Other Echoes

The Forge, CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Raj Whitehall adapts Shakespeare but also echoes Nelson, Horatius and a Poul Anderson title.

"'And I say I'm proud right now, to call you fellow-soldiers, who I trust to do their duty.'" (p. 259)

"England expects..."

(A man speaking from the foot of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London, (see image) pointed up and asked, "What would Nelson say?" Another man speaking from the steps of the General Post Office in O'Connell St., Dublin, cited the occupation of the Post Office by armed rebels during the Easter Rising in 1916.)

"'You are the descendants of the lords of the stars...'" (ibid.)

See "Lord Of A Thousand Suns."

"...you fight for your homes, your families, the graves of your ancestors, the temples of the Spirit. To battle! Winner takes all!'" (ibid.)

See previous references to Horatius. (Scroll down.)

Imperial Terra

The People Of The Wind, XIII.

The Domain of Ythri is bound "...by vows of mutual fidelity..." (p. 582), not by imperial rule. Ythri has no authority to order Avalon to surrender to Terra.

Admiral Cajal to the First Marchwarden of the Lauran System and the High Wyvan of the Great Khruath of Avalon:

"'...you're up against Imperial Terra, which thinks in terms of centuries and reigns over thousands of planets.'" (ibid.)

Thousands of planets! See "Lord of a Thousand Suns."

"Centuries" would be far too short a time scale for "thousands of planets" but Technic civilization has FTL.

"'Resistance will buy you nothing except the devastation of your homes, the death of thousands or millions. Have they been consulted?'" (ibid.)

Would they have been consulted if they had been Imperial subjects? Cajal probably expects a "No" or a prevarication but:

"'Yes'...Khruath and Parliament voted again. A majority favors holding on.'" (pp. 582-583)

We know that the Khruath vote fully represents the Ythrian and human members of all Avalonian choths. Parliaments are not as directly representative as Khruaths but, for what it is worth, the Great Khruath and the Parliament of Man agree whereas Imperial subjects have not voted on whether to annex Avalon.

Kinds Of Immortality

Fictional immortals live either through history or through an indefinite future. Poul Anderson's Hanno does both. Most "immortal" characters are really "a-mortal" although two exceptions are Hob Gadling and Captain Jack, both immune not only to disease or aging but also to accident or violence. Anderson's Anson Guthrie and his second wife are endlessly downloaded, then resurrected, thus joining the ranks of their creator's "immortals." In Anderson's earlier "Lord Of A Thousand Suns," an alien personality was downloaded, then imposed not on a newly constructed organism but on an already existing one. See here. For more on that story, see here.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, Professor Pinero, having invented and applied either the "baronoviameter" or the "chronovitameter"(see here), accurately predicts the date and time of death of any individual but refuses to give a reading to Lazarus Long who, we infer, will continue to lie indefinitely. James Blish's John Amalfi does live indefinitely - until the end of the universe which, for narrative convenience, is brought unexpectedly close to the present. Will Hanno, Hugh Valland and Guthrie live until the end of the universe in their timelines? Statistics should catch up with Hanno and Valland but Guthrie has the advantage that he exists as multiple downloads.

A Hundred Thousand Worlds

Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188.

A few more two-word sentences:

"All did." (VIII, p. 107)
"Yewwl dismounted." (p. 112)
"Flandry admired." (IX, p. 129)
"Cairncross scowled." (X, p. 133)

An early pulp space opera story by Poul Anderson was "Lord of a Thousand Suns." Cairncross aims:

"...to make himself lord of a hundred thousand worlds." (p. 133)

- but, in the latter case, Anderson conveys a sense of the Terran Empire and its member planets as substantial societies with diverse histories, economies and cultures.

We last see Cairncross thinking:

"Civilization was deathly ill; the rot had reached the heart. Nothing could save it but radical surgery." (p. 135)

But, if every local ruler is free to think thus and act accordingly, then civilization is finished.

Lord Of A Thousand Suns: Conclusion

At the climax of the story, Laird, in an enemy spaceship, saves the day by acting in accordance with a posthypnotic command. And exactly this happens to the hero of which other Poul Anderson short story?

I was slow to finish reading "Lord Of A Thousand Suns," discouraged by pulpishness. However, as with "Swordsman Of Lost Terra," interesting points emerged from the text. In this case:

science fictional rationales for fantasy ideas;
a science fictional answer to what killed the dinosaurs;
novae;
unified field theory;
how to record, preserve and reactivate a personality;
kinds of fictional immortality.

What's not to like? The Poul Anderson Planet Stories Ebook includes two other stories that I have not yet read. These will be read for any interesting features although not necessarily immediately. I still spend more time rereading known works in the sure and certain hope that new facets will be found within them.

Planets And Brains

The Vwyrddan civilization lasted for fifty million years, used nucleonic disintegrators, magnetic shield projectors and life-energy detectors and moved planets.

Each Vwyrddan was trained in psychosomatic coordination with control of involuntary functions and subcellular components and had a telepathy transceiver lobe in his brain. Daryesh's ghost must manage without such a lobe when it is reincarnated in Laird's brain which, furthermore, cannot hold Daryesh's reasoning powers. However, Daryesh should be able to exercise enough nerve control to deceive a lie detector.

The immortalized noble, Daryesh of Tollogh, had ruled a thousand planetary systems, led the Vwrddan fleets and lived a thousand years but died fighting Erai rebels. However, before his death, a molecular scanner had recorded the pattern of synapses comprising his memory and identity and transferred that pattern onto the crystalline electronic structure of a helmet that will impose the pattern on the neurons of whoever dons the helmet.

I have not yet reread "Lord Of A Thousand Suns" beyond the point that I had reached on the first reading. However, I have this time retained much more information by dint of posting while reading. And I must now desist at midnight, having risen at 5.30 AM.

Back To Lord Of A Thousand Suns

"'...you'll find almost anything man has ever imagined out in the Galaxy,' I said."
-Poul Anderson, "Lord Of A Thousand Suns" IN Poul Anderson Planet Stories Ebook.

This opening sentence immediately establishes that the story is science fiction. I posted about "Lord..." here and here but have yet to finish reading it.

The first person narrator goes on to use his sf setting to present scientific rationales for some standard fantasy ideas. First, he elaborates his Galactic background. There are:

many millions of planets;
fantastically varied planetary environments;
diverse life forms adapted to those environments;
intelligences and civilizations emerging among those life forms.

These include:

fire-breathing dragons;
dwarfs fighting beings resembling goblins;
"witches," using telepathic psuedohypnosis;
no doubt some counterpart for every other tall story or fairy tale.

I would have appreciated more of a rationale for the fire-breathing dragon, though. (I have just read Tolkien's translation of Beowulf.)

The narrator's companion agrees, affirming that he once let a genie out of a bottle and, further, that it killed him. I was going to comment that the phrase, "...genie out of a bottle...," is used metaphorically. However, it is not far from the mark. Laird (Scots for "Lord") released a powerful intelligence that had lain dormant for ages so maybe it can be classified as a counterpart of a genie.

Some Past And Future Posts

Posts from Paul on Poul will peter around Yule. Maybe another ten, including this one, in December. On the Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook, I have yet to finish reading "Lord of a Thousand Suns," then to read:

"Witch of the Demon Seas"
"The Virgin of Valkarion"
"Out of the Iron Womb!"

I have no idea what these last three stories are about. What I will find to post about them is unpredictable. In the case of "Swordsman of Lost Terra," Earth was neither lost nor referred to as "Terra" anywhere in the text so I thought that the title was misleading. However:

the use of the word "tyr" inspired a link to a post about an appearance by the Norse god, Tyr, in a heroic fantasy novel by Anderson;

the use of the word "hest" led to an interesting (to me) link to a place name near where I live. (See here. This is a different link but to information about the same place.)

Anderson's descriptive passages and rich vocabulary sometimes generate discussions that are far removed from the thud and blunder content of the early pulp short stories.

Before the ebook, I spent a long time in Anderson's Technic History and agree with Larry Niven that, "Poul Anderson immerses you in the future...puts you into a whole new world." (quoted on the cover of Baen Books' Sir Dominic Flandry.) I became very impressed with the coherence of the early History:

light sail ships explore the Solar System;
the Grand Survey explores extrasolar systems;
important inhabited planets are discovered;
many uninhabited planets are colonized;
Ythri gains the hyperdrive;
Dido is studied;
Aeneas is colonized;
the Aenean University of Nova Roma (more Latin) is founded and attracts non-human students;
Ythrians, employing human beings, explore Avalon;
the Polesotechnic League is founded;
"The world's great age begins anew...";
merchant princes, including Nicholas van Rijn, become unbelievably rich;
many human and non-human students on Earth compete for very few jobs in space...

We all know what happens next (or should know...) but what a superb beginning!

The Sky Cave Revisited

Rereading Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave"/We Claim These Stars!, I want to post about the cosmic setting of its dramatic conclusion but find that I have already done so here and here. There is not much more to be said.

This book cover illustrates the battle on the surface of the proto-planet but a more interesting image would have been that of a spaceship dwarfed by the caverns of the Sky Cave as it finds its way through and between them.

Reading some of his earlier and later stories in quick succession demonstrates Anderson's maturation as a writer. I think that "Duel on Syrtis," describing single combat between two beings in the Martian desert, is a better written work than its sequel, "War-Maid of Mars," with its chase scenes, escapes, armed agents in cars etc.

"Lord of a Thousand Suns" has features in common with the History of Technic Civilization - an interstellar civilization overthrown a million years ago, the idea of a helmet which, when worn, imposes the recorded pattern of a long dead personality onto a living brain. However, this story's Flash Gordon action-adventure fiction contrasts sharply with the subtlties of The Day Of Their Return, a novel that evokes the religious yearning of a planetary population awaiting deliverance by the Ancients when They return, soon...

Lord Of A Thousand Suns

I am reading "Lord of a Thousand Suns" in Peter Mansfield's recently created Poul Anderson ebook, which also contains "Sargasso of Lost Starships," "The Star Plunderer" and two early Dominic Flandry stories (see here and here). In 2011, "Sargasso..." was collected, for the very first time, in Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, because, like "The Star Plunderer" and the Flandry series, this story counts as an installment of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization whereas "Lord of a Thousand Suns" does not.

However, "Lord..." and "Sargasso..." have certain features in common: an Imperial Solar Navy and a visit to an ancient, mysterious, powerful planet. To the original readers of Planet Stories, there was not as yet any Technic Civilization future history but there were several space operas set within an interstellar Empire and "Lord..." might have been perceived as just another of those.

For a full listing of Poul Anderson's Planet Stories stories, see here.

Anderson's PLANET STORIES Tales by Sean M. Brooks

When Poul Anderson was a young writer who was still, in may ways, learning how to write, he contributed a dozen or so stories to PLANET STORIES.  Here I both list those yarns and offer some comments about those PLANET STORIES tales by both Anderson and me.

"Star Ship," PLANET STORIES, Fall 1950
"Witch of the Demon Seas," PS, January 1951
"Tiger by the Tail," PS, January 1951
"Duel on Syrtis," PS, March 1951
"The Virgin of Valkarion," PS, July 1951
"Lord of a Thousand Suns," PS, September 1951
"Swordsman of Lost Terra," PS, November 1951
"Sargasso of Lost Starships," PS, January 1952
"Captive of the Centaurianess," PS, March 1952
"War Maid of Mars," PS, May 1952
"The Star Plunderer," PS, September 1952
"The Ambassadors of Flesh," PS, Summer 1954
"Out of the Iron Womb," PS, Summer 1955

Most of these stories have been republished in collections including works by other authors or as one author (Anderson) anthologies.  But I have not yet managed to read "Witch of the Demon Seas," "The Virgin of Valkarion," or "War Maid of Mars."

Although best known for his excellent hard SF and fantasies, Poul Anderson also wrote some of the finest and purest quill pen pulp SF to be found.  Two examples being "Lord of a Thousand Suns" and "Swordsman of Lost Terra."  But I wish to let Anderson himself comment on the tales he wrote for PLANET STORIES.  The text quoted below came from his essay "Concerning Future Histories" (BULLETIN OF THE SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA, Fall 1979), quoting from page 8.

   Way back when, I was for a short time a mainstay of PLANET STORIES.  That magazine is today of fond memory, but at the time it was considered trash by many fans because it frankly went in for straight adventure with a science fictional back-ground.  Myself, I saw nothing wrong with that.  The action story has been a legitimate form since Homer, if not before. (It might be remarked, too, that PLANET occasionally ran stuff by such people as Ray Bradbury, Margaret St. Clair, and William Tenn which nobody else dared touch.  And even in the swashbucklers, characters were permitted to have sex lives.)  I was young and poor and wanted money to travel on, I could write derring-do very fast; why not?  Therefore I churned out a total of about a dozen.  That was all.  They caused persons who think in categories to dismiss me as nothing but a blood-and-thunderer, and those folk took a long time to change their minds.  Some never had.  No matter, I don't feel the least apologetic for having thus earned the means to widen my horizons.  Those tales were in no way memorable, but they weren't pretentious either, and if they gave a little diversion to most of their readers, they served their purpose.

It's my view that here Anderson was being too modest about the quality of the tales he wrote for PLANET STORIES.  As I've already said, I believe he wrote some of the finest pulp SF to be found.  Also, the additional text quoted below from "Concerning Future Histories" (also from page 8 of the above mentioned BULLETIN) explains why I believe his PS tales to be much better than average.

   Nevertheless, I quickly grew tired of certain cliches in the genre.  The uniformly noble and Nordic heroes,   the incredibly complete resolutions of all problems. Why not do something a bit more believable?  This was the origin of "Tiger by the Tail," the first story about Dominic Flandry.  In name and temperament, he was Gallic; a Frenchman has actually congratulated me on the characterization.  He was an intelligence officer in the service of a Terran Empire far gone in decay, losing the very will to defend its frontiers, while alien enemies pressed ever harder inward.  He recognized the corruption of his society in his own spirit.  But somebody had to try keep things hanging together somehow, at any rate through his lifetime.  After all, civilization was much more enjoyable than barbarism, or death.  Besides, the work itself was the most interesting activity in sight, in between bouts of sensualism, and he did keep a few fugitive ideals and loyalties.

I agree with what Anderson said about those "cliches in the genre."  What I read in the stories he wrote for PS makes it plain he transcended those shop worn tropes.  I thought of "Captive of the Centaurianess" as one example because of how he used sardonic humor to turn inside out those cliches.  And the same was true of "Tiger by the Tail," with its theme of how noble, honorable barbarians versus a "corrupt" civilized man was shown to be false and the civilized man was wiser and more decent than the barbarians he opposed. A writer who was merely a hack would probably have taken the opposite tack.

What kind of magazine was PLANET STORIES?  To answer that question I'll quote a bit from Malcolm J. Edwards entry for PS on page 937 of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (1993, ed. by John Clute and Peter Nicholls): "Subtitled in its early years "Strange Adventures on Other Worlds--The Universe of Future Centuries," PS was the epitome of pulp SF.  Its covers were garish in the extreme, and its story titles promised extravagantly melodramatic interplanetary adventures (which the stories themselves frequently provided)."  And Poul Anderson wrote tales for PS which fit this description (and the wonderfully lurid covers) while also improving on or even transcending those cliches he came to dislike.