Inside Straight

The fourth story in Poul Anderson's Conquests/Seven Conquests, "Inside Straight," has several background features in common with the same author's Technic Civilization History:

a Commonwealth;
the secondary drive;
the Anglic language;
colony planets called Hermes (in this case, Old and New);
motives for extra-solar colonization (fresh start, malcontents, ways of life).

The main point of this story is that scattered, self-sufficient colony planets would develop divergent cultures, including some odd ones. Diverse means of exchange enrich different social groups:

on New Hermes, gamblers;
on Alexander, entrepreneurs;
on Einstein, scientists;
on Hellas, the potent and beautiful;
on Arjay, politicians;
on Dromm, soldiers;
on Archbishop, philosophers?

Drommans overcoming their alien oppressors perfected the military virtues and became compelled to continue conquering. The introduction says that "...exploration and war do not always have economic causes." (Conquests, London, 1981, p. 105) Economics is basic if not always causative. If their conquests overstretch them economically, then the Drommans will have to stop, their self-image shattered, whereas, if the conquests enrich them, then this gives them a further motivation and justification.

The New Hermetian (Anderson writes "Hermesian") system:

automatic factories provide necessities free to all;
everything else is free enterprise subject to a Conservation Authority and a fair-practices act;
no expensive public works;
concentration of economic or political power discouraged;
individual liberty;
a lot of complicated economic gambling;
highly trained, commission-earning probability analysts;
therefore also, a complicated financial system with highly trained theoreticians and specialists;
consequently, highly developed games theory enabling them to win wars and defeat the Drommans.

I do not know about gambling and do not understand the phrase "inside straight"! (When I googled it, one possible meaning of the term was this story.)

Continuing Conquests

Continuing to reread Poul Anderson's Conquests/Seven Conquests, I have completed three of the seven stories. What did I forget to say about the second story, "Wildcat"?

First, it has a good fight scene between men with guns in jeeps and a tyrannosaur. Secondly, I have formed the habit of noting words in Anderson's extensive vocabulary that I am unfamiliar with. When the viewpoint character relieves a guard, the latter hands over his rifle and adds, "'And here's the glim...'" (Seven Conquests, New York, 1984, p. 75). From the context, I infer that he means his flashlight. Of course, in a visual medium, we would see what he was handing over.

The doctor says of a patient, "'He can do light work with that Stader on his arm.'" (p. 61) Stader?

And why does the chaplain call the oil rig men "'...wildcatters...,'" the phrase that becomes the title of the story? (p. 63)

Back to the third story, "Cold Victory." The Captain demonstrates that the anti-Humanist counterrevolution succeeded because of chance events, accidents, but the academic insists that Humanism is a historical movement that will not be deflected so easily so their philosophical disagreement remains unresolved.

"Cold Victory" addresses the harrowing issue of brothers on opposite sides in a civil war. In this case, the one who wins dies. The story also cameos a character whose condition is addressed in another installment of the Psychotechnic future history, a tramp who draws his citizen's allowance and preserves old stories: one of the millions permanently unemployed because of advanced technology.

Although this tramp is not embittered, the condition of millions like him is a cause of the war:

"'Psychotechnic government had failed to solve the problems of Earth's adjustment to living on a high technological level. Conditions worsened until all too many people were ready to try desperation measures. The Humanist revolution was the desperation measure that succeeded in being tried.'" (p. 87)

As often, I could quote more but must close the quotation marks somewhere. This is an early work by Anderson and here he is using a character, the Martian academic, to summarize an entire period of this future history.

Answers

As Poul Anderson's "Wildcat" proceeds, conversations between the characters disclose quite a complicated time travel scenario:

they are drilling for oil in the Jurassic;

their employer is the Trans-temporal Oil Company, Transoco, although the US government has a strong say in proceedings;

there is a shortage of oil in the twentieth century because Transoco has taken so much of it from the past;

 

the existence of time travel is a state secret except to those who are involved in it;

 

men and equipment are transmitted through time by a projector that remains in the present;

 

an inertial effect decrees that time travelers spending a year in the past necessarily return to their period a year after their departure;

 

thus, the concept of simultaneity between past and present is applicable;

 

the minimum period of pastward transmission is a hundred million years whereas the future can be reached in hundred year hops;

Herries wants heavy weapons to use against dinosaurs but such weapons are needed back home where the international situation is critical.

What can this be leading to? Can time travel somehow be used to affect that international situation?

HG Wells' The Time Machine, written in the late nineteenth century before heavier than air flight, is dated by incomprehensible phrases like "'...plough you for the Little-go...'" "Wildcat" is dated by its Cold War scenario and by its use of the term "Negroes."

When, Where And Why?

In Poul Anderson's "Wildcat," the opening paragraph has three sentences:

in the first, it rains in a swamp;
in the second, the viewpoint character sees a derrick and a floodlight;
in the third, he hears a brontosaur.

So where is he? In the past, in the Lost World or on another planet?

The second paragraph establishes only that he is on a dock and that it is still raining. In the third and fourth paragraphs, he evades, and shoots at, an attacking plesiosaur. Half way down the second page, Herries' altercation with the guards, who should have been more vigilant, establishes that he and they are a hundred million years in the past.

So why is this story in Conquests, a collection on the theme of human warfare? All will be revealed but that may be the limit of my blogging for today!

(Meanwhile, still among Wellsian themes, we have moved from space travel to time travel.)

Two Collections

Poul Anderson wrote many short stories. Many of them have been collected. As its American title suggests, Seven Conquests (New York, 1984)/Conquests (London, 1981) collects seven short stories. Alight In The Void (New York, 1993) contains six works but the sixth is a poem. Thus, these two volumes contain twelve stories.

Four of them need not be in these volumes:

"Wildcat" in Conquests and "Flight to Forever" in Alight In The Void are time travel stories and as such are included in Past Times, a (mainly) time travel collection;

"Cold Victory" in Conquests is an installment of Anderson's first future history series and as such is collected in, indeed is the title story of, one volume of that history;

"Son of the Sword" in Alight In The Void is historical fiction, therefore, I argue, should be included with at least four other stories set in diverse past periods in a relevant collection that could be called Many Times.

Conquests is a collection on the theme of war. Thus, since, e.g., "Wildcat" is about both war and time travel, there is some rationale for its appearing in two differently themed collections. However, what is needed now is a complete multi-volume collection, without duplication, of all of Poul Anderson's short stories. Seven Conquests/Conquests can either lose the Seven from its title or, probably, gain two relevant stories from among those that are still uncollected.

I have recently discussed the five stories in Alight In The Void. "Wildcat" is discussed briefly under "Limits on Time Travel" in the earlier post, "Time Travel And Poul Anderson," dated Tuesday, 24 April, 2012 (see here), but will warrant further discussion later (indeed has already been discussed (see here and here) because the order of these posts has been shuffled between drafting and publishing).

Cold Victory

Of the short stories by Poul Anderson collected in Conquests (London, 1981):

the first is set in space;
the second is set during the Jurassic Period;
the third, "Cold Victory," is a conversation piece set in a tavern on Mars during an early period of Anderson's Psychotechnic future history.

Thus, three settings widely distributed through space and time. Conquests is a collection on the theme of war. In "Cold Victory," war and history are discussed not just indirectly by the author but also directly by the characters:

a Martian (human colonial) academic;
a man in the uniform of the Order of Planetary Engineers;
a woman wearing a kilt displaying the tartan of the Lucifer Clan on Venus (Anderson calls her a "Venusian" but the correct adjective, used by Wells, Stapledon and Heinlein, is "Venerian");
the narrator, a Captain in the Solar Guard.

They represent four inhabited planets, Mars, Luna, Venus and Earth. The Captain, from Earth, will suggest that the anti-Humanist counterrevolution was an example of accident, not law, determining history, but his argument will have to wait until I have had a night's sleep and a day of other activities.

Non-Human Races

How many non-human races will interact with Earth in its future? In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," (Alight In The Void, New York, 1993):

Ixchulhi conquerors built an enormous stone pyramid that stood for over twenty thousand years;

the Grimmani built the also enormous stone fortress of Brontothor;

Taury's Imperial court included a centauroid, an avian from Klakkahar, a four-armed Haamigurian and the Dreamer;

 

the "gods" of the city were so far beyond mankind that it was irrelevant whether they were our descendents or the outcome of an independent evolution;

Saunders wonders "How many intelligent races had risen on Earth and had their day, and died...?" but concludes "At least...we were the first." (p. 235)

Thus, some non-human races are separated from us not by space but by time. They are not extraterrestrials but extra-temporals.

The Dreamer is the last of the Vro-Hi. In Anderson's Technic Civilization History, we realize that a Galactic Empire would be too impossibly vast to rule and that even the much smaller Terran Empire, only four hundred light years across, cannot really be ruled centrally from Archopolis. However, in "Flight to Forever," "'...the coordination of a billion planets...'" in a single Galactic Empire becomes temporarily possible because of "'...scientific psychodynamics and the great cybernetic engines...'" and the guidance of the old, wise, telepathic Vro-Hi. (p. 214) The Vro-Hi are not just collectively ancient. The Dreamer alone is half a million years old.

"'No other race is intelligent enough to coordinate [the Empire].'" (p. 208)

The Dreamer works on the philosophical basis of the Second Empire just as Asimov's Second Foundation applies psychohistory to project their Second Empire. However, the Dreamer also proves that permanence is self-contradictory so that, "'There can be no goal to reach, not ever.'" (p. 214)

No permanent goal, no.

The Dreamer agrees with the time traveler Saunders that "'To travel hopefully...is better than to arrive.'" (p. 213) CS Lewis commented on this aphorism that, if it were true and were known to be true, then there would be nothing to hope for. But Lewis believed in a permanent goal. Surely for the rest of us there is both constant motion and many inherently valuable moments along the way?

The Vro-Hi "'...achieved a static physical state in which the new frontiers and challenges lay within our own minds...'" and wrongly thought that this ideal should suit all other beings. (p. 213) This same, I think false, dichotomy recurs in Anderson's much later Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy. Integrated intelligences will continue to explore both the endless outer cosmos and mental realms like pure mathematics.

The Dreamer offers to remove the time travelers' "'...little neuroses...'" but Belgotai replies that he likes his. (p. 213) I would have accepted the offer. When painful memories arise during Zen meditation, we neither suppress nor prolong them and do not think about them but let them pass and, until they pass, sit with them. But attention to the present would be facilitated if the memories did not arise.

"Flight to Forever" gives us another reference to the "ultrawave" (p. 216) and a space battle comparable to those in the Technic History. Saunders ironically uses the phrase, "All the time in the world." (p. 188), which is used not in The Time Machine but in one film adaptation of it.

Science fiction hints at some interesting other languages:

Old Solar in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy;
Temporal in Anderson's Time Patrol series:
Stellarian in "Flight To Forever" -

- languages of the sun, time and stars.

War, Wells And Anderson

Everyone knows that sf writers follow in the footsteps of HG Wells but it is not always obvious how. Wells predicted not only spacecraft but also aircraft - that nineteenth century nation states armed with twentieth century weapons would wage World Wars. Soldiers on battlefields would be replaced by aviators bombing major cities. Not only armies but also populations would suffer and die in large numbers.

Wells wrote The War In The Air in 1907. He added a Preface in 1921 and another in 1941. The latter ended, "I told you so. You damned  fools." (Wells, The War In The Air, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1973, p. 8)

Poul Anderson's collection, Conquests (London, 1981), addresses exactly the same theme as Wells' novel, The War In The Air: future technological warfare. The first story, "Kings Who Die," adds the more familiar Wellsian theme of space travel. In fact, the exportation of institutionalized violence into space is effectively offered as a partial solution to the problem propounded in The War In The Air, and experienced in World War II. The United States and United Asia have learned better than to bombard each others' cities or even each others' Lunar bases. Only soldiers die and only in space.

But why can this endless, carefully controlled slaughter not be ended to make way for peaceful coexistence on Earth and in space? The Unasian General Rostock practices brain-computer symbiosis like a character in Anderson's later novel, The Avatar. From all the data available to him, Rostock deduces that the sacrificial deaths of the revered soldiers is "'...an outlet for the destructive emotions generated in the mass of the people by the type of life they lead. A type of life for which evolution never designed them.'" (p. 35)

Rostock wants the American prisoner Diaz to join with him in devising a solution but first Diaz must help Rostock's fleet against the Americans! Is Rostock's claim to want peace merely a ruse to get Diaz's help in the war? I would be with Rostock in wanting to end war but a credible first step is not to enlist a prisoner's help in waging the war. Diaz agrees, a strange thing for an Anderson hero to do, but it turns out that he is acting under a posthypnotic command that he had agreed to but, of course, willingly forgotten. Appearing even to himself to cooperate, he gets close enough to Rostock to sabotage the latter's computer with an oscillator hidden in his body.

So, by the end of the story, the highest loyalty open to Diaz is to his country, not the more general loyalty to humanity apparently offered by Rostock. I have to agree in disagreeing with Rostock's means, if not his end. (Similarly, Aycharaych asked Flandry to help him preserve Chereion but that would have required Flandry to betray his allies, including his murdered fiancee's family. Good end, bad means.)

How plausible is Rostock's theory that the war is a revival of human sacrifice? This, if true, would be horrific and governments would have to agree to stop the slaughter, then find some other way to address their disagreements. But I think that they should do this anyway.

Brontothor

On June 30 and July 1 last year, I posted a two-part Chronology of Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" (IN Anderson, Alight In The Void, New York, 1993, pp. 161-240), which I thought was comprehensive although, on rereading the story, I realize that a few more dates should have been included:

in 43,000 AD, the nonhuman Grimmani built the massive stone fortress of Brontothor on Earth;

in 44,000 AD, Brontothor was blasted out of action;

between 49,000 and 50,000, the Galactic Emperor lost his fleet, fled to the Periphery, made Earth the Galactic capital and renovated parts of Brontothor;

in 50,000 AD, the time projector arrived outside Brontothor.

The Grimanni sound like Germani or other barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire in history and in historical fictions by Poul Anderson.

Brontothor is a fantastic setting:

"A gray stone mass dominated the landscape. It stood enormous a few miles off, its black walls sprawling over incredible acres, its massive crenellated towers reaching gauntly into the sky. And it lay half in ruin, torn and tumbled stone distorted by energies that once made rock run molten, blurred by uncounted millennia of weather - old." (p. 201)

- but there is a banner flying.

One of Brontothor's occupants describes it as:

"A haunted fortress on a frozen ghost world..." (p. 204)

Earth is frozen and inhabited by "Only a few starveling savages..." because there was "...a weapon...which consumed atmospheric carbon dioxide." (pp. 208-209)

The time travelers are entertained in a small council chamber "...hung with tapestries and carpeted with skins..." because the great hall is too huge,empty, dark and hollow. (p. 206)

"Flight to Forever" ends with echoes of The Time Machine and of another Anderson story. Because the Morlocks moved the Time Machine into the White Sphinx, it returns to the nineteenth century in a different part of the Time Traveler's laboratory. Because the time projector was stored in a warehouse at Brontothor, it returns to 1973 a short distance down the hill from the house. And Saunders says, "'...I must be a little early.'" (p. 240) - echoing the title of another Anderson time travel story.

Flight To Forever III

I thought that another memorable passage in Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" (IN Anderson, Alight In The Void, New York, 1993, pp. 161-240) was:

"'...this last farewell to the days when we fought with our own hands, and fared between the stars, when we were a small band of sworn comrades whose dreams outstripped our strength.'" (p. 226)

Taury the Red, about to assume Galactic Imperial power, feels nostalgic about the days when her small band was almost powerless. Looking ahead, she continues:

"'When you work for a billion stars, you don't have a chance to see one peasant's wrinkled face light with a deed of kindness you did, or hear him tell you what you did wrong - the world will all be strangers to us -'" (ibid.)

Could a high tech interstellar civilization really have a social hierarchy with an Empress at one end and peasants at the other? Surely not. Why do we read such stuff? What we are appreciating here is a fantastic combination of elements from historical fiction and from science fiction. It is like the Tsarist Empire with spaceships, although Anderson's canon does also include both straight historical fiction and serious speculative fiction.

The change in Taury's Imperial status is from de jure to de facto. Earlier:

"'...we are the Empire - legally. Taury is a direct descendant of Maurco the Doomer, last Emperor to be anointed according to the proper forms. Of course, that was five thousand years ago, and Maurco had only three systems left then, but the law is clear. These hundred or more barbarian pretenders, human and otherwise, haven't the shadow of a real claim to the title.'" (p. 205)

But would Galactic Emperors be anointed and hereditary? If so, then any of the pretenders can seize power and start a new dynasty. De jure always begins as de facto. And, as it happens, only an implausible coincidence enables Taury to enforce her claim.

Saunders and Belgotai, time traveling futurewards in their time projector which, like Wells' Time Machine, is confined to a single position on the Earth's surface, stop in 50,000 AD. Over the millennia, the Galactic Imperial capital had been located closer to the Galactic center. However, Taury's father had fled back to the Solar System and had occupied the Terrestrial fortress of Brontothor which happens to have been built, seven millennia earlier, in sight of the location of the time projector. And it is this imported time travel technology that enables Taury's fleet to win a decisive space battle.

Thus, a far more probable scenario would have had the time travellers arriving in 50,000 AD while the seat of Imperial power was still located elsewhere in the Galaxy. Even if it was now in the Solar System, why should it be on Earth, let along in direct line of sight of the arriving time projector?

Some other arrivals also have this convenient coincidental quality, enabling the time travelers instantly to assess the Galactic situation immediately on exiting the projector:

in 4100 AD, they arrive among buildings where a man uses a "psychophone" to greet them with "'Welcome, travelers...'"! (p. 185);

in 4300 AD, they are greeted by young people emerging from summerhouses who regard time travelers as "'...the biggest lark...since the ship came from Sirius...'" (p. 188);

in 4400 AD, a villa burns as "...huge bearded men in helmets and cuirasses..." carry loot and captives to a scarred spaceship (p. 190);

in 25,296 AD, Lord Arsfel of Astracyr from the Galactic Institute has led an archaeological expedition (spaceship parked nearby) to excavate the Ixchulhi pyramid in which the projector had been trapped for twenty thousand years;

in 31,000 AD, they are in a city with a spaceship, yet again, parked nearby and this time there is a Matriarchy;

in 36,000 AD, there is a village with a battered spaceship and a main in Imperial uniform.

On all but one of these dates, as in 50,000 AD, the time travelers are immediately greeted by informative locals. In the remaining case, 4400 AD, they can see at a glance that the barbarians have arrived so that it is prudent to flee.