Strangers

One of Poul Anderson's collections is Strangers From Earth. One of Robert Silverberg's anthologies is Earthmen And Strangers. Silverberg argues that sf stories about human beings meeting aliens are really about the human need to cope with meeting strangers.

The nine stories in Earthmen And Strangers include "Life Cycle" by Poul Anderson and "Out of the Sun" by Arthur C Clarke. Both of these stories are set in the twilight zone of a Mercury still believed to turn only one side towards the Sun but also to librate, thus causing a local sunrise and sunset. Anderson's characters encounter Mercurian life whereas Clarke's encounter Solar life. Anderson's Terrestrial characters are accompanied by a feathered, owl-faced Martian who sounds familiar from other Anderson works.

Anderson devises an ingenious life cycle in which hive-minded Mercurian females inhabit the Twilight Zone but must risk the dangerous heat of Dayside in order to be fertilized, as they believe, by their gods. Since females past the age of fertility return to Dayside to die, it does not take long for the Earthmen to deduce that the females apparently going to their deaths are in fact going to be transformed by the heat into the males of their species.

There is an eerie moment when the Earthmen, disguised as females, having entered the Dayside temple, see the gods approach:

"...tall lizardlike forms, in burnished coppery scales, wreathed in silvery vapor - they glowed, walking dragons, but they did not burn. They advanced...Their beaks gaped..."
- Poul Anderson, "Life Cycle" in Robert Silverberg, Ed., Earthmen And Strangers (New York, 1966), pp. 91-116 AT p. 111.

Having visited Greystoke and Hadrian's wall yesterday, today we visited the Lake District town of Keswick where I bought Earthmen And Strangers as a second hand paperback in a charity shop.

STL Interstellar War?

"...there can be no question of war fought over interstellar distances."
- Poul Anderson, Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), p. 188.

Why not? Anderson's Technic Civilization History presents several excellent descriptions of battles between interstellar space fleets. ("Standby for hyperdrive! Standby for combat! Glory to the Emperor!")

The answer to "Why not?" is that in the concluding chapter of Is There Life On Other Worlds?, Anderson considers only Einsteinian spacecraft - either reaction drive or field drive, as explained in the Appendix which unfortunately includes equations. These are essential to this subject matter but also beyond my comprehension.

However, Larry Niven makes a start on describing slower than light interstellar warfare in Protector. The basic requirement is technologically powerful beings with indefinitely prolonged lifespans and mutually incompatible long term goals. Thus, protectors live until killed by acccident or violence and plan long term for the survival of their bloodlines but operate in a pre-hyperdrive, Bussard ramjets only period of Niven's future history.

Knowing that humanity is descended from Pak, human protectors can predict that more Pak protectors will come from galactic centre. The human protectors use telescopes not to study natural phenomena but to detect artificial radiation. When two spacecraft become mutually detectable at a distance, each must assume that the other is hostile and change course accordingly. In human space, more breeders must be transformed into protectors so that a fleet can be launched to intercept the approaching Pak. Such a conflict will last for millennia at least and unfortunately Niven has not described it for us yet. Protector ends with the human protectors setting out.

Another good fictional use of the ramjet idea would be to describe two round trips on the trade circuit. Thus, a ship leaves Earth, visits say four planets, returns to Earth, then repeats the procedure so that we see two stages of social change on four colony planets and three stages on Earth. Trade can be STL (see Anderson's Kith) and maybe war can also.  

An Ultimate Destiny?

The title of Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), means both, "Are there thinking beings with whom we might communicate?" and "Are there ecologies that we might colonize?"

These questions necessitate discussion of radio wavelengths, language, planetary formation, biology, means of propulsion and colonial societies. Anderson ends with an sf vision of extra-Solar colonies not "...plundering..." but "...mak[ing] sensible use of their resources..." (p. 187), founding further colonies and eventually meeting "The older and higher races..." (p. 189).

"...we will go on, century after outward-looking century, discovering who knows what, growing in knowledge and wisdom as we travel." (ibid.)

This stretches the meaning of the word "we" a bit. Probably, most people most of the time will be more aware of their familiar, taken for granted, environments than of any centuries-long growth in knowledge and wisdom. However, Anderson acknowledges this:

"Few people will ever go spaceward with more than the vaguest thought of an ultimate destiny. They will go because they are curious, prideful, desirous of freedom, eager to improve the lot of the next generation." (p. 189)

Maybe. But conditions will have to have got pretty bad at home if people come to hope for freedom and betterment light years away. And maybe something can be done to improve those conditions instead of leaving them behind?

Anderson concludes that, even for those who stay behind, "...our enterprise beyond the sky will keep alive that sense of bravery, wonder, and achievement without which man would hardly be himself." (ibid.)

Such an enterprise will help to do that but meanwhile and, I think, indefinitely there are also bravery, wonder and achievement on Earth and in the Solar System.

A Certain Hunger?

"Already today, when man has not yet set foot on the Moon, we look at the stars with a certain hunger. It is bound to grow once the Solar System has become familiar to us. Can it ever be appeased?"
- Poul Anderson, Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), p. 165.

Do we? How many people on Earth want either to cross interstellar distances or to be alive when others do? Many struggle for existence on Earth. Others hope for a fulfilled life here. For those who are interested in the exploration of the Solar System, it will be a very long time before it becomes familiar. Anderson wrote this book at a time when the US was racing to the Moon, although, as he says in Thermonuclear Warfare, this was more for the development of rocket and computer technology than for interplanetary exploration. But interplanetary exploration was part of the popular image of why they were doing it.

At the end of the preceding chapter, Anderson presents this rationale for interstellar travel:

"Machine civilization, irresistably powerful, spreads across Earth and devours all others...We see before us the specter of a planet-wide empire...as rigid as Pharaonic Egypt...the individual may have numerous liberties. But if there is nothing he can do with it, his freedom is empty. Already today we feel the first gnawings of that millennial hollowness. Yet we move on toward the empire, for our alternative is to renounce the machine.

"The newness that is our salvation may come from the stars." (p. 164)

Nothing he can do with it? We can life live to the full on Earth with some exploration of the Solar System even if the first interstellar travel is a long way in the future. Instead of renouncing technology, we can use it to make this world fitter for humanity.

I am for the exploration of the universe but do not see the interstellar question in such apocalyptic terms.

Connections With Fiction III

In Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963):

The Star Fox and Fire Time

(vii) A spaceship isolated from the inertia-generating cosmic gravitational field might accelerate indefinitely (p. 166).

This is the kind of hyperdrive used in what I call Anderson's Star Time diptych.

(viii) "...I suspect that [future Terrestrial society] will be poor, with great wealth reserved for the very few..." (p. 185)

This is the kind of global economy that Anderson envisages in Star Time and in some other futuristic sf works but why? Surely technology opens the possibilty of abundant wealth for all - as Anderson also acknowledges.

Miscellaneous

(ix) "I...imagine the long-run consequence of a hyper-drive as not one galactic civilization but widely scattered clusters of civilizations." (p. 168)

This is the brilliant setting of Anderson's After Doomsday and it is a pity that he did not write an entire series about it. At the end of that novel, dispossessed human beings have changed the balance of power in two neighbouring civilization clusters without, of course, affecting the rest of the galaxy in the slightest.

(x) Anderson hopes that human beings will never colonize an inhabited planet and exterminate its inhabitants (p. 177) but they do in his "Terminal Quest". He does not always present positive outcomes.

(xi) Anderson thinks that it is unlikely that rational species will differ greatly in intelligence (p. 139). However, in one of his short stories, human beings are more intelligent than the galactic average and, in another, they encounter a far more intelligent race.

(xii) Exogenesis (p. 184) is used for extra-Solar colonization in Orbit Unlimited and in Virgin Planet.

(xiii) "...the government itself might want to get rid of...misfits [to extra-Solar colonies]..." (p. 185)

This happens in Orbit Unlimited and in The Boat Of a Million Years.

(xiv) An Elder (older, wiser) Race (p. 135) is sought in the Technic History, is located at the galactic centre in For Love And Glory and is encountered in The Avatar. Humanity might become the Elder Race of a new universe in Tau Zero.

Connections With Fiction II

In Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Worlds? (New York, 1963):

The Technic Civilization History

(i) "It may be possible to make a very large number of small quantum jumps per second." (p. 166)
This is the kind of "hyperspace" used in the Technic History, thus it is not a fourth spatial dimension.

(ii) "[Interstellar] Commerce will deal mostly in luxuries and curiosa." (p. 168)
Hence, Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company.

(iii) "...hydrogen and oxygen breathers can have little to trade with each other and perhaps little to say to each other once some scientific questions have been answered." (p. 168)
Thus, the Dispersal of Ymir (hydrogen breathers, colonizing Jovoid planets) occupies the same space as the Terran Empire and the Merseian Rhoidunate (oxygen breathers, colonizing terrestroid planets).

(iv) "Joint colonization is not unthinkable, and could lead to some extraordinarily interesting societies." (p. 188)
This one sentence makes me want to reread the two short stories and one novel set on the joint human-Ythrian colony planet Avalon. Anderson systematically presents colonization of the islands, colonization of the continent and resistance to Terran imperialism.

Tau Zero

(v) "Alternatively, the gas of space might be scooped up and used as fuel and ram jet reaction mass.This would permit...velocities very close indeed to c." (p. 198)
This is the Bussard ram jet, used in Tau Zero and in some other works of sf. In Tau Zero, the spaceship approaches c with spectacular results. Unfortunately, Anderson adds, "...I am not sure that it is really feasible." (ibid.)

(vi) "Interstellar navigation will be difficult." (p. 199)
Anderson mentions the Doppler effect, aberration and imprecise location of destination. In Tau Zero, the ship at near light speed must navigate in the dark between clusters of galaxies. New sciences must effectively be created for this purpose.

(To be continued.)

A Week Away II

See A Week Away.

Today I visited two places of literary interest. First, the village of Greystoke where I saw the entrance to Greystoke Castle and Park which, unfortunately, are not open to the public because the Castle is a private residence. Not being a great Tarzan fan, I did not enquire any further.

Secondly, the northwestern-most point of the Roman Empire where there is a low remnant of Hadrian's Wall and merely the excavated foundations of one of the sixteen forts that guarded the Wall. Although without the text of The King Of Ys to consult, I nevertheless think that this might have been the fort where Gratillonius, the Romano-British Centurion who became the last King of Ys, was based?

The Normans took stones from the Wall to build castles and churches. In fact, the building now housing the Visitors' Centre, was constructed in this way in the nineteenth century whereas now, of course, the little that is left of the Wall is preserved. Such is our history.

Interstellar Communication

On p. 161 of Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Poul Anderson cites the example of interstellar communication that I had cited here from Carl Sagan's Contact:

.    -  .  ._  ..
..   -  .. ._  ....
...  -  .. ._  .....

It should be obvious from the above that - means "plus" and that ._ means "equals".

Anderson continues:

.        1
..       2
...      3
....     4
.....    5
......   6
.......  7
........ 8

Even to anyone unfamiliar with Arabic numerals, it should be obvious that the symbols in the right hand column are the names of the numbers.

11 - 8 HO

Is it also obvious that:

11 means "two atoms of the first element (hydrogen)";
8  means "one atom of the eighth element (oxygen)";
-  means again "plus" or "added to";
HO means "one molecule of the compound (water)?

I find that third example less obvious but I am not a scientist interpreting a radio message from scientists in another planetary system.  

The Small Population Of An Extra-Solar Colony

Merely from the fact that an extra-Solar colony will have a very small population, Poul Anderson, in Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), is able to deduce several features of its society. In order to prevent genetic drift, there might be:

(i) teen-age marriage as the norm;
(ii) high social status for mothers of many children;
(iii) a family-centred culture;
(iv) strict exogamy, e. g., marriage of cousins forbidden;
(v) sexual permissiveness;
(vi) no stigma on illegitimacy;
(vii) encouragement of married women to have children with different men;
(viii) large clans instead of small families;
(ix) artificial insemination;
(x) exogenesis;
(xi) a legal requirement for each family or clan to adopt one exogene;
(xii) genetic manipulation.

Coupling (ii) with "...the desirabilty of independent pioneering outside the original settlement...", Anderson thinks that the family-centred culture (iii) might also be "...patriarchal..." (p. 184). Sexual permissiveness (v) is presented as an alternative to the patriarchal (iii). However, different approaches might be tried in various settlements or alternatively a colonial society might combine features that would have seemed incompatible to the Terrestrial ancestors.

A Week Away

From today, Saturday 16 November, until Saturday 23 November, I am away from home with my lap top but without immediate access to the internet. I have brought only one Poul Anderson book, Is There Life On Other Worlds?, which I have nearly finished reading although there is more to be posted about it.

The objects of the trip are to visit places of interest, possibly to include Hadrian's Wall, the opening setting of The King Of Ys, and also to catch up with Latin reading. There will therefore be fewer posts for a while.

When I do post next, it will be to discuss:

Anderson's ideas about radio communication with extra-Solar civilizations;
his suggestions about interstellar travel;
further connections between Is There Life...? and Anderson's sf.

Critical discussion of Anderson's various fiction and non-fiction works entails serious discussions of politics, economics, philosophy, logic, astrobiology, mythology and history, to name only the first seven disciplines that come to mind. I will be interested if any blog reader can suggest another writer of fantasy or sf who has such a wide range of interests and knowledge?