Nikean Insolation

Insolation (from Latin insolare, to expose to the sun)^[1][2] is the total amount of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area during a given time. It is also called solar irradiation
- copied from Wikipedia.

"...in the upper air, he encountered severe turbulence. That was unexpected, on a planet that received less than 0.9 Terran...insolation..."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 469.

Poul Anderson's dictionary-necessitating vocabulary strikes again. I had guessed the meaning of "insolation" (not insulation) from the form of the word and also from the context, then Wikipedia confirmed it (see above). The three dots before "insolation" must indicate Roan Tom's hesitancy about applying a word derived from "Sol" to radiation from another star.

Like the recently spotted "acher," this is a word that I do not remember noticing on any previous reading. However, this time, I am rereading very carefully in order to find any possible detail to post about. I think that it has already been demonstrated that, the more deeply we look into Anderson's texts, the more there is to be found in them.

Roan Tom

"Later ages wove a myth about Roan Tom. He became their archetype of those star rovers who fared forth while the Long Night prevailed."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 457.

These two opening sentences of "A Tragedy of Errors" inform us that the Fall of the Terran Empire and the subsequent "Long Night," delayed by Dominic Flandry, have occurred at last. They also apply the evocative phrase, "star rover," to this new character, Roan Tom. (Anderson's Time Patrol series gives us a "time rover.")

Tom's Lochlanna father, outlawed after a family feud, became a space pirate. Tom, born on a spaceship to a freedwoman said to be of Hermetian descent, grew up fighting, was captured while in a landing party and sold into slavery. He somehow regained his freedom, acquired a spaceship and a following and went to Kraken which:

like Nyanza, is mostly ocean;
has 1.25 standard gravity;
has a half barbaric region where the Eylan-speaking inhabitants are intricately tattooed and women learn combat skills.

An impoverished Krakener noble family, the House of Brenning, made alliance with Tom by giving him Dagny, Od's daughter, in marriage. Tom accepted Krakener body tattoos but, having gained some power on the planet, tried to restart trade, regarding fighting only as a means to an end.

Although no non-human intelligences appear in any of the post-Imperial stories, they are mentioned twice. Tom makes alliance with the Shah of Sassania and is on that planet when the Pretender's non-human mercenaries overthrow the Shah. Tom and Dagny escape in the Firedrake with Yasmin, the deputy governor's daughter. Yasmin speaks Pelevah and has studied the classics, like Anglic, astrophysics and planetography, at Anushirvan University and in the Royal Library.

Narratives And Perspectives

There are two ways to begin a narrative.

(i) The text can plunge in media res, into the midst of things, with the viewpoint character's perception of a particular scene or even with a burst of action: two of Poul Anderson's heroes are introduced to the reader as they dive into water to escape from an immediate physical threat.

(ii) The narrator can contemplate the events to be described and place them in some historical, or at least wider, context before introducing the - or at least a - viewpoint character.

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization concludes with four works set in the post-Imperial period. Working our way back from the end of the concluding volume of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, we find the following three beginnings:

"'From another universe. Where space is a shining cloud...'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 711.

(The viewpoint character is listening to a recording.)

""Moru understood about guns." (p. 663)

(Moru seems to be our viewpoint character, although he is soon succeeded in this by Evalyth.)

"The Quetzal did not leave orbit and swing toward the planet until she had got an all-clear from the boat which had gone ahead to make arrangements." (p. 545)

(Thus, immediate action, with a viewpoint character introduced and named two sentences later.)

These are three in media res beginnings. By contrast, the first post-Imperial work, "A Tragedy of Errors," begins with a short italicized paragraph separated from the text of the story by three blank lines. The italicized passage begins:

"Once in ancient times, the then King of England told Sir Christopher Wren, whose name is yet remembered..." (p. 457)

Thus, this text begins with a historical reference. Further, reading the story immediately after the previous installment of the Technic History, we know that the word "...yet..." refers to some period in our future, either in Dominic Flandry's time or, as we soon realize, later.

The story itself begins:

"Later ages wove a myth about Roan Tom." (ibid.)

Thus, Tom will be the central character. However, the narrator is either omniscient, entirely detached from the narrative, or is an inhabitant of a much later age, able to look back at the intermediate ages in which there were myths about Roan Tom.

So far, in the Technic History:

Hloch of the Stormgate Choth on Avalon has presented an Ythrian perspective on human history from the Grand Survey to the early Terran Empire;

other commentators, Le Matelot, Vance Hall, Noah Arkwright and Urwain the Wide-Faring, have presented their perspectives on the period of the Polesotechnic League;

Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society, has commented on the founding of the Terran Empire;

an unidentified narrator has addressed readers of the History thus:

"Consider Helen Kittredge. We pick her name at random out of personnel data. These say little more about her than that..." (p. 276)

Thus, this narrator, living at some period of the History and having access to Naval data, admits to his ignorance (lack of omniscience) and goes on to speculate about the course of the Magnusson Rebellion as experienced by the randomly chosen Helen Kittredge.

Now another, or possibly the same, narrator comments on the myth about Roan Tom.

Reality

See here.

"Ultimate reality" means whatever exists at the most basic level. Thus, particles are more basic than macroscopic objects but are composed of energy which therefore is yet more basic.

One view was that discrete atoms and/or souls, which could have existed independently, happen to coexist and to interact. Thus, atoms combine as material bodies in some of which souls are incarnated. Alternatively, several "elements" accidentally coexist and interact. A subtler understanding was that opposites are not only interactive but also interdependent.

A modern understanding is (something like) that a single field of energy variously and transiently manifests itself as particles, larger structures and consciousness. Thus, an individual subject of consciousness is not an independent, immaterial, immortal soul but a transient, material organism generating consciousness by sensitively interacting with its environment. Buddhists got this idea but retained "rebirth" as a hangover from the strong Indian traditional belief in reincarnating souls.

Thus, as Poul Anderson wrote in the SFWA Bulletin, concepts of ultimately reality change, although maybe not constantly.

Change

"In an age when everything else is constantly changing, including our concept of human nature and of ultimate reality, what's the sense in clinging to the old? (Here I refer simply to old literary devices. Basic principles are different. They are eternal. What we need is ever new ways of expressing them.)"
-Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979, pp. 7-14 AT p. 14)

I agree that everything is changing and also that some principles are eternal even though, prima facie, that is a contradiction and requires further elucidation. Basic concepts do not change with the daily news but they have certainly changed. The phrase, "human nature," is used in two senses:

(i) the nature of humanity (obviously);
(ii) a particular idea about the nature of humanity, i.e., that human beings are fundamentally and unchangeably selfish.

My replies to (ii) are:

nothing is unchanging;
"human nature" has already undergone the greatest possible change, from non-existence to existence;
human beings have differentiated themselves as a species precisely by cooperatively changing their environment with hands and brain and changing themselves in the process.

Thus, our nature is cooperative change, not unchangeable selfishness. It is a historically recent discovery that we have evolved and are related to all other Terrestrial life which, in turn, is physically connected in more than one way with the rest of the cosmos. Many mental processes are unconscious and many motivations are concealed. These are major changes in our concept of human nature but let us consider ultimate reality tomorrow.

Unknown Planet

As Roan Tom approaches an unknown but habitable planet, he observes many seas but no ocean. The surface of this small terrestroid globe is not covered by a single planetary ocean surrounding several continental land masses but, instead, consists of dry land surrounding many isolated seas. That in itself is quite a thought.

The planet is so small, mass only 0.15 Terran, that it should have neither air nor water. However, this is explained later. Poul Anderson's knowledge of science enabled him to devise mysterious environments for his characters to solve as if in a cosmic detective story.

Tom's most significant statement comes early in his story, "A Tragedy of Errors":

"'I shook pursuit in the Nebula. But when we came out on the other side, we were in a part o' space that wasn't known to us. Old Imperial territory, o' course, but that could mean anything.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 459.

"Old Imperial territory...could mean anything"! Sitting comfortably at home, we feel a sense of freedom and excitement. After the long and enjoyable Flandry period, the Technic History has moved on to an era when old Imperial territory has become unknown and anything can happen. But Poul Anderson knew that the collapse of a civilization is not all freedom and excitement. Tom has already spelt out that life is tough. He and his two wives might not survive and will certainly not get back home unless they can find a planet with enough industrial capacity to repair their ship.

Compact Histories

Robert Heinlein's Future History is admirably compact, adequately covering the several successive periods of its fictitious history in just four volumes. Orphans Of The Sky is a short appendix about the crew of a single spaceship that does not advance the history of mankind.

We need a complete uniform edition of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, which would probably fit into five volumes of normal length or two omnibus collections on the model of Baen Books' Technic Civilization Saga.

Readers of science fiction should have the opportunity to read right through the Future History, the Psychotechnic History and the Technic History, beginning with Heinlein's "Life-Line" and ending with Anderson's "Starfog." Whereas the Future History is compact, the Technic History is necessarily long both because it covers more space and time and because it incorporates entire series that had had a life of their own before they were connected into the History.

Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's future histories succeed Anderson's but, for me, the peak of future historical fiction remains the Technic History.

Fictional Worlds

Honore de Balzac's The Human Comedy is a series of short stories and novels, comprising 91 finished and 46 unfinished works, incorporating his entire output under his own name and presenting every aspect of post-1815 French society with reappearing characters.

Marcel Proust's Remembrance Of Things Past is a seven volume novel of about 3200 pages, featuring more than 2000 characters.

Sinclair Lewis set a series of novels with recurring characters in the fictitious city of Zenith, Winnemac, and is said to have made architect's models of the characters' homes.

Robert Heinlein got the idea for his Future History from Sinclair Lewis. Stories in the Future History are linked by common references to fictitious place names like Luna City on the Moon, Drywater on Mars and Venusburg on Venus and the canon originally included Stories To Be Told (see here).

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History was modeled on Heinlein's Future History. Heinlein's Editor, John W Campbell, had published Heinlein's Time Chart for his Future History so Anderson devised a similar chart, then set stories in it.

Anderson's Technic History originated, instead, by linking together a series set in a period of interstellar capitalist expansion to a series set in a later period of interstellar imperial decline.

These five authors transport their readers from 1815 into remote futures.

Coya III

After van Rijn and Coya met Falkayn and the trader team at Mirkheim, Coya married Falkayn and joined the team for five years until her daughter, Juanita, was born. Then the couple settled on Earth. Four years later, their son, Nicholas, was born in van Rijn's mansion in the floating city of Delfinburg.

The Falkayns led the colonization of Avalon where they lived in a house on First Island in the Hesperian Sea. Their granddaughter named the planet after they had chosen it for settlement. Both David and Coya recognized in their writings how rich and strong a world would result from joint colonization under the protection of Ythri.

Nicholas Falkayn became an engineer meeting with Ythrians to plan the colonization of the Corona continent. His son, Nathaniel, learned Planha and befriended young Ythrians. Their descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, was born in Highsky Choth and married Christopher Holm of Stormgate Choth.

Although we do hear of Stormgate one more time later in the History, unfortunately there is no further information either about its human members or about any other descendants of the Falkayns.

Coya II

Nicholas van Rijn had many lovers, remaining friendly with most. We know of two children:

Eric Tamarin will become Grand Duke of Hermes;
Beatrix Yeo married Malcolm Conyon and had a daughter, Coya.

The Conyons lived on Earth, where van Rijn visited, bringing extra-solar presents for Coya, and took her sailing, to the theater and around the Solar System. Now aged twenty-five, Coya is an astrophysicist at Luna Astrocenter.

Supernova remnants are white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. Their probable distribution within a radius of a few hundred parsecs can be computed from:

the known distribution of former supernovae;
data on other star types, dust, gas, radiation, magnetism, locations, concentrations and time derivatives;
theories of galactic development.

The problem is complex enough to require the best self-programming computer used by a highly skilled astrophysicist. The solution is a list of decreasing probabilities. A spaceship searching on a path defined by the equations will find the type of body sought. Van Rijn asks Coya to solve the problem and Astrocenter records tell her that van Rijn's protege and her hero, David Falkayn, mounted exactly the same search secretly ten years previously.

Coya is caught in the middle of a possible conflict between van Rijn and Falkayn...