How Aliens Fight

Body shape and environment determine combat skills. On a proto-planetary asteroid, Dominic Flandry leads a four-species Terran crew against about twenty Merseians and one Chereionite. One of the Merseians:

"...made a low-gravity leap towards his opponent, whipped about, and slapped with his tail."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 292.

- like one of ERB's Barsoomian plant men.

A quadrupedal Donarrian:

carries on his back a nuclear howitzer with the man who will fire it;
hurls, tosses, kicks and stamps Merseians.

Two Gorzuni, standing shoulder to shoulder, fire blasters held in each of their four hands, thus penetrating any metal armor. An inhumanly quick Scothanian wields a wrecking bar. Human beings use blasters, slug guns, grenades and karate. Flandry captures the Chereionite because he is from a larger planet and therefore has stronger muscles.

This is not just another fight scene but one that takes account of the different physical characteristics of all the participants.(See also here.)

The Sky Cave As Seen From Within

I wrote in the previous post that there is not much more to be said but, of course, I cannot do better than to quote directly from Poul Anderson's own description of the nebula where a star and its planetary system are condensing:

"Flandry himself saw sinister grandeur: great banks and clouds of blackness, looming in utter silence on every side of him, gulfs and canyons and steeps, picked out by the central red glow. He knew, objectively, that the nebula was near-vacuum even in its densest portions: only size and distance created that picture of caverns beyond caverns. But his eyes told him that he sailed into Shadow Land, under walls and roofs larger than planetary systems, and his own tininess shook him."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 284.

- as when, millennia later, Daven Laure sails into the Cloud Universe nebula (see also here, here and here), except that that one is many times bigger, containing over a quarter of a million stars, some condensing, some going nova, others at every intermediate stage.

It is the "...walls and roofs larger than planetary systems..." that are truly awesome, generating the impression that this is not interstellar space but a vast three-dimensional material structure, like a cathedral explored by a fly.

To its credit, the very first Star Trek feature film showed the Enterprise dwarfed by some sort of interstellar cloud that it had to pass through.

The Sky Cave Revisited

Rereading Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave"/We Claim These Stars!, I want to post about the cosmic setting of its dramatic conclusion but find that I have already done so here and here. There is not much more to be said.

This book cover illustrates the battle on the surface of the proto-planet but a more interesting image would have been that of a spaceship dwarfed by the caverns of the Sky Cave as it finds its way through and between them.

Reading some of his earlier and later stories in quick succession demonstrates Anderson's maturation as a writer. I think that "Duel on Syrtis," describing single combat between two beings in the Martian desert, is a better written work than its sequel, "War-Maid of Mars," with its chase scenes, escapes, armed agents in cars etc.

"Lord of a Thousand Suns" has features in common with the History of Technic Civilization - an interstellar civilization overthrown a million years ago, the idea of a helmet which, when worn, imposes the recorded pattern of a long dead personality onto a living brain. However, this story's Flash Gordon action-adventure fiction contrasts sharply with the subtlties of The Day Of Their Return, a novel that evokes the religious yearning of a planetary population awaiting deliverance by the Ancients when They return, soon...

Vixen

In the Cerulian system, resonance with the jovoid planet Ogre has multiplied perturbation and brought the eccentricity of the terrestroid Vixen's orbit close to one-half so that, with a 24 degree axial tilt and midsummer nearly at periastron, once every eighteen month year the northern hemisphere is scorched with four times the radiation that Terra receives from Sol - snow melts, rivers overflow, lakes bake dry, storms rage, fires break out, erosion prevents mountain formation, hot wind blows dust and ash across dry plains.

-copied from here. 

Dominic Flandry expects frontier planets like Vixen to outlast the Terran Empire. See here. 

He resists Ardazirho invaders of Vixen. See here, here and here.

I am currently finding new details in Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave." It is helpful to gather together information already posted.

Fight Scenes

When I was only a few years old, I was a great admirer of fight scenes in films and on TV, realizing that such scenes always had to be carefully choreographed. (There were many "Western" series on TV in the early 50's.)

Anyone filming Poul Anderson's works would find that many of the fight scenes had already been choreographed for them. For example, while the Terran agent Flandry tries to capture the Ardazirho Clanmaster Temulak alive, the Vixenite hunter Emil Bryce must quickly and efficiently kill Temulak's escort. Anderson takes two pages to describe every move in the fight:

Flandry glides from an alley behind some Ardazirho who are returning from HQ to barracks but they immediately turn;
he tries to punch Temulak's face with a knuckleduster but Temulak ducks, so that the steel hits his helmet, and draws his blaster;
Flandry chops Temulak's wrist, making him drop the blaster;
Temulak's howl will be heard in both HQ and barracks;
Flandry karate kicks Temulak's jaw;
Temulak staggers but grabs Flandry's ankle and they go down together;
Temulak's steel-reinforced fingernails go for Flandry's throat;
Flandry fights back and Temulak bites his wrist;
Flandry rabbit punches and throttles him;
Bryce has been firing cyanide darts into exposed flesh but one Ardazirho has jumped him;
Flandry shoots that Ardazirho with Temulak's dropped blaster...

I have skipped over some details here but I am sure that you get the idea! It is well after midnight and I must get to bed.

Life And Blogs

I have not blogged for the last few hours because we have attended a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the courtyard of Lancaster Castle. Previously, we have seen this play three times in Williamson Park, Lancaster, twice as a "promenade," walking around to see scenes in different parts of the Park. Other promenades in the Park have included The Tempest.

I mention this both to show life going on outside the blog and also because these two Shakespeare plays are relevant to Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest - and are a main parallel between Anderson's works and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. (The second image shows the ornamental lake in Williamson Park.)

Meanwhile, in relation to Anderson's futuristic science fiction, the previous three posts on this blog and the previous two on the companion blog, Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments (see here) have focused on "Hunters of the Sky Cave." Further, we have yet to exhaust "Hunters..." and, when we have done so, will proceed to other installments of the Captain Flandry series.

Not as yet having any new Anderson-related material to read is helping me to realize how much can still be said about works that have already been discussed.

An Escape

How does this grab you as an escape sequence? By an elaborate deception, Flandry has wangled permission for himself and his fellow prisoner, Kit, to see inside a small Ardazirho (see link) spaceship while its engines have been disconnected. Four armed guards accompany them into the ship though not into the control room. Alone with Kit, Flandry gives her a pre-arranged signal.

Returning down the companionway, Kit passes the guards while Flandry distracts them. Kit grabs a guard's knife, stabs him, grabs his rifle and shoots another. Two down, just like that. Flandry, prepared, dodges a shot aimed at him, knocks that gun aside and strikes the fourth guard, who has turned towards Kit, on the back of the head. That leaves standing only the third guard who, while springing back to get room for a shot, is blasted by Kit. Finally, Flandry kicks the stabbed guard who is down but reaching for a rifle.

All neatly choreographed so that an unarmed Terran and an unarmed Vixenite can neutralize four heavily armed Ardazihiro. One or two Ardazihiro should have watched Kit as she walked past them despite any distraction from Flandry. And how easy can it be for Flandry to dodge a point-blank shot and to knock that gun aside before a second shot is fired?

Flandry and Kit instantly escape in the ship's lifeboat. Flandry can handle the controls even though the wolves squat instead of sitting and have their thumbs on the other side of their hands and, also, he has to look for the release switch. But, nevertheless, the lifeboat controls are sufficiently similar to the spaceship controls that he has just taken time to study.

It is far more likely that such an escape attempt will either not get off the ground or end in two quick deaths.

Wolves On Vixen

(This image is of Flandry's daughter, not of him, but I considered it worthy. Diana is not an Imperial agent (yet).)

To spy on his enemies, Dominic Flandry allows himself to be captured and taken into a frighteningly alien environment. The lupine Ardazirho, having conquered the human colony planet, Vixen, construct their headquarters just below the arctic circle by blasting artificial tunnels into the hills, fusing rocks with atomics and installing equipment with robots in a layout rougher and less private than men or Merseians would want.

Flandry is surrounded by:

painful blue light;

Ardazirho, sprawling, not sitting, gambling for stakes up to a year's slavery or wrestling with teeth and nails;

a barbaric chapel of pungent leaves and a burning wheel;

a gloomy, straw-strewn office with a stream of water running down one rock wall;

a mess where soldiers eat raw meat and howl "...in chorus with one who danced on a monstrous drumhead."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 242.

Our hero takes all this in his stride. Experienced in outmaneuvering aliens, he is soon able to compare the "wolves" with other species that he has met and knows how to get on friendly terms with his interrogator.

An Occupied Planet

This post continues a line of thought started here.

Dan Dare: The Reign Of The Robots;

Doctor Who: Dalek Invasion

and Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave" -

- all recall World War II:

occupation;
street patrols;
underground resistance.

In Anderson's story, the Ardazirho have invaded and occupied the human extrasolar colony planet, Vixen. Unlike Dare's Treens and the Doctor's Daleks, the Ardazirho are not continuing villains. However, Aycharaych is behind them.

After landing covertly on Vixen and joining the resistance, Dominic Flandry reflects that a local man's hunting skills are transferable to resistance fighting. But surely such skills are also part of Intelligence work? In a Frederick Forsyth novel, a British secret agent organizing resistance in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait remains hidden and motionless but alert for eight hours while watching a possibly compromised dead letter drop before concluding that it is safe to approach it. Sure, his life depends on it. Nevertheless, this is admirable. To remain motionless and alert for eight hours is not only a day's work but a skilled day's work, and the skill is transferable to meditation, in particular to zazen. I try unsuccessfully to remain focused for half an hour.

How is Intelligence gathered? Flandry allows himself to be captured in order to learn the enemy's language, then escape. The easiness of escape is implausible. Of course, escape from capture by armed enemies is a familiar routine in action-adventure fiction and Anderson always writes his escape scenes well although their frequency diminishes their plausibility.