Merseians And Martians

My mind has been elsewhere for most of today as my body will be elsewhere on Friday this week with a day trip to York. 

Meanwhile, we cannot really compare Merseians with Martians because there is only one fictional race of Merseians whereas there are no one knows how many fictional races of Martians. Poul Anderson's Merseians, at least those of the Roidhunate, like HG Wells' Martians, want to conquer Earth whereas Ray Bradbury's Martians are almost entirely wiped out by chicken pox brought from Earth - just as Wells' Martian invaders are killed by Terrestrial microbes - while at the same (in a different timeline) CS Lewis' Martians are protected from Terrestrial evil by superior beings in the Solar System. What could be more different? And those are just three of the most prominent examples.

The comparison that I have in mind here is with SM Stirling's Martians. Merseians are multicultural. See information about Cnif hu Vanden here and particularly here. By contrast, Stirling's Martians have been monocultural throughout a very long history and this makes it hard to tell how much of their psychology is genetic as opposed to cultural. Is a monocultural species easier to write about or must the author work harder to keep it consistent? As a mere reader, I can only guess.

Thank you all for so many page views for a day when this is the first post.

Language

Diverted from rereading The Anubis Gates, we are concurrently reading two recently acquired volumes, one about interpretations of the Bible, the other describing a divergent timeline in which paper and printing with punctuation, upper- and lower-case letters and spaces between words are introduced in the Roman Empire in 167 CE. This convergence of texts focuses our attention on communication and we will now post about that subject, referring of course to our favourite authors, including Poul Anderson, but placing them in a wider context. 

That cooperative manipulation of the environment which generated speech differentiated homo sapiens from all other animal species. Consider the following progression:

spoken language

written language

literature

scriptures

We have evolved a long way from non-, then pre-, linguistic organisms and indeed before them from inanimate matter. The latter is not just inert and dead. Its capacity to change (energy) overcomes its resistance to change (inertia). Without these two contradictory forces, no events would occur and no objects or organisms would remain in existence from one moment to the next. There is spiral development to more dynamic levels of energy-inertia interaction, from inanimate matter through unconscious organisms and animal consciousness to ascending levels of human (and other?) intelligence and self-consciousness. At this stage, we can imagine more highly developed consciousnesses helping and guiding less developed consciousnesses as in the Cosmenosist philosophy in Anderson's The Day Of Their Return. However, this is unnecessary. Ascent to more dynamic and creative levels of consciousness continues - at present - even if only in a single species. At the same time, social inertia pulls us back towards self-destruction. Interaction continues but with unpredictable outcomes: continued ascent or abrupt descent?

Spoken Language

Until they spoke, our ancestors were at most pre- or proto-human. They developed oral traditions which - those that survived - have long since been written down. We read Homeric epics and Buddhist scriptures in Penguin paperbacks.

Written Language

The earliest written language was still largely oral, i.e., with no spaces between written words, people read aloud to make sense of the text and also for the benefit of those who were still illiterate. It was a big discovery that it was possible to read without being heard! Scriptures are still ritually read aloud in places of worship.

Literature

Written language could be just signs, hand-written notes or instructions, shopping lists, private correspondence etc. However, literature, writing handed down the generations, transmits knowledge and culture, improving on the work of the earlier oral traditions. All our friends are here, including Poul Anderson following:

the Bible

the Verse and Prose Eddas

the Sagas

Shakespeare

Mary Shelley

HG Wells

L. Sprague de Camp

Robert Heinlein

etc

Scripture

We have already mentioned Buddhist scriptures, the Bible and the Book of Thoth.

Scripture is literature regarded as authoritative and foundational. Every religious tradition has scriptures. Also, I regard certain texts as proto-canonical, i.e.:

the Greek "Homer and the poets" formally parallel the Hebrew "Moses and the prophets" and were also regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality;

the Eddas are not called "scriptures" only because that was not done in pagan traditions but they are our sources for Norse myths, knowledge of the gods.

When a text is canonized, it is universally known that it is officially regarded as authoritative even by those who can neither read nor understand it and it becomes effectively a blank screen onto which later generations project whatever they want. Christian Nazis: Jesus was Aryan, not Jewish. An extreme example but nevertheless an example. He is also a shaman, a yogi, a Bodhisattva, an astronaut and everything else imaginable.

SM Stirling's American time travellers arrive after the closure of the Christian and Jewish canons but nevertheless they radically change history and also introduce printing very early. How will that affect later uses of the Bible in public worship, private reading, social ideology etc?

One of Poul Anderson's time travellers must avoid changing the content of the Germanic literature that he studies.

In one of Anderson's divergent timeline, a medieval theocracy survives into the twentieth century. Clergy rule in the name of the Bible but, obviously, most people will not need to read even a word of it. It will not even have been translated into the vernacular. The church controls printing.

Now I want to get back to some reading! (And a little eating and drinking. Satisfy the inner man.)

Spiritual Development II

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane, just before she mentions duty: 

"'...[Cosmenosists] think reality is always growin' toward what is greater than itself...'" (pp. 129-130)

"...greater..." is mystically vague but she means intensifications or refinements of consciousness. So is reality always growing towards this? Well, no. What has happened so far?

There was an earliest moment with no earlier moments just as there are no points further north than the North Pole. At that earliest moment, condensed energy was released with natural forces that allowed for the emergence of a complex ordered universe rather than a random chaos. Were the forces "fine tuned"? Not by any intelligent being because intelligence had not emerged yet. 

Energized complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating, the first unicellular organism. Chemistry was not "growing toward" biology although presumably a random event would have happened some time. I understand that multicellular organisms are unlikely although they have evolved at least once. Consciousness was an accidental byproduct of natural selection. Organisms were selected for sensitivity. Pleasure and pain, if they were possible, would have survival value. Therefore, sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into sensation. 

Now that we are not only conscious but also self-conscious and intelligent, we can decide to work towards the goal of self-development but reality had not been growing towards such an outcome. There might be universes where some of the earlier random events like the fusion of two simple cells into a single complex cell allowing for the emergence of multicellular organisms did not happen.

Now that we are here, we can do something about it but we should not think that preconscious reality had had any inbuilt tendency to work towards us.

Conclusion And An Unwritten Sequel

Was the conclusion of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword predictable: that the sword, Tryfing, would kill the Elven-Fosterling, then the Changeling? Yes, if we could think in terms of weird instead of in terms of happy endings or of any other kind of story resolution, then this double killing should have been predictable.

In which god should we place our trust? Skafloc tells us!:

"'A true friend is Mananaan. He is the only god I would trust.'" (XXVI, p. 189)

Freda winds up with Mananaan. Asking Christ to forgive her because she loves Skafloc more than Him, she goes to seek Skafloc and Mananaan sees to her welfare after Skafloc's death.

Odin speaks the sequel that Poul Anderson never wrote:

"'Skafloc must fall, and this child whom I wove my web to have begotten and given to me must one day take up the sword and bear it to the end of its weird.'" (XXVI, p. 196)

Such an early work implying such an obvious sequel - that was never written.

It is getting late here.

Some Facts About Ythrians

The People Of The Wind.

Of course, these "facts" are really fictions but we know what we mean or at least I hope that we do. I once suggested to a University graduate that a good fictional premise for a sequel to The Time Machine could be that Wells wrote a true account that has been mistaken for fiction for all these years because the Time Traveller never returned. What would follow from such a premise? In no time, however, the guy with whom I had shared this idea had got so confused that he asked me, puzzledly, whether I though that The Time Machine was true? If we ask whether it is "true" that in 1984, the world was divided into three states, Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, that were perpetually at war, then the answer is "yes" provided that it is understood that this entire discussion takes place within the context of the fictional scenario in George Orwell's novel, 1984, and is not about the real world in 1984 AD, a year that had still been in the future when Orwell wrote 1984.

Obvious, we hope. Here is a "fact" about the Ythrians' usually regular sexual cycle. Grief can prematurely initiate female receptivity and fertility. Philippe Rochefort's training video informs him that:

"Doubtless this was originally a provision of nature for rapid replacement of losses. It seems to have brought about a partial fusion of Eros and Thanatos in the Ythrian psyche which makes much of the race's art, and doubtless thought, incomprehensible to man." (IV, p. 44)

I had to google "Eros" and "Thanatos" to get a more exact understanding of these terms as used in psychology. If (i) these principles are partially fused in Ythrian psychology and if (ii) this partial fusion makes much Ythrian thought incomprehensible to humanity, then surely there should be bigger communication problems than we are shown in these narratives? Yet this potential problem is mentioned only in this single sentence. We did see in In Oronesia And The Weathermother, that western Coronans and northern Oronesians would first confer human-to-human and Ythrian-to-Ythrian. Tabitha Falkayn judged that this procedure would initially avoid:

"'...the handicap of differing species.'" (III, p. 30)

Later, the omniscient narrator informs us that:

"...one is tempted to call [Ythrian Planha-speakers] 'Hellenistic.'" (V, p. 53)

However, is this an omniscient narrator if he speaks/writes about "one" being tempted...? Who is this "one"? An omniscient narrator should in no way obtrude into the text. Instead, he should be completely outside of the readers' sight and hearing like the supposed invisible, omnipresent deity. This sentence reads more like one of our many Technic historians and commentators reflecting on his subject-matter.

Lastly, for now, Khruaths, assemblies which any free adult can attend, work for Ythrians because members of that species differ from humanity in the following ways. They are less:

talkative

busybody

easily bullied

crowded

Modern communications spread Khruaths planet- and Domain-wide.

Your blogger needs a food break.

Working For What?

War Of The Wing-Men, XV.

After a military defeat:

rolling mist;

stony dales;

chill twilight;

hopeless hunger;

wood burned;

land scoured;

worms eaten;

dank dark;

sullen volcano -

"...only the wind and the rushing, glacial waters lived." (p. 103)

Well, sure. We were waiting to see what the wind was doing!

Poul Anderson writes a detailed description which I try to summarize rather than quoting it at length.

However, where the Eart'ska work:

fires burn;

wheels turn;

lathes chatter;

hammers thump.

The fat Eart'a, van Rijn, has roared down protests and kept the factory working.

"Working for what? thought Trolwen, in a mind as gray as the mist." (ibid.)

That is a very good question and not one that will be answered here tonight!

Why?

The Shield Of Time.

The Time Patrol prevents time criminals:

"...from destroying that history which leads through the ages to the Danellians. For them this may be a matter of simple survival. They have never told us, we hardly ever see them, we do not know." 

- 1965 A. D., pp. 159-171 AT pp. 163-164.

It seems that there is a very great deal that we, the readers, do not know but that we might have learned some of if the series had continued. As it happens, we do learn more than we would have done if the series had remained just its original four instalments.

Imagine if someone showed up now who not only claimed to remember a different history of the twentieth century but who also displayed documentation and other physical evidence to back up his account? Like coinage that would have been minted if the British Royal Abdication had not happened? Documents signed and sealed by an alternative President of the United States? And so on. What would be the simplest explanation of such phenomena? Entire other universes or just some quantum fluctuations?

I only work here.

Cuicuilco

I do not remember reading about Cuicuilco before but I find that I have posted about it four times. See here. (Scroll down.) And now a fifth.

There is a finite number of time travellers on Earth in 209 BC - including in Cuicuilco. When all of these time travellers have completed their business in that year, that will be the end of the matter and there will be no further need or occasion for anyone to travel to 209 BC. That year can be regarded as closed, completed and done with - and the same applies to every other year.

Everard learns that the time travel traffic in 209 BC includes himself leading the capture or killing of the last of the Exaltationists - not a routine task like the work of the Patrol base staff or of the historical investigators but nevertheless a single finite operation that, once completed, can be left when it is as part of the fixed past and need not be revisited. In that sense, the entire history of the Patrol is complete, including the retirement and death of the last graduate of the Academy. Reading the series might generate an impression of endlessness but that would be misleading.

Life really is busier here. Maybe only one post today.

A Conversation About SF

OK. Conversation with Mike at the barbeque this afternoon touched on:

Wells

Stapledon

Lewis

Blish

Anderson

Pullman

Heinlein should also be mentioned as a future historian coming after Wells and Stapledon but before Blish and Anderson. 

Nothing much was said that has not been said here before. All but Lewis and Pullman stand in a particular science fiction tradition. Lewis replies to Wells and Stapledon. Blish is post-Lewisian whereas Pullman is anti-.

Lewis' The Problem Of Pain is a work of Christian apologetics. Anderson's "The Problem of Pain" is a short story about a Christian man confounded by an Ythrian response to suffering and death.

Mike has read some Lewis and commended his psychological insights. He has also read Anderson's Genesis and thinks that mankind will be superseded not only by AI but even by unconscious AI and, furthermore, that this will be a good thing! Consciousness causes suffering and is a curse. If this is the real meaning of Buddhism, then I have to affirm that I am not a Buddhist although Zen meditation is beneficial for consciousness.

If Lewis' God exists, then He knows that He created both Wells and Lewis. We are all in this thing together, somehow. (That is not always true but it is here.)

RED NAILS

Robert E. Howard, Red Nails IN SM Stirling Conan: Blood Of The Serpent (London, 2023) AT pp. 337-453.

Although I am reading dutifully to the end - not far off - I find this work surreal and nightmarish. Conan and Valeria have wound up among a small population whose members are motivated only by hate and cruelty. Our two central characters remain upright and honourable but the sooner they can get out of this place the better and then the story will end. I am unlikely to read any more Conan. 

Howard does not control his narrative point of view, switching from a particular pov to an omniscient narrator when he needs to tell us what has been happening elsewhere. I will read to the end but will not reread to make sense of any of the details. Poul Anderson and SM Stirling have introduced me to Conan but I expect to end my acquaintance with this character here.

What It Means (Or The Meaning Of It All)

The Night Face, III.

Raven, the Lochlanna Commandant, works hard to understand the Gwydiona, especially since they are so unusual to begin with. He tells his men:

"'They say, "Man goes where God is," and it seems to mean...'"

(We have been wondering what "God" means so here we go...)

"'...that work and play and art and private life and everything else aren't divided up; no distinction is made between them, it's all one harmonious whole.'" (p. 566)

Oneness, harmony, wholeness: yes, we can associate these qualities with "God," although some might say that the use of this word with only that meaning is metaphorical.

The Gwydiona fish (work) in elaborately carved and decorated boats (art) with multiple symbolisms to musical accompaniment (more art) and claim that this multifaceted activity is more efficient than compartmentalization. Raven is even prepared to concede that:

"'They might be right...'" (ibid.)

The transcendence of the distinction between work and leisure should be a future social goal. Drudgery should be eliminated. Enjoyable and self-realizing activity, whether "work" or creative leisure, should be maximized. Years ago, my friend, Kevin, sat on a park bench watching his grandchildren on the swings on a Saturday morning while simultaneously selling an electric balance to a customer over his mobile phone. His work and leisure were seamlessly blended. Before mobile phones, he would have had to go home and use the land line: more of a distinction between work and leisure. A trivial example, of course.

I think that the Gwydiona vision is realizable without the downside, the Night Face, which we learn that it has.

ESP Or Magic

We have seen that the premise of one work can be casually referenced or even summarily dismissed in another work by the same author. For example, in Poul Anderson's The Avatar, the Betans can travel through space-time via T machines but cannot enter or intervene in their own history, unlike time criminals in the Time Patrol timeline. FTL is possible and extraterrestrial intelligences are abundant in some fictional universes although not in others. There are several alternative answers to the question whether conscious AI is possible. And so on. We appreciate such systematically alternative approaches in Poul Anderson's prolific output. We also find something similar in the works of the author whom I think of as paralleling Anderson, James Blish. 

In an early novel by Blish, Jack Of Eagles, ESP is scientifically rationalized and extensively deployed. Several later works by Blish present alternative rationales for ESP. However, in his Black Easter, a black magician, Theron Ware, says to a client, Baines:

"'Then you don't really believe in magic yet - only in ESP or some such nonsense.'"

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT p. 33.

When Baines' scientific advisor, Adolph Hess, compares black magic to flying saucers, Baines replies that the reasons for thinking that anyone has seen a saucer are pitiable whereas they have seen a demon. Thus, stories about alien visitations are dismissed. 

When travelling underground in a gravity-vacuum tube, Baines' personal assistant, Ginsberg, remarks that riding in such a thing makes it hard to believe in devils. Yes, hard sf and fantasy are usually light-years apart.

Ware refers to magic as goetic art. See also here.

Flandry And Bond

Dominic Flandry is definitely not an sf James Bond imitation because Flandry was published first, in 1951 as against 1953, but are they comparable as spy series? I think not. Flandry is primarily sf. The many differences far outweigh any similarities. If anything, Flandry resembles a space Hornblower because he rises through naval ranks and even spends some time at sea in his first instalment.

Bond's setting is the contemporary world at the time of writing whereas Flandry's is a fantastic and arguably impossible scenario of faster than light interstellar travel and many intelligent species. 

Bond's Enemies

Russia (a French trade unionist, SMERSH, GRU, KGB)

Nazis left over from the (still recent) War

North American gangsters (Spangled Mob, Hoods' Congress, a Canadian gang)

international organized crime (SPECTRE, Blofeld)

(Once, the KGB hires SPECTRE which sends an ex-Gestapo man to work with the Canadian gang.)

Flandry's Enemies

Merseia

barbarians

rebels

The only resemblance here is that Merseia operates like Cold War Russia.

When Bond has to operate in Japan, that is a bit like being on another planet! You Only Live Twice, like Ensign Flandry, becomes in part a fictional travelogue.

Meaning

Ensign Flandry.

Flandry to Persis:

"'...here's a job I'm fitted for, that serves a purpose. If I don't take it, what meaning has life got?'"

-CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, p. 190.

The job is Intelligence. Flandry has to be active. Defending the Empire is a purpose. We are all different. 

My meaning of life has not depended on a job. I would have been fitted for academic work but now strongly suspect that life in an ivory tower would have been a bad idea. Jobs have been only a means to a livelihood and, fortunately, a comfortable pension. Meditation and understanding, which I value, have come from outside work although one teaching job did contribute to understanding.

Flandry's preferred career suits him. If I were alive in his era, then I would be on Terra trying to understand life and probably involved in sociopolitical activities that are not mentioned in Flandry's narratives.

Spaceships' Names

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Unfortunately, we approach the end of this novel yet again. There are only two chapters left. It has been unexpectedly enjoyable to reread this account of Dominic Flandry's initiation into Intelligence. The second last chapter describes a space battle. See here. Previously, it took some work to study this chapter and summarize the battle but it is unnecessary to repeat that exercise. This time, I will reread at a leisurely pace, again looking out for any details missed before but not needing to keep track of the fates of Sabik, Umbriel etc.

What do the names of the ships mean?

Sabik

Umbriel

Antarctica

New Brazil

Murdoch's Land

Encke

Ikeya-Seki

When I started to write this post, I did not expect to initiate those google searches. There is always more to be found in Poul Anderson's texts.

Tachyons

The term, "tachyon," was coined in 1967. See here. Gerald Feinberg who coined it was inspired by "Beep" by James Blish. Poul Anderson's "The Pirate" was published in 1968. In it, hyperdrive is described as:

"...the tachyon mode..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), pp. 137-165.

In that mode, a spaceship can be tracked only by:

"...a weak emission of superlight particles..." (ibid.)

Thus, retroactively, all previously published references to the hyperdrive in Anderson's Psychotechnic History were to this "tachyon mode."

How does it work? Transforming all the particles in a spaceship into tachyons would make the whole ship move faster than light, if not also backwards in time, but would also make it undetectable.

"The Pirate" is in one way the summit of the Psychotechnic History since it was the last instalment to be published and spells out the ethos of the Coordination Service.

Now I am bound for the two-storey apartment above the Old Pier Bookshop, the view of Morecambe Bay, pizza, superhero videos and an analysis of world affairs. I will think about sf as well.

Sanity

The Psychotechnic Institute aims to bring about sane individuals in a sane society. I agree with these aims. However... Many people will have different objections to the Institute's project.

I think that individual sanity can only be encouraged but not brought about to any sort of schedule or by any kind of manipulation of educational or social institutions. What is sanity? We will formulate this in different ways. One way, influenced by contemplative traditions, is to say that each of us is not a separate self (isolated, vulnerable, defensive, aggressive-defensive, assertive etc) but a member of the universal self, i.e., the universe conscious of itself in each psychophysical organism. If we acted on this realization, then we would cooperate to preserve life instead of contending to destroy it. However, not everyone is going to realize their oneness simultaneously, to say the least. Education and culture can encourage contemplation but that is all that they can do in this respect. (I received an upbringing that intensified the feeling of separate selfhood instead of pointing towards transcendence of it.)

Apart from encouraging contemplative practices, the Institute can work on social and political arrangements and, since we all know how contentious an issue that is, I will end this discussion here.

Heroes And Dead Aliens

Years ago, some publisher launched an sf line with the slogan:

"Remember the days when androids didn't have personality problems, every Earthman was a hero and the only good alien was a dead one?"

Maybe there were some such days although it is also the kind of thing that we think we remember. John Carter killed a lot of green Martians but also befriended a lot of them. He was a chieftain of Thark. But that was in sword and science, not in space opera.

Needless to say, real life and history are more complicated. Allies and enemies change sides. In Mirkheim, XV, a Hermetian man, a Wodenite and a Cynthian fight against four men. The four work for the Baburites and could just as well have been Merseians, Gorzuni or Donarrians. 

When Dominic Flandry accompanies a group of Dennitzans into their Parliament, he is conscious of the fact that the only member of that Parliament that he knows is Merseian by species - and an ally. 

I see that I have quoted that provocative publisher's slogan twice before. See here. (Scroll down.)

At This Hour

John Milton wrote a sonnet beginning: "Cromwell, our chief of men..." (here)

William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet beginning: "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour..." (here)

Let me add: "Anderson, our chief sf writer...," "Anderson! You should be living in this century..."

I have heard or read that there is evidence that:

there are large asymmetrical objects in orbit around a nearby star;

there is a Dyson sphere around another star (these might be the same story);

there are energy traces in space that might have been left by warp drive spaceships.

If any high tech is active nearby, then it should be detectable. A relativistic spaceship approaching light speed would have to be visible as a massive artificial energy source. Is it possible that humanoid aliens will arrive soon in FTL spaceships and incorporate Earth into an interstellar empire? I do not think so if only because nothing ever happens as it had been imagined, e.g., the first Moon Landing. We have not met Selenites or Martians, Barsoomians or Malacandrians, or discovered an oceanic Venus but we might just possibly be starting to move into space at last. Let me do two things:

(i) confidently predict that no humanoid aliens will arrive in our lifetimes;

(ii) acknowledge that I could be proved wrong about this tomorrow.

Meanwhile, what kind of sf would Poul Anderson be writing if he were still at work today?

The Cosmos And The Future

I am trying to refocus on Nicholas van Rijn but that has taken us through the League, Empire and Commonalty periods of the Technic History to Mars in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History to an interstellar crossing in an obscure, magazine publication only, work by James Blish. But sf is all one. It is about our relationships not only to each other and to our Terrestrial environment but also to our total cosmic environment as revealed by science. The laws of physics apply "...on Earth as in the heavens."

In a sense, we cannot go into space because going into space will change us so much that we will no longer be who we were before we went. In most sf, we continue to act in the same kinds of ways because we have not changed enough yet but give us more time. Daven Laure says that the people of the Commonalty do not get into wars and, indeed, if they have no reason to wage wars, then they will not, any more than most of us attack our neighbours here and now.

We need to imagine different futures because we will live into them.