Isolated Planets

How likely are faster than light interstellar travel and a galaxy full of habitable but uninhabitable planets for human beings to colonize? I think that both ideas are extremely unlikely. However, these improbable premises underlie two standard sf scenarios:

an interstellar civilization or "Empire";

a post-Imperial period during which colonized extrasolar planets, isolated for several generations, are gradually rediscovered and recivilized by the few worlds that have retained or regained the capacity for interstellar travel.

This second scenario, Star Trek without the absurdity of identically humanoid beings independently evolved on innumerable planets, exists in:

Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation;
James Blish's Cities In Flight;
the Long Night and Allied Planets periods of Poul Anderson's Technic History;
Jerry Pournelle's A Spaceship For The King, expanded as King David's Spaceship.

Poul Anderson describes fictional planets in detail and always makes clear that human colonists would require dietary supplements, imported ecologies, biological readjustments etc. Another planet is not just another continent.

Planets Of The Long Night

Roan Tom's father was from Lochlann but his mother was said to be of Hermetian stock. Tom gained power on Kraken. Fleeing from a defeat on Sassania, he came upon Nike.

A joint Lochlanna and Nuevamerican expedition explores Gwydion.

The Allied Planets expedition to Lokon represents several planets, including Kraken, Atheia and Nuevamerica. Their computer refers to Lochlann, Ifri and neo-Freeholder techniques.

Kirkasanters who arrive on Serieve are investigated by a Ranger from New Vixen who trained on Aladir.

By "Planets of the Long Night," I mean planets that are mentioned during or after the Long Night. I count references to fifteen. We are told that Old Earth may no longer exist.

Of the fifteen, we heard of five {sorry, six; see comments} before the Long Night. The reference to Hermes was surprising. Of the remaining ten, New Vixen is a colony of Vixen and Kirkasanters are descendants of Aenean rebels. Thus, the planets that are entirely new are, I think, Lochlann, Sassania {revision: not Sassania}, Nike, Nuevamerica, Gwydion, Lokon, Serieve and Aladir.

Addendum, 28 June 2014: I might revise this post but meanwhile please read Sean Brooks' comment mentioning several earlier references to some of these planets.

Adapted Men

Compare and contrast:

James Blish's four "pantropy" stories, collected as The Seedling Stars;
Poul Anderson's four post-Terran Empire stories, collected in The Long Night and again in Flandry's Legacy.

Both these tetralogies are hard sf with interstellar themes:

Blish's theme is artificial adaptation of human beings to extraterrestrial environments;
Anderson's theme is natural adaptations by human beings left isolated in extraterrestrial environments.

When I had explicitated this comparison, I realized why I had been thinking of these two series in parallel.

The pantropy series is a short but complete future history, covering:

an early interplanetary period;
intermediate periods on two extrasolar planets;
longer term galactic hegemony for humanity in its many adapted forms.

The post-Empire stories also cover a future historical period:

post-Imperial anarchy in the mid-fourth millennium;
an intermediate period while the Allied Planets restore interstellar civilization;
longer term, human civilizations have spread through several spiral arms and one is served by the Commonalty.

The main difference is that the post-Empire stories are not complete in themselves but are merely the concluding section of the much longer History of Technic Civilization.  

The Two Dark Ages Of Technic Civilization

Poul Anderson wrote one short story, "The Star Plunderer," set during the Time of Troubles between the Solar Commonwealth and the Terran Empire and another, "A Tragedy of Errors," set during the Long Night between the Terran Empire and the Allied Planets.

The Long Night is the Troubles writ large, a second social breakdown but on a vaster interstellar scale. During the Troubles, the Commonwealth government collapses while the Baldic League, uniting alien Gorzuni with human barbarians, occupies the outer Solar System and raids Earth for slaves. An entire series could have been set during the Troubles which end when Manuel Argos leads a slave revolt, attacks Gorzun and founds the Terran Empire, whose Fall a thousand years later precipitates the Long Night.

We know less about the Long Night, just that, throughout the four hundred light year diameter sphere that had been the Empire, Imperial rule ceases and interstellar travel is significantly reduced although there is no reason why some isolated planets cannot have retained their own technologies and civilizations. Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization tells us that, in the middle of the fourth millennium:

"War, piracy, economic collapse, and isolation devastate countless worlds."
Sandra Miesel, "Chronology of Technic Civilization" IN Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), pp. 663-672 AT p. 671.

Countless worlds but not necessarily all. "A Tragedy of Errors" features a potential series character, Roan Tom, who gains economic power on the colony planet Kraken, which later joins the Allied Planets.

A notable feature of the Long Night is that the former Imperial volume of space is not, as expected, occupied by the rival Roidhunate of Merseia. It seems that "The Empire and Merseia wear each other out." (ibid.) We see the beginning of Merseian demoralization at the end of The Game Of Empire, the last work set before the Long Night.

Dates In The Later Technic History

"Only one is set during the Long Night itself, over half a century after The Game Of Empire: 'A Tragedy of Errors'..."
-Hank Davis, "The Wheel Turns" IN Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. vii-xii AT p. x.

Over half a century? Surely it is longer than that? As a matter of fact, the dates as given by Sandra Miesel in "Chronology of Technic Civilization" (pp. 795-804) are:

3064 The Game Of Empire
3600 "A Tragedy of Errors"
3900 "The Night Face"
4000 "The Sharing of Flesh"
7100 "Starfog"

The precise dating in this Chronology has been disputed (see here). However, I am at present focusing attention only on the Chronology as presented in Flandry's Legacy and, furthermore, only on the approximate intervals between the last few installments. The texts present no dates. Sandra Miesel presents only round numbers for the dates of these later works. And she dates Flandry's birth to another round year, 3000.

Once in the series, the projected date of the Fall of the Terran Empire is discussed:

"'If we possessed Syrax,' said Aycharaych, 'it would, with 71 per cent probability, hasten the collapse of the Terran hegemony by a hundred years, plus or minus ten. That is the verdict of our military computers - though I myself feel the faith our High Command has in them is naive and rather touching. However, the predicted date of Terra's fall would still lie 150 years hence. So I wonder why your government cares.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 163.

What does this tell us? Aycharaych doubts the computers and can be trusted to know what he is talking about although not necessarily to tell the truth about it. This story, "Hunters of the Sky Cave," is set in 3040, according to the Chronology. 150 years later would be 3190. But Merseia does not gain control of Syrax so that puts the estimated date of the Fall back to 3290. However, the Merseians suffer other unexpected reverses during Flandry's lifetime. They lose Chereion in 3047 and suffer a severe blow to their morale in 3064. All of this should delay the fall of Terra even further. In fact, we know that the Roidhunate also collapses and this would not have been predicted by their military computers. Diana, who is eighteen in 3064, should not, even with anti-senescence, live to see the Empire fall.

Back to Aycharaych's last point: 150 years, if that were the right figure, is frighteningly close. Even the complacent Terran Empire might be concerned.

Languages

The word "language" can be used either literally or metaphorically. Thus, "body language" and animal signals are not literally "languages." Metaphor becomes problematic if misunderstood literally.

These observations are occasioned by reading Poul Anderson's The Night Face. Elfavy of the planet Gwydion lists "languages," which, she says, each describe a single facet of reality:

speech;
mathematics;
music;
painting;
choreography;
Gwydiona myth;
poetry.

I suggest that a language can not only express feelings but also convey information. Thus, music and choreography are media but not languages. Poetry, prose and drama are different media which can use a common language. Mathematics is closer to being a "language." The Admissions Tutor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology said that he wanted to know, of any prospective student, "Does he obey the laws that we obey? The laws of physics. Does he speak the language that we speak? The language of mathematics." (Here again, a word is used in an extended sense. We can break the laws of England but not the laws of physics.)

Elfavy mentions not myth in general but specifically Gwydiona myth as a "language." The latter was developed not by primitives confusing it with science but deliberately and systematically by trained semanticians to describe a facet of reality for which all the other "languages" were inadequate.

I buy myths like death and resurrection as describing reality but do not call them a language.

Fall Of Empire

Poul and Karen Anderson describe the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Northern Europe in the King of Ys Tetralogy;
Poul Anderson describes post-Roman Britain in "Time Patrol";
he also describes the post-Imperial galaxy in the Long Night and Allied Planets periods of his History of Technic Civilization:

"Now the Empire has fallen, the Long Night descended upon that tiny fraction of the galaxy which man once explored and colonized. Like Romano-Britons after the last legion had withdrawn, people out in the former marches of civilization do not even know what is happening at its former heart. They have the physical capability of going there and finding out, but are too busy surviving. They are also, all unawares, generating whole new societies of their own.
"I do not, myself, believe that history will necessarily repeat itself to that extent. Nor do I deny that it might. Nobody knows."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. 543-544.

Nobody knows what will happen by 3900, but maybe by then society will better understand its own historical processes?

We see something of the new societies being generated in the later story, "Starfog."

One planetary population has been isolated from the rest of humanity not only during the Long Night but also, before that, during the entire period of the Terran Empire. That is long enough for humanity to have evolved into something else and that is what explorers restoring interstellar civilization find on the planet Gwydion.

The Long Night Of The Moon

Jules Verne, Around The Moon (London, 1970), Chapter 14, The long night, pp. 115-124.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, "the Long Night" is the significant phrase repeatedly used to describe the collapse of interstellar civilization after the Fall of the Terran Empire.

In Verne's Around The Moon, we encounter this same phrase as a chapter title but here it means literally the fifteen day lunar night. On the lunar Far Side, neither the Sun nor the Earth is above at night. Thus, when the projectile is above Far Side at night, it is plunged into darkness and then into extreme cold with ice on the portholes. The astronauts must use gas for both light and heat. By passing a thermometer on a cord through a porthole, they measure the temperature of space as 140 degrees Centigrade.

Verne's text is full of documentary data not integrated into the narrative but I am determined to finish the book to find out what the astronauts see on the Moon and how they return to Earth. Even more interesting will be the contents of Verne's remaining two interplanetary novels.

Atheia And Kraken

I have found a tenuous narrative thread linking the Terran Empire of Dominic Flandry's period to the restoration of civilization during the post-Imperial Long Night. In the last Flandry novel, The Game Of Empire, Maria Crowfeather was born on the colony planet Atheia and Olaf Magnusson was from Kraken, described as "...cold and heavy..." (Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, p. 251)

During the Long Night, Roan Tom, born on a spaceship but with a father from Lochlann, gains power on Kraken and re-establishes trade, including mutually beneficial arrangements with the planets Sassania and Nike. We learn that Kraken gravity is 1.25 standard.

Later, a joint expedition from Lochlann and Nuevamerica contacts the lost colony on Gwydion. Later again, a few planets, including Atheia, Kraken and Nuevamerica, form the Allied Planets, whose explorers, "...struggling back to civilization ranged across the ruins of empire..." (p. 665), and the extreme case of Gwydion is referred to. (p. 680)

We learn that part of Kraken remains half barbaric and that Krakeners from that region are intricately tattooed whereas Atheia "...was supposed to have retained or regained almost as many amenities as Old Earth knew in its glory..." (p. 665) Expeditions find lost colonies and advise a Board on whether civilizing missions should be sent. Thus, both Atheia and Kraken are involved in the restoration and Atheia may even have retained, rather than merely regained, the former benefits of civilization. Here is a degree of continuity between Empire and Allied Planets that I was not previously aware of.

In the concluding installment of Anderson's Technic Civilization History, a peaceful civilization spanning several spiral arms includes New Vixen, an off-shoot of the colony on Vixen which Flandry had visited.

After the Empire: the Long Night

What would be the most appropriate title for an omnibus volume collecting the last four works in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation? After The Empire would be accurate and, if, as I suggest elsewhere, earlier titles included the word "Empire," then After The Empire would be immediately perceived as a sequel by anyone who glanced at the titles.

The Long Night would be immediately perceived as a sequel by anyone who read the earlier volumes. "The Long Night" really refers only to the period of chaos after the fall of the Empire, therefore does not incorporate the works set in later civilizations. On the other hand, Imperialists might regard anything following their rule as a "Long Night" so that for them the title would be accurate.

Could the proposed titles be combined as After The Empire: The Long Night? Or, better still: Long Night And After? The latter version is more accurate and comprehensive, echoing an earlier proposed title: Late League, Early Empire.

This discussion might seem trivial to anyone not familiar with these works. I hope that some readers of this blog have read Anderson or are encouraged to do so or do look at the earlier articles where the content of the works is assessed in more detail.

An existing collection called The Long Night contains one story from what I call the "Late League, Early Empire" period, one story from the "Flandry and Empire" period and only three of the four works from the "Long Night and After" period.

The Commonalty

Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty, says that economic planning is impossible even for a single continent. (1) I disagree. I think that, in the kind of advanced technological future envisaged by Anderson, an educated population freed from drudgery and possessing, at least potentially, vast social wealth and a refined communications technology would be able to plan production of necessities and to allocate remaining resources for research, recreation and creativity while maintaining the maximum freedom for each individual within a dynamic social and cultural environment. I regard this not as philosophical speculation but as a practical proposition. Of course, its feasibility remains to be determined in practice. As long as such a system does not exist, there will continue to be minority economic control, whether private or bureaucratic, as envisaged by most sf, which projects familiar social relationships onto unfamiliar technological contexts.

I do agree with Laure that economic planning is neither possible nor even desirable on the scale of a galactic spiral arm. Each planet should be self-sufficient. Whatever the arrangements on each planet, an interstellar market would not involve the stockpiling of food or medicine needed elsewhere or sweat shop labor on one planet producing luxury items for another. With many entire planets, with vast distances between them and with a universally distributed high technology, such oppressive features of a market economy would be relegated to a remote and primitive past.

The Commonalty is "...a private, voluntary, mutual-benefit society, open to anyone anywhere who meets the modest standards." (1)

We are not told what the standards are. The Commonalty maintains services like space rescue and is hired by planetary governments. One such government asks the Commonalty Rangers to investigate the newly arrived Kirkasanters who tell an implausible tale and may be a threat to humanity. When Laure accompanies the Kirkasanters back to their home region of space, the "profit," or return on the investment in his ship and training, is the scientific knowledge gained. OK so far. Laure also mentions individual quadrillionaires in the home civilization. That informs us that, on at least some of the planets, the market economy is of the kind known to us in which one of the commodities bought and sold is labor power. I think that alternative arrangements would also be possible on particular planets while planetary populations either bartered or bought and sold knowledge and technology.

Laure also says, "The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars." (2)

This makes sense. The Commonalty is interstellar. If, on that scale, there is no incentive for imperialism - grabbing raw materials, trade routes and markets, then defending them militarily -, then there is no reason for war. On the other hand, the industrially valuable planets Satan and Mirkheim became causes of conflict earlier in the History so could something similar occur with the Kirkasanters' heavy metals rich Cloud Universe? We are glad that Anderson wrote so much and wish that he had written more but he could not have gone on forever. He did show us interplanetary exploration, the Grand Survey, the League, the Troubles, the Empire, the Long Night, the Allied Planets and the Commonalty.

(1) Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, The Long Night, New York, 1983, pp. 242-310 AT p. 291.
(2) ibid., p. 251.

Living in the Galaxy

After five thousand years of interstellar travel, mankind has thinly occupied parts of two or three spiral arms. Old Earth, still called Home, is a half remembered myth in another spiral arm. Daven Laure, from the Fireland mountains on New Vixen, has never seen Earth, has never met anyone who has seen Earth and has no family record of any ancestor who had seen Earth. As a Ranger of the Commonalty, he trained at Starborough near Irontower City on Aladir, travels in a ship with a consciousness level computer and encounters nonhuman sophonts. The Commonalty, a service organisation, not a government, has members on an estimated ten million planets but:

"We know that other branches of humanity have their distinctive ways, and hear rumors of yet stranger ones." (1) 

The colonised planet Serieve, poor in heavy metals, is close to the northern verge of its spiral arm with only the galactic halo of scattered ancient globular clusters and a very thin interstellar medium beyond it. The only concentration of gas and dust in the region, the Dragon's Head Nebula, is in transit. New colonists of an entire planet usually build low but the Serievans have built a high rise industrial city, Pelogard, on an arctic island where they can extract minerals from ocean currents. Flocks of blue, winged, bird-like organisms circle above trees with fronded silver leaves.

Several interlocking narratives of the Technic History conclude in the Commonalty period:

(i) Terrans colonised Aeneas;
Dominic Flandry of Terra exiled Aenean rebels;
the rebels colonised Kirkasant hidden in the "Cloud Universe" globular cluster;
a ship from Kirkasant made an epic journey to the colony planet Serieve.

(ii) Terrans colonised Hermes and Vixen;
David Falkayn of Hermes discovered the industrially valuable planet Mirkheim and initiated the Supermetals company to exploit it;
Henry Kittredge of Vixen was the Supermetals ground operations chief on Mirkheim;
the Vixenite share in Supermetals bought badly needed weather stations;
Flandry and Catherine Kittredge of the Vixenite weather engineering department successfully resisted alien invasion of Vixen, at one stage hiding in a weather station.

(iii) Helen Kitteridge of Vixen, Terran Space Navy energy weapons controller, joined Olaf Magnusson's revolt;
intelligence gathered by Flandry's daughter brought down Magnusson.

(iv) Vixenites colonised New Vixen;
Daven Laure of New Vixen integrated Kirkasanters into interstellar civilisation after a ship from Kirkasant had reached Serieve.

These interlocking narratives touch on the histories of several planets and highlight eight individuals: three Vixenite Kittredges, three major figures - Falkayn, Flandry and Magnusson - and two others, Flandry's daughter and Daven Laure. As with the history of the Ythrians (see here), we would like to know more but this was all that Anderson had space to tell us.

Beyond the Dragon's Head is unexplored space. Directly behind this Nebula is the "Cloud Universe" globular cluster. A globular cluster comprises old, red, metal-poor stars in a nearly perfect vacuum. However, the Cloud Universe's eccentric orbit passes through dense clouds of gas and dust near the galactic centre. The cluster gravitationally gathers gas which makes it opaque and condenses into new stars. Periodic ingestion of new matter causes several supernovae per century for at least a million years. Stars are unstable and radiation levels prevent any life in the centre of the cluster. From within the Cloud Universe, space appears as neither dark nor empty but as bright and star-filled. Stars are light months apart.

A fleet fled from the Terran Empire. One ship fled as far as possible, a quarter way round the galaxy through two spiral arms, and hid as well as possible, on Kirkasant in the Cloud Universe. Such a long trip in an early vessel required frequent repair, resupply and refilling of nuclear converters. On arrival, the ship needed a rebuild but the Kirkasanters, as they now were, needed five millennia to build the industrial capacity for interplanetary travel. High radiation and a harsh environment speeded evolution. The first generation mined and forged metal. The second supported a literate class. When scientific method was rediscovered, relativity theory, based on observations from within the Cloud Universe, implied a universe two or three hundred light years across with space tightly curved by the concentrated mass. The Kirkasanters progressed from moon rockets to hyperdrive in a single lifetime. They knew it was possible and were guided by old texts and the hulk of the ancestral ship.

The first interstellar ships visited stars visible from home. The Makt crew went further, believing that they would be able to steer home by already charted stars. However, because of the haze and shine in the Cloud Universe, absolute magnitudes and therefore relative distances had not been calculated accurately. Bypassing home space, the ship became lost in the Cloud until it exited the cluster. Theory implied that they had made a dimensional crossing into another universe, even though each universe was visible from the other. Legendary references to space as dark suggested that the ancestors had come from here. When they had re-entered the cluster three times to no avail, telescopes revealed a distant black cloud (the Dragon's Head). Reasoning that the ancestors, fleeing an enemy, might have passed through such a cloud, the Makt crew approached and traversed the Nebula. Then they used neutrino detectors to find the nuclear power plants of an advanced civilisation and, nearly out of fuel, reached Serieve.

Entering the Cloud Universe, Jaccavrie (Laure's ship) and Makt could not find Kirkasant and were in danger from radiation, hidden bodies and unpredictable stellar processes. Laure explored several planets both to confirm that they were rich in heavy metals and to establish a claim of ownership for himself and the Makt crew. When miners swarm into the cluster, the Kirkasanters will be rich and the miners' beacons will enable them to map the cluster and find their planet: a neat solution to a technical problem.

That the Kirkasanters were descended from the Aeneans is a reasonable inference given that Anderson did not write anything further to contradict it. It is certainly unlikely that any other human group fled that far that early.

Thus, Anderson constructed an sf story about:

vast interstellar distances albeit traversed by hyperdrive;
unusual celestial bodies and processes;
human communities isolated for millennia in different environments, thus becoming distinct species;
no nonhuman intelligences in this story although they are mentioned once;
no interstellar empires although they had existed earlier in this fictitious history;
a new form of interstellar organisation meriting further discussion.

Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, The Long Night, New York, 1983, pp. 242-310, AT p. 248.

The Long Night

Poul Anderson over-uses the term "Long Night" which refers to the immediate post-Imperial period in his Technic History. The Imperialist Flandry continually anticipates the Long Night with apprehension. Four millennia later, Daven Laure says:

"Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars." (1)

The Lancaster sf book seller, Pete Pinto, commented that, if the Commonalty has arisen from the "Long Night," then Commonalters should not call it that. Of course, the author is mainly signalling to the reader through a character that the latter exists in the same timeline as van Rijn and Falkayn of the Polesotechnic League and Flandry of the Terran Empire. Laure can hardly be speaking League Latin or Imperial Anglic so we might regard the phrase "Long Night" in his dialogue as translating whatever phrase he does use into terms familiar to us. 

Anderson made this point in relation to his earlier future history:

"...a story laid some centuries hence must be thought of as a translation, not merely of language but of personalities and concepts corresponding only approximately to anything we know." (2)

The League and its successor the Empire occupied only a small part of one spiral arm of the galaxy whereas, by 7100, the Commonalty operates in one of several divergent human civilizations thinly occupying two or three spiral arms. There is mention of human diversity but not of any interaction with other rational species. This implicitly contradicts the earlier series but only implicitly. Anderson could have extended the series even further by recounting what the Long Night had done to Merseians, Ythrians, Cynthians, Wodenites etc. However, he regarded the History as already having made its point about the periodic, though not inevitable, rise and fall of civilizations so why belabor the point?
 

"Better to seek new themes." (3)

...which he did in future histories about human-AI interaction and post-human AI without ET's or FTL (i. e., without extra-terrestrials or faster than light interstellar travel): a different though less implausible scenario. 

If "the Long Night" means not just "later than the Empire" but, more specifically, the period of chaos and barbarism immediately following and resulting from the Fall of the Empire, then "Starfog," about the Commonalty, is set well after the Long Night. Only three works are set between the last Empire novel, The Game of Empire, and "Starfog." The first of these, "A Tragedy of Errors," is definitely set during the Long Night. It begins:

"Later ages wove a myth about Roan Tom. He became their archetype of those star rovers who fared forth while the Long Night prevailed." (4)

Again, the phrase is used to clarify not only which series this story belongs to but also which period of the series it is set in. 
 

"A Tragedy of Errors" is deceptively simple, on the surface a conventional action-adventure story but with informed scientific speculation throughout. The planet Nike has been colonized not only by human beings but also by "...the more efficient, highly developed species that man commonly brought with him...": oak; birch; primroses; grass overwhelming "...a pseudo-moss that apparently had a competitive advantage only in shade..." although, in one place, the dense vegetation is "...principally native Nikean, dominated by primitive but tree-sized 'ferns.'" (4) (5)

This theme continues in the next short story, "The Sharing of Flesh," set, according to Sandra Miesel, four centuries later. On another planet, a plant descended from clover is "...scattered low among the reddish native pseudo-grasses." (6) The view point character, Evalyth, remembers that:

"Clover was another of those life forms that man had brought with him from Old Earth, to more planets than anyone now remembered, before the Long Night fell." (6)

Evalyth's home world Kraken has altered pines, gulls and rhizobacteria but Krakeners had forgotten that these organisms came from Earth with their ancestors.

Returning to "A Tragedy of Errors," Tom and his wives, even while fleeing from their (temporary) enemies, speculate about the scientific oddities of Nike and its sun and have found answers by the end of the story. Despite its small size, Nike has a breathable atmosphere and a biosphere because it is old enough for its weak gravitational field to have had enough time to pull the heavier elements into the kind of solid core that generates atmosphere-producing planetary forces. It follows that Nike's sun is also old. This explains its variability and enables Tom to import solar meteorologists who will predict the weather on a planet where harsh and previously unpredictable storms were catastrophic. But first he must learn that, in the local lingo, he needs to " 'change " with "camarados," not to "do business" with "friends."

The main point of the story is that words change their meanings over time. An opening and closing quotation clarifies that "awful" once meant "awesome" etc. In the story, space raiders attacking the isolated Nike had ironically introduced themselves as "friends" coming to do "business." A decade later, a refugee seeking help and using those same words is in trouble, especially when he refuses to "slave" himself, i. e., to accept precautionary arrest. This is the main communication problem but there are other examples of linguistic shift. When a scientifically based society degenerates into a feudalism, then "Engineer" becomes the title of a feudal lord. Twice in the Technic History, in the League and Empire periods, a "rogue planet," meaning a loose or sunless planet, had played a pivotal role in history. Tom would call that a "bandit planet" because to him "rogue planet" means a planet, like Nike, with an unusual orbit or composition. A character who has studied the classics knows some science because, in the Long Night, scientific knowledge is a classical art!

"A Tragedy of Errors" is one of at least three proto-series in the Technic History, i.e., Roan Tom could have become a series character. The two other potential series characters are Diana Crowfeather and Daven Laure. By contrast, "Margin of Profit," introducing van Rijn, and "Tiger by the Tail," introducing Flandry, would have been proto-series if they had not had sequels. We are told that, during Tom's life-time, his "...name was already in the ballads of a dozen planets." (7) 

He even introduces the story from an imaginary Valhalla where Earth grown tobacco is available but this is only a narrative device. Anderson stops short of introducing the fantasy of a literal Valhalla into the hard sf of the Technic History. One Empire novel refers to Manuel Argos "...in whatever hypothetical hell or Valhalla the Founder dwelt." (8) Fittingly, the Valhalla references link Manuel, slave and Emperor, to Tom, trader and warlord. Manuel responds to the Troubles by leading a slave revolt and founding the Terran Empire. Tom copes with the Long Night by trading when possible and fighting when necessary. He shares van Rijn's ability to identify common interests and to arrange mutually advantageous exchanges that can transform potential enemies into trading partners and allies.

  I would not have remembered the details about Nike, and thus would not have fully appreciated Anderson's work, if I had not set out to re-read and summarize the details.

The remaining three post-Imperial works deal with more fundamental changes than linguistic alterations. "The Sharing of Flesh" occurs when the Allied Planets are restoring interstellar civilization, thus at the beginning of the end of the Long Night. A mutation in a small and impoverished population which for one or two generations had practiced cannibalism for survival entails that boys can reach puberty only by gaining the extra hormones provided by cannibalism. Thus, cannibalism continues until the Allied Planets provide hormone pills, then Terrestrial-type meat animals.

In "Starfog," the Kirkasanter population that has been isolated for millennia has an instinctual compulsion to have children but cannot interbreed with the people of the Commonalty. Thus, Laure cannot after all marry a Kirkasanter woman whom he has met. The single post-Empire novel, The Night Face, is set before "The Sharing of Flesh." Organizations from two civilized planets join forces to explore Gwydion which has been isolated throughout the entire Imperial period. The Gwydiona are unusually peaceful and harmonious without any legal coercion or government control but something mysterious, a transcendent experience that they cannot describe, occurs once a year. It turns out that everyone becomes insane for a few days. They can harm themselves or each other but instantly forget that it is they themselves that have done it. They have unconsciously developed ways to minimize the harm. For example, when everyone is insane, ritual chanting and dancing channels the energy that would otherwise be expressed as homicidal violence. But the ritual is disrupted by the presence of extra-planetary visitors who do not understand what is happening... (9) I think there was a Star Trek episode like this but, of course, Anderson does it better.

What can we say about the post-Imperial period of the Technic History? It comprises four works. Each work describes an encounter with an isolated human community, not with a new non-human species. In each work, something important has changed: language; biology; psychology; again biology. The first biological change is reversible. The second is not. The works present four stages of development from the barbarism of Roan Tom in a small part of the former Imperial volume of space to the support services of the Commonalty stretching across a spiral arm.

Would the Technic History be better balanced and more satisfactory if there were less of Flandry and more of the Long Night? In my opinion, the series would be better if there were more of Flandry and more of the Long Night. It is long but seems too short.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "Starfog," Analog, 1967, IN Anderson, The Long Night, New York, May 1983, pp. 240-310 at p. 251.
(2) Anderson, P, Virgin Planet, London, April 1966, 151.
(3) Anderson, P, "Concerning Future Histories," Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Volume 14, No 3, Whole No 71, Fall 1979, pp. 7-14 at p. 13.
(4) Anderson, P, "A Tragedy of Errors," Galaxy, 1967, IN The Long Night, pp. 133-201 at p. 155.
(5) Anderson, P, ibid, p. 177.
(6) Anderson, P, "The Sharing of Flesh," Galaxy, 1968, IN The Long Night, pp. 203-240 at p. 205.
(7) Anderson, P, "A Tragedy of Errors," p. 139.
(8) Anderson, P, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, London, 1978, p. 39.
(9) Anderson, P, The Night Face, London, 1972, pp. 113-124.

Anderson’s Technic History

A Chronology of the Writing of the Technic History

Jan 51	“Tiger by the Tail”	3032
May 51	“Honorable Enemies”	3033
Jan 52	“Sargasso of Lost Starships”	28th C
Sep 52	“The Star Plunderer”	c2700
Summer 54	“The Warriors from Nowhere”	3042
Sep 56	“Margin of Profit”	2416
Feb-Apr 58	The Man Who Counts	2420s
Mar 58	“The Game of Glory”	3025
59	“Hunters of the Sky Cave”	3040
Mar 61	“Hiding Place”	2420s
61	“A Message in Secret”	3037
61	“The Plague of Masters”	3038
Jun 63	“Territory”	2430s
63	The Night Face	3900
63	“The Three-Cornered Wheel”	2423
Apr 66	“A Sun Invisible”	2420s
66	Ensign Flandry	3019
Jan 67	“Day of Burning”	2430s
Aug 67	“Starfog”	7100
Dec 67	“Outpost of Empire”	3027
Feb 68	“A Tragedy of Errors”	3600
May-Aug 68	Satan’s World	2430s
Dec 68	“The Sharing of Flesh”	4000
69	The Rebel Worlds	3025
Feb 70	“Esau”	2420s
70	A Circus of Hells	3021
Jul-Aug 71	“The Trouble Twisters”	2430s
Aug 71	“The Master Key”	2430s
Aug 71	“A Little Knowledge”	2430s
Apr 72	“Wings of Victory”	2150
Feb 73	“The Problem of Pain”	24th C
Feb-Apr 73	The People of the Wind	29th C
Jul 73	“Wingless”	26th C
73	“Rescue on Avalon”	26th C
73	“Lodestar”	2446
73	The Day of Their Return	3028
Dec 73	“The Season of Forgiveness”	2420s
74	“How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson”	2416
Sep-Dec 74	A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows	3047
77	Mirkheim	2456
79	A Stone in Heaven	3061
Feb 81	“The Saturn Game”	c2055
85	The Game of Empire	3064

Sandra Miesel compiled the “Chronology [which is also a bibliography] of Technic Civilization.” (1) From this Chronology/bibliography, I have abstracted the above chronology of the writing of the Technic History from 1951 to 1985.

The History comprises two complete narrative cycles. The first begins in 2150 with human-Ythrian first contact on the planet Ythri and ends, seven centuries later, when the human-Ythrian joint colony on the planet Avalon successfully resists Terran Imperial annexation. The second cycle begins in 3019 with Dominic Flandry defending the Terran Empire and ends, four millennia later, when descendants of rebels exiled by Flandry contact a post-Imperial civilization. “The Saturn Game,” preceding the first cycle, introduces the Jerusalem Catholic Church and thus anticipates both The People of the Wind, the last volume of the first cycle, and The Game of Empire, the last volume of the Imperial period, because members of that Church play important roles in both of these works.

The Game of Empire, set in the Empire, “A Tragedy of Errors," set during the Long Night between the Empire and the Commonalty, and “Starfog,” set in the Commonalty period, are potential series. Each introduces a character who could have become central to later works but Anderson had more to write than this one series.

In “Hunters of the Sky Cave,” Flandry reveals that the Empire he has defended in “Tiger by the Tail,” “Honorable Enemies,” “The Warriors from Nowhere” and “The Game of Glory” is the same Empire that the leader of a slave rebellion, Manuel Argos, had founded in “The Star Plunderer.” In “A Plague of Masters,” Flandry reveals that Manuel’s Empire was preceded by the Polesotechnic League of Nicholas van Rijn’s period as described in “Margin of Profit” and The Man Who Counts. Since mercantile expansion was later followed by imperial decline, the combined series is about social change.

Mirkheim, a good political novel, shows how the League had declined and sympathetically treats a revolutionary character despite Anderson’s conservatism. Van Rijn, old but not pathetic and still energetic, makes an anti-cartels speech into the sunset.

“Day of Burning” reveals that the Merseians from whom Flandry defended the Empire had owed their earlier survival to van Rijn’s protégé, David Falkayn. “Lodestar” shows why inequities within the League made Falkayn break his oath of fealty to old van Rijn. When the League declines, van Rijn leads an expedition outside known space but Falkayn leads the colonization of Avalon. Works set after The Game of Empire show us what happened after the Empire fell. Flandry, an Intelligence officer, worked hard to prolong the Empire so that he could continue to enjoy its decadence while he lived. Near the end of A Stone in Heaven, the reader is led to believe that Flandry will die in space but his faithful retainer rescues him and he is last seen, in this book, in an autumnal scene. He cameos in The Game of Empire, about his daughter who is embarking on a new series of adventures.

(Added later: on re-reading A Stone in Heaven, I realize that I had misremembered one scene. Chives does not rescue Flandry. Instead, Miriam Abrams rescues both Chives and Flandry. But I prefer my memory. Flandry should have been alone when reminiscing before an expected death in space.)

I think that the elderly Flandry should have become Emperor in a palace revolution. A novel called Emperor Flandry could have book-ended the series with Ensign Flandry. Also, as the Lancaster sf book seller Peter Pinto suggested to Anderson, Flandry’s opponent Aycharaych should have returned but in an Aycharaych, not another Flandry, novel. I used dialogue between Flandry and Aycharaych on death when working as an RE Teacher. The aristocratic Flandry thinks that death is “…not quite a gentleman…” whereas the alien Aycharaych sees it as a “...completion.” (2)

Van Rijn stories are curious combinations of frivolous action-adventure fiction and serious scientific speculation. We are supposed to admire and enjoy van Rijn’s profiteering, ostentation, apparent benevolence and confounding of the bureaucrats. At the same time, the canny trader van Rijn survives, prospers and profits only if he continues to understand ever new examples of alien biology and psychology and Anderson can imagine these as genuinely alien by reasoning from the basic premises of different stellar and planetary environments. Van Rijn’s deductive processes resemble Hercules Poirot’s. He works hard at thinking out new situations even while lounging and drinking beer but is physically powerful and skilled enough to handle himself in a fight with an alien warrior if necessary. How would he have coped with a situation where he had to choose between private profit and the greater good? The moral of his stories seems to be that he can always profit from the greater good although he is persuaded to hold his peace at the end of “Lodestar” when Falkayn has become more prominent.

This article is occasioned by the fact that Baen Books are currently issuing the entire Technic series in chronological order of fictitious events for the first time ever. They are therefore having to break up earlier collections including the omnibus The Earth Book of Stormgate but they are preserving the Earth Book introductions to stories, “written by” an Avalonian Ythrian. The Earth Book about Terrans who walk the Earth is a companion volume to the Sky Book, which we do not see, about winged Ythrians.

This complete publication of the series means that many of us will read for the first time the previously uncollected “Sargasso of Lost Starships” which, I believe, has to be regarded as a slightly inconsistent account of the early Empire. A reference in “The Star Plunderer” to Manuel’s Empire as the First Empire fits with a similar reference in Anderson’s earlier, Psychotechnic, History. Thus, this represents a period in the writing when the Histories had not yet been differentiated.

Disagreeing with Anderson, I would include “Memory” (July 1957) as a post-Empire Long Night story because that is how it reads. If it were included in the Long Night section of the History, I do not think that readers would notice any discrepancy. It may be that the characters anticipate a different subsequent history than the one revealed in later stories but that is what happens in history.

(Added Feb 2012: After carefully re-reading "Memory," I now agree with Anderson that it is not set during the Long Night after the Fall of the Terran Empire.)

The Chronology of Technic Civilization

c2055	“The Saturn Game”	Feb 81
2150	“Wings of Victory”	Apr 72
24th C	“The Problem of Pain”	Feb 73
2416	“Margin of Profit”	Sep 56
2416	“How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson”	74
2423	“The Three-Cornered Wheel”	63
2420s	“A Sun Invisible”	Apr 66
2420s	“The Season of Forgiveness”	Dec 73
2420s	The Man Who Counts	Feb-Apr 58
2420s	“Esau”	Feb 70
2420s	“Hiding Place”	Mar 61
2430s	“Territory”	Jun 63
2430s	“The Trouble Twisters”	Jul-Aug 71
2430s	“Day of Burning”	Jan 67
2430s	“The Master Key”	Aug 71
2430s	Satan’s World	69
2430s	“A Little Knowledge”	Aug 71
2446	“Lodestar”	73
2456	Mirkheim	77
26th C	“Wingless”	Jul 73
26th C	“Rescue on Avalon”	73
c2700	“The Star Plunderer”	Sep 52
28th C	“Sargasso of Lost Starships”	Jan 52
29th C	The People of the Wind	Feb-Apr 73
3019	Ensign Flandry	66
3021	A Circus of Hells	70
3025	The Rebel Worlds	69
3027	“Outpost of Empire”	Dec 67
3028	The Day of their Return	73
3032	“Tiger by the Tail”	Jan 51
3033	“Honorable Enemies”	May 51
3035	“The Game of Glory”	Mar 58
3037	“A Message in Secret”	61
3038	“The Plague of Masters”	61
3040	“Hunters of the Sky Cave”	Jun 59
3042	“The Warriors from Nowhere”	Summer 54
3047	A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows	Sep-Dec 74
3061	A Stone in Heaven	79
3064	The Game of Empire	85
3600	“A Tragedy of Errors”	Feb 68
3900	The Night Face	63
4000	“The Sharing of Flesh”	Dec 68
7100	“Starfog”	Aug 67

1. Miesel, Sandra, “Chronology of Technic Civilization” IN Anderson, Poul, The Technic Civilization Saga: The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis, 2008, Riverdale NY, pp. 445-450.
2. Anderson, Poul, Agent of the Terran Empire, 1977, London, p. 93.