Non-Series Futuristic SF Novels

I am trying to list all of Poul Anderson's non-series futuristic science fiction novels. So far, I have come up with:

Brain Wave
Vault Of The Ages
The War Of Two Worlds
Shield
Planet Of No Return
Three Worlds To Conquer
The Long Way Home
Tau Zero
World Without Stars
After Doomsday
The Byworlder
The Enemy Stars
The Winter Of The World
The Avatar
For Love And Glory

Qualifications to this classification:

as noted in earlier posts, Three Worlds To Conquer and Tau Zero each have a short prequel whereas The Enemy Stars has a short sequel, so maybe these are mini-series;

The Boat Of A Million Years is a long novel with a novel-length concluding section set in an indefinite future but the earlier sections are historical science fiction with one contemporary chapter;

Starfarers is not on the list because it is, most of, the Kith History series;

Twilight World is not on the list because it is a series - in particular, its epilogue is set in a much later period;

some time travel works have passages set in the future but are mostly about the past;

Genesis is not on the list, although maybe it should be, because I classify it as a future history (a synthesis of the Stapledonian and Heinleinian models) and would therefore shelve it alongside the other shorter future histories like Flying Mountains and Rustum rather than with the more straightforward novels listed here.

Still to do:

finish reading and commenting on The Snows Of Ganymede;
discuss the lesser known (?) The War Of Two Worlds;
say (a little) more about Ace Doubles;
acquire Anderson's second and third mystery novels;
but first re-enter the realm of Morpheus;
and wonder whether discussion of Anderson's works is really, as it seems to be, endless...

The Snows Of Ganymede II

In Poul Anderson's The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), we soon learn why Yamagata, who is introduced on the first page of the text, page 5, had not been listed in the Cast of Characters on p. 2. On p. 7, he commits suicide so that Davenant and Kruse can share his air. Before removing his helmet on Ganymede in about 2220, he remarks:

"'They'll stick my name in Hero's Hall or some such foolishness...'" (p.7)

In his world, that is a more lasting testimonial than a mention on page 2 of an Ace Double published in 1958.

I already knew of the Order of Planetary Engineers from reading other works in this series, mainly "Brake," set c. 2270, but Ganymede gives us the full lowdown on this outfit, which is like the Order of Communicators in "The Communicators." Imagine something like the idea of a medieval religious order but applied to scientific practice instead of to spiritual practice. The apolitical, supranational Order serves mankind. What its members forgo in high salaries, they gain in training, prestige, comradeship and sense of mission. Their Archimedes Academy is a Lunar fortress, nicknamed "the Abbey." (p. 9)

Pages14-16 present just under two pages worth of solid Andersonian future historical writing from "...the lunatic years of the latter twentieth century..." (p. 14) to 2100 AD, as recounted in de la Garde's Short History of Interplanetary Colonization (p. 16). After World War III, both the White American Church and the Pilgrims reacted against "...the spreading of scientific method in human relations..." (p. 14) (The appliance of science to society was championed by HG Wells but opposed by CS Lewis. See articles on my Science Fiction blog. Thus, Anderson contributes to an important battle of ideas.) (2100 AD was a significant year in Robert Heinlein's Future History on which this first of Anderson's several future histories was directly based.)

The Pilgrims tried to reestablish an imagined norm and made an exodus to Mars whereas the White Americans tried to anticipate an imaginary millennium and made an exodus to Ganymede. In Anderson's Planet Of No Return, Dissenters made an exodus to Mars but to escape from a New Christian theocracy, not from scientific society, so these two fictitious histories are parallel but not identical.

The Snows Of Ganymede

I have just received by post an ACE Double Novel Book, "TWO COMPLETE NOVELS," (New York, 1958) The Snows Of Ganymede and War Of The Wing-Men, both by Poul Anderson. (Ace Doubles could be by different authors.)

Wing-Men, "Complete & Unabridged," is pp. 5-160 on one side of the volume whereas Ganymede, "Complete Novel," upside down on the other side, is pp. 5-96. My rule of thumb for novel length is 100+ pages so I don't count Ganymede.

Everything shorter than a novel I count loosely as a "short story." I recognize that there is in fact an intermediate length but do not understand the terms "novelette" and "novella": long short story and short novel? (I might even have these the wrong way round.) These more precise length delineations make sense to publishers, editors and authors but maybe not to readers.

For both "novels", pp. 1-4 are blurb, Cast of Characters (incomplete), title page and publishing details. The Ganymede Cast of Characters lists:

Hall Davenant
Lyell
Thorval Kruse
Angel-Three Garson
Cinc-Four Halleck
Roberts-John

in each case followed by a cryptic comment but does not include Yamagata, who speaks on p. 5.


The opening sentence:

"Three dead men walked across the face of hell." (p.5)

- if taken literally, would introduce a fantasy but we learn almost immediately that they are on Ganymede with Jupiter on the horizon and the local equivalent of snow falling. They are "dead" in the sense that they will be when their air runs out: prolepsis = referring to a future event in the past tense as if it were already accomplished or completed.

Contemporary Cosmic Context

Although we differentiate contemporary fiction about personal and social relationships from science fiction about the impact of future technology, alien contact, interplanetary spaces, other planets etc, these fictions are set in one universe and a single word in a contemporary novel can remind us of that wider context.

For instance, in Poul Anderson's detective novel, Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959), as Michael Stefanik walks through a cold wind:

"A glance overhead, between flapping leaves, showed him a few stars. They were dim, unbelievably remote, and flickered as if some gale through their own spaces were about to blow them out and lay darkness upon their planets." (p. 145)

Stars seen in the night sky are a permanent feature of humanity's perennial environment so it does not feel like any sort of intrusion when a character in a novel looks up at them. Quite the contrary. However, a reference to their "planets" goes beyond what can be seen with the naked eye and reminds us of modern scientific knowledge with its future implications of maybe traveling to some of those planets.

But Anderson does more here. The projection of Earthly weather into space, the idea of a wind blowing out the stars as if they were candles and darkening their planets, suggests a story set in an alternative, magical universe. In fact, the novel seems to become fantasy when Stefanik hears what he thinks is a whispering ghost or headless body wielding what, according to the legend, is a murderous sword. But then when Stefanik is alone in hearing this and when, further, the police apprehend him with the sword, a wounded companion and no one else present, then we start to think that we have after all been reading about his states of mind. And finally the detective explains the mystery and solves the crime.

Thus, Anderson has taken us through a mundane windy night, the stellar universe, a fantastic realm, a possible ghost story and a possible psychological story to the resolution of a detective story and, at five minutes past midnight, I am once again ready to turn in.

Mermaids And Larry Rance II

An earlier post on Poul Anderson's contemporary fantasy novel, The Devil's Game (New York, 1980):

quotes "...Masterman York...is known with certainty to be descended from a mermaid" (p. 57);

links this reference to Anderson's historical fantasy novel, The Merman's Children;

also links the merfolk theme to the Devil's Game contestant, Larry Rance, because Lance's challenge, to swim two miles through sea containing sharks and barracuda, and his ambition, to use the million dollar prize money to build a schooner and cruise the world, are maritime in nature.

Well, blow me down if Anderson doesn't go on to make this second link later in the novel:

"Larry wouldn't settle down with us away from the sea. He's obsessed. Hear the mermaids singing to him, but they have shark teeth." (p. 241)

This may be only a small point but maybe also I am getting in tune with Anderson's texts if I can anticipate a connection before it becomes explicit.

Meanwhile, in the novel that I am currently reading, in this case for the first time, Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959), I recognize a moment on which I have commented in several of Anderson's problem stories. Yamamura is speaking but breaks off in mid-sentence:

"Yamamura's argument was cut off as if by an ax. Pereira saw him, not stiffen, but relax totally, so that dark slitted eyes filmed over and the long body almost slid from the chair." (p. 133)

Asked "What is it?," he does not reply but sits unmoving for an entire minute, then for longer. This is the moment of realization. The hero has solved the problem. The detective has identified the murderer. But he will not tell anyone yet. He will check the facts, confirm his suspicion, act accordingly and we will be told what we need to know in due course.

There is something odd and obviously significant about the surnames of two characters but I am no wiser about solving the mystery. Are detective novels like crossword puzzles? Do some readers guess the ending in advance? And get it right?

Jargonese

An English Teacher that I used to work with and still meet gets mad at modern English like "out-source" and "invite" (used as a noun). Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959) conveys the amusement that can be generated by new linguistic usages and people's reactions to them:

"'Did you want to see Mr Deacon?...'He's in conference, engineerwise, but I can intercom him.'
"'Never mind.' Even then, Stefanik reflected that modern business English was enough to drive a man to socialism." (p. 19)

(The guy I know laughed uproariously the first time I pulled "(insert noun)-wise" on him.)

Later, the same secretary says:

"'...he messaged me over the intercom. He said to call a New York supplier we deal with and ask them to urgentize a shipment we have on tap.' Yamamura was so nauseated that he barely heard the rest..." (p. 93)

Nowadays, we "private message (pm)" each other on facebook. I would say "prioritize," not "urgentize," but I remember when my father had not heard "prioritize."

Meanwhile, of course, Anderson writes excellent descriptive English. I have commented on his descriptions of the seasons in historical fiction but this perception is also present in his contemporary fiction:

"Nob Hill was more than a good address; it was seeing the great two-footed stride of the Bay Bridge, or the lovely curve men had thrown across the Golden Gate, or ships standing in past blue islands, whenever you wished." (p. 1)

"Saturday morning was blue again, with small white clouds and sunlight spilling across the hills. But a wind came streaking from the Bay and the ocean beyond." (p. 113)

Different Reading Experiences

Part of the experience of reading a book is where and when we first read it, which is different for each of us. I started to read Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959) in the cafe of the Tate Gallery at Albert Dock, Liverpool, formerly a dock, now a memorabilia, museum and tourist area, on 30 September, 2013. Two members of my family attended the Chagall Exhibition but I preferred to drink coffee and read Anderson.

Later, I sat on a bench overlooking the Dock beside the Maritime Museum. Liverpool has history and I have history

with Liverpool. The teenage girl who served us in a confectionery shop spoke in a singsong Liverpudlian accent which brought back the ten years when I worked in Merseyside. On this occasion, I did not have time to meditate in the Anglican Cathedral, eat in an upstairs vegetarian restaurant or visit either of the sf and comics shops, Worlds Apart or Forbidden Planet.

I started to read this novel for the first time in the future, forty four years after its publication. Our twenty first century has cyberspace but not yet hyperspace and Global Warming instead of Cold War. Our future, forty four years hence, in 2057, remains as unknown to us as our 2013 was to Anderson and his fellow sf writers. Moreover, I would be 108 then but nevertheless hope to live long enough to see most of what transpires between now and then.

The Gospel According To...

In Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959), Michael Stefanik, translating a Russian text, thinks:

"...better include a critical note, warning the reader to allow for Marxism. Soviet work nowadays seemed less influenced by dogma than formerly, but Stefanik remembered that the gospel according to Karl postulated agriculture had evolved from nomadism (the reverse is actually the case) and this might well bias even a scientific report." (pp. 12-13)

In reality, of course, there is no "...gospel according to Karl..." If Marx thought that agriculture had evolved from nomadism but the reverse is the case, then Marxists have to accept this like everyone else. The Omniscience and Infallibility of the Founder is a religious, not a political, doctrine. However, Stefanik refers not to a group of thinkers and enquirers applying and developing Marxist theory and analysis, for whom "dogma" would be anathema, but to a group of bureaucrats misruling a country, using Marxist ideas, instead of the older Orthodox beliefs, as their ideology and indeed as a "dogma." These are as far apart as a theological conference or a Bible study group is from an Archbishop blessing Imperial troops!

It is fortunate that scientists were able to communicate even across the Iron Curtain, thirty years before the collapse of the Bureaucratic State. Science is universal. When, with a group of other Careers Advisers, I visited UMIST, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, the Admissions Tutor told us that he needed to know of any course applicant, "Does he speak the language we speak? That is the language of mathematics. And does he obey the laws we obey? Those are the laws of physics." A school leaver usually showed this by achieving high grades in public exams in the relevant subjects. A third exam pass with high grades was also needed but could be in any subject: History, Literature etc. (Cultured scientists are a greater social asset than uncultured ones.)

The scientific background of Perish By The Sword is more detailed than in some hard sf novels:

"The time isn't too far distant when you'll specify the properties you want in a metal and some engineer will design an alloy for you. Right now, of course, there's still a lot that isn't known, a great deal which has to be worked out by empirical methods. That's what D & C does. Partly it solves problems handed it by other outfits which don't have facilities for such specialized research. Partly it carries out independent investigation, with an eye to discovering something patentable and profitable." (p. 43)

So this detective novel is like a prequel to any number of "the day after tomorrow" sf novels.

Perish By The Sword

(Will be away 4-14 Oct.)

I do not make this stuff up. Poul Anderson books really are this interesting to read and discuss.

A novel about contemporary scientists and their current work is fiction about science but is not "science fiction" so what is it? (Someone once told me that she was not a "girl friend" but a "girl who is a friend.") Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959) is a detective novel about science with the information about Japanese swords adding almost a historical fiction element and even a fantasy element if we heed the legends about the swords. The Norse sword, Tyrfing, which features in Anderson's historical fantasy, is mentioned for comparison.

The detective is Trygve Yamamura but a surprising number of chapters are narrated from the point of view of his friend, Michael Stefanik. Stefanik is attacked with a stolen sword and I wondered if one chapter was going to end with his death. But things get more complicated.

Maybe an established science fiction writer should avoid references to sf when writing in another genre? For instance:

"(Part of Yamamura wondered why a terminated human being always appeared so much more dead than an animal, and thought that perhaps it was because man had no fur to cover his poor waxen skin, and speculated that a race of furry intelligent beings might be less afraid of their dead than man is.)" (p. 78)

That is just the sort of speculative detail that Anderson does include in his hard sf but does it fit here?

When confirming an alibi, one character says:

"'I wish I were enough of a scientist to invent a time machine and be in two places at once, but I'm afraid such talents as I have are more for business.'" (p. 89)

Exactly. This book is about business, not time travel! Readers unfamiliar with sf might ask, "How could a time machine let him be in two places at once?" If he travels back twenty four hours, then he necessarily coexists with his younger self of one day ago. I know from experience that some people would not understand this or would say that it was impossible or might even argue that his younger self was there yesterday but now his older self is so his younger self can't be as well. Or something.

It is good that different works interconnect and cross-refer even across genres but maybe, when immersed in a mystery novel, we are better off not being too directly reminded of issues in sf?

A Happy Ending

Poul Anderson's The Devil's Game (New York, 1980) ends with two contestants dead and one mad. However, the remaining two men and two women, at least temporarily forming two couples, experience positive outcomes, to our surprise and to that of Haverner who had expected to watch them disintegrate.

It is tragic that the good though misguided Cruz was killed but fitting that his low life murderer suffered the same fate. It is poetically just that the Christian Nordberg enters Hell: psychosis following the final challenge, a "bad trip" on LSD. "...poetically just..." does not mean that I would have wished this on him. What Nordberg (like many in the real world?) needs is a realization, however painful, of the significance of his attitudes and actions. I did not exhaust his faults or failings in a previous post. Of two other contestants, he thinks:

"I wouldn't put murder past them." (p. 195)

But he had ordered Cruz's murder! However, that is different, so he thinks, because the Lord knows that he is "...a merciful man who doesn't like it..." (p. 198). Here, Anderson rivals CS Lewis' ability to imagine and verbalize the innermost thoughts of a character who is fundamentally dishonest with himself.

Nordberg, wondering whether to "... have [Flagler] get rid of Gayle Thurner?", because she may threaten Nordberg's interests, reflects that she "...richly deserves death for her sins..." (ibid.) (The death penalty for unmarried sex?) However, apart from Nordberg being, as we have seen, a merciful man, it may be unnecessary to murder Thayer because she is so "timid" that he is "...reasonably sure that she can be frightened into silence." (ibid.) And this amoral pragmatism is all part of Nordberg's perpetual inner prayer to the Lord.

Thayer, the weakest link, quickly and easily eliminated from the contest, is abused and abused by two of the men. Allied to Flagler, then persuaded by Rance to spy on Flagler, then confessing this to Flagler when it is beaten out of her, she is more than once reduced to weeping defenselessness. Yet, despite Nordberg's judgment that she "...richly deserves death...," Samael thinks that she and the other three sane survivors might be approaching "...salvation." (p. 255) Haverner judges that she shows "...a measure of psychological independence." (p. 253)

When the wealthy surviving man proposes to her, she replies:

"'...don't you understand, Byron? After these horrors...I'm through chasing money. I am...I will not use you...We'll try for a year or two...No promises...No legal claims...I've got to become something I can respect. I've got to make sure I'm worth - not your money, but your time, your life - before I can take a promise from you.'" (p. 252)

A remarkable, almost miraculous, turnaround. And much the same happens with the, till now, scheming Julia Petrie. Winning the million dollars, she insists on "'...a seven-way split.'" (p. 250) - the last thing that Haverner had expected. Petrie keeps the seventh that would have gone to the dead murderer, Flagler, but, apart from that:

"'[Nordberg's] people can use his share if he is incapacitated. And if [Cruz] hasn't left any kin that can be traced, whatever village he came from can have his portion. I'm sure they need it.'" (ibid.)

So some of the money that Cruz would have invested in revolution will be used to alleviate the poverty in which he grew up. And Rance's yacht will be used not only to cruise the world but also to research oceanic pollution. The survivors approach their salvation, which may be what Samael had intended.

The structure of the narrative requires that each of the characters narrates a chapter but that Petrie narrates the one in which Nordberg goes psychotic. Thus, we do not see his madness from the inside. I cannot stop analyzing Nordberg. He approves of a passage from Zephaniah in which the Lord expresses his "indignation," "fierce anger" and "jealousy." (p. 191) Nordberg would interpret such terms with anthropomorphic literalness, thus inferring a deity that is morally inferior to the best of mankind. Other Biblical theists need to elucidate such passages as expressing a higher, not a lower, morality.