Who Guards World Peace After A Nuclear War?

In different works (which?) by Poul Anderson:

the UN
the US
the Maurai
Sweden

There are probably more than that?

As ever, Anderson was prepared to consider (what seems like) every possibility, including his own country failing and political power shifting to the global South.

The Protectorate

(This is a scene from the novel.)

Poul Anderson, Shield, VII.

There have been two atomic wars (!) and the "Protectorate" means that the US monopolizes:

"...arms or armed forces beyond what is needed for internal policing." (p. 54)

Also, the US alone judges whether internal changes in any other country are:

"...consonant with its own security..." (p. 55)

If these measures prevent a third atomic war, then so far, so good. However:

the US could set a moral and political example by dismantling its own nuclear arsenal and redirecting resources toward, e.g., (genuinely) "no-strings-attached" foreign aid?;

"...its own security..." almost certainly means not only strategic but also economic interests.

I foresee that there would be much for other governments and their populations to protest about. However, secretly planning a Fifth World War would not be the way to go.

Ways To Die In An Atomic War (p. 59)
blast
immediate radiation
fire-storms
fall-out
anarchy
disease

"Anarchy," literally meaning "no rule," is also used to mean "lawless." Thus, a group of friends meeting to share a meal or other social activity is "without rule" whereas a gang of thugs harassing them breaks the law. Some people might be surprised to learn how many of their own activities are "anarchist" in the literal sense.

Historical Process And Completion

The spirit moves me to comment on the antithesis between the previous two posts, dealing as they do with ancient mythologies and with speculative technologies, respectively. Poul Anderson's works encompass the far past and the far future as well as the interconnecting historical process. History is made real not only in historical novels like Rogue Sword but also in two history-spanning sf works, the Time Patrol series and The Boat Of A Million Years, and in a future history, the History of Technic Civilization, that began as futuristic adventure fiction but became a reflection on past and future historical cycles. Thus, history synthesizes mythology and technology and Anderson's complete works present a sense of - completion. We might reread Rogue Sword next.

Applications

(Illustration by Dan Adkins for "Shield" by Poul Anderson in Fantastic Stories of Imagination.) (See here.)

Poul Anderson, Shield, VI.

Shields designed to fit like thermsuits so that the wearers can walk and manipulate;

hull-less land, air and space vehicles;

spaceships transformable into dome houses;

asteroidal mineral mining (as with gyrogravitics in Tales Of The Flying Mountains);

a motor that moves a spaceship by changing its energy potential;

maybe near light speed;

spacewarp equations yielding FTL?;

a new source of atomic energy;

conversion of any kind of matter into energy?;

costless fuel;

unlimited power.

Not only will people kill to control this technology but also powerful vested interests will want to suppress unlimited power for everyone. In fact, we could probably be much further along the road to that goal already...

Old Powers

In the pagan world-view, there was no difference in meaning between the questions, "What gods exist here?" and, "Which gods are worshiped here?" although an attempt was made to reduce divine overpopulation ("All things are full of gods," Thales) by identifying, e.g., Jupiter with Zeus and Thor, and the identifications could be arbitrary, e.g., Jupiter with Thor, not with Odin, because Jupiter and Thor both wielded thunderbolts.

So, from within that pagan world-view, it becomes possible to ask, "Where are the gods now?" In Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, Mithras, the Olympians and the Three of Ys withdraw before the new God born in the age of Augustus. I wanted to quote some relevant dialogue from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Dream Country. However, googling for an appropriate image, I found this very dialogue in an image (see the attached image), although I would not have quoted the old English proverb in the last speech balloon. 

Educational Blogging

Your friendly neighborhood blogger:

read a reference to Br'er Rabbit and the brier patch in Poul Anderson's Shield;

remembered a similar reference in Anderson's "Cold Victory";

googled Br'er Rabbit;

read the Wiki account;

reread and compared the two Anderson accounts;

eventually got the point;

in the process, found four other interesting features in "Cold Victory";

posted here.

Basically, blogging is interactive reading. Without it, I would have been condemned to a retirement of continued passive reading.

Five Interesting Features In "Cold Victory"

(i) "...competent chess..." (see here)

(ii) "The vessel on which they had zeroed came into plain view, a long black shark swimming against the Milky Way."
-Poul Anderson, "Cold Victory" IN Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), pp. 165-194 AT p. 178.

(iii) I asked here if the word "less" might be missing at a crucial point in the dialogue but that word is still not there in The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2.

(iv) The phrase, "future history," appears in a future history:

"It was a heartless load to put on a man. The dice of future history..." (p. 189)

(v) Br'er Rabbit, apprehended by Br'er Fox, asks not to be thrown into the brier patch, knowing that he therefore will be thrown into the brier patch which he knows how to get out of. In "Cold Victory," Robert Crane, captured by his brother Ben who is on the opposite, Humanist, side in a civil war, has heard the story of Br'er Rabbit and knows that Ben has not so Robert tells Ben that the Humanists will win if they maintain their position, knowing that Ben will think that he is lying...

Also:

"Br'er Rabbit and the brier patch! Koskinen thought in a leap of excitement. 'Please do not brick me in,' he spelled on his fingers. If they do, I can expand the field and break down any  masonry they can erect - and maybe escape!"
-Poul Anderson, Shield (New York, 1970), V, p. 40.

Please note:

The Broken Sword, Original And Revised, Part One and The Broken Sword, Original And Revised, Part Two by Nicholas David Rosen will be at the top of the blog for the next week. Newer posts will appear below them.

(Nicholas' two articles are no longer at the top of the blog but this "Please note:" post will be left in place because, through a Google glitch, comments on one of the articles have appeared in the combox here.)

Existence And Craters

Poul Anderson, Shield, IV.

"Great Existence, Koskinen thought." (p. 35)

There it is again, like "Cosmos," in some other works.

Is this plausible? -

There was too much radiation for habitation near the "Craters" immediately after the war;

however, as the radiation diminished, the land was cheap or free so the poorest moved there;

the hardiest moved into the Craters;

crater barons exact tribute from low-level slum dwellers;

the police seldom intervene;

upper-level people know little of the Craters.

Two ideas, post-nuclear devastation and criminal control of impoverished urban areas, are uncomfortably combined in the "Craters" which contrast with the "Centers."

Shapes And Existence

Poul Anderson, Shield, III.

Scrolling back through previous blog references to Martians reveals that I was unable to find any physical description of the Martians in Shield. Not only that but:

"...he and Elkor traveled to the Philosophers, whose very shape he could no longer quite recall...." (p. 24)

An entirely unfamiliar shape is difficult to describe or even to remember.

"God, he cried wildly, or Existence, or whatever you are, don't let me kill anyone!" (p. 20)

"Dave had been his closest buddy. Still was, by Existence." (p. 24)

OK. So a new philosophy or world-view hypostasizes "Existence"? Or is Koskinen's thinking influenced by that of the Martians?

The shields, or "...portable potential-barrier units..." (p. 25), are an engineering application of a new concept of energy phenomena resulting from a fusion of "...Martian and Terrestrial science..." (pp. 24-25) They are not Martian force shields as I wrongly said here.