Times And Places II

Starfarers.

Kith Town 

10: Kith Town begins "...as a district in a small city." (p. 77) 

 

Later, it is surrounded by trees, grass, sunflowers, flocks of crows and grazing neobison that are hunted only by "...wild dogs and master-class men..." (p. 78) when this part of central North America has become "...a vicarial preserve." (ibid.)

 

21: The low Kith Town buildings are surrounded by the towers of a city where the previously peaceful nearest neighborhood has turned bad.

 

44; Kith Town is "...ever dwindling..." (p. 423)

48: Kith Town is a robotically tended museum surrounded by the ruins of cities that had occasionally engulfed it.

 

An outstanding future history. 

Times And Places

 

Starfarers.

(Posting delayed by a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. Watching superhero TV series. Robin, operating independently, stomps drug dealers and says "F--- Batman!" Outstanding.)

Chicago

Starfarers presents no year dates so we cite only chapter numbers. In 44, in Tenoya Lowtown, people occupy excavated remnants of Arakoum and, before that, Cago. In 48, Elya is built above layers of cities:

 

"...the whole way down to Chicago." (p. 454)

 

Tenoya:

 

to the west, a dusty, desolate plain;

 

to the east, a cultivated former lake bottom with pipes, processors and robots;

in the city, large buildings (former office blocks?) now filled with tenants, smaller dwellings made from wreckage, bulbous temple spires, a fortified garrison, dust and smoke.

Elya:

to the west, grassy plains, trees and large, wild, genetically engineered grazers;

to the east and north, a cultivated bottomland with robots tending biosynthetic plantations;

on the height between these two landscapes, one hundred thousand people in widely spread houses with gardens and groves, various places of business, Sanctuary and shrines surrounded by natural stone, plants and branching towers, other buildings mostly underground.

A Chill Wind

Previously with Dornford Yates and Stieg Larsson and now with Susan Howatch, appreciation of Poul Anderson has compelled me to notice similar literary details in the works of other authors. Thus:

"But my relief was gone, my depression was crawling back to possess me and..."

- wait for it:

"...a chill wind blew towards me as I turned to face the sea."

-Susan Howatch, Penmarric (London, 2014), IV, CHAPTER NINE, p. 496.

 

If not for the omnipresence of the wind as pathetic fallacy, analogy and (almost) dramatis persona in Anderson's works, I would have read past this passage without comment. However, we appreciate a novel more fully by pausing on apparently inconsequential words and phrases.

Heroes' Welcome

Starfarers, 48.

It seems that Earth-Envoy communications are not broadcast, like by a news or documentary network. However, individuals can tune in on the conversations and millions do. Visitors to the planetary surface would be mobbed so it is better that crew members go singly, each to be accompanied by a designated guide. Virtual reality tours precede physical visits. Virtual reality is of high quality although no one on Earth is addicted to it.

Crew members are referred to as:

"...the honored guests from the remote past..." (p. 452)

- as if they were literal time travelers, not returned space travelers. The fact of their having made an interstellar journey seems to be irrelevant. The future civilization combines admirable and questionable aspects.

Three Prophetic Writers

Starfarers, 47-48.

HG Wells' Time Traveler travels to 802,701 AD and beyond, then returns to the nineteenth century, whereas Envoy travels to an extra-solar civilization, a pulsar and a black hole, then returns to Earth. However, returning to Earth equals traveling to Earth eleven thousand years in the future. Thus, what the Time Traveler finds on his outward journey the Envoy crew find on their return journey: nature conquered by technology and a decadent society. The main difference is that, in The Time Machine, industrial workers have devolved into Morlocks whereas, in Starfarers, they have been replaced by robotics and nanotech. Anderson supersedes Wells in a powerful dialogue about future society.

CS Lewis's anti-Wellsian contribution, That Hideous Strength, argues that technological control of society would be literally diabolical.

Post-Imperial Pax

Starfarers, 44.

"'Rats' nests of tribes, peoples, classes, religions, godknowswhats, scourings of wars, migrations, revolutions, conversions, history - much too much history, much too little of it ours.'" (p. 411)

Thus speaks an Imperial Governor ("Executive"). The natives are "rats' nests" and "scourings." He acknowledges his ignorance: "godknowswhats." It is a problem for him that their history differs from his. One of the cities that he governs is "'Aswarm with fanatics.'" (p. 412) I am confident both that there is a line to be drawn between fanatics and other anti-Governance campaigners and that the Executive and I would draw that line in a different place.

It does not have to be like that. Today our Muslim neighbors celebrate Eid. Brightly garbed visitors from other cities fill the street. Two families give us plates of curry, rice, cakes and bread that make our evening meal. 

In Preston ("Priest Town") twenty miles away:

the City logo is a Lamb with a Cross;

there are many Catholic religious houses;

Preston City Church has become Preston City Mosque;

but the church congregation has moved to new premises;

one street had a church, mosque and Gurdwara next door to each other;

but the Gurdwara (Sikh Temple) was due to move to larger premises;

another street has an ornate Hindu Temple at one end and had a Pagan Moot meeting in a pub at the other end;

there is a nearby Buddhist Center;

an Anglican Bishop was a guest at an Eid celebration.

 

We celebrate diversity.

Lost In The Corridors Of Time

Susan Howatch's character, Adrian Parrish, goes to war in 1914:

"I braced myself, prepared to ride into battle bearing aloft the standards in which I believed so passionately, prepared to die if necessary for the cause I thought so worthwhile.

"But I did not die. Nor did I ride into battle on a milk-white charger like some mythical crusader lost in the corridors of time."

-Susan Howatch, Penmarric (London, 2014), III, CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 352.

 

See also A Corridor Of Time.

 

Again Howatch, no doubt unknowingly, echoes Poul Anderson. Time might be compared to a corridor but why should it be thought to have "corridors" in the plural?

Return II

Starfarers, 48-49.

Envoy communicates audiovisually with Earth. A scholar interprets for an enthroned woman, the Unifier Areli, who "'...bids peace...'" (48, p. 447) She is not mentioned again. (She is mentioned again but not much.)

"It was clear that robotics and nanotechnology had made all necessities, services as well as goods, and perhaps all comforts too, free, like air and sunshine. There was presumably some way to control their distribution and maintain a stable population, but whatever coercion this required was not obvious." (49, p. 450)

There is no need either to control the distribution of air and sunshine or to coerce an affluent and informed population to practice birth control. Poul Anderson imagines an advanced civilization but either he or his characters have difficulty in accepting its implications.

Kith visits are rare and unimportant and the scant interplanetary traffic is entirely robotic. Kith no longer live on Earth. The Envoy crew remain starfolk and cannot settle on Earth.

Return

What do interstellar travelers find when they return home?

Dan Dare: the Mekon has conquered the Solar System with robots.

Dan Dare (later): Earth has been evacuated for some reason.

Larry Niven, A World Out Of Time: Earth orbiting Jupiter; teleportation; new kinds of immortality.

Poul Anderson, "Epilogue": robotic evolution.

Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home: complicated.

Poul Anderson, Starfarers: that is what I am rereading right now.

What Is Peace?

Starfarers, 45.

Envoy, returning, detects declining star travel around Sol. Immediately, what I see as a false dichotomy is posited:

"'If humans aren't adventuring anymore, could they be at peace, as the Tahirians wanted to be?'" (p. 428)

Peace is the absence of armed conflict, not the end of adventure, initiative, exploration or discovery.

Hanny says that most people most of the time stayed put. Sure. Most people cannot go on voyages of exploration nor do they need to. If I lived in the Solar Commonwealth of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then I would not ache to become an apprentice in the Polesotechnic League. I would live and work on Earth while learning as much as possible about Ythrians, Wodenites, Cynthians, Merseians etc.

Hanny asks:

"'...would peace be so terrible?...Suppose Earth is tranquil and beautiful. Suppose we can find something for ourselves like your estancia. Then I could gladly settle down.'" (ibid.)

But of course some former explorers and adventurers should be able to settle down on a peaceful, tranquil, beautiful Earth while others continue to explore and adventure beyond Earth. I feel that the word, "peace," is being devalued here.