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. 

Fantasy And SF

Poul Anderson," Fantasy in the Age of Science" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, September 1981), pp. 265-286.

Paraphrase: sf makes the scientific assumption that the universe is comprehensible whereas fantasy is free to assume "...the completely supernatural...forever unamenable to the scientific method." (p. 271) It is necessary to explain teleportation or faster-than-light space travel but not the powers of magicians or gods.

However, in quantum mechanics and in possibilities like naked singularities, science approaches the bounds of comprehensibility. Furthermore, fantasy is rooted in prehistoric traditions stemming from ancient times when human beings marveled at nature and stood in awe of the unknown. We cannot return to our earliest state but nevertheless should remember our origins.

Landing On A Planet

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XV. 

James Blish's Okies control gravity and therefore can land their flying cities on planetary surfaces. New York winds up on New Earth in the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

Often, in sf, large interstellar vessels remain in orbit around a planet while crew or passengers descend by other means. Star Trek has "transporters"/teleportation transmitters, thus avoiding the extra trouble of scenes with ship's boats although the Enterprise does have boats for specialized missions in interplanetary space. A few characters can be shown in action away from the others.

In Ensign Flandry, Flandry hijacks a ship's boat which even has hyperspace capacity.

In the Peregine, a boathouse contains a boat and some "fliers" (?) The latter are soon explained. For the landing, two fliers each bear two men while a boat carries twenty. Although the planet is terrestroid, indeed apparently paradisal, elementary precautions are taken. Ten spacesuited men leave by an airlock which is sterilized while the outer lock is open. One of the crew members who remain on board analyzes the atmosphere, bacteria and spores. The ten return with soil, plants, water and insects to be sterilized in the airlock, then analyzed on board. Nothing is harmful. Then, four parties of four explore in different directions while others remain by the boat and fliers. Each party has maps taken from the air, local details to be added, and will collect samples. Bodies are protected by coveralls, boots and skin-tight gloves. Each explorer carries wrist radio, gun, canteen and medical kit except the non-human Ilaloa who is confident that there is no danger and refuses to wear any extra clothes. She speaks as if she knows the planet:

"'This is the home of peace.'" (p. 131)

Nicki comments on Ilaloa's:

"'...nerve - or foolishness...'" (p. 133)

- but should really be suspicious of her confidence.

A climax approaches.

Poul Anderson And SF Themes

In SF Themes, we identified eleven themes:

time travel

space travel

alien invasion

future history

invisibility

telepathy

teleportation

immortality

robots

a science of society

generation ships

Perhaps invisibility is the only one of these themes not addressed by Poul Anderson?

Another theme neither on this list nor addressed by Anderson is miniaturization:

The Girl In The Golden Atom

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Fantastic Voyage

Ant-Man (Marvel superhero)

The Atom (DC superhero)

In "Nor Iron Bars" by James Blish, an interstellar spaceship gains negative mass and collapses into the microcosm.

In The Great Divorce by CS Lewis, characters travel by changing size but this is a metaphor for spiritual progress or regression.

Five (And More) Future Histories

We have often listed "future histories," including Poul Anderson's several such series or single works. Let us now focus on just five interconnected future histories:

Poul Anderson's Technic History and Larry Niven's Known Space series are arguably the most significant successors to Robert Heinlein's original Future History;

Anderson's Psychotechnic History, modelled directly on the Future History, occupies a position intermediate between the Future and Technic Histories;

despite the prominence of his Known Space series, Niven presents an entirely different history of the future in his "State" series -

A World Out Of Time

The Integral Trees

The Smoke Ring

In Volume I, two individuals from different periods make relativistic round trips to the galactic core whereas, in Volumes II and III, an interstellar crew has mutinied and colonized the Smoke Ring.

I am currently rereading The Integral Trees when not rereading Anderson's Brain Wave.

A list of Niven's series at the end of his Tales Of Known Space places "Rammer," the first part of A World Out Of Time, in the short Leshy Circuit sequence which is also about Bussard ramjets. Teleportation booths are common to Known Space, the State and a separate "Teleportation" series. Niven begins to rival Anderson in the number of his alternative future history series.

"Terran" And "Interstellar"

Poul Anderson's Technic History has a Terran Empire. Robert Heinlein's Citizen Of The Galaxy has a Terran Hegemony. Sf writers have coined "Terran" as an alternative to "Terrestrial."

Sf  is "interstellar" if someone in it has traversed interstellar space. Thus:

(i) extra-solar aliens have arrived here;

(ii) an exploratory expedition has departed from the Solar System;

(iii) travel between inhabited planetary systems has become routine, like trans-Atlantic air travel now. 

Robert Heinlein's seven juvenile interstellar novels divide into one of (i), one of (ii) and five of (iii).

Poul Anderson has (i) in some short stories, (ii) in Tau Zero and (iii) in many works that are familiar to us.

In Anderson's The Enemy Stars, a slower than light interstellar spaceship carries an instantaneous teleportation transceiver so that the ship can be refueled at any time and also crews can pass between Earth and the ship. In Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky, receiverless instantaneous interstellar teleportation is possible between planetary surfaces: no spaceships needed. Impossible!

How Mattercasters Work

The Enemy Stars, 5.

"You cannot have a 'wave' when you have no velocity, and gravitational forces do not. (This is a more accurate rendition of the common statement that 'gravitation propagates at an infinite speed'.) (pp. 39-40)

Gravity has no velocity so mattercasting can be instantaneous? But apparently gravity does propagate at light speed. See here. (Newton thought that gravity was instantaneous.)

In Larry Niven's Known Space future history series, teleportation is at light speed. (See also combox here.)

The beam that scans the protein structure, energy level and relative position of every molecule in a human body reduces the body to gas but flashes the information into a transmitter matrix that simultaneously sends the signal to a receiver matrix which immediately reproduces every molecule in microseconds. The body is dead so briefly that it arrives alive.

If it were possible to record the complex signal, then the mattercaster would become a duplicator. Maclaren wonders whether duplication is already possible but suppressed by the Protectorate. 

"No government likes revolutions, and molecular duplication would revolutionize society beyond imagining." (p. 39)

Maclaren adds that even now mattercasters have to be guarded and isolated on the Moon because otherwise some fanatic might duplicate enough stolen radium to sterilize a planet. So some duplication is already possible?

Two Powers

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

The two Arzunian powers are telekinesis and teleportation:

"'The Arzunians use telekinesis to control matter and energy, and the same subspatial principle as our ships to go faster than light.'" (IV, p. 406)

Maybe "subspace" is another way of saying successive quantum jumps? Thus, a giant lizard defeated by Wocha vanishes. Thus also, Arzunians can appear inside an approaching spaceship and can manipulate air molecules to whisper threats, simulating a haunting.

However:

"'...differences of potential energy must be made up from their own metabolism.'" (ibid.)

Therefore their area of control is bounded by the fringe stars of the Nebula but that is as much as they want.

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars, a spaceship can make an instant jump even to another galaxy but must first accelerate through space to reach the appropriate relative velocity.

Even great power has limits.

Social Revolutions On Hermes And Earth

Mirkheim, XVI.

Henry Kittredge informs Adzel and Chee Lan that the Baburites:

"'...intend to mount a revolution on Hermes - from the top, though doubtless they expect to get support from the bottom. The whole scheme of law and property is to be revised, the aristocracy abolished, a "participatory republic" established, whatever that means.'" (pp. 224-225)

"Participatory republic" means a lot although what it can mean in these circumstances, under threat of Baburite missiles, is a very good question.

I thought that the phrase, "social revolution," had appeared somewhere in the text but now cannot find it. In any case, this is a proposed social revolution, changing not just the governing group but social relationships. The American Civil War was a social revolution because it transformed slaves into free workers. Slavery could be abolished by legislation although that would not happen if there were not more general moral revulsion against it.

In Miracleman, Alan Moore describes a global social revolution that is successful because it is implemented by overwhelming extraterrestrial superhuman power and because it is welcomed by massive active popular support. A Warpsmith, with the power of teleportation, informs the UN that all nuclear and bacteriological weapons are completely disorganized. When asked for clarification, she explains that the weapons are disorganized not on a political level but on a molecular level because they have just been teleported into the sun. Other super-powered beings rebuild the environment and abolish money, providing basic necessities for everyone on Earth. More than enough volunteers come forward to administer and support the new system while deposed dictators receive counseling.

I was reminded of the successful Miracleman revolution when rereading Henry Kittredge's account of the proposed Baburite revolution. Anything can happen in fiction but meanwhile, on Earth Real, we must solve global problems without any superhuman or extraterrestrial help.

Return

What do interstellar travelers find when they return home?

Dan Dare: the Mekon has conquered the Solar System with robots.

Dan Dare (later): Earth has been evacuated for some reason.

Larry Niven, A World Out Of Time: Earth orbiting Jupiter; teleportation; new kinds of immortality.

Poul Anderson, "Epilogue": robotic evolution.

Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home: complicated.

Poul Anderson, Starfarers: that is what I am rereading right now.

Future History Treks

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER NINE.

"The Dronning Margrete was not of a size to land safely on a planet. Her auxiliaries were small spaceships in their own right." (p. 81)

This is familiar territory to Trekkies although the Dronning Margrete is not as big as the Enterprise and does not have "transporters." But Poul Anderson does have teleportation in other works. 

Okie cities are even bigger but do land on planets. However, they control gravity and were built on planets in the first place. They are around us now. In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Nomad ships are big enough to carry entire clans, who live in them, but they also land on planets.

It feels as if these future histories:

the Technic History

the Okie History

Star Trek

the Psychotechnic History

- and some others are very close to each other if not also to our timeline. Surely Trekkies should check out Anderson and Blish?

"Door To Anywhere"

Poul Anderson, "Door to Anywhere" IN Rick Katze (Ed.), Door To Anywhere, pp. 11-34.

This story incorporates the kind of cosmological background information that I usually find interesting although I do not want to try to summarize it right now. Maybe later when the dust has settled. The story was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1966, when Fred Hoyle's steady state universe theory was still on the table. Of course, Anderson the sf writer utilizes a fictional extension of the theory to rationalize instantaneous interstellar teleportation, somehow.

However, the following sentence is worthy of note:

"His face might have been Saul's on the road to Damascus." (p. 26)

This, of course, is yet another Biblical reference.

I have yet to finish reading the story. A man has disappeared in intergalactic space and we have yet to learn why.

Speeds

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER II.

Does this cover illustration represent the Donarrian in Flandry's crew later in the story?

At faster than light speed, Flandry and Chives will travel from Jovian orbit to Terra in minutes. That does seem like breaking the rules. Usually in sf, interplanetary travel is slower than light whereas interstellar travel is either STL or (often) FTL. Of course, an sf writer can change the rules but then he has to sell the idea!

Someone who travels faster than light arrives at his destination sooner than is possible according to relativistic physics. Someone who travels into the past arrives at his destination even sooner, before his departure.

The faster someone moves, the closer he gets to instantaneous transition, i.e., to zero time between departure and arrival. The only way to accelerate further would be to have negative time, i.e., to arrive before departing.

Thus:

slower than light travel

faster than light travel

instantaneous teleportation

travel into the past

 

- form a spectrum? In Anderson's Time Patrol series, the time effect is discovered as a by-product of an attempt to find a means of instantaneous transportation. 

Underground

We share alternative world-views in conversation and correspondence and by reading authors that we disagree with. We can think that a man's fundamental beliefs are completely wrong but find that he is insightful about common experiences. CS Lewis was anti-Darwinian but wrote insightful fiction. He advised fiction writers that they should never state that an experience was frightening but instead should describe the experience in such a way that readers think, "That would be frightening."

Poul Anderson does this in The Day Of Their Return, 20. Perhaps a familiar nightmare scenario is to be somewhere underground in close proximity to a hostile non-human being? Ivar Frederiksen sees foot prints in a mountain tunnel:

"They were the tracks of a being who walked on birdlike claws. Again Ivar stood. Cold gnawed him.

"Should I turn right round and run?

"Where could I run to?" (p. 225)

 

See also SF And Horror. 

The nightmare passages in a novel by William Dexter mentioned in that post involve human characters lost in large extraterrestrial caves where demon-like aliens arrive and depart by teleportation.

"Ages Before You Were Born"

"Time Patrol," 6.

In a time travel scenario, unless we are very careful, we wind up thinking of different times as if they were different places coexisting at the same time.

Two SF Scenarios
(i) Instantaneous interplanetary teleportation: someone teleports from Earth to Mars, spends twenty minutes on Mars, then returns to Earth - arriving twenty minutes after his departure? Yes.

(ii) Time travel, meaning the ability to disappear at any time and to (re)appear at any other time, whether earlier or later: someone disappears from 2020, appears in 3020, spends twenty minutes in that year, disappears from then and reappears back in 2020 - appearing twenty minutes after his disappearance from that year? Not necessarily. With the ability of time travel as described, he can appear at any time in 2020, not just twenty minutes after his original disappearance from that year.

A Danellian tells Everard:

"Your appeal has been considered... It was known and weighed ages before you were born." (p. 51)

The Danellians, who live over a million years after Everard, considered his appeal ages before he was born?  No. That does not sound right. Are we thinking of the twentieth century and the Danellian Era as if they were two different places that have coexisted for ages?

There is a simple solution. Given the mutable nature of history in the Time Patrol series, the Danellians must surely establish a base many ages in the past. Thus, that base would be unaffected by any alterations to human history made by time criminals. In that base, Danellians would be able to spend as much time as they needed to consider Everard's appeal and to perform any other such tasks.

But, nevertheless, when we first read the Danellian's statement did we then unreflectingly think that someone who lives over a million years after Everard's lifetime could have considered Everard's appeal ages before his birth?

"Martians" And Extinct Martians

Poul Anderson has half a dozen versions of Martians, then an uninhabited Mars visited in Twilight World and another uninhabited Mars colonized by Terrestrials and Lunarians in Fleet Of Stars. So, like sf in general, Anderson imagines Mars first as inhabited, then as uninhabited?

But there are intermediate positions. In James Blish's Cities In Flight and two Jack Loftus novels, Martians did exist but have become extinct. The last Martian dies as Earthmen arrive in Blish's Welcome To Mars. The hero of Michael Moorcock's ERB pastiche time travels to the era before the human race had migrated from Mars to Earth. The origin of the DC Comics superhero, the Martian Manhunter, changed from teleportation to time travel.

Anderson's "Margin of Profit" had Martians but, when the story was revised to fit it into the Technic History, those "Martians" had become extrasolar aliens who had colonized Mars. Every possibility is covered but this time not just by Anderson.

Down The Wires

Perish By The Sword, 7.

Unbe-
freaking-
lievable!

In the previous post, we quoted Gerard Manley Hopkins. In the present post, we invoke superheroes.

"Suddenly all of him wanted to be dissolved, flesh turned into energy, to pulse down the wires at light speed and be where she was." (p. 66)

This is a science fiction idea: teleportation. Furthermore, a DC Comics superhero, the Silver Age Atom, was able not only to shrink to any size but also to travel by telephone. The attached image shows him doing this with none other than Superman.

Through a telephone receiver, we hear not the speaker's voice but a recognizable reproduction of it. Similarly, I expect a teleporter, or in this case a telephone, to emit not the original guy but his duplicate.

But there you are. Poul Anderson does not suggest that anyone would be able to travel through a telephone although he does present teleportation in one or two stories.

Quiz question: In how many works does Anderson present teleportation? (They should all be mentioned in the blog search result for "teleportation," linked from the previous paragraph.)

Transports Of Delight

Star Prince Charlie, 2.

Now we come to a humorous bit. A kind of vehicle comprises a detached Ferris wheel with the driver and passengers seated in a gimbal-mounted box at the hub while six "yachis," kangaroo-like animals, are tethered on platforms just within the rim. The driver induces each yachi in turn to leap, thus propelling the vehicle forward.

This "yachina" is to be surpassed only by a kind of spaceship imagined by Bob Shaw. Shaped like a railway carriage and with a teleportation device at each end, the ship crosses space by repeatedly teleporting itself to itself, thus tumbling between stars faster than light. (Apart from the tumbling, this sounds like the multiple quantum jumps of the hyperdrive in Poul Anderson's Technic History.)

Shaw contributes one other FTL drive. In The Palace Of Eternity, when a Bussard ramjet passes a certain percentage of light speed, Einsteinian physics are superseded by the magical-sounding Arthurian physics, named after the physicist Arthur Arthur, and acceleration can continue beyond c. (Unfortunately, the crew of Anderson's Leonora Christine did not know this.)

Anderson was interested in humor, alternative FTL drives and Bussard ramjets so I imagine that he appreciated Shaw's contributions.

Does anyone out there know of any other "Transports of Delight"?

A Few Short, Focused Future Histories

Long future histories - Heinlein's, Anderson's or Niven's - are just about the future whereas a few short future historical series focus on a single concept.

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles: Mars;
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot: robots;
James Blish, The Seedling Stars: "pantropy";
Poul Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains: "gyrogravitics";
Poul Anderson, Maurai: post-nuclear recovery;
Poul Anderson, Kith: STL interstellar travel;
ERB, The Moon Maid: Lunar invasion;
Larry Niven, Teleportation: teleportation.

Eight loose examples, three by Anderson. Whatever is said about sf is usually said about Anderson.

Studying a future history, an sf fan's mind moves either forward along a single timeline, e.g., with van Rijn on Diomedes, or sideways between timelines as above. Although we imagine multiple timelines, each future history usually remains autonomous except once when van Rijn visits the Old Phoenix.

This Bank Holiday weekend:

May Day March;
a moot;
the big annual charity car boot sale at Ryelands Park.

For the retired, life is a long weekend.

Planetary Designations III

Poul Anderson, "Horse Trader," see here.

Alpha Centauri B II is an inner planet so maybe it is terrestroid? In fact, its envoy, Helmung, is a large blue humanoid with beady eyes, a black mane, a battered face, antennae and tattoos. (All these guys have two eyes in front. This is an anthropomorphic assumption.)

Helmung, who is from the continent of Almerik, carries a spear and a sword and wants fights, females and booze so it sounds as if Almerik is based on Almuric which is like Barsoom: Cairn travels there by teleportation and finds beautiful women.

Helmung wants spaceships and atomic weapons to "'...sack many worlds...'" (p. 289) - like the barbarians in the Technic History. His people have limited telekinetic power, enough to affect dice, possibly based on neural-quantum interaction. So even these dudes might have something to offer - also something to explain the mysterious data theft that is being investigated. Sf and detective fiction meet again.