Discourse And Rhetoric

In "Science and Creation," Poul Anderson complains that rhetoric has replaced discourse. Often:

an opponent is reviled;
there is no attempt to understand his point of view;
opinions or attitudes are falsely attributed to him.

But we have to understand a point of view before we can know whether we agree or disagree with it! I agree that this deplorable situation exists and suggest that it is because real or perceived conflicts of interest are thought to underlie disagreements. In these islands, to support Irish unification was to be suspected of supporting terrorism whereas to support the United Kingdom was to be suspected of supporting continued social discrimination.

I once argued that every state should be secular and should treat everyone within its borders with full equality, therefore that no state should be Jewish or Muslim etc. A supporter of a Jewish state accused me of advocating a Muslim state and also described me as "That -------, Shackley!"

I think that the automatic mental response is: I not only disagree with but also strongly dislike what this person is saying, therefore I should denounce it in the strongest possible terms even at the expense of forgetting what his view in fact is. I suggest as a basic rule of discourse: quote or summarize the other person's view in terms that are acceptable to him, then reply to what he said and only to what he said.

In the same article, Anderson asks:

"Would it really infringe anyone's constitutional rights if children were to learn something about the roots of their civilization?" (NESFA vol 2, p. 246)

I respond: No but does anyone argue that it would?

Matter And Energy

A passage in James Blish's Black Easter and The Day After Judgment (London, 1972), pp. 173-17, is relevant to the discussion in the previous post. To paraphrase -

Baines: The conservation laws apply to matter and energy but demons are neither.

Satvje: They may be unified fields of electro-magnetico-gravitic energy with 100 per cent negative entropy.

Buelg: Completely negative entropy is impossible but stable negative entropy would be H(x)-Hy(x)=C+E.

Satvje: That would be eternal life.

Buelg: Eternal barring accidents. We ought to be able to disrupt the electromagnetic part of the system and thus to kill spirits.

However, I do not understand the equation.

Science And Philosophy

Like Socrates, I value philosophical reflection, not empirical details. However, scientists have shown us that details matter. Poul Anderson quotes two expressions of the second law of thermodynamics in "Science and Creation" (NESFA Vol 2, pp. 456-457). I will try to summarize them:

heat cannot be converted into work without changing something;
heat cannot flow from a body of low temperature to one of high temperature.

The second law's wider applications include entropy which is describable with calculus: when an amount of heat Q is exchanged at temperature T, then the increase of entropy, or of disorder, is equal to the integral of dQ/T. Unfortunately, I have only ever studied the most basic level of school mathematics and have no understanding of calculus, of integrals or of the significance in this context of the symbol "d." I do understand the proof that there is no highest prime number although someone even more ignorant of mathematics than myself denounced this proof as "gobbledegook" merely because he did not understand it. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Scientific creationists argue that the evolution of complex order would contradict the increase of disorder. However, the spatial diffusion of stellar energy generates a cosmic disorder that is far greater than any temporary order in galactic or biological systems. Anderson argues that, before the Big Bang, energy was not chaotic but concentrated and is now scattering. What preceded the concentration? Did anything?

The northernmost point is the North Pole. If we travel to that Pole and keep going, then we travel not further north but south although in a different hemisphere. Might the earliest moment be a "Past Pole" such that, if we traveled to it and kept going, then we would travel futureward although through a different volume of space? The question "What was before the earliest moment?" must be as contradictory as "What is north of the North Pole?" Maybe there was not anything before the singularity or random quantum fluctuation generating the space and energy that inflated to become the expanding universe?

Some Non-Fiction

The second NESFA collection of Poul Anderson's short works includes four articles:

"On Imaginary Science"
"The Hardness of Hard Science Fiction"
"Science Fiction and History"
"Science and Creation"

- which might prove to be fertile sources of discussion for a few posts.

"Hardness" lists three kinds of sf:

(i) The Marvelous Voyage - Homer (see image) or Lucian;

(ii) Prometheus/Mad Scientist/Android/Things Man Was Never Meant to Know/conflict between man and his works - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Brian Aldiss, with whom I agree, argues that modern sf begins here);

(iii) hard sf, a term coined by James Blish who said that it soon changed its meaning, although Anderson does not disclose either what Blish had meant or what the changed meaning was.

To summarize Anderson's own meaning of "hard sf," it explores possible consequences of known scientific facts. Jules Verne is its prime source and archetype. His hard sf works are Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and his two Moon books whereas two other works, Journey To The Center of The Earth and Hector Servadac, are "...tall tales." (p. 198)

Hard sf environments include:

Frank Herbert's Dune;
Larry Niven's Ringworld;
Hal Clement's Mesklin (in Mission Of Gravity);
Poul Anderson's Avalon.

Anderson explains how he planned his Ythrians from the skeleton out. Supercharged beings would need tremendous energy, therefore would be carnivorous and territorial. First biology, then psychology. Anderson writes that The People Of The Wind is not "...the best in any sense..." (p. 201). It is.

New Connections

To anyone who may be interested in the Kipling connection, new correspondent, David Birr, has disclosed the source of Poul Anderson's title, "No Truce With Kings" (see Comment here).

And to anyone interested either in the Wells connection or in humorous sf&fantasy, David has drawn attention to a humorous story by Wells (see Comment here).

Thank you, David.

I had not known of the Kipling poem and had not remembered the Wells story so it is helpful to have these works drawn to our attention. There is bound to be more out there that other blog readers know about?

Moments Of Realization

Exhaustive though this blog may be, it falls well short of an Encyclopedia. Every time I find a "moment of realization" in an Anderson story or novel, I draw attention to it but there is no way that I am going to catalogue them all.

"The Dutch...fought themselves free of Spain and free of the ocean itself; when the French or Germans came, they made the enemy sea their ally -
"The bottle fell from his grasp."
-NESFA Vol 2, pp. 71-72.

In other words, this asterite, not at sea but in space, has just realized how he can fight the North Americans - but we will find out what he is going to do when we see him doing it. And I do not remember although I have read the story at least twice.

A surprise ending is a moment of realization for the reader. This story, "Industrial Revolution," begins with a reminiscent dialogue involving a "Missy Blades." (p. 48) The body of the story is an extended flashback during which Mike Blades interacts with two women, his secretary and an enemy North American. So which of them will become his wife and widow? Only the surprise ending will tell us.

"Cold Victory" in the Psychotechnic History begins with a dialogue, then presents an extended flashback featuring two brothers on opposite sides in a civil war, then ends by showing us that we had been misled as to which of the brothers was involved in the opening dialogue. Thus, another moment of realization for us.

"That Flowing Spaceman's Pace..."

Robert Heinlein's Future History was rightly said to have given the future a daily life. Heinlein concentrated on lunar colonization. Poul Anderson and Larry Niven followed this with asteroidal colonization.

"He...stepped off toward the nearest entry lock with that flowing spaceman's pace which always keeps one foot on the ground. Even so, he didn't unshackle his inward-reeling lifeline till he was inside the chamber."
-Anderson, NESFA Vol 2, p. 51.

On an asteroid whose rotation counteracts its minimal gravity, Mike Blades wears grip-soled boots, keeps one foot on the ground and uses a life-line. Anderson writes as though he and his readers were familiar with that flowing spaceman's pace.

I distinguished between social and political stories when discussing Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Mike Blades' story in the Flying Mountains future history contains both of these elements, details of daily life in an asteroid but also political tension after a change of government back on Earth. I know from experience that members of armed services avoid political argument with civilians. They are probably warned against this. Yet a visiting Navy man blurts out that Belt companies are:

"...only using natural resources that rightly belong to the people, and the accumulated skills and wealth of an entire society." (p. 58)

This insensitivity plus intelligence-gathering questions from other Naval personnel indicate that trouble is brewing.

"Cold And Vacuum And Raw Rock..."

Michael Blades, hanging upside down from the wide end of a truncated pyramidal asteroid, seeing pitted rock, jutting crags, black shadows, glaring lamps, a cliff-like horizon mere kilometers away and crowding stars, thinks:

"You couldn't escape from people on Earth. Cold and vacuum and raw rock and everything, the Belt was better."

-Poul Anderson, "The Industrial Revolution" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, Volume 2: The Queen Of Air And Darkness (Framingham, MA, 2009), pp. 48-80 AT p. 51.

Well, I prefer people! However, if enough people think like Mike, then the human race will colonize the Solar System. Poul Anderson and Larry Niven have shown that mining the Asteroid Belt will be profitable even if making it comfortable to live there will take a lot more work.

The Lords Of Creation, Volume One: Conclusion

I said that I might post about the conclusion of SM Stirling's The Sky People (New York, 2006) but, now that I have read it, I am not quite sure what to say. I lost the sequence of events a bit but, in any case, the narrative does not reach a conclusion. Instead, it points towards a continuation in the following volume. The "'...Crimson Dynasty...'" (p. 308) must connect with ...The Crimson Kings (p. 311) of the title of the second novel. There are a few more to me unfamiliar words but maybe we have had enough of those for a while?

Stirling has written an authentic account of an inhabited Venus and I look forward to his account of Mars. "Authenticity" means conformity not to twenty first century science but to Golden Age pulp sf. There is a scientific Venus and a literary one. Stirling has made a major contribution to the latter. We need not, after all, say, "Farewell, fantastic Venus!"

Easter Agenda

(Lancaster Priory Church. Some friends and acquaintances will be there today. I will meditate at home.)

Agenda
Family and social activities.
Finish reading SM Stirling's The Sky People.
Finish interrupted rereading of Poul Anderson's Fire Time.
Order further NESFA collections and "Lords of Creation" installments.
(Have now finished the third Stieg Larsson novel. Recommended.)

Although the NESFA collections contain much familiar material, I nevertheless reread the first Gunnar Heim story in NESFA collections vol 2. This led to rereading The Star Fox, then Fire Time. Moral: do not dismiss collections containing familiar material. None of these works should be read just once or even twice.

The next post will probably be about the conclusion of The Sky People but this is not always predictable.