Van Rijn And Brannock

Contrast Nicholas van Rijn on Diomedes with the Christian Brannock upload on an unnamed extrasolar planet.

(i) Van Rijn, with a life expectancy of a hundred years, regularly travels through hyperspace between the Solar and other planetary systems whereas immortal inorganic intelligences like the Brannock upload travel between stars at sub-light speeds and do not intend to return to Earth. In fact, Intelligence Prime and Brannock have been on this one extrasolar planet for seven hundred years.

(ii) Diomedes has a planetary ecology and an intelligent species whereas Brannock's planet has only primitive organisms of interest because they are alien to Terrestrial forms.

(iii) Van Rijn manipulates the winged Diomedeans and their societies in order to keep himself and his companions alive whereas Intelligence Prime, helped by Brannock, aims only to understand the planet and its life.

(iv) Van Rijn must win a war whereas Brannock merely explores, charts, studies and discovers although these quests can be difficult and precarious.

(v) Van Rijn returns home whereas Brannock is incorporated into Intelligence Prime.

The Man Who Counts

Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts spells out its message right at the end. The Man Who Counts is not the engineer but the man who motivates the engineer and everyone else involved by doing whatever is necessary to ensure that the job gets done: paying salaries; chivvying; coordinating; organizing; negotiating, bribing, even cheating at dice to gain money to bribe with, etc. Van Rijn even manipulates his opponents into doing what he wants them to do.

Sandra Tamarin explains most of this to Eric Wace, then, when Wace begins to reply:

"'...we played our parts too...Without us, he...,'"

she interrupts:

"'I think, without us, he would have found some other way to come home...But we without him, no.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 511.

Here, I think that she goes too far towards almost deifying van Rijn. I grant that Sandra and Wace would not have gone home without van Rijn whereas he, even if stranded alone without any human companions, would have done his damnedest to reorganize Diomedean society for his own ends. We see him doing this. But success is never guaranteed and would have been even harder without Wace's engineering skills. In that sense, everyone counts. Human labor is effective because it is collective.

Van Rijn succeeds where many would have failed. By sheer luck, he was not one of those who died when his skycruiser was sabotaged. He could have been knifed in one of the fights. Here is an idea for an sf/detective story: van Rijn, stranded on another barely habitable planet where a fellow Master Merchant has made many right moves but has finally succumbed to hostile conditions and adverse circumstances, must reconstruct his dead colleague's actions in order to determine what went wrong and to find out how it might be possible for a second group led by van Rijn to survive.

The point about not doing everything yourself but motivating those who can perform particular tasks to do them is amply illustrated in Anderson's Tau Zero. The crew of the Bussard ramjet hurtling at near light speed between galaxies needs to gather astronomical data from the relativistically distorted galaxies. One man on board has the knowledge and skills for this task but is completely demoralized so the practical problem becomes not how to observe the galaxies but how to re-motivate the man who can.

Diomedean Evolution II

Intelligence requires a long childhood during which behavior is learned. Therefore, both parents must protect helpless infants and ignorant children. Diomedean adults are kept together not by permanent sexuality but by the need to cooperate to survive migration. The prolonged effort of migration concentrates sex hormones so that arrival in the tropics triggers indiscriminate mating. Children must all be born at about the same time if they and the mothers are to survive the long migration. The family is not a couple and their children but a matrilineal clan. However, Diomedeans living at sea near the equator have continual labor and sexuality and therefore also patriarchal monogamy. Migrators and sea-dwellers see each other as perverse.

A long childhood is our glory and our tragedy. Helpless, ignorant children can be:

educated or indoctrinated;
encouraged or intimidated;
taught how to think or told what to think.

The conflict between these two kinds of upbringing will decide the future of humanity. My upbringing: I was given good advice, which I ignored, and taught nonsense, which I took on board. No good, either way. I should have started zazen twenty years earlier. However, my daughter, now grown up, was not indoctrinated.

A human organism, as soon as it has been activated by social/linguistic interaction, has a unique and distinctive personality from an early age but I think that this comes from genes and environment, not from rebirth as many of my fellow meditators believe. The personality then responds to inputs which, however, can have contrary effects, as suggested above.

A possible future form of the conflict: Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic Institute began well, applying psychology, not imposing an ideology, but went wrong, doing too much too fast and taking disastrous short cuts, thus provoking a "Humanist" backlash. But that is in another future history.

Diomedean Evolution

A small arboreal carnivorous glider inhabited a large forested tropical island far from the extreme polar seasonal changes. Rapid geological changes on the low density planet deflected ocean and air currents which, because of the great axial tilt and large fluid masses, bear considerable heat and cold. Drought reduced the forest to woods scattered across pampas.

The gliders:

developed wings to fly between woods;
grew in size to prey on large grass-eaters;
spread into different environments;
but, because of mobility, remained a single species;
developed intelligence to cope with environmental diversity;
flew north and south from the home continent;
found good hunting territories but could not survive the polar winters;
therefore, returned to the tropics where, however, they could not survive indefinitely;
consequently, learned to migrate regularly.

(To be continued.)

Natural Selection Of Fictional Characters

Nicholas van Rijn has persuaded leaders of Flock and Fleet that they can agree. Only the Fleet Admiral resists but he is an absolute monarch. How does van Rijn solve this problem? Flamboyantly, of course, but how specifically?

First, he deliberately provokes the Admiral. An aggressive man severely provoked will punch or kick whereas a carnivorous Diomedean similarly provoked tends to bite, especially since van Rijn obligingly offers a tempting target: standing directly in front of the Admiral but turning his back to bow to the audience. Van Rijn reasons: Diomedean food poisons human beings so the reverse should be true. Further: as soon as the Admiral sickens, his more reasonable and amenable prime minister, "Chief Executive Officer," will be able to seize control. Problem solved.

Thus, van Rijn has survived sabotage, shipwreck, capture, rescue, long journeys, defeat in a land battle, a stalemated sea battle, starvation, hostile negotiations and a personal assault. Is this possible? Yes. We must remember that many Master Merchants of the Polesotechnic League would have succumbed at one of the listed stages. That last hurdle could have been the fatal one. He might not have survived the personal assault. Thus, by a process of natural selection and in a galaxy littered with the corpses of unsuccessful merchants, van Rijn has survived to become the hero of an sf novel by Poul Anderson.

Saints And Science

Neolithic Diomedeans refer to gods, although they may not still take them seriously. Two of the Polesotechnic League merchants refer to saints, which they do seem to take seriously. Meanwhile, educated Diomedeans know that there is only the Lodestar and van Rijn believes in many saints but one God. Thus, there is more potential agreement than might have been expected. Even secularist merchants will at least understand theistic concepts.

As for a scientific world view, the Flock has some idea of evolution and the Fleet understands astronomy. Van Rijn is able to explain to both sides that they are a single species despite their shockingly different lifestyles. Neither is bestial or demonic so agreement should be possible.

Elsewhere in known space, there are greater religious disagreements, between human beings and Ythrians or most Ikranankans, but no irreconcilable conflicts between species as such. It is the Wilwidh culture, not the Merseian species, that is unable to recognize others as equals. And the hydrogen-breathing Ymirites are so different that there can be no ground for conflict between them and any oxygen-breathers.

Two Reasons To Deduce That Eric Wace Is A Catholic

Two Reasons To Deduce That Eric Wace Is A Catholic

(i) Wace and van Rijn discuss which saint to invoke before a battle. They mention the soldier saints: George, Michael and Olaf (see also here) but also Dismas and Nicholas. (Wace mentions that Nicholas is the patron of highwaymen, just as van Rijn tells us elsewhere that Mercury is the god of thieves. See here.)

Of course, such a discussion could be merely academic. We all know that Mars is the god of war without believing in literal Olympians. A traveler may carry a St Christopher medal without believing in literal saints. However, we know that van Rijn at least is devoutly Catholic and both characters seem to take the discussion equally seriously.

(ii) Wace, sailing into danger, inwardly addresses an absent friend thus:

"Pray for my soul, beloved, while you wait to follow me. Pray for my soul."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 483.

Prayer for the dead is a specifically Catholic practice - maybe also Orthodox? - but not Protestant. (We do not see any Protestantism in the Technic History, although there is something called "Christian variant.")

On a purely personal note, my mother was unsure whether to have a Mass said for her deceased mother-in-law. I suggested asking for prayers to be said in my grandmother's church but my mother replied that they (Congregationalists) did not believe in praying for the dead. I did not then know what to say but now would suggest that we respect other people's ways to God or Truth. See here.

Addendum, 19 February 2018: I have changed "Baptist" to "Congregationalist." It was my grandmother's neighbors who were Baptists.

Diomedean Geography

More maps of planets in Technic Civilization would be helpful.

The Holmenach archipelago, stretching north for hundreds of kilometers from the Britain-sized island of Lannach, separates the Sea of Achan from the colder Ocean. The north coast of Lannach slopes in broad valleys from the uplands towards the Sea and Sagna Bay where the Flock of Lannach have several towns:

Ulwen;
Mannenach;
Yo of the Carpenters.

Fish called trech have changed their habits and moved from Draka waters (where?) to the Sea of Achan.

Well to the north of the archipelago is the ice-covered island of Dawrnach. The Flock of Lannach takes several Earth-days to fly there, resting on skerries usually visited only by birds. Somewhere to the south of Lannach are the jungles of Swampy Kilnu.

Thursday Landing, the League trading post across the Ocean, deals with the Tyrlanian Flock.

There may be a little more geographical information in the text, which I have not yet reread in full.

Van Rijn At War

Van Rijn At War (although not in the image)

In summarizing the "War of the Wing-Men" (so to call it), I realize that I have omitted several details like:

not only does ice not burn, of course, but also walls of ice protect ice ship crews from flame throwers so that they can get up close before they either burn or board the rafts;

if an ice ship is incapacitated, its crew simply flies off and disperses itself among the other ships;

infantry are protected not only by shields held above them but also by spears that they suddenly thrust up in unison against swooping attackers;

a raft once occupied by the Flock is relatively safe from attack even by a better armed, more skillfully sailed Fleet raft because all of the Fleet's families, dwellings and possessions are on the rafts so that the Fleet commanders dare not risk these vessels in this new kind of sea combat, where everything that they own can be burned;

usually, van Rijn would prudently avoid a battlefield, except when his presence is necessary to demonstrate that he has confidence in his plans, even though he doesn't;

but, when he is in a battle, he goes doubly armored and well armed and can fight as we also see on T'Kela - on Diomedes, he charges the enemy, then wrestles and strangles a swooping warrior who clings to his back;

van Rijn's entire war aim is not victory/checkmate, which is impossible, but stalemate so that there can be a truce and the beginning of negotiations - something that he is good at - but this must be kept secret from most of his army, who regard the enemy as filthy animals.

Thus, he is manipulating both sides all along but the negotiations should lead to everyone's good.

Ice And Fire

Nicholas van Rijn forced the Flock to fight on foot. Next, he gets them to fight the Fleet with a fleet of ships carved from ice! Ice floats but does not burn. Van Rijn's ingenuity is infinite:

(i) most Flock members can wield stone chisels;

(ii) thus, each ship is carved in a few hours and the fleet in a week;

(iii) oil lamps with bellows smooth the ships;

(iv) holes are cut for insertion of mast and rudder;

(v) refrozen water is cement.

There is no time for testing and I am also inclined to agree with Wace that there is nowhere near enough time to solve all the engineering problems that he lists:

How deep should the mast holes be?
Is ballast necessary?
How can clean cuts be made in large, irregular ice blocks?
Should the bottoms be smoothed to reduce drag?
The ice can be strengthened by refrozen mixed sawdust and seawater but in what proportions?

Van Rijn does get some Diomedeans to work under the cold sea water to streamline the bottoms.

When the ice fleet penetrates the Fleet, van Rijn's forces burn some Fleet rafts and board others. The boarders use the new infantry tactics, advancing on foot shielded against aerial assault, still the only form of assault known to the Fleet, whose members rise only to be shot down by archers in a second wave of boarders. Pretty smart stuff.

Since the rafts are dwellings, one female tries to rally the others to fight but van Rijn frightens her by saying that she should stay with her children whom he will otherwise eat. More political lying, which happens to be in the Fleet females' best interests as well.

Regular readers will notice how the war has advanced quickly through distinct stages thanks to van Rijn's innovative inputs. The characters are in the thick of battle at the point to which I have read.

I might post twice more tonight, then this laptop goes back to Ketlan for maintenance tomorrow.

War On Diomedes

Awesome: van Rijn's new Diomedean infantry is unassailable from the air because each foot soldier carries a shield above him and is unopposed on the ground because they are the first infantry on Diomedes so they can march straight to an occupied town and can even recapture it temporarily. However, this alone is not enough to win the battle. Against van Rijn's advice, this town was attacked first only because of its religious significance even though the enemy at that point was clearly strong enough to separate the ill coordinated Flock air and ground forces and to drive them back. (The winged Diomedeans had never thought of fighting on foot.)

Undeterred, van Riin reorganizes, plans his next moves and rallies his disaffected troops with rhetoric from Shakespeare, Pericles etc. Does he remember all this? Surely it loses something in translation? If "royal" means "of kings" and if a throne is a seat of kings, then Shakespeare's "...royal throne of kings..." has to be a double or treble tautology? And less meaningful to a people without a king?

Here is a wise Diomedean saying: "It is written: 'The Lodestar shines for no single nation.'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 444.)

Poul Anderson shows us a real war with conflict spread across a wide geographical area and the tide of combat moving back and forth.

Eric Wace

We (some of us) want more information about ordinary life on Earth during the Solar Commonwealth and, later, during the Terran Empire. Given a few data, we can extrapolate more. Here is one datum about the Commonwealth: Eric Wace was born on Earth in a slum near "'...the old Triton Docks.'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 423) Must there still be slums amidst the technological advances of the twenty fifth century?

Both "Triton" and "Docks" evoke the sea and maybe recall Poul and Karen Anderson's maritime city of Ys, which had a covenant with a sea god. But, of course, Triton Docks is a spaceport. Only the poor live so close to the noise and smells of a spaceport but they become used to it because it is incessant. But why is there a regular "'...earthquake noise...'"? We are not talking about rocket launches.

A slum near a spaceport sounds like an excellent setting for a Heinlein-type juvenile sf novel. Of course, a Heinlein hero, like Starman Jones, or an Anderson character, like Wace, gets himself into one of the spaceships and leaves the slum behind but what becomes of the many who don't or can't? An entire series of novels could tell their story, with an occasional sighting of an extraterrestrial or a ship overhead. (Since superheroes are an extension of sf, I also speculate about ordinary lives in Metropolis, where god-like beings occasionally clash overhead or are reported in the Daily Planet.)

Wace imagines that half of his childhood acquaintances are dead or in prison, the other half competing for occasional half-skilled, hard, dirty and unwanted jobs. In other Andersonian futures, automation has abolished any such jobs. Wace was simply lucky. His already mentioned apprenticeship (see here) at the age of twelve was with a fur wholesaler. After two years, he joined a fur-trapping expedition to the planet Rhiannon.

"'I taught myself a little something in odd moments, and bluffed about the rest I was supposed to know...'" (pp. 423-424). For more on bluffing or "faking it," see here and here.

Wace's self-education and bluffing got him from job to job until he became the Solar Spice & Liquors factor in the minor outpost on Diomedes but, of course, this takes us away from the Terrestrial society that we wanted to know about. Lady Sandra Tamarin tells Wace that he would be able to live comfortably on a settled planet like her Hermes.

The Man Who Counts, Chapter X

Nicholas van Rijn's machinations are endless. We already knew that he had engineered a civil war between Grand Admiral Syranax and Chief Executive Officer Delp, realizing that Delp would lose, merely to give himself cover to release a prisoner who would return with help. But, before that, he had given Delp's wife, Rodonis, the means to poison Syranax. Rodonis not only poisons the Admiral but also threatens Syranax's heir, T'heonax, with the all too plausible accusation that he had poisoned his father, thus blackmailing T'heonax to release the condemned Delp, who would otherwise have become a wing-clipped slave. Thus, divisive conflict continues in the Fleet long after van Rijn's departure.

Fleet religion

(i) "...primitive bloody sacrifices to Aeak'ha-in-the-Deeps..."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 403.

(ii) Worship of the two Moons, She Who Waits and He Who Pursues, seen as marrying when their paths cross.

(iii) "...an educated person knew there was only the Lodestar..." (ibid.), who has "...holy books..." (p. 404) and whose Leader in Sacrifice and Oracle is the Admiral - aristocracy and priesthood combined.

Wood And Fish

(This double image shows one installment each of the Technic History and of the Psychotechnic History.)

Diomedeans buy metal tools from Polesotechnic League companies. Before that, they had found several creative uses for wood:

fire-hardened bayonets;
dugout ships;
an inhabited fleet of log rafts;
wooden buildings;
paper for books;
wooden locks like Chinese puzzles;
a wooden lathe with a cutting edge of fractured diamond;
a wooden saw with volcanic glass teeth;
a wind-powered railway with wooden wheels on wooden rails, carrying flint, obsidian, timber, fish and handicrafts.

"Wace nodded, realized that the gesture was probably meaningless here..."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 357.

In this passage, Anderson addresses an issue that I raised earlier. However, the gesture is meaningful here because later a Diomedean nods assent.

The Flock of Lannachska migrates, leaving houses empty during winter, whereas the Drak'honai Fleet sails, fishing for trech. However, the trech change their habits, moving from Draka waters to the Sea of Achan, separated from the Ocean by the island of Lannach and the Holmenach archipelago, so the Drak'honai, following the trech, occupy the Lannachska towns and drive the returning Flock into the uplands where the recent mothers will be unable to rest or feed enough to survive the next migration. Thus, the survival of the Flock is at stake and van Rijn has yet to devise a solution...

The Man Who Counts, Chapter VIII

Diomedean archers, trained almost from birth, effectively use seven limbs. While flying, with two wings, each of them:

"...gripped a bow as long as himself in his foot talons, drew the cord with both hands and let fly, plucked a fresh arrow from the belly quiver with his teeth..."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 389.

As with driving a car, the entire body is used. (One sf film had US fighter pilots capturing and immediately flying alien aircraft even though the body shape was entirely different.)

Diomedean weapons also include:

bolas;
boomerangs;
weighted nets, pulling enemies to their deaths;
primitive blowguns;
repeater blowguns with bayonets;
fire weapons;
catapults.

The Fleet army is coordinated by horn calls whereas the Flock has a more flexible Whistler corps. Since "'...the fat Eart'ska...'" (van Rijn) correctly predicts the outcome of a battle, Commander Trolwen jokes that maybe he should command and Tolk, the rescued Herald, more thoughtfully agrees that "'Perhaps...he will.'" (p. 391)

Van Rijn's machinations transcend the differences between species.

The Man Who Counts, Chapter VII

Nicholas van Rijn, faking a poor grasp of the local language, tells a defamatory lie that initiates a fight among the Drak'honai merely so that, in the confusion, he can release their Lannachska prisoner who will, by prearrangement with van Rijn, return with an army to rescue van Rijn and his companions. Is this getting a bit too complicated to be credible? By similar deceptions, Dominic Flandry later escapes from more than one planet.

There is another, minor, parallel. When Flandry is on Talwin, a native shakes her head in disbelief. When van Rijn reminds the released prisoner to bring an army, the latter nods. I understand, although it seems hard to believe, that head-shaking for no and nodding for yes are not even universal gestures in Europe - they can be the other way around - so they should not be projected across the galaxy! We should not even assume that aliens have heads.

 However, since Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization assumes:

"...a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes..."
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), 

- there will be some who not only have heads but who also shake or nod them as we do. These seem like obvious signals to precede or supplement language or its equivalent.

In our universe, if thinking beings were as casually produced as snowflakes, then I would expect us to have found some evidence of their existence by now. Surely astronomers should be able detect obviously artificial energy sources elsewhere in the parts of space observable by optical and radio telescopes? So far, the evidence remains compatible with humanity being the only industrial-technological species in this part of the galaxy.

The Man Who Counts, Chapter VI

Nicholas van Rijn will end the War of the Wing-Men so that the Wing-Men can help him to get home! (War Of The Wing-Men is an editorial, not an auctorial, title for Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts.) Van Rijn proposes to help not the side that has captured him but the other side, which is losing, because they will be more grateful. Never do anything easy.

Van Rijn learns two Diomedean languages simultaneously and surreptitiously, pretending ignorance while accurately reading the conflicts among his captors:

"'I know a little something about politics. It is needful for an honest businessman seeking to make him a little hard-earned profit, else some louse-bound politician comes and taxes it from him for some idiot school [!] or old-age pension.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 370.

(An educated population is an abler work force. Pensioners with purchasing power are a market.)

"'The politics here is not so different from what we do out in the galaxy.'" (ibid.)

Maybe not, but everything else is so different that it takes a genius to discern the politics. Van Rijn discerns:

aristocrats;
the throne, in the Fleet, called "the Admiralty";
an old admiral with a disliked crown prince...

He even avails of the thick atmosphere to eavesdrop on gossip when most human beings would be simply overwhelmed by alienness and danger. Anderson's heroes are always able and resourceful but Nick van Rijn exceptionally so.

Diomedes

See here.

Large flying animals evolved in the dense Diomedean atmosphere. Flocks of intelligent Diomedeans winter in the tropics. The exertion of a long flight causes hormonal changes so that, upon arrival, there is a mating orgy. Females are pregnant when they return home in spring and give birth before the next migration when parents carry infants who can fly independently the following year.

Towns, vacated every autumn but reoccupied every spring, are centers of stone working, ceramics, carpentry and limited agriculture although the main economic activities are hunting and herding. The Great Flock of Lannach is indolent, artistic, ceremonious and matrilineal whereas Diomedeans of the Fleet of Drak'ho have abandoned annual migration in favor of fishing and seaweed harvesting from large, oceangoing rafts where the exertion of navigational activities exercises the body, maintaining year-round sexuality and reproduction and patriarchal monogamy. The Fleet, able to accumulate stores, machines and books, is richer but authoritarian.

On Starkad (see here), land-dwelling and sea-dwelling intelligent species were natural enemies. On Diomedes, Flock and Fleet are the same species but initially regard each other with mutual horror although extra-planetary traders encourage tolerance and cooperation. In the Imperial period, Drak'ho can adapt to living on land and to engaging in new economic activities whereas the migratory Lannachska culture, used to summer time indolence, cannot survive the introduction of high-energy technology but, without it, must remain poor and powerless.

The Snows Of Ganymede

I have just received by post an ACE Double Novel Book, "TWO COMPLETE NOVELS," (New York, 1958) The Snows Of Ganymede and War Of The Wing-Men, both by Poul Anderson. (Ace Doubles could be by different authors.)

Wing-Men, "Complete & Unabridged," is pp. 5-160 on one side of the volume whereas Ganymede, "Complete Novel," upside down on the other side, is pp. 5-96. My rule of thumb for novel length is 100+ pages so I don't count Ganymede.

Everything shorter than a novel I count loosely as a "short story." I recognize that there is in fact an intermediate length but do not understand the terms "novelette" and "novella": long short story and short novel? (I might even have these the wrong way round.) These more precise length delineations make sense to publishers, editors and authors but maybe not to readers.

For both "novels", pp. 1-4 are blurb, Cast of Characters (incomplete), title page and publishing details. The Ganymede Cast of Characters lists:

Hall Davenant
Lyell
Thorval Kruse
Angel-Three Garson
Cinc-Four Halleck
Roberts-John

in each case followed by a cryptic comment but does not include Yamagata, who speaks on p. 5.


The opening sentence:

"Three dead men walked across the face of hell." (p.5)

- if taken literally, would introduce a fantasy but we learn almost immediately that they are on Ganymede with Jupiter on the horizon and the local equivalent of snow falling. They are "dead" in the sense that they will be when their air runs out: prolepsis = referring to a future event in the past tense as if it were already accomplished or completed.