Kindred, Followers And Travers

Mirkheim, X.

On Hermes, the Kindred are the thousand families whose ancestors were the first passengers from Earth. Those ancestors founded corporations and their descendants head the domains. However, one family of first arrivals, the Tamarins, worked as professional freelancers instead of founding a corporation. The constitution of independent Hermes specifies that the presidents of the domains elect the Grand Duke or Duchess from among the Tamarins who, however, must remain without a domain. It seems to follow that Grand Duchess Sandra is not of the Kindred. If she had not become Duchess, then her options would have been:

to earn a living, differing from a Traver only in having a vote;

to marry into either the Kindred or the Followers.

Travers are latecomers, either employees or business people, whereas Followers hold entailed shares and therefore are junior partners in domains. Members of the Kindred have ten votes in domain affairs whereas Followers have only one. (XIII, p. 185) Finally, certain courtesies are necessary to higher-ranking people. Sandra, brought up among the Kindred, would have found such courtesies embarrassing if she had become a Follower. In fact, however, she married Peter Runeberg of the Kindred.

Not only is this slightly more complicated than I had realized (I have had to correct an earlier post) but it also seems to be designed to maximize dissatisfaction among later generations, as if a demon had drafted the constitution.

More Details In MIRKHEIM

See Van Rijn And Age.

If Satan's World had succeeded in making its point, then it would have been a different book and "Lodestar," then Mirkheim, would have been unnecessary. However, we enjoy the unfolding of the series. These three works constitute the van Rijn-trader team series as opposed to either the van Rijn series of six installments or the trader team series of two installments.

Since "Lodestar" did not fully make its point, Anderson could either have lengthened/novelized it or written a longer sequel. Fortunately, he took the latter course. In "Lodestar," Falkayn refers to monopolists and Coya refers to laissez-faire capitalism whereas Mirkheim goes into detail about:

The Council of Hiawatha

The Home Companies

The Seven in Space

 

See also Some Important Organizations and The Economy Of The Solar Commonwealth.

 

Much of this information is only in Mirkheim as also are details of the planet Hermes and of David Falkayn's Hermetian family. Van Rijn as the largest independent gains an unwanted leadership role. The single volume, Mirkheim, is a massive contribution to the Technic History.

Supermetals And The Baldic League

Mirkheim, VII.

On Mirkheim, Sandra Tamarin meets a gang of Supermetals workers comprising Ikranankans, Cynthians, a Gorzuni, an Ivanhoan and human colonials, all led by the Vixenite, Henry Kittredge. So some Gorzuni, taking a break from working as mercenaries, have joined Supermetal although this does not prevent members of their species from later sacking Earth and enslaving human beings during the Time of Troubles. They do this as part of the Baldic League which also includes renegade human colonials. "The Star Plunderer" was published twenty five years before Mirkheim. But longer term benefits of Supermetals include the weather stations on Vixen and that planet later founds a colony, New Vixen. A New Vixenite becomes a Ranger of the Commonalty and contacts descendants of Aenean rebels exiled by Dominic Flandry and that really does bring us to the end of the Technic History.

A Troll's Face

Mirkheim, VII.

As Muddlin' Through approaches Mirkheim, the planet is not white with frozen atmosphere but gleaming in metal:

"Mountains and chasms made rough shadows. Regions of dark iron sketched a troll's face." (p. 120)

Human babies are genetically programmed to respond to human faces. Only a very few random dots or markings suffice to suggest two eyes above a mouth. There is a man in the Moon and it is appropriate that a troll should guard the wealth of Mirkheim. This single reference to a face on Mirkheim is fully appropriate. We find such details in Poul Anderson's texts when we search for them and they affect us subliminally on a casual reading.

The Tiger

Mirkheim, V.

Approaching the planet Babur, Falkayn sees a tawny globe veiled partly by night and partly by swirling white clouds tinged gold, brown or pale red:

"The majesty of the sight gave Falkayn to understand why its human discoverer had named it for a conqueror who went down in the memory of India as the Tiger. He didn't know how well he chose, he thought." (p. 81)

But Poul Anderson did know how well he chose. Here he invokes the history of the Mughal Empire, incorporating its connotations into his History of Technic Civilization. For a moment, we think of tigers, India, Kipling etc. Then we read on but the Tiger remains in the background.

Reason And A Puddle

 

Lord Hauksberg wants to cooperate with the reasonable elements in the Merseian government. Max Abrams replies:

"'Trouble is...the whole bunch of them are reasonable. But they don't reason on the same basis as us.'"

-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER NINE, p. 84.

 

Bayard Story says that Babur is:

 

"'...the home of a species as reasonable by their lights as we are by ours.'"

-Mirkheim, III, p. 72.

 

Van Rijn replies:

 

"'God help reason, if we and they is the best it can do.'"

-ibid.

 

If a race believes that it is superior, then it is reasonable for it to subordinate all others. Bigots have reasoned from Biblical premises, e.g., that the Rapture would occur in 1988. CS Lewis, converting to Theism, believed that God was Reason but wondered whether He was also "reasonable," i.e., not too demanding.

 

Van Rijn claims to have collected data:

 

"'...till I got a full jigsaw puddle.'"

-Mirkheim, III, p. 73.

 

Jigsaw pieces fit together because they are rigid whereas a puddle is fluid so "...jigsaw puddle..." has to be an ultimate contradiction.

Earth Seen From The Moon

Mirkheim, III.

In the Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn sees:

"...Earth's heart-snaring loveliness hung blue and white in the south." (p. 65)

And a century and a half earlier in the Time Patrol timeline, Carl Farness sees:

"...heaven black but reigned over by an Earth nearly full. I lost myself in the sight of that glorious white-swirled blueness. Jorith had lost herself there, two thousand years ago."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 2319, p. 375.

 

Time travelers have a different perspective.

 

There is artificial gravity in Lunar facilities in both timelines. Farness sees only mountains and craters but van Rijn looks out on trees growing high under a forcefield.

 

Apart from this, it is the same Earth and Moon in our timeline and in the two fictional timelines.

Links And A Foundation

We have known of the planet Hermes since "Wings of Victory" and that David Falkayn was an aristocrat of that planet since "The Three-Cornered Wheel" but the first time that we see Hermes is in Mirkheim. The second and last time is in A Stone In Heaven.

 In Mirkheim:

Sandra and Eric Tamarin are a strong link back to The Man Who Counts;

the Baburites are a strong link back to "Esau";

not only Mirkheim but also Commodre Nadi of the Supermetals Company is a strong link back to "Lodestar";

Sandra's reference to David Falkayn as the hero of the Shenna affair is a strong link back to Satan's World;

Nadi's explanation that Falkayn also discovered Mirkheim and founded Supermetals is another strong link to "Lodestar";

references to Ikrananka, Ivanhoe and Vanessa are links to "The Trouble Twisters," "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "A Sun Invisible," respectively.

Nadi summarizes for Sandra's benefit the events of "Lodestar," how van Rijn found his way to Mirkheim but David and Coya persuaded him to keep quiet. Nadi adds that van Rijn pro-actively helped to keep the secret by advising Supermetals agents on how to keep confusing the issue.

However, Mirkheim is much more than just an exhaustive list of references to earlier works. On the firm foundation provided by previous installments, Anderson builds what I have previously described as a good novel, a good science fiction novel and a good political novel.

A Solid Society

Mirkheim.

Hermetian society as described by Poul Anderson is solid from Sandra's long, darkly wood-paneled conference room, its windows open onto a lawn guarded by a mastiff, to the complex hierarchical social structure. Peter Asmundsen cannot avoid giving preferential promotions to Followers but can try to compensate the strike-threatening Travers, maybe with extra vacations. Grand Duchess Sandra is worried by a large Liberation Front rally with intemperate orators and a large, enthusiastic Travers crowd. The society is complex enough for readers to adopt different positions towards it. I think that it sounds over-ripe for reform - which does happen in the novel. I empathize with Travers, not with Kindred or Followers. What the Grand Duchess regards as intemperate, I might regard as moderate. The fact that readers can disagree on these issues shows that Anderson has created a plausible society. 

Life-Fiction Parallels

We find parallels between an author's (auto)biography and his fiction. Both CS Lewis and his character, Elwin Ransom, have the same experience of nearly drowning.

"...I held a primitive hand ax, a piece of flint chipped into shape in the Middle Acheulean period, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago, by a hunter - Homo erectus, not yet Neanderthal - and saw a tiny fossil embedded in it, left by a mollusc in a sea that drained and dried away perhaps a hundred million years ago."

-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), I, p. 17.

 

"On a shelf in my home lies a relic of the Paleolithic, a so-called hand ax, a heavy piece of flint chipped into a sort of pear shape but once rimmed with sharp edges... It is Middle Acheulean, made perhaps a hundred thousand years ago by a hunter whose folk were not yet quite at the Neanderthal stage of evolution. Embbed in the flint is a fossil, a sea shell laid down perhaps a hundred million years ago...."

-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 184.

 

A hundred thousand years and a hundred million years. That hunter had no conception either of the fossil in his ax or of Poul Anderson later holding and possessing the ax. Is there a wider perspective of which we have no conception?

 

Sandra Tamarin:

 

"...found her eye falling on a battle-ax from Diomedes."

-Mirkheim, II, p. 56.

 

Sandra looking at the Diomedean ax reminded me of Anderson looking at the Acheulean ax although the difference is that Sandra had acquired her ax in a society where it was still in use.

 

Also on Poul Anderson's shelves was:

 

"...a fine statuette of a Diomedean, inhabitant of an imaginary planet of mine which was visited by human beings in the twenty-fifth century...."

-"The Discovery of the Past," pp. 185-186.