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.

Fictional Planets

Which is the most fully realized fictional planet in Poul Anderson's Technic History?

Avalon

Dennitza

Merseia

Hermes

There are other candidates. More details can be found by searching these blogs. I am inclined to favour Dennitza because of the Obala, the Kazan, Zorkagrad etc and also Avalon because of the details of choth life in Oronesia, Corona, Centauri etc. But there is endless space for comparisons and contrasts. We would like to visit or to live in some of these imagined places.

The Technic History presents not just one fictional world but many.

Life In The Technic History

Imagining living in Poul Anderson's Technic History, I envisage myself neither as a League merchant nor as an Imperial Intelligence officer but as living a quieter life in one of the many exotic locations:

Earth in the Solar Commonwealth;

Starfall on Hermes;

the Kazan, the Obala or Zorkagrad on Dennitza;

anywhere on Avalon;

Olga's Landing on Imhotep;

beside the Highroad River on Daedalus.

Also visiting Ythri, Merseia etc. 

If living in the appropriate era, I might work as a researcher for van Rijn or for the Terran government. If working for van Rijn, I would seek election as a union steward and might have some interesting interactions with our employer. 

St. Thomas's Church in Lancaster always holds General Election hustings where the Parliamentary candidates answer questions. That and other important events are scheduled for this week.

Onward to the future.

A Cobbled Quadrangle

The Winter Of The World, I.

There is no doubt that Poul Anderson enjoyed writing about certain kinds of societies and also communicated his enthusiasm about them. Donya's wintergarth at Owlhaunt sounds familiar:

sod-roofed timber buildings sheltered by birches, around a cobbled quadrangle;

shed;

smokehouse;

workshop;

stable (horses);

kennel (hounds);

mews (hawks);

clerestory above the underground dwelling;

hounds roaring forth;

descent by ladder to a vestry;

wood floors;

hides;

fabrics;

carved, painted, movable interior partitions;

weapons and murals on walls;

hundreds of shelved books;

a tiled stove;

oil lamps;

fruits and flower sachets hanging from rafters;

a girl singing with a stringed instrument;

kith seated on shelves or cushions.

Not everything is the same, of course, but we remember the Vymezal estate on Dennitza (see In The Kazan) and the Hedin Freehold on Aeneas.

More Merseians On Dennitza

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, IV.

"Day of Burning" and A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows are linked across several centuries. Life was hard on Merseia because the planet was modernizing and moving into space at the same time as it had to be protected from supernova radiation and there was a three-sided struggle for power between Vachs, Gethfennu and nations like the Republic of Lafdigu. Merseian immigrants were welcome on the human colony planet, Dennitza. Able to stand cold better than human beings, they do most of the fishing and pelagiculture, especially on the eastern seaboard of the main continent, Rodna. They are organized in Vachs and have their own House in the Shkoptsina, Parliament. Kossara remembers a gruff welcome at the campfire of great green hunters and is overcome by emotion. After Abrams' and Flandry's (fully justified) hostility to the Roidhunate, Anderson's account of inter-species harmony on Dennitza is welcome indeed. It is hard to choose but I think that Dennitza is my favourite planet in the Technic History. Its place names are resonant:

the Kazan

the Obala

Zorkagrad

I would not participate in Orthochristian prayers or sacraments but would meditate in a side chapel of St Clement's Cathedral. I would also learn how to recite Eriau prayers with Trohdwyr. Paganism encourages ritual observance but does not insist on credal assent.

From The Ice Cliff To The Black Ocean

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

In imagination, we might follow a single drop of water through Dennitzan geography. 

In the far north, there are glaciers and a two-kilometers-high ice cliff. A river from the melting cliff flows fast past Bodin Miyatovich's hunting lodge.

The "Melt-begotten...Lyubisha River..." (XIV, p. 524) flows through a canyon in the northern ringwall of the Kazan and eventually enters Lake Stolyan, site of the planetary capital city, Zorkagrad, at the centre of the Kazan.

The Elena River flows east from Lake Stoyan, cuts through the eastern ringwall and enters the Black Ocean where the ychani hero, Gwyth, dared climactic storms three hundred years ago. There are:

"...docks at the Elena River mouth..." (XVI, p. 544)

- and the Kazan ringwall is visible on the horizon, from the Obala, the east coast of the Rodna continent.

But our main focus here and now is on a single drop of water making its way from the ice wall to the Black Ocean.  

Some Strong Female Characters In Fiction

I am rereading:

a passage in Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where Kossara Vymezal, on vacation from the Schola and on furlough from her ground defense unit in the Narodna Vokska, hunts in the Kazan with her family's zmay (Merseian by species) gamekeeper, Trohdwyr, and kills a charging dyavo with her rifle;

SM Stirling's Daggers In Darkness about the intrepid secret agents, Luz O'Malley and Ciara Whelan;

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy about Lisbeth Salander - although I also like a long list of Larsson's male characters, including the real life Paulo Roberto;

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, well known for its many strong female characters, notably Dream's older sister, Death.

(Grammatically, a single-sentence post until I added this parenthetical remark.)

Travelogues

The Fleet Of Stars becomes partly a futuristic travelogue. Guthrie from Amaterasu at Beta Hydri visits Zamok Sabely' at Alpha Centauri and Proserpina en route to the inner Solar System. Fenn from Luna visits the Pacific, then Mars. In other works by Poul Anderson, Dominic Flandry tours Merseia in the company of young Merseians of equivalent rank, then later treks across Dido and, later again, through the Kazan, the Obala and Zorkagrad on Dennitza. Other characters travel a long distance down the Flone on Aeneas. Flandry's daughter similarly travels on Imhotep and Daedalus.

More sf could be like this. Fictional futures contain many exotic places that could be visited peacefully and described interestingly without having to become settings for violent conflicts between intelligent species and their interstellar civilizations.

Gravbelts II

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XIV.

I have corrected a factual detail in Gravbelts. Flandry's and Kossara's trek into the Kazan took not three but seven days. This is far too long in view of the facts their mission was urgent and that they had used gravbelts to descend to Dennitza but thereafter made no reference to these faster means of transport. We have returned to the point on which we ended yesterday, having spent most of today in other activities.

Let me end today on two more general points. First, when I first read Poul Anderson, Ian Fleming and many others in the 1960s, we thought that a "space age" was beginning. Sf writers described that age and authors of contemporary fiction assumed its imminence. James Bond thought that a younger man had been:

"...born into the buyers' market of the Welfare State and into the age of atomic bombs and space flight."

-Ian Fleming, Thunderball (London, 1961), 2, p. 14.

But we also knew that most predictions were wrong.

Secondly, the diversity of human mentalities and motivations should open our minds to the possibility of even greater diversity among non-human intelligences. Anderson listed a sample of six kinds of human beings (see "Homo Sum" and The Discovery Of The Past II) and Fleming's You Only Live Twice addresses the perception of suicide as an honorable act in Japan.

Lyubisha

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XIV.

We cannot get enough Dennitzan geography but unfortunately there is only a limited amount. Regarding the Lyubisha River, see:

In A Dennitzan Forest

 

By The Lyubisha River

 

Five Senses By The Lyubisha

 

There might not be much to add here. I have not noted before that "Lyubisha" is a personal name meaning "seriousness, thought, intuition, intent and wisdom."

 

The gorge cut through the Kazan rimwall by the Lyubisha is called the Dolyina and has been conserved by the Vymezals "'...from olden time...'" (p. 525) so that Flandry is able to appreciate its natural beauty while he and Kossara trek through it into Dubina Dolyina province of the Kazan.

Gravbelts

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XIV.

In order to arrive on Dennitza undetected, Flandry and Kossara descend by gravbelt in spacesuits while Chives flies the Hooligan to Zorkagrad. Flandry buries the spacesuits but what does he do with the gravbelts? They have a seven-day trek into the Kazan, posing as a couple on a walking holiday, but their mission is urgent so why did they not use the gravbelts for discrete low-level jumps across most of their journey?

That is the tenth post for today and my last thought on this subject for tonight. As we know, A Knight... approaches its climaxes on Dennitza and Chereion. They wait for anyone who continues to read.

Two Hunting Lodges

The Time Patrol maintains a lodge in the Pleistocene Pyrenees. Manse Everard and Piet Van Sarawak stand on a glassed-in verandah with a view to the north of mountains, woods, marsh and tundra.

Bodin Miyatovich, Gospodar of Dennitza, keeps a hunting lodge on the tundra to the north of the Kazan. He and his niece, Kossara Vymezal, stand on a slate terrace jutting from the house with a view across the barrens towards the ice cliff.

Such resonances between the Time Patrol and Technic History timelines are always welcome. This one struck me so forcefully that, while rereading A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, I had to go and check Time Patrol.

Everard and Van Sarawak will have to counteract a divergent timeline. Miyatovich and Kossara have to counteract a plot to split their planet from the Terran Empire. Anderson's characters can never just enjoy the scenery.

See also A Hunting Lodge In The Wilderness.

Some Sights In Technic Civilization

"...a summer sky over the Kazan...," here

the view from the Zamok, here 

the Obala 

Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother, here

the Oronesian archipelago

the city of Centauri

Falkayn Bay 

Daybreak Bay

the High Sierra 

Archopolis 

the Flone Valley

Nova Roma

I was struck by Kossara's reference to the blue of a summer sky over the Kazan but, of course, I have posted about that before as also about various other scenes in Poul Anderson's Technic History.  

The View From The Zamok

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, V.

An earlier post, The Kazan, identified the Dennitzan capital city, Zorkagrad, on Lake Stoyan in the center of the Kazan and summarized the view from the Zamok in Zorkagrad so let us now take a closer look at that view:

Old Town has steep tile roofs and pastel-tinted half-timbered stucco;

the small city slopes down from Old Town;

twisting lanes become broad boulevards;

later generations have raised geometrical buildings in modern materials;

traffic flits;

ships crowd the docks and the bay;

glittering, deep blue Lake Stoyan stretches west beyond the horizon;

the sky is cloudless;

from a sun deck of the Zamok, Kossara sees cultivation along the shores, both green Terran and blue or purple native, widely spaced buildings and sunpower towers, the Lyubisha River flowing from the north and the Elena River, with barges and boats, flowing east;

the crater walls are below the horizon but she knows that they protect this "...chalice of warmth and fertility..." (p. 408) from "...glacier and desert..." (ibid.) 

She feels a breeze, smells flowers and hears the singing guslars that nest in the vines on the gray stone of the Zamok.

Vysochina And Captain Flandry

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, II.

I am fascinated by Dennitzan geography. Much is already on the blog, e.g.:

the Kazan

The Obala 

Zorkagrad

 

On p. 365, we read that the huge crater of the Kazan bites an arc from the Vysochina so what is the latter? First, it is named after a region of the Czech Republic. Secondly, further down p. 365, there is a reference to "...Vysochina hills." We read elsewhere that Kossara wants to show Flandry an overlook in the Vysochina highlands. And that is it, at least so far. There are three previous references on the blog (see here; scroll down) but all say much the same.

 

Hopefully, this is the last attempt to put the Captain Flandry sub-sub-series in the right order in hypothetical new editions:

Volume I

Two diptychs:

"Tiger By The Tail" and "Honorable Enemies"

"Message in Secret" and "The Plague of Masters"

Volume II

One trilogy:

"The Game of Glory," "Hunters of the Sky Cave" and "The Warriors from Nowhere"

Volume III

One novel:

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

 

As a rule, each installment refers back to the previous one but "The Game of Glory" refers back to "Honorable Enemies" and the second diptych can fit between them.

Dennitzan Geography

Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

In the far north, there is a two-kilometer high ice cliff. A river of melt water flows from the cliff through the tundra past Bodin Miyatovitch's hunting lodge. Further south, the Lyubisha River, also melt water, flows through taiga and has cut through the northern wall of the Kazan into the Dubina Dolyine province where Kossara's father is both voivode and nachalnik.

The Lyubisha flows into Lake Stoyan where the planetary capital, Zorkagrad, is located at the center of the Kazan. The Elena river flows east out of Lake Stoyan and enters the Black Ocean on the Obala, the east coast of the Rodna continent, where most of the zmayi live.

There may be a few more details to round up.

Descent to Dennitza

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XIV.

Clouds and ice make Dennitza whiter than Terra when seen from space. Oceans are azure and dazzling. As Flandry and Kossara bail out on gravbelts, they experience:

"...a roar of night winds." (p. 520)

- then descend to:

"...the unpeopled taiga north of the Kazan." (ibid.)

(I would have guessed that "taiga" meant some kind of terrain other than a forest.)

In perhaps my first year at school, maybe 1954, I was frightened by a film of men bailing out of a plane and was allowed to leave the school hall. A few years later, I would have enjoyed a film, if there were one, of Flandry and Kossara bailing out of the Hooligan.

Today, walking past the back of the Infirmary, I was for the first time ever right beside the helipad when a helicopter circled around, descended just above my head and almost landed (it was only a training flight), raising a strong, cold wind that blew my hat off into a line of cars that had been temporarily stopped by a barrier during the helicopter's approach. That would have been an exciting experience for a young schoolboy.

(A friend who has been mentioned on the blog was once flown to the Infirmary with a broken back.)

About Dennitza

(This is an image of the Russian city of Kazan.)

I am sold on Poul Anderson's fictional planet of Dennitza, particularly that planet's much-linked Kazan, Obala and Zorkagrad Old Town. It is good, when rereading A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, to find as if for the first time some Dennitzan detail that generates a blog post like the blue sky over the Kazan in the previous post. I have not yet reread as far as Flandry's and Kossara's arrival on Dennitza so I hope to find more such details but will in any case reread the rest of the novel.

Blue Over The Kazan

See prayers written by Poul Anderson here, also Mary And Grass and Prayers.

"Then rest while you can, Kossara. Sleep comes not black, no, blue as a summer sky over the Kazan, blue as the cloak of Mary.... Pray for us now, and in the hour of our death."
-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, X, p. 468.

O, men from the fields!
Come softly within.
Tread softly, softly,
O! men, coming in.

Mavourneen is going
From me and from you,
To Mary, the Mother,
Whose mantle is blue!

From reek of the smoke
And cold of the floor,
And peering of things
Across the half-door.

O men from the fields!
Soft, softly come thro'.
Mary puts round him
Her mantle of blue.

-copied from here.

More On Fedoroff

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 5.

OK. I am learning something, I think:

the Kazan (scroll down), or Cauldron, is an astrobleme on the planet Dennitza in Poul Anderson's Technic History;

Kazan is a Russian city;

Kazan Cathedral is in St Petersburg;

but there is also a reconstructed Kazan Cathedral in Moscow.

When Fedoroff returned from Delta Pavonis, he had experienced twelve years although forty three had elapsed on Earth. He was pleased still to recognize:

Kazan Cathedral (the one in St Petersburg);
Alexander and Bucephalus over the Nevsky Prospect bridge;
the Hermitage.