On The Highroad River

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TEN.

The Waterblossom proceeds, slowly because it is "...ponderous and heavily laden..." (p. 297), from Paz de la Frontera towards the Cynthian town of Lulach. At first, there are teeming rowboats and hydrofoils but later only barges and a towed timber raft. The brown, sheening, murmurous river is two kilometres wide with forested banks. Fliers dart and skim. It is quiet and cool. On horizonless Daedalus, Diana sees the river valley receding as if to infinity, toylike snowpeaks, a far away gleam that is the ocean and sunlight spreading into a ring instead of disappearing. Day becomes dusk, not night. She sees Imhotep and Icarus - another planet and a moon - but no stars except a few scattered points. Axor praises the Creator.

And now, in Lancaster, a Sunday walk, possibly along the river or the canal or towards the Bay.

On The Waterfront

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER NINE. 

The waterfront at Paz de la Frontera has warehouses, wharfs, watercraft, bustling human and nonhuman beings and scurrying machines and:

"Beyond, the stream flowed broad and brown." (p. 294)

"...broad and brown..." is familiar. See no less than seven other rivers described in works by Poul Anderson that are quoted in posts linked here.

The description of the scene from the wharf continues:

"The opposite shore was dimmed by a thickening rain." (ibid.)

Next come the reactions of two of the characters:

"Shan U registered a feline dislike of the wet, but Diana welcomed its warm sluicing. She felt cleansed." (ibid.)

Diana needs cleansing because she has just had to fight off four human males with a Tigery knife.

Shan U is a Cynthian and this species is squirrel-like although here his response to the rain is described as "feline" and one of Diana's assailants had described him as a "'...monkey-cat.'" (p. 292)

No single comparison will be quite accurate. The attached cover image shows Diana not with a Cynthian but with a Tigery disguised as a performing animal.

Down The Stream

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER NINE.

And now for another change of pace. Diana Crowfeather thinks:

"How good it'll be, floatin' quietly down the river with Axor..." (p. 294)

This is almost entirely a personal association but that is part of the experience of reading a rich text. I recently committed to memory one of the best short poems in English:

(Image copied from here.)

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky

By Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —

Lingering in the golden gleam —

Life, what is it but a dream?

-copied from here.

Alice Pleasance Liddell drifts; Diana Crowfeather floats:

"...under skies

"Never seen by waking eyes."

We thank Lewis Carroll and Poul Anderson.

Parallels

In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, CHAPTER FOUR.

An alternative history comments on our history:

"'...that's a stereotype. Like the unemotional half-Martian Science Officer on the Federation Starship New Frontier...'" (p. 105)

"'If the ancients hadn't given us an interesting couple of planets to explore and squabble over -'

"'And the ancients themselves to worry about,' he put in.

"'- and that, odds are we'd have destroyed Earth by now.'" (p. 107)

This dialogue is set in 2000 AD. We have not destroyed Earth yet - by 2026 - but it is not for want of trying!

CHAPTER FIVE reveals that the 1970s films about an archaeologist with a bullwhip were set on Venus.

See also:

Eutopia, Westfall And America

Oblique Commentaries

Imagine individuals living in and accepting each of these alternative histories.

From Trojans To Terrans

The immediately preceding post proceeded from Trojans via Greeks and Romans to Terrans and we skipped past some intermediate stages like British and Americans! There really were people who believed that the British Empire would last forever because the British were the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and their Empire was the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham and this world-view is echoed in one timeline of Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse where Shakespeare is the Great Historian so (it is argued that) the English were everywhere in antiquity - except that I am getting mixed up between British and English.

Sometimes imagination and ingenuity are invested in interpreting scriptural and historical texts to sanctify preconceived conclusions like the Anglo-Israel theory outlined above. A far more productive use of any author's imaginative and intellectual abilities is to create works of acknowledged fiction which can, e.g., envisage future empires without insisting that any such empires will come about! All that we do know for certain about the future is that it will be unlike what anyone has imagined. I think that it is the task of sf writers to convey that: novelty and unpredictability.

Historical Connections

In terms of film adaptations, I would have preferred The Iliad before The Odyssey and The Aeneid after it. Virgil's Aeneid, presenting Aeneas from Troy as an ancestor of Romulus, founder of Rome, and prophesying an endless empire for the eternal city, connects with:

(i) Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series which shows -

an alternative outcome of the second war between Rome and Carthage;

a potential alternative outcome of the Northern Revolt in the Roman Empire;

Goths rejecting or responding to Roman/Christian influence;

Britain after Roman withdrawal;

(ii) Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy about the decline of the Western Roman Empire;

(iii) Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, set in the Eastern Roman Empire;

(iv) SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series about an alternative Roman Empire;

(v) Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization which features an eventual Terran Empire.

See also the blog search result for "Ilion."

My mind boggles!

Of course, the Aeneid connects with much more, e.g., Dante's Inferno, but it is the works by the Andersons and Stirling that mostly concern us here.

Narratives About Something

Recently I tried rereading some sf from years ago but did not read it to the end. I realize now that what I wanted then was stories about people in spaceships, not stories that were about something and that also happened to feature people in spaceships. Poul Anderson's first few Dominic Flandry stories are space opera but his later Flandry novels are about historical processes and alien evolution. The Merseians are transformed from cliched villains into a plausible species. The Technic History incorporates the lengthy Flandry series and, as we know, another entire series with additional stories set before, between and after, thus making it, in my opinion, the most complete future history series.

The film, The Odyssey, expresses concern about the decline of civilization, an issue that was not present in the Homeric epic but that is relevant now and was expressed by Poul Anderson. 

A Real Mars?

SM Stirling's In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings reads as if it is about a real Mars (not our real one, of course!) which other versions merely hint at. That is what writers of fiction try to do. CS Lewis tells us, quite legitimately, that HG Wells' Martians are very different from the real Martians... My other general observations are, first, that I strongly dislike Stirling's Martians' attitudes to life and to each other and, secondly, that I still find them rather complicated and convoluted to read about but that last point just means that I need to persevere as a reader.

And the relevance of all this to Poul Anderson is that, both for comparative purposes and also for their own sakes, Anderson presents more fictional Martians than any other sf writer, even Heinlein.

In a short post, and without initially intending to, we have referred to no less than Stirling, Lewis, Wells, Anderson and Heinlein - and will now stop short of listing others especially at this time of night!

Good night or whatever time of day it may be where you are now.

A Trip

Here at Blog Central, we are on an "all one universe" trip because:

Percy Shelley wrote -

"A new Ulysses leaves once more

"Calypso for his native shore.";

Poul Anderson quoted those lines in Trader To The Stars;

Ulysses is Odysseus;

we have just had a family outing to the film, The Odyssey;

in that film, of course, Odysseus leaves Calypso for his native shore.

And now your friendly neighbourhood blogger needs some food and drink after hours at the cinema. 

We might be more focused laterz.

Some Comparisons

At a Memorial Evening for James Blish, the publisher, Charles Monteith, described Blish's Cities In Flight as "a greater and higher Star Trek." We can make a similar comparison with Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In Star Trek, there are many intelligent species and perhaps two main ones:

Klingons

Vulcans/Romulans

In the Technic History, there are many intelligent species and perhaps four main ones:

Merseians

Ythrians

Wodenites

Cynthians

Wodenites and Cynthians are mainly represented through individuals:

Adzel, then Axor;

Chee Lan - and some others.

But perhaps the closest parallel to Spock is the Chereionite, Aycharaych: pointed ears and a more powerful telepath but on the other side.

Trekkies should read Anderson and Blish.