Memories

World Without Stars
The Boat Of A Million Years
For Love And Glory
Time Patrol and The Shield of Time

These three novels and one series are all very good hard sf by Poul Anderson. In each, human life-spans are extended indefinitely. The three novels address the problem that indefinitely accumulating memories would overwhelm a finite brain. In The Boat..., each of the immortals must somehow solve this problem for him- or herself whereas, in World... and FLAG, there is a technology that can selectively erase memories.

In FLAG, Torsten Hebo is about nine hundred Terran years old. Thus, he joins the ranks of:

Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long;
Poul Anderson's Hugh Valland and Hanno;
James Blish's John Amalfi;
Larry Niven's Louis Wu.

Failures of memory put Hebo in a socially embarrassing situation and then nearly get him killed. He will return to Earth for memory editing and thus we, the readers, will see what has become of our home planet in that remote future.

FLAG's fifty four chapters fill only 290 pages so the chapters are short. Chapters I-VII, pp. 11-41, are set on a single planetary surface. In Chapter VIII, the spaceship Dagmar has returned Karl to his home planet, Gargantua, and will return three other beings to their home planet, Xanadu, before returning the human beings to their home planet, Asborg. Conversation on the ship informs us about the politics and economics of Asborg. The chapter ends by telling us that something important awaits Lissa on Asborg but we forget about this as soon as we turn to Chapter IX which begins with Hebo approaching Earth.

And I will now leave blog readers in suspense while I go about other business for a while...

Longevity And Memory

(i) In Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, mutant immortals must find within themselves an inner discipline to stave off insanity caused by endlessly accumulating memories.

(ii) In Anderson's World Without Stars, immortal beneficiaries of an antithanatic regularly have their memories artificially edited. Thus, at any one time, an immortal retains the general pattern of his identity and a single lifetime's worth of memories but nothing more. This may be why they write journals.

(iii) In Anderson's Time Patrol series, Time Patrol agents have anti-senescence treatment and can also have selected memories erased:

"When this hunt ended...the Patrolman would be almost sorry to have those trills and purrs [of the Exaltationists' language] scrubbed from his brain." (The Shield Of Time, p. 83)

"Eventually, when they had no further use for the knowledge, it would be wiped from them to make room for something else." (p. 203)

In both these cases, the reference is to linguistic knowledge that has been artificially implanted in the first place. Nevertheless, if some memories can be erased, then why not others? Thus, the Time Patrol might have the same solution to the problem of accumulating memories as one set of Anderson's immortals, which would make their perception of time even weirder.

More Earlier Information

See here.

For inter-galactic travel by:

Bussard ramjet, see here;
T-machine, see here;
many instantaneous space jumps, see here.

I made a link to the "In Space" post because it imparts information on space in the Cloud Universe. However, it also refers to asteroidal, interstellar and inter-galactic space so I considered it appropriate to add further links to posts covering these aspects of space.

On the issue of inter-galactic travel, as with the end of the universe (see here), AI (see here), future histories (see here) and time travel (see here), Poul Anderson once again seems systematically to address every possible aspect of the topic. Bussard ramjets and T-machines are theoretically possible now. Although, in World Without Stars, the characters visit only a single planetary system in inter-galactic space, instantaneous jumps combined with the antithanatic suggest the intriguing possibilities of visiting every galaxy and of traveling to the relativistic edge of the universe if it has one.

Similarly, in There Will Be Time, two concepts creatively combine: STL + time travel = FTL.

A Progressive Novel

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave changes as we read it. It is successively:

a contemporary novel of enhanced intelligence;
a near future novel of technological advances, including interstellar exploration;
an ultimate vision of a cosmic future.

This progression and conclusion put Brain Wave alongside other Anderson novels, like Tau Zero, World Without Stars and After Doomsday, that place mankind in a galactic or cosmic setting. In fact, despite the novel's pedestrian beginning, the intelligence inhibitor field emanating from the galactic center had already given it an interstellar context before any of its characters left the atmosphere.

Another hard sf writer who did this was Fred Hoyle. Extrasolar influences reached Earth even though Hoyle's characters stayed on the ground.

Edwin Cairncross's Ambitions

Imagine wielding so much power that you and you alone were able to initiate great and good works and projects on an interstellar scale! Edwin Cairncross has achieved much as Grand Duke of Hermes and aims to do more as Emperor of Terra. (He just needs to overthrow the incumbent first.)

One of his most cherished achievements is his estate at Lythe in the center of the single Hermetian continent of Greatland: an eyrie with ornamental battlements on an extinct volcano above a formerly arid steppe now transformed by canals, imported plants, birds and game animals and a town made prosperous by commerce. From Lythe, Cairncross governs the globe and beyond, receiving electronic reports from a dozen elite secret agents, bypassing their nominal superiors.

He enlarged the industrial operation in the Ramnuan system and held successive political posts before forcing his half-brother's abdication and his own election. Then, as Duke, he implemented popular public works. Now, half the Hermetian adolescents are Cairncross Pioneers for sports, outdoormanship and patriotism focused on him.

As Emperor, he will:

organize research to extend instantaneous communication beyond its current limit of one light year, thus "...rous[ing] enterprise again in the human race" -Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 132;
reverse the glaciation on Ramnu, thus gaining the reverence of an entire race "...for as long as their sun endures" (p. 134);
do much more than this, thus possibly being "...remembered through the lifetime of the universe." (p. 134)

Hey, steady on there, old chap! Can any one person possibly be remembered through the lifetime of the universe? He only stops short of imagining that he will be "renowned throughout the cosmos." I read this last phrase decades ago in a comic book loc (letter of comment). The loccer commented that Kal-El is renowned throughout the cosmos whereas the Green Lantern is known only in his own space sector.

I think that only the combination of antithanatics and instantaneous space jumps in Anderson's World Without Stars would give anyone the slightest possibility of being renowned throughout the cosmos. And, even then, he would be famous in some places but not in others as a man working for Babur tells the celebrity David Falkayn in Mirkheim.

"God"

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars, "God" is our galaxy seen from a planet of a star in intergalactic space. In Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Merseians refer to "the God" and Ythrians refer to "God the Hunter" but neither of these phrases is interchangeable with any Abrahamic or Indian use of the word "God."

The human-descended Gwydiona say things like:

"'I understand that God wears a different face in most of the known cosmos.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York,2012), p. 554.

"'...we have lived here a long time. We know the Aspects of God on Gwydion better than you.'" (p. 560)

"'O guest of the house, who may be God, most welcome and beloved, enter.'" (p. 562)

"'...that Aspect of God called the Green Boy...the autumnal Huntress Aspect...the Night Faces...the Day Faces...'" (p. 563)

Gradually we realize that "God" also means an annual collective experience not remembered afterwards... This is mysterious, then shocking when the extra-planetary visitors learn the truth.

Meanwhile, here is a theological conundrum closer to home. In "The Problem of Pain," a Christian character, Peter Berg, says:

"'Way back before space travel, the Church decided Jesus had come only to Earth, to man. If other intelligent races need salvation - and obviously a lot of them do! - God will have made His suitable arrangements for them.'"
- Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 28-29.

But "the Church" can speak with a different voice in different periods. Seven centuries later, a Wodenite has converted to Jerusalem Catholicism and has been ordained in the Galilean Order.

Autumn In The High Sierra

Chapter III of A Stone In Heaven tells us that:

"Vice Admiral Sir Dominic Flandry maintained three retreats..." (Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, p. 28)

- and describes his main home base in Archopolis. The concluding fourteenth chapter of the novel mentions his cabin with its small accompanying area of land in the High Sierra - which was also the setting of an important conversation remembered near the end of World Without Stars. (See here.)

The cabin is not described although we are told that Chives will fish for trout for dinner that evening. Flandry and Banner walk into scenery described by Anderson: clear air; dark firs; golden aspen; a canyon; snow on distant, high rocks; cloudless sky; bright sun; a hovering hawk. At the very end:

"They walked on into the autumn." (p. 188)

One unanswered question is what became of the would-be usurper Cairncross? Was he killed by his men or did he go to the barbarians or the Merseians? We do not need to know. Loose ends exist in life so they can exist in fiction. For once, I do not wish that Anderson had written a further story or novel to elucidate. But Aycharaych is another matter...

Chapter XIV, like the corresponding concluding chapter of Anderson's earlier Technic History novel, Mirkheim, expresses and evokes endings. In Mirkheim, Chee Lan says that we cannot return to our home as we remember it because we have changed even if it has not. Banner says:

"'Everything has changed, been shattered, could be rebuilt but never in the same shape. Half of me died when Yewwl [the Ramnuan whose perceptions she shared] did...I don't want to begin again with another Ramnuan. Our sisterhood, Yewwl's and mine, was wonderful, I'll always warm my soul by it, but it came to be when we were young, and that is gone.'" (p. 187)

- but she and Flandry get together, as he says a little old and a little sad but friends, a new beginning in an autumn.

Immortality

The article below is copied from the James Blish Appreciation blog. I thought that the "rechannelling" of memories in the decadent society of Blish's "A Style In Treason" contrasted interestingly with the constructive use of memory editing in Anderson's World Without Stars.

To any fan of either author, I can only say, "Read both."

A Few Fictional Kinds of "Immortality"

Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children: breeding for longevity and one mutant immortal;
Poul Anderson's World Without Stars: the antithanatic;
Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years: mutants, then artificial longevity;
James Blish's Cities In Flight: anti-agathics;
Blish's "A Style In Treason": "...indefinitely prolonged physical vigor..." (Anywhen, New York, 1970, p. 14).

Anderson's mutant immortals avoid insanity from endless memory accumulation by marshalling their own inner resources whereas the beneficiaries of his "antithanatic" have their memories periodically edited by artificial means. They retain recent memories and the overall structure of their lives but not the many biographical details for which they can consult written records.

The indefinitely vigorous people of Blish's "A Style In Treason" have found different uses for memory control:

"After a while, it became difficult to remember who one was supposed to be - and to remember who one was was virtually impossible. Even the Baptized, who had had their minds dipped and then rechannelled with only a century's worth of memories, betrayed to the experienced eye a vague, tortured puzzlement, as though still searching in the stilled waters for some salmon of ego they had been left no reason to suspect had ever been there. Suicide was unconcealedly common among the Baptized..." (p. 14).

So sanity is not a priority. These Blish characters are  "...tired..." and decadent by contrast with the intergalactic expansion and dynamism of Anderson's antithanatic-users so would immortality be a curse or could it be put to constructive use? Science fiction writers show us both options.

Memory And Patience

Copied from James Blish Appreciation:

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars, the antithantic has ended aging and death by old age for all mankind. Many people trade and explore between galaxies. A spaceship can make an instantaneous jump to any other galaxy when it has accelerated to equalise velocities. Memories are periodically edited to prevent insanity through memory overload and people have learned patience.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the anti-agathics have ended aging and death by old age for the small minority who fly cities between stars faster than light. Immortals do not overload with memories because they leave the remembering of facts to computers. However, they have learned to see solutions to problems almost instantly and are impatient with those who don't.

Similar premises; different conclusions.

Winding Up On World Without Stars II

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero mentions planets of an intergalactic red dwarf and his World Without Stars is set on one. World Without Stars mentions the cosmic collapse and Tau Zero is about it.

"...must we kill through all time, until time ends when the disgusted universe collapses inward on us?" (World Without Stars, New York, 1966, pp. 115-116)

Thus, cosmic collapse is invoked in a comment on conflict but it also reminds us of the novel's cosmic context.

The wise and capable Hugh Valland, spaceman, singer and sometime soldier, shows us that an ancient and apparently impregnable empire might be ripe for overthrow:

" '...there can't be an awful lot of Herd soldiers. The downdevils never needed many, and won't have time to breed a horde - which they couldn't supply anyway.' " (p. 118)

This is realistic, practical and also inspiring thinking.

The spaceship is lit by "evershine[s]," (p. 31) a phrase simultaneously suggesting both a future advance in technology and a part of the environment that has been around for a long time, like evergreens.

Back on Earth, Argens visits a man who looks young but has the manner of age. That paradox would exist with the antithanatic.

Argens' rented flying "flitter," "...had bunk, bed and food facilities." (p. 124) Here is another example of advanced technology, in this case suggesting that, beyond a certain stage of technical development, it should be possible for anyone to go anywhere in comfort. He is even able, inside the flitter, to tune in to "...multisense programs..." but they "...were not for a spaceman..." so he prefers to go for a walk. (p. 124):

"This was Manhome. No matter how far we range, the salt and the rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood." (p. 124)

That passage could have appeared in any futuristic novel about space travel and is a good place for me to discontinue these concluding remarks.

Winding Up On World Without Stars

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966), spaceman Felipe Argens might not see his City portwife Lute and their daughter Wenli again for another fifty years (p. 45). Because of the antithanatic, Lute and he will be physically unchanged but Wenli will have grown from small child to adult.

Although space jumps are instantaneous, a spaceship needs time to accelerate to the velocity of its destination spiral arm or galaxy and a large energy differential must be made up in stages - plus which, the company rotates personnel between stations.

However, half a century is little to an immortal. First, Argens has other portwives and Lute has other spacefaring husbands. Secondly, even within an unextended lifespan, each new year seems progressively shorter because it is a smaller proportion of the total to date. (CS Lewis argued that our surprise that "Time flies" shows that we belong in eternity but I think that the mathematical explanation just given sufficiently accounts for our sense of acceleration with age.)

Isaac Asimov's characters who live well into their second century count their age in decades without specifying which year in a decade just as we say, "I am sixty four," without adding, "...and two months." So Argens would view decades as we view years and years as we view months. I envy him and his fellow immortals their greater ability to "...set the years in perspective..." (p. 121).

Inner Conflict

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966), the human characters, having "jumped" into intergalactic space, must now fight against natives armed with spears. However, greater issues are at stake. Like any reflective science fiction writer, Anderson, when comparing human beings with aliens, casually touches on important issues - and, I think, sets up a false dichotomy:

"In the Earth-days since he renounced his species, Rorn had improved his command of Yonder [an alien language] until he could readily use it; so much does the removal of inward conflict do for the mind, and you may decide for yourself whether it's worth the price." (p. 97)

The narrator, Argens, has answered his own question for us. Humanity as it is currently constituted is rightly preferred to a mere "...removal of inner conflict..." that would be part and parcel of a loss of individual freedom. However, by meditation and psychological understanding, human beings, without any alien input, can work towards a resolution of inward conflict not negating but enhancing individual freedom (I think).

The novel is, we understand, part of Argens' autobiography and indeed, he is the first person narrator of all but three of the chapters. Chapters I, VIII and XIV, however, are narrated in the third person and from the alien viewpoint of ya-Kela - so these chapters are fictionalised either by Argens or by the omniscient narrator who is otherwise absent. In Chapter XIV, ya-Kela hears without understanding human conversation, which  therefore is printed in italics. For example:

" 'Hugh,' said ya-Argens, 'I don't know whether to call you a hero or a devil.' " (p. 105)

I question whether ya-Kela would be able to discern and remember incomprehensible syllables.

Ya-Kela's people sit on their tails, like Anderson's Merseians, and the females are subordinate, as also among the Merseians, but the differences are greater.

Mentalics?

We would be duly impressed if we learned of a civilisation that was many times older than ours and that had mastered the science of mind. Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire, over ten thousand years old, is the culmination of a much longer period of interstellar civilisation and its highest scientific achievement is Hari Seldon's mastery both of mass psychology and of individual "mentalics." The Second Empire is to be based on Seldon's "psychohistory."

Poul Anderson's fictitious species, the Ai Chun, confined to a single metal-poor but very old planet of an isolated red dwarf star in intergalactic space, rule an ancient empire based on selective breeding, mental control and telepathy. They have even bred intelligence in a subject species and believe that they themselves in previous incarnations created everything else.

In previous posts, I compared Asimov's Galactic Empire unfavourably with Anderson's Terran Empire and must now add that I regard Seldon's Second Foundation as a much less plausible ruling group than the Ai Chun. Reading Anderson's works, I am reminded of Asimov's Foundation Series but always feel that Anderson's scenarios are more substantially based both in scientific understanding and in creative imagination.

Cosmic Histories

Olaf Stapledon wrote:

a future history, Last And First Men;

a futuristic perspective on past history, Last Men In London;

an unfinished cosmic history, Nebula Maker;

a completed cosmic history, Star Maker;

a contemporary science fiction (sf) novel linked to Last Men and Star Maker, Odd John;

a short story set in one of the sonic universes created by the experimenting Star Maker, "A World of Sound."

Martians invade Earth. Terrestrials invade Venus and Neptune where they become Venerians and Neptunians, respectively. Neptunians mentally time travel. The Solar System is a different place after the catastrophe that led to the colonization of Neptune. The galactic mind briefly reviews Solar history, then merges into the cosmic mind which glimpses the Star Maker and his ultimate cosmos to which ours is related as a single particle.

Stapledon presents four Wellsian themes, time travel, space travel, Martian invasion and future history, in the first Last Men volume. Further, his fictitious history summarizes the entire human future whereas his predecessor, Wells, had initiated future histories by recounting two centuries including a major turning point. Stapledon, the ultimate sf writer according to Brian Aldiss, and also in my opinion, was at home in places that most people do not know about.

In my experience of reading sf, Stapledon's main successor is Poul Anderson. Readers of more recent cosmic-scale authors will have to tell me whether they think that those authors write as well as Wells, Stapledon or Anderson.

Anderson's much greater body of work includes several future histories. An outline of a cosmic history emerges from his Tau Zero, with significant input from "Pride" (IN Anderson, Space Folk, New York, 1989):

Sol's brown dwarf ("half-star" (p. 1); "sub-sun" (p. 20)) companion, Nemesis, has several large planets, one bearing life;

Nemesis' orbit intersects the Oort cloud, disrupting cometary orbits, thus causing some comets to fall towards the Sun;

cometary impacts kill many Terrestrial species, including dinosaurs, ammonites and Miocene mammals;

homo sapiens becomes dominant on Earth;

there are nuclear wars in the late twentieth century;

entrusted with maintaining world peace, Sweden becomes the single super power for at least two centuries;

Antarctica, the Moon and Mars are colonized;

a Bussard spaceship, Anna Lovinda, makes the four light year round trip to Nemesis, thus establishing that the four light year one way trip to Alpha Centauri is feasible;

Bussard spaceship crews explore and colonize several extrasolar planets;

one spaceship, Leonora Christine, accelerates uncontrollably until the universe contracts and re-expands;

the Leonora Christine crew colonizes a terrestroid planet in the new universe;

their descendants might become the Elder Race of that universe.

Anderson has no Stapledonian observer overseeing cosmic history but does present a continuous narrative from Nemesis in the far past to a human universe in an immeasurable future.

Despite the conceptual link between them, Anderson's Tau Zero and World Without Stars cannot occupy the same timeline because, in the latter novel, the early twenty first century is dominated not by Sweden in the aftermath of nuclear warfare but by the imminent production of the antithanatic. In any case, Tau Zero presents a relativistic universe where one character dismisses the notion of faster than light travel as a fantasy whereas a premise of World Without Stars is the possibility of instantaneous intergalactic jumps. These are two different and independent cosmic novels.

Ya-Kela

Like several of Poul Anderson's Prologues, Forewords or opening chapters, Chapter I of World Without Stars (New York, 1966) introduces a setting that will reappear later in the novel and presents statements that will not make sense until later.

The viewpoint character, ya-Kela, the One of the Pack, is alien, with "...webs and tail..." (p. 6) His society is hunter-gatherer and is active at night whereas their enemies, the downdevils and Herd, are active during the day.

Creatures came from the sky long ago so we expect to read about human beings or other space travelers visiting ya-Kela's planet. Like some other Anderson aliens, the Pack are monotheists. Ya-Kela, standing "...his watch of homage on behalf of the whole folk...," sings the Welcome, the Praise and the Strength to God. (pp. 5-6)

This does not surprise us. What is unusual is that ya-Kela sees God "...rising in the west..." (p. 5) First, the fingers of God's forearm appeared, then "...His entire self was revealed." (p. 5) Later, after sunset, "..God, the angels, and three planets..." are in the sky. (p. 6) God is revered because He " '...casteth out the sun...'" (p. 6)

We might guess, helped by the cover illustration of this edition, that "God" is our galaxy seen from a planet in intergalactic space but that is not disclosed in Chapter I.

The Meteor Crew

In "Remote Galaxies," I summarized what Chapters III and IV of Poul Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966) tell us about the crew of the spaceship Meteor. Chapter V completes the picture.

Bren and Galmer are pilots. The two crew members who were unnamed earlier are the engineers Morn Krisnan and Roli Blax but both of them die when the ship crashes and they are soon joined by Smeth.

The crew will later also lose Rorn. Thus, only Argens, Valland, Bren, Galmer and Urduga will make it back to Earth after four decades marooned on the wrong planet in intergalactic space.

Valland, because of his long experience, is the one who has the presence of mind to shout:

" 'Pilots! For God's sake, reverse us and blast!' " (p. 29)

- when the jump ends too near a planet instead of safely out in space. That rouses Captain Argens who then issues orders but it is Valland who leads when the survivors must wage a war and organize the building of a spaceboat.

Three millennia of experience must count for something even though most of it is not consciously remembered.

The High Sierra

There is an extremely evocative passage just over a page in length on pp. 110-111 of Poul Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966). It is very difficult to quote any of it without wanting to quote all of it. It is impossible to find any sentence or two that are the core of the passage. They are all core.

First, Hugh Valland, nearly three thousand years old, remembers being young.

" 'Oh Lord, but we were young!' " (p. 111)

He refers to himself and Mary O'Meara.

Secondly, they were young at a very special time. Wordsworth wrote of the French Revolution, "Bliss was it to be alive that day, and to be young was very heaven." Valland and Mary were young when it was known that the antithanatic would "'...soon be in production.'" (p. 110) Thus, they were at the dawn of a biological revolution that would affect everyone. " 'Nobody who was alive would have to grow old.' " (p. 110) There would be no more fear of old age. Valland spells this out by contrasting a child like Argens' young daughter with a pre-antithanatic grandmother. The former would eventually become the latter " '...in less'n a century...'" (p. 110)

Thirdly, he tells us how the whole world population was responding to this imminent change. " 'The world had grown so quiet.' " (p. 110) Partly, people became cautious now having so much to lose and, partly, they just " '...needed a while to get used to the idea.' " (p. 110)

" 'It was an air...while the human race waited, it felt kind of like wakin' after a fever had broken.' " (p. 110)

Having described people who have become used to their immortality, Anderson now asks us to imagine those who were waiting for it.

Fourthly, though, Valland and Mary, being young, " '...couldn't sit still...' " (pp. 110-111) They had to do something to prove to themselves that they " '...were alive enough to rate immortality...' " so they backpacked in the High Sierras (p. 111). Valland explains to Argens that this was a mountainous region partly "'...kept as wilderness.'" (p. 110)

Fifthly, moreover, they did it to remember those who had loved the Sierras but had died and would never come back.

" 'We swore to each other we'd always remember our dead.' " (p. 111)

As we learn later, that is what he is doing for her. She died aged nineteen.

Sixthly, he recalls that most people eventually agreed with him and Mary that immortality would be useless if it just meant centuries of " '...bein' careful...' " so they " '...went to the stars.'" (p. 111)

And that ties in with Earth being quiet and depopulated in the concluding chapter.

I have tried not to quote too much but every short quotation has been apt and my attempted summary is about as long as the passage that I set out to summarise.

Earth In World Without Stars

The concluding chapter of Poul Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966) is described as an addition to the posthumous edition of Guild Captain Felipe Argens' autobiography so, despite the antithanatic, the Captain has died after we do not know how many centuries of life.

He describes Earth/Manhome:

it is depopulated and quiet;

great forests have returned;

spacemen find enjoyment in the starport towns;

youth from every part of the galaxy attend the educational centres;

arts, science and scholarship flourish;

nothing new is built - the old is preserved;

a spaceman can find his robotically protected property and its surroundings unchanged after five hundred years;

Argens reports to his employers and to the Universarium of Nordamerik;

 
in Niyork, there is little traffic while ivy and lichen grow on the tall, mostly empty, towers;

to visit Hugh Valland, Argens rents a flying vehicle called a "flitter" and parks it "...on an otherwise deserted carfield..." at a small Maine village (p. 123);

in Maine, there are forests and a peak-roofed, shingle-walled, seaside village of two hundred people, "...those curious, clannish folk who - even more than on places like Landomar - are not interested in worlds out yonder, who use their immortality to sink deeper roots into Earth" (p. 123);

the civil monitor of the village smokes a pipe on a rocking chair on his porch while his one wife prepares dinner;

Argens finds a gravestone inscribed "Mary O'Meara, 2018-2037";

Mary's contemporary, Valland, is nearly three thousand so the novel is set about 5018.

(Mary will be born five years hence in the year of James Blish's They Shall Have Stars/Year 2018!)

Landomar

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966), occasionally a group of people still wants to live on and belong to one stretch of a planetary surface at the bottom of a gravity well. They want land, "...nature and elbow room..." so they find and claim:

"...a habitable uninhabited world (statistically rare, but consider how many stars the universe holds)..." (p. 7)

Many science fiction readers will accept and pass over that statement but just think about what it implies. To find a suitable planet, the land claimers must travel to another star. We are used to that, in fiction. However, in the Terran Empire period of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, extra-solar colonies are, with one exception, confined to a single spatial volume of a single spiral arm of the home galaxy. Later, mankind spreads through several spiral arms but that is as far as we see them go.

Here, on the first page of this novel, Anderson makes it clear that would-be colonists can search the universe for a star with a habitable uninhabited planet. As noted in earlier posts, when a spaceship has, by stages if necessary, matched its velocity to that of another galaxy, any other galaxy, then it can instantaneously jump to a predetermined point within that galaxy. That is a whole different ball game from mere interstellar travel, even when the latter is faster than light. And, as has also been noted, lifespans are indefinitely prolonged, ending only by accident or violence.

Either breeding reinforces the instinct to live on the land or "...the original parents remain culturally dominant over the centuries." (p. 7) The result is a scattered population of villagers and farmers who conserve their forests and oceans and who, in the case of Landomar, agree to a starport, called City, being built in orbit because they do not want one on the ground. The elders welcome the money of spacemen, who visit to hunt and sail, but dislike it when their youngsters visit and start to work in City. However, sociodynamicists extrapolate that, apart from the development of a few "...small space-oriented service enterprises...," the presence of City:

"...would never really affect their own timeless oneness with the planet." (p. 8)

Another planet, Awry, is described as:

"...a bucolic patriarchal settlement like Landomar." (p. 23)

One spaceman has a young daughter in City and a thirty year old from Awry becomes a spaceman. So, after three millennia of the antithanatic, people are still being born yet the population of Landomar remains "...scattered...," inhabiting farms and villages, not planetary cities (p. 7). Either the antithanatic reduces fertility or other measures are taken.

How many people would want to remain forever on one patch of land with the entire universe to explore? Some but not many, apparently.

Evolutionary Changes?

Hard sf writers scientifically rationalise FTL, time travel, immortality, telepathy, teleportation etc. James Blish's They Shall Have Stars is an extended rationale for antia-gathics and antigravity, the twin premises of his Cities In Flight Tetralogy. This blog recently listed three of Poul Anderson's rationalisations for FTL and his one explanation of instantaneous space jumps.

Let us consider immortality. Blish's anti-agathics are a range of drugs that counteract the various aspects of the aging process. Heinlein's Howard Families breed for longevity. Others, wanting to emulate the Howards, find a way to prolong life by renewing blood. In one of Larry Niven's futures, the chemicals associated with aging can be teleported out of the body. That is neat.

(This is one exercise in imagination: combine two basic sf premises and see what results. In this case, the instant elsewhere is a young forever. Another example, in Anderson's There Will Be Time, is the equation: STL + time travel = FTL.)

In Anderson's World Without Stars (New York, 1966), the antithanatic is a synthetic virus that destroys any cells "...that do not quite conform to the host's genetic code." (p. 20)

I agree with correspondent Sean's comment that this would tend to prevent evolutionary changes in humanity - but there are other factors. In the orbiting starport, City, Argens' portwife, Lute "...lives in high-weight, overlooking space itself. That's expensive..." (p. 9) Thus, physically, other port dwellers must live permanently in lower weight. That will affect their body size and shape.

Mentally, regular contact with other races must change perspectives. There are "...the usual linguistic problems..." which are greater than usual with the intergalactics because " '...they came from such an alien environment.'" (p. 21) Nevertheless, conversation is established so a multi-species worldview will eventually emerge.

Indefinitely prolonged life-spans, although they prevent physical mutations, must also affect perspectives.

"One thing that we have all gained in our centuries is patience." (p. 16)

Memories must be regularly edited and this would change perspectives even more. How much sense of identity would a man retain with his earlier life? How will he regard current experiences when he knows that, years or decades hence, he will edit most of his memories although he himself, barring accidents, will continue to live for centuries and millennia? Death will not come from old age but can come unexpectedly at any time. Instead of working, saving and retiring, an individual will work, save, spend time between jobs, then work again, indefinitely. Fortunately, there is a universe to explore although a few prefer "...timeless oneness with the planet." (p. 8) These sound like major psychological and social changes to mankind.