Tau Ceti II

Tau Ceti II is the second planet of the nineteenth star in the constellation, Cetus. "Tau" is the nineteenth letter in the Greek alphabet and "II," obviously, is the Roman numeral, two.

See Tau Ceti in fiction and on this blog. (Scroll down.) "Tau Ceti II" as a post title means either that the post is about the planet or that it is the second post about the star.

In Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, the sub-arctic region of Tau Ceti II is described as follows:

safe;
rusty dunes;
a few thorn-plants;
a glaring red sun;
hot dry air full of carbon dioxide.

As a habitable planet of a nearby star, Tau Cet II makes sense as a place for the U.S.S. Benjamin Franklin to go to after Earth has been destroyed but it plays no role in the rest of the novel. I was surprised to learn how many works of sf feature planets of this star.

Death And Tau Ceti

In the recent post on Death, we should have added that, in Plato's Phaedo, Socrates says that dreamless sleep is the greatest happiness (?) and that, if there is no hereafter, then eternity is a single night (Yes!).

Not to be confused: Tau Zero is a novel by Poul Anderson whereas Tau Ceti is a star.

Tau Ceti on:

Wikipedia

Poul Anderson Appreciation

James Blish Appreciation

- and in Anderson's "Terminal Quest," it took human beings forty years to travel to Tau Ceti which is twelve light-years away so this story is set in an Andersonian STL (slower than light) future like at least three others that we have discussed recently.

(Lessons in Lancaster history continue: there was a controversial murder trial in the family of a local Councillor just over a hundred years ago.)

Tau Ceti II

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

One significance of the previous post was that, in December 2012, evidence was found for five planets in orbit around Tau Ceti. (Tau Ceti is also the sun of the colonized planet Hydrot in James Blish's The Seedling Stars.)

In Starfarers, the round trip from Sol to Tau Ceti takes twenty two years and the explorers spend three Terrestrial years there. Thus, they return to Earth after twenty five years. Because Earth changes and not for the better, Jean decides to continue starfaring:

"'What will we find when we come back? After a generation...At best, I'm afraid, worse crowding, more ugliness, less freedom. I doubt I'll care to stay.'" (pp. 25-26)

"'...I recall how the things I loved, moors, woods, old towns full of kindness, old lifeways, I've seen them crumbling and by now they may be gone.'" (p. 27)

In two of Anderson's FTL futures (which two?), Earth eventually becomes a quiet forested world to which spacemen like to return.

I disagree with Jean on one point:

"'And the rest of the Solar System - well, we know too much about it. Nothing really new there.'" (p. 26)

Nothing really new in the entire Solar System? That can never be true.

Lars Telander

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero does not give any year dates. The following improvised chronology begins with Lars Telanders' birth as time zero. Bracketed numbers are his time dilated age.

0          Telander born in Dalarna.
3           Alpha Centauri expedition leaves.
6           Maser messages from expedition.
25        Telander on Epsilon Eridani expedition.
54 (36) Return from Epsilon Eridani.
55 (37) Telander on Tau Ceti expedition.
86 (50) Return from Tau Ceti.
89 (53) Leonora Christine leaves.

Telander is:

a crew member to Epsilon Eridani;

first officer to Tau Ceti but becomes commander when the captain dies;

captain of the Leonora Christine.

At age 53, he has adolescent great-grandnephews in Dalarna.

Tau Ceti And Coldsleep

"In The Shadow."

Karl Rouvaratz wants to:

"...propagandize for a real interstellar trip. Tau Ceti, say; that one must have planets, and you could coldsleep during the decades of the voyage." (p. 94)

Again Tau Ceti.

Again also decades-long interstellar journeys with the passengers in coldsleep. This idea links the stories collected in The Queen Of Air And Darkness... even though they do not form a consistent series. In the multiverse, these timelines will be close together.

Again Tau Ceti

The opening chapter of CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station summarizes interstellar travel from 2005 to 2352 and refers to "Pell's Star" which, the Introduction informs us, is Tau Ceti, now known to have planets, one or two possibly habitable. See here and here.

A lot of sf features Tau Ceti (see here), including works by Poul Anderson and other authors discussed on this blog (see here).

Tau Zero, Chapter 2

Although Poul Anderson's Tau Zero (London, 1973) is definitely set in the twenty third century, the text gives no year dates so I have arbitrarily assumed 2201 as Lars Telander's birth year in order to generate a timeline.

2201 Lars Telander born.
2204 First manned expedition to Alpha Centauri departs.
2208 Luna Farside Station receives first maser messages.
2226 Telander joins crew of first expedition to Epsilon Eridani.
2256 Epsilon Eridani expedition returns, having aged 11 years.
2257 Telander is first officer on Tau Ceti expedition.
2288 Tau Ceti expedition returns, having aged 13 years.
2291 Telander is captain of Leonora Christine. His brother's great-grandsons are adolescents.

Just before Leonora Christine departs, one crew member says of the interstellar voyage:

" 'It is a kind of death - followed by resurrection, perhaps, but nonetheless a death.' " (p. 25)

She does not know how prophetic this is.

Leonora Christine departs at the beginning of Chapter 3.

The Life Of Your Time

In "Common Time" by James Blish, the test pilot of a faster than light interstellar drive experiences an unexpected discrepancy between subjective and objective durations. He subjectively experiences hours while his body physically endures and ages for mere seconds, then the discrepancy reverses. The first half of this discrepancy recurs for interstellar travelers in Poul Anderson's "The Life Of Your Time" (Dialogue With Darkness, New York, 1985).

Anderson sketches a background for this single short story:

there is an American Hegemony on Earth;

the Solar System and Alpha Centauri have been explored;

interstellar travel is by relativistic ramjets, fueled by interstellar hydrogen, as in his novel, Tau Zero;

radio messages have been received from Tau Ceti;

a ship crewed by four couples departs for Tau Ceti, accelerating to near light speed;

the crew learns the hard way that time dilation affects bodies, not minds, so that, as ship velocity increases, they experience hours for every bodily second;

one listens to speeded-up Beethoven;

with less external distractions, a crew member's telepathic potential increases;

thus, she both senses the temporarily continued existence of the space-time pattern that is the mind of another woman who has attempted suicide and awakens the telepathic potential in the other crew members;

there is time to revive the body that would otherwise have bled to death;

the crew will spend their subjectively long journey exploring this newly discovered mental realm.

Time dilation affecting bodies but not minds is an awesomely imaginative idea that was worth exploring in at least one short story. Fortunately, dilation did not work like that in Tau Zero where the crew of the relativistically accelerating ramjet were able to survive both physically and mentally into the next cosmic cycle.

In "The Life Of Your Time," the growing discrepancy between mental experience and bodily activity raises the philosophical question of the mind-body relationship. A musical pattern is communicable on paper or as sounds and can be played on different instruments or by different orchestras but cannot exist independently of any physical manifestation. It makes sense to speculate that mental patterns are similar.

I would add that, although someone who reads musical notation imagines sounds, there is no audible music. Similarly, if a mental pattern could be described in symbols, then someone able to understand the symbols would imagine the mind or personality described although the latter would not thereby become conscious. It would be like reading about a fictitious character.

Lastly, is the telepathic potential enabling the crew to cope with their predicament a deus ex machina?

At Tau Ceti

Starfarers, 49.

There are many fictional versions of Tau Ceti. This is the one in Poul Anderson's Starfarers.

The reception of Envoy is more like what would have been expected on Earth in earlier millennia: tumultuous welcome, appearances, interviews, celebrations, lectures, conferences, interpretation of data downloads. 

Human beings live not only on the planet Harbor but also throughout the Tau Cetian planetary system. On Harbor, there is still a Kith village on the Isle of Weyan. A woman called Chandor Lia is president of the Duncanian continent and her son, Chandor Barak, becomes director of the new Venture League's academy on the seventh floor of the League's headquarters in the city of Argosy. Like men in Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Chandor unexpectedly wears a kilt.

Although the League, founded by Captain Nansen of Envoy, attracts financing and runs businesses, its ultimate aim is neither gain nor glory but "...humankind's place in the universe." (p. 466) The League is opposed by those who want the capabilities brought by Envoy to be used profitably at home. 

Earth Grown Foreign

Starfarers.

In travel time, Tau Ceti is twenty-two years away, Epsilon Eridani twenty-five. The life of an interstellar explorer:

"'Do you really want that? For the rest of your life? Returning each time to...to an Earth grown still more foreign?'" (2, p. 25)

An open-ended series of very long novels would not do justice to this concept. Starfarers will show us some of the alienization of Earth itself.

During a pause in a conversation between Jean Kilbirnie and Tim Cleland on a planet of Tau Ceti:

"The wind whispered through the leaves." (p. 26)

Some very new blog readers might wonder why I quote that sentence...

Hail, Vayu!

At Tau Ceti

"The Voortrekkers."

The third narrative passage, on pp. 255-259, is four and a third pages in length, is narrated by Korene and begins while the ship orbits the second planet of Tau Ceti. Since this planet has humanly breathable air, therefore life, it will be explored with organic bodies.

For two pages, Korene remembers a television interview in which a spokesman for the interstellar project explained that small spaceships cannot carry human beings but exploration needs human intelligence so human psychoneural patterns would be mapped into computer-sensor-effector systems which can be switched off in transit. Organic bodies would be used to test the habitability of planets. Such bodies are self-healing, therefore, in some ways, more durable than robots. The same psychoneural patterns would be used to economise on data banks.

Korene says that sending themselves into the sleeping bodies will be a "...climax outcrying the seven thunders..." (p. 259) Another Biblical reference. See Revelation 10: 1-7.

Tau Ceti

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

Another group of explorers has spent three Terrestrial years on a Tau Cetian planet that will be called Harbor and will be the site of a Kith village. In Chapter 2, we see Jean Kilbirnie and Tim Cleland among the explorers on Harbor.

In Chapter 17, the Monument Stone, in a preKithic language, commemorates Jean Kilbirnie and Tim Cleland of the first expedition. They are historical figures but not dead because they are in the Envoy.

Jean says, "'We Scots can wax unco sentimental.'" (p. 24)

Uncouth. Uncommonly? Anderson gets Jean's Scottish speech right - and I am out of here.

Diaspora

The Long Way Home.

Ed Langley, like HG Wells' Time Traveller, has passed into the future and must learn what has become of mankind. However, the Time Traveller contends only with the class division - and species division - between Morlocks and Eloi whereas Langley faces a galactic diaspora.

Interstellar emigration began slowly in the twenty-first century. During later periods of trouble, successive waves of malcontents and refugees went far from Sol to avoid recapture. Lost colonies are presumably scattered throughout the galaxy. 

The Technate resumed colonization as a safety valve and tried to retain control of nearby colonies although this became impossible so that there are now about a dozen independent states still in contact with Sol. Sol and Centauri contend for the mineral resources of Sirius where the government is weak. Valti of the Commercial Society is from Ammon in the Tau Ceti system. There may be more info.

Addenda after an afternoon out: 

The Tau Ceti system also includes the inhabited planets, Osiris and Horus.

Langley's companion, Marin, observes that, among the thousands of lost colonies:

"'Surely one of them, somewhere, has become something different.'" (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 103)

She means something better than any of the known civilizations. Surely... This is one of many sf scenarios that could be extended indefinitely with additional speculations about utopias, dystopias etc.

Meanwhile, on another blog...

Planetary Designations

(Uranus.)

Poul Anderson, "Horse Trader," see here.

One envoy is from Tau Ceti III, the third planet of Tau Ceti, so maybe that is an Earth-like planet? Its envoy sounds humanoid apart from being centauroid (quadrupedal). His English is fully comprehensible despite his pronouncing "monster" and "scum" as "monther" and "thcum." (p. 272)

Another envoy is from 61 Cygni A V, the fifth planet of its star, so maybe that is a gas giant? Sure enough, the planet is called "New Uranus" and its envoy is enclosed in a protective sphere where he, "George," breathes high pressure hydrogen.

Anderson, generalizing from a single instance, is modeling extra-solar planetary systems on the Solar System. However, more recently, large planets have been detected close to their primaries. The universe is one big surprise.

Tau Zero, Chapter 6

In Chapter 6 of Poul Anderson's Tau Zero (London, 1973), we learn that:

the chef on the interstellar spaceship Leonora Christine is called Carducci;

the crew also includes Iwamoto Tetsuo, Hussein Sadek, Yeshu ben-Zvi, Mohandas Chidambaran, Phra Takh, Kato M'Botu, Olga Sobieski, Foxe-Jameson and Maria Toomajian.

Thus, we now know twenty three names although this is still less than half of the total.

It would be easy to misremember Tau Zero as presenting the first extra-solar expedition. However, it informs us that there have already been at least four to:

Alpha Centauri;
Epsioln Eridani;
Tau Ceti;
Delta Pavonis.

I am beginning to see Bob Shaw's point about the cosmic passages not being integrated into the novel. Anderson simply directly informs or lectures the reader on relativistic flight and, simplified though they are, I do not always follow his explanations. Anderson usually dramatizes such information by having one of his characters explain it to another character and thus also to the reader, although sometimes such conversations are too obviously contrived for this purpose.

Every member of the Leonora Christine will already be familiar with the fascinating value of tau: the square root of {one minus (the speed of the ship (v) squared divided by the speed of light (c) squared)}. Thus, as v approaches c, tau approaches zero. This novel is based on and named after that equation: as James Blish commented, "the ultimate hard sf novel."

The crew celebrates Christmas/Chanukah/solstice/New Year. The ship flies normally through Chapter 6 but, at the very end of that chapter, the omniscient narrator informs the reader that "grief" will come in the next chapter (p. 63).

Expeditions And Regimes

Poul Anderson's sf addresses, among many other issues:

(i) political conflicts and future regimes on Earth;
(ii) interstellar exploration and colonization.

Under (i), Anderson shows global power shifting to different parts of the world and twice shows the USSR conquering the US. He links (i) and (ii) by asking:

(iii) What sort of regime would launch an interstellar expedition?
(iv) Might the colonists be political refugees?

"The High Ones," IN Anderson, The Horn Of Time (New York, 1968), perfectly combines (i) and (ii). A World Soviet regime has launched a slower than light spaceship, with suspended animation, to Tau Ceti but, en route, Whites have overthrown the Reds within the ship! Here we encounter an issue familiar from Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Planet Of No Return. Psych-tests were meant to have picked a stable crew so do the tests not work or did someone deliberately sabotage them? The White crew has no intention of returning to Earth except, if they can, as liberators.

What they find in the Tau Cetian system is an ultimate collectivist state where individuals have devolved until they no longer think. Originally intelligent bipeds now have the mentalities of ants, bees or termites. They are on a par with Wells' Morlocks and Eloi or with his Selenites who are biologically adjusted to perform necessary social roles.

Several features of the story are familiar to regular Anderson readers:

we are given the clues - inconsistent behavior by the aliens will be interpreted to mean that they are not intelligent;

there is a moment when our hero realizes the truth - "Holbrook gasped. 'God in heaven!'" (p. 62);

there is a moment when he escapes by grabbing a gun, kicking a guard etc.

Once the truth is realized, it is a very easy matter to evade, immobilize or kill the slow-moving guards, who have not encountered resistance for centuries, and to destroy the computer which is not intelligent but merely applies programs to instruct the population who are helpless without it.

A Soviet loyalist says of the aliens:

"'Their reasoning processes must be fundamentally akin to ours, simply because the laws of nature are the same throughout the universe.'" (p. 49)

That does not follow. Yes, logic and maths should be a basis for communication but only a meta-basic basis. Thought processes can differ considerably even between human cultures. And, of course, his very next sentence is absurd:

"'Including those laws of behavior first seen by Karl Marx.'" (ibid.)

If Marx were there, he would say, "I do not know about these aliens. We have to find out." And he would be intelligent enough to make Holbrook's discovery. There is a parallel situation in Isaac Asimov's future history. The laws of psychohistory describe human society. The Laws of Robotics are not merely about robots because they control robotic behavior towards human beings. Thus, both sets of laws refer to humanity. Therefore, both are irrelevant when considering extra-Galactic intelligences. Hari Seldon, Susan Calvin and Karl Marx would say, "We might find some parallels between human and alien societies but we will have to look and see."

Holbrook replies, "'Pseudo-laws for a pseudo-religion!'" (ibid.)

I do not agree that Marxism is a pseudo-religion but that "Soviet" dogmatic formulation of it certainly is. The Soviet loyalist, holding a gun on his human companions, says, to the approaching alien guards, "'I have them, comrades!'" (p. 65) - and is blown to pieces because, as Holbrook had realized, the aliens are incapable of making any fine distinctions; they simply obey orders to guard or to attack etc. Theirs is a degenerate civilization comparable to what Wells imagined in The Time Machine.

If a Stalinist regime conquered an entire planet and thus ceased to have any external competitor, then it would cease to have any competitive dynamic and would indeed become a horrific, deadening despotism that might eventually wind up as Anderson describes here.

Introducing THE STAR FOX

Poul Anderson, The Star Fox (New York, 1966).

In the opening pages, the Moon is referred to as "Luna" and we are told that there is an Apollo City. It is not called "Luna City" so we are not in Robert Heinlein's Future History but maybe in a similar future. On Earth, any large city has a Welfare section, unsafe at night. The police merely contain "...the fury and futility..." (p. 10) of the technologically unemployed but protect those with needed skills. Gunnar Heim, self-described retired spaceman, drinks and gambles in the Welfare "subculture" (ibid.) where he goes armed with a stun pistol.

These are familiar futurological issues. Let's not discuss them again. They are only background colour, in any case. Heim, of Norwegian descent and now naturalized as American:

"'...was born on Gea, Tau Ceti II.'" (p. 12)

- and was in the space navy. So we gather that there is regular interstellar travel, almost certainly faster than light. Sf cliches fall into place but we expect Poul Anderson to put them to good use.

The title is standard. This author's titles also include Star Ways. And, of course, we cannot escape from Star Trek or Star Wars. But we rightfully expect a better deal from Poul Anderson.

The Astronomy Of The Technic Civilization Saga by Johan Ortiz

-Hard science, artistic license and obsolete data-

 

The son of an engineer and with an education in physics himself, Poul Anderson was not shy about including hard science in his fiction. While future tech was often handwaved off with a minimum of techno-babble, when it comes to strange stars and planets, we get a veritable catalogue of facts from spectral type of the star, the axial tilt of the planet, even in some cases including the geology of his worlds! And while he did create a lot of fictional stars, he also made use of real ones when building his future histories. This is very apparent in his Technic civilization stories, where some actual stars are recurring “characters” together with some fictional ones. It is notable that in that series of stories, most of the action takes place either in the Sol system or in rather distant star systems. Hardly any Technic story takes place within 20 light years of Sol (excepting Sol itself). Staple stars of science fiction like Epsilon Eridani, Sigma Draconis or Tau Ceti are seldom mentioned. In a rare exception, the future first Emperor of Terra, Manuel Argos, is captured by the Gorzuni on Alpha Centauri. Another relatively close system mentioned is Chee Lan’s home planet Cynthia which orbits Omicron 2 Eridani A, 16,3 LY from Sol.

The position of the real star systems used, just as the fictional ones, are often described at least relative to the Sol system – and it is here that the advancement of science has made a disservice to Anderson’s work. During, and especially after the period during which he worked on the technic civilization saga, the data we have on the distance from Sol of many of the stars mentioned in the stories have improved considerably.

Because we do not know with certainty the absolute luminosity of a distant star – we cannot really tell at a glance if it is a shining giant at an enormous distance we are seeing or a modest dwarf closer to Sol – we can measure distance from us by using the parallax method. It is how our depth vision work. Just as our brains can calculate the distance to an object through (among other means) the slight difference in angle between the picture of either eye, astronomers can measure the angle to a star at two points in time. Using the difference in angle between the two observations, trigonometric calculus can give an estimate of the distance to a star. However, the more distant the star, the smaller the angle is and the harder it is to accurately calculate the distance. And in this, the state of the art has advanced considerably since the 1950s. For example, in the 1990s, close to the end of Poul Anderson’s career, the Hipparcos mission obtained parallaxes for over a hundred thousand stars with a precision of about a milliarcsecond, providing useful distances for the first time for stars out to a few hundred parsecs (a parsec is equal to about 3.26 light years). With the Hubble telescope we can today reliably determine distances out to 5 000 parsecs. None of this was possible in the 50s, 60s or even 70s.

This coupled with the fact that the Technic stories involve mainly distant stars has caused the distances mentioned by Poul Anderson to become very dated. I shall name a few examples.

In A SUN INVISIBLE, the distance from Sol to Beta Centauri is given as 190 LY. Currently, it is believed to be 397 LY. In SATAN’S WORLD, the Serendipity supercomputer tells David Falkayn that Beta Crucis is 204 LY from Sol. Currently it is believed to be 287 LY. Note that this also means that the author thought of these two stars as being be much closer to each other than what we now believe.

The obsolete data for distance to real stars have consequences also for the locations of fictional ones, since their position is often described as relative to real stars.

In WINGS OF VICTORY, in which an Earth star ship of The Great Survey visits the Home world of the avian Ythrians, their star is said to be “beyond the great stars Alpha and Beta Crucis”, “in the constellation Lupus” and “278 light years from Sol”. As mentioned earlier, this is inconsistent with modern data, since the closer of the two stars, Beta Crucis is about 287 LY from Sol, and Alpha Crucis is 326 LY. To be considered “beyond” both these stars in any sense of the word, Ythri must be no closer than 326 LY to Sol. Add to this that Ythri is to be found in Constellation Lupus, not Crux as Alpha and Beta Crucis, that is to say a considerable distance to one side of Crux.  If we are truly to consider us to be “beyond” and not “beside” Alpha Crucis, we would have to increase the distance further – exactly how long is impossible to determine, but one could safely assume another 100 LY at the least, to place A .Crucis “behind” rather than beside us.

But we have more clues in other stories. In THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND, the Terran Empire initiates a war of conquest against the Ythrians. Among the reasons are to secure for Terra the system of Beta Centauri, around which orbited several Krakoan- and one human-inhabited worlds before Ythri might beat them to it, as they already had with the Dathyna-system (from SATAN’S WORLD). Beta Centauri is, also as mentioned, 397 LY from Sol, and while it is not inconceivable that Terra and Ythri would dispute a system beyond Ythri from Sol, intuitively we would assume that the disputed systems are between the two. Beta Centauri is not mentioned as a close neighbour to Ythri in “wings of victory”, which makes sense since we know that the author believed B. Centauri to be only 190 LY from Sol, we can conclude that he also thought of Ythri as being no closer to B. Centauri than 88 LY (which would any way require it to be behind Beta Centauri and in Constellation Centaurus, not Lupus). These considerations would lead us to the conclusion that Ythri is near to 500 LY from Sol.

Another problematic set of data appears in Anderson’s Dominc Flandry stories set in the decadent Terran Empire of the early 31st century. The Empire is said to control a rough sphere with a radius of two hundred light years including around 4 million stars – but within that sphere are Beta Centauri (397 LY away), Alpha Crucis (326 LY from Sol), Beta Crucis (287 LY) and Antares (609 LY from Sol). Betelgeuse (642 LY from Sol) is not within the Empire, but a buffer state between Terra and Merseia (which is said to be located in “the wilderness between Betelgeuse and Rigel” in THE DAY OF BURNING). To make matters worse, Antares and Betelgeuse are almost exactly opposite each other from Sol. The Empire thus claims space up to more than 600 LY in both these directions.

Another problem is that within a sphere with even a 250 LY radius from Sol, there are in the proximity of 260 000 stars, so nowhere near the 4 million stars mentioned. That amounts to about 0,0038 stars per cubic light year. Using this star density, it would require a sphere with a radius of almost 630 LY to include 4 million stars.

On the other hand, in THE REBEL WORLDS, Polaris and Deneb are said to be “unutterably far beyond the Empire and its enemies”. This is doubtlessly true about Deneb (1 547 LY from Sol) but Polaris is “only” 431 LY from Sol, that is to say closer  than both Antares and Betelgeuse and also notable for being on one end of the sphere controlled by the Polesotechnic League in the era of Van Rijn and Falkayn, which held sway “from Polaris to Canopus” (Canopus is 313 LY from Sol, by the way). While it is mentioned by Flandry that the Polesotechnic League explored far beyond the Empire’s reach, it is odd that Polaris should be considered “unutterably” beyond the Terran sphere, when being closer to Sol than some of the Empire’s more notable border systems.

None of the this would really be problematic unless for the oft-repeated statement that the Empire controls a “rough sphere” 400 LY across, or with a radius of 200 LY. An Empire that controls Antares, Alpha and Beta Crucis, Beta Centauri and which borders Betelgeuse but otherwise only holds sway out to a radius of 200 LY from Sol is not a sphere – rather it is shaped like a three-dimensional starfish!

Now, how to reconcile these inconsistencies with Poul Anderson’s texts? One way is to decide that the entire universe is fictional, and that in the universe of the technic civilization, Beta Crucis really is only 200 LY from Earth. Another approach is that of “minimum rewrite”, i.e. to ignore those measure of distance given by the author that are inconsistent with modern data but accept all other facts – in other words, accept that Antares is an Imperial system, and Betelgeuse is a buffer state, and thus conclude that the Empire is over 1 200 LY across between those systems. That would also mean accepting that the Empire, as stated, is a rough sphere rather than a starfish, but that it is a sphere with a diameter of roughly 400 parsec (rather than light years). Interestingly, the earlier mentioned radius of a sphere required to englobe 4 million stars, 630 LY, corresponds to 193,1 parsecs. A sphere with a 200 parsec radius would hold, on average, 4,4 million stars. Close enough!

Not all astronomic inconsistencies in Anderson’s work stem from obsolete data however. Above all, he was a writer of fiction, and as such he would engage, from time to time, in artistic license. In WE CLAIM THESE STARS, the dastardly Merseians are trying a land grab (or star grab perhaps?) in the fictional Syrax star cluster, which, if held by the Merseians would “bypass Antares” (presumably an imperial bastion) and thus hasten the demise of the Terran Empire by a century or more. The only problem is that, as mentioned before, Antares in constellation Scorpio is on the exact opposite side of Sol from constellation Orion where Merseia orbits the star Korych between Betelgeuse and Rigel (according to THE DAY OF BURNING). Thus, if we are to take this at face value, the Merseians have completely surrounded the Terran Empire at least on one side and can threaten it from the exact opposite direction of their home world, more than 1 250 LY away, in a straight line and more than 2 000 LY away if they have to fly around the circumference of the Terran sphere. Assuming speeds similar to those given in SATAN’S WORLD (Sol to Beta Crucis in two weeks), such a journey would take close to 100 days. It could be less, if the state of the art of hyperlight travel has improved in the centuries since SATAN’S WORLD, or it could be more, given that the estimated travel time in that story was for a small, swift ship for a few passengers. A heavy battlefleet might be considerably slower. The Merseian fleet at Syrax could well have made a journey comparable in length to that of the ill-fated Russian Baltic Fleet sailing to Tshushima in 1904-1905 (which took around six months).

On the other hand, we are told the Merseia threatens the Empire on its “Betelgeusan flank, and the barbarians everywhere else” – the Empire does not have Merseia around half of its periphery. This leaves a distant Merseian base the only possible explanation, perhaps similar to Cuba becoming a Soviet base during the Cuban missile crisis. That analogy makes clear the problem with that assumption obvious – while the US would have very much deplored and opposed a Soviet attempt to take over, say Haiti from its Cuban base in 1961, the really big beef was having Soviet missiles on Cuba in the first place.

By the same token, if the Merseians were threatening Syrax from a distant exclave in Constellation Scorpius, then surely it would be worth at least a passing mention by Flandry or his superiors? Such a base would constitute a major strategic conundrum for Terra, far more important in itself than the fate of the Syrax cluster and one it could scarcely leave unaddressed, even in it morose decadence. Nonetheless, this is what the reader will have to assume, if we are not to dismiss the premises of the story out of hand!

In this case, obsolete data are not to blame – the directions of Antares and Betelgeuse where as well known in 1969 when that particular story was written as they are today.  But Antares had been used in several prior stories and connects the reader with the Technic universe through familiarity of places and names. It will be noted though that never in the story does Anderson say that Antares is anywhere near Betelgeuse or Korych. The inconsistency is not in astronomy but rather in somewhat implausible geo- or rather astropolitics.

Story-Telling At The Kith Fair

Can "sitters" join the tinerans on Aeneas in Poul Anderson's Technic History? No.

Can "groundhuggers" join the Kith in Anderson's Starfarers? Rarely and with difficulty. 

An Aerien proves that he has what it takes to be a Kith by playing a trick to get himself recruited. Even before his recruitment, this enterprising young man had started to learn Kithic and also Xyrese because of how widely the latter is spoken around the hear stars:

Sol

Tau Ceti

Delta Pavonis

the primaries of Maia and Aurora

others?

"'...Aerie is the furthest of all worlds where humans dwell...'" (17, p. 125)

- because beyond that the travel time becomes too great.

(In James Blish's Jack Loftus novels, "the Heart Stars" means the galactic centre where there is an ancient interstellar hegemony. In Anderson's The Game Of Empire, one passage refers to the heart of the Terran Empire.)

In Chapter 17, two Kith, one of them playing a polymusicon, entertain a Kith audience by jointly relating their recent experience with the young Aerien so there could be different ways to adapt this narrative to screen: leave out the narrators and their audience; stay with them throughout; alternate between the performance and flashbacks to the related events; simplify the complicated narration - Rusa with the musical instrument keeps interrupting the main narrator, Shaun.

A Real Interstellar Trip

See Into The Shadow.

Karl Rouvaratz wants:

"...to propagandize for a real interstellar trip. Tau Ceti, say; that one must have planets, and you could coldsleep during the decades of the voyage. God, to walk on a world uncluttered by cities and crowds and governments and police, a world unraped by man!" (p. 94)

So the Gearchy has coldsleep technology? OK. Here is how to link "In The Shadow" to either the Rustum or the Directorate future history. Because of information sent from the shadow planet (see The Gearch), the Gearchy will be overthrown to be replaced either by the Federation or by the Directorate, then STL interstellar travel with suspended animation will begin, to be followed by extra-solar colonization.