Six Senses; Scottish Struggles

Star Prince Charlie, 8.

"A drop ran into one eye and stung. The smell and taste of the dust were acrid. The round shield hung heavy on his left arm.
"He looked about. Spectators made splashes of subdued color on gray tiers. He sensed their excitement before they started shouting." (p. 83)

Bodily Sensations
stinging
heaviness

Smell
of dust

Taste
of dust

Sight
color
grayness

Sound
shouting

Sensation...
...of excitement

Hector tells Charlie to remember:

Otterburn
Bannockburn
Killiekrankie
Wallace

Those were real conflicts. Maybe the Hoka would be better employed in righting present wrongs rather than in re-enacting past ones?

Thor In Lancaster And Anderson

Today in Lancaster:

Sheila's and Nygel's birthday;

coffee at another friend, Nathan's, restaurant;

Viking Festival;

after this post, Indian meal with Aileen and Yossi.

At the Festival, several men wore Mjolnir. One guy showed me that his hammer had symbols for day and night on opposite sides. However, when I asked him about "making the sign of the hammer," he did not know about this so I am not sure how authentic the attribution of Christian-like signs to pagans is:

"They stared, listened, furtively drew signs Ax or Cross."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT p. 402.

Anderson refers to the hammer:

"The storm god smote [a giant], and a crushed skull was the wage that he got."
-Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), I, p. 13.

"Redbeard caught [a hammer] in midair and whirled it aloft. It was a short-handled maul. The weight of its iron head smashed open the carpenter's skull."
-Poul Anderson, The Golden Slave (New York, 1980), X, pp. 124-125.

Redbeard says, "'They call me Tjorr the Sarmatian...'" (ibid., p. 128)

"'And Thor has a hammer, too, which he throws at trolls.'"
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 14.

World Without Stars is futuristic science fiction.
Time Patrol is historical science fiction.
The Golden Slave is historical fiction.
War Of The Gods is heroic fantasy.

Fighting Ships

Star Prince Charlie, 7.

As in Poul Anderson's stories set on Avalon, knowledge of seamanship is evident.

A New Lemurian fighting ship:

thirty meters long;
broad beamed;
high prowed;
high sterned;
fiercely figure-headed;
two square-rigged masts;
also a fore-and-aft mizzen sail;
wheel-controlled central rudder;
magnetic compass;
cannon;
catapults;
mangonels;
few professional warriors;
mostly fishers, farmers, laborers and sailors with inherited weapons.

Details on every square inch of a page.

Four Senses At Sea

Star Prince Charlie, 7, pp. 78-79.

Charlie is on a war fleet flagship:

striped sails (seen);
sea sparkles (seen);
waves whoosh (heard);
ships rock (seen and felt);
warm sun, cool wind (felt);
freshness and distance (smelled);
sea birds cruise and cry (seen and heard);
green islets (seen);
white surf on reefs (seen);
tartan banner (seen);
"enormous heaven"...

Tobacco or a drink would have completed the picture.

Dzenko instructs Charlie in the third Feat:

"'All is arranged.'" (p. 80)

Will Charlie at some stage assert his independence and break away from Dzenko's pre-planned prophecy-fulfillments? I don't remember.

Fantasy And Realism

Nicholas van Rijn visits the fantasy setting of the Old Phoenix, the inn between universes, without comprising the hard sf of the Technic History in which he is a major character. How an author writing in different genres might subtly interconnect his various works while maintaining their respective narrative integrities has been one recurrent theme on this blog. In fact, there are relevant posts that I cannot readily find. For example, a known Time Patrol member might move among the characters in a twentieth century contemporary novel without making any explicit reference to his time traveling in that particular text.

In Dornford Yates' interconnected works, a woman called Eulalie:

features in the contemporary short story collection, Jonah and Co.;

visits Etchechuria, a magical kingdom concealed between France and Spain, in the fantasy novel, The Stolen March;

is mentioned in the contemporary thriller, Adele and Co., where one of the characters summarizes what we know became of Eulalie after her return from Etchechuria but, of course, without making any reference to the existence of that fabulous realm.

Three Intelligent Species

Star Prince Charlie, 7.

One part of sf is satire. Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson use the Hoka and the New Lemurians to make a point about humanity:

"Was that kilted teddy bear really very different from the natives ...or from man?" (p. 78)

The minstrel composes an epic about the slaying of the Sorrow:

during the fight, the Demon transformed "...itself into a raging fire...," (p. 77) threatening to incinerate everyone;

the mere sight of two lords outside the cave made forty-seven attacking demonic kittens turn back and flee underground;

the New Lemurians did not flee but sought their foe.

Hearing this, the individuals concerned agree with the minstrel's account, gloss over any contradictory evidence without realizing that this is what they are doing and even adjust their memories accordingly. Do they really differ from Hoka or from men?

The Second Feat, Continued

Star Prince Charlie, 6-7.

(A tiger is the Terrestrial equivalent of a New Lemurian ilnya.)

The New Lemurians have:

grown up among superstitions;
never learned scientific method;
good reason not to challenge Dzenko's blatant deceptions.

The third point is the clincher.

Hector's bagpipes kill the aged ilnya that plays the role of the ogre! Please (re)read the novel to find out how this happens. It has probably been remarked before that the sound of bagpipes is like a secret weapon but this time it is literally true.

The sound serves another purpose. The New Lemurians standing outside the cave flee when they hear what they think are:

"'...the Demon's shrieks and roars...'" (7, p. 75)

When Hector is told that there were shrieks and roars, he asserts that he "'...heard naught...'" (ibid.) but then realizes that these hideous sounds must have been drowned by "'...yon sweet melodies...'" (ibid.) of the pipes! A comedy of errors develops.

Hector says that the dishonesty is legitimate statecraft:

"'Turnin' his own guile against the Sassenach.'" (ibid.)

He has a very broad conception of "Sassenach." However, England does have a reputation for duplicity. See Perfidious Albion.

The Second Feat

Star Prince Charlie, 6.

For the second of his five prophesied feats, Charlie must kill someone or something called "'...the Sorrow of Avilyogh!'" (p. 65)

But when should he do it? The Council debates.

Reasons For Three Days Hence
(i) The town will want to tax spectators, the more of them the better.
(ii) Food vendors will need time to purchase extra supplies.
(iii) Inns and private households will want to prepare rooms.
(iv) Souvenir manufacturers will also need time to prepare.

(An ad in Alan Moore's Neopolis, where most people have superpowers: "Let us cater to your Crisis or Crossover!"

(In Mike Carey's Lucifer, when Lucifer Morningstar and an angel are to fight a duel in Hell, a stadium must be built for the spectators, who gamble in souls on the outcome.)

Dzenko's Reason For This Afternoon
If the tyrant, Olaghi, has time to learn what is happening, then his battle fleet will arrive to burn the town.

Another debate is "What is the Sorrow?"

Possible Answers
A great decapod;
the height from which flocks of birds ravish grainfields;
bandits;
a demon or ogre, dangerous in itself and responsible for all the other ills - this is Dzenko's authoritative answer: his hunters have already scouted the ogre's lair and given him a map.

Everything seems to be happening on schedule. The New Lemurians accept unsubstantiated stories in the same way as the Hoka accept new roles to play. The two species seem to have been made for each other.

Democracy And Autocracy

Star Prince Charlie, 6.

On the island of Avilyogh:

the chief town has a "Councilhouse," where adult males discuss public business;

the baron presides but votes "...only in case of a tie." (p. 62)

When Charlie remarks that this sounds democratic, the lord Dzenko retorts:

"'Avilyogh is backward... Its lords never have managed to put the commoners in their place and run things efficiently.'" (ibid.)

Although Charlie is startled, the authors know that civilization involved centralization of power and loss of earlier forms of direct democracy, sometimes to be replaced later in history by representative democracy.

Poul Anderson shows us a small part of this process in Time Patrol when the Wanderer says that the Gothic king, Ermanaric:

"'...envies the power of the Roman Emperor, and wants the same for himself over the Ostrogoths.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT p. 417.

Tharasmund replies that Ermanaric:

"'...must pay double weregild, and at the Great Moot vow upon the Stone of Tiwaz to abide henceforward by olden law and right. Else I will raise the whole country against him.'" (ibid.)

At the moot:

"...the Goths finally voted to split the hoard in three equal shares, one for Ermanaric, one each for the sons of Embrica and Fritla. The king's men having slain those, the two-thirds fell to Randwar the fosterling. Overnight he became wealthy.
"Ermanaric rode livid and mum from the meeting."
-ibid., p. 433.

Ermanaric wants everything. Struggles and history continue.

Bagpipes And Tartans

Star Prince Charlie, 6.

To play a role requires knowledge of it but a Hoka seems to have endless knowledge:

"Hector could have come along but had elected to stay behind and supervise some craftsmen in the construction of a set of bagpipes." (p. 61)

Could you or I supervise the construction of bagpipes? The paragraph continues and concludes:

"In addition, he had weavers prepare an ample supply of cloth in different tartans." (ibid.)

Does the average extraterrestrial carry in his head designs for several different Scottish tartans and would he be able to have weavers of yet another species prepare cloth in these designs?

I understand that the laws of probability differ in comedy.

We have previously observed that Scottish people of Italian descent have their own tartan. See here.