War-Maid Of Mars

Right now I am accessing an ebook that is enabling me to read for the first time "War-Maid of Mars" by AA Craig (Poul Anderson), than which there could not be a more ERBian title. (Compare Burroughs' Warlord Of Mars and Thuvia, Maid Of Mars.)

The ERBianism of the title leads the reader to expect Sword and Science, the sf equivalent of the fantasy sub-genre, Sword and Sorcery. However, the story so far is more like Anderson's Shield. Our hero, with an artifact embodying a dangerous new technology in his possession, is on the run from totalitarian conspirators and security men on a future Earth which has world government, regular rocket flights, interplanetary travel and routine contact with natives of Mars and Venus. This sounds familiar: Golden Age sf, though not ERBian. I still do not see where the Maid is coming from.

However, I really must read more of this pulp story before I post any more about it. I will also be reading and posting about a few other uncollected works by Anderson, which will make a change from revisiting his History of Technic History, although the latter as ever is far from exhausted. In fact, I have yet to finish rereading "Hunters of the Sky Cave."

(Also still reading The Scar by China Mieville. Bizarre. Some well thought out consequences of familiar ideas. One detail that I do not remember noticing anywhere else - this fantasy world's moon has moons.)

Textual Inconsistencies

I argue here that (what I call) the first four Captain Flandry stories form a coherent tetralogy. However, unusually for him, Poul Anderson also wrote a partly inconsistent prequel (see here). In The Day Of Their Return, set earlier, Terran Naval Intelligence learns of Aycharaych's telepathy even though, at the beginning of the second Captain Flandry story, Dominic Flandry, a Terran Naval Intelligence officer, does not know about it.

It is always possible - and enjoyable - to try to iron out even the most glaring inconsistencies in a fictional series as Holmesians, who included Poul Anderson, know. However, the simplest explanation of this particular inconsistency is just that, although Anderson did revise some of the Captain Flandry stories for later republication, it escaped his notice that the later written prequel necessitated one specific revision of "Honorable Enemies."

Some texts are finished products, perfect and complete with not a word out of place, whereas others remain works in progress even after publication. An example of the former is Pride And Prejudice, although even it was enhanced by gestures and facial expressions added in a high quality TV dramatization. An example of the latter is Hamlet which means whatever a theater company can make it mean in each performance. I have seen one short dialogue given diametrically opposed meanings without the alteration of a single word. Shakespeare revised plays between performances. However, as soon as as an author has died, his texts become fixed, although their interpretation and reinterpretation continue.

Any unfinished or on-going series is a permanent work in progress. Thus, in Anderson's Technic History, "Diana, Daughter of Dominic" remains a proto-series because Anderson needed time to write some less space operatic speculative fictions. So we can try to iron out the telepathy contradiction or can just accept that, massive though it is, the History of Technic Civilization remains a fascinating work in progress.

"Sir!"

I was told of a school pupil who was able to express any meaning or feeling in the single word, "Sir": incomprehension, puzzlement, surprise, polite inquiry, indignation, acceptance of a fact, of an order, of a compliment, of a recrimination.

Dominic Flandry's Shalmuan servant, Chives, is clearly no slouch in this respect. When Flandry begins to imply that, instead of preparing supper, Chives will be required to remain on the bridge of the Hooligan:

"'Sir?' Chives raised the eyebrows that he didn't have." (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 274)

When Flandry explains that Chives will be required to remain on the bridge and that instead a Chief Petty Officer will cook:

"'Sir!' bleated Chives." (ibid.)

Chives, of course, obeys orders except when it is a matter of deciding which uniform Flandry should wear to dinner or which wine should be served with the meal. There is a clear echo of Wooster and Jeeves but let me also recommend another fictional master-servant team.

Captain Flandry, Parts I-IV

The first four Captain Flandry stories:

(I) "Tiger by the Tail"
(II) "Honorable Enemies"
(III) "The Game of Glory"
(IV) "Hunters of the Sky Cave"

are a perfect tetralogy.

(i) Flandry defeats the Scothanians in (I), is described as the single-handed conqueror of Schothania in (II) and commands a crew that includes a Scothanian in (IV). (His crew also includes two Gorzuni and one Donarrian - two other species that had been introduced earlier in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.)

(ii) Admiral Walton, introduced in (I), reappears in (IV), where he is described as "...one of the last brave and wholly honorable men in all Terra's Empire." (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 272)

(iii) Flandry learns how to lie to the telepath Aycharaych in (II), this incident occurs between some of the events in (III), which is mostly set on Nyanza, and Aycharaych congratulates Flandry on his handling of l'affaire Nyanza in (IV).

(iv) Flandry first meets Aycharaych in (II) and captures him in (IV) - but the Merseians arrange a prisoner exchange.

(IV) reveals a curious effect of the Technic History version of hyperspace. Flandry's ship, the Hooligan, while pursuing an Ardazirho craft, briefly interpenetrates it so that Flandry sees into its turret and even recognizes its pilot. Then the Hooligan matches phases and captures the Ardazirho.

(IV) is the only installment of the History to feature the Ymirites. Flandry encounters them on Jupiter before traveling to the colony planet Vixen, which plays important roles both earlier and later in the History, as does the Vixenite family, Kittredge.

Vixen

In the Cerulian system, resonance with the jovoid planet Ogre has multiplied perturbation and brought the eccentricity of the terrestroid Vixen's orbit close to one-half so that, with a 24 degree axial tilt and midsummer nearly at periastron, once every eighteen month year the northern hemisphere is scorched with four times the radiation that Terra receives from Sol - snow melts, rivers overflow, lakes bake dry, storms rage, fires break out, erosion prevents mountain formation, hot wind blows dust and ash across dry plains.

-copied from here. 

Dominic Flandry expects frontier planets like Vixen to outlast the Terran Empire. See here. 

He resists Ardazirho invaders of Vixen. See here, here and here.

I am currently finding new details in Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave." It is helpful to gather together information already posted.

Social Developments In The Technic History

"...in the Psychotechnic History stories we see early examples of Anderson speculating that drastic and radical advances in technology created so much wealth that even persons who lost their jobs due to technological changes were able to live reasonably well ("citizen's relief"). But the problem arose of how to solve the problem of many, many people feeling useless because the new, technologically advanced society had no place for them. As we saw, the anger, frustration, and despair this caused led to disasters like the Humanist Revolt (see also "Quixote and the Windmill").

"It's my belief that what became Technic Civilization avoided suffering a similar fate due to the invention of a FTL drive in the 2100's. The opening up of vast new frontiers acted as a safety valve for Earth, giving those who felt helpless and powerless an outlet. And, on many of the new colonial worlds the most modern technology simply wouldn't be practical for many years for a variety of reasons. Which means the technologically displaced could still do useful and necessary work. AND giving time for most humans in Technic Civilization to adapt to technological changes.

"And, yes, even so, we still see mention of regions inhabited by people who, for one reason or another, still failed. Such as the "sub-Lucifer" Aaron Snelund escaped from on Venus or the "Underground" mentioned by Admiral Fenross."
- copied from a comment by Sean M Brooks on the post "Underground on Terra." See here.

Let us back up Sean's point about life on extrasolar colonies in the Technic History with examples from Hermes, Aeneas and Dennitza.

"...a backwoods colony on Hermes...temporarily primitive because shipping space was taken by items more urgent than modern agro-machines."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rin Method (New York, 2009), p. 96. 

"'To maintain humans, let alone research establishment, on planet as skimpy as this, you need huge land areas efficiently managed. Hence rise of Landfolk: squires, yeomen, tenants.'"
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 96.

The pioneers led to Denniza by Yovan Matavuly:

"'..weren't many, nor had the means to buy much equipment...
"'...did, for generations, have to put aside sophisticated technology. They lacked the capital...
"'The young Dennitzan industries needed labor.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), pp. 399-400.

Thus, Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is complex yet coherent enough to be analyzed as if it were real history.

Fight Scenes

When I was only a few years old, I was a great admirer of fight scenes in films and on TV, realizing that such scenes always had to be carefully choreographed. (There were many "Western" series on TV in the early 50's.)

Anyone filming Poul Anderson's works would find that many of the fight scenes had already been choreographed for them. For example, while the Terran agent Flandry tries to capture the Ardazirho Clanmaster Temulak alive, the Vixenite hunter Emil Bryce must quickly and efficiently kill Temulak's escort. Anderson takes two pages to describe every move in the fight:

Flandry glides from an alley behind some Ardazirho who are returning from HQ to barracks but they immediately turn;
he tries to punch Temulak's face with a knuckleduster but Temulak ducks, so that the steel hits his helmet, and draws his blaster;
Flandry chops Temulak's wrist, making him drop the blaster;
Temulak's howl will be heard in both HQ and barracks;
Flandry karate kicks Temulak's jaw;
Temulak staggers but grabs Flandry's ankle and they go down together;
Temulak's steel-reinforced fingernails go for Flandry's throat;
Flandry fights back and Temulak bites his wrist;
Flandry rabbit punches and throttles him;
Bryce has been firing cyanide darts into exposed flesh but one Ardazirho has jumped him;
Flandry shoots that Ardazirho with Temulak's dropped blaster...

I have skipped over some details here but I am sure that you get the idea! It is well after midnight and I must get to bed.

Flandry On Vixen

Dominic Flandry, organizing Vixenite resistance to Ardazirho invaders, knows that an effective "underground" needs cells, frequently changed passwords and widely separated hiding places. (Here is a different meaning of the word "Underground" from the one quoted in a recent post.)

I recently mentioned World War II (WWII). The Ardazirho occupation of Vixen puts Flandry very much into a WWII scenario without going as far as to transport him to Occupied France via time travel. But there are always science fictional elements:

Flandry is "...trained to tell faces apart, even nonhuman faces -" (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 223);

the invaders have a keener sense of smell than man;

they control crowds not with hounds but with "...batsnakes..." (p. 219);

they walk differently, not hitting the ground with boot-heels but clicking with metallic toes;

their chief officer is not a Commandant but a Clanmaster;

the Ardazirho have no discernible uniforms because their recently unified planet still has disparate clans;

to capture the Clanmaster in Garth alive, Flandry must knock him out with a knuckleduster because an anaesthetic might be fatal.

(With ten minutes still to go, today has nearly as many (133) page views as yesterday (138) although this is the first post for today. I have been busy with other activities and will be increasingly so till Christmas.)

Blue Star

According to my information (see here), F-type stars are yellow white and are separated by white A's from blue B's and O's. However, in Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave," the F-type Cerulia:

"...glistened keen and blue ahead." (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 204)

Maybe Cerulia is blue-shifted because Flandry's spaceship, the Hooligan, is moving towards it? No, after the Hooligan has entered the Cerulian System and is falling towards the planet Vixen, Cerulia is still being described as "...the harsh blue sun..." (p. 212).

Poul Anderson always describes extrasolar planets and their primaries in meticulous detail but I have never until now paid any attention to spectral types or to whether what is said about them seems to be accurate.

Anderson usually makes clear how a landscape on an extraterrestrial planet differs from any of its Terrestrial counterparts - different colors of vegetation for a start. The Shaw on Vixen is merely described as "...tall trees..." (p. 216). However, it does have at least one unEarthly feature:

"...here and there on the high trunks glowed yellow phosphorescent fungi, enough to see by." (p. 217)

While reading Anderson's speculative fiction, we always remember that the environments of other planets do not simply reproduce what is to be found on Earth.

Coterminous Realms

Stellar Spectral Classes

O   Blue
B   Blue
A   White
F   Yellow White
G   Yellow
K   Orange
M   Red

O   30 to 60 thousand degrees Kelvin
B   10 to 30
A    7,500 to 10,000 degrees kelvin
F    6,000 to   7,500
G    5,000 to  6,000
K    3,500 to  5,000
M   2,000 to  3,500

The seven classes are each subdivided into tenths from 0 to 9. Sol is G2. Korych, the sun of Merseia, is Sol-like. Cerulia, the sun of Vixen is F-type. The eye structure of the Ardazirho invaders of Vixen suggests that their sun is about A5, which would be no good for human beings. F is probably as cool as Ardazirho would want.

Flandry thinks that the Ardazirho "'...may well have built up a little coterminous kingdom, a number of B, A and F suns...'" (Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 201), before invading Vixen.

The Dispersal of Ymir interpenetrates the Terran Empire and the Merseian Roidhunate because the Ymirites occupy not terrestroid planets but gas giants, including Jupiter in the Solar System and Ogre in the Cerulian System. Thus, the Dispersal probably continues to exist after the Fall of the Empire and the collapse of the Roidhunate but might there also be other coterminous realms in the systems of stars with different spectral types?