Four Short Stories In One Future History Series

 

When an sf writer has created a future history timeline, he is then free to add new instalments of any length and type and at any point along that timeline. The history can be enhanced by the addition of stories written for different markets. Asked for a story on the theme of redemption, Poul Anderson wrote "The Sharing of Flesh"/"The Dipteroid Phenomenon," set during the Long Night/Allied Planets period of his Technic History.

"How To Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," about Adzel's student days on Earth, and "Rescue on Avalon," set during the colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon, were each first published in a different anthology of juvenile short stories edited by Roger Elwood. "Wingless (on Avalon)," set during the colonization of the Hesperian Islands on Avalon, was first published in Boy's Life. Adzel will become a member of Nicholas van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew led by David Falkayn and "Wingless" features Falkayn's grandson.

The three juvenile stories enhanced the Technic History further when they were incorporated into The Earth Book Of Stormgate and therefore acquired informative introductions fictitiously written by the Earth Book editor, Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon.

We are glad that Anderson took these opportunities to enlarge his Technic History rather than to write unrelated stories. 

Kraken And Lokon

Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708.

The "...Militech of the expedition..." is:

"...from a half barbaric part of Kraken where the sexes had equal opportunities to learn arts of combat suitable to primitive environments..." (pp. 663-664)

This reference to the planet Kraken establishes that the story is an instalment of Anderson's Technic History. Kraken is a link to the earlier instalments, The Game Of Empire and "A Tragedy of Errors." Interstellar leaders have come from Kraken, both during and after the Terran Empire.

"...the inhabitants of Lokon were as cooperative with the visitors from heaven as mutual mysteriousness allowed." (p. 664)

"Lokon" is a new addition to the series. We gather that the Lokonese are primitives. This story fits the pattern of the previous instalment, The Night Face: an interstellar expedition to a colonized but isolated planet with a problem.

A local kills the Militech's husband.

Morris And Mach

 

Sometimes a name crops up in more than one context. Thus:

William Morris

utopian fiction

retellings of Norse myths

socialist politics

art & design

Ernst Mach

physics: a precursor of Einstein

philosophy: a Russian revolutionary wrote a refutation of Machism

Both crop up in Poul Anderson:

Morris is quoted at the beginning of "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," that title being a line from the quoted passage;

Mach provides a rationale for FTL.

It is good when everything comes together.

Fictions And Divergent Realities

What is fiction in one world might be real in another. Might human beings colonize a planet without realizing that it already has intelligent inhabitants? This is an implausible theory on Gwydion in Poul Anderson's Technic History but a reality on Nerthus in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. An author can develop the same idea in different directions.

A single fictional planet can exist in different fictional timelines. The planet, Lithia, explodes in 2050 in A Case Of Conscience by James Blish but still exists millennia later in The Seedling Stars by Blish - as do real planets like Earth and Mars, of course.

Gwydion is introduced in The Night Face and referred to as a sad case in "The Sharing of Flesh." A pyramidally structured future history series continues to incorporate new data until it reaches its apex.

Ultimate Reality

The Night Face.

Raven on the Gwydiona:

"'...they cover the truth with meaningless words about an ultimate reality.'" (XII, p. 654)

I would say not meaningless but misapplied words about an ultimate reality. What Elfavy says about languages or, more generally, about different ways of communicating and about the different corresponding aspects of reality, is meaningful. It just does not happen to apply to the insanity that the Gwydiona experience in Baletime.

Raven approaches a comprehensive apprehension as he and Kors jog through the forest en route to the Holy City. He sees stones and dust lit by a torch and hears:

thudding feet

rustlings

creakings

chirps

hoots

croaks

a tinkling brook

a screaming animal

He feels cool, mild air and smells:

earth

growth

water

individual flowers

unfamiliar scents

blooming baleflower

The scents evoke unidentifiable memories.

Another layer of reality is the scientifically understood physics underlying sensory experiences. Particles and forces are inexhaustible but progressively approximated by scientific theories. The Gwydiona need to be helped to understand and cope with their condition.

Dusk, Sunset And Sea

The Night Face, XI.

Raven closes the door of his cabin, emerges from the spaceship and converses with his companion. However, between the departure from the cabin and the conversation with the companion, we read the following paragraph:

"Emerging from the spaceship, Raven saw that dusk was upon the land. The sky was deeply blue-black, early stars in the east, a last sunset cloud above the western mountains like a streak of clotting blood. He thought he could hear the sea bellow beyond the dike." (p. 644)

Blue-black sky, blood-red cloud, bellowing sea: only two senses this time but it is enough. We have become used to this level of descriptive detail in Poul Anderson's works and I have also become reluctant to read any other sf writer's account of another planet in case it does not measure up.

I might shortly read A. Bertram Chandler's account of John Grimes' meeting with Dominic Flandry.

Burning Bush

 

The Night Face, X.

When discussing the Gwydiona baleflower, Tolteca refers to:

"'The Burning Bush of primitive religion.'" (p. 635)

- yet another Biblical reference. Because of that phrase, "...primitive religion...," I googled to check for any pre-Biblical burning bushes but there do not seem to have been any. The Bible would be primitive to Tolteca. He also points out that:

"'...Baal is an ancient word for a god.'" (ibid.)

The secular meanings of "bale" are full of implications:

a bundle;

a fire;

a pyre;

an evil;

a sorrow.

In religion, conclusions can contradict their premises, e.g.:

All religions are equal.

But Hinduism is the only religion that recognizes this.

Therefore, Hinduism is superior.

According to Christianity, God wills the salvation of all human beings.

But most human beings have lived before or outside of the influence of Christianity.

Therefore, God saves those human beings by means other than Christianity.

(Corollary: Non-Christian religions are clues to God's other activities.) (John Hick.)

People can pray or meditate anywhere. It helps to have access to a tradition of spiritual practice but I do not believe that any particular tradition is necessary for "salvation." However, characters like Poul Anderson's Fr. Axor do believe this. So how would Axor view the salvation of the Gwydiona who have been cut off from other traditions for twelve hundred years and whose psychology is no longer human?

Today And Van Rijn

Just back from a day trip to the Lake District, which will be repeated on Wednesday. No time this evening for analysis of the text of The Night Face. 

Nicholas van Rijn:

stars in the three short stories collected as Trader To The Stars;

cameos in the last of the three David Falkayn short stories collected as The Trouble Twisters;

co-stars with Falkayn in two novels, Satan's World and Mirkheim;

stars in two short stories and one novel collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

co-stars with Falkayn in one short story in the Earth Book;

appears in one Old Phoenix short story.

A total of eleven appearances. The first ten go somewhere and are fully integrated into the Technic History (total: forty three instalments), a long series embedded in a longer one.

One of my abiding themes is the superiority (I think) of Poul Anderson's Technic History to any other sf future history series, including Heinlein's original Future History.

Evolving Apes

The Night Face, VIII.

On Gwydion, apes that live near human settlements and have observed human beings using tools have not begun to make tools themselves and have not attacked human beings. A flock that lives farther away carries shaped bones, attacks Tolteca and Raven and ties their hands together with vines but nevertheless throws away the men's guns and even their knives.

Raven, having escaped, concludes that:

the apes are not intelligent and cannot be responsible for past violence against human beings on Gwydion;

inbreeding of a mutation may have increased intelligence in the flock that attacked him and Tolteca;

but even that flock lacks the means or persistence to break into houses, which has been done in the past.

But why do the Gwydiona resent Raven's attempts to solve this mystery?

Utopias And Exile

Alien intervention utopianizes Earth in:

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

The Galactic Milieu Trilogy by Julian May

Miracleman by Alan Moore

Earth is utopianized by cosmic influence although not by alien intervention in:

In The Days Of The Comet by HG Wells

Brain Wave by Poul Anderson

Unaided human beings utopianize Earth in:

The World Set Free by HG Wells

The Shape Of Things To Come by HG Wells

In much American sf, a better future is sought not by improving Earth but by leaving it. A few people escape from the Solar System while a dictatorship is imposed on Earth in:

They Shall Have Stars by James Blish

The Draka History by SM Stirling

But the ultimate saga of human freedom on an interstellar scale has to Poul Anderson's Technic History, especially in its accounts of the early exploration and eventual colonization of Avalon.

Utopias and dystopias are valid fictional forms. Utopians should both describe a qualitatively different society and demonstrate its feasibility.