Le Matelot

Hank Davis, compiler of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, describes the passage signed by "Le Matelot" as the introduction to "Hiding Place," which was the first of the three Nicholas van Rijn stories collected as Trader to the Stars. But it is not. Examining a copy of Trader to the Stars, I judge that Le Matelot introduces the volume as a whole. Le Matelot is on p. 7, p. 8 is blank and "Hiding Place" begins on p. 9. The content of Le Matelot refers not to this first story but simply to the Polesotechnic League. Therefore, Le Matelot introduces the League period as such. In Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, Le Matelot should precede not "Hiding Place," the last story in this volume, but "Margin of Profit," the fourth story, which introduces both van Rijn and the League. "Le Matelot" is an ultimate statement of a new beginning and should appear as early as possible in Saga, Volume I.

Works of fiction coexist in an imaginative space. The Technic History and Cities in Flight are alternative future histories. Van Rijn from the Technic History visits the Old Phoenix Inn. I am just about to return to Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End. And that is all for this evening.

Le Matelot And "Lodestar"

"Hiding Place" is the first of three stories collected in Trader To The Stars, Volume I of Poul Anderson's Technic History in its original publication order, and the last of eleven instalments collected in The Van Rijn Method, Volume I of Baen Books' The Technic Civilizatiion Saga, presenting the Technic History in chronological order of fictional events. 

"Lodestar" is the tenth of twelve instalments collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate, Volume VI of the Technic History in its original publication order, and the last of seven instalments collected in David Falkayn: Star Trader, Volume II of The Technic Civilization Saga.

In Trader To The Stars, "Hiding Place" is preceded by a fictional introduction attributed to "Le Matelot." However, Le Matelot introduces the Polesotechnic League period as a whole, not this particular story. The Van Rijn Method reproduces "Le Matelot" as an introduction to "Hiding Place." However, the Acknowledgements at the beginning of The Van Rijn Method inform us that this introduction was not published with "Hiding Place" in Analog but was added in Trader To The Stars. Therefore, "Le Matelot" introduces the collection, not just its first story.

Since "Le Matelot" introduces the League period, The Van Rijn Method should have included it not before "Hiding Place" but before the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," which is the fourth of the eleven in this volume. "Le Matelot" and "Lodestar" should be further apart because it is the latter that informs us that the Pax Mercatoria is coming to an end.

Collections And Introductions

Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place," starring Nicholas van Rijn, was first published in Analog, March 1961, and has since been collected twice:

it is the first of three van Rijn stories to be collected as Trader To The Stars;

it is the last of eleven installments of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization to be collected as The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I (of VII), The Van Rijn Method.

Van Rijn is the title character of both these collections.

In my copy of Trader To The Stars (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975) (see image):

"Hiding Place" begins on p. 9;

p. 8 is blank;

p. 7 is a fictional quotation from "Le Matelot," beginning with an authentic quotation from Shelley -

"The world's great age begins anew..." (see here)

Thus, Le Matelot seems to introduce the volume. However, I have reason to believe that Le Matelot specifically introduces only "Hiding Place" and therefore possibly appeared with it in Analog. (Later: Le Matelot was not in Analog. See the Acknowledgments in The Van Rijn Method, pp. vi-vii.)

In my copy of Trader To The Stars, "Hiding Place" is immediately followed by an extended quotation from Anderson's first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit" (1956):

"Hiding Place" ends near the bottom of p. 47;

the quotation from "Margin of Profit" begins at the bottom of p. 47 and continues to the top of p. 49;

p. 50 is blank;

the second story in this collection, "Territory," begins on p. 51.

However, despite this misleading layout and pagination, the quotation from "Margin of Profit" is intended as an introduction to "Territory," not as a postscript to "Hiding Place." The compiler of The Technic Civilization Saga, Hank Davis, reproduces Le Matelot as introducing "Hiding Place" and the "Margin of Profit" quotation, now entitled "A Historical Reflection," as introducing "Territory," which is the first of seven works collected in Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader.

Finally, in Trader To The Stars:

"Territory" ends on p. 103;
p. 104 is blank;
p. 105 quotes a further stanza from Shelley's "Hellas" (see the above link);
p. 106 is blank;
the third story, "The Master Key," begins on p. 107.

Thus, the stanza beginning, "A loftier Argo cleaves the main...," clearly introduces "The Master Key" and is reproduced as such when this story is republished as the fourth installment in David Falkayn: Star Trader.

Multiple Beginnings

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization has multiple beginnings. One of the best of them is the unentitled introduction to Trader To The Stars which, without any explanation, is signed "Le Matelot." It begins:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"

-Poul Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), p. 5.

Trader To The Stars was Technic History, Volume I, in the original book publication order. Le Matelot introduces not only the opening story, "Hiding Place," but also the entire Polesotechnic League period and, by extension, beyond that, the entire Technic History. However, when the Technic History was collected in chronological order of fictional events in Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, Le Matelot, now treated as introducing just a single story, appears very near the end of Volume I, The Van Rijn Method. "Hiding Place," although the first story in Trader To The Stars, is the eleventh and last story in The Van Rijn Method! In any case, the first published van Rijn story was not "Hiding Place" but "Margin of Profit" which became the fourth story in The Van Rijn Method. In The Earth Book of Stormgate, which, according to its entirely accurate front cover blurb, "spans, illuminates and completes the magnificent future history of the Polesotechnic League," the opening story is "Wings of Victory" and, for nine years, that was the first story in the Technic History although, in The Van Rijn Method, it is displaced by the later-written "The Saturn Game." The earliest published Technic History instalment was the first Captain Flandry story, "Tiger By The Tail," although the later-written "Young Flandry" novels are set earlier. Multiple beginnings.

In The Van Rijn Method, Le Matelot should precede not "Hiding Place" but "Margin of Profit."

A Loftier Argo

We rightly commend the Introduction to Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place," which begins:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"As it has before, and will again. The comings and goings of man have their seasons."
-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION, HIDING PLACE IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 555-556 AT p. 555.

- and ends:

"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way.
"-Le Matelot."
-op. cit., p. 556.

However, Anderson's "The Master Key" has an equivalently inspirational Introduction:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
"Fraught with a later prize;
"Another Orpheus sings again,
"And loves, and weeps, and dies.
"A new Ulysses leaves once more
"Calypso for his native shore.
"-Shelley."
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), p. 273.

"Hiding Place" and "The Master Key" were the first and third of three stories previously collected as Trader To The Stars, now collected in Volumes I and II respectively of The Technic Civilization Saga. The opening line quoted by Le Matelot and the stanza quoted to introduce "The Master Key," both taken from "Hellas" by Percy Shelley, perfectly express the sense of adventure in the springtime of the Polesotechnic League.

Le Matelot writes that:

"The comings and goings of man...are no more mysterious than the annual cycle of the planet, and no less." (See above.)

"...the planet..." implies that, although Le Matelot writes that "...we are sailing out among the stars...," he himself is on Earth. We know nothing else about him. He is another of our mysterious commentators.

"The Master Key" describes dusk over Chicago Integrate which stretches beyond the horizon and recalls San Francisco Integrate in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson." (See also Rio de Janeiro Integrate, here, and Sandra Tamarin on Earth, here.) The first person narrator enters Nicholas van Rijn's penthouse apartment on the Winged Cross which is visited in other works by Emil Dalmady and by the Falkayns.

The Technic History imparts a sense not only of time but also of place.

Matelot

See Le Matelot. (Scroll down.)

See Matelot.

L'Ollonais explains to Pym that each buccaneer has a chosen comrade and lifelong friend called a matelot and that, if the buccaneer is killed in an attack, then the matelot gets his share of the plunder.
-John Sanders, The Hat Of Authority (London, 1966), 6, "Matelot's End," p. 72.

If we read Poul Anderson's Technic History in the original order, beginning with Trader To The Stars, then the first thing that we read is Le Matelot quoting Shelley.

Hloch and Le Matelot

In The Chronology of Technic Civilization, "Esau" is listed as occurring shortly before "Hiding Place." However, in his Introduction to "Esau," Hloch says that, at that time, the philosophy and practice of the Polesotechnic League were becoming archaic, even obsolete, whereas "Hiding Place" is preceded by a passage from "Le Matelot," beginning:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 555)

- and ending:

"We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way." (p. 556)

According to the Chronology, the League had been founded two centuries earlier in the twenty third century. Therefore, the passage from "Le Matelot" should be moved from before "Hiding Place" to between "Wings of Victory," the only story set in the twenty second century, and "The Problem of Pain," the only story set in the twenty fourth century. This passage introduces the entire League period which ends after "Rescue on Avalon" in the twenty sixth century.

The Earth Book Of Stormgate stretches from "Wings of Victory" to "Rescue on Avalon." The first two and a half volumes of the seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga not only span the entire League period but additionally include every story or novel set in this period.

The Technic History was written in the twentieth century and includes only one work set in the twenty first. "The Saturn Game" is now only thirty nine years in our future.

Three Introductions

Hloch's introduction to "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" says that this story shows the Polesotechnic League in its glory whereas his introduction to "Esau" says that, by the time of this story, League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic, even obsolete. In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, "Esau" is immediately followed by "Hiding Place" whose introduction by Le Matelot presents the League as just beginning. However, "Le Matelot" had been written as an introduction not to "Hiding Place" but to Trader To The Stars in which "Hiding Place" happened to be the opening story. "Le Matelot" should be moved to before the first League story, "Margin of Profit," in the Saga. 

Quick breakfast post.

Le Matelot

Le Matelot comments on the early days of the Polesotechnic League. His opening words:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"As it has before and will again."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 555,

and his conclusion:

"We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way." (p. 556)

- are inspiring.

"...sailing out among the stars..." makes him and his contemporaries "...akin to Europeans overrunning America or Greeks colonizing the Mediterranean littoral..." (p. 555)

They have a frontier along which they discover, pioneer, trade, proselytize and compose epics and sagas. Technic civilization, different from either Classical or Western, spreads itself thinly across unimaginable volumes of space, learns from non-human peoples and changes unpredictably. The Polesotechnic League, although analogous to European medieval mercantile guilds and descended from Terrestrial concepts, also mutates and miscegenates unpredictably.

And that thought leads Le Matelot to his magnificent conclusion.  

Beginning And Obsolescence

Le Matelot's Introduction to "Hiding Place" is, fictitiously, written in the early days of the Polesotechnic League:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609 AT INTRODUCTION, p. 555.

Hloch's Introduction to "Esau" informs us that, at this time, Polesotechnic League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic or even obsolete. 

Yet "Esau" precedes "Hiding Place" in The Van Rijn Method and, according to Sandra Miesel's CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION, the two stories are set in a decade when "stories overlap" (p. 613) It follows that Le Matelot's Introduction belongs much earlier, before the first two Polesotechnic League stories, "Margin of Profit" and "How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," which also overlap. 

When the stories from the earlier collections, Trader To The Stars and The Earth Book Of Stormgate, are brought together in The Technic Civilization Saga, then we gain a transhistorical perspective, becoming aware of the beginning and the end of the Polesotechnic League simultaneously.

"...We Are On Our Way"

Perhaps the most inspiring - or perhaps a better word is "awesome" - passage in Poul Anderson's Technic History is the concluding paragraph of the introduction to "Hiding Place":

"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way.

"-Le Matelot."

Again, this introduction was added in the collection, Trader To The Stars, and is rightly retained in The Van Rijn Method. Nicholas van Rijn is the title character of both these volumes. "Hiding Place" is the first of three stories in Trader To The Stars, which was Volume I of the Technic History, but the last of eleven stories in The Van Rijn Method, which is Volume I of The Technic Civilization Saga. A whole ten instalments, including a full novel, are set earlier than the story that had been the first to be collected.

Although Le Matelot's generation did not know or care where they were going, we, having read the Technic History, do know and it is not all good.

Two First Volumes

I am looking at and contrasting two completely different "first" volumes of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. Both titles refer to the same character. 

The original "first" volume, Trader To The Stars, collects three stories about Nicholas van Rijn, Master Merchant Polesotechnic League:

"Hiding Place"

"Territory"

"The Master Key"

"Territory" is introduced by an extract from an earlier van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit." There is no indication that the van Rijn series is a sub-series of a future history series. The volume is fictitiously introduced by "Le Matelot," who writes at the time of the Polesotechnic League and who does not know what will come next in history.

The second "first" volume, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, collects the first eleven instalments of the Technic History including one full-length novel about van Rijn, The Man Who Counts, another title referring to the same character. The opening thee stories precede the League and have no common character. The fourth is "Margin of Profit." Seven of the instalments are fictitiously introduced by Hloch who writes long after the League and who refers to events recounted in The Technic Civiliztion Saga, Volumes II and III. The eleventh instalment in The Van Rijn Method is "Hiding Place," preceded by the "Le Matelot" introduction.

"Hiding Place" And "Esau"

Le Matelot's introduction to "Hiding Place" begins:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609 AT p. 555 -

- and ends:

"...we are on our way." (p. 556)

- whereas Hloch's Earth Book introduction to "Esau" states that, by the time of that story, Polesotechnic League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic, even obsolete.

Yet "Esau" immediately precedes "Hiding Place" in The Van Rijn Method. This anomaly can be ironed out by moving "Le Matelot" to before "Margin of Profit," as suggested here.

In The Technic Civilization Saga, as in Time Patrol, I think that a few such adjustments are necessary.

"The Scourings Of Space"

"...oxygen-breathing mercenaries, human, Merseian, Gorzuni, Donarrian - adventurers, the scourings of space - "
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Chapter XIII, p. 181.

That reminds me of a line in Doctor Who years ago. A very well-spoken lady declaimed:

"'You should have seen them - the scum of the galaxy!'"

Is life in the galaxy evolved enough to have developed a layer of scourings or scum?

We learn more about Anderson's "scourings of space." David Falkayn's mother, Athena, says:

"'The humans and nonhumans are both a motley lot, recruited over a period of years - from the broken, the embittered, the greedy, the outlawed, the amoral, the heedless adventurous.'
"Falkayn nodded. Expanding through space with the speed and blindness of a natural force, Technic civilization had bred many such."
-op. cit., Chapter XVI, p. 219.

Some of the "greedy" and "amoral" are running Technic civilization, not deprived or embittered by it! That civilization is not entirely blind. It is a civilization, i.e., large numbers of conscious beings, not a natural force, although in this passage it is compared with the latter. That remark about blindness reminds us of "Le Matelot":

"We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way.
"Le Matelot."
-Poul Anderson, Introduction to "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 555-556 AT p. 556.

If there is much dissatisfaction, then there will be some theoreticians who analyze what is wrong and ask what might be done about it. Their situation differs from ours: we are on one planet; they are on many. Ideas about better ways of to organize economies and societies might be tested on entire planets. Such social experiments might be even more secure in a subsequent period with the protection of the Terran Empire.

Introductions

The "Le Matelot" passage at the beginning of Poul Anderson's Trader To The Stars is an introduction not just to the first story in the collection and not just to the collection but also to the whole of Technic civilization. Therefore, in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, this passage should precede not "Hiding Place" but "Margin of Profit" even though the latter story already has an Earth Book introduction. If, in addition, as has already been suggested, "Esau" were to be relocated to after "The Master Key," then these alterations would resolve a current anomaly. In The Technic Civilization Saga as it stands, "Esau" precedes "Hiding Place" even though the Earth Book introduction to "Esau," reproduced in the Saga, describes League philosophy and practices as already archaic or even obsolete whereas "Le Matelot" celebrates the beginning of a new age.

We will have more to say about introductions to Technic civilization.

Definitive Passages

The two defining passages for the Polesotechnic League are:

the passage beginning "It is a truism that..." which occurs early in "Margin of Profit," and is repeated as an introduction to "Territory," the second story in Trader To The Stars;

the passage beginning with the quotation, "The world's great age begins anew...," which introduces Trader To The Stars and is attributed to "Le Matelot."

These two passages need to be highlighted at the beginning of the League period in any uniform edition of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization so I suggest that Volume I of the History should begin with:

the three pre-League stories;
the "Le Matelot" passage;
"Margin of Profit" -

- which is followed by no less than four stories about different aspects of the League before its hero, van Rijn, returns as a series character. Thus, the Polesotechnic League becomes a substantial setting for later adventures of van Rijn and his protege, Falkayn.

The defining passage for the decline of the League is "Lodestar" at the end of Volume II. The implications of "Lodestar" are worked out in Mirkheim and indeed arguably in the remaining volumes of the Technic History.

Four Layers Of Narrative

In Poul Anderson's "Esau," Emil Dalmady comes from Altai, which Dominic Flandry will visit, and outwits the Baburites, who will trouble the Polesotechnic League. Rereading a future history series with full knowledge, we can look backwards and forwards simultaneously.

Dalmady's adventures on Suleiman are framed by Dalmady's dialogue with van Rijn which is preceded by an Earth Book introduction which is preserved in The Technic Civilization Saga so that nothing is lost. However, the narrative at Saga level needs to be slightly reorganized. See Hloch and Le Matelot and Collections And Introductions II. For more on Le Matelot, see here.

Addendum: See combox and Don Balthasar Carlos And His Dwarf, here.

Three Ways Into The Technic History; Three Layers Of Futurity

There are three great ways into Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Trader To The Stars, which was the first Technic History collection, begins as someone unidentified except as "Le Matelot" writes:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"As it has before, and will again."
-Poul Anderson, Trader To The Stars (Panther Books Ltd, Frogmore, St Albans, 1975), p. 7.

The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which "spans, illuminates and completes the magnificent future history of the Polesotechnic League," begins:

"To those who read, good flight.
"It is Hloch of the Stormgate Choth who writes, on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother."
-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 1.

The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), which is Volume I of The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, begins with Davis' infectiously enthusiastic introduction:

"PLANETS AND PROFITS:
"INTRODUCING NICHOLAS VAN RIJN AND THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE...

"...and also introducing one of the grandest sagas in science fiction: the Technic Civilization series." (p. ix)

Even better, Davis' compilation reproduces Hloch's introduction on p. 75 and Le Matelot's on p. 555 so everything is preserved and nothing is lost.

Earlier And Later Polesotechnic League

"A Sun Invisible," II.

"The Polesotechnic League  exists merely because - given hyperdrive and gravity control - interstellar freight costs less for numberless planetary products than manufacture at home would cost." (p. 278)

This is a succinct summary of the premise of the Polesotechnic League series. Obviously, endless stories could have been set against that background. I suggest some slight revisions to The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I and II. 

(i) Re-entitle them Rise Of The Polesotechnic League and Decline Of The Polesotechnic League. This would fit with the existing title of Volume III which is Rise Of The Terran Empire.

(ii) The introduction to "Hiding Place," signed "Le Matelot," was first published not with that story in Analog but in Trader To The Stars where it introduced the entire collection, not just the opening story. "Le Matelot" really introduces the entire Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History and therefore should be moved forward in Volume I to before "Margin of Profit," before Hloch's introduction to that story.

(iii) Hloch's introduction to "Esau" states that, at the time of the story, League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic or even obsolete. Therefore, maybe move the last two stories in Volume I, "Esau" and "Hiding Place," to Volume II? In fact, I think, only the last three installments in Volume II show problems within the League. They are preceded by Satan's World which shows an external threat to Technic civilization. 

"Territory"

Slim paperbacks are preferable to omnibus volumes for carrying in a gym bag. Today, I carried War Of The Wing-Men and Trader To The Stars instead of The Earth Book Of Stormgate and The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II! 

Next, we might reread "Territory," which is:

the second of the three van Rijn stories comprising Trader To The Stars;

not included in the Earth Book;

the first of the seven Technic History instalments collected as the Saga, Volume II.

It makes some difference whether a particular story comes at the beginning, in the middle or at the end. "Hiding Place," also not in the Earth Book, is the first of three in Trader To The Stars and the last of eleven in the Saga, Volume I! Thus, the Technic History in its original book publication order had certainly not started at its chronological beginning and there are now two orders in which it can be read.

Each of the three stories in Trader... has an excellent introduction. All three introductions convey the sense of adventure in the early days of the Polesotechnic League.

Le Matelot, really introducing the whole volume, not just the first story, quotes Shelley to proclaim:

"The world's great age begins anew..."

-Poul Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), p. 5.

An extract from the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," describes the League as:

"...sprawling from Canopus to Polaris..." (p. 54)

The third introduction is simply a verse from Shelley beginning:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main..." (p. 115)

The first two introductions acknowledge problems as well as adventure:

"...on the darker side, greed, callousness, disregard of the morrow, violence, often outright banditry have returned. Such is the nature of societies possessed of, and by, a frontier." (p. 5)

A pretext or an excuse? We are on a frontier so we can be as greedy, callous and violent as we like?

"The powerful companies joined together to squeeze out competition, jack up prices, and generally make the best of a good thing." (p. 53)

We see the results of this three volumes later.

"...it had its troubles." (p. 54)

"...it..." being the League.

Le Matelot ends by saying that we do not know or care where we are going but:

"...we are on our way." (p. 5)

Later generations cannot afford to be so carefree when they see where they have wound up.