Fictional Universes II

Fictional universes contain not only persons but also places that take on a life of their own. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Virgilian System includes the planets, Dido and Aeneas. The latter, lighter and dryer than Earth, kind of like a Mars with a breathable atmosphere, would have been more suitable for colonization by the nearby Ythrians. However, human scientists, wanting to study the tripartite inhabitants of the even less hospitable Dido, established a base, which became a University, on Aeneas. The Rebel Worlds, set mainly on Dido, has one chapter set on Aeneas. Its sequel, The Day Of Their Return, is, except for a single early flashback, set entirely on the surface of Aeneas. 

Hermes, important as the home planet both of David Falkayn and of Sandra Tamarin, remains off-stage until it becomes a major setting in Mirkheim and is again visited in A Stone In Heaven.

Avalon, is shown at four different stages of development in three short stories and one novel. Its notable locations include the Weathermother mountain range and the cities of Gray and Centauri, the latter containing Livewell Street named after a local flower.

Dennitza appears only in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where, however, it imparts a real sense of place to the Kazan, the Obala and Zorkagrad.

Returning again to another author in another medium and genre, Alan Moore fully exploits the connotations and implications of the familiar place name, "Gotham City," before bringing on stage its most notorious inhabitant.

Details On Aeneas

Extrasolar terrestroid planets colonized by human beings in Poul Anderson's Technic History - there are a few:

Hermes

Avalon

Dennitza

Aeneas

Nyanza

Altai

Unan Besar

Vixen

Imhotep

Daedalus

Some are realized in minute detail. Frex, in Nova Roma on Aeneas:

"...the gray ashlars bore a veneer of carefully chosen and integrated slabs, marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite, materials more exotic than that; and often there were carvings besides, friezes, armorial bearings, grotesques; and erosion had mellowed it all, to make the old part of town one subtle harmony."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 3, p. 87.

There is much more - statues and plants among fishponds and fountains in vitryl-roofed courts, cramped and twisted streets where countryfolk ride horses or stathas - but I don't want to quote lengthy paragraphs. As I always say, read Anderson.

Garbage, Gust And Gates

"Losers' Night."

Villon mixes so many metaphors when complaining that a ballad that he is composing will not take form that he resorts to two more:

"'At least let the wind of your words blow away the garbage clutter of my metaphors! Sit.'" (p. 113)

Then a real wind enters the inn:

"A cold gust made the fire jump and snap. Turning our heads, we saw the front door had opened again. Taverner was greeting a new arrival. We couldn't see past him to that person, but the entrance was full of gray fog and drizzle. I judged the time yonder to be near sundown of a winter's day in a northern land." (pp. 114-115)

My land, as a matter of fact. The man who enters is easily recognizable and is in any case named in the second last sentence.

And it is he that tells a famous painter that his paintings will win something that:

"'...the gates of hell shall not prevail against.'" (p. 122)

And there is one more Biblical reference in a work by Poul Anderson!

It will be a long time before we have squeezed out every detail, implication, reference etc.

Wind Above The Cliffs

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

"...the clouds were breaking up, weren't they? Too much wind for them. The wind went shrieking across a plain of whins and stiff grass, here and there a leafless tree, everything gray under hurried moonlight and unmercifully sharp stars. Holger couldn't see the smoke from the troll's bolthole; the wind scattered it too fast." (p. 147)

"Holger looked across the tumbled gray land. The wind struck him in the face." (p. 148)

"The wind was still loud, but Holger paid no heed." (p. 149)

When Carahue shouts that the huntsmen are coming:

"The noise flew torn in the wind..." (p. 150)

Loud wind breaks up clouds, shrieks, scatters smoke from the fire that killed the troll, strikes Holger's face and tears the noise of Carahue's warning shout and of the approaching horns. As we often observe, Andersonian winds do a lot of work! The wind-driven action builds to a crescendo.

Further Into The Wilds

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY.

glimmering lake

white vapours

chill weather

scudding gray clouds

leaden overcast

barren mountain slopes

harsh silver grass

eroded pinnacles

sheer scarp

a gap to the wold

savage towns

troll stench

caves

burrows

rocky defile

heavily armed, barking hillmen

Holger intimidates the hillmen by blowing smoke at them, a trick learnt from A Connecticut Yankee..., we are infomed.

The hillmen flee and we turn to the next chapter although not necessarily this evening.

Aesir And Others

The Broken Sword.

The Aesir are the Norse pantheon. As As is a god. "Aesir" is the plural: "gods." Asgard is the enclosure of the gods. Thus, a dweller in Asgard is an As, not an "Asgardian," as in Marvel Comics.

Imric the elf-earl:

hears Thor ("Thunder...great wheels across the sky...," III, p. 23);

sees Odin ("...long gray beard...shadowing hat...spear...single eye...," p. 24);

receives Skirnir ("...messenger of the Aesir...," IV, p. 25).

Although I did not remember Skirnir's name, Wikipedia reminds us that he is in both Eddas.

Odin will reappear in this novel.

The omniscient narrator informs us that gods, giants and trolls are "...others..." (ibid.) of the same sort as elves, whatever sort that is. This sort has in common that they do not age and have:

"...few children, centuries apart..." (ibid.)

The text proceeds to mention dwarves, sprites, gnomes, goblins, a faun, Pan, the new god, dryads, nymphs and Olympians. For some of these beings, see:

Out In The Weather

Port Kestrel

In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, we read about the cities of Gray on Falkayn Bay and of Centauri on the Gulf of Centaurs, both on the colonized planet, Avalon. Elsewhere in Anderson's Technic History, we read about the city of Starfall on Daybreak Bay on the colonized planet, Hermes.

Similarly, in Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, we read about the small town of Port Kestrel at the mouth of the Lily River on an island shore of the Azurian Ocean on the colonized planet, Amaterasu. Port Kestrel has boats, bridges, bright buildings, trees and a communications mast. Amaterasu is being terraformed and grass grows on several islets. Above and around the port are plantations, industries and parks with dandelions and harebells. Dark native thalassophyte still grows in patches while imported seagulls fly above it. Elsewhere on Amaterasu, terraforming continues among glaciers and deserts.

Although The Fleet Of Stars is Volume IV of a later and very different future history series, its sceneries are described in comparably minute detail. 

The Spaceship And Earthly Weather

 

"The Chapter Ends."

Terrans move in a line towards the ship that will take them away from Earth forever:

"The spaceship was a steely pillar against a low gray sky. Now and then a fine rain would drizzle down, blurring it from sight; then that would end, and the ship's flanks would glisten as if they were polished. Clouds scudded overhead like flying smoke, and the wind was loud in the trees." (p. 276)

We notice "space ships" on p. 260 and "spaceship" on p. 276. At least, I notice this difference because I am quoting so many passages from a single text.

Why is the spaceship a pillar? I am sure that the means of propulsion no longer require the rocket shape. However, the "steely pillar" seems appropriate and might be favoured for purely cultural and historical reasons. The last Terrans should depart in vehicles of the same shape as those that had been used by the earliest astronauts.

Earth reminds the voyagers of its environment and its weather:

gray sky

fine rain

scudding clouds

loud wind

trees

The rain is "fine." It does not pound or batter but does remind. Some Galactics fly above the line generating:

"...a shield against the rain." (ibid.)

However, one couple leaves the line because they want a last tactile experience of Earthly rain.

And, of course, the wind is loud...

Tabitha Falkayn On Falkayn Bay

The People Of The Wind, XVIII.

I am revisiting one of my favourite scenes in Poul Anderson's Technic History and finding that I have already quoted it three times:

Livewell On The Wind

In Gray

Back In Gray

We know Gray and Falkayn Bay and the mixed vegetation of Avalon. Poul Anderson conveys a sense of place as some mainstream writers have been able to do for London, Paris, Dublin etc and as Poul and Karen Anderson did for Ys.

The time for walking across town to the Chinese New Year concert approaches.

Laterz.

On Lucifer

Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 35-54.

On the hellish planet, Lucifer:

"We came back to base as day's fury was dying in the usual twilight gale; we washed, ate something, went to sleep with the hiss of storm-blown dust for a lullaby." (p. 36)

Rereading, we find yet another contextually appropriate wind. How many sf writers present this amount of detail when describing extraterrestrial environments? Many hours later, it is still night with:

cold, crystalline stars;

thin air;

flaming auroras;

hoar landscape;

glittering ice sheathing twisted "trees."

Work outside cannot resume until dawn so two men eat, drink and talk.

We are rereading "The Problem of Pain" in order to discern how much information this story imparts about Ythrians and, in particular, about their form of social organization called the "choth." But there are no Ythrians on Lucifer, a planet that we are shown only in this single story although it will be mentioned once later.

Two men talk and one of them, Peter Berg, describes his earlier experience with Ythrians on the terrestroid planet provisionally named "Gray" although later, when colonized, it will be renamed "Avalon." The scene on Lucifer is introductory. Every scene contributes to one long rich series.

First Contact

The two most recent posts have shown the position of Ythrians in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Their first story is about first contact when initially nothing was known about this species. Indeed, initially, it was difficult even to identify the dominant species on an obviously inhabited planet.

A Star Trek-parallel scenario: 

the (first) Grand Survey;

the starship, Olga, under Captain Gray, on a five-year mission beyond Alpha and Beta Crucis in the constellation Lupus, 278 light-years from Sol;

a golden G9 dwarf star of half Solar luminosity;

a terrestroid planet, smaller than Earth, with 0.75 G, a thin, dry but humanly breathable atmosphere, some small oceans and two small moons.

The Olga:

verifies by neutrino analysis that there is no artificial atomic energy anywhere in this planetary system;

enters orbit around the terrestroid planet;

gains every possible datum by remote observation before dispatching robot probes to uninhabited regions where the probes establish that life is chemically similar to Earth's and that microorganisms are safe.

There are woods, lakes, plains, mountains, clusters of buildings without defensive walls or streets, primitive mines and evidence of both Stone Age and Iron Age cultures.

This planet will later wage interstellar war against Terra. But not yet.

The Chaos

 

Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, Explorations (New York, 1981), pp. 12-81.

The "Chaos," an early period in Poul Anderson's Technic History, is mentioned in a single sentence:

"The Chaos ended those activities." (p. 36)

Is it mentioned anywhere else?

The activities that the Chaos ended were "...war and fantasy games..." (ibid.) "...during the middle twentieth century..." (p. 35) which were probably a reaction against:

"...the inactive entertainment, notably television, which had come to dominate recreation." (p. 36)

The quoted report which informs us that the Chaos had ended war and fantasy games but which also adds that those activities had been revived "...in recent times..." (ibid.) is dated 2057. Thus, the Chaos, whatever it was, is bracketed some time between the middle twentieth century and a date some time before 2057.

A regular blog correspondent, Sean Brooks, suggested that the "Chaos" in our timeline began in 1914 and is still happening and I think that this makes sense. However, in the Technic History timeline, the term has a more time-specific application and they should be getting out of it by now. That Chaos is the dividing line between the decades in which Poul Anderson was writing his Technic History and the times that he was writing about.

Although "The Saturn Game" is primarily about a small team of explorers experiencing difficulties on the surface of a Saturnian moon, some of its scenes are flashbacks to conversations inside the comfortable living quarters and shared spaces within the light sail ship, the Chronos. All of this adds to the richness of the Technic History which had originally started in the Polesotechnic League period until some chronologically earlier instalments were added. In the finished product, human beings explore the Solar System, then interact with Ythrians, first on Ythri, then on Gray/Avalon, before the League and Earth in the Solar Commonwealth are introduced in the contemporaneous fourth and fifth instalments.

"The Saturn Game" reads like a possible near future for us even if we remain skeptical of later developments like the quantum hyperdrive and interstellar civilizations. This single story is the Technic History equivalent of the The Green Hills Of Earth period of Robert Heinlein's Future History, a series that we should always remember while we read or reread Anderson's several alternative future histories.

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!

What Happened After

We would like to know what happened to the characters after the story ended. (I mean stories in general, not just any particular story.)

And I remember that some old-style novels did conclude by summarizing subsequent biographies for one or two of the major characters. That constrains what can be written in a sequel. However, many novels are constructed as self-contained units neither requiring nor expecting a sequel.

A sequel published twenty years later can either reflect the passage of time in the real world by commencing its action exactly twenty years after that of the first book or, alternatively, can begin five minutes after that action because fictional time is not real time. 

Poul Anderson never describes the death of a major series character - except Harald Hardrada, The Last Viking, because Harald was a historical figure with a known time and place of death. 

It is useful to have a copy of The Earth Book Of Stormgate alongside The Technic Civilization Saga even though the entire contents of the Earth Book are reproduced in their chronological positions in Volumes I-III of the Saga.

Hloch, fictitiously editing the Earth Book, does satisfy some of our curiosity about what happened afterwards. First, he informs us that the curiously off-stage first person narrator of "Wings of Victory" was called Maeve Downey. She was a planetologist who later wrote an autobiography, Far Adventure, from which "Wings of Victory," about the discovery of Ythri, is extracted. Ythri was discovered after the first three years of the Grand Survey and:

"After five years the survivors would meet and compare experiences."

-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 15-32 AT p. 16.

Five years: shades of Star Trek! An entire series could have been set during the Grand Survey. But we have only this one story. The Olga, which discovered Ythri, also discovered Avalon which was provisionally named Gray after the captain of the Olga.

And I think that that is all that we can glean about what happened after "Wings of Victory." It is marginally more than the story itself tells us.

Whooping, Sobbing Wind And Hissing Rain In 1137

Poul Anderson, 1137 A. D. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 374-380.

Everard, Tamberly and Volstrup discuss weighty matters on their bleak December day. When Volstrup's face pales:

"Outside wind whooped and a dash of rain blew from wolf-gray heaven." (p. 376)

When he moistens his gullet for a second time:

"The wind sobbed." (p. 378)

When Everard stares into shadows:

"Rain hissed down the walls. Chill sneaked beneath clothing." (p. 379)

After "...wind whooped...," I read to the end of the chapter confidently expecting more such references and of course found some.

This chapter also reminds us of some of the details of the history guarded by the Time Patrol:

heretics burned;

Jews ghettoized, massacred or expelled;

peasants who claimed any rights treated in the same way.

I know someone who thinks that it would have been better if consciousness had never evolved. A time criminal could travel far enough back to prevent the emergence of life on Earth, killing himself at the same time.

Wanda Revisits The Tulat

13,211 B. C., III.

Steel-gray sunless sky and sea;

crashing surf;

skirling wind;

dead grass;

dark moss;

bare shrubs and trees;

strewn boulders;

dark horizon;

encroaching cold;

approaching blizzard;

roaring, foaming river.

Aryuk looks haggard. Nature agrees. Life has become bad for the Tulat. But an Andersonian heroine can act.

A Northern Civilization

"Star of the Sea," 10.

Manse Everard reflects that, because the Roman Empire converts the barbarians to Christianity:

"...the new Western civilization comes to birth where the old Classical one did, on the Mediterranean shore, not along the Rhine or the gray North Sea." (p. 552)

This thought flits through his mind. It is important. There is a fork in time and the potential for a Northern matriarchal monotheism challenging the Mediterranean patriarchal monotheism. The prophetess, Veleda, is the key. The Time Patrol has been regarding the North as:

"...the barest footnote to history." (p. 548)

Now they must intervene.

Time Travelling

There Will Be Time, IV.

Jack Havig describes the experience of time travelling to Robert Anderson just as the Time Traveller had described it to his dinner guests.

"'I'm in a shadow world while I time-travel. Lighting varies from zero to gray. If I'm crossing more than one day-and-night period, it flickers. Objects look dim, foggy, flat.'" (p. 37)

"'...night followed day like the flapping of a black wing... The landscape was misty and vague.'"

HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 4, pp. 24-25.

However, there is one inexplicable sensation described by the Time Traveller which Havig does not duplicate:

"'There is a feeling exactly like that one has on a switchback - of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash.'"

-ibid., p. 24.

Why? Wells, like no doubt many of his readers, is here in the grip of the delusion that the Time Traveller is somehow accelerating forward along the Fourth Dimension. He is not. According to the Time Traveller's own account, nothing material moves along the Fourth Dimension. Everything material merely extends in that direction. He adds that consciousness/immaterial mental existences do move along the Fourth Dimension - and that I certainly disagree with - but, in any case, material objects like the Time Traveller and his machine do not. On the contrary, they are aging/enduring much more slowly than everything else. There should be no feeling of motion and Havig, rightly, does not describe any such feeling.

If three-dimensional objects did move along the Fourth Dimension and if one such object, the Time Machine, were to accelerate in that direction, then the machine would leave everything else behind it and would have to wait for them to catch up with it in 802,701 AD.

Also, of course, motion along the Fourth Dimension would take time. Therefore, that Dimension itself would not be time.

On Bornholm

The Merman's Children, Book Four, IV.

A ship crosses the Baltic Sea from Copenhagen to Bornholm and docks at Sandvig near Hammer House.

Whitecaps are gray. The sky is pale and whistling. Pebbles rattle. Gulls fly and mew. Brown tangled kelp, strewn on the sand, bladders popping, smells of the deeps. Also: dunes, grass, moor, heather and a standing stone. (Three senses.)

The merman's children wade ashore, naked, Tauno's hair greenish-gold, Eyjan's bronze-red with a seaweed undertint.

Conversation commences but I have formed the habit of pausing on the descriptions. And what descriptions these are with the merfolk effectively personifying the elements and the deeps. In fact, in the prevailing mythology, merpeople are entirely of nature because they lack the human souls that would link them to the supernatural. But they have been in those deeps that the kelp evokes.

(Here, it is time for a pause for other reading.)

Five Senses On The Caithness Coast

The Merman's Children, Book Four, II.

Shadowed wavelets are dimly silver. Reflected sunlight warms the cliffs. Roasting seal and auk smell good. Guts growl. When eaten, the food is savoury. When night falls, crackling flames flicker red, yellow and blue with a coal-glow core and the smoke is pungent. (Five senses.) 

When Tauno follows his sister's spoor, an upward footpath reveals heather sloping down towards gray moorland whitened by snow patches and rime. The trail enters a dale sheltering a croft with oats, barley and sheep. Hayricks and buildings huddle before a Viking grave-mound and a Pictish keep. Dogs bay but flee from the scent of a merman. (Three senses.)

OK. I have passed over interactions first between Tauno and Eyjan, then between Eyjan and four men, because I have been focusing on the colours, bodily sensations, odours, tastes and sounds in which Poul Anderson's text is rich. However, Eyjan's feline yowling and a man's shout convey a different kind of sensation.