War In Poul Anderson's Technic History

"Margin of Profit"

Fighting pirates. Could have become a war.

"A Sun Invisible"

Invasion of a planetary system.

The Man Who Counts

War on Diomedes.

"Hiding Place"

Action against pirates.

Mirkheim

The Babur War. First civil war in the Polesotechnic League.

"The Star Plunder"

A slave revolt.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

Imperial annexation of Ansa just completed, then a conflict in the Black Nebula.

The People Of The Wind

The war between the Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri.

Ensign Flandry

Not a war but a battle near Starkad.

The Rebel Worlds

The McCormac Rebellion in the Terran Empire.

"Outpost of Empire"

War against the Empire on Freehold.

The Day Of Their Return

A war of religion narrowly averted.

"Tiger by the Tail"

Flandry foments war in the Scothani Empire.

"The Game of Glory"

Annexation of Brae.

"A Message in Secret"

Conflict on Altai.

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

The Ardazhiro occupy Vixen while Terrans and Merseians fight elsewhere.

The Game Of Empire

The Magnusson Rebellion.

"A Tragedy of Errors"

Interstellar conflicts after the Empire.

Lawlessness

"Sargasso of Lost Starships" does not cross the line from sf into fantasy but Poul Anderson moves the text as far as he can in that direction:

"'We're entering the home of all lawlessness,' said Donovan. 'The realm of magic, the outlaw world of werebeasts and nightgangers. Can't you hear the wings outside? These ghosts are only the first sign. We'll have a plague of witches soon.'" (p. 392)

Donovan exaggerates. The "ghosts" are telekinetic and will not be followed by werebeasts, nightgangers or witches. But this is clearly the premise for an sf-fantasy synthesis: scientific laws in known space but magical lawlessness in the Black Nebula; spacemen learning to adjust from science and aliens to magic and ghosts. CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy suggests that this is a false distinction. Ransom encounters beings that are equally extra-terrestrial and supernatural.

"Ghost world, ghost army, marching through an echoing windy solitude to its own weird " (p. 408)

The rest of this paragraph makes clear that this description is metaphorical. The marching army comprises:

"The men of the Imperial Solar Navy..." (ibid.)

- but Anderson will later write heroic fantasies about men in long ships and their weirds.

Fictions Within Fictions

If we regard "Sargasso of Lost Starships" as a fiction within the fiction of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then we can imagine sequels that would not need to be consistent with any events occurring later in the Technic History. There could be a Black Nebula series and collection which could then be filmed as "Technic History: Non-Canonical."

Fictions within fictions are a vast untapped source of potential creativity. Fictional characters have to read something. Often they refer to works that we have read, like Alice In Wonderland or Sherlock Holmes, but they must read something else as well. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series cannot be published or sold in the version of New York inhabited by Time Patrolman Manse Everard so what did Poul Anderson write instead of the Time Patrol series in the Time Patrol timeline? This is not a question that anyone usually even thinks of.

We do know, because we are told, that Wells' The Time Machine and Anderson's Maurai future history series and There Will Be Time are published in the There Will Be Time timeline. 

In Alan Moore's Watchmen, which is a comic strip, a character reads a comic strip. We see and read what he sees and reads and eventually want to know the outcome of this secondary or subsidiary story as well as that of the primary story. Both were filmed but separately, the inner story as an animation.

In Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, a very minor character is an actor who plays an irascible police inspector in a popular TV series. Thus, there could be two TV series, one of Millennium, the other about the inspector, with the same actor playing both the actor and the inspector.

But the truth is that authors and script writers are fully occupied with what they are already writing about.

Humanoid Forms And A Mysterious Volume Of Space

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

This must be the only story by Poul Anderson in which the aliens are not just generally humanoid in form but completely indistinguishable from human beings as in an average Star Trek episode. We take this to be impossible as stated later in the Technic History:

"Unless, to be sure, happenstance had duplicated most of those details for you in the course of evolution...

"Ridiculous, Laure thought. Coincidence isn't that energetic."

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 725.

This is clear evidence that "Sargasso..." should be regarded as a fiction within the fiction. 

Allowing for some cosmetic changes, as to colour and length of hair, one and the same actor would be able to play three of Poul Anderson's villains:

Brann in The Corridors Of Time;

Merau Varagan in the Time Patrol series;

Morzach in "Sargasso..."

- two time travellers and one teleporter-telekineticist. Screen audiences would be free to speculate about one being manifesting in three timelines.

The title of "Sargasso..." had led me to expect a hard sf story about abandoned spaceships orbiting together at somewhere like a Lagrangian point which, if I remember correctly, was how Dan Dare was reunited with his old ship, Anastasia.

The Black Nebula is a region of strange phenomena which turn out to be neither supernatural nor technological but psychic in nature. I have been told that, in Babylon 5, which I have never watched, human space travellers avoid a volume of space where an incomprehensibly advanced civilization operates. Presumably something like this is possible: a species as far advanced beyond humanity as we are beyond cave-dwellers.

Captain Donovan, Earl Basil

Poul Anderson, "Sargasso of Lost Starships" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 363-436.

Basil Donovan wears two tarnished insignia, stars for a captain and silver leaves for an Ansan earl. The blue-skinned, rhinoceros-bodied, gorilla-armed, ape-faced, tusked Donarrian, Wocha, has been Donovan's slave all their lives and was his batman during the recently concluded space war against Terra. Ansa has been defeated and occupied. After becoming very drunk in the Golden Planet among the bombed buildings of Lanstead, Donovan leads the singing of an Ansan rebel song, starts an anti-Terran bar fight and is arrested. Sam Olman, a peasant still loyal to the now dis-ennobled Donovans, is bayonetted in the fight.

I like to think that, even if "Sargasso..." is a fiction within the fiction, its author researched Ansan history and chose a real Earl Basil as his hero. Thus, we can imagine that that historically real former earl and space captain did get drunk and start a fight even if we do not swallow the main narrative in which he accompanies a Terran expedition to the mysterious Black Nebula.

Caverns In Clouds

"The Night Face," VII.

"Rain cane the following afternoon, first thunderheads banked over Kolumkill like blue-black granite, lightning livid in their caverns..." (p. 602)

Where have we seen caverns in clouds before?

"Lightning blazed in [the cloud wall's] caverns."

-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 526.

"Lightning played through [those clouds'] caverns."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 374, p. 463.

Dominic Flandry sees "...caverns beyond caverns..." in the Sky Cave nebula. See here.

In the "Starfog" of the Cloud Universe cluster, Daven Laure sees cliffs and grottoes.

There are probably more examples.

Some Inconsistencies

I am in a bar with my lap top but without Poul Anderson's texts to hand. Rise Of The Terran Empire is in our apartment and everything else is back at home.

In "Sargasso...," Donovan claims that the Shalmuans were imperialistic. That is not the Shalmuans that we know and love. Maybe some mutant Shalmuans were aberrant? Or maybe there was some inter-species conflict but Ansan propaganda has villainized the greenies? I value consistency in a series but sometimes we can accept and even appreciate that there are different versions of a story even in the Bible and Greek or Hindu mythology. James Blish's "Haertel Scholium" is a number of works that refer to the character Adolph Haertel but that are mutually inconsistent.

The Ganymede cannot transmit information from inside the Black Nebula because the ship's "ultrasonics" (?) are not working. That contradicts the usual means of interstellar communication in the Technic History. This is an inconsistency that could have been ironed out by editing a single sentence or we could try to think of some way round it?

Addendum: Sorry, "subtronics." (III, p. 395)

These Are The Voyages Of H.M. GANYMEDE

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

This story is like a Star Trek episode imported into the Technic History. Humanoid aliens, Arzunians, indistinguishable from human beings - so that actors would not need any make-up -, teleport into the Ganymede. The Arzunian woman, Valduma, knows Donovan from his previous trip inside the Black Nebula. He and she spend time together. In fact, wasn't there a Star Trek like this? We have asked this question before. See here. (Scroll down.) See also "Catspaw." "Sargasso..." is best thought of as a play within the play.

For the next week and a half, we will be away from home so it remains to be seen what will become of blog posts.

Later...

Poul Anderson, "Sargasso of Lost Starships" IN Anderson, Rise of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 363-436.

"Basil Donovan was drunk again." (I, p. 367)

We are still in the Technic History, in The Technic Civilization Saga and even in Volume III but centuries have passed. There is no reference to Falkayns, Ythrians or Avalon but there is historical continuity. In "The Star Plunderer," the Commonwealth had disintegrated and was about to be replaced by the Empire. Now, the Empire is expanding. Donovan is not a new series character but his planet, Ansa, is referenced elsewhere in the Technic History. The story introduces quadrupedal Donarrians and green-skinned, tailed Shalmuans who also appear elsewhere. 

"Ahead lay Sagittari, Galactic center and the Black Nebula." (II, p. 381)

The Black Nebula is specific to this story, which may be a fiction within the fiction, but Sagittari and Galactic Centre are strong background links to Poul Anderson's earlier future history series, the Psychotechnic History.

Upward and outward. 

Earlier Naval Careers

In two recent posts, we listed thirteen Terran Naval careers, plus Edwin Cairncross's five-year hitch, but these all happened during Dominic Flandry's lifetime. Earlier in the Technic History:

John Reeves was a Lieutenant in the Solar Commonwealth Navy but became a Rear Admiral in the Imperial Solar Navy under Manuel I;

Commander Helena Jansky, commanding HM Ganymede during the expedition into the Black Nebula, was accompanied by Basil Donovan, formerly a Captain in the independent Ansan Navy;

Fleet Admiral Juan de Jesus Cajal y Palomares led the Terran fleet against the Domain of Ythri;

Lieutenant (j.g.) Philippe Rochefort captained the Meteor-class ship, Hooting Star, which was crewed by fire control officer, CPO Wa Chaou, and engineer-computerman CPO Abdullah Helu;

Ferune, Wyvan of Mistwood Choth and First Marchwarden of the Lauran System, commanded the fleet defending Avalon.

NGC 5460

Starfarers, 13-14.

In the open cluster, NGC 5460, a neutron star attracts a cataract of gas from its red dwarf companion. Hydrogen, heated by its fall and condensed by weight, gathers on the neutron surface until the star novas. This cycle continues for millions of years. The dwarf will dwindle and the neutron star will grow until it becomes a Type I supernova, then a black hole. This is Andersonian cosmological drama.

We also find two further descriptions of the Milky Way:

"Metal glimmered in the light of star throngs, icily tumbling Milky Way, querning nebula, galaxies dwindled only by distance." (13, p. 91)

"Views of space filled two large screens, the cluster splendid in one of them, the Milky Way chill in the other." (13, p. 93)

Envoy is a cylinder with a spinning wheel at each end. On p. 91, Dayan and Cleland walk outside. The cluster is about forty closely packed stars, "...a fire-swarm of ruby, gold and diamond." (p. 91)

The Play Within The Play

We are still comparing future histories. Two stories in Larry Niven's Tales Of Known Space raise an issue that is also relevant to some of the works in Poul Anderson's Technic History. All that happens in "Intent to Deceive" is that two characters converse. Lucas Garner recounts an anecdote that turns out to be a lie told as a joke! Thus, the events described by Garner did not after all occur even within the fiction. "Safe At Any Speed" is a first person narrative which, we learn, is an advertisement whose narrator was paid to write it. So does he exaggerate or otherwise deviate from the (fictional) truth?

Of the short stories collected in Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate, three had been published as fictionalized accounts in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana, while the longer narrative, The Man Who Counts, was originally published on either Terra or Hermes apparently as a historical novel although this is not quite clear. Elsewhere in the Technic History, "The Star Plunderer" might be historical fiction. If it is, then a different and more accurate account of Manuel Argos could be written. "Sargasso of Lost Starships" might be fantastic fiction or Imperial propaganda. If it is, then the Black Nebula and its mentally powerful inhabitants do not exist.

There is endless scope for further future history episodes that need not be kept consistent because they can be presented as different kinds of narratives, e.g.:

tales of the heroes of Dennitza;

what the Merseians of the Roidhunate want to happen in future;

legends of the ancestors of the Kirkasaneters;

a Cosmenosist's account of a meeting with the Ancients;

etc.

Non-Biological Intelligence

Let me posit some propositions:

organisms interact with their environments;

consciousness is one kind of organism-environment interaction;

some consciousness is intelligent;

conscious organisms, particularly intelligent organisms, not only interact with but also act on their environments;

psychology is based in biology.

Can there be non-biological intelligence? People imagined disembodied consciousness and pre-cosmic intelligence before they understood the biological origins of consciousness.

(i) For intelligent ball lightning in works by Poul Anderson and James Blish, see Kyrie.

(ii) Anderson has post-organic intelligences in Genesis, sophotects in his Harvest of Stars Tetralogy and consciousness-level computers in his Technic History.

(iii) For whether spirits are a kind of energy, see Matter And Energy.

(iv) For more on Blish's energy beings and also on CS Lewis's eldila, see Angels And Demons. The eldila:

"...had some kind of material vehicle whose presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified."

-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (Lonodon, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 151.

 

(v) Fred Hoyle has an intelligent interstellar gas cloud in The Black Cloud.

 

(vi) Olaf Stapledon has intelligent nebulae in Nebula Maker and Star Maker.

 

Poul Anderson keeps good literary company.

Frontiers

"Starfog."

The planet, Serieve, is located on two frontiers:

at one edge of the Milky Way galaxy;

at one furthest point of exploration and civilization within the galaxy.

"'We aren't far, here, from the northern verge of the spiral arm. Beyond is the halo - thin gas, little dust, ancient globular clusters very widely scattered. The interstellar medium from which stars form has not been greatly enriched by earlier generations.'" (pp. 719-720)

Within the galaxy:

in one direction, civilized planetary systems;

in the opposite direction, a mostly unexplored volume of space concealed by the Dragon's Head Nebula, which is "'...in transit through our skies.'" (p. 724)

The Kirkasanters, having arrived in an antiquated spaceship from beyond the Dragon's Head, claim to have come from "'...a shining cloud, two hundred light-years across...,'" (p. 711) full of red and unstable stars. Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty, must investigate.

Will human beings ever live on the edge of the galaxy? Anderson describes it again, this time as seen from an orbiting space habitat:

"Space dropped dizzily from the viewport, thin starred black here on the rim. Huge and shapeless - we being still more or less within it - the galaxy streamed past and was lost to sight; we looked toward remoteness."
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 12.

Collecting Clues

"Hunters of the Sky Cave."

At the Crystal Moon, Aycharaych describes violet orchids as black. Flandry deduces that the Chereionite is color-blind in the blue wavelengths but sees further into the red, therefore that his home sun is cooler and redder than Sol. (II, p. 162)

The Ardazirho are covered in red fur (VII, p. 200) but describe themselves as "'...the Black People...'" (XII, p. 244) Their kilts have squares of rose next to scarlet or of crimson between two yellows. (VII, p. 200) Temulak describes Flandry and the Vixenite colonials as "'...gray people...'" (XI, p. 233)

Svantovik refers to "'...the Sky Cave...'" (XII, p. 245) and swears by "'Great unborn planets!'" (XII, p. 247) Ardazir's sun is not in Imperial catalogues because it is hidden behind "...the Hatch...," (IX, p. 221), a small dark nebula visible from Vixen, and there has not as yet been any exploration in that direction. From its far side, the Hatch is discovered to be "'...faintly luminous: a proto-sun.' " (XV, p. 268) On hearing this:

"Flandry stiffened. 'What's the matter?' snapped Walton.
"Nothing, sir. Or maybe something. I don't know." (ibid.)

Flandry is experiencing a moment of realization as he remembers Svantovik's moment of realization when the latter exclaimed, "'Great unborn planets!'" (See above.) Elaborating slightly, Flandry says that he has a hunch, that some of the Ardazirho use the expression, "the Sky Cave," that it describes a dark hole which is the entrance to hell in some of their religions and that the higher-ranking Svantozik, who knows more than the others, swore by "'Great unborn planets.'" 

Later, when Svantovik, now captured by Flandry, looks at the Hatch, which he calls the Sky Cave, from its far side, he sees:

"'The Great Dark. The Gate of the Dead, as those who believe in religion call it....' His tone, meant to be sardonic, wavered." (XVI, p. 279)

The Sky Cave is black. Svantovik does not see its dim red luminosity, visible to Flandry. The Ardazirho are red-blind, seeing further into the violet than human beings, the opposite of Aycharaych. They see human beings as gray and themselves as black. The mismatched red and yellow squares on their kilts are equally dark to them.

Exploiting Ardazirho awe of the Gate of the Dead, Aycharaych the telepath directs the Packmasters from within the Sky Cave. (XVII, p. 283)

Sargassos

The Sargasso Sea is frequently (but erroneously) depicted in fiction as a dangerous area where ships are mired in weed for centuries, unable to escape.
-copied from here.

I expected Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships" to be a hard sf story about wrecked or abandoned spaceships congregating somewhere like a Lagrangian point. (For Lagrangian points in Anderson's Technic History, see The Beginning Of Technic Civilization.) Instead, it is almost fantasy-with-spaceships: physically beautiful, psychically powerful humanoids hijack spaceships in the Black Nebula. "Sargasso" has come to mean a place where ships disappear.

In James Blish's "Sargasso of Lost Cities":

the cities, protected by force fields, fly between stars faster than light and thus are "starships";

however, they are not lost but instead have congregated in a common orbit because they have been impoverished by an interstellar economic depression.

Anderson's and Blish's titles are almost interchangeable. Each of these works is incorporated into its author's main future history series.

Stellar Deduction II And New Information

See Stellar Deduction.

The planet has breathable air, ice and vegetation;

atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere would not survive the expansion of the sun "'...without artificial help...'"; (p. 402)

therefore, the planet is inhabited.

Donovan, who has been here before, adds that:

the star is near the center of the Black Nebula;

it is in a hollow space where there is not enough dust to retard the planet and make it spiral inward to collide with the star;

further, the star has the same velocity as the Nebula and therefore stays in the hollow space.

Questions:

How can there be a hollow space in a dust cloud?
Do the Nebulites/Arzunians keep the space clear of dust psychokinetically?

Starships And Star Trek

I have made many comparisons with Star Trek.

Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships" has a human spaceship trapped in a Black Nebula by beautiful humanoid aliens with superior psychic powers and therefore obviously is a potential Star Trek episode. Larry Niven adapted a Known Space short story as a Star Trek animated episode, then Alan Dean Foster novelized the animation. A.E. van Vogt's The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is another potential Star Trek sequence and even has a Spock-like Japanese character. Charles Montieth, the British publisher, described James Blish's Cities In Flight as "...a higher and greater Star Trek." (Quoting from memory.)

I have posted about Spaceship Stories which obviously include Star Trek and much prose sf by Anderson and others. Some works would be easily adapted to Star Trek; others not.

Curdled Silver II

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

The colonized planet, Ansa, is fifty light years from Sol. The Imperial ship, Ganymede, departs from Ansa in the opposite direction toward:

"...Sagittari, Galactic center and the Black Nebula." (p. 381)

Sagittari = Sagittarius? Presumably the Black Nebula is much closer than galactic center?

Exactly one page of the text (pp. 381-382) is Andersonian description of the cosmos as seen from space followed by the viewpoint charater's reflection on the cosmic insignificance of man. This passage has seven familiar features.

(i) Sol is "...lost in the thronging glory of stars." (p. 381)

(ii) "The Milky Way foamed in curdled sliver around that enormous night, a shining girdle jeweled with the constellations." (ibid.)

This is the second time that we have found the Milky Way described as "curdled silver." See Curdled Silver, which also refers to Sagittarius. In the "Sargasso..." passage, the "curdled silver" is also "a shining girdle" and "jeweled with the constellations": three descriptions.

(iii) In "Sargasso...," after the Milky Way, Anderson next describes other galaxies. These have been mentioned a few times and maybe I should be listing the references to them as well? See here.

"Far and away wheeled the mysterious green and blue-white of the other galaxies, sparks of a guttering fire with a reeling immensity between." (ibid.)

(iv) "Looking toward the bows, one saw the great star-clusters of Sagittari, the thronging host of suns burning and thundering at the heart of the Galaxy." (ibid.)

Humanity migrates in that direction in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. See Sagittarius.

(v) Next, Donovan begins to reflect and thus touches on three more familiar themes. First:

"And what have we done? thought Basil Donovan. What is man and all his proud achievements?" (ibid.)

"What is man...?" is a Biblical quotation. See also A Note...

(vi) Donovan continues:

"Our home star is a dwarf on the lonely fringe of the Galaxy, out where the stars thin away toward the great emptiness." (ibid.)

Thus, he contradicts the earlier implication that mankind operates on a "Galactic" scale and also connects with the familiar theme of  "the edge of one spiral arm."

(vii) Finally, his continuing reflection reminds me of some short passages that I quoted here from Anderson's "Flight to Forever":

"We've ranged maybe two hundred light years from it and it's thirty thousand to the Center! Night and mysteries and nameless immensities around us, our day of glory the merest flicker on the edge of nowhere, then oblivion forever - and we won't be forgotten, because we'll never have been noticed." (ibid.)

Two hundred light years is supposed to be the radius of the Empire in Flandry's time but see:

"The Astronomy Of The Technic Civilization Saga" by Johan Ortiz, here.

Worshiping Celestial Bodies

In Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye, the Coal Sack nebula appears to some extra-solar human colonists as a hooded head and shoulders with a red giant star as the single eye, thus as God's Face. They interpret a scientifically explicable brightening of the Eye as God's awakening.

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars, inhabitants of a planet in intergalactic space worship our galaxy as God.

In Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave," the Ardazirho believe that a nebula:

The Sky Cave
Unborn Planets

- is the abode of the dead.

In Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Planets," inhabitants of most planets near the Black Nebula either worship the Nebula or believe that it is the home of the gods. The inhabitants of the nearest planet, Heim, sacrifice foods, furs and tools which they claim the gods take.