Interventions By The Others

The Avatar. 

The Others do more than provide interstellar transport machines for species that achieve interplanetary capability.

They also:

directed humanity to the Phoebean System;

gave the Danaans metal tools to use on their gas giant planet;

gave the pulsar dwellers the Oracle;

constructed observation stations for other races at the pulsar and at a black hole.

Also, the Oracle, a self-conscious and hyper-intelligent artifact, gives Chinook data that will enable the holothete to plot a probable path to the Others' frontier. Something like this was necessary. Random rotations around T machines would not have returned Chinook to the Solar System where a major problem awaited resolution. 

Another novel could describe a ship travelling indefinitely through space-time via T machines. Such a ship would require a self-sustaining internal environment and also some mechanism to ensure that each T machine led to another T machine, not just to empty space. With these requirements in place, the sky would be the limit. Or rather would not be. The Others travel between universes.

Again FURY

Today is the beginning of a new month, a new quarter and a new financial year. I hope to visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop again next week.

Reading is a peculiar process. In a pile of books on a bedroom floor, I find my copy of Fury by Henry Kuttner. This reminds me that recently - it turns out to have been exactly one month ago - I began to reread Fury after many decades in order to assess it and to compare it with Poul Anderson's works. I read as far as p. 104 (of 190) and since then have completely forgotten about it which demonstrates that it was not holding my attention. 

Previous relevant posts:

FURY

JOB In FURY And STARFARERS

Some Familiar Ideas

The Queen Of Air And Darkness

"Immortals" On Venus

Wind And A Pulsar

That seems to be all. I had forgotten most of these. Maybe I will complete the project of rereading Fury to the end to find out whether anything else in it looks blog-relevant. This is the milieu that Anderson wrote in.

Quantum Life

Starfarers, 38.

In Poul Anderson's The Avatar, there is intelligent life on a pulsar. In his Starfarers, there is also a pulsar. However, in this novel, interstellar explorers receive messages from intelligent life composed not of mass, molecules, atoms or nuclei but of quantum states among the virtual particles in the vacuum of the changeable space-time near a black hole. Life is information. Quantum states can carry information as well as or better than masses. And I am going out. Back here later.

JOB In FURY And STARFARERS

On the same day, we read:

"His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down in the dust. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth...-JOB."

-Fury, PART I, p. 83.

"O might and mystery! Out of the whirlwind, God speaks to Job!"

-Starfarers, 28, p. 260.

The might, mystery and whirlwind are encountered at a pulsar of which more later. 

At its core, neurons fuse into hyperons... Incandescent gaseous iron atmosphere only a few centimeters high. Hundreds of spins per second. Magnetic field capturing interstellar matter and accelerating it out at near light speed. Radio beacon detectable across the galaxy. The whirlwind. God speaks...? At least the forces that form this universe do.

Wind And A Pulsar

There are several more Biblical references in Fury. You just have to keep reading.

Meanwhile, back in Starfarers, 26:

"Mokena gathered her words as she walked. The wind shrilled." (p. 245)

Shrilling wind indicates that there will be difficulties in what is to be said. If four crew members travel in Envoy to explore a nearby pulsar, then the other six will be left on Tahir and will be stranded there if Envoy fails to return. And why do most Tahirians seem to dread a return to starfaring? The artificial human-Tahitian language needs another year to become fully useable. Predictably, the human explorers remain surrounded by more that is unknown than known. What is certain is that a spaceship crew that traverses five thousand light years will discover at its destination phenomena that are not observable from the Solar System. So a fictional account that did not introduce anything new would be both wrong and inauthentic. We must rely on the author's creative imagination - scientifically informed, of course.

Pulsar And Son Of Man

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTERs EIGHTEEN-NINETEEN.

Flandry in his Comet-class scoutboat uses a storm, then a pulsar, to evade Merseian pursuit. Like Larry Niven's Beowulf Shaeffer in "Neutron Star" (Known Space future history), he swings around a pulsar.

Flandry:

"'Gray waves. Somebody under primary acceleration.'" (p. 352)

That should be "Grav waves." This is about the third occurrence of this miss-print.

Djana:

"Son of Man, help us." (p. 353)

Another Biblical quote, of course. We can be so used to Biblical phrases that we don't question them but why "Son of Man" instead of "Son of God"? A "son of man" is just a man but "one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven," the complete phrase, is not a man. He is a supernatural humanoid being. 

Djana continues to pray:

"'God have mercy,' she cried with her whole being. 'Oh, send them back where they belong!'" (ibid.)

Her psychic power, carefully nurtured by her enemy, Ydwyr, works. The pursuit recedes.

Merseians

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTERs TWELVE-THIRTEEN.

A team of Merseian physicists returning from an expedition to an unusual pulsar near the border of the Terran Empire noticed the unique orbital configuration in the Siekh System and investigated that also. As a result, Ydwyr came to study the Talwinians and had to accept that the base on Talwin would also have an Intelligence aspect. He hopes that Flandry, an alien with an Intelligence agent's knowledge of xenology, will help his research.

Flandry and Djana mess with Merseian civilians who treat them cordially and with interest, naturally enough. I remember my mother looking at a photograph of Russians laughing in a street in Moscow. She commented, "They can't all be devils." Well, of course not. Differentiate between a people and their regime.

Cnif hu Vanden, who becomes friendliest with Flandry, is a colonial to whom Merseia is strange. We realize that there is more to the Merseians than the Roidhunate's conflict with Terra.

Three Prophetic Writers

Starfarers, 47-48.

HG Wells' Time Traveler travels to 802,701 AD and beyond, then returns to the nineteenth century, whereas Envoy travels to an extra-solar civilization, a pulsar and a black hole, then returns to Earth. However, returning to Earth equals traveling to Earth eleven thousand years in the future. Thus, what the Time Traveler finds on his outward journey the Envoy crew find on their return journey: nature conquered by technology and a decadent society. The main difference is that, in The Time Machine, industrial workers have devolved into Morlocks whereas, in Starfarers, they have been replaced by robotics and nanotech. Anderson supersedes Wells in a powerful dialogue about future society.

CS Lewis's anti-Wellsian contribution, That Hideous Strength, argues that technological control of society would be literally diabolical.

Pulsar, Bible And Milky Way

Starfarers, 28.

At the center of a neutron star, the neutrons might fuse into hyperons.

The star may have an atmosphere of incandescent gaseous iron a few centimeters deep.

It spins hundreds of times per second.

Its magnetic field accelerates interstellar matter outward at near light speed.

Its radio pulse is detectable across the galaxy.

"Out of the whirlwind, God speaks to Job." (p. 260)

Another Biblical reference. And, indeed, ultimate forces are manifest in the pulsar.

Beyond it is "...the cold cataract of the Milky Way..." (p. 261)

(And see "...an infinitely cold cataract..." here.)

Stars And Storms

Around Stars 

In Larry Niven's Known Space future history series,  Beowulf Shaeffer orbits close to a neutron star.

 

In the Polesotechnic League period of Poul Anderson's Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn orbits close to the dead sun of Mirkheim.

 

In the Terran Empire period of the Technic History, Dominic Flandry orbits close to a pulsar.

 

(A pulsar is a neutron star.)

 

Through Storms

In the Polesotechnic League period, David Falkayn destroys pursuing Shenn warships by making them follow him through a storm on the planet Satan.

 

In the Terran Empire period, Flandry evades Merseian spacecraft by flying through a storm on Talwin and Uroch the Lucky evades Gorrazani craft by flying through a storm on Gorrazan/Gorzun.

 

In Anderson's Maurai future history series, Stormriders fly through a storm, then fire lasers to dissipate it.

(We need more of what the Stormriders do.)

Textual Diversity

Poul Anderson's works are nothing if not diverse. In recent posts about just one novel, A Circus Of Hells:

the offworld wealth of Vach Urdiolch and the xenological knowledge of the Roidhun's nephew;

the religious objects in Ydwyr's inner and outer rooms;

Djana's visions which recalled Hrolf Kraki's Saga and thus, indirectly, the Volkerwanderung;

the Domrath seasonal cycle;

Merseian physicists investigating a pulsar;

a long chain of Merseian intelligence work on Irumclaw;

Djana's kinship with other fictional heroines.

And we have hardly mentioned the hero, Dominic Flandry.

Travelogue

The first three Dominic Flandry novels, collected both as The Imperial Stars and as Young Flandry, present a fictional travelogue:

Terra and the Coral Palace on the Emperor's Birthday

Highport on Starkad

Castle Dhangodhan on Merseia

at sea on Starkad

Kursoviki on Starkad

undersea on Starkad

in space

Ardaig on Merseia

Irumclaw

Wayland

Talwin

close approach to a pulsar

Admiralty Center on Terra

Shalmu

Catawrayannis on Llynathawr

Aeneas

Dido

orbit around Satan

 

More than you might think. Some of these places appear elsewhere. Others do not.

Accidents

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER TWELVE.

Merseian astronomers observed an old and unusual pulsar;

Merseian physicists traveled through space to observe the pulsar more closely;

returning home, they noticed the unique planetary orbits around the star, Siekh;

investigating the Siekh system, they discovered the extraordinary inhabitants of the planet, Talwin;

Ydwyr insisted that the Talwinians should be studied;

a research station on Talwin was agreed only if it could also be an advance intelligence base;

therefore, and only because of this series of accidents, there is an intelligence base on Talwin and, finally, it captures Dominic Flandry.

Scientific exploration has to co-exist with inter-imperial conflict.

Non-Biological Intelligence II

See Non-Biological Intelligence. 

I missed two other Andersonian kinds of non-biological intelligences:

The Holont

"star dwellers" on a pulsar

For the latter, see the 4th jump, here.

(It is convenient to be able to summarize a lot of information merely by linking to previous posts.)

Into Deepest Space And Poul Anderson's Works

In Into Deepest Space, Richard Warboys from Earth and a female spacefarer called Alcyone converse.

(i) Alcyone has found some biological material that is not dextro- but levo-rotatory. At least one biosphere in Poul Anderson's Technic History is dextro but which? Answer: Dido.

(ii) Warboys asks:

"'...why would a soft creature made more or less of the usual kind of polymerized biological molecules think in any different fashion than a computer made from hard metal?'"
-Fred Hoyle & Geoffrey Hoyle, Into Deepest Space (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1977), 12, p. 159.

Anderson points out more than once that a conscious organism responds with its whole body from the cells up, thus applying its entire evolutionary history, whereas hard metal interacts with the surrounding environment merely according to the laws of physics. A computer "thinks," if that term is appropriate, not with its entire being but only according to an inputted program.

(iii) Warboys almost immediately does state a reason why a computer might think differently:

"'A metallic computer might have properties I can't conceive of - if its brain were superconducting, for instance. But with the Yela we know that we're on familiar ground. It has the usual kind of brain.'" (ibid.)

(iv) Warboys continues:

"But god, what a brain - a thousand yards in diameter. No wonder the damn thing is able to outsmart us.'" (ibid.)

He assumes that a spherical Yela spaceship is not a crewed vehicle but the metallic body of a large organic brain, a flying cyborg.

(v) When Alcyone doubts whether a computer can think, Warboys assumes, and she confirms, that she thinks that:

"'...there is a law of nature which requires a structure to possess molecules of a certain kind before it can be conscious, before it can think...'" (ibid.)

They miss a point previously discussed on this blog in relation to Poul Anderson's works. The issue is not what kind of molecules a structure possesses but what it does with its molecules. Any structure, whether metallic or biological, that merely manipulates symbols according to programmed rules is conscious neither of the meanings of the symbols nor of anything else. It may be that only biological structures are able to transform unconscious sensitivity into conscious sensation but that is an empirical question.

(vi) Warboys hypothesizes intelligence on a pulsar:

"'I don't see why life shouldn't be based on nuclear properties as well as on chemical properties... It might be based on nuclear magnetic moments...'" (p. 166)

- as in Anderson's The Avatar. (Scroll down to "4th")

Dangerous Manoeuvres

Van Rijn escapes pursuit by orbiting close to a supernova remnant. See Rights, Wrongs And Risks.

Flandry escapes pursuit by orbiting close to a pulsar. See Ingenious Deceptions.

Rouvaratz reaches escape velocity by orbiting close to the shadow matter star in "In The Shadow."

These are good stories but, after a while, when rereading one, we are reminded of  the others. I still have not reread as far as the discovery that one of the shadow planets is inhabited and communicative but that will wait till tomorrow.

Neutrons

In a neutron star, electrons and protons combine to form neutrons. Thus, the star is composed almost entirely of neutrons, therefore almost entirely of neutronium. But has a neutron star ever been described as:

"'One gigantic neutron?'"?
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 5, p. 35.

Are Maclaren and his colleagues investigating some other kind of hypothetical object or did they not yet know about neutron stars in their timeline?

1932 discovery of neutrons
1933 proposal of neutron stars
1958 publication of "We Have Fed Our Sea"/The Enemy Stars
1962 discovery of the Scorpius X-1 radio source
1965 discovery of the Crab Pulsar
1967 proposal that spinning neutron stars would emit radiation
1967 realization that Scorpius X-1 was an accreting neutron star

Meeting Aliens

In Poul Anderson's The Avatar, Dan Brodersen's spaceship, Chinook:

visits the planet Pandora but not when the original intelligent species is revisiting;

loses its Betan crew member, Fidelio, on Pandora;

explores the space station near the pulsar but not when any other space travelers are there;

is near a star gate when a nearly massless force field ship transits in just 37 seconds;

eventually finds the Others who had built the star gates.

The universe is full of intelligent beings coming and going but space is so big that it is not easy to find them.

A Path Through The Star Gates

After conversing with the Others' Oracle on the pulsar, Joelle the holothete:

makes probabilistic computations of the magnitude and direction of particular paths through the star gates;

also makes reasonable estimates of the likelihood that another T machine will be at the end of a gate;

devises a scheme for traveling from machine to machine, always jumping as far as possible in a plausible direction, thus eventually reaching the frontier where the Others are still building T machines.

The remaining seven jumps are to:

a still coalescing planetary system;

an old globular cluster with one planet humanly habitable only on plateaus, like Larry Niven's Plateau or Anderson's Rustum in the first generation of its colonization;

the galactic core;

near the galactic center in the far future;

intergalactic space a billion years in the future;

in the galaxy, 70 to 100 billion years in the future;

the Others.

At The Pulsar II

Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XXXVII.

After their fourth jump, the Chinook crew sees:

"...a whirling sword of light..." (p. 319), i.e., the pulsar;

a T machine with two satellites, i.e., the shield and a space station;

a stellar background;

no sun.

Both satellites have a motor to counteract perturbation. The station also has a dock for spaceships. Chinook's boat, Williwaw, lands and its crew explores "...on foot and by personal rocket." (p. 324) Joelle the holothete follows events from Chinook. There is an entrance to a tunnel with branching passages. Walls shine in wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared. There are many unopenable doors. Transparent doors or force fields show antechambers to diverse environments. At the center of the station is a kilometer-wide sphere containing displays addressed to species with different sensory organs and world-views. In the most comprehensible display:

atoms, the periodic table and changing quantum states are represented;
the hydrogen-1 nucleus is a unit of mass;
its emission line is a unit of length;
its frequency is an inverse unit of time;
the entire temperature scale from absolute zero to deuterium-forming fusion is divided into twelve to the power of twelve degrees;
when instructions are followed to activate a particular device, Joelle receives and responds to binary digits and recognizable patterns;
the automatic transmitter adapts to her equipment and nervous system;
she learns that there is intelligent life on the pulsar.