A Unique Evolution

Let us consider the unique evolution of Poul Anderson's eight future histories in more detail. Since the first two histories have FTL, aliens and interstellar empires whereas the last two have STL, no aliens and human-AI interaction, that leaves four intermediate histories, none with FTL. It is as if Anderson deconstructs future histories, then rebuilds them from first principles.

In the Maurai History, mankind recovers from nuclear war and has barely resumed space travel by the end of the series - although the related time travel novel, There Will Be Time, tells us about an interstellar future.

In Tales Of The Flying Mountains, mankind colonizes the asteroids and is just beginning extrasolar colonization by the end of the series.

In the Rustum History, several extrasolar planets are colonized.

In the Kith History, there is interstellar trade. This history exists in two versions. In the first, there is a Star Empire and a journey to the galactic center at relativistic speeds by political exiles. In the second, there is a long journey to visit an alien civilization. So much time elapses that the theme of the rise and fall of civilizations returns.

In the last two histories, AI takes over.

Back To Senlac

Rereading Poul Anderson's works and reading some for the first time is an endless voyage of discovery. Many months ago, I posted about his time travel novel, There Will Be Time. One detail that I appreciated in that novel was the hero's birthplace, the carefully realized Midwestern town of Senlac with its river and the nearby Holberg College. In fact, I posted about Senlac specifically.

At present, I am reading, I am fairly sure for the first time, "The Kitten" by Poul and Karen Anderson and blow me down if this short story is not set in Senlac where the viewpoint character's wife commutes forty miles to Holberg College in order to complete her master's degree. I think that the novel also mentions the distance of the College but will check.

Still reading the story, I am not sure whether it is going to fit into the category of mystery fiction or of fantasy. There is an early cryptic reference to "...the other place..." that will have to be elucidated (The Unicorn Trade, New York, 1964, p. 122).

Since There Will Be Time is set in the timeline of Anderson's Maurai future history, the Senlac setting suggests a slight extension of this series, which can be collected in three volumes:

Vol I, the three Maurai stories;
Vol II, Orion Shall Rise;
Vol III, There Will Be Time and "The Kitten."

This sequence starts in a post-nuclear future and ends in a quiet Midwestern town in the present.

Twilight World And Maurai

Poul Anderson's Twilight World is two short stories about the restoration of civilization after a nuclear war collected with a newly written longer story about the resumption of space travel, as far as Mars, and a short epilogue set on a colonized Ganymede in the further future.

Anderson's Maurai History is three short stories about the restoration of civilization after a nuclear war followed by one long novel about resumption of space travel as far as the Moon and a shorter novel about time travel to a further future of interstellar travel.

In Twilight World, civilization is restored in the Northern Hemisphere and must incorporate a large mutant population. The Maurai Federation in the Southern Hemisphere is based on new, more organic, applications of science.

In Vault Of The Ages, set long after a nuclear war, scientific knowledge is acquired from a "time vault" whereas, in Shield, also set after a nuclear war, new knowledge is acquired from Martians.

In Twilight World, the remnants of the United States and Canada merge as the North American Union with a Jack and Stripes flag. Hugh Drummond is the viewpoint character of the first story, is mentioned as the first Union President in the second, is the late, great President Drummond with a Martian base named after him in the third and, finally, archaeologists find some of his private correspondence in the fourth. But the main unifying character, active in the second and third stories, is the mental mutant Alaric Wayne who, like James Blish's future genius, Adolph Haertel, designs the spaceship that takes him (and others) to Mars where, like Haertel, they find plants, small animals and oxygen that can be released for use.

Some Of Poul Anderson's Many Characters

In Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings, I am impressed by Queen Gunnhild's ability to offer honest, unrepentant prayers to the new Powers, Christ and Mary. Despite her "sins" (Christian terminology) or "crimes" (secular terminology), she is clearly working towards an honest accounting between herself and the truth, whoever or whatever that turns out to be. Unfortunately, a single lifetime is nowhere near long enough to settle the issue - but humanity collectively now knows a lot more than it did a thousand years ago.

I had thought that there might be something in common between Gunnhild's footling, Kispin, and Pummairam, the Tyrian youth recruited to the Time Patrol in Anderson's "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks." Both of lowly status, both are intelligent, observant, quick-witted and able to make themselves useful to the powerful. However, the characters differ. Pum seizes every opportunity to learn and to improve his condition whereas Kisping remains petty and grasping and falls on his own deeds. But, despite his unsavouriness, Kisping remains one of the hundreds of characters brought vividly to life in Anderson's fiction.

I would have welcomed an extra element to this fiction, something like a historical novel featuring as one of its characters a Tyrian merchant called Pummairam. There would be no hint of science fiction in this novel except that readers of the Time Patrol series would know that Pum is a Patrol agent operating covertly in his home era. A historical series and a future historical series could have been subtly linked by a time travel series. Anderson does come near this when his time traveling character Jack Havig visits both the Constantinople that was sacked by Crusaders and the Maurai Federation that features in one of his several future histories.

Passing from Gunnhild to Havig via Kisping and Pum certainly demonstrates the diversity of Anderson's fictional characters.

Maurai In There Will Be Time

 I think that the best reading order for Poul Anderson's Maurai series is:

(i) the three short stories which are collected in Maurai And Kith but should now be a single volume, just Maurai;

(ii) the long (486 pages) novel, Orion Shall Rise;

(iii) the much shorter time travel novel, There Will Be Time.

In each volume, in fact in each individual work, the perspective broadens, first geopolitically, the historically. The Maurai rule in the Southern Hemisphere. Then we learn progressively more about the Northern Hemisphere: the Northwest Union; Uropa. Finally, the entire Maurai period is placed in a longer historical context. Jack Havig, born 1933, visits, among other eras, Constantinople in 1204, the Maurai Federation and the further future of the Star Masters.

I was surprised to realize that, despite my preferred reading order, Orion is copyright 1983 whereas Time is 1973. Thus, only the first three stories informed Time. (Addendum: Only the first two. See combox.) In fact, Orion acquired the surname of a character, Terai Lohannaso, and that of a country, the Northwest Union, from Time. The Domain of Skyholm did not exist until Orion.

Time both informs us that Poul Anderson invented the name "Maurai" for a future civilization visited by Havig and continues to use that fictional name so there is a real history that we are not being told. In one of the three stories, Poul predicted something that Havig discovered later but he "...guessed wrong more often than right." p. 129.

Havig comments:

"If anybody who knows the future should chance to read this, it'll look at most like one of science fiction's occasional close-to-target hits...Which are made on the shotgun principle...These stories never had wide circulation. They soon dropped into complete obscurity." (p.129)

Let us hope not.

Orion Rises

 When I wrote that Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson (London, 1988) was "Rooted In The Past," I had not yet reread to pages 306-308 where a hundred women - maidens, wives and grandmothers - meet at standing stones to curse a usurper who:

"...claimed his world-view embraced eons, but...had no real conception of ancientness. He could not admit that a people may have a right to preserve their own nature..." (p. 306)

The curse, in the names of Deu, Zhesu-Crett and all saints, is Christian. A distinction is made between saints "...on high..." and "...in the Afterworld..." "...on high..." must refer to the aristocrats in the aerostat who, we have been told, are commonly regarded as "saints."

This curse takes us right back to the earliest European history and even reminds us of the Nine Witch-Queens in Poul and Karen Anderson's historical fantasy tetralogy, The King Of Ys. The town that was Quimper in the Ys period has become Kemper in the Orion period. Orion Shall Rise encapsulates the past of Europe and a future for the world. The old religion Christianity, represented by a Bishop in Devon, clashes with the new philosophy of Gaeanity, represented by the cursed usurper.

We had known from early in the novel that "Orion" was a top secret prohibited technology project in a country defeated by the conservationist Maurai. On page 311 of 468, we are finally told exactly what it is although perhaps I should not state that here? The Maurai go to war to suppress Orion but are resisted by their adversaries' peculiar "Lodge" system. What seemed to be a population fleeing from invaders turns out to have been a population mobilized to use hidden weapons to destroy the Maurai Marine Corps. Any population outnumbers any invading army so that, if the population is motivated, armed and organized, then invaders beware. Anderson knew the importance of different kinds of social organization.

The Pey-d'Or is a tavern introduced early in the novel and a place that becomes familiar as characters meet and return there. They include "the Stormrider" Iern and the balladeer Plik. Anderson endows the latter with a (slightly implausible?) poetic/prophetic ability to mythologize the historical events occurring around him and to predict in general terms how they must go. Although an archaic Nicene Christian, he knows that:

"...the gods are doomed - everybody's gods - and what new ones will come striding through their ashes, we shall not live to understand." (p. 316)

 And:

"The Apollonian Domain and Arthurian Maurai are up against Orphic Gaeanity and the Faustian Northwest...the Norrmen are demons readying to overthrow the gods of sky, sea, and earth - though chthonic gods have always had their own dark side - and the war that is coming will bring an end to the world." (p. 270)

The Norrmen of the Northwest are industrial demons challenging European aerostatic government (sky), the Maurai (sea) and Gaeans (land).

Although in this instance writing sf, Anderson, through Plik, applies the language of mythological fantasy and ensures that the reader does not miss the significance of seemingly small events that will have enormous consequences later in the narrative. By "...an end to the world..." is meant an end to the present world order. A four sided conflict is an improvement on the twosidedness often seen in popular fiction. A Gaean, secretly helped by the Northwest Wolf Lodge, has seized control of the Domain but is provoking civil war.

The Maurai In Orion Shall Rise

In Poul Anderson's Orion Shall Rise, the Maurai Federation comes on-stage in Chapter Two, still powerful enough to enforce on nearby nations its policies of ecological balance and no nuclear power, now engaging in a series of wars (a Whale War, a Power War) with the Northwest Union, to the north of the Mericans, where government is minimal and society is mainly organized around Lodges (Wolf, Fish Hawk, Polaris):

"A local Lodgemaster could field a regiment overnight, and disperse it to anonymity when its mission was completed." (1)

It seems that the Mong are still in North America (maybe that is one of the inconsistencies mentioned in the Author's Note?) and we learn that their ancestors had crossed from "Sberya" over a channel frozen for several months each year because

"...nuclear detonations had filled the upper air with dust." (1)

I think the idea of the nuclear winter is that radioactive dust would fill the entire upper atmosphere causing endless winter and night everywhere on Earth?

Again, Anderson presents a detailed account of how different countries might recover from a limited nuclear exchange and of how they would understandably and plausibly disagree about international policies for centuries afterwards.

"...mostly, those who survived kept going by creating new versions of savagery or barbarism. Few of them have yet climbed any further back. Few, if any, ever will, unless-" (2)

But some have climbed further, in different directions from different starting points, and we are bound to reflect that even savagery and barbarism are preferable to extinction. The world is in nowhere near as bad a state as it might have been. The Maurai impose their policies but are nevertheless benign, not imperialistic. A qualitatively different culture has emerged from the lessons taught by the War of Judgement.

We learn that the Maurai pantheon of Tanaroa the Creator with Lesu Haristi the Saviour on his right and shark-toothed Nan the Destroyer on his left is called the Triad. In the Prologue and Chapter One, we had learned that:

European peasants call the Aerogens "saints" and believe that they are endlessly reborn in Skyholm;
many believed that Deu Himself placed Skyholm in heaven to prevent a new Judgement;
Aerogens believe that the present generation carry their "ancestral anims";
the agnostic Iern attends services as a Clansman but shrugs at the blessing "Zhesu ward you";
there is a new philosophy called Gaeanism;
the name of the Aerogens' First Captain, "Great Charles," can be used as an oath.

Thus, almost subliminally, we are taught more than we might realize about European and Maurai religion.

Finally, a Maurai visiting the Northwest Union hears without understanding a defiant slogan cried by a child:

"Orion shall rise!" (3)

1. Anderson, Poul, Orion Shall Rise, London, 1988, p. 38.
2. ibid., p. 34.
3. ibid., p. 41.

More About The Maurai

More on Religion, Psychodynamics and Civilisation

Religion

In the second Maurai story, "Progress," Lesu Haristi is addressed as "...Son of Tanaroa..." (1) Thus, the Maurai pantheon has aspects of both the Hindu Trimurti and the Christian Trinity.

Trimurti: Creator, Preserver, Destroyer.
Trinity: Father, Son, Spirit.
Maurai pantheon: Creator, Son, Destroyer.

Centuries after the events of the first Maurai story, a Merican still swears by Oktai. A newly introduced nationality, the Beneghalis, swear by Vishnu, the Hindu Preserver.

Psychodynamics

Psychodynamics is an academic discipline applicable to analysis of the "...ethnopolitical situation..." (2) Maurai "...peace enforcers..." are psychodynamic teams (somehow) redirecting the energies of any barbarians who threaten their neighbors. (3) (Neat trick. "Peace enforcement" sounds rather contradictory.)

Anderson cleverly makes us think that psychodynamicists have developed telepathy but, if we read on, we find that the "head-to-head" used by Maurai agents is based on a different means of communication.

Civilisation

Until the concluding section of this second story, we have seen Maurai only away from home. Now at last we see one of their cities. After a pedicab ride into the hills, a foreigner visits a quiet, sunny, book-lined house above groves and gardens sloping down to a mast-filled harbor.

The Maurai, acting covertly, destroy a newly constructed Beneghali atomic power station in order to preserve gradual progress with cultural diversity. A growing industrialism would have spread everywhere very quickly and would have returned the globe to the precarious state that it was in before the War of Judgement whereas psychodynamic science implies that the diverse cultures which originated in isolation during the dark ages after the War will interact creatively if they are allowed to continue their separate developments:

the Maurai exploit the sea and limit their population;
Mericans develop dry farming and continental trade;
Okkaidans adopt moderation as a way of life;
Sberyaks systematize reindeer ranching;
Beneghalis return to the old ways of machine techniques
etc.

In a few short passages, Anderson sketches a world that is rich in diversity and ingenuity if not yet in material possessions. In the first story, three very different cultures had interacted. In the second, there are more.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "Progress" IN Anderson, P, Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 73-137 AT p. 113.
(2) ibid., p. 75.
(3) ibid., p. 92.

A Science Of Society?

The premise of both Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic future history is that a group of experts can apply a science of society to society, thus ensuring that a government, or a clandestine group monopolising the science, would be able to achieve its aims (an Empire can be rebuilt on schedule; discontent can be managed so as to prevent social breakdown) as readily as an engineer can build a bridge. The same idea occurs in works by Heinlein and in other works by Anderson.

Anderson's Maurai Federation has made some moves in this direction. Their paramathematical psychology is at an early stage but "...helps control population..." (1)

Ruori of the Maurai sees evidence that his current enemies sometimes fight each other and reflects that:

"The Federation's political psychologists were skilled at the divide-and-rule game." (2) 

Ruori, understanding social processes, sees that the settled Meycan civilisation can conquer the "Sky People" raiders not with an army but with priests (Christian missionaries), merchants, culture and learning. He advocates this because he wants to preserve the Sky People's scientific approach which the Meycans, for all their rote learning from ancient texts, lack.

How plausible is the idea of an applicable science of society as practised by Asimov's "psychohistorians" and Anderson's "psychotechnicians" and approached by Anderson's Maurai? The premise of the Maurai series is that the industrial technological civilisation of the Northern Hemisphere had destroyed itself in a nuclear war so that the Islanders in the Southern Hemisphere, lacking metal to cannibalise, have had to survive by applying scientific method not to oil, iron or uranium but to wind, sun and life. This could include their paramathematical and political psychology.

However, society is us, not an external substance or process that we can observe from outside and perform experiments on. Maybe we, by cooperation and education, can together acquire a better understanding and control of our own activities? The idea of the applicable science of society as presented in these works of sf seems to be the idea of a minority manipulating the majority. And, since society is divided into conflicting interest groups, this controlling minority is likely to serve either its own interests or the interests of whichever other group pays its salaries and funds its activities. Anderson's Psychotechnic History does show the Psychotechnic Institute being overthrown and society preferring to live without that kind of minority control.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "The Sky People" IN Maurai And Kith, New York, 1982, pp. 9-71 AT p. 22.
(2) ibid., p. 34.

Maurai Civilization

The basis of the Maurai civilization:

the Southern Hemisphere suffered less in a nuclear exchange ("the War of Judgment");

Islander populations did not outrun the sea's ability to feed them;

having less metal to cannibalize than mainlanders, they instead applied scientific method to sun, wind and organisms;

by applying genetics, they created useable seaweeds, plankton and fish;

scientific forest management gives them adequate timber, organic-synthesis bases and some fuel;

they develop and apply solar, wind and tidal energy;

wood, ceramics and stone replace metal for most purposes;

early paramathematical psychology helps to control population;

having mastered nautical techniques, they can sail large ships fast, almost into the wind;

their whale ranchers keep large herds;

unlike mainland populations, they preserve printing, universal literacy, scientific medicine, a healthy diet, spacious living and personal freedom.

I have gathered this much so far by rereading a few pages into the first story, "The Sky People." The Maurai, the "Sea People," are about to meet others, the Sky People of the title, who have rediscovered and are applying scientific method so that it will be more appropriate to form an alliance with them than with a superficially more attractive culture that is declining back towards barbarism because it merely applies rote knowledge bequeathed by the ancients, depends on muscle power, has a peon class, tears down old ruins and does no research on new energy sources.

Published in 1959, "The Sky People" was one attempt by Anderson to show a recovery of civilization after a nuclear war. Much later, information about a "nuclear winter" implied that such a war would not be survivable.