Mural

I have been reading Poul Anderson since the 1960's. In those days, I also read American comic books. I got back into comics twenty years later. Usually, the only graphic element in a novel or short story collection is the cover illustration -  although some hard back editions do not have one. Novels republished several times over the decades can have a few different covers whereas later novels, even when reprinted, tend to stay with a single cover.

In Poul Anderson's The Byworlder (London, 1974), the character Skip takes two pages to describe a mural of the Revelation of St John the Divine that he himself had painted on the walls and floor of a Bible-belt diner during a week when it was closed. Any screen adaptation of the novel would have to show this mural even though it is described only in a flash-back. The graphic content is vivid and cannot be reproduced here except by quoting the entire passage which I am not about to do.

However, the main highlights are:

the Father's face "'...was half human, half lion'" (p. 87) (this connects with CS Lewis and Hinduism);
"'...his long white hair and beard tossed in the storm of destruction...'" (ibid.);
Gabriel was a jazz trumpeter;
the floor underfoot was Earth with tombstones falling and graves opening everywhere since, by the time of Judgment Day, bodies have been buried everywhere;
different stages of the reconstitution of resurrecting bodies;
"'...a distant view of burning cities, floods, earthquakes...a lightning bolt...'" (p. 88);
the saved "'...whirling upward like dry leaves in a cyclonic wind...,'" all naked (ibid.);
the damned falling and starting to burn;
Satan making a defiant, offensive hand gesture towards God;
"'...the number of the beast in binary'" (p. 89) (?);
the Great Whore of Babylon glad-eyeing the Antichrist...'" (ibid.)

Skip, not a believer, had enjoyed literally interpreting Revelation and had been so engrossed in creativity that it had not occurred to him that the locals would not appreciate it. But they need to ask themselves whether this is what they believe.

A comic script writer would verbally instruct his penciller, inker, colorist and letterer whereas Anderson, a prose novelist, verbally addresses his readers. I am sadly lacking in visual imagination but I expect that most readers can visualize Skip's apocalyptic mural to some extent.

Orthians

In Poul Anderson's The Byworlder (London, 1974), "Byworlders" live alternatives life styles to that of "Orthodox" society but what is the latter like?

Orthos are called "georges," staid taxpayer types (p. 10). Skip, a sigaroon, contrasts the Viking sea gypsies with Orthos:

"The average upper-class Orthian was doubtless more hard-driving, well informed, thoroughly trained, including in the new mental disciplines which could evoke effective genius from ordinary cerebral endowment; but he was also anomic, chronically anxious, inwardly alone: a sane and realistic logician, emotionally crazy as a hoot owl.
"The oldest Viking kept youthful spirits." (p. 80)

It sounds as if these two cultures need to be synthesized: the Ortho new mental disciplines with the Viking youthful spirits. The idea of genius-evoking disciplines is relevant to Anderson's The Long Way Home in which apologists for the computer-run Technate society dismiss their Commoners as having hopelessly low IQ's, even though the Technate meanwhile uses genetic engineering to ensure a high average IQ among its Ministerial class.

In view of changes made so far, I think that no part of the human condition should be regarded as unchangeable. Better diet, medicine, educational input and, if they are to be found, "...new mental disciplines...," like the training received by Anderson's Time Patrolmen, can draw out and enhance existing intellectual, practical or creative abilities that were previously left undeveloped in those who were thought not to need them.

Byworlders

In the early twenty first century -

Byworlders:
leave "Ortho" society not to join the organized crime of the Underworld but to found diverse sub-cultures like -

Theontologists:
an eclectic religious community.

Sigaroons:
drifters, migratory workers;
do odd jobs and provide personal services or entertainment;
ostracize any of their number who beg, bully or steal;
can exercise a right to a public works billet, doing, e. g., clean-up work.

Skip, a sigaroon (interior decorator, carpenter, mechanic, repairman, singer and story-teller) spends time with Theontologists and sea gypsies.

Sea Gypsies:
sail international waters indefinitely in nuclear-powered ships;
re-use equipment developed for the Moon and Mars;
fish;
harvest plankton;
process water for minerals;
process sea weed for food and fabrics;
prospect for ore or oil;
carry cargo;
employ land-based brokers.

The Viking fleet preserves Northern virtues.
The fleet flag ship carries four thousand people with command posts, offices, electronic communications, schools, hospital, culture, recreation and private enterprises.
The other ships include a service vessel with machine shops, a mineral-extractor craft, a trawler, a submarine and a factory ship processing harvested kelp.

I expect to learn about several more Byworlder cultures while rereading Poul Anderson's The Byworlder. So far, by page 79, of 190, we have met these three groups.

The Sigman

OK. That last post quoted an example of characteristically flamboyant Andersonian characterization from The Long Way Home. Now let's get down with summarizing the description of the physically nauseating alien "Sigman" in Andersion's The Byworlder (London, 1974):

a 3 meter long, 130 centimeter wide, spongy black, flexible ellipsoid, covered by three layers of golden-brown plates independently mounted on muscular stalks, permanently glistening with moisture and excreted slime, occasionally revealing the black inner sponginess when the Sigman stretches;

four legs near the middle, two arms at each end, four claws each surrounded by six tentacle fingers, several tendrils with sensors including four eyes;

no front or back;

claws macerate food, then hold it against the spongy surface of the sheathed arms where digestive juices break it down until it is absorbed up the arms;

a booming voice from vibrating tympani;

many human observers are physically sickened.

Like Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers, a laudable attempt to envisage a non-human alien, although not one that we would like to meet. I have yet to reread far enough to learn anything about Sigman psychology.

Another Detail

I have known for a long time that Poul Anderson's writings are extremely rich but I keep re-surprising myself with this discovery. I had thought that The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975) was not among his best works and was even a bit disjointed with all its disparate elements. A careful rereading shows that it all hangs together.

The means of interstellar travel used is not FTL but is unique in sf and contributes significantly to the plot, allowing the characters to cross many light years in zero subjective time.

Chapter One is unambiguous hard sf with interstellar explorers returning to the Solar System. Chapter Two begins:

"Lord Brannoch dhu Crombar, Tertiary Admiral of the Fleet, High Noble of Thor, ambassador of the League of Alpha Centauri to the Solar Technate, did not look like a dignitary of any civilized power." (p. 17)

Brannoch is six foot six, wide shouldered, yellow maned, blue eyed and scarfaced and wears jewelled ear rings. If not for the references to Alpha Centauri and Sol, we might have been reading heroic fantasy. "Thor" turns out to be a planet, not the god. Even more strangely, Brannoch talks to alien monsters concealed in the wall of his apartment.

The first three Chapters feel like mixed up information overload but I hope to have shown in earlier posts that this complicated account of future civilizations is not only coherent but also addresses fundamental issues for any organized society or intelligent life.

The Long Way Home Revisited II

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home, the way the Technate limits the social use of technology is shown by the fact that Ministers can descend by gravity shaft from the moving belts of their bridgeways to the low-level where it is necessary to walk because there are no slideways although, obviously, these could have been installed.

I am reminded of an Englishman who objected to the introduction of railways because he saw no reason why the lower orders should wander aimlessly around the country. But, of course, the more they are free to travel and learn, the less they are describable as "lower." Rulers throughout the ages have justified keeping the people down because the people are down. However, rulers themselves have only been with us for the few thousand years since the beginning of civilization. Before that, society would have had leaders, those who led activities from time to time, but there was not as yet any economic surplus to be monopolized and controlled by a class of administrators becoming rulers.

My example of moral leadership, clearly distinguishable from any kind of rulership, is this. A line of people waiting for a bus witness an act of cruelty on the other side of a busy road. They hesitate to intervene, to risk the traffic or to miss their bus, which they see approaching. One steps forward. Some follow the one. More follow the some. The rest follow the more. The one gave a lead. He could not coerce the others. They need not and might not have followed his lead.

So down with rulers and up with leaders!

Knowledge Of Knowledge Of

"Science" means (Latin) knowledge.
"Theology" means (Greek) knowledge of (Greek) God.
"Scientology" means (Latin) knowledge of (Greek) knowledge!
"Theontology," coined by Poul Anderson in The Byworlder (London, 1974, p. 5), would mean what? (Greek) knowledge of (Latin) knowledge of (Greek) God?

Theontologists seek the divine through diverse sub-cults of Spirits, Jesus, Brahma, Amida Butsu, Snake or Oracle. If I were being brought up in a Theontologist community, then I would want to practice in a Zen cult but otherwise let's just stick with Zen as taught by a Buddhist lineage.

The Byworlder introduces a genuinely non-humanoid extra-solar alien, the Sigman (plural: Sigmans), who has entered Earth orbit after approaching the Solar System in a Bussard ramjet from the direction of Sigma Draconis. An entire page is necessary to describe this creature. The way he moves is fairly sickening and that comes through in the description. The problem of devising a mutually comprehensible pidgin language is also recounted in the necessary detail.

The Chinese rulers who have to cooperate with the Americans and others in communicating with the Sigman are absurdly sure, first, that they represent "the people" and, secondly, that, if they get the chance to tell the alien the facts about American imperialism, then he will support the cause of the people. (Hopefully, he will indeed support the people, not their rulers.)

Terrestrial society has divided into sub-cultures. Our first viewpoint character belongs to a sub-culture that does not settle down and live in a house with a steady job but travels around, for example, by staying as a guest of Theontologists. However, far from being parasitical, he is a migrant worker with an amazing range of practical skills to offer. There is a, to Anderson readers, now familiar moment when, speculating about the Sigman's motives, he realizes something, breaks off with open mouth and yells but does not immediately divulge what he has realized. We have to read on.

The Long Way Home Revisited

Recently, when discussing Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), I argued that a massive IQ difference between two classes of a single society seemed implausible. I had forgotten that that society practices genetic engineering.

When Langley, an astronaut from 2047, which is now five thousand years in the past, remarks:

"'Where I come from...we'd learned better than to leave leadership to chance - and heredity is mighty chancy.'" (p. 32)

- he is reminded that the society that he is criticizing has genetic engineering. Thus, the hereditary Ministerial class is artificially selected for high IQ. But that makes nonsense of another claim made by apologists for the Technate social system. The abysmally low average IQ of Commoners is cited as an insuperable obstacle either to giving them the vote or to using technology to liberate them from work. They are supposed to be incapable either of participation in public policy making or of creative use of leisure. But we are to understand that the intelligence levels of future generations is something that can be controlled.

We are used to thinking that a ruling class will maintain its rule and will use any idea, including even the alleged stupidity of the Commons, to justify that continued rule. However, there is a difference in the Technate, where ultimate decision making has been handed over to an incorruptible computer, the Technon. Ministers implement the Technon's basic policies and make only the lesser day to day decisions themselves.
So why does the Technon not implement the greater good of humanity by liberating the population while raising its intelligence level? Because it has been programmed to maintain stability, not to liberate or improve humanity.

However, an external enemy has learned to manipulate the Technon's decisions by controlling the data inputted to the Technon so why have none of the Ministers learned to do this? Or have they and we just don't know about it?

We are assured that the Technon is "...a robot, a super-computer...", not "...a conscious brain..." or an artificially duplicated mind but we are also told that, within its limits, it thinks, reasons, exercises "[s]ome equivalent of creative imagination..." and is comparable to a child (p. 157). I am not sure that all of this language is fully consistent. An equivalent of creative imagination is not creative imagination but thought and childhood imply consciousness.

Sf authors are used to writing about, and we are used to reading about, a kind of future society that reflects historical and contemporary societies in which a technologically powerful elite rules a vigorous although subjugated subordinate class. The Long Way Home contains hints that something qualitatively different and better is possible.

There is a prayer, "Give me the courage to change what can be changed, the patience to accept what cannot be changed and the wisdom to know the difference." Technate society counts the nature of human beings among the "cannot be changed" although it contradicts this with genetic engineering. I count our nature among the "can be changed" - we exist as a species only because our pre-human ancestors began the task of changing their environment with hands and brain and changed themselves in the process. Thus, our "nature" is change, not anything unchanging.

An Astronaut Returns

An astronaut returns to Earth centuries or millennia after his departure. Everyone he knew is dead. Suddenly he sees, or catches a glimpse of, a woman who closely resembles his former wife or fiancee. Can she possibly have survived unchanged? But, if so, how? And, if not, then what is the explanation?

I have encountered this intriguing idea twice: in a Buck Rogers TV episode and in Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home. In both of these cases, a woman's appearance had been changed for our hero's benefit. However, there is potentially a different story here - a long search for the mysterious, occasionally glimpsed, woman, ending with either an enlightening explanation or an extended enigma. I cannot tell this story but someone else would be able to.

Meanwhile, in the last forty eight hours, I have attended a picket line, a Hindu Temple and a funeral and have responded to correspondence concerning the commencement of my state pension, so there is plenty of life, change and death still in the real world outside the pages of science fiction novels. I have also realized that I missed a point in my most recent critique of the society described in The Long Way Home - this is the sort of point that I hope that page viewers will be able to spot for me - so I must soon return yet again to that novel before starting to comment on The Byworlder.

Fair winds forever!

Etie Town

Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975) is also good on Terrestrial-ET relations:

"The spacemen accepted [a new alien] almost casually, they were used to non-human intelligence." (p. 122)

It is worth making this point instead of simply showing the characters coping with a new kind of intelligent being as if he (this one is male) were just another human being.

"A huge shape came around a corner. It had four legs, a torso with arms, a nonhuman head. Langley hailed it...The alien looked blankly at him and moved on...Etie Town, the section reserved for visitors of other races, was somewhere around here...most of the compartments would be sealed off, their interiors poisonous to him." (p. 71)

So, again, aliens, even a large quadruped, are taken for granted although precautions must be taken against poisonous atmospheres.

Later, Langley does visit Etie Town. Outworlders employ human servants for prestige and must pay them high salaries. Terrestrials practice slavery but do not allow aliens to own human beings. A Slimer (a merchant from Srinis) employs a cook, a maid and a formidable butler, who must work in greenish yellow light and a thick, damp mist.

These imaginative details in just a few passages increase the richness of the book. In Etie Town:

"They went down a broad street full of strangeness." (p. 166)

- but, this time, the "strangeness" is not described so the reader gets to exercise some imagination.

During Langley's visit to Etie Town, I do not understand the reference to "...the Private Eye school..." (ibid.)