Anderson And Heinlein On The Past And Present

Poul Anderson described "...the past of the United States..." as:

"...that intricate, colorful, raucous pageant..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 192.

As Jeeves might say, "I would not perhaps take the liberty of describing it in quite those terms, sir." However, it is an interesting perspective.

Is sf unrealistic because important events happen quickly and:

"...are brought about by a few determined individuals."
-op. cit., p. 199?

Anderson shows that American history is like that:

from the Declaration of Independence to the annexation of 1848 (see here) was 72 years, a single lifetime;

Anderson's mother was alive for Kitty Hawk and the first manned Moon landing, 66 years apart;

steam engines, cotton gins, combine harvesters, railways, telegraph, telephones, electric lights, automobiles, aircraft and atomic power came quickly and with identifiable originators.

Since we are still living in that same history, it is appropriate to quote Robert Heinlein, especially since this passage could just as easily have been written by Poul Anderson:

"The anomalies of the Power Age are more curious than its wonders.
"But it is a great and wonderful age, the most wonderful this giddy planet has yet seen. It is sometimes comic, too often tragic, and always wonderful. Our wildest dreams of the future will be surpassed by what lies in front of us. Come bad, come good, I want to take part in the show as long as possible.
"Robert A. Heinlein."
-Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), Preface, p. 10.

(But let's try to prevent some of the "bad," not just let it come.)

At the effective end of the Future History, Lazarus Long proves that sometimes a character's views are those of his author:

"'...here's one monkey that's going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.'"
-Robert Heinlein, Methuselah's Children (London, 1966), p. 191.

In terms of up-to-date American contemporary fiction, I am also reading The Whistler by John Grisham.

The Lahui Kuikawa

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

Human global society is differentiated into an "Orthosphere" (p. 73) and a "Heterosphere" (p. 74), which sounds like the terminology in The Byworlder.

The Heterosphere includes a two-species society like the human-Avalonian enclave on Avalon in Anderson's Technic History:

"The Lahui Kuikawa amounted to about ten thousand humans on a small Hawaiian island and maybe fifty thousand Keiki Moana, maybe considerably more, prowling the greatest of the oceans." (p. 72)

Human beings and intelligent seals cooperated on labor-intensive work in:

fish ranches;
dolphin domestication;
aquaculture;
recreational enterprises;
scientific surveys;
salvage and repair.

However, cheap robotization replaced living labor while the Keiki population grew, leading to poverty, hunting and banditry, like theft from farms. A woman of the Lahui tries to mediate between the human authorities and the "kauwa," outcasts, exiles, bandits.

Poul Anderson shows how technological progress generates new social dislocations and conflicts.

Addendum: Aleka of the Lahui Kuikawa swears by "Pele." (p. 73)

Robots In Capek, Asimov And Anderson

Capek's "roboti" are synthetic, conscious, humanoid organisms. See R.U.R.

Asimov's robots are artificial, mechanical, humanoid bodies with conscious "positronic" brains.

"...a versatile machine with a program capable of some learning and much adaptation, nevertheless just a robot and unaware."
-Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995), 5, pp. 64-65.

In the third case, "learning" has to mean "reprogramming," not conscious learning. "...just a robot and unaware..." denies the Capekian and Asimovian meanings of "robot." Capek coined the term.

Complete Works

On both Poul Anderson Appreciation and James Blish Appreciation, an interesting topic is how the author's works should be presented in any uniform Complete Works edition.

One certainty is that Anderson's History of Technic Civilization cannot possibly fit into a single volume. I think that Baen Books has the number of volumes right, seven, although I would rearrange some of the contents.

Anderson's historical and even prehistorical works could be presented in chronological order. The alternative histories connected to the Old Phoenix belong together. Anderson's future histories progress from the Psychotechnic History, which could be complete in two volumes, pre-FTL and FTL, to Genesis, a single volume.

Blish's main works or bodies of work could be collected in just four volumes although I now think that each branch of his Haertel Scholium deserves its own separate volume. His complete works, of course, are more voluminous.

A Familiar Invitation

I think that we have had every possible philosophical, theological and political disagreement on the blog by now. This is because Poul Anderson raises these issues for us. How can we respond except with our own different, and reasoned, opinions? Anyone who reads Poul Anderson must have something to say.

When Anderson treats religious believers sympathetically, do you share the beliefs or respect them or regard them as merely irrational?

Will civilizations continue to rise and fall or is it possible to break out of this cycle?

Is technology liberating, oppressive or both?

Is Artificial Intelligence possible? Will it supersede its creators?

Is a space program a waste of resources needed on Earth?

Is the universe full of intelligences or are we the first?

Is Nicholas van Rijn admirable or a greedy hog?

Can you identify all of the covers displayed in the attached image?

What makes me think that I can get away with a post that merely repeats earlier questions?

I can because it's my blog! But I have no control over what other people write so please do.

Rereading A Future History

Rereading The Stars Are Also Fire, I have reached Chapter 5:

the introduction presents a philosopher at Alpha Centauri in a further future;

Chapters 1 and 3 present the Lunarian, Lilisaire, her employee, Ian Kenmuir, and her opponent, Venator, in the narrative present;

Chapters 2 and 4 present Anson Guthrie and Dagny Ebbeson in historical flashbacks to a period even earlier than the previous volume;

Chapter 5, returning to the narrative present, presents new characters on Earth, including an intelligent seal.

Thus:

a true future history;
not necessarily an easy read;
further rereading to be shelved until tomorrow!

Daily Life In Future Histories

The Future History by Robert Heinlein

The Psychotechnic History by Poul Anderson

The Technic History by Poul Anderson

This is what I call the "future history triad." We already know, first, that Poul Anderson directly modeled his Psychotechnic History on Heinlein's Future History and, secondly, that Anderson's unplanned Technic History grew organically to become a future history series on a similar model but a vaster scale. However, merely to say that is to overlook something unique about the Future History. It has been said that this series gives the future a daily life.

Volumes I and II of the Future History are primarily "social" whereas Volumes III and IV are primarily "political." (For this distinction within future histories, see here.) Volume V, a brief appendix about events elsewhere, does not advance the History. In the first and "social" part of the Future History:

there are only short stories;

they are set in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty first century;

in general, there are no continuing characters - although Harriman appears twice;

the space rocket technology in the stories is extrapolated from the science and technology known at the time of writing;

thus, this could have been what was going to happen in the next few decades - apart from the less plausible extraterrestrials who, however, do not impinge greatly on human history;

the characters are an individual, a couple, a family, a crew etc living and working in those decades;

the narration addresses a reading public living in the same period;

politics are in the background - there is an attempted coup by a faction in the Space Patrol and, later, the UN metamorphoses into a World Federation;

in Volume II, the stories do not advance chronologically but show different aspects of the same contemporaneous society.

Examples:

"Sure we had trouble building Space Station One - but the trouble was people."
-Robert Heinlein, "Delilah And The Space Rigger" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 7-19 AT p. 7.

"You've seen pictures of the Station -..."
-op. cit., p. 13.

"The traveling public gripes at the lack of direct Earth-to-Moon service..."
-Robert Heinlein, "Space Jockey" IN The Green Hills Of Earth, pp. 19-36 AT p. 20.

"It has only been in the past five years that [Supra-New York space station] has even been equipped to offer the comfort of one-gravity centrifuge service..."
-ibid., p. 21.

"You sang [Rhysling's] words in school..."
-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN The Green Hills Of Earth, pp. 131-141 AT p. 131.

I think that it is fair to say that there is nothing like this in other future histories? I have said occasionally, e.g., here and here, that I would like to know more about life on Earth during the Solar Commonwealth and the Terran Empire. I value "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" for its glimpses of domestic life during the Commonwealth.

The Tetralogy As History

Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars Tetralogy functions well as a future history series:

the political relationship between Earth and Moon changes between Volumes I and II;

Vol II, The Stars Are Also Fire, Chapter 1, informs us that, centuries earlier, there was an important historical figure called Dagny Beynac;

in Chapter 2, a flashback, an important figure already known to us, Anson Guthrie, tells Dagny Ebbeson that he is her grandfather;

Chapter 3 is set in Tychopolis on Luna;

in Chapter 4, another flashback, Dagny Ebbeson meets Edmond Beynac on the Moon while mining metals for the building of Tychopolis.

Since the two (so far) flashbacks are entitled "The Mother of the Moon," we deduce that Dagny Ebbeson/Beynac will come to be regarded as a Foundress of the Lunar colony.

Lunar Colonization In Heinlein And Anderson

Lunar colonization is a major theme in Robert Heinlein's sf, particularly his Future History where, depending on how we count them, seven stories are set on the colonized Moon and another ends with Harriman, "The Man Who Sold The Moon," landing there to die.

Anna Stone, Luna City Community Association Service Manager, says:

"'I was here when Luna City was three air-sealed Quonset huts connected by tunnels you crawled through on your knees.'"
-Robert Heinlein, "'It's Great To Be Back!'" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 74-92 AT p. 74.

There are Stones on the Moon in this Future History story, in one Scribner Juvenile novel and in one other novel. (See image.) I suspect, although it would a lot of trouble to confirm this, that the Lunar capital is Luna City in the Future History and in the Scribner Juveniles but has other names in other works.

Later future history series skip past early days on the Moon although Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium History informs us that Neil Armstrong set foot there in 1969.

The Moon In Poul Anderson's Series
In the Psychotechnic History, the Abbey;
in the Technic History, Lunograd;
in the Time Patrol series, a Lunar hospital;
in the Harvest of Stars Tetralogy, Tychopolis.

In The Stars Are also Fire:

Chapter 3 is set in Tychopolis;
in Chapter 4, a historical flashback, a Nearside base is being built in Tycho Crater;
later in 4, the base is named as Tychopolis.

The Harvest of Stars Tetralogy, with its human beings adapted to live and reproduce in Lunar gravity, more than compensates for any earlier future historical neglect of the Moon.

An Explanatory Update

Hi. Happy October.

I did mean to post more yesterday and even have a draft of an unfinished post which will now be drastically revised because I have had more time to think about it. While cleaning the keyboard, I accidentally pressed some combination of keys that disabled the lap top. Even Ketlan, following online instructions, was unable to re-enable it so it had to go back to the shop but all's well that ends well.

I intend to post about the treatment of lunar colonization in future histories. While waiting for the lap top to be re-enabled, I:

reread "How Beautiful With Banners" by James Blish and corrected an error on James Blish Appreciation;

reread "This Earth of Hours" by James Blish and might soon post about its nonhumanoid alien (in fact, see here);

reread some stories in Robert Heinlein's The Green Hills Of Earth.

Although Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History was directly modeled on Heinlein's Future History, some aspects of the Future History are unique to it (I think) and this observation might generate another post.

Outward into the universe with Heinlein, Blish and Anderson!