Archaisms

For Love And Glory, XLI.

OK. How many archaisms does Hebo use that we recognize and understand but Lissa does not? I have not been taking notes and they are mounting up but I am not about to conduct a search right now. Maybe when I get back from London. (See here.)

The archaisms include:

convent girls;
grand piano;
Judas priest.

He also says:

salud;
prosit;
skaal;
kan bei. (p. 233)

Hebo has been spied on. He and Lissa will have to race to reach the giant star before their competitors and this is probably the last post before Monday.

Hebo's Plan

For Love And Glory, XXXIX.

At last we learn what Hebo had realized in XXX (see here):

it is known that the Forerunners were active in the period between five and three million years ago;

they probably had computing power way beyond ours;

thus, they might have predicted the black hole collision;

if so, then they would have wanted to observe the collision from close by;

their probes, if any, would be small and undetectable;

they would have established a base at a nearby star;

the star would have to be more massive than Sol or Sunniva so that its trajectory could be predicted that far in advance;

there is in fact a giant star fifteen light years from the site of the collision;

however, Hebo needs expensive new radiation screening etc if he is to approach such a star;

the purpose of his business on Freydis is to make enough money to fund such an expedition.

Hebo's deduction of a possible nearby working Forerunner base resembles David Falkayn's deduction of a possible source of supermetals.

Growing Buildings And Integrating With Nature

Can anyone recognize the cover or covers on the top row, left and right - if they are images from a cover?

For Love And Glory.

There should have been another post last night but the great god Bacchus intervened. See here.

In FLAG IV, I summarized a lot of information about the Freydisan environment, including Lissa's hopes for the Susaian colony on that planet. However, I did not sufficiently highlight these plans:

"'...microbes that extract and refine minerals, buildings that grow out of the soil...'" (XXXVII, p. 215)

Such nanotechnology, technological manipulation of atoms and molecules, is mentioned in this novel and also in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy. What are the longer term implications of nanotech?  A new phase of existence? The end of want and conflict? An "intelligent" environment addressing every need, transmuting waste into oxygen, growing on trees (if we wanted it) fully nutritional food that looked and tasted like cream cakes? Etc? 

"'...a civilization not opposed to nature, but integrated with it, both in and of it. Something altogether new. No telling how it will develop, what shapes it will take, what the rest of the galaxy might learn from it.'" (ibid.)

Like the Alori in the Psychotechnic History or the Freeholders in the Technic History?

Four Senses In The Jungle

For Love And Glory.

Lissa and Hebo track the missing Susaian, Orichalc, through the Freydisan jungle, an environment providing much scope for multi-sensory descriptions:

gloom;
rank odors;
sticky sweat, both felt and smelled;
"Cries, croaks, whistles..." (XXXVI, p. 197)

"Rain rushed, wind brawled, branches creaked." (XXXVII, p. 201)

Compare "Rain Roared."

What with meditating and all, I usually avoid alcohol but this evening we received a free bottle of wine when we ate in the Borough:

I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young
-copied from here.

Have I not drunk Soma?
-copied from here.

"In the secret high place of the heart there are two beings who drink the wine of life in the world of truth."
-Katha Upanishad, Part 3.

Lycosauroids And Other Species On Freydis

For Love And Glory, XXXV.

There are "'Lycosauroids'" (p.190), "'...silent-running large carnivores...,'" (p. 189) on Freydis as on Avalon. (Scroll down.)

Other species on Freydis are:

ceratodons;
leatherwings;
deimosauroids;
"...antlike forms, browsing animals that in reality were huge." (p. 187)

Does Poul Anderson mean that those "forms" seemed "antlike" in size when seen by people flying above them or that they were antlike in form albeit huge?

"Judas Priest!"

For Love And Glory, XXXV.

"'Judas priest!' Hebo exclaimed. 'How much labor went into this?'
"Lissa didn't recognize his phrase, doubtless archaic. Yes, he'd have wanted to keep memories from his first youth." (p. 184)

People who are rejuvenated have more than one youth.

I have hardly encountered Hebo's phrase outside of Poul Anderson's works where I first found it in the mouth of Manse Everard. There is an English heavy metal band called "Judas Priest." See also the Wikipedia article here. There is also a song by Bob Dylan.

Apparently the phrase is a euphemism. I thought that there should be more to it than that but apparently not.

Ecologists And Venusberg

For Love And Glory, XXXIV.

Science fiction addresses interactions not only between human beings but also between human beings and the rest of the universe, which can mean:

aliens invading the Solar System;

uninhabited planets colonized by human beings;

newly discovered laws of physics;

technology created by human beings but now confronting them as if it were an external force;

floods, droughts, nuclear wars and any other imaginable disaster;

etc.

Hebo resents the suggestion that only "'...pure-hearted ecologists...'" (p. 183) should help the Susaians to settle on Freydis. He is in that business already. When Lissa accuses him of enriching himself as much as possible as fast as possible with no concern for the consequences, he replies:

"'Do you expect me to work for nothing?'" (p. 183)

We need travel neither to the future nor to another planet to engage in this argument or, as Horatio said, in a different context:

HORATIO

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave

To tell us this.

-copied from here.

Susaians On Freydis

For Love And Glory, XXXIV.

Imagine working with beings that can sense emotions.

"Excitement often spread with explosive speed through beings so directly perceptive of emotions." (p. 179)

That is logical. Some beings detect an emotion and others detect their detection of it.

"She begrudged the admission and knew that Coppergold felt that she did." (ibid.)

Lissa cannot conceal her inner begrudgment from a Susaian. But Susaians might be more sympathetic than human beings? (p. 180)

A group of them have settled on Freydis which is:

"Not the global hell of jungle and swamp that most people imagined; no, as diverse as Asborg. But dear Asborg was well-nigh another Earth, renewed and again virginal. Humans soon made it theirs, and in its turn it claimed them for itself." (ibid.)

Earth and Venus are Sol III and II. Asborg and Freydis are Sunniva III and II. A "...global hell of jungle and swamp..." was one idea of what Venus might be like. Anderson's Sunnivan System is like a retro-Solar System.

There is a Venusburg on Venus in Robert Heinlein's Future History and Torben Hebo runs Venusberg Enterprises on Freydis.

Conversation In The Baltica

(Thursday-Sunday this week: Trip to London. No blogging. But I hope that there are enough posts to satisfy blog readers until Monday.)

For Love And Glory, XXXIII.

Novelistic characters interact. Specifically, in the Baltica, Hebo meets two men who had conversed with Lissa in earlier chapters. Plot strands intersect as they discuss the newly merged black hole and the proposed Susaian colony on Asborg's sister planet, Freydis. (These plot strands already interconnect because a Susaian group had bought an island on Freydis in exchange for information that had led to the discovery of the black hole.)

In their restaurant alcove, the three men are not interrupted or disturbed by waiters because their orders of beer, martini and whiskey slide up from the table port. This post does not join our Food Thread because the men do not screen the menu until the end of the chapter.

Like XXXI, XXXIII ends as the omniscient narrator informs the reader of what is to come:

"She didn't know that they would begin with a new rescue mission." (XXXI, p. 167)

"And then the next five years were amply eventful. And then Lissa returned." (XXXIII, p. 177)

Lissa and Hebo are our only two viewpoint characters. XXXI is narrated from Lissa's pov but, by telling us what she did not know, the narration in the concluding sentence steps right outside of that pov and also remotivates the reader to continue reading.

Four Senses In The Baltica

For Love And Glory, XXXIII.

The Baltica is a restaurant in a clear dome on top of one of the tallest towers in the city of Inga on the planet, Asborg. At night, patrons see city lights and a haloed moon.

Among the tables, artificially designed flowers:

are multi-colored;
"animate" the air, presumably with odors;
trill a springtime melody!

Awaiting his host at a reserved alcove table, Hebo drinks a beer.

Thus, the opening paragraph of XXXIII addresses four senses.