Other References To Ythrians

"Wild wings above Ythri!"

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70 AT p. 61.

"...the splendor of an Ythrian on the wing..." 

-see Flying Away From Babur.

In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, some disaffected Diomedeans hope in vain for help from Ythri. See Diomedean Demands. 

In A Stone In Heaven, Dominic Flandry refers favourably to Avalon. See Settling Avalon II.

I think that that is all. The Ythrians remain an important power in the background.

Scrolls And Stars

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

In Adzel's shack:

"Two scrolls hung on the walls, one showing a landscape and one the Compassionate Buddha." (p. 65)

In a question and answer session, the Chinese postgraduate student who attends our meditation group asked, "Why do you have scrolls showing Bodhidharma and Kanzeon behind your altar? Those two figures are not usually associated in China."

What a question! One that I would not have known to ask. The answer was, first, that they are associated in our tradition and, secondly, that, when the group started, someone gave us two scrolls and they happened to be of Bodhidharma and Kanzeon. I could see that he liked that second answer. This is a domestic detail in the Solar Commonwealth that resonates with my current experience: scrolls.

The Riefenstahl's apartment overlooks the Golden Gate where crews work to replicate the bridge. In the living room, Betty punches for coffee while a full-wall transparency shows city lights, the Moon with cities visible on its dark side and a few stars. More welcome domestic details although too few.

Earlier sf writers took the trouble to get to the Moon. In later future history series, cities on the dark side are part of the background. Stars, of course, mean not just lights in the sky but somewhere that Jimmy wants to go. He contrasts the no-longer-existent San Francisco Chinatown which was probably regarded as picturesque with:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)" (pp. 60-61)

That reflection summarizes quite a lot of the Technic History.

Connections

The diverse installments collected in The Van Rijn Method (see previous post) are pulled together not by any single narrative thread but by multiple interconnections:

two of the eleven installments are about Ythrians;

three are about Nicholas van Rijn;

another installment, "Esau," is about a one-off character, Emil Dalmady, but shows Dalmady in conversation with his employer, van Rijn;

two are about David Falkayn;

the first Falkayn story, "The Three-Cornered Wheel," is set on the planet, Ivanhoe, which is also the setting of "The Season of Forgiveness";

in the second Falkayn story, "A Sun Invisible," Falkayn has started to work for van Rijn's company, Solar Spice & Liquors;

the first Ythrian story, "Wings of Victory," mentions Hermes, Falkayn's home planet, and also Woden, home planet of Adzel who appears in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

Thus, directly or indirectly, ten of the eleven installments are interconnected. There are even more connections with later volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga but here we are focusing only on Volume I.

Jim Ching reflects wistfully:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)"

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT 183.

We read about Cynthia, Gorzun and Ythri. So far, Jim also has only heard or read about these planets. Thus, he speaks for the readers when he wishes that he could visit them. Maybe this is a taste of metafiction.

Introducing Gorzun

If we read Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization not in the original order of publication but in chronological order of fictitious events, in Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, then the first reference to Gorzun comes in the fifth of the eleven works collected in Volume I:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)"

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 183.

 

Ythri was introduced and Cynthia referenced in the second story and Ythrians reappeared in the third whereas Cynthians and Gorzuni remain off-stage until Volume II. The Cynthian Chee Lan is a member of the trader team. The Gorzuni are:

"...great gray-furred four-armed tailed bipeds..."

-Satan's World, IX, p. 418.

-wearing traditional mail but armed with modern blasters. Since:

"Their yellow eyes set beneath bony prominences that looked like horns, glowered back out of the coarse faces..." (ibid.)

- and since van Rijn offers them "'...weregild...'" (p. 422)

- it is evident that Anderson has imported troll-like beings into an sf setting, just as the Lunarians in his Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy resemble Elves. The Nordic parallel is reinforced when van Rijn tells Adzel:

"'Like they used to say in Old Norse and such places, "Bare is brotherless back."'" (X, p. 431)

A Change Of Pace II

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson."

Coincidentally, the second page of the text contains the phrase, "A change of pace..." (p. 52) The narrator's principle counselor tells him:

"'The indices show you're apt to work yourself into the ground. A change of pace is downright necessary.'" (ibid.)

Jim would prefer to be "...apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League..." (ibid.) than to be counseled by a specialist armed with "...a psychoprofile and a theory..." (ibid.)

We are a century or more later than "The Problem of Pain." (See here.) The Polesotechnic League thrives. We have seen it from the perspective of David Falkayn as an apprentice, then Falkayn as a journeyman and also different characters as Master Merchants but now we see it from the perspective of a sixteen year old student preparing for his preliminary Academy tests. For the first and unfortunately the last time, we see domestic life on Earth during the Solar Commonwealth. Despite his youth, Jim Ching owns a car that he can fly "...out above the ocean..." (p. 51) but he wants to go a lot further and one of the perspectives that he contemplates is:

"Wild wings above Ythri!" (p. 56)

The Ythrian Collection

After one van Rijn collection, one Falkayn collection, two van Rijn-Falkayn novels and one novel set centuries later on Falkayn's colony planet, Avalon, The Earth Book Of Stormgate collected twelve remaining works set before, during and after the van Rijn-Falkayn period with new introductions written as if by an Avalonian Ythrian.

In The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III, the twelve Earth Book installments, now published for the first time in chronological order of fictitious events, are not only separated from each other by other installments of the Technic History but also are presented in a slightly different order. For example, "Margin of Profit," introducing van Rijn, comes before instead of after "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," introducing Falkayn's crew member, Adzel.

I prefer the original order in which:

 

the first, second, eleventh and twelfth installments are about human-Ythrian interactions;

 

the third installment refers briefly to Ythri whereas the tenth features an Ythrian spaceship crew;

 

thus, six works making no reference to Ythri are sandwiched between six that do make such references!

 

The Earth Book is not only an Ythrian collection but also a synthesis between the Ythrian and Polesotechnic League threads in the Technic History, the latter thread mainly, though not entirely, comprising the activities of van Rijn and Falkayn. Thus, having celebrated their grand finale in their second joint novel, these guys show up again in stories set earlier in the Earth Book.

 

That brief reference (see above):

"Wild wings above Ythri!"

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson" IN The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 49-67 AT p. 56.

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 183.

Out There

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," pp. 175-197
"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)" (p. 183)
-copied from here.

"...Ramanujan, where gilt towers rose out of mists to catch the first sunlight, blinding against blue Mount Gandhi."
-"Hiding Place," pp. 598-599.

The description of Ramanujan reminded me of the earlier descriptions of Cynthia etc. This is what it would really be like to visit some of the planets in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Meanwhile, we should appreciate Earth in the same way.

Fenn And James Ching

Fenn:

"Fenn's eyes went toward the glare-hidden stars. The Lunarians at Proserpina and Alpha Centauri - and now fugitive stories of Terrans at three new suns, whole new worlds, and the galaxy open to them - As he had done before, uncountably often, he choked down his craving and concentrated on the business at hand."
-Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1998), 4, pp. 44-45.

Jimmy:

"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)"
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 183.

"...a journeyman merchant of the Polesotechnic League...the go-to-hell independence in his face, which turned me sick with envy."
- op. cit., p. 184.

Different history, different galaxy, same wanderlust - which I do not share. I want women and men but not necessarily me to be out there. Nor do I want to die as far as possible away from my home planet especially since it is the only environment anywhere in the universe that I am adapted to live in.

Eight Planets Introduced In Three Short Stories

Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009).

The Planets
Ythri
Cynthia
Woden
Hermes
Gray/Avalon
Aeneas
Gorzun
Alfzar

"Wings of Victory," pp. 75-102
"In youth he'd done excellent field work, especially in the trade routes of Cynthia..." (p. 83)

"True, you get considerable variation. Like, say, hexapodal vertebrates liberating the forelimbs to grow hands and become centauroids, as on Woden." (p. 93)

"...a backwoods colony on Hermes..." (p. 96)

"We next sought the folk of Ythri, as the planet is called by its most advanced culture..." (p. 100)

"The Problem of Pain," pp. 103-134
"I already knew he wasn't from Earth, had in fact never been there, but from Aeneas..." (p. 109)

"'Offhand, the world - our group called it, unofficially, Gray, after that old captain - the world looked brilliantly promising." (p. 115)

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," pp. 175-197
"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)" (p. 183)

"'...I've got this friend from Woden, name of Adzel...'" (p. 181)

"...a stocky blueskin of Alfzar..." (p. 184)

"...[Adzel] was the one Wodenite on this planet." (p. 188)

All these planets are important later in the Technic History.

The Daily Life Of The Future II

In Robert Heinlein's "daily life" of the future, a couple who have returned from the Lunar colony to Earth see the intercontinental rocket pass overhead. In Poul Anderson's "daily life," James Ching sees, from San Francisco, cities on the dark side of the Moon while also hearing the clangor of crews working to replicate the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Wings of Victory" describes first contact with Ythri and explains Ythrian biology;
"The Problem of Pain" describes Ythrian-human cooperation and presents Ythrian psychology and theology;
in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," Jim, yearning to go into space, thinks:

"Wild wings above Ythri!"
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 183.

These stories display three stages in the development of a pyramidal future history:

an alien race is introduced;
members of that race become protagonists in a later story;
they also become background material for later installments of the History.

Meanwhile, the emblem of the Polesotechnic League is:

"...a golden sunburst afire with jewels, surrounding an ancient rocketship..."
-"Margin of Profit," p. 138. (For full reference, see here.)

That sounds like later sun and spaceship of Empire.

Living In The Future

The Decline Of The Polesotechnic League (see here) would collect:

four van Rijn stories;

the trader team series, prominently featuring van Rijn;

one other League story, parenthetically mentioning van Rijn.

Volume III of The Technic Civilization Saga (see image), the only volume of that series that I have no disagreements with, collects:

the culminating novel of the overlapping van Rijn and trader team series;

two sequels set on Avalon;

a three-part introduction to the Terran Empire period which, later, will prominently feature Dominic Flandry.

In my proposed edition of the History of Technic Civilization, three entire volumes would cover Flandry's lifetime and one would cover the post-Imperial ages - not that Flandry lived longer than all subsequent ages but Anderson wrote more about him.

Getting back to the Polesotechnic League period, Anderson wrote:

an introductory trader team story, "Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters" (1965);

a sequel, "Day of Burning" (1967);

a prequel, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" (1974), expanding on information about Adzel's student days given in "Trader Team."

After three stories set entirely off Earth, "How To Be Ethnic..." shows us the Earth of the League period and gives the future a daily life. James Ching studies, takes a call from his counselor, eats dinner with his parents and visits his girlfriend who then suggests visiting Adzel. So far, Jim has only been as far as Luna but he knows of:

"...treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia!" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 183);
four-armed drummers sounding the mating call of the Gorzunian moons;
"Wild wings above Ythri!" (ibid.)

Not as yet above Avalon; Falkayn has yet to found that colony. On a local bus, Jim sees:

"...a dandified Lunarian..." (p. 184);
a blue Alfzarian;
a spacehand wearing a Brotherhood badge;
a League journeyman, skin weathered by other suns.

We remember Lunarians from another Anderson future history series but are told little or nothing about their counterparts in the Technic Histoty. This scene reminds me of a panel in a Dan Dare story: commuters in a London bus included a green-skinned Treen from Venus wearing a business suit and bowler hat and reading a newspaper - a colored immigrant.

The setting is San Francisco which recalls Trygve Yamamura and the last Time Patrol story. Asked by his counselor to represent the local Chinese community in the Festival of Man, Jim consults Library Central and learns that there was "...a Lunar New Year with fireworks and a parade." (p. 183) That is currently a big event in Lancaster and Morecambe with food stalls and a dragon. Adzel and the dragon will come together.