The Avatar IV

Let us compare Poul Anderson's The Avatar with his The Winter Of The World, Tau Zero and Time Patrol series.

In The Avatar, Earth is gradually approaching an Ice Age. Is this the Ice Age of The Winter Of The World? It could be but Anderson would have had to write a transitional volume to connect the two novels.

Both The Avatar and Tau Zero describe long interstellar journeys without a faster than light drive and within the laws of physics as understood at the time when the novel was written. The premise of Tau Zero is that a Bussard ramjet accelerates uncontrollably at relativistic speeds, thus traversing intergalactic distances in a very short time as experienced by its crew.

The premise of The Avatar is that the Others have placed a network of T machines throughout the universe. By approaching the T machine in the Solar System on a carefully controlled flight path, a spaceship can enter a target planetary system where it will be able to use another T machine to return home. Approaching a T machine on a random path can take you anywhere or when. Inevitably, an emergency will force the characters to the latter course - although I have yet to reread to that point so I look forward to being reminded of the details.

Random trips via T machines are the equivalent, in The Avatar, of the uncontrolled acceleration in Tau Zero. In each case, the novel's premise allows this kind of journey into the unknown so Anderson can explore the possibilities.

Imagine discussing as a matter of public policy whether to use a T machine to change history. Some Betans suggest preventing their scientific revolution but no path can be found to take a ship into their historical past. I think that that is how T machines work, allowing only consistent causality. If Betans intending to prevent a scientific revolution had emerged from their T machine earlier in their history, then Betan history would already have incorporated their arrival and its consequences and, if they had succeeded, then they themselves would have traveled back from a Beta without science so they would have had to use a spaceship borrowed from some other race. Thus, no Time Patrol is necessary.

Anderson and Blish

For anyone who may have been following these posts chronologically, I have finished rereading The Winter Of The World and have started rereading The Avatar but meanwhile have posted "ASK Haertel" on www.jamesblishappreciation.blogspot.co.uk.

Both Blish and Anderson:

were serious hard sf writers;
were among the authors whose series were edited by John W Campbell;
felt obliged to present new rationales for standard sf props like FTL;
wrote future histories;
speculated about the future of society;
were agnostics who took religion seriously;
also wrote historical fiction and fantasy.

Differences:

Anderson was prolific, able to produce many works very quickly, whereas Blish's much smaller body of work was written at times, we understand, with considerable effort; 
Anderson not only wrote both historical fiction and sf but also synthesised them in several works;
Blish managed to combine the three genres of historical fiction, fantasy and sf in a single trilogy;
Blish's sf series are more closely interconnected as he develops related ideas in different directions.

The Winter Of The World III

Still rereading Poul Anderson's The Winter Of The World, I am learning more about the Rogaviki. Anderson condensed a wealth of background information into one short novel. Anyone who just follows the plot to find out how it ends will not remember many details but should realise that he has read a rich text.

More about the Rogaviki

A Kithmeet meets near solstice in each territory. The Landmeet, two months later, is for everyone in the Northlands but Rogaviki attend as individuals, not as leaders or delegates.

Each family practises private rites, know only their own and do not discuss them. A Fellowship is an informal association of families with nearby winter quarters, hunting together. Widowed husbands might stay together for the children and remarry even to a much younger wife.

Most unwed women stay in their Fellowships but some:

form trapping or trading partnerships;
settle at Stations;
travel abroad, returning rich in tales;
become artists, artisans, entertainers, inventors, prospectors, scholars, teachers or scientists;
seek wisdom as Forthguides travelling freely and repaying hospitality by teaching or advising.

Forthguide Krona of Starrok, in her late thirties, lifelong celibate, often travels naked, carrying a staff bearing a sunburst carved in walrus ivory from the Mother Ocean, but at night wears a long gray gown and hooded blue mantle. She lives for her own enlightenment, requiring oneness of body and mind which is like the oneness of bird and flight and is approached by efforts and austerities.

The Winter Of The World II

I have referred to Poul Anderson's The Winter Of The World as post-Ice Age, but the novel begins, "Once during the Ice Age..." (1)

In the novel, the Rogaviki, an entire population who turn out to be a new human species, live by hunting bison, moonhorn cattle, bronco, antelope, wild deer, caribou, moose and elk. This makes them sound like the most primitive of homo sapiens societies.

However, a multi-chimneyed, mostly underground Rogaviki dwelling surrounded by shed, smokehouse, workshop, stable, kennel and mews uses both a sunpower collector and a windmill manufactured in neighbouring urban civilizations and shelves hundreds of books in its principal chamber below.

The largest formal social group is a single family. Associations of families are informal. Households are self-sufficient in necessities but buy finely made goods either imported in exchange for metal salvaged from ancient ruins or manufactured at "Stations," where Rogaviki, frequently traveling alone, can swap ponies and self-employed postal couriers stay overnight. A Station is a set of independent businesses run by single women or misfit men.

Bullgore Station print shop can bind books but buyers usually do this in winter when they practice arts or enjoy idleness. One new pamphlet describes astronomical observations made by a man with an imported telescope and navigator's clock at Eagles Gather. Most paper is imported although Whitewater Station on the Wilderwoods edge has a paper mill. Rogavikian manufacture is expanding and innovative, e.g., a portable loom and a repeating crossbow. All manufacture and trade are private with no government, guilds or laws although no one would sell game meat or hides because they live by the game beasts.

Bullgore makes brandy and distils, from fermented wild grain and fruits, alcohol to fuel blow torches and small machine tools. Although there is a windmill, the main energy source is the solar collector sending water to a subterranean fired clay tank where pressure generates heat used for cooking and warmth. Domesticated horses, hounds and hawks are indistinguishable from their wild counterparts. Rogavikians live healthily on a mainly meat diet by eating the whole animal, adding fish, fowl, eggs, breads, mare's milk and cheese, fruits, herb teas, beer, wine and mead.

One Rogavikian seriously offended by another severs all relationship with the offender. Offenders of too many become Outrunners, vicious bandits.

A kith is a set of families traditionally sharing a single large hunting ground. Territorial herds define each kith's territory which no other kith ever invades although individual travelers are welcome guests and may hunt en route. There are less than a hundred kiths and each has at most three thousand members. Rogaviki women can control their fertility. In a cross-kith marriage, the man joins his wife's. A Rogavikian woman decides whether to become a wife of several husbands or to remain unmarried but with other sexual outlets.

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Winter Of The World, New York, 1976, p. 9.

The Winter of the World

In Poul Anderson's The Winter Of The World, the post-Ice Age economy is wind- and steam-powered. Seafolk Intelligence use radio and someone in the Empire has invented telegraph.

The main puzzle of the novel is the eccentric behaviour of the Rogaviki people. Hunters, not herders, capable both of civilised discourse and of berserk rage, they fanatically resist invasion but never invade, not even to counterattack, and resume friendly relations with former invaders as soon as the latter have been expelled.

In other works by Anderson, his characters must fathom the initially incomprehensible motivations either of extraterrestrials or of isolated extrasolar colonists but these mysterious beings are fellow terrestrials. However, like some of the societies that Anderson imagines as isolated on other planets, the Rogaviki have diverged evolutionarily. The explanation offered at the end of the novel is that they are a new fundamentally individualistic species with no social organisation larger than single families but with a very strong territorial imperative because each of them needs to be surrounded by open spaces, not by other people. They are adapted to post-Ice scarcity on the plains. As in a detective novel, earlier mysteries make sense when explained at the end.

 A question not asked in the novel but unavoidable for readers of science fiction is whether pre-Ice space travel left any colonies on other planets. It is stated that there was flight to the Moon but, since the novel was published in 1976, this was not then a science fictional proposition. Having so far reread to page 96 of 190, I have found only one clue. A character regards the "...bluish brilliance..." of Mars. (1) The reader thinks: Mars blue? We are immediately told that an astrologer had found ancient records of a red Mars so the author has not just got the colour of a planet wrong.

Has Mars been terraformed? Is the blue oceans? Are there people there now? We cannot help asking. The character who has looked at the blue Mars remarks that it was red before the Ice but quotes this only as evidence that "...nothing endures forever..." (2) He does not suspect colonisation.

Is the novel set in the timeline of Anderson's Technic History or any other series? During the League and Empire periods of the Technic History, Mars was red, inhabited by extrasolar aliens, but it could have been changed since then.

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Winter Of The World, New York, 1976, p. 78.
(2) ibid., p. 80.

The Further Future

Some science fiction novels are set on Earth in the far future without giving many details about what has happened between now and then, e.g.:

The Time Machine by HG Wells (802,701 AD, then the Further Vision);
Midsummer Century by James Blish (about 23,000 years hence);
The Winter Of The World by Poul Anderson (at least 10,000 years hence).

Of particular interest to sf readers is whether there has been any space travel, either interplanetary or interstellar, in that time.

However, a Dirac message transmitted in Midsummer Century is received many millennia earlier in Blish's interstellar novel, The Quincunx Of Time, so we know that there has been space travel in that timeline.

What happened between the 1890's and 802,701? Did anyone (re-)invent Cavorite and leave Earth to contend with Selenites or Martians? Wells mostly wrote one-off works and did not connect them into a series.

Decades ago, the Lancaster sf bookseller, Peter Pinto, told me that he thought that The Winter Of The World was set in Anderson's Technic Civilization timeline. On reflection, he added that it might just be that Anderson had got into writing about futures in a particular way so that there seemed to be a connection. If this novel is set in the Technic timeline, then its events occur long after the Fall of the Terran Empire but while human beings who have never seen Earth are still spreading through the galaxy.

The Winter Of The World is so named because an Ice Age has destroyed our civilisation. Mankind, with new racial distinctions, has thrived in various societies, including an Empire, mines metal from the sites of the former technological civilisation and has just re-invented telegraph.

Since I am currently rereading the novel, I will look out for any clues as to which timeline it belongs in but do not really expect to find any - although apparently Sandra Miesel persuaded Anderson that Planet Of No Return could fit into the Psychotechnic future history so it is always possible to re-assess connections between works.

Changes In Human Nature

In at least three works, all novels, Poul Anderson envisaged different fundamental changes to human nature. In Brain Wave, everyone becomes significantly more intelligent. Larry Niven's characters to whom this happens think with embarassment:

"I've been stupid." (1)

In Brain Wave, this major change is initially felt only on the intellectual level. Everyone can think more quickly, clearly and efficiently and this can be difficult to adjust to, especially since motivations, beliefs and superstitions are as yet unchanged. Someone now thinks more effectively about how to impose his beliefs on others, for example.

However, a second, more gradual, change is latent. Human history has been a struggle between instinct and intelligence but now intelligence has won so human beings can:

consciously select their desires;
adjust their personalities to intellectually conceived requirements;
end psychosomatic diseases;
control organic illnesses at will;
end pain;
learn enough medicine to make doctors redundant;
extend lifespans;
abolish senility.

In The Night Face, the entire population of a colonised planet is peaceful and harmonious without any governmental or legal coercion but extra-planetary visitors learn that all the colonials become insane for a few days every year, afterwards remembering only that they have had an indescribable experience. During that time, ritual dance and chanting channel otherwise destructive and homicidal energy.

In The Winter Of The World, a new human species has ceased to be herd animals. Each of its members is from birth emotionally self-sufficient, responding to others only as individuals but not regulating behaviour with governments, laws or courts.

It may be more imaginative to conceive of these inner psychological transformations than to anticipate outer technological advances.


(1) Niven, Larry, Protector, London, 1974, p. 213.