"The Galaxy In Your Hands"

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XII.

Nicki tells Trevelyan that the Nomads belong in the universe, adding:

"'Forget your damned science for a while. Reach out and take the Galaxy in your hands!'

"'A big Galaxy,' he murmured." (p. 105)

People set up false dichotomies. The Nomads could not have been out in the universe without science. Indeed, that our galaxy is not the entire universe but only a "grain of sand," to quote Brian Aldiss, was realized only in 1925. Now we take it for granted... 

Trevelyan taking the Galaxy in his hands reminds us of William Blake. See the attached image.

Now I have to eat and get to the Zen group.

Keep rereading Poul Anderson. 

Various POV's

 

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XI.

"[Trevelyan] noticed that weeping didn't disfigure [Ilaloa] as it does a human." (p. 99)

That is a good characteristic for a humanoid species.

Only a few lines later:

"Looking on the warmth of [Trevelyan's] face, Nicki wondered how much of it was acting." (ibid.)

POV switch: in the course of a single passage, the narrative point of view has switched from Trevelyan to Nicki. Shouldn't really happen - some of us think.

Over the page but still in the same narrative passage:

"The hypnotism didn't take long. Ilaloa went under fast. Sean winced at the violence of her re-enactment, but the peace that followed was worth it." (p. 100)

Are we being informed not that Trevelyan and/or Nicki noticed Sean's wince but that he felt it and then thought that the peace was worth it? If the latter, then the POV has shifted again, this time to Sean.

Meanwhile, Ilaloa is misleading her companions. She pretends to have heard an alien thought in order to direct them towards a particular region of space where her people wait. 

Before the hypnosis, Ilaloa tells Trevelyan that she has no words to describe how a received thought felt if he has never felt them. Why not? We all directly experience our own thoughts  so, if we suddenly detected someone else's, then we ought to be able to say something about it. Indeed, Trevelyan makes an attempt. He makes four points:

"'It comes all at once...'" (p. 99);

there is "A main thread..." (ibid.);

there are also what he calls sidelines, overtones, hints, whispers and glimpses;

"'...it's always changing.'" (ibid.)

Does that sound like thought? Ilaloa accepts the description. But she then describes a thought of some fictional species other than her own. The Nomads and their Coordinator ally are being misled.

Organizations In Three Timelines

Poul Anderson's major series feature organizations with different but mostly worthwhile purposes.

The Technic History

The Polesotechnic League cartelizes, becoming a shadow of its former self.

The Commonalty: we see this interstellar service organization only at its height.

The Psychotechnic History

The Psychotechnic Institute goes bad and is suppressed.

The Order of Planetary Engineers.

The Stellar Union Coordination Service.

The Time Patrol series

The Time Patrol preserves our history, both good and bad, but is this a good or a bad thing to do?

Theory And Fact, Theory And Practice

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XI.

Nomad Nicki says that Solarians smugly try to run the universe according to equations and a theory.

Coordinator Trevelyan Micah replies:

"'Any culture is based on a theory... Ours simply happens to be explicitly formulated.'" (p. 96)

Explicitly formulated, maybe. Predictive, no. Early psychotechnicians made predictions but we have seen that the later Coordinators are always behind with their information. 

The word, "theory," is much abused. Call evolution a theory and some say, "It is only a theory so it is not proved." For this reason, Richard Dawkins started calling evolution a "fact" but it is not a single datum which is one meaning of "fact." Theories explain facts but surely evolution is an overwhelmingly substantiated explanation of adaptation? If anyone can substantiate an alternative theory, then that will be well and good but let's hear it. 

Once Sheila referred to the "theory" of something and a friend responded, "So it is only theory, not fact?" She meant theory as opposed to practice, not theory as opposed to fact. That latter meaning, taken in isolation, is an extremely impoverished understanding of "theory." Theories are tools, not mere hypotheses. Theory guides practice. Practice tests theory.

Decades ago, a guy on a bus identified me as a student and opinionated, "We want practical, not theoretical!" We have to choose not between theory and practice but between better and worse theories. In James Blish's sf:

Newton

Einstein

Haertel

If a theory is disproved, then we have to seek a better one, not say, "So much the worse for theory!"

Sensations In Kaukasu

The Peregrine, CHAPTER IX.

Chill morning mist.

Gleaming wet flagstones.

Mountainous towers.

Shrill clamoring voices.

Thumping hoofs.

Groaning wheels.

Clashing iron.

Smells, unspecified.

Narrow, cobbled, twisting, labyrinthine streets.

Slippery muck.

High, peak-roofed, crazily leaning houses.

Heavy brass doors.

Narrow slit windows.

Overhanging balconies.

Flimsy wooden booths of pottery, clothing, tools, weapons, rugs, food and wine.

Minareted temples.

Blood-smeared gods.

Swirling crowd.

Braying trumpet.

Galloping guardsmen.

Sheeting mud.

Trampled child.

Chained slaves.

Bleeding feet.

Market square.

Hanged bodies.

Happy harpist.

Blind alleys.

The human rulers of this planet have turned into a blind alley.

Worrying

The Peregrine, CHAPTER X.

We can reflect on any sentence.

Peregrine Thorkild Sean thinks:

"I worry too much, and it gets me nowhere." (p. 86)

At work, when change and redundancies were threatened, we received a day of pep talks. A trainer, counsellor or whatever he was claimed that the vast majority of things that we worry about do not happen and the ones that do happen would have happened anyway. That helped.

"What's the use of worrying?

"It never was worthwhile..."

A Larry Niven character in Known Space thinks, "I've got to get over this some time. Why not now?"

Meditation does not prevent worrying but does help. 

That is the sum total of my reflection on worrying at present. Almost any sentence can prompt a moment of reflection.

On Erulan

The Peregrine, CHAPTER IX.

The sprawling, chaotic city of Kaukasu, with high roofs and bulbous towers, is surrounded by fields, great forests, white mountains and purple sky. The central castle is on a terraced hill, each terrace heavily walled in ancient stone. Natives throng. Air is cold.

In the castle, vaulted halls lead to a monstrous audience chamber, its roof dusky with height, its narrow windows throwing bloody light onto thick rugs, gold, jewels, banners and tapestries. Guards line walls. Slaves prostrate. The Arkulan and his nobles are enthroned. Trumpets blow. Kettledrums thunder.  

The human conquerors, former Nomads, have gained a world and lost their souls.

See earlier posts On Erulan.

Technic History Summaries

 

Methuselah's Children is Volume IV of Robert Heinlein's Future History.

Mirkheim is Volume IV of Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League Tetralogy.

These two novels play comparable roles in their respective series. Both pull together numerous plot threads and also indicate some of what is yet to come.

See:

blog search result for Road Cities

In Mirkheim

After surveying seven or so future histories, we return to Anderson's Technic History as the best of its kind although some future history series are so dissimilar that "comparisons are odious."

We have found two ways to summarize (most of) the contents of the Technic History. The first summary has been used several times but (maybe) bears repetition; the second only once so far. Both revolve around the central role of the omnibus collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

The First Summary

The Earth Book:

is the fifth Polesotechnic League volume and the second Ythrian volume;

completes the story of the Polesotechnic League and almost completes the story of human-Ythrian interactions;

refers to the Terran Empire but not to Dominic Flandry because that major character has not been born yet;

is followed by the nine-volume Flandry period and its single-volume sequel.

The Second Summary

The People Of The Wind, the Earth Book and The Day Of Their Return comprise an Ythrian Trilogy which is:

preceded by the Polesotechnic Tetralogy;

interrupted by the Young Flandry Trilogy;

succeeded by the Captain Flandry and Flandry's Legacy Trilogies. 

It is kind of surprising that a series so large and apparently unwieldy is susceptible to such succinct summaries.

Hyperspace And Telepathy

The Peregrine, CHAPTER VIII.

Withdrawing from comparisons between multiple future history series, we appreciate specific details in a single future history instalment although here again we can find some comparisons. When the Nomad spaceship, the Peregrine, departs from a planetary system, the ship cannot enter hyperspace until the gravitational field is sufficiently weak. That is fairly standard and certainly applies to the different kind of hyperspace in Poul Anderson's later Technic History. In the Peregrine, human bodies experience:

"The indescribable twisting sensation of hyperdrive fields building up..." (p. 57)

I have read that or something like it elsewhere although maybe not in the Technic History?

In the Peregrine, a telepath senses cerebral emissions but cannot interpret characteristic individual patterns and this corresponds exactly to how telepathy operates in the Technic History - excepting only Aycharaych, the universal telepath. Characters in different series cannot know how close they are to each other. Sundered by their alternative histories, they are nevertheless united in their creator's and readers' imaginations.

1930

One advantage of blogging is that, if we forget to include a quote in a particular post, then we can include it in a later one. Yesterday, in a completely different context, I had read a passage that I had thought was highly relevant both to the twentieth century (in which it was written) and to future histories (written in that century). However, the context was so different that I had forgotten the passage when I wrote:

1930, 1950, 1990, 2000

In Italy in 1930, Antonio Gramsci wrote in one of his Prison Notebooks:

"The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born - now is the time of monsters..."

1930 was also the year of publication of Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men. (See the first link above.)

We remember Poul Anderson's "New centuries scream in birth."

Future histories do not have villains as such. However, we remember political "monsters" in Poul Anderson's "Un-Man" and "The Sensitive Man" and in the real twentieth century! (Anderson's Technic History incorporated his Captain Flandry series in which the Merseians appeared as well-written although stereotypical green-skinned space opera villains but Anderson later transformed them into a more well-rounded and plausible alien species.)

In "1930, 1950, 1990, 2000," we mentioned that Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history chronology starts with Neil Armstrong in 1969 and that the CoDominium is formed in 1990. It follows from these data alone that, when this chronology was written, 1969 was past and 1990 was future. Future histories reflect their times.