interstellar travel). Then he questioned such premises in less implausible later works featuring not alien intelligences with FTL but artificial intelligence and STL.

Now, we appreciate both kinds of histories while suspecting that the second kind is more likely. 

"Martians"

"Martians" usually means "natives of Mars." (See HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon, CS Lewis, ER Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein etc.) Poul Anderson thought of two other meanings. In his Technic History, extrasolar aliens for whom Mars is habitable colonize it and come to be called "Martians."

In The Fleet Of Stars, Terrans and Lunarians colonize Mars, and thus become "Martians," because:

both species can breed in Martian gravity which is neither too low for Terrans nor too high for Lunarians;
dwellings do not need domes or excavations as on Luna;
altered species can flourish on the surface;
mineral mining is profitable;
low gravity and proximity enable Martians to export to the asteroidal colonies.

Thus, many generations live on Mars so that some individuals and families want to remain there even when the original economic reasons no longer apply. Anderson understood that societies develop their own momentum.

The Fleet Of Stars III

In Poul Anderson's "Harvest Of Stars" Tetralogy, a community of human beings and intelligent seals populates Pacific islands and floating cities. This reminded me, a little, of human beings and alien Ythrians jointly colonizing a planet in Anderson's Technic History especially when one seal tells a human being of another culture, or "Dao," that what he will say "...may be no fair wind for you..." (The Fleet Of Stars, New York, 1997, p. 48). Winged Ythrians, of course, often refer to "winds" in more than a literal sense and, like the seals, they are intelligent but remain hunters.

The issue in the Tetralogy becomes which is better: conflict or contentment? That sounds like the issue in Brave New World except that, in that novel, every member of society is conditioned to welcome and enjoy his or her contented lack of freedom. (Also, I cannot help thinking that the World Controllers have to be intelligent and informed enough that one of them might be tempted to sabotage the system just to see what results?) Human beings in Anderson's Tetralogy are educated, although sometimes misinformed, but not conditioned. Their main problem, not always perceived as such, is lack of options.

Huxley suggested in his Introduction to later editions of Brave New World that a third option, cultivation of sanity, is feasible. I am always inclined to make a similar comment about any sharp dichotomy presented in a work of fiction.

Anderson's extra-solar colonists have got it right. They are fulfilled, not content. Their lives are determined by themselves, not by computers. Their conflict is with the inorganic universe, not with each other. Their technology serves their ends and does not deprive them of ends. In fact, the cybercosm should be able to realize that this fullest expression of organic life is to be acknowledged, not controlled.    

Fenn

Before rereading Poul Anderson's "Harvest Of Stars" Tetralogy, I counted the pages to be read and noticed that Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1997), ends with "(Chapter) 32: FENN WOKE." (p. 403)

At that time, I had no memory of who Fenn was. Now, I have reread to Chapter 2 which introduces this character. Chapter 2 ends "Fenn raged." (p. 24) We are back in the Solar System with the cybercosm subtly limiting human freedom and ending space travel. Fenn is one of the few for whom this is intolerable.

The reader wants not to rage with Fenn but to soar with Fenn's hero, Anson Guthrie. Chapter 1 describes incarnate Guthrie on Amaterasu, a colonized planet of Beta Hydri. Chapter 3 describes download Guthrie visiting the Lunarians in their orbiting stronghold of Zamok Sabely' at Alpha Centauri A. I would have welcomed one long novel in which Guthrie fared between stars and did not have to return to Sol to counteract an attempted deception by the cybercosm. Here, the cybercosm is not merely suppressing information, although that was bad enough, but is actively trying to mislead on a massive scale. Whatever the ultimate issues, the cybercosm puts itself outside the bounds of civilized, moral discourse by lying instead of engaging in dialogue.

But what I really want to see is Guthrie leading the colonization of the next planet after Amaterasu. Unfortunately, we would need downloaded or re-incarnated Anderson to write about it for us.