Inter-Imperial War

 

In his Introduction to The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the Ythrian Avalonian editor, Hloch, refers to "the Terran War" and its aftermath on Avalon:

"...ruined landscapes lay underneath skies gone strange."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION WINGS OF VICTORY IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-77 AT p. 76.

The Terran Empire had waged war to adjust its border with the Domain of Ythri. Terra won, Ythri was defeated and hostilities ceased. Consequently, several planets, including Avalon, were to be transferred from the Domain to the Empire. However, Avalon refused to yield. Renewed hostilities focused on this single planet. Terra invaded Avalon but was badly defeated on the planetary surface and obliged to accept a truce. Consequently, Avalon remained within the Domain. Thus, Terra won its war against Ythri but lost its subsequent war against Avalon.

In "Wings of Victory," Terrans came to the as yet unindustrialized planet, Ythri, as explorers. In The People Of The Wind, they returned as belligerents. That is how history unfolds.

Blish, Niven, Moore, Anderson And Aldiss On Intelligence

Harvest Of Stars, 23.

Dolphins are intelligent in James Blish's Jack Loftus novels, in Larry Niven's Known Space future history series and in Alan Moore's Halo Jones but Poul Anderson tells us here that their large forebrains merely process auditory input.

When Kyra wonders whether the only intelligences anywhere are human, artificial or neo:

"Abruptly the stars felt cold." (p. 216)

Brian Aldiss wrote somewhere that we had populated the Terrestrial environment, then the Solar System, with intelligences that are not there and he expected the same to be true of extra-solar intelligences. This is not a logical argument but feels compelling. A spaceship could arrive tomorrow but hasn't yet. One nearby star has not only planets but also large asymmetrical objects in orbit.

Guthrie On Ecology

Harvest Of Stars, 23.

Download Guthrie:

"'The economy was in such desperate shape, and "ecology" wasn't the knee-jerk shibboleth it had been, that the new government was glad to sell us a little piece of Volcanoes Park.'" (p. 213)

We have lived into a future when "ecology" has to be more than a "knee-jerk shibboleth."

Guthrie's company, Fireball, provides a home for a community of metamorphs/neosophs and shields them from:

"'...gaping tourists, yawping ideologists, and quick-money hustlers.'" (p. 214)

Fireball is a commercial outfit, even if not a "quick-money" one. Guthrie and I would probably disagree about which of the "ideologists" are "yawping."

With all that said, an outfit like Fireball can do some good like by helping metamorphs.

Heightened Surveillance And Literary Gods

 

Harvest Of Stars, 22.

The characters devise an elaborate plan to smuggle the authentic download Guthrie off Earth despite all the heightened surveillance aimed specifically at apprehending him. I hope that the narrative moves on soon.  A confrontation in space between Guthrie and anti-Guthrie will be of interest.

Familiar names, Winston P. Sanders and A.A. Craig, show up.

Valencia inputs a false message:

"How deftly Valencia stroked the keys. His head might have been a young Hermes' - no, a Pan's, or a Lucifer's - leaning intent above a mischief from which would be born music." (p. 211)

Gods remain important in imagination and art. Three appear here. Hermes is the viewpoint character of Poul and Karen Anderson's "A Feast for the Gods." Lucretius invokes Venus at the beginning of a philosophical poem which argues that the gods do not intervene in human affairs. The Lusiads involves the Olympians in its epic narrative. Poul Anderson's Hugh Valland helps a child to imagine and invoke Thor in a high tech future.

Three Threes

The first part of the Technic History comprises three collections, three novels and three extra short stories. The first four volumes - two collections, each containing three stories, followed by two novels - cover the period of the Polesotechnic League and the second novel, Mirkheim, describes the beginning of the end of the League. The Terran War on Avalon begins and ends in the third novel, The People Of The Wind. The third collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, begins and ends on Avalon in the aftermath of that war. The Earth Book collects twelve works set before, during and after the period of the Polesotechnic League. Three of the collected stories describe the early exploration and later colonization of Avalon. Thus, this culminating volume combines the themes of League and Avalon. A third theme, begun in one of the extra short stories and continued in The People Of The Wind and the Earth Book is the Terran Empire which then continues in nine of the later ten volumes of the Technic History. The series seems schematic but grew organically.

The Meaning Of Everything

Harvest Of Stars, 20.

"'Demeter, only live planet we've reached, yes, but primitive and doomed and all it does is make me wonder what everything means if life is so rare an accident.'" (p. 195)

Why should everything mean anything? How can it? What a word means is what it refers to or how it is used. What does "man" refer to? How is "if" used? Everything cannot refer to anything other than itself and cannot be used linguistically. Would everything mean something if life were abundant? 

Another meaning of "meaning" is value. I think that we value life more if it is rarer? That is enough about the meaning of everything.

Festival And Futures

Lancaster Music Festival prevented me from rereading Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars but not from repeatedly reflecting on the same author's Technic History for two days. Hence, the previous eight posts. Every other future history seems flat and linear by comparison. Of course, we are not always comparing like with like. Anderson's Genesis is a single volume, not a series, and also is a very different kind of futuristic speculation. The Technic History began not as speculation but as space opera but then transformed its cliched setting of the Terran Empire into genuine discussion of civilizational cycles. The many extra-solar planets and their inhabitants are scientifically conceived and creatively imagined. Pulp magazine green monsters became a credible intelligent species with many histories and cultures. I still cannot get enough of the Technic History.

Reading Orders IIIb

See Reading Orders III.

In fact, the first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," had to be revised before it could be incorporated into the Technic History and for this reason was not included, although it was quoted, in the van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars, which was also the first Technic History collection. The revised "Margin of Profit" was included in the third collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

Between Trader... and the Earth Book, the second collection, The Trouble Twisters, did present David Falkayn's career in a chronological sequence. This volume collects three stories constituting a "Young Falkayn" Trilogy. He is respectively:

apprenticed to Martin Schuster;

a journeyman and factor in Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors company;

a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League, appointed by van Rijn to lead the first trade pioneer crew.

In subsequent volumes, Falkayn's career continues to advance:

savior of Merseia;

hero of the Shenn affair (an external threat to Technic civilization);

discoverer of Mirkheim and founder of Supermetals;

instrumental in ending the Babur War;

acting CEO of SSL;

Founder of the joint human-Ythrian colony on Avalon.

I have summarized Falkayn's biography yet again to make the point that it was almost presented in chronological order - but not quite. Mirkheim about the Babur War, which ends with Falkayn as acting CEO, was published in 1977 whereas "Wingless," in which he has founded Avalon, was published in 1973. Also, after closer study of Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, "A Sun Invisible," in which Falkayn is a journeyman, was published in 1966 whereas "Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters," in which he has become a Master Merchant, was published in 1965.

Reading Orders III

This is an impossible supposition but, if the order of writing and the chronological order of fictional events had been identical in the case of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then the stories would have been collected in a multi-volume linear sequence starting with "The Saturn Game" and "Wings of Victory," there would have been no later need to gather together any previously uncollected stories from earlier periods of the history and therefore Hloch's introductions to The Earth Book Of Stormgate would not have been written and would not have made their substantial contributions to the series.

However, a series as long and complicated as the Technic History could not have been conceived and constructed as a linear narrative:

the Young Flandry Trilogy was written after the Captain Flandry series;

the "young Adzel" story, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," was written after Adzel had been introduced as a member of the trader team and indeed this juvenile short story written for a different market is an expansion of a short passage of dialogue in the first trader team story;

it was retroactively decided that the interstellar empire founded by Manuel Argos was the same one later defended by Dominic Flandry; 

the Ythrians, who are present throughout most of the history and almost from its beginning, were introduced en bloc in a single creative burst in 1972-'73.

The manner of the writing of the series affects its structure.

League And Empire

Since the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire began as unrelated series, we appreciate their integration as earlier and later periods of the single Technic History. In The Earth Book Of Stormgate, Hloch recapitulates the history of the League from the perspective of the Imperial period. Dominic Flandry of the Empire would prefer to have lived in the time of the League. Van Rijn of the League is a legendary figure on some planets in Flandry's time when one planet is called Vanrijn. Chunderban Desai of the Empire judges that Technic civilization went wrong when the League became cartelized. And finally the whole of Technic history is summarized in the time of the later Commonalty:

"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 722.

Amen to interstellar peace and what an astounding historical panorama.