Kamakura

Both Rudyard Kipling (here) and Poul Anderson (here) refer to Buddhism in Kamakura. However, Anderson's short story describes a visit to Japan whereas Kipling's novel is set in India.

Recent posts have discussed ancient mythology, scientific cosmology and a Kipling connection: essential Poul Anderson.

In his Japan-based story, Anderson also mentions:

the Temple of the Golden Pavilion;
Sumiyosi Taisha;
the Sengakuji;

the Forty-Seven Ronin;
Daibutsu;
the Hase district;
the Kannon Hall;
Sagami Bay;
Jizo;
Amida.

"The Shrine for Lost Children" was more coherent on rereading and contains a wealth of Japanese references. See links above.

The Cyclical Cosmos

In Poul Anderson's retrospective collection, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), two novels are represented by excerpts and one by its short sequel. However, Tau Zero, a major hard sf novel, is represented neither by an excerpt form its text nor by its short prequel, "Pride" - although the latter might have been considered insufficiently representative in any case.

Anderson states two reasons for not excerpting Tau Zero:

"...it doesn't seem to lend itself to that very well. Also, the evidence has become very strong that our universe is flat, not closed as was commonly thought in those days." (p. 355)

I disagree with both these reasons. First, one of the cosmic passages would have made an excellent excerpt and advertisement for the book. Secondly, science fiction is not invalidated as fiction every time science advances. In any case, since as yet very little is known and since cosmologies can change in our lifetimes, it is far too early to make any definite statements about the universe as a whole.

The cyclical universe is an ancient myth and Tau Zero is a modern, scientifically based, expression of it. The myth was based on experience. Day and night, seasons and life are cyclical - although we now know that Earth and life also evolve. Cyclical processes are not merely terrestrial. Atoms from novae condense as later stellar generations. And there is also evolution at that level, stellar fusion of heavier elements necessary for life. Thus, not only the water-vapor cycle but also before that the stellar cycle are necessary conditions for biological cycles. Cyclicism's got legs - it's going somewhere!

Anderson explains in Starfarers that our universe expanded from a random condensation of energy in a vacuum paradoxically full of perpetually created but mutually annihilating particle anti-particle pairs. (Maybe Fred Hoyle's continuous creation idea had some legs as well.) That sounds like Brahma and Shiva with a quiescent Vishnu, continual creation and destruction uninterrupted by any intermediate preservation. But Vishnu wakes when energy condenses... And what happened once can happen again. There can be cycles of newly created universes even if, as the current evidence indicates, our particular universe will expand indefinitely and never contract.

The Trygve Yamamura Series

Anthony Boucher persuaded sf authors to write mysteries. Poul Anderson writes:

"The result for me was three novels and several short stories. The hero of most was Trygve Yamamura..."
-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), p. 296.

I had thought that Anderson wrote the three Yamamura novels and co-wrote with Karen Anderson just one Yamamura short story. However, Anderson's phrase "The hero of most..." seems to imply that Yamamura was the hero of more than one of the short stories? See the comment on this recent post.

So is the Trygve Yamamura series longer than some of us thought? Someone out there must know. Googling discloses this list which however confirms my earlier idea of the extent of the series.

Going For Infinity: Miscellaneous

Poul Anderson's Going For Infinity (New York, 2002) is a retrospective not only of short stories but also of novels. Three Hearts And Three Lions and A Midsummer Tempest are represented by excerpts and The High Crusade is represented by its sequel, "Quest." We can think other novels that could have been represented by a shorter prequel or sequel. Anderson uses his phrase, "...a wilderness of stars..." (p. 204), once more in his synopsis of The High Crusade.

The Harold Shea stories by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt were Anderson's "...main inspiration..." (p. 238) for Three Hearts... Thus, Pratt joins the list of Anderson's antecedents. Anthony Boucher, Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, asked Anderson to include a parallel universes rationale in Three Hearts... Thus, Boucher joins John W Campbell as an editor influential on Anderson. Thanks to parallel universes, the hero of Three Hearts... crosses over into A Midsummer Tempest and there meets a character from Anderson's two Operation... volumes.

Anderson's multiverse is more compact than Michael Moorcock's sprawling Multiverse which has a Conjunction of the Million Spheres comparable to DC Comics Crisis on Infinite Earths. Moorcock's Multiverse has been graphically adapted. I have discussed how Anderson's works might be adapted for comic strips and screen (also here) but it would have to be done very well or not at all. Anderson himself heard that the film of The High Crusade was "...a piece of botchwork..." (p. 203)

"Death And The Knight"

Clark Kent grew up with Lana Lang and would later marry Lois Lane. Poul Anderson married Karen Kruse and later sold a Time Patrol/Knights Templar story to Katherine Kurtz. Real life is stranger than fiction. (I once knew of an interconnected Nichols, Nicholson and Nixon.)

"Death and the Knight" conveniently represents the Time Patrol series in the retrospective collection, Going For Infinity, not only because it is short but also because the paperback Tales Of The Knights Templar was less readily available by then. "Death and the Knight" has since been included in Time Patrol but should really be republished as a coda to The Shield Of Time.

Just as the Avalonian editor, Hloch's, introductory passages in The Earth Book Of Stormgate were incorporated into The Technic Civilization Saga, maybe Poul Anderson's interstitial passages in Going For Infinity could be reproduced before their respective stories in an eventual Complete Works of Poul Anderson? Obviously the many overlapping collections should not be republished as they stand.

Anderson writes of the next story in Going For Infinity (New York, 2002):

"If some of the thinking and feeling in it seems a bit strange, please remember that it's from the 1950's. That was another country." (p. 128)

"The past is another country" is a true and evocative saying, especially appropriate in time travel fiction as when Manson Everard visits World War II London in the first Time Patrol story. Everard lived through the War but now he is time traveling to it - a different experience.

Clifford Simak

Since this blog is about Poul Anderson, I here quote Poul Anderson's opinion about another science fiction writer:

"the late great Clifford D Simak was an inspiration to us all. He still is."
-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), p. 81.

I would have been interested to read Anderson's comments on some of Simak's works. I know from private conversation that James Blish did not care for them and that he particularly disliked talking dogs which, as I remember, occurred no less than three times in Simak's sf. Simak must be classified with Ray Bradbury and CS Lewis as not a hard, therefore a "soft," sf writer.

In my teens, I set out to read every word written by certain American sf writers. Simak was on this list. However, I caught up with him, read his then newly published novel, felt that he had become repetitive and self-parodying, and stopped reading although Simak continued to publish a novel a year (or thereabouts).

A lot of what he wrote about time and time travel did not make sense. His Time And Again did present a logically consistent circular causality paradox but I was disappointed when I reread it more recently - too many sf cliches - although one interesting feature was an appearance by Old Cliff himself at the age of ninety.

Anderson, Blish and Simak each wrote a story about exploring the Jovian environment. Anderson's and Simak's characters, though not Blish's, wound up living happily there.

Retrospective

I usually complain about overlap between the contents of collections and have done so on this blog. However, a retrospective volume, like Poul Anderson's Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), with stories, auctorial comments and autobiographical notes spanning a career, makes sense. Anderson even remarks that:

"This book would be incomplete without a van Rijn yarn." (p. 153)

Of course we have already read all the van Rin yarns but we also reread them and might feel like rereading "The Master Key" while looking though ...Infinity.

Earlier in the volume, Anderson wrote:

"'Gypsy' is the earliest that seems worth including here. I could do it better nowadays." (p. 66)

He did rewrite several early stories to good effect but it was neither necessary nor possible to do this with all of them. In any case:

"...this little tale is a landmark for me, my first attempt to celebrate the wonders of our universe." (ibid.)

And that is exactly what this story does. Space travelers who have lost their way and wandered between planetary systems before settling on a terrestroid planet remember the wandering and decide to regain it, thus becoming the first of the Nomads. We read of some of their earlier adventures only as reminiscences:

"We had ridden centauroids who conversed with us as they went to the aerial city of their winged enemies -" (p. 77)

- an appropriate story to include in a retrospective volume.

Poul Anderson, Scientist

We would have read more about Poul Anderson's Japanese-American detective, Trygve Yamamura, if Anderson had earned more by writing about Yamamura and we would also have read more about Diana Crowfeather if Anderson had not wanted to write other sf like Harvest Of Stars and Genesis. Further, however, we would have read none of this if Anderson's original career plan had been realized:

"Science fiction writers tend to start out young. I began making professional sales while in college. My aim was to become a scientist, but after graduating, with no money left to continue, I supported myself by writing while I looked for honest employment. Jobs were scarce just then; the search grew more and more half-hearted; gradually I realized that what I was doing was what nature had cut me out for. Meanwhile I was learning the craft the hard way, at least as much through the rejections as the acceptances."
-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), p. 66.

We must thank the Muses that jobs were scarce. And story-telling is one of the oldest forms of "honest employment." Poets recited epics about solar and stellar deities long before scientists understood solar or stellar processes.

So here are at least four alternative realities:

Poul Anderson, scientist;
Poul Anderson as primarily a mystery writer;
Poul Anderson continuing his major future history series at the expense of other kinds of hard sf;
the Poul Anderson we know.

I think we got the best option.

Yamamura, Crowfeather And Van Rijn

It is almost impossible to glance inside a book by Poul Anderson without finding something for a blogger to post about. For example:

"I would have liked to continue with [Trygve Yamamura], but was earning so much more by science fiction that it became impractical."
-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), p. 296.

We already knew that we would have read more about Dominic Flandry's daughter, Diana Crowfeather, if Anderson had not wanted to write other kinds of sf. Now we also know that we would have read more about Yamamura if he had paid better. But, in a sense, the readers decided.

However, we got three novels and one short story about Yamamura - and I have yet to read one of those novels - whereas we got only one novel about Diana.

Anderson wrote nonstop for over fifty years, producing a monumental canon, but we still want to read more about all of these characters - in particular maybe to accompany Nicholas van Rijn on his last exploratory voyage outside known space.

A Double Surprise

Throughout "Genius" by Poul Anderson, the psychologist Heym and the soldier Goram speak as though genocide were morally acceptable, although - surprise ending - Goram turns out to have been playing a role. Shortly before the end of the story, Heym has learned, first, that Goram is secretly a member of the genius population of the experimental planet that they are inspecting and, secondly, that agents from that planet are infiltrating and taking over the Solarian Empire.

Knowing this, Heym, who is loyal to the Empire, cannot be allowed to return to it. Just six sentences before the end of the story, Goram, who until now has spoken of nothing but killing, remarks with a smile:

"'I'll just have to report you as accidentally killed on the planet.'" (Call Me Joe, p. 222)

A death sentence for Heym? No. The geniuses are too ingenious to resort to violence. Goram continues:

"'I don't think you'll find life exile on this world, out of sight of the observers, uncongenial.'" (ibid.)

Indeed, it has already been established that this entire planet is a hassle-free zone with considerate inhabitants and no conflict. I like to imagine a sequel, set decades later, in which Heym, still happily living on the planet, has no desire to escape or warn the Empire. In fact, the geniuses will solve the social problems of which he was only too aware - the only difference being that homo intelligens pursues goals that transcend those of homo sapiens.