Death And The Martians

"Strange Bedfellows."

There is Martian as well as human cultural diversity in this fictional Solar System:

the Great Confederation dries and powders a dead body and scatters it on the winds;

in Illach, they process a body as fuel for their Biological Engine;

K'nea uses bodies for animal fodder;

Hs'ach does something else but Sevigny cuts short R'ku's account.

It must be impossible to count how many fictional Martian species there have been. Have we seen the last of them? No, enterprising and imaginative sf writers, like SM Stirling, can write retro-sf.

Just move sideways in time and you can write what you want. But it had better be original!

Can Anyone Help With This?

See Krishna.

On this blog, we quite often link to earlier posts on the same blog. When we do, we frequently find minor errors requiring correction, e.g., a name misspelt etc. In the post linked above, we have quoted from SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers but have omitted the page reference. My copy of this novel encompasses 458 pages of text. I might reread them all anyway - not a bad idea - but, meanwhile, does any other reader out there know the page reference for Athelstane King's reflection on the god Krishna?

The Peshawar Lancers and Conquistador are my two favourite SM Stirling novels, each conveying a sense of adventure on a new (to us) parallel Earth. These works are culminating peaks of an alternative history tradition that also includes both HG Wells and Poul Anderson. What's not to like?

See also:

blog search result for -

"Thy Merchants chase the morning down the sea

Thoas, Abrams And Christie On Akhnaton

"Son of the Sword."

Thoas criticizes Akhnaton:

"'Rather than fail in his love for all mankind, he let those men who loved him be hacked down and their wives and children be sold into slavery. Cities stood ablaze for want of the troops he could have sent. But no, he loved everyone and Aton forbade killing.'" (p. 139)

So Thoas agrees with Dominic Flandry's mentor, Max Abrams. See Pacifism And Reformism.

Abrams says that we have a duty to act and thus connects with SM Stirling's Athelstane King. See Krishna.

We find that Agatha Christie has inserted herself again. See Akhnaton.

That is enough for this evening but the connection between Thoas and Abrams was a good one.

Malevolence?

Orbit Unlimited, part four, 8.

We have read about Joshua Coffin praying that God's will be done. But there is another way to look at it.

Coffin's companion, Jan Svoboda:

"Defeat rose in Svoboda's throat like vomit. He told the knowledge over and over, a kind of litany to the malevolent God who had arranged matters in precisely this way." (p. 150)

SM Stirling has argued in earlier comboxes on this blog that we have been naturally selected to discern motives in each other - one man approaches with a smile, another with a frown - and, as an extension of this, we also attribute motives to non-human phenomena. Our ancestors tried to placate gods of the weather. 

Many of us now think, on scientific and philosophical grounds, that the causes of natural events do not include any "will," whether benevolent, malevolent or inscrutable.

Coffin and Svoboda can, if they want, argue the matter after the event. 

How Must-Read Writers Change

In my teens, I read everything that I could find that had been written by:

Isaac Asimov

James Blish

Robert Heinlein

Clifford Simak

CS Lewis (not just sf)

I think that that was the complete list.

Observations 

(i) I knew of Poul Anderson but he was not yet on the list. 

(ii) I knew of Ray Bradbury but he was not hard sf and was not on the list.

(iii) Larry Niven and SM Stirling were not around yet.

(iv) Heinlein had not gone down the tubes yet.

(v) I caught up with Simak with The Goblin Reservation (1968) and then stopped reading his novels as they were published, also feeling that he had become repetitive and self-parodying.

(vi) Now Poul Anderson is to be not only read but also endlessly reread.

There has been delay in me acquiring a copy of Simak's City. A friend who read contemporary fiction and no sf read at least some parts of City and wondered why I thought that it was any good. Rereading it now, I might agree with him.

The best sf is very good but. (I know that it is grammatically wrong to end a sentence with "...but." instead of with "but..." but occasionally it feels appropriate.)

Brobdingnagian

(A single word in an Andersonian text can inspire a blog post as I will now demonstrate.)

Fictions refer to earlier fictions. References accumulate. Many works are remembered although many more are forgotten. We all know Sherlock Holmes but not Cyril Saunders. (In fact, we recognize Holmes even when he appears unnamed in Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol.")

Here is a beautiful literary reference:

"The sail now nearly bisected the sky. Seven kilometers wide, the foam-filled members that stiffened it marching across the field of view like Brobdingnagian spokes with its slow rotation, that disk massed close to a hundred tons."

-Tales Of The Flying Mountains, p. 205.

I had intended to compare this passage with one by CS Lewis but find that I have already compared that Lewis passage with one by SM Stirling here. For other uses of the adjective, "Brobdingnagain," see here. (Scroll down.)

I must satisfy the inner man in two senses: first, eat; then, meditate.

Future Freedoms

Interstellar travel is the ultimate symbol of freedom in American sf and, in several cases, is accompanied by escape from tyranny back on Earth. I could list titles but I think that we have been through them before:

Robert Heinlein's Howard Families escape persecution by hijacking a generation ship;

when SM Stirling's Draka conquer the Solar System, some Americans escape to found an extra-solar colony;

Poul Anderson's Technic History features the "Breakup" and, in another series, his extrasolar planet, Rustum, is colonized by ideological refugees;

the opening instalments of both of James Blish's future history series, Okies and pantropy, end with political refugees fleeing from the Solar System.

Six examples from four major sf authors. But this is wishful thinking. The bulk of humanity has to resist encroachments on its freedom here on Earth.

In a future history series, the opening instalment is a story complete in itself and the second story begins in a different time and place:

in the Technic History, the action moves from a Saturnian moon to an extrasolar planet;

Volume I of Blish's Cities In Flight ends with Senator Wagoner in his cell on the last day whereas Volume II opens centuries later with Crispin deFord waiting to watch the city of Scranton leave Earth (and, if we have read this series in publication order, then we already know deFord's fate);

Book One of Blish's The Seedling Stars ends with Sweeney on Ganymede whereas Book Two opens in a completely different milieu with Honath the Purse-Maker...

As James Blish once said, we grew up with science fiction...

References

Our parallel rereadings of four works set on Jupiter has carried us to some strange places. First, the four works in question are:

a non-series story by Poul Anderson;

one of the two opening instalments of James Blish's Cities In Flight;

an instalment of Clifford Simak's City;

ERB's last John Carter story.

Secondly, however, we have also referred to:

the opening story of Anderson's Technic History;

the closing story of his Psychotechnic History;

the opening and closing stories of Blish's The Seedling Stars;

CS Lewis' "Forms of Things Unknown";

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy;

ERB's The Land That Time Forgot;

Anderson's The Devil's Game, Murder Bound and Mirkheim.

I think that that is the full list. In any case, it is all that I have time for tonight. Tomorrow, gym.

Current Issues: Time Travel And Jupiter

See Jim Al Khalili on time travel here (I hope).

A very enjoyable afternoon with Andrea overlooking Morecambe Bay, as ever. We watched Jim Al Khalili's very clear discussion of issues around time travel. (For Al Khalili on this blog, see here.) (Scroll down.) There are many parallels between this discussion and Poul Anderson's works. Can causality be circular and/or would a Time Patrol be necessary?

Meanwhile, on another current issue, see also the immediately preceding post, Anglesey And Helmuth. If such posts encourage some blog readers to read or reread the works discussed, then they will have achieved one purpose. I had said that I would concurrently reread four Jupiter narratives and have subsequently read to the half way point of ERB's "Skeleton Men of Jupiter." There were warlike green men and more civilized red men on Mars and there are warlike "skeleton men" and more civilized purple men on Jupiter! 

The rapid axial spin of Jupiter generates centrifugal force that counteracts its stronger gravity. There is a breathable oxygen atmosphere beneath the poisonous gases in the upper atmosphere which alone are visible to Terrestrial telescopes. The surface is both heated and lit by many volcanoes! ("Gods of all stars!," to quote James Blish's Okies.)

On this blog, we frequently appreciate Poul Anderson's descriptions of weather and scenery. Here is an extract from ERB's Foreword to "Skeleton Men...":

"Occasionally I also have to inject a little weather and scenery in my deathless classics, two further examples of literary racketeering that I especially deplore in the writings of others. Yet there is something to be said in extenuation of weather and scenery, which, together with adjectives, do much to lighten the burdens of authors and run up their word count."

-Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter Of Mars (London, 1968), p. 71.

OK. ERB's tone is frivolous so our response should not be serious. It is interesting that he picked on this one of the many points that we admire in Anderson.

If Venus and Mars had turned out to be as described in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy, then would ERB have become more literarily respectable, as he does in the Trilogy? I doubt it and I question whether this can be a serious suggestion by Stirling?

ERB's politics: there are good rulers and bad rulers and that's it. The bad rulers are arrogant and cruel. Contrast Poul Anderson's sympathetic treatment of some of his characters that he would have disagreed with politically:

a Communist in The Devil's Game and another in Murder Bound;

the dying moments of the leader of the Hermetian revolution in Mirkheim.

In ERB's The Land That Time Forgot, a villainous character says, "I am an IWW. I hate all American's..." (memory)

(The IWW still exists. One of its official showed up to represent some employees in Lancaster!)

We welcome the glimpses of John Carter's and Dejah Thoris's later lives in the later volumes.

I do not think that we have anything further to say about ERB although I will dutifully persevere until the end of "Skeleton Men..."

Moran

See Wells And Verne. 

Of course the list from Mary Shelley to Poul Anderson and his successors covers the modern sf tradition. Anderson's other literary antecedents are:

the Bible

the Eddas

the Sagas

Saxo Grammaticus

Der Nibelungenlied

a Danish ballad

William Shakespeare

Rudyard Kipling

Arthur Conan Doyle

- and maybe some that I don't know about.

We have noticed the many Holmesian references in Anderson's works, particularly the appearance of a private investigator and his amanuensis in "Time Patrol."

In SM Stirling's The Lords Of Creation, one of the Brittanians is named Colonel Sebastian Moran although their ancestors came to the Sphere pre-Doyle so this is a coincidence although it conveys the ambience of the Brits.

(End of posting for a while. We will walk to Morecambe for a concert and tomorrow will visit Bowness on Windermere. On Tuesday, I will visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. On Wednesday, there will be a solar eclipse here.)

No Horizon

The inner surface of a Dyson sphere has no horizon because it is the inner surface of a sphere. The planet Daedalus has no horizon because atmospheric conditions refract sunlight around the curve of the planet. In both cases, a distant object is not seen because it is too far away but not because it is out of the line of sight. Nevertheless, inhabitants of a Dyson sphere live on the inside of a sphere whereas inhabitants of any planet, including Daedalus, live on the outside.

What else is either similar or dissimilar? Daedalus has been colonized by human beings, including Zacharians, and also by Cynthians and Donarrians, and is in the Patrician System where Imhotep has been colonized by human beings and by land and sea Starkadians. (In The Game Of Empire, we see neither Donarrians nor sea Starkadians but we have seen both in earlier instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History.)

So far, SM Stirling's Dyson sphere seems to have been colonized only by human beings, indeed by types and nationalities that we recognize, but I have read only as far as p. 110 of 203 of The Lords Of Creation. The land area of a Dyson sphere presents immense possibilities (see the combox here) so what else are the American explorers with their EastBloc representative about to find? On this blog, I post while reading so that, on a first reading, I do not know The Shape Of Things To Come, to use a phrase. But the remaining 93 pages will soon disappear below the temporal horizon. How long have we been reading interesting narratives? How long will be continue to? What will come next?

(There are many books called Lords... or The Lords... Of Creation.)

York And Lancaster

Some of Poul Anderson's characters visit York and this blog is written in Lancaster. These are the two "Roses" cities.

In York yesterday, we:

visited the Minster;

visited the home of a Catholic martyr, which is now a chapel;

bought Yorkshire curd tart;

bought hand-made wooden kitchen cutlery from a Ukrainian market stall holder;

had a good time.

We are still reading SM Stirling's The Lords Of Creation for the first time.

Comparing ERB

This blog focuses on Poul Anderson and refers to other imaginative sf writers. It contends that:

Anderson succeeds but also surpasses HG Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Robert Heinlein;

Anderson's works should be filmed but only if it can be done very well;

James Blish should be read also;

SM Stirling is a worthy successor of Anderson, particularly in the sub-genre of alternative histories;

a series, such as several by Anderson, can become a single, sometimes more elaborate, story behind the stories (see here).

Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) is comparable in imagination although not in literary quality. He is a persistent presence in popular consciousness if only because of Tarzan and, to a lesser extent, John Carter, just as Lewis Carroll is persistently present because of Alice in Wonderland. (Narnia, if not as widely recognized, is certainly up there.)

We have found a single ERBian allusion in one of Anderson's works whereas Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy is retro-sf explicitly inspired by ERB and other pulp writers.

There could be an anthology of stories set on Jupiter:

"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson

"Desertion" by Clifford Simak (from City)

"Bridge" by James Blish (from Cities In Flight)

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by ERB (from John Carter Of Mars)

James Blish could not understand why I would include the ERB story. For completeness, for nostalgia and for the absurdity of ERB's scientific explanation of human life on the Jovian surface.

ERB's Martian series is interestingly elaborate:

Volumes

I-III: narrated by Carter.

IV: Carter's son.

V: Carter's daughter.

VI: the second Earthman on Mars, Ulysses Paxton.

VII: a Martian warrior whose story is transmitted to Earth by Paxton on the Gridley Wave which is also used to communicate with Pelucidar which is at the Earth's Core and is visited by Tarzan!

X: a second Martian warrior whose story is transmitted as above.

VIII, IX and XI: narrated by Carter, featuring his granddaughter and trips to a Martian moon and Jupiter.

Also:

four novels and one novelette about Carson Napier who aims for Mars but crash-lands on Venus;

two novelettes about a soldier who travels to the extra-solar planet, Poloda, in the same way that Carter had travelled to Mars;

a future history trilogy in which a spaceship launched from Earth towards Carter's Mars is sabotaged and crash-lands on the Moon, causing a Lunar invasion of Earth;

information, in one Martian book, that there are also Mercurians.

But it all sounds better than it reads, I think.

(We are tired from a day-trip to York and you are lucky to receive this post which I mentally drafted on the return journey!)

Understanding Of Languages

When we read an English-language novel set in France, we understand that the characters converse in French even though we read their dialogue in English. How else can it be done?

In Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry and The Game Of Empire, Merseians on Merseia, and also in the second case in a spaceship, converse in Eriau but, of course, we read their conversations in English. In Anderson's The People Of The Wind, Ythrians on Avalon and in space converse in Planha while we read English. Time Patrol agents converse in Temporal...

I am not sure how it can be done but I think that authors need to help their readers to reflect on linguistic differences. In an English-language novel (title and author's name forgotten), a Frenchman says not that "everyone" comes into town on a Saturday but that "all the world" comes into town on a Saturday. "All the world" is a literal translation of the phrase, "tout le monde," which the French use when we say "everyone." There must be other similar ways of reminding a reader that another language is being spoken. This requires some knowledge of languages but it would be good if all of us had some of that!

See also:

Reading Other Languages

The Great Art

Languages

When a Marine swears in French, a Dyson Sphere native asks:

"'Vow parlass Fransay?'"

-SM Stirling, The Lords Of Creation (Rockville, Maryland, July 2025), CHAPTER THREE, p. 40.

Contact!

SM Stirling is an author who displays knowledge and understanding of languages.

(A European visitor to London, frustrated by his inability to communicate at a reception desk, muttered to himself, "Ili ne komprenas min kaj mi ne komprenas ilin!" One receptionist responded, "Ah, mi komprenas!" because she did know some Esperanto. An unfortunately rare occurrence.)

Comprehensiveness And Beyond

In his comprehensiveness as an sf writer, Poul Anderson addressed:

telepathy

teleportation

mutants

longevity

immortality

scientifically rationalized magic

interplanetary exploration

slower-than-light interstellar travel

a generation ship

several scientific rationalizations of faster-than-light travel

several versions of Martians

other aliens

extraterrestrial environments, ecologies and evolutions

cosmological sf

eight future histories, including Heinleinian and Stapledonian models

time travel, with both paradoxes

alternative histories

the Frankenstein question ("Is it right to create human beings?")

robots

conscious artificial intelligence

a predictive science of society

future warfare

dystopian futures

post-nuclear-war Earth

space opera

excellent contributions to several other authors' series

- but not artifacts larger than planets, as in:

the Ringworld Tetralogy and "Bigger Than Worlds" by Larry Niven

the Orbitsville Trilogy

the Bowl Of Heaven Trilogy by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

The Lords Of Creation by SM Stirling

And now we know the answer to an earlier question:

CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is set on Mars, Venus and Earth;

SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation Trilogy is set on Venus and Mars and in a Dyson Sphere. 

Merseians And Martians

My mind has been elsewhere for most of today as my body will be elsewhere on Friday this week with a day trip to York. 

Meanwhile, we cannot really compare Merseians with Martians because there is only one fictional race of Merseians whereas there are no one knows how many fictional races of Martians. Poul Anderson's Merseians, at least those of the Roidhunate, like HG Wells' Martians, want to conquer Earth whereas Ray Bradbury's Martians are almost entirely wiped out by chicken pox brought from Earth - just as Wells' Martian invaders are killed by Terrestrial microbes - while at the same (in a different timeline) CS Lewis' Martians are protected from Terrestrial evil by superior beings in the Solar System. What could be more different? And those are just three of the most prominent examples.

The comparison that I have in mind here is with SM Stirling's Martians. Merseians are multicultural. See information about Cnif hu Vanden here and particularly here. By contrast, Stirling's Martians have been monocultural throughout a very long history and this makes it hard to tell how much of their psychology is genetic as opposed to cultural. Is a monocultural species easier to write about or must the author work harder to keep it consistent? As a mere reader, I can only guess.

Thank you all for so many page views for a day when this is the first post.

Grand Canal

There is a Grand Canal in Venice and in China and in a few other places. 

There are at least two on (different fictional versions of) Mars:

Rhysling mentions the Grand Canal in Robert Heinlein's Future History;

another Grand Canal surrounds Mons Olympus in SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings.

Poul Anderson has a lot of Martians but maybe not any canals? 

For James Blish on Martian canals, see Versions Of Mars.

CS Lewis said that he put "canals" on his fictional Mars because "...they are part of the popular tradition." (See here.) However, Lewis' "canals" are deep inhabited river valleys, not artefacts. 

It is appropriate that a fictional Mars should have a Grand Canal and that in fact there are at least two. Fictional Mars is a major part of our heritage.

Planetary Princesses

Edgar Rice Burroughs

John Carter marries a princess on Mars.

Carson Napier marries a princess on Venus.

Julian V has a love affair with a princess on the Moon.

SM Stirling

Marc Vitrac marries a "...high priestess-cum-princess..." (In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, CHAPTER SIX, p. 148) on Venus.

Jeremy Wainman has an affair with the Martian woman who is:

"'...rightfully Emperor and King Beneath the Mountain, holding and swaying the Real World. Or at the very least, the Designated Successor.'"

-ibid.,  CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 159.

(I have read this book but forgotten its ending and am rereading it but have not reached the end.)

Poul Anderson

Dominic Flandry has an affair with Queen Gunli on Schotha. 

Historical Connections

In terms of film adaptations, I would have preferred The Iliad before The Odyssey and The Aeneid after it. Virgil's Aeneid, presenting Aeneas from Troy as an ancestor of Romulus, founder of Rome, and prophesying an endless empire for the eternal city, connects with:

(i) Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series which shows -

an alternative outcome of the second war between Rome and Carthage;

a potential alternative outcome of the Northern Revolt in the Roman Empire;

Goths rejecting or responding to Roman/Christian influence;

Britain after Roman withdrawal;

(ii) Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy about the decline of the Western Roman Empire;

(iii) Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, set in the Eastern Roman Empire;

(iv) SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series about an alternative Roman Empire;

(v) Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization which features an eventual Terran Empire.

See also the blog search result for "Ilion."

My mind boggles!

Of course, the Aeneid connects with much more, e.g., Dante's Inferno, but it is the works by the Andersons and Stirling that mostly concern us here.

A Real Mars?

SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings reads as if it is about a real Mars (not our real one, of course!) which other versions merely hint at. That is what writers of fiction try to do. CS Lewis tells us, quite legitimately, that HG Wells' Martians are very different from the real Martians... My other general observations are, first, that I strongly dislike Stirling's Martians' attitudes to life and to each other and, secondly, that I still find them rather complicated and convoluted to read about but that last point just means that I need to persevere as a reader.

And the relevance of all this to Poul Anderson is that, both for comparative purposes and also for their own sakes, Anderson presents more fictional Martians than any other sf writer, even Heinlein.

In a short post, and without initially intending to, we have referred to no less than Stirling, Lewis, Wells, Anderson and Heinlein - and will now stop short of listing others especially at this time of night!

Good night or whatever time of day it may be where you are now.