Some Turning Points

Poul Anderson, "Turning Point" IN Anderson, Conflict (New York, 1983), pp.267-284.

In the Acknowledgements:

"Turning Point," Worlds of If, copyright 1963 by Digest Production Corporation.

On the Contents page:

The Turning Point         267

On p. 267:

TURNING POINT

At the head of the even-numbered pages, 268-284:

The Turning Point

On the opening page, the first person narrator quotes:

"The die is cast"

"In this sign conquer"

"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident"

"The Italian navigator has landed in the New World" (This was a surprise.)

"Dear God, the thing works!" (I can't find this.)

That opening passage is sufficient to determine that we will consider this story next.

The narrator reminds us that:

"...every planet is a complete world!" (p. 267) How many Anderson characters say that? If I had known that the question was going to come up, I would have counted.

He was on a ship that was surveying a planet that had been noted by the Traders - or maybe by another group called "...the Federals." (p. 267) All will be explained, of course. The crew had been surveying for a year and were "...jaded." (ibid.) This reminds us of Poul Anderson's Grand Survey ship, the Olga, and we have encountered interstellar Traders often enough before, of course.

It is good to know where we are going next.

Eric Sherrinford

"The Queen of Air and Darkness."

I will quote a character called Eric Sherrinford although I will also rearrange his words into a list rather than leaving them in the continuous prose of Poul Anderson's text. Sherrinford, addressing his client, Barbro Cullen, claims:

"'...I know just a few obvious facts, such as...

"'...your being widowed rather than divorced...

"'...and you're the daughter of outwayers in Olga Ivanoff Land...

"'...who, nevertheless, kept in close telecommunication with Christmas Landing;...

"'...and you're trained in one of the biological professions;...

"'...and you had several years' hiatus in field work...

"'...until recently you started again.'" (p. 6)

Barbro gapes and asks how in cosmos he knows that. (Of course.)

Who does Sherrinford sound like?

Does he say enough to back up his claimed knowledge?

Is this just an introductory flourish or does Sherrinford maintain the same level of deductive skill throughout the story?

I am not going to answer all these questions now!

For who Sherrinford sounds like, see:

Eddies: The Private Enquiry Agent

Good night. For me, back from the Gregson, Stieg Larsson, who also quotes that private enquiry agent, then bed.

Aurea

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWO.

Capital city of the colonized planet, Daedalus, in the Patrician System.

The original small town has been demolished or engulfed by the newly built sector defence command with its accompanying civil bureaucracy and private enterprises.

Soaring towers and sprawling industry.

Non-stop traffic on streets and elways or in the air.

Settlements elsewhere are enclaves in the wilderness.

A small part of the original town clings to a steep slope beneath the plateau with a view across hundreds of kilometers on this horizonless planet. 

Colonists of Daedalus are of many species from within the Terran Empire.

Targovi, a Tigery trader and covert Intelligence agent from Imhotep, visits an inn owned by a Cynthian, Ju Shao.

Aurea and Daedalus are as fully realized as Olga's Landing and Imhotep although these cities and planets appear only in this single novel.

In Olga's Landing II

Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), CHAPTER ONE.

See In Olga's Landing.

We try to convey the feel of Anderson's descriptive passages and have come close in the above linked post although we omitted some details:

the sky is not just blue but "...clear, deep blue..." (p. 195);

the breeze is cool although -

"It would have been deadly cold before [Diana's] people came to Imhotep" (ibid.);

Mount Horn is twelve kilometers above sea level;

the city holds not only the Pyramid but also the Institute, industries, shops, hotels, apartments and spaceport;

Diana is in the old quarter whose description we have quoted several times before (search the blog for "old quarter" although at least one other such quarter will come up!);

pioneers built in brick and low because of Imhotepan gravity;

in the market, videos show Terran sleaze and a vaz-Siravo dance from the Seas of Yang and Yin;

a gun dealer sells rifles, stunners and illegal Merseian blasters.

Every scene in Anderson's works reads as if the place exists and has not just been created at the stroke of a pen - or on a typewriter or a computer screen. We want to read more but can gain immensely just by rereading.

Three Market Squares On Two Planets

We have discussed the market squares (scroll down) in Lancaster and in Olga's Landing on Imhotep. Today Lancastrians had a procession with two lions and a dragon around the town centre, then music and food in Market Square.

There is also a market-square in Solis Township on Earth in the far future of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." The statue of the dancing girl on the fountain in the centre of this square is one of the memorable images in Poul Anderson's works, I think because mankind is about to evacuate Earth so that the statue will be left to crumble without ever again being seen.

Searching this blog for "dancing girl" (scroll down) brings up two references to this fountain and two others to a living dancing girl in Tyre.

Wind On Avalon

"The Problem of Pain."

"Wind shrieked, hooted, yammered, hit flesh with fists and cold knives." (p. 42)

This wind attacks four Ythrians and two human beings in three ways. It not only shrieks and deafens - it is, after all, loud - but also punches and stabs: an attack as if by enemies. And this attack by the Avalonian environment devastates. Arrach drowns. Enherrian loses a wing. Olga is poisoned. Pete must question his faith. And that shrieking wind presages all this.

In Poul Anderson's works, we find:

"The winds that will be howling at all hours..."

I am typing this post, watching TV news about Greenland and preparing to attend the Zen group while Sheila goes to one of her choirs.

An Ythrian Family

"The Problem of Pain."

Having said that Ythrians live in small groups, either single families or extended households, Peter Berg introduces one single family into his narrative:

Enherrian, father;

Whell, mother;

Rusa, grown son;

Arrach, grown daughter.

These four Ythrians plus the recently married Peter and Olga Berg embark on a sea mission while exploring Avalon. Thus, here are two married couples, one difference being that the human couple have not yet had time for children.

In his narration, Berg refers to one human ideal of matrimony, the Holy Family:

"'At first everything went like Mary's smile on Christmas morning.'" (p. 41)

(Another Biblical reference and also a link to "The Season of Forgiveness," a second Christian story in the Earth Book.)

However, there are differences between the two kinds of marriage. The Ythrians have an oestrous cycle. Male and female are kept together not by regular sexual relations but by shared care of children who cling to either parent in flight. 

In the course of this story, both Arrach and Olga die. There are differences in the ways that the two species mourn.

There has been nothing further as yet about choths.

Details And Copies

In Narrative Structures, we proposed to summarize information about members of the Olga crew but find that we have already done this in "Wings Of Victory." I would have included a few more details if writing such a summary now but, of course, the details are in the story which I recommend every reader of this blog either to read or to reread. See also A Five Year Mission.

In "The Saturn Game," Scobie's:

"...copy of The Machinery Of Freedom...had nearly disintegrated..." (p. 23)

After repeated rereadings and referencings, my paperback copy of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate eventually split into two parts and was sellotaped back together but then split again, this time into two parts and a separate page, and has more recently been replaced by a larger format hardback copy whose dust jacket is now frayed and torn. Likewise, a paperback edition of David Falkayn: Star Trader split in two with a torn page but has been replaced by a larger hardback copy whose dustcover is protected by a seemingly impenetrable transparent outer cover. We quote texts as if they subsisted in an abstract and universally accessible Platonic realm, and indeed they can now be preserved online, but nevertheless we often still rely on vulnerable physical copies. 

Most of my currently possessed copies of Poul Anderson's works should outlast their present owner.

Narrative Structures

Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 15-32.

The first person narrator of this story has a curious status. First, she is not named in the story. It is the Earth Book compiler, Hloch of Stormgate, who afterwards informs us that her name is Maeve Downey, that she is a planetologist and that this story is an extract from her autobiography, Far Adventure. (An evocative title.)

Secondly, she is not involved in the action that she recounts. Three explorers descend to the surface of the newly discovered terrestroid planet. They are a xenologist, a pilot and a gunner and therefore do not include the planetologist.

Thirdly, her narrative uses the techniques of fiction, describing events from the point of view of the pilot and informing us of his reactions and feelings. This does not surprise us because we know that we are reading a short story written by Poul Anderson but Hloch's Avalonian audience does not know that!

The story presents information about several members of the Olga crew and I propose to outline and discuss this information but that will have to wait until after a visit to the gym. Life continues in Lancaster as well as on Ythri.

First Contact

The two most recent posts have shown the position of Ythrians in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Their first story is about first contact when initially nothing was known about this species. Indeed, initially, it was difficult even to identify the dominant species on an obviously inhabited planet.

A Star Trek-parallel scenario: 

the (first) Grand Survey;

the starship, Olga, under Captain Gray, on a five-year mission beyond Alpha and Beta Crucis in the constellation Lupus, 278 light-years from Sol;

a golden G9 dwarf star of half Solar luminosity;

a terrestroid planet, smaller than Earth, with 0.75 G, a thin, dry but humanly breathable atmosphere, some small oceans and two small moons.

The Olga:

verifies by neutrino analysis that there is no artificial atomic energy anywhere in this planetary system;

enters orbit around the terrestroid planet;

gains every possible datum by remote observation before dispatching robot probes to uninhabited regions where the probes establish that life is chemically similar to Earth's and that microorganisms are safe.

There are woods, lakes, plains, mountains, clusters of buildings without defensive walls or streets, primitive mines and evidence of both Stone Age and Iron Age cultures.

This planet will later wage interstellar war against Terra. But not yet.

What Happened After

We would like to know what happened to the characters after the story ended. (I mean stories in general, not just any particular story.)

And I remember that some old-style novels did conclude by summarizing subsequent biographies for one or two of the major characters. That constrains what can be written in a sequel. However, many novels are constructed as self-contained units neither requiring nor expecting a sequel.

A sequel published twenty years later can either reflect the passage of time in the real world by commencing its action exactly twenty years after that of the first book or, alternatively, can begin five minutes after that action because fictional time is not real time. 

Poul Anderson never describes the death of a major series character - except Harald Hardrada, The Last Viking, because Harald was a historical figure with a known time and place of death. 

It is useful to have a copy of The Earth Book Of Stormgate alongside The Technic Civilization Saga even though the entire contents of the Earth Book are reproduced in their chronological positions in Volumes I-III of the Saga.

Hloch, fictitiously editing the Earth Book, does satisfy some of our curiosity about what happened afterwards. First, he informs us that the curiously off-stage first person narrator of "Wings of Victory" was called Maeve Downey. She was a planetologist who later wrote an autobiography, Far Adventure, from which "Wings of Victory," about the discovery of Ythri, is extracted. Ythri was discovered after the first three years of the Grand Survey and:

"After five years the survivors would meet and compare experiences."

-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 15-32 AT p. 16.

Five years: shades of Star Trek! An entire series could have been set during the Grand Survey. But we have only this one story. The Olga, which discovered Ythri, also discovered Avalon which was provisionally named Gray after the captain of the Olga.

And I think that that is all that we can glean about what happened after "Wings of Victory." It is marginally more than the story itself tells us.

Multiple Narratives

Of the eleven Technic History instalments, including one novel, that are collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon introduces the seven instalments (including that one novel) that had previously been collected with five others in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

"The Saturn Game" is a third person narrative about a team of characters exploring the outer Solar System but with no viewpoint character.

"Wings of Victory" is a first person narrative by a character who remains in the orbiting Olga instead of descending to the surface of the newly discovered planet, Ythri, so that most of the narration is in the third person with one member of the landing crew as the viewpoint character.

In the framing passages of "The Problem of Pain," an unnamed first person narrator describes his conversation with Peter Berg on the planet Lucifer. The main story is a third person account of Berg's experience on Avalon with him as viewpoint character. 

"Margin of Profit" introduces Nicholas van Rijn but with Rafael Torres as the main viewpoint character in a third person narrative although, additionally, there are two short passages when, unusually, van Rijn, who is and remains the central character, also becomes the viewpoint character.

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" introduces Adzel but with James Ching as both viewpoint character and first person narrator.

"Esau" is a third person narrative with Emil Dalmady as viewpoint character both in the framing passages where Dalmady confronts van Rijn on Earth and in the main story which recounts Dalmady's experience on the planet, Suleiman.

Those are just six of the eleven but they are also the six with the most complicated narrative structures.

In Olga's Landing

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER ONE, is one of my favourite scenes in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Sitting on the tower of St. Barbara's, Diana sees blue sky, the small, fierce sun Patricius, two moons, the Pyramid that houses Imperial offices, sunseeker vine climbing the tower, the market square surrounding the tower, life spilling from narrow streets and surging between enclosing walls, shops and booths with multifarious wares, occasional clopperhoof-drawn wagons, muscular Imhotepan colonials, a spaceman and a marine badmouthing "'Merseian bastards,'" (p. 198) Tigeries (land Starkadians), a centauroid Donarrian, Irumclagians, Shalmuans and the first ever Wodenite on Imhotep...

That is where the narrative begins.

We are also informed that:

ice bull herds used to stampede through Olga's Landing when it was only an exploration base;

hot, savoury odours waft from foodstalls and music from taverns;

folk are mostly human but not Terran.

The scene is worthy of a Heinlein Juvenile. Technic civilization is most alive in this moment.

From Page To Screen

Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453. 

I am a stickler for accurate screen dramatizations of novels. However, extraordinary measures would be necessary to translate to screen all the information conveyed in CHAPTER ONE of this novel. Maybe a mixture of voice-over and scrolling script to inform us that:

the sun is called Patricius;

Diana's people had come to Imhotep;

the Pyramid houses Imperial offices;

the transient, multiracial population of the old quarter drifts "...in and out on the tides of space..." (p. 195);

"Who holds St. Barbara's holds the planet." (p. 196)

We would be directly shown the Miniature Computers and other wares on sale in the shops and booths of Olga's Landing, all of them.

Avalonian Organisms

In "The Problem of Pain," Ythrian and human explorers on the planet provisionally named Gray see large floating masses of vegetation grazed by monstrous marine creatures and probably supporting many lesser species. Olga Berg names the vegetation atlantis weed. On an island in an archipelago where some of the explorers have been shipwrecked, a surgeon tree cuts a wing from the Ythrian, Enherrian, and Olga dies when poisoned by vapors from the hell shrub.

In "Wingless," Nat Falkayn rescues Keshchyi, a young Ythrian caught in atlantis weed on the planet now named Avalon.

In The People Of The Wind, Tabitha Falkayn takes Philippe Rochefort to see atlantis weed, each mass of which supports an entire ecology. She hopes that they will also see a grazing kraken. Tabitha tells Rochefort that, on the archipelago island where he had crash landed, he might have been injured or killed by a surgeon tree and also that there were hell shrubs in a hollow nearby. 

Thus, the novel incorporates features from the two short stories.

Details On Avalon

Rereading Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, Chapter I, we find that it is extremely rich in details but, on the other hand, they have all been recorded on this blog before and can be found by searching the blog. See in particular:

Who Knows of Avalon? 

Falkayn Bay (blog search result)

The city of Gray on the planet Avalon is named after the captain of the Grand Survey ship, Olga, which made first contact with Ythri and discovered Avalon. The city is on Falkayn Bay which, of course, is named after the Founder of the Avalonian colony, David Falkayn.

Three ecologies coexist: native Avalonian; imported Terran and Ythrian. Many plant and animal species are named and described as if by someone who is acquainted with them. Native flowers include:

"...sweet small janie, pungent livewell, graceful trefoil and Buddha's cup..."

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 444.

Names must have been bestowed by colonists because there are no native Avalonians. The last flower listed here must have been named by Terrans!

Poul Anderson's characters live in this history and we feel as though we do too.

Life In The Technic History

Imagining living in Poul Anderson's Technic History, I envisage myself neither as a League merchant nor as an Imperial Intelligence officer but as living a quieter life in one of the many exotic locations:

Earth in the Solar Commonwealth;

Starfall on Hermes;

the Kazan, the Obala or Zorkagrad on Dennitza;

anywhere on Avalon;

Olga's Landing on Imhotep;

beside the Highroad River on Daedalus.

Also visiting Ythri, Merseia etc. 

If living in the appropriate era, I might work as a researcher for van Rijn or for the Terran government. If working for van Rijn, I would seek election as a union steward and might have some interesting interactions with our employer. 

St. Thomas's Church in Lancaster always holds General Election hustings where the Parliamentary candidates answer questions. That and other important events are scheduled for this week.

Onward to the future.

Orion And The First Grand Survey

The planet t'Kela is a hundred light-years from the Solar System and in about the centre of the Orion constellation if we have understood van Rijn correctly:

"'...poor Nicholas van Rijn must come out on his own selfs, a hundred light-years in the direction of Orion's bellybutton he must come...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Territory" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 1-76 AT p. 9.

There is an Esperancian mission to t'Kela so we infer that t'Kela is not very far from Esperance.

Between Rigel and Betelgeuse, the star Valenderay, becomes a supernova. A passing exploratory Polesotechnic League scout ship alerts the scientific base at Catawrayannis on Llynathawr. A little over one parsec from Valenderay is the G-type star, Korych, with its inhabited planet, Merseia.

Paradox And Trillia, a hundred parsecs from Sol, are close to each other and not far from Avalon.

Planets Discovered During The First Grand Survey

Ythri (by the Olga)

Gray/Avalon (also by the Olga)

Paradox

Trillia (I checked on this before adding it to the list)

Merseia

Holm And Avalon

The People Of The Wind, Chapter II opens:

"Avalon rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds, on an axis tilted 21 degrees from the normal to the orbital plane. Gray, at about 43 degrees N., knows short nights always; in summer the darkness seems scarcely a blink." (p. 452)

The first sentence reads like the omniscient narrator imparting physical information directly to the reader. In the second sentence, the phrase, "...the darkness seems...," maybe reflects the collective experience of the Avalonians rather than just another fact about their environment. However, the third sentence, which completes the opening paragraph, reads:

"Daniel Holm wondered if that was a root of his weariness." (p. 452)

Thus, we learn that the entire paragraph, and indeed the entire ensuing chapter, are narrated from the point of view of Daniel Holm who had conversed with his son, Christopher, at the beginning of Chapter I. It is Holm that knows and reflects on Avalon's rotation period. The omniscient narrator, who is always present however marginally, has been pushed further into the background.

Holm goes on to reflect that his ancestors have lived on Avalon for centuries and indeed had:

"...arrived with Falkayn." (ibid.)

David Falkayn, whom we first saw as a Polesotechnic League apprentice, has become a historical figure. That is what happens in future histories. When James Blish's John Amalfi, preserved for centuries by antiagathics, revisits the planet, He, he learns to his embarrassment that the highest mountain on the planet has been named Mount Amalfi.

On Avalon, the city of Gray is on Falkayn Bay:

the Grand Survey ship, Olga, under Captain Gray discovered Avalon;

David Falkayn founded the colony on Avalon;

Falkayn's granddaughter named the planet.  

Corona

Peter and Olga Berg were in a base on the southern shore of Corona. A strong current ran east from a great gulf and struck an archipelago which would be the Oronesia. Beyond Oronesia is the Hesperian archipelago and, beyond that, around the curve of the planet, the western coast of Corona. Is that "great gulf" the Gulf of Centaurs where the second Avalonian city, Centauri, will be built? Jack Birnam's family were sea ranchers dwelling on the west coast of Corona. Did they live on or near Falkayn Bay where the first city, Gray, would later be built?

We see Corona in three periods: when it is being explored, when it is being settled and when it has long been settled. There is also an intermediate period when the Hesperian Islands have been settled and a research and development team is planning the colonization of Corona so that there will then be some exploratory expeditions to the continent.

Within the Technic History, there is an Avalonian history.