A Little French

Of course, Alexander Jones, the hero of Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), having in a previous story been impressed into the British Navy, is now recruited, by a misunderstanding, into the French Foreign Legion. Most Hokas speak good English but, when appropriate, they can add a French accent or even a few words of the French language.

Jones, needing help to rescue his wife from the next planet sunward, begins, "My wife -," (p. 167) but breaks off when it occurs to him that he needs to be discrete about her current situation.

That single phrase, "My wife -," is enough for the civil governor of Sidi Bel Abbes. Getting Alex to confirm that he wants La Legion Etrangere, the governor rushes him to the commandant where my French is just enough for me to follow the comical dialogue on p. 168 -

Governor: La Femme -
Commandant: Non!
Governor: Mais oui!
Commandant: Avec un autre - un plus jeune-
Governor: On ne le dit pas; cependant...

I am not sure about "cependant" but, of course, the rest of it is -

G: The woman -
C: No!
G: But yes!
C: with another - a younger -
G: One doesn't say it...

So Alex must spend a few days under the brutish Sergeant LeBrute - Hokas are unaffected by kicks but not a human being - before he is able to desert in the company of a "typical" crew including a way over the top PC Wren-type Englishman called Cecil Fotheringay-Phipp Alewyn Smith. Since they "desert" in Alex's spaceship, they are at last en route to rescue his wife - but I will soon be en route for a Sunday afternoon drive with family to a local beauty spot so posting must cease for a while.

A Little History

In Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson's Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), the Hokas do not become entirely immersed in their roles because, for example, they can remember sharing out the roles and can criticize each others' dialects.

Jones has learned to negotiate with the Hokas by accepting the terms of whatever is their current role instead of by trying to override it. At the end of the pirates story, he prevents what might have become a bloodbath by, just out of sight of the Hokas, as if in a radio drama, enacting a sword fight between two of his own personae, the plenipotentiary and a pirate admiral. This is appropriate since the entire pirates scenario is a drama in any case.

I had enjoyed the Holmesian London and was none too pleased to be yanked away from it into a fantastic piratical milieu but it became possible to learn a little history from the latter. The Hokas' "pirates" are either fictional, like Long John Silver, or historical, like Henry Morgan and Anne Bonney. I had not heard of Bonney but google confirms her historicity and I wondered whether she was related to William Bonney of whom we knew through "Western" fiction in the fifties. (Addendum: Or is she Anne Bonny?)

In the concluding story, Jones must rescue his wife from the natives of the next planet. This need not have been a Hoka episode but, of course, the story stays on message as Jones rounds up Hoka mercenaries from the desert where Arabs and Legionnaires are to be found. (His job has previously involved ensuring that they are not killing each other.) The story's title, "The Tiddlywink Warriors," the significance of which as yet eludes me (I am still reading), had not clarified what kind of Hoka sub-culture would be highlighted.

The natives of the second planet, treating Mrs Jones, as she thinks, like a goddess, are force feeding her with native food which is making her FAT, which is why she urgently requests rescue over the subspace radio. Surely there is an obvious alternative possibility, that they are fattening her up as a sacrificial victim...

A Mosaic World

We have seen Wild West, Operatic, Space Opera, Victorian and Pirate Hokas each in their own story so it makes sense that Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's collection, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979) ends with a story showing diverse Hoka cultures coexisting and interacting:

the United States Cavalry and the Varangian Guard nearly fought as to which of them should provide an honor guard for a very important visitor but were overawed when King Arthur allied with the Black Watch;

the Secret Service escorts the very important visitor to the League Office which is guarded by a Samurai.

Thus already, we have briefly referred to six distinct sub-cultures. However, since this story is entitled "The Tiddlywink Warriors," I have yet to learn what its prevailing theme is to be.

So far also, we do not see any new marks of the passage of time. The Jones' offspring are still young enough to be referred to as "...the children..." (p. 161) and there is as yet no mention of a fourth. Alex has been married to Tanni long enough not to admit something to her but we are not told how long that is.

A convenient break from child care is provided by sending:

"...the children to the Hoka London to watch Parliament; he had hopes of government careers for them, and this was an unparalleled education in how not to conduct such business." (p. 161)

An excellent observation. Of course, Anderson and Dickson are merely treating their fictitious Hoka as objects of humor but many of my countrymen would make the same remark about the original London Parliament.

I do not think that the Jones' children will grow up and have children before the end of the third volume. Thus, I do not think that the Hoka series approaches future history status but, even if it did, I would qualify that classification. In Classical literature, an epic is a long heroic poem whereas a mock epic, like Metamorphoses, is epic in form though not in content. Since the Hoka series is not serious speculative fiction, to extend it to further generations would be to transform it only into a mock future history.

Addendum: OK, we do have a mark of the passage of time:

"Alex was hardened, after a dozen years on Toka." (p. 162)

Jones' Doubts

The audience for any fictional series becomes used to a set of continuing characters interacting against a common background. By the time we start to read the interlude between the concluding two stories in Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), we have become used to the idea that plenipotentiary Alexander Jones and his wife Tanni have represented the Interbeing League on the planet Toka for over ten years.

One way to generate drama in an installment of a series is to imply an imminent and fundamental change to some aspect of this familiar set-up - that the central character is about to resign or retire, for example. The interlude is a letter from Jones in which he says that he has not yet reached a definite decision about whether to resign but that, pending the result of an inspection, he "...shall very probably step aside..." (p. 157). This letter strikes a reflective note by contrast with the humor that is the main theme of the series - and it is appropriate that characters in a comedy are occasionally presented more seriously as when contemplating their future careers.

Jones doubts the value of the Cultural Development Service. He asks whether their work "...is only a subtler form of the old, discredited imperialism of Earth's brutal past?" (p. 156) As Anderson argues in other series, because each planet is economically self-sufficient, interstellar economic imperialism is both impossible and unnecessary. I think that this alone saves the CDS from rerunning British imperialism. There is nothing "brutal" about Jones' relationship with the Hokas.

But he goes on to expound his question differently:

"Have I merely been turning my wards into second-rate humans, instead of first-rate Hokas?" (ibid.)

This would be cultural imperialism. The question is complicated by the fact that a first-rate Hoka is precisely one who enacts an imported culture instead of developing his own. For this reason and no other, Jones has helped the Hokas, for example, to transform a Tokan island into "England" complete with London and rural shires.

Often, in a series, the drama of an episode is resolved as the fundamental change is prevented. In one episode of The Prisoner, the title character escapes and gets all the way back to London but winds up at the end of the episode back in the Village. Since there are two further Hoka volumes and since also I expect the narrative framework to remain much the same, I do not expect Jones to resign his post at the end of this first volume.

The Sound And The Furry

The mentally protean Hokas would make excellent galactic spies and infiltrators were it not for their embarrassing, and frankly unbelievable, shape but this, of course, is part of the comic absurdity of the series as when:

"Holmes himself dropped into an armchair so overstuffed that he almost disappeared from sight. The two humans found themselves confronting a short pair of legs beyond which a button nose twinkled and a pipe fumed."

- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), p. 101.

The button nose, like the elsewhere mentioned beady eyes, make it difficult to avoid the impression that the Hokas are not just small and bear-like but really are animated toy teddy bears.

Anderson and Dickson reasoning logically from their own premises have invented an original crime, if not an Original Sin: smuggling historical novels to Toka! As the series proceeds, it does address some of the potential practical problems implied by its own premises. For example:

"...imposed cultural patterns were always modified so as to exclude violence." (p. 126)

Jones, the plenipotentiary, has to control the input. Thus, Hokas are able to read about bloodthirsty pirates only when inappropriate material has been smuggled in to them but then two dozen ships turn pirate, head for the Spanish Main and can be expected, irresponsibly, to attack Bermuda, "[n]ot really realizing it'll mean bloodshed. They'll be awfully sorry later." (p. 127)

Not realizing? Sorry later? That does raise some questions about their supposed intelligence.

When I asked in an earlier post whether Caesar would accept assassination etc, there was one such question that could have been answered affirmatively: would Dick Turpin accept being hanged? Tanni thinks that the Hokas have turned violent when she reads that they have hanged Dick Turpin but they do it every week: Hokas cannot be harmed by hanging them because "Their neck musculature is too strong in proportion to their weight." (p. 126)

Time Is Passing

(I accidentally published some posts instead of saving them so Onward, Earthlings!)

The framing sequences and character continuity in Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979) are provided by Alexander Jones who:

(i) visits Toka as an ensign in "The Sheriff of Canyon Gulch";

(ii) is visited by his fiancee, Tanni, while hosting Hokas on Earth in "Don Jones";

(iii) accompanied by his wife, Tanni, is plenipotentiary to Toka in "In Hoka Signo Vinces";

(iv) has been plenipotentiary for nearly ten years in "The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound";

(v) mentions the birth of their child in a letter appearing as an interlude between "The Adventure..." and "Yo Ho Hoka!"

I will look out for further such marks of the passage of time while reading the series.

In Isaac Asimov's Robot stories, character continuity is provided not by any of the robots but only by the woman and men (robopsychologist, trouble shooters, US Robots executives and representatives etc) dealing with the robots. Jones performs exactly this role with the Hokas, heading off trouble or dealing with it when it arises.

In fact, he shows that he is aware of the potential dangers to which I alluded in the immediately preceding post:

"Can you imagine what would happen if I admitted a band of preachers who not only read from the Old Testament - and won't give our local rabbis a chance to explain the details - but hand out illustrated biographies of Oliver Cromwell?" (p. 123)

Yea, verily. Exactly so. Jones' job is to prevent disasters and to keep the series on the comic level.

Hokas are protean, not physically but mentally. They have no language, traditions, stories or world-view of their own that they want to preserve. They must have had something originally but they don't want to preserve it. Instead, they eagerly, energetically embrace and live whatever myth, fiction or drama they receive from human beings, even including the English language suitably adapted to different contexts.

I wanted to read more about Holmesian London but that is not the point of the series. When Jones, still within the Hokan "England," goes to Plymouth, he is about to encounter pre-Holmesian pirates.

How Serious Could This Get?

How far would Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Hokas take their role play?

Would Socrates drink the hemlock?
Would Caesar accept assassination?
Would Jesus accept crucifixion - and expect resurrection?
Would Charles I accept execution?
Would Czar Nicholas and Lenin persuade the population of a large country to reenact the Russin Revolution with the same outcomes?
Would Trotsky accept the ice pick?
Need I go on?

One response to such questions could be, "This is only humor!" Of course. And I expect that the three Hoka volumes, which I have yet to read in full, will remain on that level. But questions can always be asked.

Alan Moore has shown that extremely powerful dramatic effects can be achieved by taking joke characters seriously and asking, "What would follow if this were true?" Young Billy Batson was tied up and gagged so often to prevent him from saying, "Shazam!", that the adult Batson might have developed a fixation about being tied up and gagged? And a super-strong villain moving at super-speed would be able to commit in a few hours atrocities far worse than any in history so should a visual medium not show such atrocities in graphic detail?

Nowadays, one question in my mind when reading lighter fiction is often: what might an Alan Moore treatment of these premises look like?

Another Science Of Mind

One science fiction idea is that a science of mind will be developed in future. In some of Poul Anderson's works, such a science is called "psychotechnics" or "psychodynamics" but here is another version:

"The [Hokas] were linguistic adepts, and between their natural abilities and modern psychography had learned English in a matter of days."
- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), pp. 17-18.

This tells us only that the science is called "psychography," that it speeds learning and that it works on other species as well as on humanity but that is quite a lot to be told in a single sentence. The role of the new mental science in this narrative is merely to rationalize how one previous expedition from Earth has enabled an entire planetary population to speak fluent English in diverse dialects by the time our hero arrives with the second expedition.

Therefore, we hear no more about psychography, at least not in the parts of the series that I have read so far - the first four of the six stories in the first of the three volumes. It would have been interesting to learn more about the psychographic study of the Hokas since this species combines the strength and intelligence of human adults with the imaginative playfulness of human children. This contrast combined with the Hoka's resemblance to animated teddy bears is deployed for comic effect but could potentially have been the basis for a more serious treatment of alien psychology.

Anderson's "The Saturn Game" presents adult human beings immersing themselves in a psychodrama until, to ensure their own physical survival, they must imagine the deaths of their assumed characters.

An Elder Race Of Great Galactics

When authors turn to humor, ideas that are usually presented seriously are recycled for comic effect. The idea of an Elder Race, an older and wiser civilized species, occurs several times in Poul Anderson's works. Usually, the Elder Race exists just as an idea in the minds of his characters although, with characteristic Andersonian thoroughness, we also encounter a real such  race in The Avatar.

But to return to the Elder Race as a mere idea, there is no Space Patrol in known space but nevertheless a potentially imperialistic race reports that its new space battleship was devastatingly attacked by a smaller ship of the Space Patrol. Alexander Jones must suppress the fact that that was his ship hijacked by Hokas enacting a TV space opera. One possibility suggested by Jones is that:

"...the affair is a case of mistaken identity, possibly involving some as yet unknown race."

- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), p. 90.

This suggestion is enthusiastically endorsed and extended by Jones' bureaucratic superior. The Council of the Interbeing League is informed that an undiscovered alien race knows English and possesses a Space Patrol whose observed actions have been beneficial. A search begins for these aliens provisionally regarded as "...an elder race of Great Galactics..." (p. 91) whose Observers maintain the Space Patrol and who will be able to teach the League much.

Thus is born a major myth...

Laugh Out Loud Moments

(The 100th post this month! Preferring to work in round numbers, I will save any more written today until tomorrow.)

(You folks out there have been great with page views recently: 190 yesterday; 125 by 11.10 am today. Maybe everyone who views can comment just once to tell us who and where they are?)

One, not the only, laugh out loud moment - an Interstellar Bureau of Investigation agent, responding to a role-playing Hoka:

"...caught on and nodded as if it hurt him. 'Of course,' he said in a strangled voice. 'I would be the last to compare myself with Mr. Holmes.'"
- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), p. 98.

Jones and the IBI man have flown to the Tokan island of England and landed in Victorian London with its peaked roofs, winding cobbled streets, River Thames, Buckingham Palace, Parliament, St Paul's still being built, fog, gas lamps, Scotland Yard, cockney policeman referring to "...'Er Majesty...'" (p. 97), Inspector Lestrade, hansom cabs pulled by large reptiles, 221-B Baker Street, Mrs Hudson and, of course...