Teleportational Civilization

Mattercasting is expensive so there is a ferry from Earth to the mattercaster on the Moon. But why not a mattercaster on Earth? In the Tau Ceti System, the known mattercaster is on Moon Two of Sarai but the Fellowship of Independence suspects that the Protectorate also has a heavy duty 'caster on at least one asteroid.

The Lunar ferry has formfitting loungers and an ecdysiast.

There are many extrasolar colonies, including:

Centaurus
Sarai
Krasna
Rama
New Kashmir
Gondwana

The Fellowship tries to organize simultaneous revolution on a dozen planets.

How Are There Spacemen When There Is Interstellar Teleportation?

In Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars:

spaceships are necessary to carry the mattercasters to other systems;
the ships must be maintained;
men teleport to them to make scientific observations from space;
someone must explore new planets;
apparently, the Protectorate can teleport an entire Space Navy to a colonized system.

Thus, a retired spaceman on an island in the Outer Hebrides lives surrounded by items brought back from other planets.

A Master Of Physics And Politics II

See A Master Of Physics And Politics.

"The space around a giant star, a close double, like Capella, and especially around its biggest planet, was certain to be full of cosmic junk. Billions of meteors hit Sarai every day. Hundreds of them got through to the surface."
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 3, p. 24.

So the colony planet, Sarai, is struck by many meteorites, including a bolide (p. 23), whereas the colony planet, Krasna, has a "...melodrama of codes, countersigns, and cell organization..." (4, p. 26) because there is secret opposition to the Protectorate! Poul Anderson's sf always gives us future physics and politics.

The Terrestrial Protectorate is socially stratified. Although David Ryerson's new wife is a high-class common and a Professor's daughter, it is expected that she will go into the kitchen to prepare teas as soon as she has been introduced to her father-in-law, Magnus. Further, if David joins the expedition to the dark star, then she will be expected to stay with Magnus during her husband's absence.

Terangi Maclaren spends time with a higher ranking technic woman whose guardian is a general. Some of this sounds like the regime on Earth in the Kith History. Since the woman is "...of a carefully selected Burmese mutant strain...without so much as an amazon for chaperone." (1, p. 9), maybe there is a genetic element to the aristocracy?

Seafarers And Spacefarers

In the Time Patrol series, Poul Anderson links seafarers to spacefarers and timefarers. See Battle At Sea. In The Enemy Stars, he links them just to seafarers. A retired spaceman lives on an island in the Outer Hebrides surrounded by his pilot's manuals and by stones, skins and gods "...brought from beyond the sky..." (2, p. 14) These are compared to a sea captain's Bowditch and souvenirs.

I found it instructive to google "Bowditch." The island setting and the comparisons made closely connect the traditions of seafaring and spacefaring. As in the Time Patrol passage, the main connection will turn out to be that their kin mourn farers who do not return.

Natural Descriptions

Pytheas appears and later has an interstellar spaceship named after him in Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years and is quoted in Anderson's The Enemy Stars. His description of the Outer Hebrides remains valid. In winter, leaden sea meets leaden sky and leaden light obscures the horizon. Day differs little from night.

By contrast, a New Zealand sunset is bright gold to the west, green and royal blue to the east. Anderson's characters will visit a dark star but first they experience contrasting regions of their home planet.

We are also shown colony planets: Sarai and Krasna (and see here). "Krasna" reminded me of James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time but there it is the name of a character, not of a planet.

What does "spaceman" mean when interstellar teleportation is used? We will learn more.

The Enemy Stars

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars.

This novel is set three hundred years after the discovery of quantum mechanics and over two hundred years after the beginning of space travel. There are slower than light spaceships but there is also instantaneous interstellar teleportation. In the Outer Hebrides, a stone cottage is little changed after several centuries.

There are ten billion people on Earth but several sparsely populated extrasolar colonies are ruled by the Terrestrial Protectorate. Terrestrial society is divided into "technics" and "commons." The richest technics do not work and some are uninterested in the classics, Confucius, Plato and Einsten - a class preparing itself to be consigned to the dustbin of history. A common can become a technic by marriage but David Ryerson marries a high-class common and plans to gain technic rank on his merits.

There is much more than this in the novel and more will be posted when time permits.

Black Sun

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars (London, 1979), 1.

Terangi Maclaren is going to investigate "'...a truly burned-out star.'" (p. 11) There has been argument as to whether the universe is old enough for a star to have exhausted both its nuclear and its gravitational energy. But surely, as long as a star exists/has mass, then it has gravity? And, if it has imploded to zero volume, then it leaves the gravitational energy of a black hole?

"'...it's conceivable this one is left over from some previous cycle of creation!'" (ibid.)

How do cosmic cycles work? If the most fundamental particles are deconstructed and remade, then no macroscopic object can survive. In Anderson's Tau Zero, one spaceship sails around the re-forming monobloc. In his The Avatar, the Others control forces that enable them to travel into a new universe. In James Blish's The Triumph Of Time, an interstellar civilization called the Web of Hercules, by controlling  matter-antimatter interactions, is able to leave a record that is read in a subsequent universe.

Howling People And Burning Books

Dominic Flandry thinks:

that the howling peoples will camp in the ruins of the Empire (see here);

that the barbarians will howl among smashed buildings and the smoke of burning books (see here).

And, in another fictional future:

"...the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books."
-Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars (London, 1979), p. 7.

Why all this howling? Is civilization a continual effort to suppress howlers who will one day bring down civilization, smash buildings and burn books? Is that what a policeman thinks when he moves someone on?

Civilization, while it exists, responds both to criminals and to its own critics. If and when civilization collapses, some of the survivors will try to build something better from the ruins - and to preserve books.

Arguments V

Poul Anderson, Planet Of No Return, Chapter 17.

Let's have another crack at Avery although he becomes tiresome. He wants "'...stability...'" (p. 123) whereas Dalgetty recognizes that freedom is "metastable," therefore more difficult to sustain than dictatorship. Dalgetty also recognizes that psychotechnics could be misused to serve dictatorship which raises the question whether that is what Avery is doing.

Avery's problem with interstellar travel is that:

"'The rush of emigration will produce a turmoil which we couldn't possibly control...'" (ibid.)

Why should you control anything? If malcontents, as he calls them, want to and are able to emigrate, then that is their right. The Terrestrial government needs to help the malcontents to control their new environments, not keep them on Earth in order to control them!

"'A million eccentric little civilizations will spring up and go their own ways.'" (ibid.)

This would ensure four good things:

racial survival;
cultural diversity;
social experimentation;
the possibility of new, unpredictable and beneficial forms of social organization.

But that is enough of Avery, a very sad man.

Arguments IV

Poul Anderson, Planet Of No Return, Chapter 18.

Regular readers might wonder when I will stop discussing Planet Of No Return so I will keep stalling for a while longer. Can we grind the "Arguments" into even finer particles? Yes, sir!

Both Avery and Lorenzen use very emotionally loaded, one-sided language. Lorenzen claims:

"'...that man crawling into his own little shell to think pure thoughts and contemplate his own navel is no longer man.'" (p. 126)

Well, yes. Despite the existence of a warp drive, Avery proposes to confine mankind to the Solar System for the next thousand years and also to limit the growth of scientific knowledge. That second proposal literally frightens me more than anything else. How can men cope with and respond to the universe if they refuse to learn about it?

But, apart from this, Lorenzen ridicules and denigrates contemplative practice. Zen is not crawling into a shell, thinking pure thoughts or contemplating a navel. In zazen, the senses remain alert while every thought, pure or impure, arises and passes so that we learn to stop identifying with them. And, meanwhile, we continue to engage with the rest of the universe while not sitting for meditation.

The next post will either be more of this or the next book!