Meeting Manuel Argos

Manse Everard only works here. See The Quotable Time Patrol and "I only work here."

Dominic Flandry only works here. See "I only work here" II.

Kathryn McCormac says that we only live here. See "We only live here..."

John Reeves, captured by the alien barbarian Gorzuni and herded with other prisoners aboard one of their space tenders, notices that the drunk Gorzuni medic who inspects the prisoners and beheads any that are too sickly is assisted by a man whom Reeves addresses as, "'You filthy bastard...'" ("The Star Plunderer," p. 334)

The man, indicating his iron collar, replies, "'I only work here, Lieutenant...'" (ibid.)

The prisoners have already been forced to strip but the medic's assistant had noticed Reeves' uniform and now takes no offense at Reeves' remark. Indeed, he is noting who will help him to overthrow the Gorzuni. This is Manuel Argos. 

"I only work here" II

Manse Everard and Dominic Flandry have in common that both do Intelligence work and both say, "'...I only work here...'" For Everard, see here.

When Max Abrams, chief of Terran Intelligence on Starkad, asks Flandry what he thinks of the Terran mission on Starkad, Flandry replies:

"'Sir, I only work here, as they say. But...'"
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT Chapter Five, p. 41.

He then goes on to formulate a question to which Abrams responds:

"'Confidentially...my main task is to find the answer to that. I haven't succeeded yet.'" (ibid.)

The question is this: the Terrans are on Starkad to contain Merseian expansionism but why are the Merseians there in the first place?

Flandry is already able to identify the key question and it is not long before Abrams suggests that he transfer to Intelligence.

"I only work here."

"'Have you gotten any word since your first report?'
"'Yes. I have not passed it on, because it is very incomplete. Better to assemble a coherent picture first, I assume.' As a matter of fact, it was not, but Everard didn't press the point."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 327.

This quotation highlights a few points. First, much of what the Time Patrol does is Intelligence work. Patrolmen gather intelligence not about other countries but about other times or timelines but it is Intelligence work nevertheless. Secondly, work in any large organization requires continual cooperation, coordination and checking of what colleagues are doing, especially when they have moved away from their own original area of expertise. A historian waits for a coherent picture whereas an Intelligence officer welcomes every single datum as soon as he can get it.

After all the training and induction, we still have finite, fallible human beings working with or around but hopefully not against each other. How much bad practice is out there? Think of some of the teachers you endured. I think about some of the teaching and other services that I provided...

A third point is that we can know that someone is wrong but also that it would not be helpful to challenge him about it right away. In a staff meeting, my boss answered a question by saying, "Paul's dealing with that." I wasn't but it would not have been right to contradict him in front of others.

Finally, Everard has the best attitude to work that I have come across:

"The universe isn't for the likes of me to understand. I only work here." (p. 261)

Ensign Flandry: Some Minor Points

Dwyr's password, "Meshuggah," is Yiddish for "crazy" or "senseless."
-Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 132.

Flandry's surprisingly frank assessment of the Terran Embassy to Merseia:

"This is no police or military center, wasn't geared to violence, only created violence for others to quell." (p. 135)

He also says:

"'That's for the statesmen, though, I'm told. I only work here.'" (p. 137)

We recognize the phrase, "I only work here," from earlier in this novel and from elsewhere. See here. Workers' control would abolish the distinction between workers and decision-makers.

When I have more time, we will take a longer look at Dwyr.

"We only live here..."

Both Manse Everard and Dominic Flandry say, "I only work here!" See here. Kathryn McCormac says, "'We only live here...'"

"'...somebody's got to command. It's your duty...
"'Dominic, we didn't make this carnivore universe. We only live here, and have to try and cope.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT Chapter Eight, p. 449.

Does someone have to command? If fewer people sought military careers, then maybe governments would learn to settle their differences less violently? I used to argue for the kind of pacificism that Max Abrams condemns at the end of Ensign Flandry. Now I am glad to read that British Muslims have been acquitted from a charge of violent disorder that was brought when they defended themselves against a racist attack.

I think that, with abundant energy and education, future societies will be able to make war redundant:

" 'Why?...A whole galaxy. A whole universe, a technology that could make every last livin' bein' rich - why are we and they locked in this senseless feud?'

"When technology has reached...a certain level...weapons are redundant. When you already have...all that you need, then...why fight?" 

-both quotations copied from Interstellar Wealth. 

Issues In Mirkheim

Times Three

In my opinion, Mirkheim by Poul Anderson is:

a good novel;
a good science fiction (sf) novel;
a good political novel.

Novel: it shows conflict and change, including age, in the lives of its characters.

Sf novel: its superb premise is that the core of a sufficiently large planet will survive a supernova and will then be coated with industrially valuable supermetals.

Political novel: it shows political changes both in the Solar Commonwealth and on the planet Hermes and its characters express every possible view - they are conservatives, aristocrats, bureaucrats, pragmatists, reformers, liberals, imperialists, faithful retainers, malcontents and a revolutionary seen as either fanatical or idealistic. It is also made clear that some social changes do occur whatever view is taken of them.

When reading The Time Machine by HG Wells, I enjoy the colourful detailed description of "time travelling" and engage with the characters' philosophical discussion, indeed with their Platonic dialogue, about the nature of time and the possibility or otherwise of "time travelling." Similarly, I enjoy Mirkheim and respect Anderson's views, which do shine through the fiction, by taking them seriously and by sometimes disagreeing with them. Here, I aim to indicate areas of disagreement but not to discuss them fully. I want to continue enjoying the fiction and to conduct political arguments in more appropriate arenas elsewhere. But disagreements should be mentioned here. Political opponents often ascribe discreditable motives to each other. I am convinced that Anderson advocated views which he saw as the most beneficial for society as a whole.
 

Issues

(i) "'...the issue has been what shall be the final arbiter. The state, which in the last analysis relies on physical coercion; or a changeable group of individuals, whose only power is economic...Oh, I know it's nowhere near that simple. Either kind of leadership might appeal to emotion, for instance - yes, does, in fact, because at bottom the choice between them is a matter of how you feel, how you see the universe. And of course they melt into each other.'" (1)
 

The speaker then says that, on Hermes, the state arose from private corporations and that, in the Commonwealth, a consortium of big corporations has become part of the state, strengthening its control and gaining its protection from competition. It is clear that Anderson regards the latter, "Home Companies," arrangement as bad. It is less clear what he thinks about Hermes. 
 

I wanted to comment, "It's not that simple," and "economic and political power are connected," but Anderson builds these points into his character's exposition. That is what makes this a comprehensive novel and a well-rounded discussion within the novel. The exposition makes the state sound simply (as opposed to relatively!) undesirable and also arbitrary. Surely the state, the body of armed men, the instrument of social coercion, arose with the accumulation of private property? Those who wield economic power need laws to protect property and a state (police, courts, prisons) to enforce the laws.

Their power also relies on coercion. We cannot be compelled to buy their products? Well, we have to buy some products to survive. And we have to work to be paid to be able to buy any products. And we create more value than the value of our labor power which is what we are paid in a market economy. Otherwise, there would be no profits or wealth for an investing minority. Of necessity, under present economic arrangements, most of us work for someone else, an employer, not for ourselves, our community. Society could be organized differently, I think. How? That does need discussion elsewhere.

Moving on -

(ii) "'After a while, the great bankers were not just handling money, they were creating it, with a vested interest in inflation.'" (2)
 

I agree but can this be prevented in a market economy? Bankers do not merely store or safeguard wealth. They lend money that is not theirs, lend more than is in their possession, charge interest and gamble that most, not necessarily all, borrowers can generate enough wealth to return the loan with interest. How does the part of capital that controls material production come to be in debt to the part of capital that makes marks on paper (or on computer screens)? If a debt is not repaid, where or what exactly was the money that was lent in the first place? Since money originated as a standardized means of exchange and an improvement on barter, can industrial capital not function without such a massive involvement of finance capital? Here I have only questions although again I do think that a different socio-economic system is possible.

(iii) Anderson introduces a fisherman and independent ship owner merely to have him state a political position which includes:

"'...once a government starts dividing property up, where does it stop? I worked hard for what I have, and I mean for my youngsters to have it after me - not a cluttle of zeds who can't be bothered to do anything for themselves save fart in unison when their glorious leader says to.'" (3)

Please! I accept that this is an authentic character and that there are people who take this sort of view and express it in this kind of language. But the majority who are not self-employed, who do not own their own ship (their own means of production), who are obliged to support their own "youngsters" by earning a wage or salary are not zeds who can't be bothered to do anything for themselves. If that majority builds a co-operative economy on Hermes, then they will do it by collective action, not by following a leader. I suggest that, if they continue to eat fish, then they could continue to buy it from independent operators like this Captain Romney and his heirs as long as those heirs are indeed willing to continue in his line of business. (There might be one or two of them who "can't be bothered to do anything for themselves"?) But, however the transaction is conducted, the Romneys or other independent traders will not be able to accumulate capital to invest in the labor of others. Those others, in a planetary co-operative, commune or whatever we want to call it, would have an equal stake in and responsibility for social labor.

(iv) "A set of ineffective but self-perpetuating welfare programs helped produce the votes useful for maintaining the corporate state." (2)

I think Anderson and I would have agreed that an industrial market economy generates more workers than work. The unemployed, the reserve army of labor, must be maintained for when they are needed. Other groups, the old, the sick and the disabled, have a claim on resources, however this is organized. Programs are "ineffective" when they are not a priority. Do they produce votes? The media can instigate hostility to welfare.

(v) "No system that mortals devise is perfect; all break their share of lives...those would always exist who did not have the special abilities or the plain luck...some were poisonously embittered." (4)

(I must summarize but Anderson's prose deserves to be read in full.) Here, Anderson acknowledges that the system he favors embitters some. I do not agree that all mortal systems have to break lives. Later in the Technic History, a character refers to:

"'...a technology that could make every last livin' being rich...'" (5)

(vi) "...that large percentage of mankind which never really wanted to be free...a majority yearned for security...A more active minority wanted solidarity behind exciting causes, and thought that everybody else should desire the same thing." (4)

Most of us don't want to be free? Most people dislike living under a dictatorship and, indeed, masses have moved, are now moving, to overthrow them. Certainly many of us do not aspire to run our own businesses in a market economy. Security is a reasonable aim within sensible limits. Life is insecure but I would feel safer if Earth had a laser defense system against comets and asteroids, for example.

"...exciting causes..." is a put down. There are some important causes. Most of the time, they are the concerns of minorities but there are times when the majority in a country acts.

(vii) When Falkayn is told that the Hermetian domains will be "democratised" and will conduct all their operations through a central trade authority, he comments:

"'A good, solid basis for a totalitarian state...'" (6)

Surely democracy and totalitarianism are opposites? Yes, but enforced "democratisation" is not democracy so I agree with Falkayn here. Also, a central authority controlling trade is a (potentially totalitarian) bureaucracy.
 

(viii) The Solar government will:

"...put the administration of private pension funds credited to employees who were citizens of the Commonwealth under the control of their unions." (7)

Van Rijn objects because unions are tied in with government and he does not want the latter running his business. My first thought was that workers' elected representatives should control how their pension money is invested. But, of course, it matters how democratic the unions are. Anderson shows union leaders as big investors fully co-operating with management to control the workforce. (2) My experience of work tells me that rank and file shop floor workers often need to organize both against management and against the intermediate social layer of trade union bureaucrats, many of whom are not elected officers but professionals employed by unions.

(ix) "Anti-trust actions penalised efficient management to the satisfaction of the less enterprising." (2)

This sounds like a squabble between capitalists in which I need not take sides! However, I hope technology will liberate humanity, not profit the "enterprising."

This is only one reader's response. It is good to get this much discussion from an sf novel. 

(1) Poul Anderson, Mirkheim, London, 1978, p. 132.
(2) ibid., p. 106.
(3) ibid., p. 172.
(4) ibid., p. 104.
(5) Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire, New York, 1985, p. 166.
(6) Mirkheim, p. 167.
(7) ibid., p. 12.

TEXTUAL CRAWL FOR FLANDRY MOVIES, by Sean M. Brooks

I have long been dissatisfied by most allegedly "science fiction" movies and TV shows.  I've seen very little of either real science or at least semi-plausible speculative advances of science in them.  And I have to say that most of them are also unsatisfactory when it comes to extrapolating possible changes, advances, retrogressions, etc., in both human and non human societies in the future.  And that reminds me of how unconvincing I've seen speculative depictions of what non human alien races LOOK like.

Poul Anderson was and is one of the few science fiction writers who have really pleased and satisfied me as regards the points I listed in the prior paragraph.  Even when he goes beyond what we currently know in the sciences, he is careful to explain how things like a FTL drive MIGHT work (and SOME scientists don't totally dismiss FTL as a possibility).  Anderson is also very convincing in showing how human societies of the future might arise and work.  And I especially admire the skill and care in how he worked out ways non human intelligent races might evolve, live, think, organize themselves into societies, etc.

I have long wished some adventurous movie producer or director would take a chance and try filming versions of some of Anderson's stories and novels. It's my view that cinematic versions of his Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry tales would be good candidates for such an effort.  I have thought that a good choice for such an experiment would be a filmed version of Anderson's "The Game Of Glory."  Because that story might need only minimal special effects and could be filmed mostly in, say, the Bahamas Islands.  I think a film like that would be a good way for a producer/director to gain experience in how to satisfactorily produce cinematic versions of some of Anderson's stories.

Here I digress a bit.  Many of the STAR WARS movies famously begins with a textual crawl beginning with the words "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."  The purpose of the textual crawl is to impart to viewers some background information and help set the mood desired for watching the movies.  It's my belief that any filmed versions of the Nicholas van Rijn or Dominic Flandry stories should begin with a similar textual crawl.  AND, a text that could be used for introducing any Flandry movies already exists.  I have a first edition hardback  copy of Anderson's collection FLANDRY OF TERRA (Chilton Books: 1965).  The jacket cover text for this edition would, with some editing, make a very good textual crawl for these hypothetical Flandry movies.  The text below was copied from the book jacket.

Captain Sir Dominic Flandry of Terra's Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps returns, dashing and debonair as ever, for more adventures among the stars

Long before Flandry was born, mankind had spread widely through the galaxy.  Humans had colonized many strange planets.  Then came a Time of Troubles out of which eventually arose the Terran Empire, rich and peaceful.  But some of those ancient colonies had been lost, and in these lost colonies, civilization had gone its own curious ways.

Now the Empire has grown old.  It wants nothing but peace in which to enjoy the pleasures of its wealth.  No longer are the barbarians and the rival, non-human powers held at bay.  Hungrily, they press inward.  Only a few devoted men risk their lives to stop the march against mankind.

Captain Flandry is one of these.  Spying, intriguing, fighting--joking, drinking, wenching--he goes from world to world on his lonely missions.

The text quoted above was a general summary--next came material specifically relating to the stories in FLANDRY OF TERRA.  The material I'll be quoting should be included after the text quoted above for the movies made for different stories.  For Nyanza, the planet seen in "The Game Of Glory," the book jacket said: "One such involves a world of ocean, settled by humans of African descent long before.  Somewhere, hidden from prying eyes, is an enemy agent--and what an agent!  He has to be found, and found at once, all one hundred feet of him!"

The text I'll be quoting here should be placed after the indented material I quoted above for any filmed versions of "A Message In Secret":  "Next, rumors reach Flandry of suspicious goings on through the chilly plains and polar snows of Altai, the lost ice world settled by clans of Mongols.  He suspects that Merseia, Terra's great enemy, is somehow involved, and goes there to see for himself.  At first the Kha Khan receives him hospitably, even sending him a girl from the royal harem.  But this girl blurts out the truth, that Merseian agents are indeed at work to turn Altai into a military base.  Flandry has to escape the palace to save his life and hers.  Then he has to warn Terra--and he is cut off in the wilderness, with no way to get at a spaceship. The best of fighting men can accomplish only so much; after that, he must depend on his own wits."  And I especially admired the ingenious way Flandry found for getting a message sent to the Empire!

This is what the book jacket said about the last story in FLANDRY OF TERRA, "The Plague Of Masters": "Unan Besar is almost the opposite of Altai.  This is a warm, rainy planet whose civilization has developed from a Malayan stock.  It looks peaceful, backward, even idyllic.  But Flandry soon finds it is under a ruthless scientific tyranny.  And almost at once, the agents of that government are out to kill him.  He takes refuge in the slums, is captured by Kemul the mugger, and brought before beautiful, catlike Luang.  His first need is a supply of those pills without which men soon die in the poisonous atmosphere of Unan Besar.  After that he must get off the planet and break the stranglehold of its government.  But Luang shows no particular interest in helping him."

I think the text about Unan Besar should be edited before being placed at the beginning of any filmed version of "The Plague Of Masters."  First, I would eliminate as unnecessary the mention of Altai.  Second, I think too much is given away about the plot of the story with the mention of how a special medicine is needed for human beings to continue living on Unan Besar.

IF done well I think any filmed versions of stories featuring Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry would be better, more convincing, than the STAR WARS or STAR TREK shows and movies.

An Incompletely Critical Look at DAGGERS IN DARKNESS, by Sean M. Brooks

I am calling this article of mine "incomplete" because I am commenting only on some of the highlights in that book which especially caught my attention the first time I read it. DAGGERS IN DARKNESS is the latest in the series of linked novels by S.M. Stirling which features Luz  O'Malley, an Irish American/Cuban field agent of the Black Chamber, an Intelligence agency created by President Theodore Roosevelt in an alternate universe where he won the Presidential election of 1912, after the premature death of President William Taft opened the  way to TR's victory.

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS gradually shows us how Luz and Ciara were coming into usually violent contact with increasingly senior agents of "The Mad Baron," Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a real, historical person who in our timeline briefly succeeded in making himself ruler of Mongolia in 1921. In the Black Chamber universe he came to rule Mongolia earlier and succeeded in staying in power.  His ambitions of gaining chemical weapons and the steps he took for achieving that were what drew the attention of the US and the Black Chamber to him.

 

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS opens in 1922, after WW I ended in a drastically different way from the Great War of our timeline. The US had conquered Mexico and annexed Canada; a Greater German Reich overran France and vast parts of eastern Europe and Russia; the British Empire was forced to evacuate Great Britain and relocate to India; Japan seized eastern Siberia, Manchuria, and chunks of China.

 

In the US, Theodore Roosevelt's "Progressive Republican" policies were so popular and seemingly successful that he had become virtually President for Life, easily winning every election since 1912. One of the things that first caught my eye and which I thought deserving of comment was this bit from Chapter 1, pages 8-9, about TR's eldest son Theodore: "Organizing the American Legion for veterans in '18 had shown he could move men to action in peacetime by his words and force of personality. The job in Manila [as Governor General of the Philippines] was a chance to show what he could do as an administrator. If he did well in it, there was no reason he couldn't be President himself someday, perhaps after a stint in a Cabinet post... Secretary of State or War, say... or nomination as Vice President in '28, and in either case in '32, when the young man was in his prime."

 

The US had become so vastly more powerful and larger that it was more an empire than anything else.  What we are seeing here, whether TR himself understood it, were  the old institutions coming to seem too small and inadequate for managing the demands of ruling an empire. We see TR coming more and more to think in dynastic terms, of his eldest son eventually succeeding him as President. If the younger Theodore governed as successfully as his father and was also blessed with an able son, would that son be proclaimed Emperor of America, instead of being only President?

 

Next, on page 27, I saw this: "Luz and Ciara's theoretically and legally adopted orphans were in biological fact half-sisters who now unmistakably resembled their mothers AND their sire, a man named Sven Lundqvist, who'd met her and Ciara under carefully arranged false circumstances. With the expectation that he'd soon be five thousand miles away and under the impression that his extremely entertaining weekend at a hot-springs resort in West Virginia had been just good luck and charm on his part; in fact his ship had disappeared on the way back to Stockholm; possibly a U-boat, probably a mine."

 

In many ways, I found Luz and Ciara's behavior here open to criticism. They wanted children, but refused to get them by either marrying men or honestly asking a man to knowingly become the father of their children.  I did not like the obvious implication that Luz had no intention of ever telling Sven that he had become the father of four daughters. He too had rights over those children!

 

It was too convenient, to have the hapless Sven Lundqvist disappearing on the way home to Sweden.  It meant there would be no awkward personal and legal difficulties in the future if Sven found out about his hitherto unknown children. It also meant there would be no trouble when the twins started asking questions why there was no father in their lives when other children they knew had fathers. And these children might want to know about Sven's parents and possible brothers and sisters. Which again could be awkward for Luz and Ciara. His too convenient death made that less likely, at least for a long time!

 

Candidly, I thought Luz's treatment of Sven callous and cynical, he was a mere sperm donor for her and Ciara. An impression which this bit from page 161 (Chapter Nine) did not lessen, after Luz learned of how the Swedish ship carrying Sven and other diplomats had been sunk by a German mine or U-Boat early in 1918: "...sinking a Swedish flagged merchant liner not far off the Kattegat, while carrying diplomats back to Stockholm in the spring of 1918. She'd been mildly sorry to hear that via naval connections, and hoped it had been quick at least..." A casually used and discarded sperm donor!

 

I also thought it very implausible that both Luz and Ciara would have twins, and that ALL of those children would be girls. it's far more likely that either Luz or Ciara would have had only one child, not twins. And I thought it very unlikely, even granting that,  that none of them were boys. It was far more likely that at least one or two of them would have been boys. It was too neat and schematic, for Luz and Ciara to both have twins and that all four children were girls.

 

Despite my distaste for the methods Luz took for her and Ciara to get children, that does not mean I am hostile to those children! Colleen, Mary, Patricia, and Luciana are thoroughly likable, bright, active, and energetic. I did wonder if they seemed too ideal, too perfect to be entirely convincing. But, I can see how if, the parents were healthy, intelligent, and free of any overt disabilities, that kind of selective breeding would maximize the chances of any children they had also being intelligent and healthy. But I continue to have my doubts about the plausibility of all four of them being girls.

 

And here is as good a place as any to state frankly I did not like the lesbianism of Luz and Ciara. Because I believe homosexuality is a distorting, a warping of the sexual and reproductive drive. So I read through the more lesbian parts of DAGGERS with resignation.

 

And in Chapter Three, page 66, I saw this: "...plenty of Jews but not as many since the Germans and Austrians plagued them now far less than now-defunct Russia and Romania had before 1914."  The question I had being: what happened to the rest of Russia? I would expect a victorious Germany to annex Russian Poland, the Baltic States, and much of Ukraine, but not ALL of Russia (I assume Austria-Hungary annexed Romania). Because I read of how, in the earlier Black Chamber books, Nicholas II abdicated as Tsar in 1916, with his son succeeding as Alexis II, under the regency of their respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas.  While I would expect the Regent to often be compelled to yield to German demands, I saw no mention of Germany deposing Alexis II and annexing all of Russia at least as far east as the Ural Mountains. But DAGGERS IN DARKNESS seems to clearly indicate that was what happened by 1922. Did Germany seize all of Russia east of Ukraine or not? Was there a Russian remnant state in western Siberia? We see no mention of what happened to Alexis II and the Regent.

 

I don't think Wilhelm II and Paul von Hindenburg would have tolerated a gruesome massacre of the Romanovs, of the kind ordered by Lenin in our timeline, which occurred at Ekaterinberg and Alapayevsk on July 17-18, 1918 in our universe! 

 

I especially loved the Chinese parts of DAGGERS, because of how I went through a Chinese phase earlier in my life, leading me to read a lot about Chinese history, including translations of parts of historical works such as Ssu-ma Chien's RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN.  But I do have one quibble: Stirling's use of Pin Yin for Romanizng Chinese names and words jarred on me, felt like a false note. Because, in OUR timeline (and presumably the Black Chamber's), the Wade-Giles system for Romanizing Chinese words and names is what was actually being used a century ago. Lastly, I simply don't like Pin Yin, "Beijing" strikes me as inelegant and poor English compared to "Peking."

 

Next, a minor point. In Chapter Five, on page 96, I read this: "A big Marine marching band in smart dress blues and billed saucer hats cane first..." It was a mistake for Stirling to say Marines wore HATS, because the Navy (of which the Marines are a part of) insists on calling head wear "covers." A US Navy officer I used to know online made a point of stressing Navy personnel wore COVERS, not "hats."

 

 Mr. Stirling is a scrupulously careful writer. After showing so many of the seemingly beneficial things brought about by the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt's so called "Progressive" Republicans, he was careful to show us some of the darker things underneath the glossy surface. For instance, in the same Chapter Five, on page 103, I read this: "...San Francisco had always been a strong union town, and the Party heartily approved of labor unions, as long as they were safely Party-affiliated." 

 

"SAFELY Party-affiliated"?  I don't like that. It sounds all too ominously like the puppet "unions" controlled by the Communist Party both in and out of the USSR. It looks menacingly like the United States becoming a de facto one party regime ruled by TR's so called "Progressive" Republicans. The text quoted below came from the same page 103 of DAGGERS.

 

   "The International Workers of the World hadn't been. The Wobblies had tried

to call strikes during what they called the capitalist-imperialist Great War. Many

of the Wobbly leaders and militants had been summarily shot in the back of

the head for that under the Espionage Act, as de facto enemy agents, so estab-

lished in nice fair fifteen minute executive-court hearings. Others had been

lynched by local patriots on a free-enterprise basis; one group had been

locked in boxcars and left in the Arizona desert to die of thirst and heatstroke

just to drive home the neighbors disapproval.

 

 "Most of the remainder were still repenting their sins in Federal Bureau

of Security corrective-labor camps in very remote places doing very hard

work for very long days in very unpleasant climates on a diet of just

enough scientifically enriched and fortified corn-and-soy mush to keep

them going; it was also scientifically designed to be absolutely tasteless.

You didn't die of starvation on that, or of scurvy or pellagra, and the

profoundly unsympathetic FBS guards didn't beat you to death with their

lead-weighted rubber truncheons or shoot you or lock you in a small iron

box to broil or freeze... unless you tried to escape or shirked or disobeyed

orders... but after a while you might not want to live very much."

 

The understated sarcasm in the passages I quoted above makes it plain Stirling himself did not approve of how the Wobblies were treated.  And I agree with him!  However much I would disagree with the views of the so called International Workers, they had every right to their own ideas and beliefs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. They should never have been treated so brutally and any trials of the Wobblies should have been in the regular state or US courts, with all the protections granted to accused persons in United States law. AND only for charges based on actual crimes allegedly committed by the Wobblies. Not for mere political opinions.

 

In Chapter Seven, page 136, I saw this: "This is Universal Imports," a voice said at the other end." As all readers of Ian Fleming's James Bond stories should immediately see, Stirling was having a little joke with the "Universal Exports" used as a cover by 007 and other agents of the British Secret Service.

 

Here I digress to touch on a minor misprint I noticed on page 276 (Chapter Fourteen): "Beds of chrysanthemums glowed gold and white and red in the dusk against the green LAWS...."  Of course I realized at once this was simply a misprint and Stirling had meant "lawns."

 

Some of my comments above, especially of Luz and Ciara, were critical. But I don't want readers to think I did not enjoy reading DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. I did! So much so that I stopped taking as many notes as I should have for writing a really satisfactory article about this book. I loved the story and it was a true page turner.

 

DAGGERS is very much an action/adventure novel, and not all readers might care for that, especially the more violent incidents to be found in the book. But Stirling, like Poul Anderson, always added so much more than simple blood and thunder and derring-do to his stories. Many times, through out the tale, readers will find historical and philosophical asides adding richness, depth, and nuance to the plot.  The example I quoted below, selected almost at random, came from Chapter Thirteen, page 268 of DAGGERS, Luz speaking first.

 

"What I've heard is that the Red Gang...the Honghang...and a faction within the

Green Gang...don't want to cooperate with Mr. X. Partly it's a regional thing; the

Red Gang are linked to southern China and the Canton triads, and so are some

elements within the Green Gang. Politics are involved too; the Green and Red

gangs were allied for a while to support Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang a few

years back, before and during the war...they called it the Mutual Progress Asso-

ciation of the Chinese Republic. The Honghang want to revive that."

    "We heard about that," Tommy said. "Didn't come to much, after Yuntai's Dad

declared himself Emperor."

 

Here Stirling shows his knowledge of Chinese history, in particular of how Sun Yat-Sen's base of support was mostly limited to southern China, with the northern provinces either indifferent to or hostile to his aspirations of founding a Republic of China after the fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911-12.  And "Yuntai's Dad" was none other than the treacherous Yuan Shikai who, after deliberately not fighting as hard as he could have for the Ch'ing, made a deal with the naive Sun that in return for forcing the abdication of the last Ch'ing Emperor, Sun would agree to Yuan becoming President of China. In our timeline Yuan tried to secure his grip on power firmly enough that he could proclaim himself Emperor, but failed. In the Black Chamber timeline, he succeeded, but only at the heavy cost of becoming a puppet of Japan. To quote some more from page 268:

 

    It's ever so common, just being a President,"  Holly said, with an ironic quirk

at the corner of her mouth, as she glanced sidelong at the Americans. "Even a

President for life with a son being groomed for the job."

"As opposed to being Lord Protector," Ciara said, her tone equally pawky-dry.

    The fact that he'd chosen Cromwell's title didn't endear Viscount Milner to her,

and she hadn't liked him to begin with. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had

sympathized with the Boers during the South African War and its guerrilla after-

math, and she'd heard a good many stories--some even true--of Milner's and

Kitchener's cruelties when she was an impressionable child.

 

In the Black Chamber's timeline Theodore Roosevelt had become de facto President for Life and was grooming his eldest son to eventually succeed him. And in our history the British had been harsh in breaking Boer resistance to their rule, including the use of concentration camps as a means of doing that. And anyone knowledgeable in British history understands at once what "Lord Protector" means!  All these are good example of how much Stirling could "pack" into his stories.

The Quotable Time Patrol

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006); The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

An appropriately and colorfully illustrated booklet of quotations from Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, divided into at least two sections - descriptive and reflective - would be a good idea. Some of the reflections of a time traveler are simply reflections on time and life.

Everard thinks:

"...that structure [of the plenum] isn't just changeable in time as well as space." (ST, p. 261)

What else is it then? This is allusive writing, hinting at something beyond what seems to be everything, space and time.

Everard continues:

"It seems to be subtler and trickier than they see fit to teach us about at the Academy." (ibid.)

But no one can teach all the lessons of life and experience at an Academy. Anyone who completes professional training and starts work learns de novo from day one. (When I trained as a teacher and started teaching practice in a school, a teacher lounging in his armchair in the staff room came out with the cliche that my College tutors were out of touch with the reality of teaching. I was able to tell him that he was wrong. He should have asked me in the first place. After all, I had just come from the College. My tutors were in touch but only because they had worked for many years as school teachers before becoming College tutors and still maintained very close practical contacts and liaisons with schools.)

"Coincidences can be more than accidents." (ibid.)

Can they? This requires further discussion. I remember reading a very extraordinary story about coincidences concerning the Titanic and two similarly named ships.

"Maybe Jung glimpsed a little of the truth, in his notions about synchrony - I dunno." (ibid.)

So a psychological theory might be relevant to variable time? Does the Patrol covertly consult Jung?

Everard:

"The universe isn't for the likes of me to understand. I only work here." (ibid.)

The universe is where he works! Priceless!

This idea of the quotable Time Patrol has got legs - that means that it is going somewhere - but I really must get my nose away from a lap top screen and do something else for a few hours. Meanwhile, suggestions for quotable phrases, with reasons, are welcome.

God and Alien In Anderson's Technic Civilization by Sean M Brooks

Anyone who has read Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization stories and novels (set in the eras of the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire) will recall how, from time to time, mention is made both of the continuing influence of Christianity and how some non human rational beings converted to Christianity.  Among other things, it means Anderson took as one of his premises the Church deciding that aliens could be baptized.  Some stories also show Buddhism becoming popular with various aliens.

I should cite some evidence to back what I said in the preceding paragraph.  In Chapter VII of A KNIGHT  OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, as Dominic Flandry was landing on the planet Diomedes, this is how the non human port master at the town of Thursday Landing was described: "He was an autochthon, a handsome creature by any standards.  The size of a short man, he stood on backward-bending, talon footed legs.  Brown-furred, the slim body ran out to a broad tail which ended in a fleshy rudder; at its middle, arms and hands were curiously anthropoid; above a massive chest, a long neck bore a round head--high, ridged brow, golden eyes with nictitating membranes, blunt-nosed black muzzled face with fangs and whiskers suggestive of a cat, no external ears but a crest of muscle on top of the skull. From his upper shoulders grew the bat wings, their six-meter span now folded.  He wore a belt to support a pouch, a brassard of authority, and, yes, a crucifix."

Note that last point, the Diomedean was carrying a crucifix, a very well known and prominent Christian symbol.  For any person to do so plainly means he believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Almost certainly, this port master was a baptized Christian.  I also got the impression that Flandry did not think it unusually surprising, in context, to meet a non human with a crucifix.

A prominent character in THE GAME OF EMPIRE is the draco-centauroid non human from the planet Woden named Francis Xavier Axor, a convert to Christianity and Catholic priest. Fr Axor said he studied archaeology in his youth, mentioning off planet scholars coming to excavate the "Foredweller" ruins found on Woden. Axor and his colleagues in the Galilean Order then tied those archaeological excavations to speculations about the Incarnation of Christ occurring on other planets.

When I first read THE GAME OF EMPIRE in 1985, the Galilean Order immediately reminded me of the Jesuits, because of Axor's comment about the Galileans interest in the sciences.  The Jesuits have produced many scholars and scientists.  The Augustinians and Benedictines also came to mind.

Readers who have read the first chapter of THE GAME OF EMPIRE may be reminded of C.S. Lewis' essay "Religion and Rocketry," which can be found in the collection called THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS (Harvest/HBJ).  A few quotes from that paper seems in order.

From page 86:

If there are species, and rational species, other than man, are any, or all of them, like us, fallen?  This is the point non-Christians always seem to forget. They seem to think the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity.  But of course it implies just the reverse; a particular demerit and depravity.  No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician.  Christ died for man precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.  Notice what waves of utterly unwarranted hypothesis these critics of Christianity want us to swim through.  We are now supposing the fall of hypothetically rational creatures whose mere existence is hypothetical!

Lewis was absolutely correct to say that Our Lord became Incarnate as man NOT because of any merit on our part, but because of our depravity.  His comments reminded me of what Fr. Axor said in Chapter 1 of THE GAME OF EMPIRE:

"For see you, young person, some three thousand standard years have passed since Our Lord Jesus Christ walked upon Terra and brought the offer of salvation to fallen man.  Subsequently, upstart humankind has gone forth into the light-years, and with Technic civilization has traveled faith to race after race after race."

Many things are left unstated here, as part of a background both Fr. Axor and Diana Crowfeather understood and took for granted.  Knowledge of the existence of Christianity and its beliefs, a faster than light means of reaching the stars (else it simply would not be possible for mankind to both settle other planets and spread the Faith), the rise of an interstellar civilization enabling these things to happen, non human rational beings coming to believe in Christ, etc.

Fr. Axor goes on to say:

"About such independently space faring beings as the Ymirites, one dares say nothing.  They are too alien.  It may be that they are not fallen and thus have no need of the Word.  But painfully plain it is that every oxygen-breathing species ever encountered is in no state of grace, but prone to sin, error, and death."

I disagree with Fr. Axor's comments about the Ymirites.  The way a Ymirite tried to kill Dominic Flandry (see Chapters IV and V of WE CLAIM THESE STARS!) on the planet Jupiter makes me extremely doubtful Ymirites are un-Fallen.  I do agree that hydrogen breathers living on high pressure/gravity worlds like Jupiter are too alien for oxygen breathers to easily or often interact with.  And the comment about every oxygen breathing race encountered by mankind being "prone to sin, error, and death" has many theological implications.  Which led me to the next quote from Lewis' essay "Religion and Rocketry" (page 86 of THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS).

If all of them (and surely all is a long shot) or any of them have fallen have they been denied Redemption by the Incarnation and Passion of Christ?  For of course it is no very new idea that the eternal Son may, for all we know, have been incarnate in other worlds than earth and so saved other races than ours.

And this ties in with Fr. Axor's quest as he explained to Diana Crowfeather.  I mean his search for evidence that Christ became incarnate to other races than mankind. It's interesting to note how Lewis' comment about Christ becoming incarnate on other worlds is "no very new idea."  The essay I've been quoting from was first published in 1958--which means SOME speculative theologians have wondered about such ideas before then.  Again, I'll quote Fr. Axor (Chapter 1 of THE GAME OF EMPIRE).

"Now Our Lord was born once upon Terra, and charged those who came after with carrying the gospel over the planet.  But what of other planets? Were they to wait for human missionaries?  Or have some of them, at least, been granted the glory of their own Incarnation?  It is not a matter on which most churches have ventured to dogmatize.  Not only are the lives, the souls, so different from world to world, but here and there one nevertheless does find religions which look strangely familiar. Coincidence?  Parallel development?  Or a deeper mystery?"

I would argue that the command of Christ to preach the Gospel to ALL nations in Matthew 28.16-20  includes as a legitimate interpretation the inclusion of non human rational beings on other worlds who have fallen.  And I realize this means first getting a FTL method of reaching the stars.  Fr. Axor's comments above brought to mind these remarks of Lewis in his essay "Religion and Rocketry" (pages 87-88 of THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS):

It might turn out that the redemption of other species differed from ours by working through ours.  There is a hint of something like this in St. Paul (Romans 8.19-23) when he says that the whole creation is longing and waiting to be delivered from some kind of slavery, and that the deliverance will occur only when we, we Christians, fully enter upon our sonship to God and exercise our "glorious liberty."

On the conscious level I believe that he was thinking only of our own Earth: of animal, and probably vegetable, life on Earth being "renewed" or glorified at the glorification of man in Christ.  But it is perhaps possible--it is not necessary--to give his words a cosmic meaning.  It may be that Redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us.

These words caused me to wonder if someday, assuming a FTL drive is invented (as I so strongly hope happens!), that the Catholic Church might preach the Gospel to aliens whose races have fallen.  Fr. Axor commented above that all known oxygen breathing species are "prone to sin, error, and death."  In other words, fallen.  I've also wondered if Poul Anderson read the essay by C.S. Lewis I've been quoting.  Much of what Anderson has Fr. Axor saying in Chapter 1 of THE GAME OF EMPIRE parallels Lewis' comments.

It is my thought that certain texts in the Bible could be interpreted as supporting the idea Christianity can be rightly preached or offered to fallen aliens.  One being Matthew 28.16-20.  But I wish to take a closer look here at Romans 8.19-23: "For the eager longing of creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God.  For creation was made subject to vanity--not by its own will but by reason of him who made it subject--in hope, because creation itself also will be delivered from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God.  For we know all creation groans and travails in pain until now.  And not only it, but we ourselves also who have the first fruits of the Spirit--we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the redemption as sons, the redemption of our body."

It can easily be seen how Lewis could speculate that this text from Romans could be interpreted as meaning that a fallen creation (cosmos) awaits the revelation from Earth of the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Redemption wrought there by Christ.  And that deliverance from this slavery to corruption awaits the offering to aliens of the Gospel of Christ.

It is necessary to immediately stress that this, like the Incarnation of Christ coming among men, does NOT mean any special merit on our part.  As Lewis immediately said after the text I quoted above: "This would no doubt give man a pivotal position.  But such a position need not imply any superiority in us or any favouritism in God."  No, it would mean an ADDITIONAL duty laid on the Church.  Lewis was also careful to speculate in his essay that the vast distances of the other stars and planets from Earth might be a means of quarantining mankind from un fallen non human races--so fallen mankind could not corrupt them.

As Brother Guy Consolmagno wrote in his booklet INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE? (Catholic Truth Society: 2005, pages 33 and 37), the authors of the Bible did not have trouble accepting the existence of non human rational beings.  After all, the angels are not human and they certainly are intelligent!  Dr. Consolmagno uses Psalm 89.6-7a as one example: "The heavens praise your marvels, LORD, your loyalty in the assembly of the holy ones.  Who in the skies ranks with the LORD?"  And Brother Guy quotes John 10.14-16: "I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, even as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for my sheep.  And other sheep I have that are not of this fold.  Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd."  Which makes it easy to think that the sheep not of this "fold" (Earth, mankind) could be intelligent beings on other worlds who have fallen.

I hope readers will be patient as I bring in yet another quote here!  This being from the "Quick Answers" section of the July/August 2000 issue of THIS ROCK (page 45), a Catholic apologetics magazine.  And NO, I was not the one who sent in this question!
(Smiles)

[Q] Is the Catholic Church meant only for the human race?  What if we encounter other intelligent beings in the universe at some point--are we to spread the Catholic faith to them?

[A] It would probably require an ecumenical council to answer your questions.  While the whole area is awfully speculative, here are some considerations you might find useful.  First, there would not seem to be anything wrong with sharing the Christian faith with aliens--that is, telling them what God did on our planet (e.g., becoming incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth).  Conversely, there would seem to be nothing wrong with them sharing with us what God has done on their planet--though we would have to look to the (human) Catholic Church in determining the authenticity of their claims, since it is this Church which has our pastoral care.

Second, any species we encounter may not need the sacraments, since its members may never have fallen from grace.  Or God may have made provisions for their salvation in another way.  Or they may be psychologically configured the way angels are, such that if they fall they are incapable of repenting.  The big question is whether baptism--the gateway to the other sacraments and to membership in the Church--can be given to non-human rational beings.  We haven't had to face this question because on earth we are the only rational beings.  Before arriving at a decision on this question--and in emergency situations only--the Church might allow conditional baptism.  That is, if a dying alien professed belief in Christ and a desire to be baptized, one might use the formula, "If you are capable of receiving baptism, I baptize you in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

This is far too brief a treatment of the subtle and respectful way Poul Anderson treated religion in his Technic History stories.  Especially when I consider how, due to his skill as a writer, that Anderson was able to bring in such ideas without them overwhelming the rest of the stories he set them in.  For example, I have not discussed how Anderson speculated on what might happen as humans and non humans alike affected each other as their different religious ideas and beliefs made contact in stories such as "The Three Cornered Wheel," "The Problem of Pain," or "The Season of Forgiveness."  This essay should be understood as showing how, centuries later under the Terran Empire, speculations of the kind discussed above might reasonably spring from the initial contacts described in the stories I listed.  First, that Christianity might be offered to non humans; second, that both humans and non humans might then wonder whether Christ became incarnate on other worlds besides Terra.

Sean M. Brooks

A Fictional Language

See Fictional Languages II.

Short, snappy posts mean that I am busy but also posting quickly when possible. I hope that this is OK.

I want to show what Alan Moore did with a fictional language because it could be applied to dialogue in sf films. Someone who learned enough of a fictional language might be able to dispense with subtitles. On the other hand, since Poul Anderson told us only a few words or phrases of Planha and Eriau and none of Temporal, these would have to be written by someone else and therefore would not be the work of Anderson himself. I suppose that fully authentic screen adaptations of Technic History stories should not add anything and therefore should just present the dialogue of Ythrians and Merseians in English.

These are extracts only, from Moore's Swamp Thing, with my attempted translations.

p. 10, full page panel
Alanna: ADAM! Duss Maol Qu? (Adam! How are you?)

p. 11, panel 1
Alanna: ADAM? Adam ililoc ba! (Adam? Adam speak to me!)
(Sarnath tells Masmat to go and bring a vehicle called a "glispin" here, then to use it to take him, Adam, to the city of Ranagar. Masmat assents.)

p. 11, panel 2
Sarnath: Duss moal olt? (How is he?)
Alanna: Faor apic-zeta faor hoord ol? (Has the zeta-beam harmed him?)
(I am having to skip past some sentences.)

p. 11, panel 3
Sarnath: Ba thom ESESSU. Apic-zeta tho faor BREMEL ol hoord, claab... (You are not correct. The zeta-beam has not done any harm to him...)
Adam Strange: Green... splashed through it... deep green...
Alanna: SARDATH-CHO! OL ILIOC! Ol ililoc Inglish! Fao ol...? (Sardath! He speaks! He speaks English! What is he...?)

p. 11, panel 4
Sarnath: VIER! GLISPIN doh rette! (See! The "glispin" comes here.)
Alanna: Iu, Adam... (Oh, Adam...)

p. 11, panel 5
Masmat: Bas glispin hege, Sardath-chat. (The "glispin" is here, Sarnath.)
Sarnath: Ael! (Good.) (I cannot interpret his next sentence.)
Alanna: Fao thom hoord ol... (That he is not hurt...)

p. 11, panel 6
Alanna: Iu, Sardath-cho...Faori ol ael-fao? (Oh, Sardath... Will he be alright?)
Sardath: SASSU, Alanna. Sassu... (Wait, Alanna. Wait...) (Or something like that.)

I hope that this conveys something. It is a bit tedious, especially trying to reproduce the melodramatic comic strip punctuation. I would like to quote some more of Moore's dialogue because it suggests what might be done. On the other hand, the pictures, which I cannot reproduce here, supplement the words whereas a prose writer works only with words.

FUTURISTIC SEX by Sean M. Brooks

 

Fair warning to the prurient minded, despite the title of my article, this essay is not pornographic, so get your minds out of the sewers!

 

Over a career in writing spanning more than half a century Poul Anderson used or touched on a vast range of topics. Here I want to note how sex might be used or abused in the future, using his Technic stories for some striking examples.

 

Two basic premises for Anderson's Technic series are (1) a FTL interstellar drive was invented; and (2) many non-human intelligent races were discovered. With these premises many, many possibilities becomes thinkable.

 

I absolutely expect humans in the future to continue using and abusing sex in all the ways we see that being done in the real world, here and now. I also expect sexual encounters between humans and non-humans to happen, especially if these species are not physically repellent to each other.

 

I should also stress that intelligent races which had independently evolved on different worlds over billions of years will not be mutually interfertile. And that will remain true no matter how much two such species resembles each other.

The text quoted below came from Chapter II of A CIRCUS OF HELLS, one of Anderson's stories about Dominic Flandry, Intelligence officer for an interstellar Terran Empire set more than 1000 years from now in the future.

 

Outside a particular joyhouse, otherwise undistinguished

from the rest, an Irumclavian used a vocalizer to chant

in Anglic: "Come one, come all, come in, no cover, no

minimum. Every type of amusement, pleasure, and thrill.

No game too exotic, no stakes too high or low. Continuous

sophisticated entertainment. Delicious food and drink,

stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers, to your

order, to your taste, to your purse. Every sex and every

technique of seventeen, yes, seventeen intelligent species

ready to serve your desires, and this does not count racial,

mutational, and biosculpt variations. Come one, come all--"

 

A little later, in the same chapter,  as Flandry left the "gravshaft" on the level where he was going to a "business" meeting with Leon Ammon, proprietor of this dubious establishment,  we read: "He was glad when Door 666 admitted him; that was on the sado-maso level, and he had glimpsed things. Further on in Chapter II, "Flandry had his suspicions about the origin of many of the subjects on the floor below. Consenting adults . . . after brain channeling and surgical disguise..."

 

The extremely disreputable business establishment Flandry had entered was a brothel, set more than a thousand years in the future. The distaste he had for the sado-maso shows readers he was not "into" the really gross and perverted types of sex. Over and over, in the Flandry stories, readers will see he was a normal male heterosexual who liked and preferred women. And, in the right circumstances, xenosophont females!

 

It's right to quote again from  A CIRCUS OF HELLS, to illustrate how kinky futuristic sex might be. The text quoted below came from the beginning paragraphs of Chapter III.  A major character, a prostitute named Djana, went to meet what she thought would be a human customer but was not.

 

Bracing herself and wetting her lips, she said, "I don't. Not with xenos--"

and in haste, fearing  offense might be taken, "I mean non-human sophonts.

It isn't right,"

 

"I suspect a large enough sum would change your mind," the other

said. "You have a reputation for avarice. However, I plan a different

kind of proposition. It moved slowly closer, a lumpy gray body on four

thin legs which brought the head at its middle about level with her

waist. One tentacle sent the single loose garment swirling about in

a sinuous gesture. Another clutched the vocalizer in boneless

fingers. The instrument was being used with considerable skill;

it actually achieved an ingratiating note. "You must know about

me in your turn. I am only Rax, harmless old Rax, the solitary

representative of my species on this world. I assure you my

reproductive pattern is sufficiently unlike yours that I find your

assumption comical."

I agree that, assuming a FTL interstellar community with thousands of intelligent races, some humans and xenosophonts will have sex. But others like Djana will believe that to be wrong or disgusting. Others, like that of Rax's species, will have reproductive patterns so different from those of other races that the idea of sex with them was merely laughable.

 

I wish to backtrack a bit  to comment about Rax, in the text quoted from Chapter III. I noted how Rax was referred to as "it," instead of either "he" or "she." That made me wonder if Rax came from a race which did not have male or female sexes, reproducing in other ways.

 

The quotes taken from A CIRCUS OF HELLS gives Anderson's readers some fascinating if speculative glimpses into the sordid, seamy underside of what an interstellar civilization could be like. And these glimpses Anderson gave us can be easily paralleled in many similar brothels and prostitutes of both sexes in the real world. The more squalid aspects of the steamy night life of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, in the US, comes to mind as two examples!

 

To be strictly fair even to Leon Ammon not everything offered at his disreputable establishment will be morally repugnant, such as his restaurant services. Or even some gambling, in moderation and only if the games are honest.

 

In Chapter 4 of ENSIGN FLANDRY, we see Dragoika, a ship captain and a very influential member of the Sisterhood of Kursoviki. She belonged to a species, the Tigeries of Starkad, physically resembling humans so closely that Dragoika found Flandry attractive.

 

"Pity you must wear that helmet," Dragoika said. "I'd like to taste your lips.

But otherwise we're not made so differently, our two kinds. Will you come

to my cabin?"

 

For an instant that whirled, Flandry was tempted. He had everything he

could do answer. It wasn't based on past lectures about taking care not

to offend native mores, nor on principle, nor, most certainly, on fastid-

iousness. If anything, her otherness made her the more piquant. But

he couldn't really predict what she might do in a close relationship,

and--

 

"I'm deeply sorry," he said. "I'd love to, but I'm under a--" what was the

word?--"a geas."

 

She was neither much offended nor much surprised. She had seen a

lot of different cultures. "Pity," she said. "Well, you know where the

forecastle is. Goodnight." She padded aft. En route, she stopped to

collect Ferok.

--and besides, those fangs were awfully intimidating.

 

This amusing quote from ENSIGN FLANDRY shows Anderson speculating that parallel evolution would make humans and some non-humans physically resemble each other closely enough to be sexually attractive. I also noted mention of those lectures stressing the need to avoid offending Tigery mores. Flandry was wise to very tactfully decline Dragoika's proposition. A thousand years and more must have taught humans and non-humans alike many hard lessons on the need for caution in such intimate matters. It was also entertaining for Flandry to be intimidated by Dragoika's fangs!

I want to touch on one more example of futuristic sex between a human and non-human from the Technic stories. Years after both ENSIGN FLANDRY and A CIRCUS OF HELLS, Captain Flandry was kidnapped by unusually humanoid aliens in "Tiger by the Tail." This quote segues into how he was able to act as he did on Scotha: "The being was remarkably humanoid. Certain differences of detail could quite likely be found beneath the clothes, and more basic ones beneath the skin. Among countless worlds, evolutionary coincidences are bound to happen now and then, but never evolutionary identities. Yet to the eye, crew member and captive resembled each other more than either resembled, say, a woman. Or an alien female? Flandry wondered. I'll bet this is a male, and equipped pretty much like me, too. (AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, revised Gregg Press edition, 1979, page 2). That last part, "equipped pretty much like me, too," was Anderson's way of alerting readers that Scothans and humans were sexually compatible.

After being taken by these xenosophonts to their home planet Flandry met the wife of their king, Queen Gunli. Because of soon becoming aware of her unhappiness, he was friendly and obliging to the queen, as part of his efforts to undermine Scotha. Another apt quote is this: "Flandry gave her an appreciative look. He had ascertained that Scothanian and human females were extremely similar in outward anatomy. Queen Gunli was a stunblast, with dark rippling hair, big violet eyes, daintily sculptured features, and a figure that a thin, clinging gown scarcely hid." (AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, page 20). Meaning humans and Scothans could be attracted to each other. 

 

Queen Gunli did not like the Frithians, the Scothan nation which conquered and unified the planet, or their plans for more aggression and war.  The text copied below came from the revised version of the story in AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE (Gregg Press: 1979), page 30.

 

"War is what they want."

"But not what the females want. Not to wait and wait and wait for the ships

to come back, never knowing whether only his sword will return. Not to rock

a baby and know that a few years hence he will be a corpse on the shores

of some alien planet. Not to--" She broke off and straightened her slim

shoulders. "Let me not whimper. Naught can I do about it."

 

"You are very brave as well as beautiful, Gunli," said Flandry. "Your kind

have changed fate ere now." And he sang, low, a stave he had made in

the Scothan bardic form:

 

"So I see you standing,

sorrowful in darkness.

But the moonlight's broken

by your eyes, tear-shining--

moonlight in the maiden's

magic net of tresses.

Gods gave many gifts, but,

Gunli, yours was greatest."

All at once she was in his arms.

 

It was danger, loneliness, common ends they both desired, as well as mutual attraction that brought Flandry and Gunli into having an affair, despite being of alien races. Anderson had too much good taste to feel any need to be sexually explicit, that was left implicit. I also appreciated the verse he wrote here, it moderated the breakneck pacing of the story, giving readers a moment for reflecting on the issues that story raised.

 

Last, near the end of "Tiger by the Tail," on page 40 of the Gregg Press edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, we read this, as Flandry and Gunli waited for the Terrans to land on Scotha:

 

She brought her left hand from beneath the cloak and took both his.

"And what will you be doing?" she asked.

He met her gaze. Loneliness was sudden within him. How beautiful

she stood there.

 

But what she meant could never endure. They were too foreign to each

other. Best he depart soon, that the memories remain untarnished in

them both. She would find someone else at last. And he--well-- "I have

my work," he said.

 

I agree with Flandry's decision, because he and Queen Gunli belonged to different intelligent species. No matter how much two such races may look like each other, billions of years of separate evolution on different planets inevitably means both races will have fundamental differences from each other. And that's going to remain true even if males and females can have sexual intercourse. Also, the genetic barrier would make it impossible for them to have children. It was right of Flandry to decide it was better, for both Gunli and him, that he soon leave Scotha, parting from each other in friendship.

 

I consulted the second edition of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. St. Martin's Press, 1993) to get some idea of how other science fiction writers handled the theme of human/alien sex. Alas, all I found on page 1090, in Nicholls' article "SEX" I thought relevant to Anderson's work was this: "A sensitive treatment of love between alien races is STRANGERS (1974, NEW DIMENSIONS; exp 1978) by Gardner DOZOIS, which draws attention to the ghastly errors that can occur from trying to understand a foreign society in terms of the assumptions of one's own."

But, when I looked up John Clute's entry for Dozois, this is what I found on page 352 of the ENCYCLOPEDIA: "...his first solo novel, STRANGERS (1974, NEW DIMENSIONS; exp 1978), an intense and well told love story between a human male and a ALIEN female, set on her home planet, in a Galaxy humans signally do not dominate, her death from bearing his child is biologically inevitable (the plot's derivation from Philip Jose FARMER'S The Lovers [1961] can be seen as homage) and stems from a mutual incomprehension rooted in culture and the intrinsic solitude of beings (see also SEX)."

 

This exasperated me! I agree it might be possible some intelligent races, human and non-human, could so strongly resemble each other that sexual attraction and desire will be likely. I also agree it's highly probable mutual alienness will breed strains, stresses, problems, and tragedies. I do not agree, given totally alien genetics and separate evolution over billions of years on different planets, that humans and aliens will be able to have children. I was disappointed that Clute and Nicholls seemed unaware of that scientific absurdity. That absurdity also discredits any stories by other SF authors who write of humans and aliens being able to have children.

Before offering some general conclusions I'll quote from Chapter III of THE REBEL WORLDS to show how some non-humans might reproduce: "I know of intelligent hermaphrodites, and sophonts with more than two sexes, and a few that regularly change sex. They all tend to look on our reproductive pattern as obscene." I can too easily imagine beings from some of these species "working" as prostitutes in Leon Ammon's "joyhouse."

 

Being, as I am, both Catholic and a conservative, I would not be at all surprised to find out brothels and sexual perversions of all kinds will exist in the far future. I believe in having no illusions about how flawed humans and xenosophont races, if they exist, are likely to be if they too have fallen.  Humans being what they are--and xenosophonts, as I suspect they will be--there will be sexual encounters between members of different species, but that will not always occur because of force and violence. I appreciated how Anderson drew out such implications without needing to be pornographic!

Appendix I: JIHANNATH

 

For the sake of completeness I am discussing here a few details which did not quite fit into the main body of this article. In Chapter V of A CIRCUS OF HELLS Djana said to Flandry: "I came up from slavery--in the Black Hole of Jihannath--what I've been through makes the worse they've thought of in Irumclaw Old Town look like a creche game--"  And in Chapter XV Djana also said: "Where were the Emperor and his law when I tried to escape from the Black Hole, fifteen years old, and my contractor caught me and turned me over to the Giggling Man for a lesson?" As far as this goes, the point  we need to keep in mind is to have no illusions about prostitution, far too many times "sex workers" did not enter that "profession" freely, but by force and are often kept obedient and in line by abuse and torture.

 

But, the complication here was that Jihannath was not part of the Empire when Djana was  a child. A few years later, in Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS, as Vice Admiral Kheraskov was briefing Flandry we read: "I'm not letting out any great secret when I tell you the latest Merseian crisis is worse than the government admits to the citizens. It could completely explode on us. I think we can defuse it. For once, the Empire acted fast and decisively. But it demands we keep more than the bulk of our fleets out on that border, till the Merseians understand we mean business about not letting them take over Jihannath." And we know from THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN that the Roidhunate was forced to back down and let go of Jihannath. 

 

What I quoted above made nonsense of Djana's complaint about the Emperor and his law, because that planet was not ruled by Terra in her childhood. It was a formerly independent border world of little interest to the Empire until Merseia tried to seize it. Terra most likely took such decisive counter measures because the location of Jihannath would make Merseian occupation of the planet a threat to the Empire. But a lengthy explanation of all this in the middle of my article would have been too disruptive!

Appendix II: L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

 

The disappointment I felt when I tried to use the second edition of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION to find out how other science fiction writers used the idea of human/alien sex irritated me. So much so that my memory was joggled into recalling how L. Sprague de Camp had some very pertinent things to say about that topic in his novel THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR (Berkley/Putnam: 1977).

 

From THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR, Chapter Nine, page 119:

 

Reith was going to explain that hybridization of species from different

worlds, no matter how superficially alike, was a biological impossibility.

On  second thought, he decided to say nothing for the present. If he

made a point of their mutual sterility, Shosti might find his presence an

embarrassment and have him pitched off the cliff. He finished lamely:

"Nought, madam. I did but hope that--ah--the key would fit the lock."

 

"Fear not, my lord. I have made trial of you Ertsuma before and find

them compatible...."

 

And from HOSTAGE, Chapter Ten, page 146, a non-human character asked if it was possible for males and females of their two species to have children: "Reith shook his head. "That were impossible, sir. Earthmen and Krishnans are as mutually sterile as-as an aya and a shomal. Professor Mulroy, among my tourists, could explain it; something to do with the tiny cells whence living things originate. The-the-our word is chromosomes-it fit not together."

If, in a book meant by de Camp to be humorous science fiction serious, even obvious points like these were made, the authors of the entries I quoted from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION should have done so as well!