Smiling Villains

We have had many references to Hamlet. Here is another:

"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain, she thought."
-SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Twenty-Nine, pp. 701-702.

And we find that we have already quote this line. See here. This could lead us back onto the theme of villains. However, I have exhausted what I have to say about such characters for the time being! Stirling's character quotes Hamlet after an interesting reflection on the difficulty of acting one way and thinking another. Those who find this easy are dangerous - smiling villains.

Spy Fiction

We have just watched Andrew Marr on spy fiction. See here. Marr identifies several "rules," e.g., that the hero is always a gentleman and that there is a lot of betrayal. Dominic Flandry complies with both of these. Another rule is that this genre, only a hundred years old, must change with the times. In particular, the villains must change, always reflecting current reality:

Germans;
Communists;
the IRA;
Jihadists.

We may add -

alternative reality: SM Stirling's OSS must spy on the Draka;
future history: Dominic Flandry against the Merseians.

Marr does not mention that, when it became implausible for the British Secret Service to continue defeating the Russians, Ian Fleming invented the private criminal organization, SPECTRE. He does mention the difficulty of infiltrating a society where the population looks different. Frederik Forsyth invented a rare British agent of partly Arab descent. Anderson's Terrans discuss the difficulty of infiltrating Avalon - and no one is going to be disguised as a Merseian.

Marr rightly says that popular fiction, e.g., by Neil Gaiman and Ian Fleming, is well written and reflects life. Poul Anderson and SM Stirling are not on his radar but should be.

Addendum: I forgot one group of villains, Stieg Larsson's secretive section within Swedish Security.

Ministers Of Religion

Non-Christian writers noticeably present ministers of Christianity either sympathetically or unsympathetically. Thus:

Poul Anderson - Father Axor;
SM Stirling - Father Ignatius;
HG Wells - the Curate in The War Of The Worlds and a vicar in In The Days Of The Comet.

That comet changes everyone for the better - but Wells does not show us its effect on the vicar.

I mention this because of a short passage in Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire. The title character cannot get anyone in authority to hear what she has to say, not even a pastor who wants her to pray with him. That has to be a text book example of how not to work as a pastor or as any kind of counselor. Either Axor or Ignatius would have listened and responded. Each would have prayed for Lisbeth but not with her unless she asked them to.

The Kith Life-Style

Thank you all for 403 page views yesterday and for 473 so far today. My attention hovers between fictional universes like a patron of the Old Phoenix able to choose which world to visit next.

Is the Kithic life-style appealing or even feasible?

Appealing?
"'...weeks, months, maybe years crowded into a metal shell or into still more cramped seal-domes, never able to step outside for a breath of clean air, only in a suit - because, I reminded him, planets where humans can walk freely are bloody few, and to make the profit that keeps us going we often have to call at other kinds.'"
-Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999), Chapter 17, p. 130.

This paradox arises several times in Anderson's works. Interstellar travel is seen as the ultimate freedom yet the travelers are imagined as confined inside metal spacecraft. It need not be like this. Those who cross an interstellar distance must take a habitable environment with them so they should be able to make that environment both spacious and humanly tolerable:

in Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains, the first extrasolar colonists have a much longer travel time but their vehicle and habitat is a terraformed asteroid;

in Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, the Lunarians live permanently inside artificial environments which however are the very opposite of crowded or cramped;

in Anderson's Technic History, van Rijn and Flandry travel in sybaritic spacecraft.

Of course, there are limits to the sizes of the ships that can be moved with the zero-zero drive technology of Starfarers but, if those ships had to be too small for the sanity of large crews, then there would be no Kith culture.

Feasible?
Is regular trade feasible? After decades or centuries:

Will there still be an organized society on Earth or any other planet?
Will that society still need or want what the Kith can sell?
Might it not have found a way to produce, e.g., those rare isotopes or biochemicals at home?
Or have developed a technology with entirely different needs?

We are told that the trade does indeed dwindle for some of these reasons but how likely is it even to start?

(516 page views by the end of the day.)

Van Gogh

Recently, because of an earlier blog post (see here), Chris Cole emailed me about kayaking (see here).

Today, because of another earlier post (see here), Jenna from Artsy Team has emailed me about the Team's Vincent van Gogh page (see here) which has:

van Gogh's bio;
over 100 of his works;
exclusive articles;
updated exhibition listings;
related artists and categories.

As I said about kayaks, anything that comes up from reading Poul Anderson's works is relevant and I am happy to relay information. 

Films

Poul Anderson has:

Atlantis in the Dancer From Atlantis;
mermen in The Merman's Children;
a reference to Clark Kent in There Will Be Time. (See also here.)

The Justice League film has:

an Atlantean merman, the Aquaman;
the Resurrection of Clark Kent.

Am I alone, sitting in the cinema, in thinking of Poul Anderson and wanting these novels to be filmed? Images of the Aquaman withstanding a giant wave on a sinking ship and rescuing the sailor show how easy it would be to film The Merman's Children.

Films need substance as well as special effects and Anderson certainly supplies the former.

The Future Of Music

Hugh Valland plays an "omnisonor."
A Kithwoman plays a "polymusicon" and sounds a bugle call from it.
Heinlein's Rhysling plays an accordion but he lives in the early twenty first century when there has not yet been time for any new musical technology.
Spock has some kind of Vulcanian instrument, I think.
James Blish's "A Work of Art" (see here) is about the future of music, including musical technology.
There is multi-sensory art in Anderson's The Peregrine.
Anything else?

Planets And Meals

(An idiosyncratic title makes it easier to re-find a post.)

Poul Anderson contributed to shared planets:

Cleopatra;
Murasaki.

James Blish's "A Case of Conscience" is part of:

A Case Of Conscience;
After Such Knowledge;
the Haertel Scholium;
a projected Twayne Triplet!

I do not know who wrote the other two "Lithia" stories but Blish told me that one of them would have contained meals long and lovingly described - as in our Food Thread?

This food for thought has taken us from shared planets to "food porn" (hate that phrase!) via a fourfold James Blish story while I am eating lunch but I must get back to some real life like a walk to Morecambe.

Maybe the Justice League film this evening. (See here.)

Aerie

Poul Anderson's "The Tale of the Cat," incorporated into his Starfarers as Chapter 17, first appeared in Analog, February 1998.

Aerie:

the furthest colony planet from Sol;
dim sun;
summer light like autumn on Earth;
twenty six hour day;
mountainous glaciers to north and south;
cold clashing seas;
one tropical continent colonized;
beautiful rings, the remnants of a moon;
one temperate zone;
herds and crops;
quakes, storms and metal-gnawing mites;
Terrestrial grass sown;
imported birds flourishing;
a local animal called a "scuttermouse";
houses and shops of the Magistrate's retainers;
murky native forest, rarely visited;
castle with homes, worksteads, chapels, stadium, laboratories and a museum;
government mostly by town meetings;
the Magistrate has a militia and a court;
visiting Kith range in their flitters.

An Earlier Kith Period

Starfarers, Chapter 17, is another short story incorporated into the novel.

"Ghetto"/Chapter 21 is the crossover point between the two versions of the Kith History.

Two evocative names of Kith Ships are Eagle and Argosy. Both evoke other stories:

the Eagle comic published "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future";
Argosy magazine published ERB.

The Quadrangle Trade:
biochemicals from Morganan seas;
isotopes from the Auroran system;
arts and crafts from Feng Huang;
biostock from Earth.

Aerie is the colonized planet furthest from Earth. And there is still a lot more to reread and post about the Kith History.