Poetry And Science Fiction

Mercatores tui auroram mari persequntur.

How often do poetry and sf interact?

James Elroy Flecker wrote a speculative poem about the future. See here.

Poul Anderson, Neil Gaiman, SM Stirling and Michael Scott Rohan quote Flecker.

Until David Birr pointed it out, I had completely overlooked Anderson's character, David Falkayn, quoting the same line from Flecker that concludes Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers:

"He murmured, as best he could in Latin, 'Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea...'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 314.

But what is the Latin translation? This post begins with my attempt. Brian from our Latin class suggests:

tui mercatores mane ad ipse mare persequuntur.

Addendum: Andrew, our Latin Tutor, says:

mercatores meridiem trans mare persequuntur.

Later: We have established that "meridies" is "midday," not "morning."

Two days later: Mercatores mane trans mare... gives us alliteration but "aurora" is a poetic word for morning. In my first attempt at translation, I miss-spelt the verb and got the ablative case of mare wrong.

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.)

Garuda And Going Bird

Coincidentally, I posted about Christopher Holm "going bird" just as I began to reread the passage in SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers about the airship, the Garuda. I also forgot some details about Chris/Arinninan, who:

has short hair like all gravbelt fliers;
prefers personal flight to an aircar although the latter is much quicker;
of necessity, checks every part of his unit before a flight;
is under Ythrian law and custom, not human law;
tells orthohumans that joining a choth widens and purifies his humanity;
like other human beings, lives at ground level although the city of Gray on Falkayn Bay also has highrises for ornithoids;
flies with other members of Stormgate Choth to a regional Khruath in the Weathermother.

High is heaven and holy.

From The Angezi Raj To The Terran Empire

I have been rereading the Athelstane King passages of SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003) in search of a particular reference to Krishna. Rereading only selected passages generates continuity problems. Warburton is one of those who accompany King on camel-back into the desert (pp. 339, 351), is not one of those who leap onto a train with King (pp. 379-380) but is with King the next time we see him (p. 387)? But such continuity conundra must result from my not reading the text consecutively...

Before retiring, let me commend the smooth transition in Poul Anderson, Rise of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011) from the League period to the Imperial period and, in particular from the concluding van Rijn novel, Mirkheim, to the opening page of the novel, The People Of The Wind. On that page, Daniel Holm converses with his son Chris on Avalon. Avalon was settled in the two stories that followed Mirkheim and there was an Ivar Holm in the second of those stories. Daniel and Chris discuss an imminent war and, a few pages later, we learn that that war will be against the Terran Empire which was introduced in the third and fourth stories separating Mirkheim from The People Of The Wind.

Those opening pages of the second novel also informs us that, for the past hundred years on Avalon, Ythrian choths have been accepting human beings into membership. Thus, Christopher Holm is also Arinnian of Stormgate Choth and, lacking wings, flies with a gravbelt. We have left Nicholas van Rijn far behind. Arinnian will eventually marry Hrill of Highsky Choth who is Tabitha Falkayn, a direct descendant of van Rijn's protege, the Founder of Avalon. That is quite an involved and dense future history - and we are nowhere near Dominic Flandry yet.

Aenean And Indian Deserts

Poul Anderson excels at descriptions of planetary environments where human colonists survive or thrive but not always easily. See the Dreary and Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments.

SM Stirling describes an Indian desert that should be identical with ours although it is in an alternative timeline. There are:

a large, bright moon;
stars like silver dust in a very black sky;
insects;
large, black, swarming, lethal scorpions;
lions;
gazelles, eaten by the lions;
wild red dogs;
cold air that is "...painfully dry, but...had an exhilarating cleanness."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Nineteen, p. 362.

Anderson imagines but, of course, cannot experience Aeneas. Stirling can experience Terrestrial deserts and surely writes from experience when he describes the desert air as painfully dry but exhilaratingly clean? That sounds like the voice of experience, not of imagination. And many of us could have been there but never described it as well as that.

The Worst And The Best

Religion evokes the worst and the best in humanity. SM Stirling's Count Ignatieff believes that he will enter Hell but as one of the torturers! Further, people have tortured in the name of religion and I have encountered Evangelicals who openly gloated at the expected damnation of those who disagreed with them. But let us ascend from the demonic to the sublime, starting with Indian religious diversity.

Poul Anderson's fiction addresses the profoundest of theological questions. See "The Gwydiona Experience" and "The Problem Of Pain."

A short post this morning but I think that its links are worth checking.

Aycharaych And Ignatieff

Two Science Fiction Villains

(i) Aycharaych is a humanoid from an extrasolar planet whereas Ignatieff is a human being in an alternative history.

(ii) Aycharaych is a universal telepath whereas Ignatieff is served by a timelines-discerning clairvoyant.

(iii) Aycharaych preserves his Chereionite heritage whereas Ignatieff wants the destruction of life.

(iv) For Aycharaych, conflict and unrest are means whereas, for Ignatieff, the infliction of pain is a pleasure.

(v) Aycharaych's commitment is to his heritage, not to the Roidhun, while Ignatieff's commitment is to the Peacock Angel, not to the Czar.

(vi) Aycharaych and Flandry enjoy their conversations whereas Ignatieff and King fight to the death from their very first meeting.

(vii) Aycharaych subverts Flandry's son whereas Ignatieff had killed King's father.

(viii) Ignatieff unequivocally died whereas we can never be sure with Aycharaych...

Action And Adventure In The Angrezi Raj

(Sikh symbol.)

SM Stirling's English prose is excellent. If I find an occasional anomaly, this is only because I am rereading very closely and carefully, noticing details missed on two previous readings.

"The woman looked around the room. Even hanging from the chains, Narayan felt a slight tingling chill as he met them. They saw more than human beings were meant to see..."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Fifteen, p. 285.

What are "...them..." in the second sentence and "They..." in the third? Clearly, from the context, they are the woman's eyes. However, grammatically, these plural pronouns do not refer back to any plural noun in the first sentence. That sentence needs to read something like: "The woman cast her eyes around the room."

But how many readers are going to notice that in this action-packed adventure sequence? Imperials raid a traitor's house to rescue Athelstane King while Athelstane King leads a raid to rescue Narayan Singh! King's men, who have scaled a tower, hear the front door being blown in by they do not know who! King has his second confrontation with the dreadful Ignatieff whose robe is caked with "...dried and rotting blood." (p. 282) Evil personified and incarnated.

"Homo Sum"

"Homo sum" is Latin for "I am a man." (Two words instead of four: no article and an inflected verb, not requiring a pronoun.)

After quoting this Latin phrase, Poul Anderson rightly celebrates the diversity of humanity. He lists, and says that he can learn from:

a Navajo herdsman;
an Australian bushman;
a Yankee capitalist;
a European socialist;
a Confucian scholar;
an Islamic warrior -

- so diverse that they seem to be of different species!

I was reminded of this Andersonian list when I reread SM Stirling's account of three caravan guards from "...some very rough places indeed."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Fourteen, p. 248:

"...a thick-shouldered, bandy-legged Mongol with a quiver and recurved bow over his shoulder...";

"...a very black African with no tongue and hideous scars on his back...";

"...a man with tattooed cheeks and red hair who was of no race or tribe King could recognize and who carried what looked like a jointed iron flail." (ibid.)

Thus, Mongol, African and unrecognizable-despite-red-hair! I like that third guy. Stirling's shorter list of diverse human beings reminds us of what people do to each other (tongueless; scarred back) and to themselves (tattooed cheeks) and there is plenty of violent intent (bow and arrow; iron flail). We may add that these three serve a Jewish man who is loyal to the Angrezi Raj.

Blog Maintenance And Future Reading

Despite the mysterious disappearance of some posts from the Blog Archive, I have been in my opinion improving the blog by scanning earlier posts not only to make minor corrections but also to link to still earlier posts, where I had previously only referred to them, if I am able to locate the post in question. Sometimes, a link is not to a single post but to a search result which thus can include later posts.

Such "blog maintenance" does not increase the number of posts. However, I will:

continue to reread at least some passages of SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers;
reread The Demon Of Scattery by Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon;
read for the first time Stirling's The Stone Dogs when I at last receive a copy of this novel.

This reading and rereading will in due course generate material for new posts.

Meanwhile, is anyone able to identify the ten volumes by Poul Anderson whose covers are shown in the attached image? (Perhaps three of the titles are legible.) Also, the fifteen covers on the "Disappearing Posts" post. See link above.

Karma Yoga In The Bhagavad Gita

Athelstane King, conversing with a sannyassin, chants:

"'Action rightly renounced brings freedom:
"'Action rightly performed brings freedom:
"'Both are better
"'Than mere shunning of action.'"
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Ten, p. 166.

He continues:

"'We are men who act, holy one; better to act as our karman in this turn of the Wheel demands, than to try a path beyond our merit, and fail. Bless us!'" (ibid.)

The omniscient narrator comments:

"...King's theology was exceedingly weak, if you knew the next section of that gita..." (ibid.)

I could try to find out which section of the Bhagavad Gita King chants, then read the next section. But is his theology weak? Surely he quotes the essence of the Gita? See here. One way to avoid suffering is to avoid acting but some actions, preformed rightly, might be lesser evils.

Poul Anderson always shows respect for religious philosophies but maybe does not often discuss them with the depth of insight that Stirling displays here? The religious synthesis of the Angrezi Raj is both profound and plausible.

Heroes And Villains

Four classic pairs:

Holmes and Moriarty;
Bond and Blofeld; (and here)
Dominic Flandry and Aycharaych;
Athelstane King and Count Ignatieff.

Holmes, Moriarty, Bond and Blofeld are universally known, the two sf pairs less so. My point is that King and Ignatieff are worthy of inclusion on this list.

King gradually learns that he has a major adversary:

Ibrahim Khan reveals that a tall white fakir wearing an eye-patch paid him to kill King;
King learns that, a generation earlier, a fakir with one blue eye and one brown eye had preached jihad and killed his, King's, father;
when King meets an adversary with an eye-patch turned up above a blue left eye, that man introduces himself as Count Vladimir Obromovich Ignatieff and they immediately try to kill each other;
Ignatieff is indeed evil, a Devil-worshiping cannibal.

Pride, Pomp, Priesthood And Power

(Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi.)

"...Cyrus the Great King rode past with his chief courtiers Kobold, Croesus, and Harpagus, and the pride and pomp and priesthood of Persia followed."
-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 55-112 AT p. 110.

"......the pride and pomp and power of the Mughals was the wonder of the world..."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Ten, p. 168.

A phrase in ...Lancers rang a bell although it turns out not to be identical.

Dare I say that I prefer Stirling's description of multi-ethnic Indian street life in ...Lancers to Kipling's in Kim? For page after page, Athelstane King and his companions ride through the outskirts and into the center of Old Delhi where Chandi Chowk, the Square of Silver Moonlight:

"...was a shoving, chattering mass of folk on foot, riders or rickshaws, oxcarts..." (ibid.)

Anderson's description of a multi-species market on an extra-solar planet in The Game Of Empire is comparable.

When Stirling refers to "...the First Men and the Tree of Life...," (p. 164) I think that that is a homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Gods Of Mars?

Many Monotheisms

(The Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar - at least that is what it looks like.)

Logically, there should be many groups of polytheists but only one group of monotheists, right? Well, no. Even when agreed on a unitary principle, people always find plenty to disagree about. In SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), a Muslim ignorantly describes a Sikh, in his presence, as "'...this Hindu idol worshiper.'" (Chapter Six, p. 92)

The first step toward mutual comprehension and respect is to describe another man's beliefs in terms acceptable to him. Thus, we do not call Muslims "Mohammedans," although the phrase, "Mohammedan fanatic," is inscribed in stone, under a memorial to a British soldier killed by a..., in Canterbury Cathedral.

"The Sikh growled; his faith was an offshoot of the Hindu stock, but ostentatiously monotheistic." (ibid.)

I would go further and say that Sikhism is a Hindu-Muslim synthesis. Its scripture, the Granth, is a collection of hymns written by Hindus, Muslims and Sikh Gurus. And, of course, it is a pure monotheism, in no way idolatrous.

In Imperial service during Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, we see Jerusalem Catholics and a Muslim, a Jew and a Sikh. The Empire also encounters mutually incompatible alien monotheisms among Ythrians and Merseians.

Between Books II

(The Peshawar Club.)

I have been doing "blog maintenance," which improves earlier posts but does not add any new ones. It will also take some time to complete the job.

Meanwhile, maybe the next Poul Anderson volume to be reread should be The Demon Of Scattery? It describes events post-Mother Of Kings and is narrated during The Broken Sword. Thus, these three Viking volumes are set centuries after War Of The Gods and Hrolf Kraki's Saga but before The Last Viking Trilogy.

SM Stirling's The Stone Dogs cannot arrive tomorrow because there is no post on Sunday. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers is extremely enjoyable to reread but I am determined not to google every unfamiliar word like sambhur. There are too many of them, in any case.

In ...Lancers, the King estate has a church, a temple, a mosque and a gurdwara and the Kings' business agent in Delhi is a Jew. Admirable pluralism, also to be found in Anderson's Terran Empire although not in its rival imperium, the Merseian Roidhunate. In Europe right now, terrorist fanatics are trying to destroy our pluralism and start a race war. These are bad times.

Between Books

Today I have been otherwise engaged. I have finished rereading Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings and have not yet received SM Stirling's The Stone Dogs. As noted here, I am rereading certain passages of Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2002) in search of a reference to Krishna.

I note Stirling's rich vocabulary, e.g.:

"...the shade [the trees] cast was densely umbrageous..."
-Chapter Seven, p. 109.

I have read this novel twice before but do not remember noticing this word. But I do remember that I had to stop googling unfamiliar terminology because that was interfering with reading the text.

I also notice a slight contradiction? Narayan Singh tells his father, Ranjit, that Athelstane King is well, then whispers:

"And he is with me, disguised..." (p. 112)

At the bottom of the following page, Ranjit responds:

"'I will say that two friends of yours have come to visit...'" (p. 113)

King and Narayan are indeed accompanied by one other man but Narayan had not yet told Ranjit that.

It is a pleasure to reread this novel, a summit of alternative history fiction.

Blog Maintenance II

I cannot reread the blog without finding corrections to be made. For example, when quoting SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003) about Krishna, I neglected to record the page number. Always willing to make a virtue of a necessity, I am now rereading the passages narrated from Athelstane King's point of view in search of these reflections on Krishna.

I agree with Harry Turtledove:

"Lush backgrounds, tight research, lively characters, thoroughly nasty villains, a fascinating and plausible society - what more can anyone possibly want?"
-quoted on what has to be p. i, immediately after the front cover.

What indeed? Lancers is the best of Stirling's novels that I have read so far - although I have not read many as yet. Stirling's novels are discussed here because they are seen as worthy successors of Poul Anderson's alternative history fictions.

As Athelstane King enters the restaurant of the Peshawar Club, his stomach reminds him that, after fighting for civilization, he deserves some of its fruits. Those fruits go beyond good food to courtesy and diplomacy. The Political agent says:

"'Captain King, I presume, of Rexin in Kashmir and the Peshawar Lancers? Good of you to sacrifice time on leave.'" (p. 42)

King thinks but, of course, does not say:

"And courteous of you to pretend I had a choice..." (ibid.)

The facility to engage in such civilized discourse is indeed worth defending against some of those villains that Turtledove mentions.

Aristocracy And Humanity

Rome was a monarchy, then a republic, then an Empire. The world still contains monarchies, republics and accusations of imperialism. Poul Anderson presents a future Terran Empire modeled on the Roman Empire. SM Stirling presents a New British Empire in an alternative timeline where:

"The physician stared in appalled wonder at the work ahead of him, then darted forward, ignoring the King-Emperor for the more seriously wounded behind him and calling for his assistants and their supplies.
"Charles glanced after him. 'I like that chap's priorities,' he said."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), p. 454.

Charles is the King-Emperor. I also like the MO's priorities. In Britain today, if a Duke and his valet are trapped inside a burning building, then, to the Fire Brigade, they are two living bodies, both to be rescued as quickly as possible. Physical danger removes the distinction between nobility and commoners. It is good to see a King-Emperor who knows that, when others are in greater need of medical treatment, his rank counts for nothing.

Civilization can, of course, be reorganized without such ranks. But, as long as the ranks exist, they must be recognized as social conventions and nothing more.

False Religions

I believe that:

human beings were naturally selected to help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return;

we experience this motivation as moral obligation, not as calculating self-interest;

extraterrestrials cannot bear the same genes but might help us in return and, in any case, as conscious beings should be protected from harm;

therefore, our morality should apply to them;

religions tell stories that are good if they express universal morality and bad if they do not;

thus, "Thou shalt not kill" is good whereas "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" is bad and the stoning of an adulteress is abominable.

"'By adversity, the God tempers the steel of the Race.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 447.

This is a racial, not a universal, religion. The God wants his Race to enslave or exterminate others. Fortunately, not all Merseians are in the Roidhunate.

"I thank thee, Tchernobog, for the gift of my enemy's pain. I feel their pain, finer than the sweetest of wine on the tongue!'"
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), p. 425.

Good God! If I had to fight and even kill Ignatieff, I would neither cause him unnecessary pain nor enjoy whatever pain he did experience.

Anderson and Stirling show us two bad religions. But how should we assess the New Faith of Anderson's Ythrians?

Foresight And Desert

SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), pp. 362-374.

Athelstane King's band fights nomads in the Thar, the Great Indian Desert. Yasmini responds to the nomads' movements from foresight, not from physical sight. Desert dwellers and foresight based on perception of multiple timelines recall Frank Herbert's Dune. However, the two works are otherwise dissimilar - apart from the use of the term Padishah, which further reminds us that both novels also present fictional empires.

As ever, reference to a work like Dune prompts from me the observation that Poul Anderson addressed such themes far better than some better known authors. See here.