The Daily Life Of The Future

Somebody said that Robert Heinlein's Future History gave the future a daily life. Some of the stories in The Green Hills Of Earth answer that description.

Ideally, Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization would have had a lot more stories like "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" which puts daily life center stage:

James Ching sits in a lounger;
his phone warbles;
he had set it to pass calls from at most a dozen people;
Jim is studying tensor calculus and transformations in hyperspace theory;
the Education Central computer projects material onto his screen;
his preliminary tests for the Academy are due soon;
the entrance exams, if he gets that far, will be a year later;
there are a hundred applications for every regular spaceman's berth;
training as an apprentice to a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League would be more practically based but apprenticeships usually go to relatives on the ground that relatives of survivors are more likely to be survivors;
Jim has an air car that he can fly over the ocean;
he has occasionally visited Luna, for example, most recently, as his sixteenth birthday present;
because Jim's surname is Ching, his principal counselor, Freeman Simon Snyder, wants him to represent the San Francisco Chinese community in the upcoming Festival of Man;
"'My people?' says Jim, as the room wobbles.

This story provides a welcome contrast to the extra-planetary adventures of van Rijn, Falkayn and Flandry.

Machines

(I dislike this magazine cover but it is the issue that Poul Anderson's "Margin of Profit" appeared in. In that month, September 1956, I started to attend a boarding school in Scotland and already read sf in the Eagle.)

See Something Basic on the James Blish Appreciation blog. This post summarizes Jack Loftus' meeting with the galactic ruler, the Hegemon of Malis. Note the machines standing along the walls of the mountainous audience room. (Jack compares the room to the Hall of the Mountain King.)

Next, read Poul Anderson's account of Captain Torres' approach to his meeting with Nicholas van Rijn:

"...this hall of lucent plastic, among machines that winked and talked between jade columns soaring up into vaulted dimness..."
-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 135-173 AT p. 137.

Difference: plastic as against stone. (Does "jade" mean the mineral or the color?)

Similarities: height and machines.

An old sf image of the future is that it will be full of machines.

Struggles With God

"Israel" means "One who struggles with God." The Bible is a dialogue in which God, personified ultimate reality, is not only heard but also questioned and challenged.

Poul Anderson's Peter Berg lives this prophetic tradition when he screams:

"'Why did You do this to her, why did You do it?'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 130.

An hour later, he says:

"'Your will be done...'" (ibid.)

So Peter struggles or at least argues with God. Does this bring him closer to the Ythrians than he thinks?

How Aliens Sleep

"The Ythrians were quickly asleep, squatted on their locked wing joints like idols of a forgotten people."
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p.124.

I thought that maybe the Merseians could sleep upright, squatting on their tails? - but, somewhere in Ensign Flandry, Brechdan Ironrede definitely talks about toppling into bed which sounds quite unMerseian to me.

Avoid assumptions about aliens. That an organism must lie down to sleep is definitely an assumption.

Collections And Introductions II

(Poul Anderson's "Esau" was first published as "Birthright" in Analog, February 1970.)

"Hiding Place," collected in Trader To The Stars, has an introduction beginning, "The world's great age begins anew..." (See here.)

When "Esau" was collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, it acquired an introduction by Hloch which states that, by the time of this story, the philosophy and practice that had once animated the Polesotechnic League were already becoming archaic or even obsolete.

When both stories were collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, "Esau" was placed immediately before "Hiding Place." Thus, reading consecutively, the League becomes obsolete before the world begins anew. However, the Le Matelot introduction really belongs not immediately before "Hiding Place" but before any stories dealing with the League. In The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the first two League stories are, in this order:

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"
"Margin of Profit" -

- whereas, in The Van Rijn Method, this order is reversed. I prefer the Earth Book order, i.e., I prefer a longer delay before the introduction of the continuing character, van Rijn. Four substantial stories begin the History and build towards the League period, thus setting the stage for the first appearance of van Rijn.

According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, the League was founded in the 23rd century and Gray/Avalon was explored in the 24th century. However, I see no evidence in "The Problem of Pain" that the League existed then. I prefer to think of three exploration stories as preceding the League period.

Collections And Introductions

Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place," starring Nicholas van Rijn, was first published in Analog, March 1961, and has since been collected twice:

it is the first of three van Rijn stories to be collected as Trader To The Stars;

it is the last of eleven installments of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization to be collected as The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I (of VII), The Van Rijn Method.

Van Rijn is the title character of both these collections.

In my copy of Trader To The Stars (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975) (see image):

"Hiding Place" begins on p. 9;

p. 8 is blank;

p. 7 is a fictional quotation from "Le Matelot," beginning with an authentic quotation from Shelley -

"The world's great age begins anew..." (see here)

Thus, Le Matelot seems to introduce the volume. However, I have reason to believe that Le Matelot specifically introduces only "Hiding Place" and therefore possibly appeared with it in Analog. (Later: Le Matelot was not in Analog. See the Acknowledgments in The Van Rijn Method, pp. vi-vii.)

In my copy of Trader To The Stars, "Hiding Place" is immediately followed by an extended quotation from Anderson's first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit" (1956):

"Hiding Place" ends near the bottom of p. 47;

the quotation from "Margin of Profit" begins at the bottom of p. 47 and continues to the top of p. 49;

p. 50 is blank;

the second story in this collection, "Territory," begins on p. 51.

However, despite this misleading layout and pagination, the quotation from "Margin of Profit" is intended as an introduction to "Territory," not as a postscript to "Hiding Place." The compiler of The Technic Civilization Saga, Hank Davis, reproduces Le Matelot as introducing "Hiding Place" and the "Margin of Profit" quotation, now entitled "A Historical Reflection," as introducing "Territory," which is the first of seven works collected in Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader.

Finally, in Trader To The Stars:

"Territory" ends on p. 103;
p. 104 is blank;
p. 105 quotes a further stanza from Shelley's "Hellas" (see the above link);
p. 106 is blank;
the third story, "The Master Key," begins on p. 107.

Thus, the stanza beginning, "A loftier Argo cleaves the main...," clearly introduces "The Master Key" and is reproduced as such when this story is republished as the fourth installment in David Falkayn: Star Trader.

Optimism

When mankind explores and expands into the universe, there should be a great deal of optimism so let's find a few expressions of that in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.

En route to Saturn:

"'Here we are, safe and comfortable till we reach Saturn. After that we should never lack for excitement, or for material to work with on the way home.'
"'True.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 1-73 AT pp. 29-30.

On the Grand Survey:

"After three years we were weary and had suffered losses. Oh, the wonder wasn't gone. How could it ever go - from world after world after world?...
"It was still a heart-speeding thing to find another sentient race, actually more than to find another planet colonizable by man."
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 79-102 AT p. 79.

Exploring Gray/Avalon:

"'...[the Ythrians] have scientific curiosity and, yes, in them perhaps even more than in the humans who went along, a spirit of adventure. Oh, it was a wonderful thing to be young in that band!'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 103-134 AT p. 115.

For a student in San Francisco Integrate:

"'A certain Master Merchant I know will soon be in the market for another apprentice and accepts what I have to told him about you. Are you interested?'
"I collapsed into Betty's arms. She says she'll find a way to follow me."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 175-197 AT p. 197.

When journeyman David Falkayn has averted a war and explained that mercantilism is nobler than knighthood which depends on slavery or serfdom and killing:

"He murmured, as best he could in Latin, 'Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea...'"
-Poul Anderson, "A Sun Invisible" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 263-315 AT p. 314.

When Nicholas van Rijn recruits Emil Dalmady as an entrepreneur:

"'Afterward you go get rich, if you survive, and have a big ball of fun even if you don't. Hokay?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Esau" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 517-553 AT pp. 552-553.

When the Polesotechnic League has begun:

"'The world's great age begins anew....'
"As it has before, and will again...
"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way." - Le Matelot.
-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 555-609 AT 555-556.

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
"Fraught with a later prize;
"Another Orpheus sings again,
"And loves, and weeps, and dies.
"A new Ulysses leaves once more
"Calypso for his native shore." -Shelley.
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 273.

On The Planet Lucifer II

Quetlan and Laura, the suns of Ythri and Avalon respectively, are in the constellation Lupus.

Coya, astrophysicist and frequent space traveler, is at home in the universe, able to identify the brightest stars among the rest. The Dewfall has traveled at high speed for nearly a month from Quetlan towards the Deneb sector. Since Quetlan is 278 light years from Sol towards Lupus, they are now a hundred parsecs from Earth in unknown space. Coya knows this. To that extent, she is as at home there as a Londoner is in Hyde Park. The universe is our home and we ought to be one with it.
-copied from here.

We first read of Avalon in Hloch's Introduction to "The Problem of Pain," then in a conversation on Lucifer:

The planet Lucifer is inhospitable but might be marginally habitable and has mineral wealth. Both days and nights are long, storms are frequent, there is no green vegetation and the violent blue sun continually disrupts electronics. A uranium-concentrating root causes a unique ecological cycle in one area.
-copied from here.

I am rereading the relevant passages of "The Problem of Pain" for any more information about Lucifer. The narrator tells us that the planet is well named. However, if it proves to be even marginally habitable, then its mineral wealth will be worth exploiting. The exploratory team must determine whether the survival problems can be solved economically. Furious day-time weather ends in a twilight gale. Storms blow dust. The air is thin. Auroras flame. Frost covers the land and glittering ice sheathes twisted "trees."

When, in the concluding sentence, the sun rises from the burning horizon, I think that this is an appropriate pathetic fallacy for the theme of the story. See here.

Four Senses On Avalon

We read an account of a natural scene on another planet, expecting Poul Anderson to appeal to at least three of the senses:

"The wind was strong and loud as yet, though easing off in fickleness, flaws, downdrafts, whirls, and eddies. Clouds were mostly gone. Those which remained raced gold and soft orange before a sun low in the west, across blue serenity. The lagoon glittered purple, the greensward lay aglow. It had warmed up till rich odors of growth, of flowers, blent with the sea salt."
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 125.

In fact, I count four senses there. To the beauty of nature, Anderson adds the beauty of Ythrians in flight:

"And splendid in the sky danced Enherrian, Whell, and Rusa. They wheeled, soared, pounced, and rushed back into light which ran molten off their pinions. They chanted, and fragments blew down to the humans: 'High flew your spirit on many winds.... be always remembered....'" (ibid.)

Realizing that, "'They're holding a service for Arrach...'," Berg kneels and prays for the repose of her soul, then wonders whether she would really want rest. She would have wanted to give God the Hunter a good fight, which she has already done.

On The Planet Lucifer

This post, like the preceding (see here) and some earlier ones, is illustrated with the magazine cover for Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain." I wondered who the chess players were and whether they were human. However, the cover image in fact illustrates this story. The unnamed first person narrator says of Peter Berg:

"...he plays chess at just about my level of skill."
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 106.

Like any good installment of a future history series, "The Problem of Pain" performs more than one function:

it recounts a specific story about the one-off character, Peter Berg;

it increases our knowledge of the Ythrians, introduced in the previous story, introduces the planet that will be renamed Avalon and presents some information about Berg's home planet, Aeneas.

But it does more than this: Berg is introduced by another character, the unnamed narrator, and their conversation occurs on yet another planet, Lucifer, which is never to be seen again but which nevertheless makes its own small contribution to the Technic History.