On p. 163, Wing Alak visits Yamen's tavern:
photoelectric doors;
crowded;
the sweepings of space;
many nonhumans from remote planets;
dim light;
smoke;
live show;
tiny stage;
small table;
dark corner;
coin into vendor for warm, thin beer from chute;
approached by a slithering, dragonlike, reptilian, drug-peddling Rassalan with "beadlly" (?) eyes, addicted to acrid, poisonous vurzin.
Some of Poul Anderson's taverns are underworld joints and this is.
This Galactic League does rule some non-human beings. Sirians have tendrils and Mordhans have four arms.
Poul Anderson had an early grasp of pathetic fallacy. Red firelight seems to splash the twelve Mordhan earls with blood. And is their number significant?
"Outside the windows, the mighty autumn wind flung sleet and rain at the castle walls and roared about its towers." (p. 161)
Atmospheric and dramatic! By now we always notice Andersonian wind. We expect it to underline or punctuate the dialogue and it does. The text continues:
"Dorlock who had called the meeting, spoke first. His deep voice was low, and the storm snarled over and around its rumble..." (ibid.)
One passage about Sirians and another about Mordhans inform readers that the League rules through deceit, deception, corruption and seduction. Sf is about alternatives.
This opening passage of the first Wing Alak story, originally published in 1949, addresses political and military relationships between planetary governments and a Galactic government but does not describe any particular planet's physical environment or galactic location. The viewpoint character is on an extrasolar planet but also in a hotel room which could just as well have been in future New York. In that kind of sf, other planets were effectively empty stages for human-alien or even just human-human interactions.
Yet to come were the days when:
human beings explore Ythri out beyond Alpha and Beta Crucis;
Ythrians, employing some human beings, explore Gray, later renamed Avalon, which is in the same region of space;
human beings and Ythrians jointly colonize Avalon, first the Hesperian Islands, then the Coronan continent;
at last, Avalon is fully populated by both species and is part of the Domain of Ythri which is attacked by the Terran Empire;
thus, there are political and military interactions but between fully realized fictional worlds;
human beings have also colonized Hermes, Dennitza and other planets which are as fully realized as Ythri and Avalon.
I did not set out to post about the Technic History but have wound up doing so. But Wing Alak is still on our radar.
OK. We begin to read the Wing Alak trilogy over Sunday breakfast after meditating and before walking to the gym so we will not penetrate very far into this first story this morning.
A planetary premier whips up his excitable population over their telescreens, declaring war on the League government and its Patrol. He will lead the Galaxy and refers to:
"'...man's tortured history.'" (p. 157)
Thinking quickly, sf readers deduce that this story is set in a future period when human beings have long been settled on planets throughout the galaxy.
Our viewpoint character, listening to the premier's speech in his hotel room, is called Wing Alak, a name that discloses nothing. However, when he is arrested, Alak is addressed as:
"'Wing Alak of Sol III...'" (p. 158)
- even though he has been posing as:
"'...Gol Duhinator of Maxlan IV...'" (ibid.)
The alert sf reader is thus informed that Alak is an undercover operative from Earth - probably capital planet of the League. Maxlan has to be a star, the planet where this is happening is called Luan and Luan's immediate grievance is that the League has given Lhing to Marhal:
"'...as a political bribe...'" (p. 157)
- according to the enraged Premier, Tranis Voal.
Stay tuned.
(The NESFA volume is too bulky to carry to the gym. However, I have two paperback volumes to take to read over lunch after an hour of exercise.)
"The Double-Dyed Villains" is in Call Me Joe (see image);
"Enough Rope" and "The Live Coward" are in Kinship With The Stars.
The author's short introduction to "The Live Coward" reads:
the Time Patrol series combines historical fiction with sf (time travel);
The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson) combines historical fiction with fantasy (gods);
the History of Technic Civilization is not historical fiction but future history.
But what a comprehensive list of genres!
Time Patrol, Ys and Technic History are surely the main three? The later Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, a different style of future history, is comparable in length although not as substantial in content - in my opinion.
But what an amazing list of series, these five and others by Anderson. His first future history series, the Psychotechnic History, pales in comparison with its major successor, the Technic History, but remains a Heinleinian future history nevertheless.
OK. This story does bear some further analysis. That early expository passage, the broadcast address, not only sets the scene but also plays a role in the eventual action. First, the speaker's remark that wars had escalated made the narrator reflect that assassinations might escalate. Secondly, the fact that the speaker was not only an academic but also a leader in a major political party, although not one that held office as yet, made the narrator think that he, the speaker, might be the next target - the enemy eliminating national leaders even before they become national leaders. In fact, the narrator has a moment of realization:
"...we are the kings who die for the people..." (p. 201)
Ideas are being recycled.
The enemy sets out to assassinate not only current political leaders but also talented younger people who might become future leaders. Thus, the assassination system escalates just as war had done and the story ends not with a conclusion but with a question:
"'Where is it going to end?'" (p. 209)
The narrative had seemed to meander but this turns out to have been its destination point. OK. We can now move on to something else.
sf about future political conflicts like Poul Anderson's "The Pugilist," "A Man To My Wounding" etc;
the current news;
recent political historical works like Bye Bye Blackshirt: the fight against Oswald Mosley, antisemitism, and the British Union of Fascists, 1934-1936, by Mark Krantz who signed a copy for me at a book launch meeting last night.
Futuristic sf is part of this spectrum, commenting on the time in which it is written and the recent past.
I am finding "A Man To My Wounding" somewhat heavy going but will persevere until the end, knowing that something is always to be learned from reading anything written by Poul Anderson.
(Book launch and other meetings are held in a Methodist Church Centre. We walk through a very lively Food Bank to get to the meeting room. All human life is here - or some of it, at least. The Centre is just off Dalton Square with the Town Hall and the statue of Queen Victoria.)
