One Theme In Three Works

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, post-organic intelligences becomes dominant in the Solar System and cease to look outward whereas organic human beings continue to strive and thrive elsewhere. In Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, several technological civilizations become postbiotic, absorbing their creators into their systems, as in Anderson's Genesis. At the end of Boat, the starfaring Alloi accompany the Survivors to the planet Phaecia in order to establish a colony that will maintain both organic intelligence and interstellar exploration. A questionable dichotomy is set up: postbiotics invariably cease to look outward? In Genesis, they continue to spread through this galaxy and beyond. Boat, like Harvest... and Genesis ends by addressing the relationship between organic and post-organic intelligences. All three works involve slower than light interstellar travel. Boat has several other organic intelligent species. Its premise of immortals is implausible.

Travelling Far

Today heavy winds have disrupted Britain. I have stayed at home and blogged. In the previous post, we saw that, at the turn of a page, Poul Anderson had created an entirely new situation for the Survivors who are now interacting with two other intelligent species and have started a new generation on an extra-solar planet. 

We have travelled as far as possible from Chapter I set in 310 B.C., passing Cardinal Richelieu in 1640 at about the mid-point, and the adventure continues as a Star Trek film poster said. It might be argued that Richelieu and extra-solar aliens do not belong in the same novel. At least there is no direct connection between them. But any interstellar explorers, such as the Survivors, must have had some history behind them. Everything is connected, even if not directly or obviously. Richelieu did not know what lay thousands of years in his future and neither do we.

On Xenogaia

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 30, pp. 564-573.

Hanno and Yukiko are studying with the Alloi in their orbiting mothership. The other six Survivors have built a town, Hestia, with three homes and additional buildings. Tu Shan farms, helped by Aliyat who also collates data from Wanderer's and Svoboda's explorations in the northern woodlands and who has made most progress in the language of the native Ithagene. Macandal, who has a three-year old son, Joseph, and is pregnant again, shares with Patulcius work to do with the community.  

Long Livers Learn

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 28.

"[Hanno] did not attempt to change their attitudes. He knew better; and he knew, as well, how to pass lifetime after mortal lifetime among strangers to his spirit." (p. 551)

I empathize with Hanno and can imagine learning such lessons over a very long time.

Poul Anderson: Hugh Valland and Hanno

Robert Heinlein: Lazarus Long (but only the Methuselah's Children version!)

James Blish: John Amalfi

Neil Gaiman: Hob Gadling

There are others, of course.

Long has reason to believe that he will never die.

Amalfi lives until the end of this universe which Blish brings unexpectedly close for fictional purposes.

Gadling has an agreement with personified Death so he is a fantasy character.

I might find a vaguely remembered passage in which Amalfi reflects on the consequences of longevity.

STL Or FTL

Poul Anderson's Major Fictional Futures With Slower Than Light (STL) Interstellar Travel

Tales Of The Flying Mountains

The Rustum History

Kith: short stories

Kith: Starfarers

The Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy

Genesis

Tao Zero

The Byworlder

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, Thule

FTL

The Psychotechnic History

The Technic History

The High Crusade

World Without Stars

After Doomsday

For Love And Glory

The Hoka series (with Gordon Dickson)

Extra-Galactic

Tao Zero (STL)

World Without Stars (FTL)

Future Histories

We know which ones they are by now!

Pytheas

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 12-13, pp. 498-501.

Pytheas leaves the Solar System.

"...the ship approached Jupiter..." (p. 498)

The ship crosses the orbit of Mars without necessarily passing close to the planet. However, she does approach Jupiter in order to swing around that planet and out of the ecliptic. 

Near Jupiter, Sol is:

"...scarcely more than the brightest among the stars." (ibid.)

Thus, Sol would not appear to be a sun. How would anyone out there know that they were in orbit around it? Saturn and Neptune are even further out.

Although we highlight descriptions of the Milky Way, Poul Anderson's views from space usually encompass:

innumerable stars;

the Milky Way;

nebulae;

the Magellanic Clouds;

at least one other galaxy.

This passage is no exception. The sister galaxy is said to beckon. Such galaxies are usually beyond reach but are visited in Anderson's World Without Stars and Tau Zero.

The Survivors mark the course change with a ceremony involving drum, dance and song. The physical universe and human consciousness interact. The song:

"...called to the spirits." (p. 500)

All eight Survivors know that the spirits are in their imaginations and aspirations. Any local nature spirits have been left behind! As a philosopher, I write "human consciousness" but could have written "human spirit."

(If a "spirit" is an invisible subject of consciousness, then the universe is conscious of itself through individual psychophysical organisms and is mostly invisible so it is the omnipresent spirit of the Upanishads. Thou art THAT.)

Robots leave the ship to deploy the ramscoop and fire chamber. Acceleration under torch drive generates enough speed for the scoop and the computer-controlled harvester fields to gather many hydrogen atoms. Laser beams separate electrons from nuclei. The fields sweep the plasma safely past the hull to the magnetohydrodynamic vortex of the fire chamber where mutual annihilation with a small amount of released anti-matter transforms particles into energy which starts fusion reactions which in turn power the fields to hurl plasma aft so that reaction drives Pytheas forward, restoring full Terrestrial weight to the crew. In less than a year, they will travel half a light-year and approach light speed. 

Frost-Road, River Of Frost

Nowadays, when rereading Poul Anderson and coming across a colourful description of the Milky Way, I usually pass it by on the assumption that I have noted it in an earlier post. We find:

"...a night crowded with unwinking brilliant stars, girded by the frost-road of the galaxy..."

-The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 28, p. 550.

Searching the blog for "frost-road" brought up The Milky Way which does quote a phrase from this novel but not this phrase. Furthermore, for the reference to the phrase that is quoted, "...like a river of frost and light...," I had linked to a post entitled "Pytheas" which the computer informs me does not exist! And searching the blog for a post with that title reveals that there is none. A while back, a couple of posts were deleted for a reason that came up at the time.

This time round, I started to reread The Boat Of A Million Years not from the beginning but at its long concluding section, XIX, Thule, because I wanted to treat Thule in and of itself like an independent interstellar novel comparable to Tao Zero or Starfarers. Now I think that, when I have read to the end of Thule, I will again reread I-XVIII with a view to reperceiving the eight continuing characters as they had been in historical periods while now knowing where they are destined to wander in a remote future. While rereading, we can look out for any descriptions of the galaxy although these are less likely pre-space flight. 

Indeed, now checking XIX, 12, where Pytheas leaves the Solar System, we find:

"The Milky Way coursed heaven like a river of frost and light." (p. 499)

Thus, that earlier quotation has been found easily enough. I will now edit "The Milky Way" to link to here.

Bema, Topheth And Betyl

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX.

After Aliyat's comforting vision of Christ in 24, comes a terrible advent of the gods in 26 although, beyond them:

"Clouds began to part. Distantly gleamed the twin pillars and pure lake before the home of El." (p. 547)

"El" is a Biblical name.

When Christ had left Aliyat:

"Young Barikai sprang down from the bema and raised her into his arms." (p. 533)

In Aliyat's simulation, human love follows divine love! Of course, I had to google "bema." The Survivors before the gods present another two words:

"A sunbeam smote the eight who stood on the topheth near the betyl..." (p. 547)

If you read the account of the sacrifice in 26 and also the Wikipedia article on "Tophet," then you will indeed understand the significance of "topheth." 

We imagine these gods and we tame them. They can become characters in novels.

The Buddha is a teacher of gods and men.

See Virtual Gods.

Mind

Can we even understand what others say about their inner experience?

Hanno:

"...disengaged his mind and let hours or days flow by, scarcely registering on him."

-The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 24, p. 540.

How did he "disengage his mind"? He did it "...when stimuli palled and thought flagged..." (ibid.) He has had a lot longer than us for stimuli to pall and thoughts to flag, thus also maybe enough time to learn to disengage.

A Quaker said meditate by switching your mind off and letting your soul take over. Can he do that? I can't.

A Zen lay practitioner said that, after we have practiced just sitting meditation for a while, thoughts stop arising during meditation. A Zen monk told me, "There will always be natural thought. But don't add to it." 

At least, if we practice, we have some understanding of what we are talking about. 

(I didn't know that Howard Fast had written about Zen.) 

Festivals

There are Birthdays of Mithras in The King Of Ys and Christmases in a Time Patrol story, a Technic History instalment and a chapter of A Boat Of A Million Years (XIX, 24). In real life, I have attended Christmas parties, of course, but also Solstice and Wesak (the Buddha's birthday). (In our group's calendar, Wesak is a week after May Day.) (Anderson's "Mayday Orbit.") My friend at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre is preparing a ceremony for Paranirvana (the Buddha's death). One Buddhist tradition celebrates his birth, enlightenment and death all one the same day. Sikhs celebrate the births and deaths of ten Gurus as well as Diwali inherited from Hindus. We all have our New Years. Where am I going with this? Festivals unite us. Human beings in different futures and different timelines celebrate the same or similar festivals as us.

The Boat Of A Million Years makes us wait for physical contact with the Others/Alloi. This is a book that has just about everything: fourteen historical periods; three decades of the twentieth century; the future Earth and Solar System; a long interstellar space journey; contact with another intelligent species. And its climax looks toward a further future.