Two Moments Of Realization In One Story

Tales Of The Flying Mountains. 

Breakfast post before real world activities.

There is a technical problem in the not-yet-launched interstellar spaceship, Astra.

While his friend is in mid-sentence, the first person narrator, Winston Sanders, starts:

"The drink leaped from my hand and splashed across my lap." (p. 244)

Sanders' first moment of realization: the problem might be not technical but human, indeed criminal.

Second moment:

"An answer hit me, hard as the original solution had done. I sat straight in my chair and barked a delighted oath.

"'What now?' Furlow's calm was the least bit rattled.

"It had cause to be." (pp. 248-249)

The corrupt engineer, Furlow, is boasting that he can get away with his not-yet-admitted crimes but Sanders has suddenly realized how he can nail the guy.

As ever, a problem followed by a neat solution. End of story, followed by Epilogue.

What next? First, finish drinking a second mug of coffee.

When They Sit Up

Some by now familiar features of Poul Anderson's prose texts:

descriptive passages addressing three or more of the senses;

pathetic fallacy, particularly focusing on the wind which can roar, shriek, moan or whisper as appropriate and once whips a villainous character immediately after a vile act;

comprehensive exploration of alternative answers to basic questions about consciousness, time, the future etc;

moments of realization when problem-solving heroes spot solutions but do not yet elucidate us.

In that last example, characters typically tense or stiffen. Twice in "Call Me Joe," they sit up:

"If he wasn't so tired...

"Joe sat up. Sleep drained from him as the realization entered. He wasn't tired, not to speak of. Anglesey was."

-"Call Me Joe," p. 26.

(That passage even uses the word, "realization.")

"'We speculate in a vacuum,' said Cornelius. 'Tomorrow, maybe I can tell you. Now I know nothing.'

"Viken sat up straight...

"'You know a good deal more than you've admitted,' said Viken. 'Don't you?'" (p. 28)

In the second case, Viken realizes that Cornelius has realized something.

Outlawry And Realization

 

The Broken Sword, XVIII.

Skafloc and Freda live as outlaws:

"Dark and drear was that land, unpeopled by men or Faerie folk..." (p. 120)

"Dank and chill was the cave. Winds whittered in its mouth and surf pounded on the rocks at its foot." (ibid.)

They hunt game and kill trolls but a raven tells Skafloc that the trolls are winning the war. Despair? No, a moment of realization as Skafloc suddenly remembers the gods' gift of a sword. Freda feels him stiffen and tremble: yet another standard Andersonian moment... David Falkayn has at least two such moments (of realization) - and how many other Anderson characters also have them?

That is a fitting note on which to end for this evening. I am too head-tired for any more research and as always feel the call of other reading. Poul Anderson has to compete for attention - and always wins some of it.

Futureward.

One Writer Helping Us To Appreciate Another

We have become familiar with Andersonian moments of realization, e.g.: see Ten Years Later. Sometimes this helps us to recognize and appreciate such moments in works by other authors, e.g.: Detective Sergeant Lewis' casual remark about a domestic matter has a dramatic effect on his superior:

"For several seconds Morse sat utterly immobile in his chair, as if petrified before the sight of the Gorgon. And for the same several seconds Lewis wondered if his chief had suffered some facial paralysis."

-Colin Dexter, "The Inside Story" IN Dexter, Morse's Greatest Mystery (London, 1994), pp. 165-218 AT PART THREE, p. 201.

Thus ends that page. Having read Poul Anderson and indeed having also read previous Morse-Lewis exchanges, we can almost write the opening sentence of the following page for ourselves. In it, Morse smiles beatifically and tells his old friend that he has:

"'...done it again!'" (p. 202)

That wind, Storm Dave, will be blowing all night. Do I wander away from the point? Yes, but I always return to it.

Good night.

Wind Gone Cold

The Avatar, XXIII.

Joelle and Eric end their relationship:

"He walked out into a wind gone cold at evening." (p. 204)

Of course this wind is not warm but cold... Should I stop quoting passages in which the wind comments on human affairs? A recognizable style could easily be parodied.

Alternatively, an attentive author would be able to write sequels or imitations close in style to the originals:

descriptions of skies, sunsets, seas and landscapes;

appeals to three or more of the senses;

descriptions of stars and galaxies seen from space;

sudden moments of realization, not explained until later;

competent heroes;

sympathetic treatment of their antagonists;

a positive evaluation of freedom and diversity;

the wind...

Undersea On The Unknown Planet

 

Maurai And Kith.

Using his spacesuit as a diving suit, Jong sees "...coraloids...," (p. 233) not corals, on the sea bottom. The white "seabirds" (p. 215) should be described as ornithoids. We would not want to see recognizable seagulls if the story were filmed. The "...great tiger-striped fish..." (p. 216) should be called a piscoid. It would have to be CGI'ed. 

Jong must retrieve a Kithman's mortal remains so that they can be given a Kith funeral, launched on an "...orbit into the sun." (p. 231) Momentarily, Jong wonders whether his dead friend would prefer to stay under the sea, "...lulled to the end of the world." (p. 233) Yes if he were a sea-dweller but no because he had been a starfarer. What we do with the dead is entirely a matter of local customs and traditions.

"The knowledge exploded in Jong. For a century of seconds he stood alone with it." (p. 234)

This is one of many Andersonian moments of realization. I do not think that I have noted this one before. "...a century of seconds..." must mean a short time that seemed like a long time. In fact, one hundred seconds, over a minute and a half, would be a long time to stand with a realization.

Back in the spaceboat, Jong, looking through a port:

"...watched the sea, molten silver beneath him, dwindle as the sky hardened and the stars trod forth." (p. 239).

Sliver sea, then sky and stars, a succinct summary of the themes of this volume.

Rouvarataz's Moment Of Realization

"In The Shadow."

Rouvarataz thinks:

"Let me charge my enemy head on." (p. 103)

Then he thinks:

"Charge!" (ibid.)

Then:

"An oath tore from him. Wheeler asked what he meant. Rouvaratz ignored the question, scarcely heard. His lips moved with unspoken calculation and he stared out at the stars like a blind man." (ibid.)

We recognize all the signs of an Andersonian moment of realization. And maybe there is a subset of such moments, those that are triggered by a single word? In another story, Webner tells Turekian to:

"'...take the supercharger off your imagination.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-102 AT p. 98.

At this:

"The other man froze where he stood.

"'Aram.' Yukiko seized his arm. He stared beyond her. 'What's wrong?'

"He shook himself. 'Supercharger,' he mumbled. 'By God, yes.'" (ibid.)

Yes, we realize that he has realized something. We will be told what it is in due course.

Rescue On Rustum

Orbit Unlimited, part four, 8.

Svoboda and Coffin rescue Danny but I am not clear how they do it. Danny is in a giant spearfowl's nest on a crag. The spearfowl has hovered above and now spirals down. Svoboda is a short way below Danny but cannot reach him. Coffin is further down and will not be able to climb up. Svoboda directs Danny to play dead and, when the spearfowl lands, grab its legs. This causes the spearfowl to take off again and Svoboda shoots it. 

I've got it! The wounded spearfowl with Danny still clinging to its legs sinks down to the foot of the crag where Coffin shoots it dead. I had not got the sinking down to the foot of the crag part. I thought that the spearfowl just sank back down into the nest yet Coffin was somehow inexplicably there and Svoboda was inexplicably able to join them. But what a dangerous procedure. It would not work like that in real life.

The account has Poul Anderson's usual wind and darkness and moments of realization.

All that remains of Orbit Unlimited is the aftermath back on High America in part four, 9. But this is probably the last post until after a day trip to Liverpool tomorrow. Watch the new The Batman film. Gotham City Police HQ is the Liverpool Liver Building and Gotham City Hall is St. George's Hall, Liverpool.

A Moment Of Realization On Altai

"A Message in Secret."

Flandry and the Shaman confer with two of the dwarfish, white-furred and boneless but otherwise humanoid (?) Ice Folk. The problem is how to get a message off the planet undetected and unsuspected by their enemy, the Kha Khan. Experienced Poul Anderson readers know what to look out for and it arrives on schedule:

"Suddenly, and joyously, [Flandry] laughed." (p. 379)

The sound startles the Ice Dwellers and the Shaman stands in shadow - symbolizing his incomprehension? - whereas Flandry alone, standing with head raised in the moonlight, laughs like a boy.

"'By Heaven,' he shouted, 'we're going to do it!'" (ibid.)

This is another of the many Andersonian moments of realization. The hero suddenly realizes the solution to a problem but the readers must wait to see the solution in action.

Flandry And Falkayn

Flandry grows so rigid that Persis is frightened and asks him what is wrong although he does not hear.

Falkayn sits rigid and oblivious until Chee Lan grows nervous and asks what ails him.

Two Andersonian moments of realization: Searching the blog for one, I found both. See:

Flandry's Crucial Moment Of Realization

Battle At Satan

 

I could now search the blog for two or more previous occasions when we have found such resonances between different texts by Anderson but let's leave it there for tonight.

Flandry, Falkayn and Chee Lan are continuing characters whereas Persis, unfortunately, is not. Flandry and Persis approach Starkad...

Self-Realization

Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, 4.

A Gaean adept tells the usurper, "'You were serving Gaea.'" (p. 431) He replies, "'I was serving myself.'" (p. 432) This is self-realization, transcending Gaeanity.

In Shadowlands, when CS Lewis was embittered by his bereavement, a clergyman told him, "This is your grief speaking." Lewis replied, "What was speaking before? My complacency?" Again, self-realization, this time transcending Christianity.

Moments of truth in works of fiction.

Some Emergent Themes Of The Poul Anderson Appreciation Blog

 (Or what I have learned by writing the blog.)

Competent, problem-solving heroes.

Their sudden moments of realization, with the solution not revealed until we see it implented.

Freedom and diversity as the optimal human condition.

Frequent appeals to at least three of the senses.

The wind as a near-omnipresent Greek chorus.

Descriptions of the Milky Way in the night sky or as seen from space, in the latter case sister galaxies also mentioned.

Themes like AI, interstellar travel, time travel etc considered from every angle.

Vast output combined with sustained quality.

Various relevant literary traditions.

Remember Wells!

Cathouse

Dean Ing, "Cathouse" IN Larry Niven, Ed., The Man-Kzin Wars (London, 1989), pp. 179-289.

When Locklear, an ethologist, left alone by his kzinti captors in the uninhabited kzinti compound on Zoo, solves practical and technical problems, we recognize the sub-genre of problem-solving sf, although without any of the Andersonian moments of realization that we might have anticipated, but also wonder how long the narrative can continue with Locklear as Robinson Crusoe and whether he will find a Friday before his captors return.

When Locklear releases a kzinret, female kzin, from stasis, we are surprised that she speaks but soon learn that she dates from a time before the kzinrret had been reduced to non-sapience. "Miss Kitty," as Locklear calls her, plans to resume her feminist war against the kzintosh. One moral of MKW might be "the shadow of the past" as various past threats to the current status quo emerge from stasis. We also learn that writers can take the series in diverse directions. Pournelle's & Stirling's MKW trilogy is a prequel to Anderson's whereas Ing's diptych is set at a later time in a different place.

"The Devil In Hell!"

"Inconstant Star," Chapter XVIII.

By now, I should be able to anticipate Andersonian moments of realization. When, expecting death at the hands of their kzinti captors, Robert and Dorcas Saxtorph embrace, an exchange like the following should be all too predictable:

"Saxtorph lurched where he stood. 'Fanden i helvede!' he roared." (p. 286)

He explains that this is Danish for "The Devil in Hell." Then he shares his revelation with Dorcas but not with the reader. We must wait to see his plan work to learn what it is. She asks, "'What if we fail?'" (ibid.) but, of course, they have no alternative but to proceed. Onward, Earthlings (or "monkeys" from the kzinti pov).

The Golden Slave, Chapter V

The Golden Slave, V.

"The shortest way to the atrium was through the roses." (p. 60)

"The plain white stola fell in severe folds..." (ibid.)

"'...there was a Power in that place...'" (p. 61)

What is a capitalized "Power"? Something like a depersonalized god?

Eodan frequently refers to the Bull worshiped by the Cimbri, e.g.:

"'I was driven by the Powers of earth; the Bull was within me that day, Phryne.'" (p. 62)

The Bull was before us in Chapter I:

"It was a heavy image, cast in bronze, with horns that seemed to threaten the stars." (p. 15)

Threatening the stars foreshadows Anderson's interstellar sf. "The Bull" also wakes in Gratillonius when he is King Of Ys. See also Mithras And The Bull and The Myth Of Mithras.

"'...we are all pursued by our private Furies.'" (p. 63)

This is true although the Furies are myths.

Phryne loved a young slave who was sold and sent to Egypt. Although the man is probably still alive, Eodan reflects that:

"His ghost will not let her look on another man." (pp. 63-64)

Here, "ghost" means a memory rather than a departed spirit.

Eodan, now running errands for Cordelia, carries a purse of denarii. She names him after Hercules, the son of Alcmeme. Another of her slaves is "'...a witch from Thrace...'" (p. 68) Eodan had captured Cordelia's husband, Flavius, at the Battle of Arausio.

Eodan says that he cannot help his wife, also enslaved, but:

"Suddenly it burst within him. As if the sun had taken him full in the eyes, he gasped and cried low, 'But I can!'" (p. 72)

One of Anderson's many moments of realization.

Lifting hands to the eastern light and speaking in Cimbrian, he calls day, dark, wind, sea "...and all the Powers of earth to witness his promise." (p. 72)

- an irrevocable promise to rescue Hwicca, his wife, from Flavius' house in Rome.

Two Moments Of Realization For Mikael Blomkvist

A Poul Anderson fan (at least, this Poul Anderson fan) learns about literary devices like moments of realization, multi-sensory descriptive passages and pathetic fallacies embedded in texts almost as unobtrusively as the grammar and punctuation by reading Anderson, then is struck by these features when they appear in the works of other authors.

Here is an eminently Andersonian moment in Stieg Larsson's second Millennium novel. Lisbeth Salander is a suspect in the murder of a couple named Dag and Mia but Mikael Blomkvist wonders:

"'How she would have known of their existence, I haven't a -'
"Blomkvist suddenly stopped."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2010), CHAPTER 16, p. 270.

Blomkvist has suddenly remembered that Lisbeth is a world-class hacker, that she has hacked his computer before, that he has corresponded electronically with Dag...

Of course, Larsson was not emulating Anderson. Any author can write moments of realization. But Anderson did it so often that he has sensitized me to this particular narrative move when it happens anywhere else.

A few pages later:

"You just won't give up, will you? Blomkvist thought. He was just about to tell Niklasson to piss off when he sat bolt upright in bed. He had just had two great ideas."
-op. cit., p. 276.

Not only another moment of realization but also an italicized thought!

Every Detail Matters

I post about details that strike me. They might be linguistic, stylistic, historical, philosophical etc. Themes have emerged like food, multi-sensory descriptions, the pathetic fallacy, moments of realization etc. However, there are many details that I miss through lack of interest or specialist knowledge. I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and also have no particular interest in military history or hardware, unlike Andrea who knows every detail of every European War at least from the Napoleonic period to WWII. (The Russians had better tanks.) I must ask him about the Crusades.

Blog readers who are able to analyze the accounts of military organizations or the background scientific information in the sf novels discussed here are invited to do so. Between us, we should be able to construct an adequate appreciation of the works of Poul Anderson, SM Stirling and at least some of their predecessors and contemporaries. I have not kept abreast of most recent sf but would anyone like to tell us about it?

A Moment Of Realization On T'Kela

"Territory," see here.

Joyce has told van Rijn about t'Kela. He finishes eating the sandwich that she has made for him, broods silently for a long time, then, smiting the control board so that it rings:

"'By damn!' he bellowed. 'It fits together!'
"'What?' Joyce sat straight.
"'But I still can't see how to use it,' he said.
"'What do you mean?'
"'Shut up, Freelady.' He returned to his thoughts. The slow hours passed." (p. 35)

Van Rijn is driving while thinking. Regular readers are only too familiar with our heroes' moments of realization. In this case, we have been given one clue. Joyce theorizes that the t'Kelans do not fight wars because they cannot economically support armies. Van Rijn replies that human beings never allowed not being able to afford it to prevent them from waging a war. Why should the t'Kelans be different?

"'Maybe here is a key that goes tick-a-lock and solves our problem if we know how to stick it in?'" (pp. 33-34)

Since this is a van Rijn story, there is no "maybe" about it. But what is the answer?

Rustumite Lowland Species

Poul Anderson, New America, "Passing The Love Of Women."

The Rustumite lowlands have ceretheres, terasaurs and giant versions of spearfowl and other species that are familiar on the colonized plateau called High America. There are place names like Lake Moondance, Ahriman and Ironwood. (Scroll down.)

Dan and Eva discuss a group of friends that are missing. Eva speaks but breaks off as Dan stiffens. She has said something that gives him a clue as to where the friends might have gone - in search of a herd of terasaurs. Moments of realization punctuate Anderson's narrative like his Pathetic Fallacies and descriptive passages appealing to at least three of the senses.

I can guarantee to find something to post about just by rereading a page or two of an Anderson text.

Manse Everard's Moment Of Realization

I have posted about moments of realization in Poul Anderson's works but have overlooked perhaps the most dramatic.

Time Patrolman Manse Everard's Tyrian guide, Pum, has uncovered a crucial piece of military intelligence and sees that it is important to Everard:

"'My lord gathers his forces, I see,' murmured the boy after a while.
"The Patrolman nodded absently. His mind was in a storm of its own."
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 317.

Everard is as yet oblivious of Pum's perceptiveness. However, after a while:

"'I think,' said Pum, 'my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.'
"Am I that transparent to him?"
-op. cit., p. 320.

Pum asks to follow him. Everard is astounded. But then:

"It's out of the question, of course.
"IS it? Everard stood thunderstruck."
-op. cit., p. 321.

That standing thunderstruck is the equivalent of all the other times that Anderson heroes have gasped, stiffened, gone rigid etc - realization.