NESFA Collections Vol 1

At last I am reading the NESFA Press The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Vol 1, Call Me Joe (Framingham, MA, 2009), although I suspect that I have already read the best of its contents.

The table of contents fills a page but this turns out to be because many of the items are not short stories but short(er) verses. We recognize poems that, apparently, were published in Staves first but then were incorporated into novels. "Heinlein's Stories" is a comic verse, not, as I had hoped and expected, a serious article.

There is a page of haikus. I think that Anderson wrote the perfect haiku in his later novel, Genesis:

"The shadows, like life,
"Moved beneath summer daylight.
"Evening reclaims them."

There is a kind of sf hero who manipulates entire societies with clever schemes. These include James Blish's John Amalfi and an obnoxious extra-solar alien in Anderson's "The Helping Hand."

At last I have read "The Martian Crown Jewels," although I prefer the original Sherlock Holmes as he appears in "Time Patrol." At last also I have read the first of the three Wing Alak stories:

"The Double-Dyed Villains" (1949);
"Enough Rope" (1953);
"The Live Coward" (1956).

(I was born in 1949 and started to attend boarding school in 1956.)

Strangely, the first of these stories incorporates the titles of the second and third stories as phrases in its text. (p. 161) This short trilogy deserves its own volume with the title League Patrol. Some of Anderson's characters work for organizations with diverse purposes:

the Time Patrol guards human history;
the Coordination Service guards the Stellar Union;
the League Patrol guards the Galactic League;
the Polesotechnic League makes a profit but spreads civilization in the process;
Naval Intelligence guards the Terran Empire.

Blish wrote about comparable organizations:

the Colonization Council "seeds" the galaxy;
Okie cities "pollinate" the galaxy;
Traitors' Guilds exchange intelligence and disinformation between interstellar powers;
the Service guards an expanding, intergalactic civilization.

Both the Time Patrol and the Service work with time: the Patrol studies and preserves the past whereas the Service receives messages from and guards the future.

Why are "Time Patrol" and two Technic History stories in this collection when they are already collected with the rest of their respective series? Why include so many of the non-series time travel stories when most of these are in Past Times which deserves to be revised and republished?

The Problem Of Pain II

The argument in the preceding post was not: God (fore)knows our actions, therefore our actions are unfree. It was:

God (assuming that He exists etc) creates everything, including our dispositions, motivations, mental and physical abilities, will-power, environmental interactions etc, thus causes our actions, therefore cannot judge our actions in the way that we can and do judge ourselves and each other;
caused actions are free if they are unconstrained;
uncaused actions would be random, therefore not morally significant.

Such arguments are presented on a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog because Poul Anderson's fiction addresses these issues. In "The Problem of Pain," i.e., Anderson's short story, not CS Lewis' work of apologetics with the same title, the Christian Peter Berg and his unbelieving colleague discuss both the problem of evil and the problem of pain.

The Problem of Evil
Why does God allow (I would say cause) moral evil? Berg thinks that Christian free will apologetics is a perfect answer whereas the Ythrian response, that God allows wickedness so that we can gain honor by fighting it, is weak.

The Problem of Pain
"'Why does a merciful God permit [I would say cause] undeserved agony?'"
- Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 46.

"'Why? What possible end is served? It's not adequate to declare that we'll receive an unbounded reward after we die and therefore it makes no difference whather a life was gutsy or grisly. That's no explanation.'" (p. 47)

My answer is that no end is served because we evolved and were not created. Pain exists because it has survival value but this does not prevent it from often continuing long after it has served that function. Anderson presents an excellent alien response to the human belief in a hereafter. When asked whether he believes that the spirit outlives the body, Enherrian of the Ythrian New Faith, whose daughter has just drowned, snaps, "'How could it?...Why should it?'" (p. 38) (Despite this, we later learn that the Old Faith did involve a hereafter with a deity.)

Berg wonders whether the Ythrian response to the problem of pain is better:

"'...at last He comes after us. Our noblest moment is when we, knowing He is irresistible, give Him a good chase, a good fight.
"'Then he wins honor.'" (p. 48)

Berg's colleague, the narrator, says:

"'I looked into the abyss once, and saw nothing, and haven't looked since. You keep looking. Which of us is the braver?'" (ibid.)

The narrator's look into the abyss is another of Anderson's many untold stories.

Berg's priests tell him "'...to deny a false creed and to acknowledge a mystery.'" But he thinks that, "'Neither instruction feels right.'" (ibid.)

I would say: acknowledge mysteries but keep looking and do not call alien creeds false. The narrator points out that the New Faith has been held for centuries by millions of beings and that it solves some paradoxes, if not all.

The Problem Of Pain

In Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 26-48, the characters, discussing theology, differentiate the problem of (moral) evil from the problem of (psychophysical) pain.

On the problem of evil, the Christian Peter Berg says:

"'Why does God, if He is a loving and personal God, allow evil? Well, there's a perfectly good Christian answer to that. Man - intelligence everywhere - must have free will. Otherwise we're puppets and have no reason to exist. Free will necessarily includes the capability of doing wrong. We're here, in this cosmos during our lives, to learn how to be good of our unforced choice.'" (p. 46)

The unnamed first person narrator replies, "'...your logic is right, regardless of whether I accept your premises or not.'" (ibid.)

I do not agree that Berg argues logically from his premises. First, I suggest that every event, including every human action, is either caused or random. A random event has no moral significance. When an action is caused by a conscious decision - a decision which, in turn, had previous causes -, then we may morally judge the action and we do so for a practical purpose, to influence future actions. Of course, we find that we are caused/compelled/obliged to judge actions, including our own, but this compulsion or obligation has evolved for the suggested practical reason.

God has no reason to judge our actions. If the theistic hypothesis is correct, then He is the omnipotent creator from nothing of everything other than Himself. In fact, according to the doctrine of theistic creation, God did not merely create the material universe once long ago and leave it to run its course. That is Deism. He sustains cosmic existence at every moment. And he exists entirely outside our spatio-temporal framework. I think it follows from this that, from His trans-temporal perspective, there is no difference between creating the universe at its first moment, if it even had one, and sustaining it at any later moment. Thus, He timelessly causes/creates us performing our current actions here and now.

This does not make us puppets as we would be if a fellow human being were controlling our actions against our wills. "Free will" can only mean "absence of constraint" and "constraint" means an intra-cosmic factor thwarting our wills, not the extra-cosmic creator creating/sustaining our wills as He creates and sustains everything else.

An aggressive drunk automatically kicks a dog that bites him whereas a pacifist saint does not. If we know the drunk and the saint well, then we confidently predict how each of them will respond to any given stimulus. Our predictions might sometimes be inaccurate because, however well we know them, we do not know all the factors causing their conscious decisions. However, God not only knows but causes/creates those factors. Thus, He could have created the man who is a drunk in such a way that he never had any interest in alcohol and would never have kicked a dog.

Creating a man so that he is the kind of person who always freely makes morally right decisions does not negate his freedom. When we confidently predict how the saint will behave, we do not infer that he is unfree or a "puppet." In fact, he is freer than the man who is addicted to alcohol and unable to restrain his own aggression.

Historical Background Details III

Call Me Joe has arrived but meanwhile I have become re-engrossed in the History of Technic Civilization.

Of the twelve works collected in Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), we have so far attributed:

one to James Ching;
one to Arinnian/Christopher Holm;
two to Hloch and Arinnian;
three to Judith Lundgren -

- but what of the remaining five?

Both "Margin of Profit" and "Rescue on Avalon" are taken from Tales Of The Great Frontier by AA Craig, a Terran writer of historical fiction who traveled widely and visited Avalon during a pause in the Troubles. AA Craig was a pulp pen name of Poul Anderson. Stories that are science fiction by Poul Anderson are historical fiction by AA Craig. May these authors meet in the trans-temporal Inn.

"The Man Who Counts" is a novel, a "...full sky-dance portraying Nicholas van Rijn..." (p. 146), originally published on either Terra or Hermes, with different authors and dates cited. We also know of another title, War Of The Wing Men.

"Wings of Victory," describing the Discovery - human-Ythrian First Contact - and therefore opening the book, is taken directly from "...Far Adventure by Maeve Downey, the autobiography of a planetologist." (p. 23)

The genesis of "The Problem of Pain" is more complicated:

Peter Berg, a Christian from Aeneas, explored Gray, later renamed Avalon, with Ythrians;
later, he described this experience to a colleague on Lucifer;
that colleague recounted his conversations with Berg in private correspondence long preserved by the recipient's heirs on Terra;
a visiting historian transcribed a copy of the recorded correspondence;
the copy was preserved in the archives of the University of Fleurville on Esperance;
Rennhi of Stormgate Choth on Avalon acquired the account for her Earth Book.

At least six planets interact here: Aeneas, Ythri, Gray/Avalon, Lucifer, Terra, Esperance.

We know from The Day Of Their Return that religious feelings ran deep on Aeneas and that a new Jihad almost began there.

Berg divides the evolution of religion into three stages:

primitive faiths - the gods are power;
higher faiths - God is justice;
the highest faith(s) - God is love.

But then he meets the Ythrians for whom God is the Hunter.

Historical Background Details II

"Day of Burning" describes Falkayn's dealings with Merseia and "Lodestar" describes van Rijn's coming to Mirkheim. The first is pivotal for Technic Civilization, the second for the Polesotechnic League. In both cases, Hloch, editing The Earth Book Of Stormgate, recounts more than is divulged in the texts of the stories.

After the Babur War, van Rijn and Falkayn, foreseeing the Time of Troubles that was coming to the Solar System, left many data units in the care of the Grand Duke of Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, and of Falkayn's relatives on Hermes. Three centuries after the dissolution of the League, Rennhi of Stormgate Choth on Avalon, compiling the Earth Book, gained permission to transfer the molecular patterns of the almost forgotten stored units from Hermes to Avalon where she initiated a code-breaking program supported by the Avalonian armed forces because by then war with the Terran Empire was imminent and any information originating from Terra might have had military value.

Cracking the code developed cryptography. The previously suppressed account of Falkayn's mission to Merseia was written as a narrative in Anglic by Hloch and Arinnian/Christopher Holm. Thus, Hloch and Arinnian are, fictitiously, the authors of "Day of Burning," as James Ching is of "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and Judith Lundgren is of "Esau," "The Season of Forgiveness" and "Wingless." (See here.) (Arinnian is a character in The People Of The Wind.)

Hloch and Arinnian additionally wrote "Lodestar," based on a ship's log and on some taped conversations and data lists preserved on Hermes but also on the private journal of Hirharouk of Wryfields Choth on Ythri, made available by the Wyvan Stirrok and Hirharouk's descendants. Finally, Arinnian also wrote "A Little Knowledge" from a tale brought to Ythri by the xenologist, Fluoch of Mistwood. Thus, Hloch's account adds considerable complexity to what we accept while reading them as a straightforward short stories written in English by Poul Anderson.

The Incomplete Editions

Before the publication of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga by Poul Anderson, the only way to read Anderson's History of Technic Civilization was to gather together:

The Saturn Game

Trader To The Stars
The Trouble Twisters
Satan's World
Mirkheim
The Earth Book Of Stormgate

The People Of The Wind
Ensign Flandry
A Circus Of Hells
The Rebel Worlds
The Day Of Their Return

Flandry Of Terra
Agent Of The Terran Empire
A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows
A Stone In Heaven
The Game Of Empire

The Night Face
The Long Night

Eighteen volumes which do not present the stories in exact chronological order and still exclude one story, "Sargasso of Lost Starships."

The Saturn Game, a mere 85 pages published as part of a Double, does belong in the History although it bears no obvious connection to Trader To The Stars, which introduces the five volumes of the Polesotechnic League. The Terran Empire fills ten volumes, of which Dominic Flandry stars in seven, cameos in one and is quoted in one.

League and Empire would fill three boxed sets of five volumes each but do not encompass the entire History.

Historical Background Details

At the end of Poul Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the first person narrator, James Ching, is about to be apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League. This and subsequent stories disclose no further information about Ching. However, Hloch's introduction to the story in The Earth Book Of Stormgate reveals that Ching wrote reminiscences during his career as a spaceman, then settled on the planet Catawrayannis, where his descendants kept his notebooks and made them available to Rennhi of Stormgate Choth on Avalon when she began to gather material for the Earth Book, which was completed by her son, Hloch.

Thus, two sentences in this fictitious introduction immeasurably increase our knowledge of Ching's later life. Similarly, at the end of "Esau," Emil Dalmady from Altai is about to become an entrepreneur on ninety per cent commission from Nicholas van Rijn. Hloch alone tells us that Damady "...appears to have soared high for long years afterward." - The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 101. Hloch adds that some of Dalmady's children moved to Avalon with Falkayn and that one of them, Judith Lundgren, later wrote the story, based on her father's reminiscences, for the magazine, Morgana. She also wrote the later stories, "The Season of Forgiveness" and "Wingless," for Morgana. Her father got the details of the first of these stories from one of the persons concerned when he was an entrepreneur in that region of space whereas "Wingless" describes an event during the early colonization of Avalon.

Thus, Hloch's background material links "The Season of Forgiveness" and "Wingless," through Judith, back to "Esau." I aim to delve further into Hloch's introductions but it is time to attend meditation group.

The Turning Point

Rise Of The Terran Empire is the turning point volume of Baen Books' Technic Civilization Saga by Poul Anderson. This volume begins in the period of the Polesotechnic League - politically, the Solar Commonwealth - and ends in the Terran Empire. At the mid-point of the volume is the single story set during the Time of Troubles between the collapse of the Commonwealth and the founding of the Empire.

The six works collected in the volume comprise:

one last van Rijn/Falkayn/League novel, a sequel to the trader team series that had culminated in "Lodestar";

a juvenile short story featuring Falkayn's son and grandson on Avalon during the colonization of the islands;

a second juvenile short story about a later generation on Avalon during the colonization on the Coronan continent;

the story about the Troubles, featuring the Founder of the Empire;

a story about the early Empire;

the novel about the War between Avalon and the Empire.

All of this has paved the way for the biography of Dominic Flandry, defender of the Terran Empire, beginning in the following volume. However, each of these intermediate works also stands on its own merits and would have done so even if there had never been a Dominic Flandry series. In fact, Rise Of The Terran Empire is a particularly rich collection, even incorporating a literary contrast between the cruder earlier stories and the more sophisticated later works.

The History Of Dominic Flandry

Dominic Flandry appears in four volumes of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga:

Young Flandry (collecting 3 novels);
Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (6 works);
Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (4 works);
Flandry's Legacy (6 works).

Although Flandry's Legacy includes all four works set after Flandry's lifetime, it begins with the last two novels set during his lifetime.

I would present this section of the History as follows:

Young Flandry And The Terran Empire (3 novels);
Outposts Of The Terran Empire (2 works);
Captain Flandry Of The Terran Empire (7 works);
Children Of The Terran Empire (3 novels);
After The Terran Empire or The Post-Imperial Age (4 works).

The seven works in the proposed Captain Flandry Of... are the original Flandry series to which Poul Anderson added prequels and sequels. Children Of... would be an appropriate title because all three of these novels introduce offspring of characters from the first Flandry novel. In fact, "The Warriors From Nowhere" features a granddaughter of the Terran Emperor and is, retroactively, a prequel to the first Children... novel so this story could be moved from the end of one collection to the beginning of the next.

The Call Of The Old Days II

I do not remember this amusing dialogue from previous readings of Poul Anderson's "Margin Of Profit":

"'In my day we were men! And we had ideals, I can tell you. We would have boosted through hell's open gate if you paid us enough.'"
- Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 157.

So having ideals means doing anything if you are paid enough! Although, as a matter of fact, the speaker, Nicholas van Rijn, is nowhere near as bad as that. Everything that he says, however spontaneous it sounds, is calculated to produce exactly the desired effect in the hearer.

When discussing the suggestion of a nuclear strike, he says:

"'I must got to admit, also, supposing we could, slaughtering several billion sentients because their leaders make trouble for us is not nice. I do not think the League would long survive being so guilty.'" (ibid., p. 149)

Of course, he adds:

"'Besides, it is wasteful. They should better be made customers of ours.'" (ibid.)

But the moral judgement came first.

This same page gives us a van Rijn malapropism that is also a portmanteau word, "'...grismal...,'" grisly and dismal.

Deliberately irritating in the hope that this will stimulate his colleague's thoughts, van Rijn spells out what they all know - and thus informs the reader of it! And, teaching good manners to a younger man, he says:

"'In my day, we said "sir" to the captain even when we mutinied.'" (p. 159)