Recurrent Issues II

"'...why not give the Commoners a break? Why should they spend their lives down on low-level?'"

- Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 152.

A very good question but what do we think of the answer given?

"'My dear romantic friend, what else can they do? Do you think they're fit to share administrative responsibilities? The average IQ of the Commons is about 90, the average for the Ministerial class is closer to 150...by automating all operations, it would be possible for every man in the Solar System to quit work: all his needs would be supplied free. But what, then, is your IQ-90 Commoner going to do with himself? Play chess and write epic poems?'" (ibid.)

Two issues: IQ and abundance.

IQ: I question whether any civilization could ever become so stratified and polarized that aristocrats were that much more intelligent than commoners. Both classes remain members of a single genetically diverse species (although Wells imagined two social classes becoming different biological species: Morlocks and Eloi.) Surely such a discrepancy would mean that what the IQ questionnaires were testing for was a set of skills that were socially learned in one class and not in the other: a difference between social cultures, not in average individual intelligence? We are told that the Commoners receive a minimal education, including hypnotic indoctrination. Thus, they are prevented from realizing any inherent intelligence or creativity that they might have had.

Abundance: Surely an economy of work, trade and free enterprise would not be maintained as a sort of game if it had become unnecessary? Economics is driven by necessity and competitive pressure, not by a belief that, without it, people would have nothing to do! Some low-IQ Commoners would play chess and write poetry, even if not epic. Others would play football and watch dramatized epics. But, within a generation, a comprehensive education newly open to all would create a population with a completely different outlook.

Some would not adjust but others would. Humanity changes its environment and adapts.

"'Even as things are, there isn't enough work to go around for the Ministers. That's why you see so many wastrels and so much politicking among them.'" (ibid.)

So even the high-IQ Ministers need an alternative. At least some members of that class would seek common cause with able Commoners to propose a different form of social organization and a different use of technology. Of course, we are to understand that the Technon has stabilized society for two millennia and that to overthrow it now would be to invite regression, not progress.

"'As for politics, our civilization today may be ossified, but it is at least stable, and the majority are content that it remain so. For the ordinary man, instability - change - means dislocation, war, uncertainty, misery, and death.'" (pp. 152-153)

The ordinary man thinks that if that is what he has been taught. But, if, as we are told, there is potential production of abundance, then there is no longer any reason why instability and change should mean war and misery - in fact the contrary.

"'Ruthless use of strength is the law of nature.'" (p. 65)

This sounds like 1984: "The purpose of power is power."

There would be no need to use strength if all needs were supplied free, any more than we currently fight for the air we breathe - but might if we were in a space station with only one oxygen cylinder left.

Recurrent Issues

Despite a recent post entitled "The Long Way Home: Conclusion," I find that I am still responding to this very rich novel by Poul Anderson. Having reread the novel to its conclusion, I understand why correspondent Sean Brooks regards it as an early approach to issues later addressed in Anderson's Harvest Of Stars.

One passage is similar to Isaac Asimov's The Caves Of Steel. The city Lora is "...a single integrated unit..." (The Long Way Home, St Albans, Herts, 1975, p. 61), all buildings connected and lower levels roofed over. Two thousand feet below the high towers and moving bridgeways of the Ministerial level, Commoners inhabit sunless, skyless metal corridors lacking slideways.

(Differences from The Caves Of Steel: all inhabitants of Asimov's Cities live entirely enclosed from birth to death, travel on moving "strips" and would experience agoraphobia if transported to the open countryside of robotic farms.)

Anderson conveys the confusion of an Asian city in Lora's lower levels:

air is fresh but pumping sounds are constant;
naked children run through the crowd;
booths sell cheap pottery and jewelry;
a porter carries machine parts;
two men play dice in the middle of the traffic;
there is a tavern and a sprawling drunk;
members of rival, uniformed guilds fight with their fists;
a streetwalker approaches a laborer;
a Ganymedean merchant talks to a local buyer;
servants clear a way for a rich man riding a small vehicle;
an apprentice carries a tool box behind his master;
a masked, knife-bearing assassins' guild member (!) passes;
a vendor pushing a food cart cries his wares.

But why must the Commoners spend their lives here? That question is discussed later in the novel.

"Wildlessly"?

"It was like a dream, he was carried wildlessly along between phantoms in black..."

- Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 69.

I have commented several times on the need for a dictionary when reading Poul Anderson. Because of Anderson's rich and extensive vocabulary, I cannot be sure whether a word like "...wildlessly..." is a misprint - but, if so, for what? - or is just another unusual word.

I cannot find it in Chamber Dictionary. Googling has produced some instances of its use, including someone else querying whether it is a word, so I am not much wiser.

After further time with Chambers Dictionary: Alright, I have got it. "Wild" is an obsolete form of "wield". "Wieldless" means "unmanageable". Therefore, "wildlessly" could mean "unmanageably".

The Long Way Home: Conclusion

(A new record for page views yesterday: 339.)

In Poul Anderson's The  Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975):

(i) That phrase, "...a wilderness of stars...," again, on p. 184.

(ii) We do not, after all, see the Technon, the ruling computer, but are definitely told that it is not conscious. It is a super-computer, not a duplicated mind. (p. 157)

(iii) Secretiveness facilitates subversion: the Technon runs the supposedly independent Commercial Society and the Centaurian Jovoids have gained partial control of the Technon!

(iv) In Alan Moore's Watchmen, a faked alien threat unites mankind; in this Anderson novel, a proved alien threat unites mankind.

(v) The superdrive crosses n light-years in n years of objective time but zero subjective time so it is a bit like FTL and a bit like time dilation. In the last sentence, the characters make one interstellar jump and plan more. They do not intend to return to the Solar System but, if they did, then thousands more years would have passed and they would hardly return to the same political situation.

(vi) Telepathy is well explained as sensitivity to nervous impulses. A telepath reads subvocalizations, suppressed motor impulses from brain to throat, and can therefore be foxed by another language.

Infinite Possibilities

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), set five thousand years in the future, a historian says:

"'...man in the known universe has exhausted the possibilities of his own culture. You wouldn't expect them to be infinite, after all. There are only so many shapes into which you can carve a block of marble; once the sculptors have made the best ones, their successors face a choice between dull imitation and puerile experiment. The same applies to all the arts, the sciences, and the permutations of human relationships.'" (p. 152)

Anderson did not believe that but was showing us a static, decadent civilization. I would say the exact opposite of this historian. The contemporary culture has limited possibilities but humanity has not. The number of shapes into which a block of marble can be carved is, if not infinite, then far greater than we will ever know. Some are considered the "best" in a particular culture but this shows the limitations of that culture. The same applies to all art, science and human relationships? Of course not! Does he advocate mass suicide?

The number of words in any language is finite, although there are always new coinages, but each of us every day utters new sentences that have never been spoken before and will never be spoken again so that every conversation is creative. We do not notice this because we look beyond everyday conversation to new texts expressing both knowledge and fiction.

As always, Anderson applies historical knowledge to future scenarios. Norwegian outcasts colonized Iceland, founded a republic, wrote fine literature and tried to colonize both Greenland and North America. Religious dissidents, deported criminals, impoverished immigrants and a few liberals founded the United States. So, in the fictitious future of this novel, what might be expected from the lost interstellar colonies?

Literary Links

Ian Fleming:

wrote some scripts for a proposed TV series to be set in Jamaica, then adapted the scripts as the novel, Dr No;

wrote three scripts for a proposed James Bond TV series, then adapted these scripts as short stories;

co-wrote a treatment for an original James Bond film, Thunderball, then novelized the treatment;

created, we are told, the flamboyant name of the central character of a TV series in which an international intelligence organization, the United Network Command for Law Enforcement, resists attempts at world domination by an evil organization combining features of Bond's SMERSH and SPECTRE.

The evil organization of the U.N.C.L.E. TV series either made use of or was controlled by (accounts differ) an "Ultimate Computer." (This phrase re-occurred as the title of a Star Trek episode.)

One of the original U.N.C.L.E. novels reveals that:

the villainous organization had been founded at a meeting in a late nineteenth century London hotel by the successors of a criminal mastermind called "the Professor";

the organization's familiar name was originally an acronym for a cumbersome phrase beginning "The Technological Hierarchy..."

This gives us one definite and another possible link to the works of Poul Anderson. The definite link is Holmesianism: creative references to Sherlock Holmes in other works of fiction. Anderson refers directly or indirectly to Holmes many times. For example, when a Time Patrolman mentions "Altamont," this refers to Holmes just as "the Professor" in the U.N.C.L.E. novel refers to Moriarty.

The other possible link is that, in Anderson's The Long Way Home, the Solar System is a "Technate" run by a computer, the Technon. However, the only connection here is the old idea of a computer running things. Although there are, genetically created, slaves in the Technate, there are also free Commoners whereas the Hierarchy would have enslaved the entire world population although, arguably, this would have made it difficult to maintain an advanced technology.

A world dictatorship without any external competitor would be a horrific despotism, which is perhaps what is described in 1984, where the three States only pretend to be at war. In fact, a member of the Hierarchy shows the U.N.C.L.E. Director that crucial line in 1984, "The object of power is power."

Anderson, like every comprehensive sf writer, shows us some future dictatorships as warnings, futures we don't want.

Who Is It?

A powerful idea in popular fiction is the clandestine organization run by a mysterious masked or anonymous figure whose face and identity may or may not be revealed in the concluding episode of a series. (There are a couple of good guys whose faces we never see: the Lone Ranger and Judge Dredd - except when the latter was played by Sylvester Stallone.)

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975):

the Terrestrial Technate is, we are told, run by a computer, the Technon, which is not seen until maybe near the end of the novel;

the human colonials of the League of Alpha Centauri are secretly controlled by the concealed inhabitants of a Jovoid planet in one of the Centaurian planetary systems;

the interstellar traders of the Commercial Society are controlled at a distance by concealed bureaucrats whom they never see - recruits into the bureaucracy simply disappear.

Anderson is (almost) overdoing the idea of the mysterious, secretive leadership. We are free to speculate, for example, whether the Technon really controls the Society and whether it has any covert dealings with the real rulers of Alpha Centauri but the only way to find out is to continue reading.

A And A

Isaac Asimov, Foundation: psychohistory.
Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home: the paramethematical theory of man.

Two mathematically based, predictive, practical sciences of society but how different!

When discussing the Foundation series, I merely commented on inconsistencies between Asimov's texts whereas, when discussing Anderson's novel, I found it necessary to summarize an understanding of economics, then Anderson's account of "Technate" civilization, then to compare them. Thus, the Anderson novel, despite its fantastic setting - galactic, like Asimov's - addresses current society, economic slumps and whether they can be prevented, whereas Asimov's series, I think, is divorced from reality.

Yet again, I find it possible to highlight what Anderson does well by contrasting him with Asimov.

Two Levels

Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975), like most of Anderson's works, is written on two levels. It can be read straight through very quickly as an action-adventure novel. For example, several times, the hero is attacked or kidnapped by blaster-wielding spacemen.

However, between action scenes, the characters take time to discuss the most fundamental questions about life and society. These passages warrant careful rereading. For example, having returned to Earth after five thousands years, the astronaut Langley notices improvements in medical technology, reflects on earlier improvements made by agriculture and machines and wonders whether:

"'...given a few more millennia, man will do something about himself, change his own mind from animal to human.'" (p. 124)

Another spacefarer, Valti, born more than six hundred years previously, cites inherent limits on progress:

mass-energy will never be created;
heat will never be made to flow from a colder to a warmer body;
the bigger a building, the more of its volume is passages;
even if biochemistry allowed immortality, memory capacity is limited;
thus, no civilization can be either immortal or universal.

Langley asks:

"'So there'll always be rise, and decay, and fall - always war and suffering?'" (p. 124)

Rise and fall, yes, but I do not see why war and suffering should continue indefinitely. Valti replies that the only alternative is "'...death disguised by a mechanical semblance of life.'" (ibid.) I do not see that this is necessary either but it is good to have these issues discussed here. And Valti goes on to remark:

"'...if you had traveled across light-years all your days, you'd know that there is something operating which can't be reduced to physical theory.'" (p. 125)

So we read on, hoping to learn more about this.

World Con

www.loncon3.org

I do not usually attend sf cons but there is a World Con in London next year so will any readers of this blog be there?




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