Another Detail

I have known for a long time that Poul Anderson's writings are extremely rich but I keep re-surprising myself with this discovery. I had thought that The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975) was not among his best works and was even a bit disjointed with all its disparate elements. A careful rereading shows that it all hangs together.

The means of interstellar travel used is not FTL but is unique in sf and contributes significantly to the plot, allowing the characters to cross many light years in zero subjective time.

Chapter One is unambiguous hard sf with interstellar explorers returning to the Solar System. Chapter Two begins:

"Lord Brannoch dhu Crombar, Tertiary Admiral of the Fleet, High Noble of Thor, ambassador of the League of Alpha Centauri to the Solar Technate, did not look like a dignitary of any civilized power." (p. 17)

Brannoch is six foot six, wide shouldered, yellow maned, blue eyed and scarfaced and wears jewelled ear rings. If not for the references to Alpha Centauri and Sol, we might have been reading heroic fantasy. "Thor" turns out to be a planet, not the god. Even more strangely, Brannoch talks to alien monsters concealed in the wall of his apartment.

The first three Chapters feel like mixed up information overload but I hope to have shown in earlier posts that this complicated account of future civilizations is not only coherent but also addresses fundamental issues for any organized society or intelligent life.

The Long Way Home Revisited II

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home, the way the Technate limits the social use of technology is shown by the fact that Ministers can descend by gravity shaft from the moving belts of their bridgeways to the low-level where it is necessary to walk because there are no slideways although, obviously, these could have been installed.

I am reminded of an Englishman who objected to the introduction of railways because he saw no reason why the lower orders should wander aimlessly around the country. But, of course, the more they are free to travel and learn, the less they are describable as "lower." Rulers throughout the ages have justified keeping the people down because the people are down. However, rulers themselves have only been with us for the few thousand years since the beginning of civilization. Before that, society would have had leaders, those who led activities from time to time, but there was not as yet any economic surplus to be monopolized and controlled by a class of administrators becoming rulers.

My example of moral leadership, clearly distinguishable from any kind of rulership, is this. A line of people waiting for a bus witness an act of cruelty on the other side of a busy road. They hesitate to intervene, to risk the traffic or to miss their bus, which they see approaching. One steps forward. Some follow the one. More follow the some. The rest follow the more. The one gave a lead. He could not coerce the others. They need not and might not have followed his lead.

So down with rulers and up with leaders!

The Long Way Home Revisited

Recently, when discussing Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), I argued that a massive IQ difference between two classes of a single society seemed implausible. I had forgotten that that society practices genetic engineering.

When Langley, an astronaut from 2047, which is now five thousand years in the past, remarks:

"'Where I come from...we'd learned better than to leave leadership to chance - and heredity is mighty chancy.'" (p. 32)

- he is reminded that the society that he is criticizing has genetic engineering. Thus, the hereditary Ministerial class is artificially selected for high IQ. But that makes nonsense of another claim made by apologists for the Technate social system. The abysmally low average IQ of Commoners is cited as an insuperable obstacle either to giving them the vote or to using technology to liberate them from work. They are supposed to be incapable either of participation in public policy making or of creative use of leisure. But we are to understand that the intelligence levels of future generations is something that can be controlled.

We are used to thinking that a ruling class will maintain its rule and will use any idea, including even the alleged stupidity of the Commons, to justify that continued rule. However, there is a difference in the Technate, where ultimate decision making has been handed over to an incorruptible computer, the Technon. Ministers implement the Technon's basic policies and make only the lesser day to day decisions themselves.
So why does the Technon not implement the greater good of humanity by liberating the population while raising its intelligence level? Because it has been programmed to maintain stability, not to liberate or improve humanity.

However, an external enemy has learned to manipulate the Technon's decisions by controlling the data inputted to the Technon so why have none of the Ministers learned to do this? Or have they and we just don't know about it?

We are assured that the Technon is "...a robot, a super-computer...", not "...a conscious brain..." or an artificially duplicated mind but we are also told that, within its limits, it thinks, reasons, exercises "[s]ome equivalent of creative imagination..." and is comparable to a child (p. 157). I am not sure that all of this language is fully consistent. An equivalent of creative imagination is not creative imagination but thought and childhood imply consciousness.

Sf authors are used to writing about, and we are used to reading about, a kind of future society that reflects historical and contemporary societies in which a technologically powerful elite rules a vigorous although subjugated subordinate class. The Long Way Home contains hints that something qualitatively different and better is possible.

There is a prayer, "Give me the courage to change what can be changed, the patience to accept what cannot be changed and the wisdom to know the difference." Technate society counts the nature of human beings among the "cannot be changed" although it contradicts this with genetic engineering. I count our nature among the "can be changed" - we exist as a species only because our pre-human ancestors began the task of changing their environment with hands and brain and changed themselves in the process. Thus, our "nature" is change, not anything unchanging.

An Astronaut Returns

An astronaut returns to Earth centuries or millennia after his departure. Everyone he knew is dead. Suddenly he sees, or catches a glimpse of, a woman who closely resembles his former wife or fiancee. Can she possibly have survived unchanged? But, if so, how? And, if not, then what is the explanation?

I have encountered this intriguing idea twice: in a Buck Rogers TV episode and in Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home. In both of these cases, a woman's appearance had been changed for our hero's benefit. However, there is potentially a different story here - a long search for the mysterious, occasionally glimpsed, woman, ending with either an enlightening explanation or an extended enigma. I cannot tell this story but someone else would be able to.

Meanwhile, in the last forty eight hours, I have attended a picket line, a Hindu Temple and a funeral and have responded to correspondence concerning the commencement of my state pension, so there is plenty of life, change and death still in the real world outside the pages of science fiction novels. I have also realized that I missed a point in my most recent critique of the society described in The Long Way Home - this is the sort of point that I hope that page viewers will be able to spot for me - so I must soon return yet again to that novel before starting to comment on The Byworlder.

Fair winds forever!

Etie Town

Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975) is also good on Terrestrial-ET relations:

"The spacemen accepted [a new alien] almost casually, they were used to non-human intelligence." (p. 122)

It is worth making this point instead of simply showing the characters coping with a new kind of intelligent being as if he (this one is male) were just another human being.

"A huge shape came around a corner. It had four legs, a torso with arms, a nonhuman head. Langley hailed it...The alien looked blankly at him and moved on...Etie Town, the section reserved for visitors of other races, was somewhere around here...most of the compartments would be sealed off, their interiors poisonous to him." (p. 71)

So, again, aliens, even a large quadruped, are taken for granted although precautions must be taken against poisonous atmospheres.

Later, Langley does visit Etie Town. Outworlders employ human servants for prestige and must pay them high salaries. Terrestrials practice slavery but do not allow aliens to own human beings. A Slimer (a merchant from Srinis) employs a cook, a maid and a formidable butler, who must work in greenish yellow light and a thick, damp mist.

These imaginative details in just a few passages increase the richness of the book. In Etie Town:

"They went down a broad street full of strangeness." (p. 166)

- but, this time, the "strangeness" is not described so the reader gets to exercise some imagination.

During Langley's visit to Etie Town, I do not understand the reference to "...the Private Eye school..." (ibid.)

Recurrent Issues II

"'...why not give the Commoners a break? Why should they spend their lives down on low-level?'"

- Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 152.

A very good question but what do we think of the answer given?

"'My dear romantic friend, what else can they do? Do you think they're fit to share administrative responsibilities? The average IQ of the Commons is about 90, the average for the Ministerial class is closer to 150...by automating all operations, it would be possible for every man in the Solar System to quit work: all his needs would be supplied free. But what, then, is your IQ-90 Commoner going to do with himself? Play chess and write epic poems?'" (ibid.)

Two issues: IQ and abundance.

IQ: I question whether any civilization could ever become so stratified and polarized that aristocrats were that much more intelligent than commoners. Both classes remain members of a single genetically diverse species (although Wells imagined two social classes becoming different biological species: Morlocks and Eloi.) Surely such a discrepancy would mean that what the IQ questionnaires were testing for was a set of skills that were socially learned in one class and not in the other: a difference between social cultures, not in average individual intelligence? We are told that the Commoners receive a minimal education, including hypnotic indoctrination. Thus, they are prevented from realizing any inherent intelligence or creativity that they might have had.

Abundance: Surely an economy of work, trade and free enterprise would not be maintained as a sort of game if it had become unnecessary? Economics is driven by necessity and competitive pressure, not by a belief that, without it, people would have nothing to do! Some low-IQ Commoners would play chess and write poetry, even if not epic. Others would play football and watch dramatized epics. But, within a generation, a comprehensive education newly open to all would create a population with a completely different outlook.

Some would not adjust but others would. Humanity changes its environment and adapts.

"'Even as things are, there isn't enough work to go around for the Ministers. That's why you see so many wastrels and so much politicking among them.'" (ibid.)

So even the high-IQ Ministers need an alternative. At least some members of that class would seek common cause with able Commoners to propose a different form of social organization and a different use of technology. Of course, we are to understand that the Technon has stabilized society for two millennia and that to overthrow it now would be to invite regression, not progress.

"'As for politics, our civilization today may be ossified, but it is at least stable, and the majority are content that it remain so. For the ordinary man, instability - change - means dislocation, war, uncertainty, misery, and death.'" (pp. 152-153)

The ordinary man thinks that if that is what he has been taught. But, if, as we are told, there is potential production of abundance, then there is no longer any reason why instability and change should mean war and misery - in fact the contrary.

"'Ruthless use of strength is the law of nature.'" (p. 65)

This sounds like 1984: "The purpose of power is power."

There would be no need to use strength if all needs were supplied free, any more than we currently fight for the air we breathe - but might if we were in a space station with only one oxygen cylinder left.

Recurrent Issues

Despite a recent post entitled "The Long Way Home: Conclusion," I find that I am still responding to this very rich novel by Poul Anderson. Having reread the novel to its conclusion, I understand why correspondent Sean Brooks regards it as an early approach to issues later addressed in Anderson's Harvest Of Stars.

One passage is similar to Isaac Asimov's The Caves Of Steel. The city Lora is "...a single integrated unit..." (The Long Way Home, St Albans, Herts, 1975, p. 61), all buildings connected and lower levels roofed over. Two thousand feet below the high towers and moving bridgeways of the Ministerial level, Commoners inhabit sunless, skyless metal corridors lacking slideways.

(Differences from The Caves Of Steel: all inhabitants of Asimov's Cities live entirely enclosed from birth to death, travel on moving "strips" and would experience agoraphobia if transported to the open countryside of robotic farms.)

Anderson conveys the confusion of an Asian city in Lora's lower levels:

air is fresh but pumping sounds are constant;
naked children run through the crowd;
booths sell cheap pottery and jewelry;
a porter carries machine parts;
two men play dice in the middle of the traffic;
there is a tavern and a sprawling drunk;
members of rival, uniformed guilds fight with their fists;
a streetwalker approaches a laborer;
a Ganymedean merchant talks to a local buyer;
servants clear a way for a rich man riding a small vehicle;
an apprentice carries a tool box behind his master;
a masked, knife-bearing assassins' guild member (!) passes;
a vendor pushing a food cart cries his wares.

But why must the Commoners spend their lives here? That question is discussed later in the novel.

"Wildlessly"?

"It was like a dream, he was carried wildlessly along between phantoms in black..."

- Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 69.

I have commented several times on the need for a dictionary when reading Poul Anderson. Because of Anderson's rich and extensive vocabulary, I cannot be sure whether a word like "...wildlessly..." is a misprint - but, if so, for what? - or is just another unusual word.

I cannot find it in Chamber Dictionary. Googling has produced some instances of its use, including someone else querying whether it is a word, so I am not much wiser.

After further time with Chambers Dictionary: Alright, I have got it. "Wild" is an obsolete form of "wield". "Wieldless" means "unmanageable". Therefore, "wildlessly" could mean "unmanageably".

The Long Way Home: Conclusion

(A new record for page views yesterday: 339.)

In Poul Anderson's The  Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975):

(i) That phrase, "...a wilderness of stars...," again, on p. 184.

(ii) We do not, after all, see the Technon, the ruling computer, but are definitely told that it is not conscious. It is a super-computer, not a duplicated mind. (p. 157)

(iii) Secretiveness facilitates subversion: the Technon runs the supposedly independent Commercial Society and the Centaurian Jovoids have gained partial control of the Technon!

(iv) In Alan Moore's Watchmen, a faked alien threat unites mankind; in this Anderson novel, a proved alien threat unites mankind.

(v) The superdrive crosses n light-years in n years of objective time but zero subjective time so it is a bit like FTL and a bit like time dilation. In the last sentence, the characters make one interstellar jump and plan more. They do not intend to return to the Solar System but, if they did, then thousands more years would have passed and they would hardly return to the same political situation.

(vi) Telepathy is well explained as sensitivity to nervous impulses. A telepath reads subvocalizations, suppressed motor impulses from brain to throat, and can therefore be foxed by another language.

Infinite Possibilities

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), set five thousand years in the future, a historian says:

"'...man in the known universe has exhausted the possibilities of his own culture. You wouldn't expect them to be infinite, after all. There are only so many shapes into which you can carve a block of marble; once the sculptors have made the best ones, their successors face a choice between dull imitation and puerile experiment. The same applies to all the arts, the sciences, and the permutations of human relationships.'" (p. 152)

Anderson did not believe that but was showing us a static, decadent civilization. I would say the exact opposite of this historian. The contemporary culture has limited possibilities but humanity has not. The number of shapes into which a block of marble can be carved is, if not infinite, then far greater than we will ever know. Some are considered the "best" in a particular culture but this shows the limitations of that culture. The same applies to all art, science and human relationships? Of course not! Does he advocate mass suicide?

The number of words in any language is finite, although there are always new coinages, but each of us every day utters new sentences that have never been spoken before and will never be spoken again so that every conversation is creative. We do not notice this because we look beyond everyday conversation to new texts expressing both knowledge and fiction.

As always, Anderson applies historical knowledge to future scenarios. Norwegian outcasts colonized Iceland, founded a republic, wrote fine literature and tried to colonize both Greenland and North America. Religious dissidents, deported criminals, impoverished immigrants and a few liberals founded the United States. So, in the fictitious future of this novel, what might be expected from the lost interstellar colonies?

Who Is It?

A powerful idea in popular fiction is the clandestine organization run by a mysterious masked or anonymous figure whose face and identity may or may not be revealed in the concluding episode of a series. (There are a couple of good guys whose faces we never see: the Lone Ranger and Judge Dredd - except when the latter was played by Sylvester Stallone.)

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975):

the Terrestrial Technate is, we are told, run by a computer, the Technon, which is not seen until maybe near the end of the novel;

the human colonials of the League of Alpha Centauri are secretly controlled by the concealed inhabitants of a Jovoid planet in one of the Centaurian planetary systems;

the interstellar traders of the Commercial Society are controlled at a distance by concealed bureaucrats whom they never see - recruits into the bureaucracy simply disappear.

Anderson is (almost) overdoing the idea of the mysterious, secretive leadership. We are free to speculate, for example, whether the Technon really controls the Society and whether it has any covert dealings with the real rulers of Alpha Centauri but the only way to find out is to continue reading.

A And A

Isaac Asimov, Foundation: psychohistory.
Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home: the paramethematical theory of man.

Two mathematically based, predictive, practical sciences of society but how different!

When discussing the Foundation series, I merely commented on inconsistencies between Asimov's texts whereas, when discussing Anderson's novel, I found it necessary to summarize an understanding of economics, then Anderson's account of "Technate" civilization, then to compare them. Thus, the Anderson novel, despite its fantastic setting - galactic, like Asimov's - addresses current society, economic slumps and whether they can be prevented, whereas Asimov's series, I think, is divorced from reality.

Yet again, I find it possible to highlight what Anderson does well by contrasting him with Asimov.

Two Levels

Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), like most of Anderson's works, is written on two levels. It can be read straight through very quickly as an action-adventure novel. For example, several times, the hero is attacked or kidnapped by blaster-wielding spacemen.

However, between action scenes, the characters take time to discuss the most fundamental questions about life and society. These passages warrant careful rereading. For example, having returned to Earth after five thousands years, the astronaut Langley notices improvements in medical technology, reflects on earlier improvements made by agriculture and machines and wonders whether:

"'...given a few more millennia, man will do something about himself, change his own mind from animal to human.'" (p. 124)

Another spacefarer, Valti, born more than six hundred years previously, cites inherent limits on progress:

mass-energy will never be created;
heat will never be made to flow from a colder to a warmer body;
the bigger a building, the more of its volume is passages;
even if biochemistry allowed immortality, memory capacity is limited;
thus, no civilization can be either immortal or universal.

Langley asks:

"'So there'll always be rise, and decay, and fall - always war and suffering?'" (p. 124)

Rise and fall, yes, but I do not see why war and suffering should continue indefinitely. Valti replies that the only alternative is "'...death disguised by a mechanical semblance of life.'" (ibid.) I do not see that this is necessary either but it is good to have these issues discussed here. And Valti goes on to remark:

"'...if you had traveled across light-years all your days, you'd know that there is something operating which can't be reduced to physical theory.'" (p. 125)

So we read on, hoping to learn more about this.

More On Unpredictability And Intelligence

Regarding unpredictability, Ninian Smart, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, presented an elegant argument for the inherent unpredictability of scientific discoveries.

Anyone who had announced in advance that a man called Einstein was going to formulate a "Theory of Relativity" would have predicted merely the name, not the content, of the new theory. However, to announce instead the content of the theory would have been not to predict the discovery but to make the discovery. Therefore, discoveries cannot be predicted. I cite this here because it is relevant to the unpredictable technological innovations mentioned in the previous post and therefore also to their equally unpredictable effects on the economy.

The other problem with Technate civilization in Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975) is its Ministers' attitude to their population:

"'It isn't possible to have equality...by definition, half the people always have below-average intelligence; and the average is not high.'" (p. 64)

"'Look around you - think these apes are fit to decide public policy?'" (p. 65)

I would say that they are at least as fit as their rulers who are heading towards more genocidal wars. These apes, human beings, built civilization in the first place. Their low intelligence is a self-fulfilling prophecy because their schooling comprises, "...a few years including hypnotic indoctrination...enough to teach the basic rudiments..." (p. 65), but not enough to teach anything about public policy.

Learning is life-long and includes neither hypnosis nor indoctrination. I think that a fully informed world population able both collectively and individually to control its own productive, creative and leisure activities is, with modern technology, a realistic educational goal.

Paramathematical Theory II

"...the Technate's founders...didn't think that such and such arrangements for production and distribution would work, they knew."
- Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 58.

Is this possible? I will:

(i) summarize an understanding of economics;
(ii) summarize Anderson's account of the Technate;
(iii) see whether (ii) is consistent with (i).

(i) Economics:
incessant competition forces firms to increase productivity by periodically reinvesting in newer, more expensive technology;
as investment increases, the rate of profit decreases;
when the rate is judged too low to justify large expenditure, investment stops;
economic slump with stockpiled goods, unemployed labor and bankrupted firms;
when a sufficiently high rate of profit has been restored, investment resumes but with bigger firms tending towards monopolies;
trade requires an infrastructure and laws, thus a state;
monopolies merge with the state (see Anderson's excellent sf political novel, Mirkheim).

(ii) The Technate:
Technon-owned industries fund the state;
individual members of the Ministerial class own farms, mines, factories and at least one restaurant;
Commoners work mainly in cities, some self-employed;
trades have uniformed guilds with long apprenticeships;
Ministers "'...encourage free enterprise...'" among Commoners (p. 64);
"The Technon gives the orders on how to balance population and production, so that the economy runs a smooth course.'" (p. 61)

(iii) Consistency?
I think: it is predictable that decreased rate of profit will cause cessation of investment and that investment will later resume with bigger firms but not when either of these events will occur. Unpredictable individual decisions and technological innovations affect when. Thus, encouraging free enterprise while ordering balanced production looks contradictory? And knowing that arrangements for production and distribution will work looks impossible? (I think.)

The Paramathematical Theory Of Man

"The most important discovery since the superdrive was, he gathered, the paramathematical theory of man, both as individual and as society, which had made it possible to reorganize on a stable, predictable, logical basis. There had been no guesswork on the part of the Technate's founders: they didn't think that such and such arrangements for production and distribution would work, they knew. The science wasn't perfect, it couldn't be; such eventualities as the colonial revolts had arisen unforeseen; but the civilization was stable, with high negative feedback, it adjusted smoothly to new conditions."
- Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 58.

Sf ideas include not only interstellar drives but also a science of society. Can a single mathematical theory cover both individual and society? Isaac Asimov involved himself in several confusions -

(i) Will a sufficiently large, galactic scale, population be mathematically predictable despite individual unpredictability just as planetary orbits are predictable despite the unpredictability of individual particles? An Economics student thought, and I am inclined to agree, that increasing the number of individuals merely increases the unpredictability.

(ii) Will "Second Foundationers" who apply mathematics to society also understand individual psychology? It suits Asimov's story purposes to assume so.

(iii) The Second Foundationers, despite their greater understanding, turn out to be as mutually suspicious and in conflict as anyone else.

(iv) Does mental understanding really just mean mental control over other people?

(v) Asimov forgets between volumes what the nature and range of the mental powers is supposed to be.

(vi) It turns out that the mental powers were discovered and developed separately, not as part of Seldon's psychohistory.

(vii) Asimov says both that the mental science of the Second Foundation differs fundamentally from the physical science of the First Foundation and that mental events must be based in physical events. Dualism versus reductionism is an old philosophical debate. However, although I am confident that I am paraphrasing Asimov accurately, I am doing so from memory. His text either reduces mental events to physical events or leaves open the possibility that a qualitatively new level of being, the psychological, emerges from, without being mechanically reducible to, a more basic level, the physical. I am confident that Asimov meant the former but, since this discussion of Asimov is an unplanned digression from a discussion of Anderson, I am not disposed right now to look through Second Foundation for a verbatim quotation. But, Asimov fans, please comment or disagree?

As always, I prefer Anderson's treatment of these themes to Asimov's but that will have to wait till a later post.

Technate Civilization

Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975) presents a new combination of familiar elements.

(i) Politicians are now called "'...psychotechnical administrator[s]...'" (p. 41).

(ii) There are weapons that can completely disintegrate matter. (I have just encountered this idea in Anderson's story of the same era, "The Disintegrating Sky".)

(iii) The seven foot tall security men and bodyguards are cloned (chromosome duplicated), exogenetically grown slaves.

(iv) The Commercial Society has some similarities to the Polesotechnic League, the Kith and the Nomads:

the Society is recruited from all planets and races;
it conducts most interstellar trade, sometimes from planets unknown to the Technate;
it trades in luxuries but also in industrial materials as planets exhaust their resources;
Society personnel spend their lives in large spaceships;
they have distinctive laws, customs and language and no external allegiance;
their chief factor at Sol describes himself as "'...a lonely old man.'" (p. 44)

The astronauts from five thousand years earlier must find their way among the competing powers of the Technate, the Centaurians and the Society. I remember that the novel ends with a surprise revelation about the balance of power but do not remember what the surprise was.

Timeline And Technate

2047: Explorer departs; interstellar emigration begins.
Later: gravity control; genetic engineering; Mars,Venus and Jovian moons terraformed.
World War XXVIII: nearby colonies destroyed; Solar barbarism; lengthy reconstruction.
c. 5000: Technate unites Solar System, resumes colonization.
c. 6000: war of colonial independence; League of Alpha Centauri.
c. 7000: Explorer returns.

Before it was terraformed, Venus was a "...poisonous galling hell-hole..." (p. 9), thus closer to the mark than the "Fantastic Venuses" of other pre-space probe speculations.

The Technon, "'...a giant sociomathematical computer..'", making "'...basic policy decisions...is less fallible, less selfish, less bribeable than a man.'" (p. 31) Hereditary "Ministers" execute policies and make lesser decisions. "'Under them are the Commoners.'" (ibid.) Genetic engineering is said to counteract the chanciness of heredity.

Thus, The Long Way Home, originally published in 1955, was an early Anderson approach to human-computer interaction.

The Long Way Home

When we read about fictitious interstellar exploration, we want to know what the explorers find out there but two other important questions are how long are they away and what has happened back home in their absence?

After ten years, Dan Dare returns to find the Solar System ruled by the Mekon;

after a relativistic round trip to galactic center, Larry Niven's Corbell returns to a barely recognizable Solar System, with what might be Earth in orbit around what might be Jupiter;

in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, astronauts return to a sterilized Earth;

in Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), which I am just starting to reread, astronauts returning after thousands of years must cope with a changed sociopolitical system.

In both of the Anderson novels, an alien passenger accompanies the returning astronauts. When we start to read The Long Way Home, it might turn out to be an end of the world scenario because after:

"The spaceship flashed out of superdrive..." (p. 5),

the first question to be asked is:

"'Where's the sun?'" (ibid.)

- but this is because the malfunctioning ship has re-entered normal space a third of a light-year, instead of just one AU, away. The astronauts do not yet suspect how much time has elapsed. Their response to this has to be a major part of the novel.