Diversity And Hallowe'en

We anticipate the diversity of Poul Anderson's Terran Empire - although I do not really expect anything like that interstellar civilization to come to pass. (Are FTL and multiple extraterrestrials going to happen?) My recent and current inter-faith dialogues comprise those with:

a woman Methodist minister last weekend;

a Muslim layman today;

Soto Zen Buddhist monks tomorrow;

Fortuna-devotee, Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop, this Tuesday.

We are well prepared for Hallowe'en visitors. A lit pumpkin head outside the front door invites them to call. Each will receive a packet of crisps, a bar of chocolate and a glow-stick/bracelet. Anything not handed out will be kept for Christmas. Three young Asian boys have just called. I want to write one more post after this one, then get back to rereading Ian Fleming who is an extremely underrated good writer. He needs a new series of films based exactly on what he wrote - just as Poul Anderson needs a first-time-ever series of films based on exactly what he wrote. 

Graphic adaptations of Time Patrol and "Flight to Forever" could be visually spectacular.

Another three at the door. I also have a journal of current political analysis to read. Let me try to wind up this post now.

The Whole Technic History

Recent posts have shown (no surprise) that Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization divides into two main parts and that each of these parts can be analyzed almost, although not completely, on a tripartite basis. Thus:

(i) League

The People Of The Wind, in the early Imperial period

Earth Book

(ii) Young, Captain and Admiral Flandry in the later Imperial period.

The Earth Book covers some, although not all, of a pre-League period and some, although not all, of an intermediate period. Flandry has his contemporaries and his successors. Indeed, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, is Flandry's Legacy, covering both his later life and three post-Imperial periods:

Long Night;

Allied Planets;

Commonalty.

And now we have referred, however briefly or tangentially, to the entire contents of the Technic History.

Some might call this obsession but I call it fascination. (We alternate between referring to Saga and pre-Saga reading orders.)

A Dynamic Future History

(There will be little or nothing in this post that has not been said before on this blog but for me it is a major part of appreciating Poul Anderson and certainly bears repetition.)

A series is by its nature linear. Poul Anderson's Technic History is not only linear but also partly dynamic which is a very strange thing for a series to be, even partially. This partial dynamism is achieved in four stages:

(i) A linear tetralogy (two collections and two novels) about the Polesotechnic League reaching a definite conclusion in Mirkheim.

(ii) A single novel, The People Of The Wind, set centuries later in the period of the early Terran Empire and focusing on the human-Ythrian colony planet, Avalon.

(iii) An omnibus collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which perfectly synthesizes (i) and (ii). Thus:

the Earth Book is published on Avalon shortly after the events of (ii);

the twelve collected installments are introduced by an Avalonian Ythrian, Hloch;

five of the installments feature or involve human-Ythrian interactions;

eight installments not only are set during the League period but also do an excellent "now it can be told" operation on matters that had been mentioned but not fully explained in (i).

The Earth Book is both the fifth League volume and the second Ythrian volume.

(iv) The seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga rearranges all the installments of the Technic History into chronological order of fictional events so that stories that are set earlier are now read earlier. However, Hloch's introductions to the twelve installments that had been in the Earth Book are retained so that, e.g., Hloch now refers to the Terran War on Avalon not immediately after we have read about it but long before we are due to read about it. We know that we are reading a complicated and multi-faceted fictional history and will have to wait before every passing reference is clarified. The entire series should be read in full at least twice, first in pre-Saga order, then in the Saga.

And I will probably say this all again some time. But it is a unique future history series.

A Time Travel Series And A Future History Series

To summarize many previous posts, my two main interests in sf are time travel and future histories. Poul Anderson excels at both and combines them in There Will Be Time which might, on that account, be regarded as his culminating volume except that his canon culminates several times. If we were to take just one Anderson volume onto a desert island, should it be:

Time Patrol, which collects the entire Time Patrol series excluding only the long novel, The Shield Of Time, -

- or:

The Earth Book Of Stormgate, which "spans, illuminates and completes" the first main section of Anderson's longest and most detailed future history series, the History of Technic Civilization?

For many years, I would have said Time Patrol but I now favour the Earth Book because of its more complicated structure and double-layered narrative. The twelve collected installments, including one novel, take us from First Contact with Ythri during the first Grand Survey to the human-Ythrian colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon. Thus, they begin before and end after the entire Solar Commonwealth-Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History, which they also incorporate. Hloch's twelve introductions and single afterword transport his readers even further into the future, into the early Terran Empire period and the aftermath of the Terran-Ythrian War which is recounted in the Earth Book's companion volume, The People Of The Wind.

The Earth Book is followed by the Young Flandry Trilogy if read as a discrete volume or by "The Star Plunderer," about the Founder of the Terran Empire, when its contents are incorporated into The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III (of VII). Thus, there are two alternative but equally valid reading orders.

The Earth Book is the kind of detailed future history series that Robert Heinlein had envisaged when he began to write the original Future History which inspired Anderson's Psychotechnic History.  

Oppressive Conditions

"The Pugilist."

The bodily details of how Dowling has been transformed into a human weapon are distasteful. This had put me off rereading the story but I had forgotten every other detail.

Dowling, now a treble agent, is in the back of an enclosed car with three other Decaturists. There is a paragraph of four sentences that does not advance the action. However, these sentences are part of the text because, in them, Dowling's physical circumstances exactly match the restrictions placed on him by the oppressive society that he unfortunately lives in:

"Wind hooted around the shell. A slight vibration thrummed through my bones. The overhead light was singularly bleak. The big man on my left and the small man on my right crowded me." (p. 110)

Hooting wind.

Intrusive vibration.

Bleakness.

Crowding.

Unpleasant.

The Wind Shouted Too

 

Poul Anderson, "The Pugilist" IN Anderson, Conflicts (New York, August, 1983), pp. 89-127.

The opening sentence:

"They hadn't risked putting me in the base hospital or any other regular medical facility." (p. 89)

First person narration plus this guy is dangerous and in a military setting.

There is a war on. Although they are in the US, the narrator's wife works in a co-op and a Recreation Bureau has to ok its employees vacationing at Lake Pillsbury.

A guard has a stunner - a futuristic weapon, I think? The regeneration techniques that the narrator mentions are certainly futuristic.

This guy has been:

"'...charged with treasonable conspiracy against the People's Republic of the United States...'" (p. 92)

- not just individual treason like the narrator of "High Treason."

That phrase, "People's Republic...," is used literally, not sarcastically or ironically.

The narrator's wife, Bonnie, writes to him as John Reed but a political officer addresses him as Colonel Dowling. All will be made clear, no doubt.

The US and the Soviet Union are at war against a Sino-Japanese alliance.

Somewhere during the changes that have happened, the narrator's grandfather shouted with:

"...autumn sumac a shout of red behind him, and the wind shouted too, till I imagined old bugles blowing again at Valley Forge and Shiloh and Omaha Beach. Maybe that was when I first thought I might make the army a career." (p. 94)

(A man shouts so the wind does: Andersonian pathetic fallacy.)

OK? I'm not. We understand some of what is happening but not all of it yet.

War In Poul Anderson's Technic History

"Margin of Profit"

Fighting pirates. Could have become a war.

"A Sun Invisible"

Invasion of a planetary system.

The Man Who Counts

War on Diomedes.

"Hiding Place"

Action against pirates.

Mirkheim

The Babur War. First civil war in the Polesotechnic League.

"The Star Plunder"

A slave revolt.

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

Imperial annexation of Ansa just completed, then a conflict in the Black Nebula.

The People Of The Wind

The war between the Terran Empire and the Domain of Ythri.

Ensign Flandry

Not a war but a battle near Starkad.

The Rebel Worlds

The McCormac Rebellion in the Terran Empire.

"Outpost of Empire"

War against the Empire on Freehold.

The Day Of Their Return

A war of religion narrowly averted.

"Tiger by the Tail"

Flandry foments war in the Scothani Empire.

"The Game of Glory"

Annexation of Brae.

"A Message in Secret"

Conflict on Altai.

"Hunters of the Sky Cave"

The Ardazhiro occupy Vixen while Terrans and Merseians fight elsewhere.

The Game Of Empire

The Magnusson Rebellion.

"A Tragedy of Errors"

Interstellar conflicts after the Empire.

A Martian And Wind On The Moon

"Strange Bedfellows."

First, that wind. Sevigny searches for two men who are missing after a Lunar volcanic eruption:

"He saw no human figures. The wind squealed faintly through the volcano roar." (p. 171)

Wind on the Moon? Yes, the Moon is being terraformed and now has a thickening atmosphere. A squealing wind is not a good omen that the men will be found and rescued.

R'ku, the tall mantis-like Martian, who moves by springing or jumping, has a narrow insectoidal face with large, unblinking, unhuman, turquoise eyes. He is yet another of Poul Anderson's many Martians. Anderson presents more intelligent Martian species than either Wells or Heinlein.

I have not got fully back into rereading this story yet. It can be a wrench to disengage from one fictional scenario, then to plunge straight into a completely different one, especially when the second narrative starts in the middle of the action and we have to pick up not only on what is going on but also on all the background stuff. Men are dying while interacting with a Martian on a changing Moon and one of the surviving men is from Venus and obviously there is going to be a lot more than that.

Someone once told me that he read sf to relax.

Blackness And Drums

 

"Wildcat."

Symonds tells Herries that:

in one hundred million AD, life is re-evolving on Earth and radioactivity has died down but the atmosphere is not yet breathable;

nuclear explosions will destroy all life "'Approximately one year from the twentieth-century base date we are presently using.'" (p. 71)

Herries' response is Andersonian:

"'One year...from now.' Herries stared upward. Blackness met him. He heard the Jurrasic rain on the tin roof, like drums." (ibid.)

Told of the end of life, he sees blackness. He hears not wind this time but rain like drums and there have been times and places where the sound of drums was a threat, as in Anderson's "The Master Key."

With the benefit of time travel, the characters know what is to come and are doing what can be done about it. Symonds, presumably because he has had enough by now, just wants to return home.

What Goes On Apart From Time Travel

 

"Wildcat."

At the Jurassic oil rig site, the bureaucrat, Symonds, tells the boss, Herries, that a special shipment soon to arrive will be marked top secret and is to be guarded by armed men. When Herries reads Symonds' list of the men to be assigned to this guard duty:

"'Brave, discreet, and charter subscribers to National Review,' he murmured. 'Teacher's pets...'" (p. 52)

When Symonds informs him that:

"'The purpose is classified.'" (p. 53)

- Herries' sarcasm knows no bounds:

"'Yeah. Sure. Classified. Arise, ye duly cleared citizens of democracy, and cast your ballots on issues whose nature is classified, that your leaders whose names and duties are classified may -...'" (ibid.)

This is followed by what might be classified as mild swearing - or at least might stand in for such.

A bit further on, Symonds tells Herries that:

"'Your language is close to being subversive...'" (p. 54)

When Herries has received his monthly supply of magazines and newspapers:

"The twentieth century looked still uglier than it had last month. The nations felt their pride and saw no way to retreat. The Middle Eastern war was taking a decisive turn which none of the great powers could afford." (ibid.)

(Blogger's comment: the great powers consider their own interests, not those of people living in the Middle East.)

Reading this in (our version of ) 2026, we might think that our twenty-first century is worse than his twentieth but we would be wrong.

When questioned on his views by one of the chaplains:

"Herries looked up into the steaming sky. A foul wind met his face." (p. 56)

Wind punctuates dialogue, as ever. And Herries' mood is foul so that is what he gets in the face.

A crewcut man called Worth is:

"...one of the professional patriots who would be standing guard on Symonds' crates; but not a bad sort, really, after you learned to ignore his rather tedious opinions." (p. 58)

Poul Anderson gets us to like a guy, Greenstein, then has him killed by a tyrannosaur. Just before the fight with the tyrannosaur, Greenstein gives Herries a long look and asks:

"'How the devil did you ever get this job?... You don't sound like a man who'd be cleared for a dishwashing assistantship.'" (ibid.)

Herries replies that he has always:

"'...liked totalitarianism even less than what passes for democracy.'" (p. 59)

- but adds that he might not get the job if he were to apply now. It has changed him.

Not killed but nevertheless badly injured by the tyrannosaur is Worth who will have to be sent home and then kept incommunicado. Herries comments:

"'I wonder how much of a patriot he'll be by that time.'" (p. 63)

Herries equates patriotism with necrophilia since citizens are expected to rejoice at megadeaths and suggests, ironically of course, that:

"...facts might be un-American.'" (ibid.)

Finally, he looks inside the classified crates.

The Theoretical Basis

"Kings Who Die."

L. F. Richardson is to this story what John K. Hord is to Poul Anderson's Technic History and Oswald Spengler is to James Blish's Cities In Flight.

Rostock claims that he has:

"'...carried Richardson's work a good deal further and more rigorously. I say to you now only that civilized societies must have a certain rate of immolations.'" (p. 32)

- hence this story's title: 

"'Today the machine age has developed its own sacrificial kings. We are the chosen of the race, the best it can offer. None gainsays us. We may have what we choose, pleasure, luxury, women, adulation - only not the simple pleasures of wife and child and hope, for we must die that the people may live.'" (p. 33)

Diaz will wind up defeating Rostock militarily instead of joining forces with him but surely this Richardsonian theory warrants further investigation?

Ten Leagues Beyond

Poul Anderson, "Details" IN Anderson, Seven Conquests (New York, 1970), pp. 119-140.

See also Details.

In the opening sentence:

"...the League is a mature culture..." (p. 119)

What League is this? Despite being written by Poul Anderson, "Details" is not about his Polesotechnic League. Still less is it about the League of Nations, the League of Assassins or the Justice League of America. Terminologies have to be recycled even by a single author. "Details" is a one-off story with an implausible premise that would not make for any worthwhile series in my opinion. 

We are not told a full official name for this League, I don't think, but it is:

"...the League of the older planets." (p. 122)

"...a million-year old society..." (ibid.)

"...with a population estimated at ten to the fifteenth power souls." (p. 120)

In other words, what we might more usually call the Galactic Federation?

Other recycled terminologies in this story:

"'Coordinator Zantell...'

"'...Psychotechnic Institute...'

"'What did he think the Service was...the Patrol?" (ibid.)

"...Chaos..." (p. 122)

We know that we are reading something from Poul Anderson's imagination but anything can happen in a one-off story. 

"...the planet called Earth..." (ibid.)

- might wind up destroyed. (It doesn't this time but you know what I mean.)

Perspectives

Events on the world-stage that are current to us now will be history in the future and therefore can be referred to in futuristic sf and in future histories. That part is easy. But what will future attitudes to our current conflicts be like? Don't just project our attitudes onto our descendants! Let us quote from Poul Anderson and James Blish:

"'...you know, enmities needn't be eternal. I daresay, oh, for instance, Governor Saracoglu and Admiral Cajal had ancestors on opposite sides at Lepanto.'"

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT XVIII, p. 661.

In fact, the Governor and the Admiral are both for Terra against Ythri but, later in the Technic History, Ythri helps Terra against Merseia. Still later, the Terran-Merseian conflict is no more.

"'If an Englishman of around 1600 had found out about the American Revolution, he probably would have thought it a tragedy; an Englishman of 1950 would have had a very different view of it. We're in the same spot. The messages we get from the really far future have no contexts yet.'"

-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), 127.

And, if reading sf doesn't broaden our perspectives, then nothing will. Because I read sf, I used to think while still at school, "Things will not always be as they are now." Since then, much has changed.

Bay And Ocean

"The Pirate."

Nature continues on the planet called "Good Luck" after the extinction of all or most vertebrates:

"The bay glittered and chuckled between golden-green hills. At its entrance began an ocean; coming down [Trevelyan] had identified fantastically big shoals of marine plants and animals. No wings rode the wind that rumpled his hair... Insects, or their equivalent, swarmed on delicate membranes that often threw back the sunlight in rainbows. Silvery forms leapt from the water. The wind smelled of salt, iodine, and life.

"Overhead wandered some clouds, blue-shadowed in a dazzlingly blue heaven.

"...the day was sunny, cool, and peaceful." (p. 112)

I have had to select rather than to copy an entire page - but read the page and the story.

It reminds us of the exploration of Gray, not yet named Avalon, in the Technic History. Future histories enrich each other, especially when written by the same author.

Lancaster life: Rain. Gym this morning. Meeting this evening.

The End Of The Flight To Forever

"Flight to Forever."

Memorable passages from the concluding section:

"Entropy had reached a maximum, the energy sources were used up, the universe was dead." (p. 235)

"The universe was mortal, but it was a phoenix which would never really die." (p. 236)

"...the continuum was spherical in all four dimensions. In any case - if you travelled long enough, through space of time, you got back to your starting point." (p. 238)

(That should probably read "...space or time..." I will check the text in Past Times.)

"Grayness was outside - for the last time." (ibid.)

"The hill seemed strangely unreal, after all that he had seen from it, the whole enormous tomorrow of the cosmos. He would never quite fit into the little round of days that lay ahead." (p. 239)

That recalls Olaf Stapledon's narrator returning home at the end of Star Maker.

"...he thought he heard [Taury's] voice whisper in the cool wet wind..." (ibid.)

There has to be wind. For this peaceful conclusion, the wind is cool, not cold, as it had been/was to be in 50,000 AD, and it does not roar or shout but whispers.

"It was enough for a mortal man." (p. 220)

"'I guess I must be a little early.'" (ibid.)

- the concluding sentence.

See also Cosmic Beginnings.

3100-50,000 AD

"Flight to Forever."

In several periods, Saunders and Belgotai do not pause long enough to have any adventure.

3100 AD radioactivity.

3200 AD a vitrified, lifeless crater.

3500 AD, and centuries afterward, forest.

4100 AD a College with a psychophone (translator).

4300 AD merchants' children's playground.

4400 AD space barbarians sacking a villa.

5000 AD projector trapped inside a massive construction until -

25,296 AD Galactic Empire.

26,000 AD the pyramid has become a wooded hill.

27,000 AD agricultural village.

28,000 AD men quarrying the pyramid.

30,000 AD a stone city.

31,000 AD Solar Matriarchy.

34,000 AD devastated city.

35,000 AD peasants.

36,000 AD mercenaries hired to protect Earth.

50,000 AD when the time travellers do spend time and make a difference

- but, as I often wind up saying, no more tonight!

Hell-Wind And Realization

"Son of the Sword."

And here it is again in a more threatening form. When Pepy, the slave, has spelt out just how desperate the fugitives' situation is:

"Thoas nodded tiredly. The wind ruffled the plume on his helmet - the wind, the hot dry wind of Egypt, the cursed hell-wind blowing out of the north." (p. 148)

It cannot be stated any more strongly than that. This wind is cursed and from hell. But then something else familiar happens. Thoas reflects on something else that Pepy has said. Then he suddenly stands dead still. Ankhsenamen recognizes his stare as that of a man who has seen a revelation. Her father had looked like that coming from Aton's temple but Thoas' god is fiercer. He mutters, then shouts orders. His men swarm.

Poul Anderson's readers recognize a moment of realization as well as they recognize a meaningful wind. These are perhaps his two most memorable literary trademarks. Thoas has realized how to defeat the enemy but we will have to wait to learn how he is going to do it. And that will not be this evening. Other reading calls.

Good night.

Mounting Wind

"Son of the Sword."

Still on the Nile - not yet out at sea - Thoas' crew, led by the wrathful Cyprian, Megacles, begins to mutiny:

"They stirred uneasily on the benches, growling, reaching for the knives at their belts, and some glared at Thoas and some at Megacles." (p. 142)

Ok. What do the Andersonian elements do on such an occasion? In the very next sentence:

"The sun wavered in its veil of heat, and the wind mounted, and the ship drifted idly on the river." (ibid.)

The ship drifts because the men have stopped rowing and the wind mounts as their hostility does. We can usually count on a one-to-one correspondence between wind and human activity. There follows another Andersonian fight scene, the second in this story, although this one we are not going to summarize here! (Read it, though.)

Philosophy On The Nile

"Son of the Sword."

Thoas is alone on deck on the Nile:

false dawn

moonset

darkness

vaulting sky

wheeling stars

unseen banks

glimmering fires

gleaming river

lapping wavelets

cool, wet, low, sad, murmuring wind

howling dogs or jackals

slapping crocodiles

splashing hippopotami

sleeping men

dream whimpering

Ankhsenamen joins him and says in part:

"'...I don't know what to believe. Was Amen or Aton the false god, or were all gods a lie and this life a brief meaningless accident...'" (p. 133)

How the question is put is culturally conditioned. We do not now speak about Amen or Aton but the names do not matter. Gods are lies when used to oppress but not when they delight or enlighten. Life is a brief accident but not meaningless. It alone bestows meaning.

Thoas says that he has:

"'...heard nothing from the lips of any who have themselves died. So I will wait and see.'" (ibid.)

Or not see.

Wind And The Crew

"Son of the Sword."

One factor in whether Thoas' ship can escape to Cyprus is:

"'...whether we get a wind or not.'" (p. 130)

Egyptian slaves can outrow Thoas' mixed crew but, with a good breeze or in the open sea, the latter can outrun the former.

Consequently, we are reassured when the following narrative passage opens with:

"Toward morning the breeze stiffened to a murmuring wind that filled the sail, and Thoas let his weary oarsmen sleep." (p. 131)

Poul Anderson's winds nearly always mean something. This wind murmurs, so it maybe comments on the action, but it does not roar or threaten and might confirm their escape.

That mixed crew - described as barbarians, as port sweepings and as "...a mixed and ragged band..." (p. 127):

Syrians

Cretans

Cyprians

Nubians

Phoenicians

indescribables

robbers

paupers

runaway slaves

- all armed with edged metal.

Thoas might not be safe captaining them.