Poul Anderson's Series

Does anyone know how many series Poul Anderson wrote?

The Wikipedia Poul Anderson bibliography lists:

Hoka (with Gordon R. Dickson)

The Psychotechnic League (which I call the Psychotechnic History)

Tomorrow's Children, collected as Twilight World

The Technic History

Time Patrol

History of Rustum

Maurai and Kith (giving the wrong impression that these are one series)

Harvest of Stars

The King of Ys (with Karen Anderson)

Operation Otherworld

The Last Viking

The Trygve Yamamura Trilogy (not named as such)

This bibliography lists Tales Of The Flying Mountains as a collection although not as a collected series.

It does not mention:

connections between Three Hearts And Three Lions, A Midsummer Tempest, Operation Otherworld and two "Old Phoenix" short stories;

the three Wing Alak stories;

a few other connections between works.

For earlier posts on series, see here.

Early Space Travel?

In our childhoods - I refer to people of a certain age - , sf writers envisaged, barring a nuclear war, early space travel in the late twentieth century and routine interplanetary travel in the twenty-first century. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the first rocket to the Moon is in 1978 and the The Green Hills Of Earth stories are all set around 2000. Larry Niven's Known Space future history - a bit later than my childhood - presents interplanetary exploration in the last quarter of the twentieth century. 

In Poul Anderson's Maurai future history, the War of Judgment - a version of what we call World War III - delays space travel for centuries whereas, in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Mars and Venus are colonized in the immediate aftermath of WWIII and, in the same author's Twilight World, it is mutants resulting from the radiation of World War III that go to Mars. Thus, after all, nuclear war and space travel were not necessarily incompatible. 

But what I am leading up to is: what has meanwhile happened on Earth Real? A later Anderson future history series has to acknowledge that:

"The human space endeavor came near dying soon after it was born."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 19, p. 234.

And it is a private enterprise that restarts it:

"...Fireball Enterprises kindled fresh vitality..." (ibid.)

Any future history always reflects the time in which it is written even if its opening instalment is set in a further future. 

In less than half an hour, I will watch TV news to find out whether Artemis II launched today.

Some Short Future Histories

Future histories differ in length. A long future history series is multi-themed, dealing only with whatever happens in the future, whereas a shorter series can have a single theme with a definite conclusion. Although Poul Anderson's Twilight World is not listed as one of his future histories, it is a collected series covering more than one generation and concluding in a further future. Its single theme is that World War III causes so many mutations that some are beneficial and even enable subsequent generations to colonize other planets so that the outer Solar System is inhabited after Earth has become uninhabitable. Without that War, would the race have survived?

James Blish's The Seedling Stars is a single volume in four parts, originally five stories, about the single theme of pantropy, the science of adapting human beings to other planetary environments. It conclusion is that, when Adapted Men have filled the galaxy, Earth has changed so much that it is colonized by Adapted Men.

Twilight World and The Seedling Stars both address changes to the human form and extraterrestrial colonization.

Anderson's Maurai And Kith is a collection of only three Maurai stories and two Kith stories although later a third story was added to the Kith series and a long novel to both series. The theme of the Maurai Federation series is that, after a nuclear war, seafaring people of the Southern Hemisphere become the world power. We get a sense of Poul Anderson exploring every possibility.

James Blish's Okie series was complete as four stories in one volume. However, Blish added a prequel, a juvenile novel and a sequel. Okie culture ends in Volume III and the universe ends in Volume IV.

Larry Niven's Known Space is a long future history series with a definite ending. Because human beings are artificially selected for the inheritable psychic power of luck, Known Space and the Thousand Worlds become utopian societies of lucky people about whom Niven becomes unable to write any more stories! As Fran Cobden remarked, "...an amazing idea!"

Other short future histories:

The Moon Maid by ERB (a sequel to John Carter);

City by Clifford Simak;

Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand by Brian Aldiss.

The Outer Solar System

Colonizing The Outer Solar System By Terraforming, Adaptation Or Domes

Last And First Men by Olaf Stapledon

Farmer In The Sky by Robert Heinlein 

Three Worlds To Conquer and Twilight World by Poul Anderson

The Seedling Stars by James Blish

Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke

Exploring The Jovian Surface

"Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (John Carter)

"Desertion" by Clifford Simak (City)

"Bridge" by James Blish (Cities In Flight)

"Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson (a one-off)

ERBian physics make it possible for human beings to live on Jupiter.

We are pleased to find our man, Anderson, three times on two lists.

Quick breakfast post before visiting the lurker above the Old Pier Bookshop.

North American Union And Diamond Dust

Twilight World And Maurai informs us that:

"In Twilight World, the remnants of the United States and Canada merge as the North American Union..."

Both Rapid Technological Advances And Geopolitics and Alaric Wayne II refer to that same North American Union.

In North American Future History, the US and Canada amalgamate as the North American Federation.

In The Maurai Period, there is a North West Union.

In Pun And Gun, a North American Intelligence officer interrogates a rebel asterite.

In Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast, the North American Union is one part of Earth which is the leading planet in the Federated Community of Civilizations, usually referred to as the Federation.

Again, we find terminologies common to different fictional futures.

While searching for the North America in Tales Of The Flying Mountains, we find yet another description of the Milky Way:

"...the Milky Way girdled the universe with diamond dust..."

-Poul Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains (New York, 1984), p. 104.

Post-Nuclear War Futures

In the 1960's, we knew of two kinds of fictional futures:

the majority version, spaceships;

a minority version, nuclear war aftermath.

More recently, it has been argued that an all-out nuclear exchange would generate a Nuclear Winter - with no aftermath.

Poul Anderson covers both options, i.e., spaceships and nuclear aftermath - but not Nuclear Winter.

Anderson's Post-Nuclear Wars Futures

The Psychotechnic History

The Maurai History

Vault Of The Ages

Twilight World

Shield

some short stories

Why dredge this up at this time of knight? Because, in our late night other reading, we are rereading Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns which includes the effects of a single electromagnetic pulse on the Western hemisphere - and this explains that typo of "knight" instead of "night."

Good Knight.

A Changed World

Brain Wave (originally THE ESCAPE), 12.

In every detail, Poul Anderson demonstrates that his characters live in a changed world. 

Peter Corinth calculates intranuclear stresses in a faster than light drive field simultaneously with the construction of the hull, engine, armour, doors, ports and controls of the first interstellar spaceship, all designed as an unprecedented piece of precision engineering.

The Institute works nonstop because its many liberated minds now have unimaginable horizons. The future belongs to the young, strong, purposeful and balanced technicians whereas Corinth feels exhausted at thirty-three. He and Helga are now so perceptive that they cannot conceal their feelings for each other and do not try. 

Thin, sharp air smells of autumn and sea. Dead leaves swirl. Frost has come. That is not new, of course, although it is standard Andersonian description, but what is new is that New York streets are half empty. Pedestrians and cars are rare. Skyscrapers are dark.

Roger's Cafe is:

"'A new night club for the new man.'" (p. 106)

Inside, there is a blue twilight. Corinth immediately deduces the new fluorescence principle used. Tables are spaced farther apart than formerly and are arranged in a spiral that minimizes distances to be walked by waiters. However, the waiter is a wheeled machine that extends slate and stylus for orders.

An orchestra including some previously famous musicians plays both old and new instruments to a now more appreciative audience. The new ability to see each other more clearly has eliminated former social distinctions. Corinth and Helga communicate with looks, gestures and very few words. 

He remembers liking:

"Ah, Love, could thou and I with Fate conspire -" (p. 110)

- but now sees it as childish.

Chronologies

Any work of fiction holds a chronological position within its author's career. Thus, "Tomorrow's Children" (1947) was Poul Anderson's first published story, I think. (I regularly get historical or numerical details like this wrong.) Secondly, a story can have a different kind of chronological position as an instalment within a series. Thus, "Tomorrow's Children" became the first part of Twilight World. (Please correct me if I am going wrong here.)

Brian Aldiss' 1976 Introduction to Anderson's Brain Wave describes the work as "...this first novel..." (p. 7) However, Vault Of The Ages (1952) and Three Hearts And Three Lions (1953) preceded Brain Wave (1954). (I am assuming here that I got all these dates right when I compiled Significant Dates but I might check on that.)

Thus, we might say that Vault Of The Ages preceded Anderson's Technic History in the first kind of chronological order although not in the second kind. However, "Tiger By The Tail," (1951) "Honorable Enemies" (1951) and "Sargasso of Lost Starships" (1951) all preceded Vault Of The Ages and were later incorporated into the eventual Technic History. "Significant Dates," assuming that its dates are accurate, shows how various works and series interpenetrate in the first chronological sense. The novels and stories that separate into distinct series are parts of a single creative process.

Tuesday afternoon will be taken up with my cataract operation and the weekend after next will be spent in London in the cause of greater understanding of current conflicts.

Fair winds forever.

Since 1956

Poul Anderson has been with me personally since some time in the 1960's. I remember reading Twilight World while at boarding school in the Republic of Ireland, 1960-'67. In 1956, when the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," was published, I started to attend a boarding school in Scotland and knew nothing of Anderson as yet although I did read Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones while in Scotland. Over a much longer period, I have become very conscious of connections between Heinlein's Future History, Heinlein's juveniles, including Starman Jones, and Anderson's works.

When we reread such works, especially after very long intervals, they are not the same because we are not. I used to be satisfied if the characters had travelled in spaceships through the Solar System or to other planetary systems. Now considerably more than that is necessary. Anderson conveys some sense of what it is like to be an Ythrian or a Merseian or to be a human being in regular contact with other intelligent species. Merseians, who began as space opera villains, became a credible species with diverse cultures and languages and not every single one of them a villain - obviously.

The People Of The Wind about human beings and Ythrians seems to be inexhaustible in descriptive details and characterization although we approach its climax yet again.

Mutations In Two Timelines

This book cover combines two sf ideas: mutants approach a spaceship. 

The front cover blurb proclaims:

"An intensely gripping and imaginative novel of tomorrow's children."

-Poul Anderson, Twilight World (London, May 1964), front cover.

(I do not mean that the author of the novel wrote the cover blurb for this edition but how else am I supposed to write the reference?)

A nuclear war generates many human mutations. Some are beneficial and colonize the Solar System before Earth becomes uninhabitable. Millennia later, a Martian member of an archaeological expedition to Earth feels:

"'... the wind gibing at me, there on that old broken planet...'" (EPILOGUE, p. 127)

Andersonian winds always comment somehow.

In James Blish's Black Easter, Armageddon includes World War III. In the sequel, The Day After Judgement, a US military scientific advisor speculates:

control of the environment stopped natural selection for mankind;

furthermore, we even preserve our bad genes;

therefore, mutation is the only remaining evolutionary pressure;

artificial radioactivity and fallout help this process.

(He does not yet know that the demon fortress of Dis has been raised to the Earth's surface in Death Valley where it will be attacked by the Strategic Air Command. The heavenly host has fallen but the war continues.)

Some Familiar Ideas

Fury.

Human beings are living on Venus because:

"Science had perfected interplanetary travel and had destroyed Earth..."

-INTRODUCTION, p.5.

Sf futures in which Earth, or at least life on it, has been destroyed but human beings survive elsewhere:

After Doomsday by Poul Anderson;

a short story by John Wyndham which I have seen televised although I do not know the title!

(We often remember ideas from sf stories without remembering titles or authors. CS Lewis thanked unknown authors for ideas - and had an oceanic Venus.)

The surface of Venus is going through the "fury" of its Jurassic so people live under domes on the bottom of shallow seas. We need hardly list authors, including Poul Anderson, who imagined seas on Venus or indeed authors, including Anderson, who imagined a bone dry Venus. A Venus at an earlier stage of evolution is also a familiar idea although it did not occur to me in the 1960's to question whether planetary evolutions should parallel each other. In those days, not being scientifically oriented, I just accepted whatever ideas any given author presented.

There are mutants with a life-expectancy of two to seven hundred years. We have recently discussed works by Heinlein, Anderson and Blish in which such longevity exists. But why should such a mutation have occurred at the time when human beings have had to migrate to Venus? Again, "mutant" was one of those ideas that sf authors could arbitrarily draw upon.

Addendum: The mutations were caused by radiation on Earth. See also Poul Anderson, Twilight World.

Future Historical Culminations And Human Changes

Given enough time, either natural or artificial selection will change humanity: one example from James Blish and four from Poul Anderson.

Blish

In The Seedling Stars, Book Four, "Watershed," Adapted Men have spread through the galaxy and now colonize a changed Earth.

Anderson

In "The Chapter Ends," humanity evacuates Earth and the Galactic periphery because the human way of mentally controlling cosmic energy interferes with the way used by inhabitants of gas giants. 

In "The Horn of Time the Hunter," colonists of an extrasolar planet have become aquatic.

In Twilight World, Epilogue, descendants of post-World War III mutants terraform outer satellites and reclaim Earth.

In "Starfog," a human planetary population has adapted to a much higher radiation level than their Terrestrial ancestors and has become a different species.

Larry Niven

In "Safe at Any Speed," if we can take this seriously, the whole population has inherited genes for good luck - so that interesting stories have become impossible to write: end of the Known Space future history series.

Olaf Stapledon

In Last And First Men, eighteen human species, some of them artificial, inhabit Earth, Venus and Neptune.

White Americans And Pilgrims

Poul Anderson, "The Snows of Ganymede" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 141-214.

The White American Church:

arose during the lunatic years in the later twentieth century;

became popular in the southern states of the former US;

was a reaction against social troubles and science;

was backed by some politicians but, unlike Robert Heinlein's Angels of the Lord, did not win political power, at least not on Earth;

colonized Ganymede and wants to pay the Planetary Engineers to terraform Ganymede and Callisto.

Terraforming Jovian moons links the White Americans to characters in Anderson's Twilight World, Heinlein's Farmer In The Sky and James Blish's The Seedling Stars.

The Pilgrim Church, which had colonized Mars in "Un-Man," is an attempt to return to an imagined past whereas the White Americans try to leap forward to an imaginary millennium. Future religions are as diverse as past ones.

On the next street to ours, an entirely black church meets on Sundays in hired premises but I have no reason to believe that they are either millennarians or supremacists. That is not the nearest place of worship to where we live because there is a mosque at the end of our street. Everything in the present is a potential seed of the future. Any current religious group might conceivably form a government or colonize Ganymede in the next century.

Post-Nuclear War Timelines

Poul Anderson's main fictional futures set after a nuclear war:

the Psychotechnic History

the Maurai History

Twilight World (almost a future history)

Vault Of The Ages

Shield

The Psychotechnic History begins in the immediate aftermath of World War III. Are we living in the prelude to it? If so, then we need to heed this warning:

"...in strictly pragmatic terms, the early atomic era was the best time to resolve East-West rivalry; the crude weapons of that day could not sterilize Earth."

-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League (Riverdale, NY, October 2017), p. 3.

Or might the powers that be escalate local conflicts into a third global conflict while maintaining their tacit agreement not to deploy nukes? Thus, replay WWII: invade Poland, occupy France, besiege Britain, draw in the Americans, but without nuking anyone?

The Psychotechnic History includes "'What if World War III had not happened'?' fiction. Thus, a fictional timeline tangentially comments on the Earth Real timeline.

Futures

In some sf, like Poul Anderson's Technic History and The Star Fox, Earth becomes unified and deals with other intelligent species. Gunnar Heim's crew includes a Hungarian and a Naqsan. We have just barely started on the first part of this process. The guy on the supermarket checkout spoke English with an accent so I asked whether he was Polish and learned that he was Bulgarian. I affirmed that we are all British here.

Some other sf, like Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Maurai History, Twilight World and Vault Of The Ages, shows a long recovery from nuclear war. We are also taking some steps in that direction! I need hardly elaborate.

In the Technic History, Ythrians of the New Faith see the shadow of God the Hunter across the future. This is, figuratively, the case for each of us as an individual but hopefully not for the planet or the species any time soon.

Righteous Men

Gallicenae, 11, 2.

Rufinus of the Bacaudae expounds to Gratillonius. Men meet by twilight. Wanderers preach sedition:

"The Empire had rotted to worthlessness... the fat grew fatter, the powerful grew ever more overbearing. Had not Christ Himself denounced the rich? Was not the hour overpast to humble them and take back what they had wrung from the working poor? The Last Day drew nigh, Antichrist walked the world; your sacred duty was to resist him. Righteous men had sworn themselves to a brotherhood, the Bacaudae, the Valiant..." (p. 57)

They rob the rich and are supported by some serfs and freeholders.

Yes! The Andersons allow their character to proclaim revolution convincingly although Gratillonius remains sceptical of the difference between Bacaudae and bandits.

The two men part but Rufinus has been inserted into the narrative for a reason.

(This is probably the last post until next week.) 

Important But Improbable

"...the people in the succeeding civilization are interested in the events that led to them, even if that history was most improbable, just as we are extremely interested in knowing the steps that led to the evolution of Homo sapiens, even though those steps were exceedingly improbable."

-The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 135.

"'...I do not blandly consider that all worked out for the best. Had it not been for that damned war and its aftermath, we might stand here amidst flowering gardens and know that our people had already reached the stars.'

"'We would not exist,' said Orna prosaically.

"Danivar laughed. 'True. The trend of events must ever seem toward the best, since it is toward the one observing the trend.'"

-Poul Anderson, Twilight World (London, 1984), Epilogue, p. 179.

The evolution that led to us is important to us but that does not make it inevitable and evidence shows that it was extremely improbable. We are back in Time Patrol territory.

Wars In Different Worlds

The War Of Two Worlds.

These Martians are humanoid, differing from Terrestrials only in details like height, colouration and number of fingers. Contrast Wells' version. It is plausible that this particular set of Andersonian Martians would be nicknamed "Marshies." (I, p. 10) Will we ever interact with extra-terrestrials in the same sort of way as we interact with each other: liking them, hating them, giving them nicknames etc? I doubt it but am prepared to be proved wrong at any time by a spaceship arriving in the Solar System.

The War Of Two Worlds, like Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Twilight World, begins among post-war ruins: two versions of World War III and the first war between worlds. Unfortunately, we currently see such ruins on TV news. That war has just passed its first anniversary. A rich world destroys thousands of lives and immense wealth.

In Manhattan, because there is no other means of transport, Arnfeld walks past gaunt buildings, empty windows, gaping doorways and shuffling pedestrians and through a raw, whimpering wind. Of course this wind whimpers. 

In Anderson's Technic History, Earth avoids World War III but suffers the Chaos now and is sacked during the Troubles and again during the Long Night. We see the ruins during the Troubles. Some scenes are common to many timelines.

Future History Culminations

We are working our way back to Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories but first we will survey the field as far as I know it.

Culminations

Robert Heinlein's Future History: resolution of social conflicts and beginning of interstellar travel.

Heinlein's Juvenile Future History: beginning of interstellar travel.

Asimov: extragalactic threat.

James Blish's Cities in Flight: new creations.

Blish's The Seedling Stars: colonization of a changed Earth by Adapted Men.

Anderson's Flying Mountains: beginning of interstellar travel.

Anderson's Twilight World: colonization of the outer Solar System.

Larry Niven's Known Space: a society so utopian that Niven cannot write about it.

Pournelle: First Contact.

I know that there are more but my knowledge has its limits.

Ganymede

"Heinlein seems to have a particular fondness for Ganymede: one of the young fellows in Space Cadet was a Ganymedean colonist, the hero of Between Planets was born in a ship that was on its way to Ganymede; Farmer in the Sky is about the settling of Ganymede."

-Alexei Panshin, Heinlein In Dimension (Chicago, 1968), III, 5, p. 58.

(Space Cadet and Farmer in the Sky, but not Between Planets, belong in Heinlein's Juvenile Future History together with Red Planet, The Rolling Stones and Time For The Stars.)

In James Blish's The Seedling Stars, Ganymede is not terraformed but colonized by Adapted Men.

In Poul Anderson's Three Worlds To Conquer, there is a Ganymedean base for communication with Jovians. In Anderson's Flandry series, there is a Ganymedean base for visits to Jupiter. In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Planetary Engineers survey Ganymede to determine whether it can be terraformed. In Anderson's Twilight World, Epilogue, Ganymede is being terraformed.

Another parallel with Blish is that, in Twilight World, Homo Superior will restore the Terrestrial ecology and, in The Seedling Stars, Adapted Men will recolonize Earth.

A Planetary Engineer says that the Uranian moons are too far away to colonize yet, in Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men, a later human species colonizes Neptune albeit in a changed Solar System.

See previous blog references to Ganymede. (Scroll down.)