The Two Future Histories

Recent summaries bring out the differences between Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories.

In the former, certain groups try - unsuccessfully - to direct the course of society. The main factors that they are unable to cope with are the effects of technological unemployment and political movements motivated by antiscientific worldviews. By contrast, in Anderson's second future history, Technic civilization and its first political form, the Solar Commonwealth, merely emerge from the Chaos. No one is trying to control the course of events. However, this new post-Western civilization then becomes subject to recurrent historical cycles later studied by Chunderban Desai.

Desai, studying history and detecting patterns, contrasts sharply with Valti, applying equations to make specific predictions.

Anderson's works are richer for including both of these future history series although we can, of course, rightly say that the second is better than the first. 

"...Will Not Taste Death..."

 

My main reading at present is an analysis of the New Testament:

"Amen I'm telling you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power." (Mk, 9:1)

"Amen I'm telling you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." (Mt, 16:28)

Matthew edits a Markan passage in which Jesus predicts an imminent political and spiritual liberation.

This makes me even more appreciative of Poul Anderson's reproduction of such expectations and aspirations in a work of fiction. Tatiana Thane asks Chunderban Desai:

"'Still, Commissioner, what if bein's five or ten million years ahead of us should decide Terran Empire is in need of reconstruction?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 7, p. 131.

Gabriel Stewart announces to Tatiana that the Builders will make her son more than human while his eyes shine with belief. One of the Aenean Riverfolk asks whether the dead will rise when the Old Shen return...

On Aeneas, as in Palestine, people and generations live on after these prophecies have not been fulfilled.

An Elder Race does make contact in Anderson's The Avatar.

Favourite Chapters And Stories

My favourite chapters in Poul Anderson's Technic History include The Day Of Their Return, 3, and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, III.

In the former, Chunderban Desai converses with:

Uldwyr of the Vach Hallen;

Aycharaych, supposedly of "Jean-Baptiste";

Peter Jowett of the industrial Web in Nova Roma on Aeneas.

In the latter, Dominic Flandry converses with:

the Duke of Mars;

Emperor Hans Molitor;

Chunderban Desai. 

A spectacular cast of characters. I agree with Sean Brooks that A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows could also have included a conversation with an ennobled Leon Ammon, the man whom Flandry had met when he, Ammon, was still a gangster on an Imperial border planet. Future histories include fictional biographies, like those of Falkayn and Flandry, and Ammon would have been a sound addition. 

My favourite Technic History short stories are "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "Lodestar" for reasons previously stated. The Technic History is better than good both as a series and as a (large) number of individual narratives.

Connections

We are reconsidering the first five of the fifteen instalments in the Flandry period of Poul Anderson's Technic History and asking which persons or planets introduced in these instalments either reappear or are referenced later in the series. These five instalments are:

Ensign Flandry

A Circus Of Hells

The Rebel Worlds

"Outpost of Empire"

The Day Of Their Return

Ensign Flandry introduces:

Dominic Flandry, series character

Crown Prince Josip

Miriam Abrams, a child in a picture seen by her father but later Flandry's wife

Max Abrams, later remembered by his daughter

the land Starkadians, including Dragoika who reappears in "The Game of Empire"

John Ridenour who reappears in "Outpost of Empire"

Persis d'Io whose son by Flandry appears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows -

- but does not introduce Merseia or the Merseians because:

Falkayn's team had been on Merseia in "Day of Burning";

Merseians had joined the Baburite Space Navy in Mirkheim;

the Merseian Roidhunate is a distant but growing threat in The People Of The Wind -

- or the Terran Empire which:

had been announced in "The Star Plunderer";

is expanding in "Sargasso of Lost Starships";

adjusts its frontier with the Domain of Ythri in The People Of The Wind.

A Circus Of Hells introduces:

the planet Talwin which is mentioned in The Day Of Their Return and reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows;

Aycharaych of Chereion although only as mentioned by a Merseian;

D'jana whose psychic power will possibly influence Flandry in The Rebel Worlds and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

The Rebel Worlds introduces:

the planet Dido in the Virgilian System;

Josip now as Emperor although this time off-stage;

Vice Admiral Kheraskov, later mentioned in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows -

- but does not introduce:

The planet Aeneas which had been mentioned in "The Problem of Pain";

the planet Shalmu which had been mentioned in "Sargasso of Lost Starships";

the Ferrans, one of whom had appeared in Satan's World.

"Outpost of Empire" introduces:

the planet Freehold which is later referenced in "The Sharing of Flesh."

The Day Of Their Return, set on Aeneas, introduces:

Chunderban Desai who reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows;

Aycharaych in person, destined to become Flandry's adversary in "Honorable Enemies," "Hunters of the Sky Cave" and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows and to be referenced again in The Game Of Empire;

the Aenean rebels some of whose descendants rejoin interstellar civilization in "Starfog."

That is one massive collection of connections and I have probably missed some.

Important Or Unimportant?

Are Earth and humanity important or unimportant on a cosmic or even just a galactic scale? Obviously they can be either or in some intermediate position. Sf in general and Poul Anderson in particular show us both. Anderson has a collection, The Gods Laughed, about superior aliens. On glancing through this volume just now, I had no recollection of having read "When Half-Gods Go." (That phrase, "Half Gods," is hyphenated on the opening page of the story although not on the contents page of the book.)

Here is an intermediate position. Aycharaych, when it has not yet been disclosed that he himself is of the species known as "the Ancients," admires human variety:

"'Your versatility approaches miracle.'"

-The Day Of Their Return, 3, p. 90.

Some aliens in some sf say this but surely any intelligent species would have to be versatile? Intelligence is versatility. Aycharaych is dishonest and is saying whatever will evoke the response that he wants to get from Chunderban Desai who thanks him but adds:

"'I don't believe, myself, we are unique. It merely happened we were the first into space - in our immediate volume and point in history - and our dominant civilization of the time happened to be dynamically expansive. So we spread into many different environments, often isolated, and underwent cultural radiation...or fragmentation.'" (ibid.)

That would explain the "'...wonderful variety...'" (ibid.) that Aycharaych claims to have found while travelling through the Terran Empire.

What is the probable reality in our universe? Brian Cox has persuaded me that even multicellular organisms might be rare. We already know that consciousness, manipulation, intelligence, civilization, technology, space technology and lasting civilizations with all of these attributes might be rare. What does that leave us with? Our uniqueness? Or spacefaring civilizations so few and so far apart in space and time that they never even detect each others' existence let alone communicate or meet physically?

In either of those two scenarios, we are very important indeed. It is our responsibility to survive, to develop and to make contact if that is remotely possible. (Meanwhile, there remains a continued motivation to destroy what has already been built.)

In the universe of Anderson's Technic History:

"We are one more-or-less intelligent species in a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

Even in that scenario, every single species and every single sophont would have immense value and significance although less obviously so.

Comparing Empires

 

Poul Anderson's Terran Empire reminds us of both the British and the Roman Empires.

British when Flandry drawls:

"'Abominably poor manners, but that's policy for you, what?...

"'See here, d'you mind if I bore for a few ticks? Mean to say, I'd like to diagram the situation as I see it. You correct me where I'm wrong, fill in any gaps, that kind of thing, eh?'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 239-426 AT VII, p. 308.

- and when Lady Varvara asks Flandry:

"'Do you know what it's like, Captain, to associate with no one but an inferior class? It rubs off on you. Your soul gets greasy.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 303-339 AT II, p. 312.

Roman when Chunderban Desai is sent to take over as High Commissioner of a planet that has recently spearheaded a rebellion and where post-Imperial sentiment is increasingly transcendentalist with potential for a new religion to spread across known space.

Historical Continuity

David Falkayn:

"'Civilization needs more than the few monopolists we've got.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 449-484 AT p. 455.

Coya Conyon:

"I can't say I like most of those money-machine merchant princes..." (p. 456)

The Polesotechnic League become cartelized in Mirkheim.

Centuries later, Chunderban Desai:

"'Technic civilization started on that road when the Polesotechnic League changed from a mutual-aid organization of free entrepreneurs to a set of cartels. Tonight we are far along the way.'"

-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, p. 274.

A tremendous sense of continuity through a long future history series. 

Now I am trying to hear some news, read two other books and attend the Zen group.

Molitor And Diocletian

The Dominate phase of the Roman Empire began with Diocletian.

The rule of the Terran Empire by force alone began with Hans Molitor. (Also here.)

So is Hans the Terran Diocletian? Apparently not because, during Hans's reign, Chunderban Desai says:

"'...we too shall have our Diocletian...'"

-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, p. 274.

So that has not happened yet. (According to Desai.)

Apparently, again according to Desai, Diocletian did make a temporary reconstruction. Flandry had helped Molitor's efforts to restore old institutions (A Stone In Heaven, p. 75) but they were too late.

In any case, Hauksberg thinks that the Empire was won and maintained only by naked power from the start.

These read like conflicting interpretations of past history.

Imperial Phases: Terra

 

Technic civilization was first a republic (the Solar Commonwealth), then an empire (the Terran Empire).

Our main sources are two conversations of Dominic Flandry:

With Chunderban Desai

Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 239-426 AT III, pp. 271-276.

With Miriam Abrams

Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 1-188 AT VI, pp. 70-76.

Flandry tells Miriam that the "'...earlier order...,'" (p. 73) i.e., the Commonwealth, had committed suicide, bringing on chaos:

"'So again, as before, came Caesar.'" (ibid.)

However, in the case of Rome, the Republic, although maybe (?) heading towards suicide, had not committed it yet. Julius Caesar did not restore order after the Republic but instead accumulated power during that period and his successor, Octavius, continued this process, gradually transforming the Republic with a princeps senatus into a Principate with a princeps.

If the Principate was the continued appearance of republican government, then how could there have been a Principate under Manuel I who merely imposed his own imperial rule directly onto the chaos of the post-Commonwealth Troubles?

Desai tells Flandry that the Terran Empire is:

"'...well into our anarchic phase... Or our interregnum, or whatever you wish to call it.'" (p. 273)

Interregnum between what? Flandry spells out to Miriam that she and he:

"'...happen to be living in a critical stage of the Empire's decline, the interregnum between its principate and dominate phases.'" (p. 74)

Again, how can there have been a principate? And surely they are already well into the dominate phase? - since Flandry also tells Miriam that:

"'Now nobody can claim power by right - only by strength.'" (p. 75)

Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization seems to place the Dominate phase much later.

Uldwyr And Worlds

A conversation between Chunderban Desai and his Merseian opposite number, Uldwyr, impresses me with its future historical content. However, on searching the blog, I find that I have posted about this passage several times before! See here. I have also (just now) corrected an error. In one post, I had misnamed Uldwyr as "Ydwyr." The latter is a different character.

Maybe there is one additional point to be made. Uldwyr says:

"'So many traditions, works, mysteries - so tiny a lifespan to taste them -'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 85.

Should "works" have been "worlds"?

Check another edition:

"'So many traditions, works, mysteries...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return (New York, 1975), III, p. 15.

"...works..." again. But surely "worlds" would have made more sense? A very small point - but read the whole book, of course.

Chuan

The Fleet Of Stars.

Chuan, a human being and a human-AI interface, has some features in common with two characters in Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return. Like High Commissioner Chunderban Desai, Chuan tries to manage a planetary sociopolitical conflict. Like the Merseian agent, Aycharaych, he tells lies about the existence of a cosmic civilization.

Chu(nderb)an = Chuan?

Chuan cannot mask his feelings. When Kinna questions him about some sensitive issues:

"'Fenn, he grew so sad. I felt as if I had stabbed him.'" (12, p. 149)

Kinna continues:

"'...I have just written how sorrowful he became. Not that he said he was, but I could read it on him, how he looked away from me and his shoulders slumped and his voice drooped.'" (p. 150)

Much later:

"Below [Chuan's] smile, behind his eyes, Fenn sensed that immeasurable sadness of which [Kinna] had spoken." (14, p. 173)

On a still later occasion, Chuan's tranquility breaks and he screams at Fenn that he will say no more. (20, p. 264)

What Chuan is sad and most on edge about is the suppression of data from a solar lens. When he finally gives Fenn an account of the data, Chuan can:

"...no longer look into [Fenn's] eyes. He got up, went to the viewport, clasped hands behind his back, and stood staring out at the night." (26, pp. 331-332)

That is because every word that he is about to say is a lie.

When Fenn turns eagerly to look at Chuan, the latter:

"...saw him from the corner of an eye but did not look back." (p. 332)

Eye contact would give him away.

Knowing The Future

Robert Heinlein's Future History

Aspects of psychodynamics developed by the priest class in a theocracy.

Isaac Asimov's Future History

Hari Seldon's psychohistory is a mathematical predictive science of society.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

Eino Valti's psychotechnics is also.

Anderson's Technic History

Chunderban Desai further develops an ancient theory of historical cycles.

Anderson's Time Patrol...

...studies history as it happens and uses advanced computers to analyze the data.

Anderson's Starfarers

Cross-temporal communication.

James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time

The Service receives messages from the future.

The Future And The Past

Future histories should refer to past history.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins with a story named after the Roman general, Marius.

In Anderson's Technic History:

Minamoto describes the mid-twentieth century as an unhappy period and also refers to its passive entertainment like television;

Le Matelot compares early interstellar travelers to Greeks in the Mediterranean and to Europeans in America and also compares the Polesotechnic League to medieval mercantile guilds;

Manuel Argos consciously models his Terran Empire on the Roman Empire, for example by allowing non-humans to become citizens;

Chunderban Desai analyses Technic civilization in the light of his studies of the rise and fall of Terrestrial civilizations;

"A Tragedy of Errors" begins by referring to Christopher Wren.

The Technic History is in the same historical territory as Anderson's Time Patrol series.

Two Questions

I think that the two most important questions are:

What is wrong in the world and what is to be done about it?

What is wrong inside each individual and what is each of us to do about it?

I am not going to give my answers here. This is not a political or spiritual tract! - although we can get into any discussions in the combox.

Poul Anderson's Technic History shows us characters who address at least one of these questions.

The World Question

David Falkayn founds Supermetals which benefits planetary populations left behind by Technic civilization.

Nicholas van Rijn does not understand the question but is persuaded to play along with Supermetals.

Chunderban Desai analyses the causes of civilizational decline in the hope that the decline, when understood, can be reversed.

Dominic Flandry strengthens several planets so that they will survive the post-Imperial Long Night.

The Inner Question

Adzel practices Mahayana Buddhism and spends three years in a monastery after he has retired from trade pioneering.

Some characters believe that "They" will answer both questions for us.

Five Senses In HOOLIGAN

A Stone In Heaven, VII.

Miriam Abrams is now being referred to by her Ramnuan nickname, "Banner."

(i) Flandry and Banner drink, in his case, at least, Scotch. They smoke.

(ii) They listen to a recording of Freyan ornithoids twittering and trilling:

"...of treetops and twilit skies." (p. 72)

The conditioned air is (iii) greenwood-odoured and (iv) summer-mild.

(v) The lighting is low.

That totals five senses. Often Poul Anderson gives us at least three.

Flandry presents a poignant summary of Chunderban Desai's account of the decline of Technic civilization but also mentions mixed species cultures, including Avalon, as hopes for the future. Then the narrative must return to a synopsis of conditions on their destination, Ramnu.

(I am still struggling with heavy philosophy and need a break back in the Technic History.)

Nineteen Characters In The Technic History

The mini-bios have taken on a life of their own. The characters covered, in the approximate order of their appearance in the Technic History, are:

League Period

Nicholas van Rijn

James Ching

Adzel

David Falkayn

Chee Lan

Emil Dalmady

Coya Conyon

Empire Period

Manuel Argos

Christopher Holm

Tabitha Falkayn

Hloch

Dominic Flandry

John Ridenour

Miriam Abrams

Hugh McCormac

Chunderban Desai

Diana Crowfeather

Post-Imperial

Roan Tom

Daven Laure

A comprehensive list. Apparently insignificant characters play their roles. James Ching's narrative role is primarily to introduce Adzel but he makes his own contribution, nevertheless. Manuel Argos' role is to get the Terran Empire founded although it was not known, when Argos's story was written, that that Empire would become such a major feature of a future history series. Emil Dalmady has a daughter who makes later contributions to the History.

A Stone In Heaven makes several major contributions:

the later careers of Flandry and Chives;

Miriam Abrams as an adult;

Flandry's addition to Desai's theory of history;

a late mention of the biracial culture on Avalon;

the later history of the Grand Duchy of Hermes;

an heir of Hans Molitor;

a new inhabited planet, Ramnu.

What's not to like?

Seven Other Careers In The Technic History

Poul Anderson's Technic History includes some full biographies and a few that we can reconstruct in part.

Nicholas van Rijn

spaceman

Master Merchant, Polesotechnic League

founder and director of Solar Spice & Liquors

leading League independent

later, expedition leader (maybe)

James Ching

student

League apprentice

spaceman

diarist

retired in Catawrayannis

Emil Dalmady

from Altai

Solar Spice & Liquors factor on Suleiman

trainee entrepreneur

entrepreneur

father of Judith who went to Avalon with Falkayn and wrote in Morgana

John Ridenour

xenologist on Starkad, then Freehold

Chunderban Desai

earlier diplomatic posts

delegate to negotiations to end the Jihannath crisis

High Commissioner of the planet, Aeneas, after the McCormac Rebellion

later, guest lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy on Terra

retirement on Ramanujan to study Imperial history

Roan Tom

star rover

bandit or hero

maker of interstellar alliances

Daven Laure

Ranger of the Commonalty

They fade away into the further future.

Miscommunications In Conversations

See Miscommunications. 

In The Day Of Their Return, when Chunderban Desai receives Colonel Mattu Luuksson from Orcus, Desai realizes that he is tapping his cigarette holder on the ashtray and stops. 

When I interviewed a school pupil, there was a bothersome crumpling sound while she spoke but not while I spoke. I realized that, under the table, she was holding the paper slip that had informed her of the interview. She crumpled it only when speaking.

Desai does not know whether Mattu's frown means anger or concentration. In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, Dimble and Studdock converse. Trying to be charitable toward the younger man, Dimble adopts a fixed facial expression which Studdock misinterprets as disapproval.

I could tell many stories of conversational miscommunications but perhaps they would take us off the point if there is one.

(There is a Father Brown TV series with really good interactions between Brown and the continuing villain, Flambeau. Brown has not heard Flambeau's confession - yet.)

Desai And Ivar

The Day Of Their Return.

Chunderban Desai and Ivar Frederiksen are the viewpoint characters of their respective passages until they meet when it has to be one or the other so it is Desai, signaling the triumph of his point of view. When Desai is trying to have the fugitive Ivar apprehended, which of them do we identify or sympathize with? Perhaps each as we read about him. Poul Anderson shows the Terran Empire as good guys or as bad guys in different instalments of the Technic History. Issues become ambiguous when Dominic Flandry participates as chief of Intelligence in the conquest of Brae.

The good guys-bad guys issue needs to be explored through historical fiction, e.g.:

a German Nazi versus a Russian Communist during World War II

a Native American versus a settler

a Cavalier versus a Roundhead

Trilogy: Cavalier as hero of Volume I; Roundhead as hero of Volume II; Volume III?

Poul Anderson has a Cavalier hero in an alternative history. 

The issue here is not where our sympathies lie but what is our understanding of both sides. Garth Ennis wrote a war comic in which a Spanish Republican, an English socialist, a Luftwaffe pilot and an Irish Fascist, none of them armed, swap stories while sheltering in a bomb crater during a battle of the Spanish Civil War and I did not expect to wind up writing about that.

Sparks And Masks

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane asks Chunderban Desai:

"'What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin' universe whose creation was meanin'less accident? Or children of God? Or parts, masks of God? Or seed from which God will at last grow?'" (p. 129)

My responses:

How could pre-conscious events have meaning or be anything but accidental?

"God" can mean (i) a transcendent person, (ii) the object of numinous or mystical experience or (iii) both (i) and (ii). Let's stay with (ii). I think that it is fair to say that we are sparks, masks and children of the void.

Tatiana Thane is right to speculate but gives way to credulity about the Elders.