More Details In The Master Key

The narrator of "The Master Key" describes Nicholas van Rijn as "...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes and t'Kela!" (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 281)

Thus, "Margin of Profit," The Man Who Counts and "Territory" precede "The Master Key" chronologically. "Margin..." introduces van Rijn, and The Man Who Counts develops his character at greater, novelistic, length, then the van Rijn series proper kicks off with "Esau" and the three stories collected in Trader To The Stars, including "Territory" and "The Master Key."

In the previous post on "The Master Key," I neglected the detail that the narrator's friend, Harry Stenvik, speaks with a "...soft Norse accent..." (p. 276) These cumulative details, although usually instantly forgotten, build up a solid picture of the characters and their environment. We remember that what we read was substantial even though we forget most of it.

Often we are told which colony planet a new character hails from. Sometimes, though not always, we know the planet from elsewhere in the Technic History. Harry's son's ensign is from Nuevo Mexico (not known) beyond Arcturus. In other stories:

Emil Dalmady is from Altai (known);
the narrator of "The Problem of Pain" meets Peter Berg from Aeneas (known) on Lucifer (not known) where they discuss Gray/Avalon (known);
Noah Arkwright quotes a prospector on Quetzalcoatl (not known);
Urwain the Wide-Faring mines on Despair (not known);
the pretender Magnusson's wife is from Nyanza (known);
two very different characters come from Ramanujan.

I will remember more items for this list when walking down the stairs.

The Earlier Van Rijn Series

While without Internet access at home, I have been drafting posts for blog publication and reading interesting books by other authors while also rereading Poul Anderson who really is endlessly re-readable.

Currently utilizing Internet access at my daughter's house, I want to publish a quick version of one of the drafted posts despite maybe not having every relevant reference in place.

Trader To The Stars climaxes with "The Master Key" which refers to van Rijn's earlier exploits involving Borthu, Diomedes and t'Kela although only the t'Kela incident is included in this collection. Let us reconstruct the earliest version of the van Rijn series. "The Master Key" reads like a culmination first because it refers to three of the four earlier instalments and secondly because van Rijn seems to have stopped travelling and to have settled down on Earth where he hears the accounts of the problem on Cain, then solves the mystery by thought alone without rising from his lounger.

"Margin of Profit," about Borthu, was published in 1956.

"The Man Who Counts," about Diomedes, was serialized, then published as a novel under the title, War Of The Wing Men, in 1958.

"Hiding Place," about a space zoo, was published on 1961.

Un-Man And Other Novellas, collecting "Margin of Profit" and one instalment each from two other Anderson series, is copyright 1962.

"Territory," about t'Kela, was published in 1963.

"The Master Key," about Cain, was published in 1964.

Trader To The Stars, copyright 1964 and introduced by a new passage signed "de Matelot," collects:

"Hiding Place";

"Territory," introduced by an extract from "Margin of Profit";

"The Master Key," introduced by a verse by Shelley.

Thus, here were five van Rijn instalments published in two and one third volumes:

"Margin of Profit" in Un-Man...;

War Of The Wing Men;

Trader To The Stars.

This series was, so far, complete and not part of anything greater.

As we all know, there were two subsequent developments. First, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, published in 1978, collected twelve Technic History instalments, including:

"Margin of Profit," revised;

The Man Who Counts, its original title restored;

"Esau," about Baburites on Mogul, published in 1970;

"Lodestar," about Mirkheim and equally featuring Anderson's trader team, published in 1973.

Because the Earth Book is to be read several volumes after Trader To The Stars, that earlier collection, no longer needing to be preceded either by Un-Man... or by War Of The Wing Men, became Volume I of the Technic History with the Earth Book as at least Volume VI.

Finally, the seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, published 2009-2012, presents the entire Technic History in chronological order of fictional events so that the van Rijn instalments appear in their rightful places among all the others.

Addendum: For an error in this post, see here.

A Loftier Argo

We rightly commend the Introduction to Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place," which begins:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"As it has before, and will again. The comings and goings of man have their seasons."
-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION, HIDING PLACE IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 555-556 AT p. 555.

- and ends:

"We cannot foretell what will come of it. We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way.
"-Le Matelot."
-op. cit., p. 556.

However, Anderson's "The Master Key" has an equivalently inspirational Introduction:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
"Fraught with a later prize;
"Another Orpheus sings again,
"And loves, and weeps, and dies.
"A new Ulysses leaves once more
"Calypso for his native shore.
"-Shelley."
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), p. 273.

"Hiding Place" and "The Master Key" were the first and third of three stories previously collected as Trader To The Stars, now collected in Volumes I and II respectively of The Technic Civilization Saga. The opening line quoted by Le Matelot and the stanza quoted to introduce "The Master Key," both taken from "Hellas" by Percy Shelley, perfectly express the sense of adventure in the springtime of the Polesotechnic League.

Le Matelot writes that:

"The comings and goings of man...are no more mysterious than the annual cycle of the planet, and no less." (See above.)

"...the planet..." implies that, although Le Matelot writes that "...we are sailing out among the stars...," he himself is on Earth. We know nothing else about him. He is another of our mysterious commentators.

"The Master Key" describes dusk over Chicago Integrate which stretches beyond the horizon and recalls San Francisco Integrate in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson." (See also Rio de Janeiro Integrate, here, and Sandra Tamarin on Earth, here.) The first person narrator enters Nicholas van Rijn's penthouse apartment on the Winged Cross which is visited in other works by Emil Dalmady and by the Falkayns.

The Technic History imparts a sense not only of time but also of place.

Introducing "The Master Key"

Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327.

In this second volume of The Technic Civilization Saga:

p. 272 is a half page of text concluding the second trader team story, "Day of Burning";

p. 273 is empty except for a very appropriate six-line quotation attributed to Shelley:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
"Fraught with a later prize;
"Another Orpheus sings again,
"And loves, and weeps, and dies.
"A new Ulysses leaves once more
"Calypso for his native shore."

p. 274 is blank;

p. 275 is the opening page of the text of the sixth Nicholas van Rijn story, "The Master Key."

CONTENTS, p.V, informs us that "The Master Key" begins on p. 275, overlooking the fact that the Shelley quotation is intended not as an interesting interpolation between stories but as a brief introduction to "The Master Key." Thus, this story, complete with its evocative introduction, begins on p. 273.

For previous discussion, see here.

Van Rijn In Context

The first Nicholas van Rijn Story, "Margin of Profit," and the first van Rijn novel, The Man Who Counts, are to be read before the van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars. That gives us five narratives in a chronological sequence. The only remaining story that features van Rijn without any other continuing characters is "Esau." The Technic Civilization Saga places "Esau" between The Man Who Counts and "Hiding Place," the first story in Trader To The Stars. However, I think that "Esau" belongs later, in the same period as "The Master Key," the last story in Trader To The Stars. In "Margin of Profit," van Rijn, a former spaceman, runs the Solar Spice and Liquors company from Earth but returns to space when necessary. The Man Who Counts, "Hiding Place" and "Territory," the second story in Trader..., all begin with van Rijn off Earth. By contrast, in both "The Master Key" and "Esau," van Rijn remains in his penthouse where some of his employees report to him. 

Rethinking the van Rijn stories leads to reflecting on the whole Technic History.

Introductory Stories (the item listed as introduced is not necessarily the main point of the story)

"The Saturn Game" the Jerusalem Catholic Church

"Wings of Victory": Ythrians

"The Problem of Pain": Ythrian Faiths; Gray/Avalon

"Margin of Profit": the Polesotechnic League; van Rijn

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson": Adzel

"The Three-Cornered Wheel": David Falkayn; the planet Ivanhoe

"A Sun Invisible": rogue planets

"The Season of Forgiveness": Ivanhoe

Van Rijn Off Earth

The Man Who Counts

"Hiding Place"

"Territory"

The Trader Team

"The Trouble Twisters"

"Day of Burning"

Van Rijn In The Winged Cross

"The Master Key"

"Esau"

Threats To The League

Satan's World

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar"

Mirkheim

Falkayn's Solution: Avalon Colony

"Wingless"

"Rescue on Avalon"

Manuel Argos' Solution To Post-League Trouble: Terran Empire

"The Star Plunderer"

"Sargasso of Lost Starships"

Empire versus Avalon

The People Of The Wind

Flandry And Others Defend The Empire...

After The Empire...

A Richer Text

Sometimes a narrative is presented as a dialogue. One character tells the story directly to one or more other characters and thus indirectly to the reader. The author must describe both the setting of the dialogue and the scenes of the narrative. The former adds extra richness and might even be richer than the latter. This is particularly true in the case of Poul Anderson's "The Master Key."

The text begins:

"Once upon a time..."
Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 275.

"...there was a king who set himself above the foreign merchants." (ibid.)

- but then we are told that what he did is no longer of any account. A man called Harry Stenvik and the first person narrator of "The Master Key" hung the king from a minaret, thus enhancing the prestige of the Polesotechnic League, then got drunk, thus adding to the profits made by the local Solar Spice & Liquors Company factor.

This has told us a lot:

the story is set within Anderson's Technic History and specifically within the Polesotechnic League period of that future history;

mention is even made of Nicholas van Rijn's company, SSL.

All that is directly relevant to the current story is that there is an unnamed first person narrator with an old friend called Harry Stenvik. The second paragraph introduces van Rijn who invites Harry and the narrator to dinner at his Winged Cross penthouse which we also see in two other installments of the Technic History: rich background details. We are shown a summer's dusk, Venus, Chicago Integrate as seen from a flying "flitter" and the flowers in van Rijn's rooftop garden. We are told that Harry has:

"...built a house on the cliffs above Hardanger Fjord and raised mastiffs and sons." (p. 276)

Again, the narrator declines to disclose anything about himself - but he has told Harry that he has most recently been somewhere with ammonia in the atmosphere. Like Emil Dalmady before them, they cross:

"...a few light-years of trollcat rug..." (p. 277)

- to where van Rijn wallows and one of Harry's sons, recuperating, remains seated but a man with a holstered, much-used blaster stands to greet them. The narrator bows to the master merchant, van Rijn.

All of these details come before the story to be told has even been approached.

Addendum: At the end of a month, as now, I take a break from this blog and add to others so today, Dec 31, I have published three posts on Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments.

Earth In "The Master Key"

The Poul Anderson Appreciation blog welcomes new readers: 1643 page views (more than one per minute) yesterday and so far 1158 today. New readers are invited to comment. We seek not agreement but more, and more widely based, disagreements.

Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 273-327.

Searching through The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader, for stories or even single scenes set on Earth, we find only "The Master Key," although, as I have said, "Lodestar," set entirely outside the Solar System, does convey some sense of living in the Commonwealth.

"The Master Key" follows in the footsteps of "Birthright." A flitter lands on the Winged Cross at dusk. Venus shines. Chicago Integrate lights up. This time, the background sound is described as "...a low machine throb..." (p. 276) The unnamed first person narrator walks between roses and jasmine. This is one narrative difference. In "Esau," Emil Dalmady is described in the third person. Again there is trollcat rug, a viewer wall and a male human servant. 

This is a five-sided conversation, not just two-, as in "Esau." The characters converse about events on the planet Cain but the text continually returns to the setting of their dialogue - a comfortable way to recount dangerous adventures. At the end, van Rijn gestures at the city beneath the stars around the planet.

Overlapping Stories

Poul Anderson's Trader To The Stars collects:

"Hiding Place"

"Territory"

"The Master Key"

- three stories about Nicholas van Rijn, not the first three and not necessarily three consecutive instalments of Anderson's Technic History either.

Sandra Miesel's CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION shows us that, to summarize, in the 2420s:

"A Sun Invisible"

"The Season of Forgiveness"

The Man Who Counts

"Esau"

"Hiding Place"

- overlap and that, in the 2430s:

"Territory"

"The Trouble Twisters"

"Day of Burning"

"The Master Key"

- overlap. The dates can be debated but the main point here is that these are successive decades.

The Technic Civilization Saga exactly reflects these chronological relationships. Volume I ends with the five instalments from "A Sun Invisible" to "Hiding Place" and Volume II begins with the four instalments from "Territory" to "The Master Key." Between "Territory" and "The Master Key," Saga, Volume II, inserts two trader team stories, the first from The Trouble Twisters and the second from The Earth Book of Stormgate. A future history series has come to life before our eyes.

The Two Reading Orders

A good book should be read at least twice. A very good book can be reread endlessly. CS Lewis pointed out that the difference between "high brow" and "low brow" readers is not just that they read different things but also that they read them in different ways. A genre romantic novel, read once, is discarded like an empty cigarette packet - "I've read that one!" - whereas English literature is reread endlessly.

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization should be read at least twice. Therefore, it makes sense to possess two complete sets, the first set arranged in the original book publication order, the second in fictional chronological order, i.e., Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga.

The original publication order opens with Trader To The Stars, collecting the last three of the six Nicholas van Rijn instalments. (I say "six" because I initially exclude from consideration those four other instalments featuring van Rijn alongside David Falkayn etc.) Several volumes later, we read The Earth Book Of Stormgate and thus learn what van Rijn, Adzel and others had done before the opening story of Trader To The Stars. Indeed, we also learn about some events before their births and after their deaths.

The first of the three stories in Trader To The Stars is the last of the eleven in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method. The third Traders story describes van Rijn as:

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes, and t'Kela!"

-Poul Amderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), pp. 115-159 AT p. 121 -

- thus referring to the previous two stories but also to The Man Who Counts, collected in the Earth Book. By the time of "The Master Key," van Rijn has appointed David Falkayn to lead his first trade pioneer crew and that crew has saved the planet Merseia from the effects of supernova radiation. "The Master Key" is the fourth of seven instalments in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader.

The two reading orders present completely different perspectives on events.

The Master Key

I remarked once before on the elaborate structure of "The Master Key" by Poul Anderson. It is a Nicholas van Rijn story but we do not just get van Rijn and a few subordinate characters. We get:

the narrator;
the narrator's friend;
the friend's son;
the son's ensign;
the son's and ensign's employer, van Rijn.

Many rich details give substance to the story.

(i) Long ago on another planet, the narrator and his friend, Harry Stenvik, discomfited "...a king who set himself above the foreign merchants." (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 275) This reads like a reference back to an earlier story in the series but is not. We know only the little that we are told here. The narrator uses that familiar, evocative phrase, "...the wench is dead..." (p. 275) to communicate that there were intense experiences back then but it is all over now.

After humiliating the king so that "...the name of the Polesotechnic League was great in the land...," the two friends "...made inroads on the stock-in-trade of the Solar Spice & Liquors Company factor..." (p. 275) I think this means that they were van Rijn's competitors?

(ii) When the narrator makes a brief business trip to Earth, van Rijn invites him to dinner because Harry will be there. As the narrator's flitter lands outside van Rijn's penthouse on top of the Winged Cross, we are treated to an Andersonian descriptive passage:

"A summer's dusk softened the mass of lesser buildings that stretched to the horizon and beyond..." (p. 276)

He walks among roses and jasmine. Inside, he and Harry "...crossed a few light years of trollcat rug to the far end of the living room. Three men sat by the viewer wall, at the moment transparent to sky and city." (p. 277) I cannot help thinking: imagine a story set in a universe where there really was a rug several light years long.

If we have read the series in sequence, then we have been here before. "Esau" began when Emil Dalmady's cab landed on the Winged Cross and "The garden was fragrant around him in a warm deep-blue summer's dusk..." where other towers "...were an elven forest..." (The Van Rijn Method, New York, 2009, p. 519). Dalmady also "...crossed an improbably long stretch of trollcat rug to the VieWall end of a luxury-cluttered living room..." (ibid., p. 520)

(iii) Harry, married to Sigrid, "...had built a house on the cliffs above Hardanger Fjord and raised mastiffs and sons." (David Falkayn: Star Trader, p. 276) The narrator begins to tell us about his own personal circumstances but then breaks off, although we do know that he has been on a planet with ammonia in its atmosphere where he has had to handle a lot of negotiation and some violence.

I have summarized only as far as the top of the third page of a fifty two and a half page story, my point being that these two or three pages contain rich details which are there for us to reread at any time but that we will soon forget if we simply read through once to find out what happens in the story. Harry and the narrator have entered the penthouse, crossed the rug and approached three seated men. We know that one of the three should be their host. Further, conversation in the doorway has informed us that Harry's son, Per, now a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League, is present with a story to tell.

That will be our story, containing adventure and violence enough, but it will be related in a relaxed conversational style so that, although we accompany Per and his ensign to the mysterious planet Cain, we never really leave the comfort and security of van Rijn's penthouse where our host, never leaving his lounger, bellows for beer, hears the story and solves the problem.

The narrator "...bowed to him as is fitting to a merchant prince..." (p. 277)

Is it? These are the customs of the Polesotechnic League. Van Rijn was born poor so a very interesting novel could have been written about his rise to wealth. JRR Tolkien rightly wrote of The Lord Of The Rings, "It is too short" and the same can be said of the History of Technic Civilization.

Traders To The Stars

Trader To The Stars, three stories about Nicholas van Rijn, was the first Technic History volume. In my proposed re-presentation of the Technic History, Volume III would be an expanded Trader To The Stars, possibly to be entitled Traders To The Stars, although that might be confusing.

Like Trader..., Traders... would contain "Hiding Place," "Territory" and "The Master Key" and would end with "The Master Key." However, Traders... would begin with another van Rijn story, "Esau," and would include two trader team stories, "The Trouble Twisters" and "Day of Burning," between "Territory" and "The Master Key." Van Rijn cameos in "The Trouble Twisters," explaining his new trade pioneer crew idea to David Falkayn. Thus, "The Master Key" now tells us what van Rijn was doing - lounging back on Earth, solving a mystery - while his trader team/trade pioneer crew was operating on planets like Ikrananka and Merseia.

This volume paves the way for the three pivotal works that feature van Rijn and the team in equal measure. The series goes somewhere and takes as long as it needs to get there.

Stories Overlap

(I quote dates from Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization. For an alternative view of the Chronology, see here.)

stories overlap, 2420s
"A Sun Invisible"
"The Season of Forgiveness"
The Man Who Counts
"Esau"
"Hiding Place"

stories overlap, 2430s
"Territory"
"The Trouble Twisters"
"Day of Burning"
"The Master Key"
Satan's World
"A Little Knowledge"


Not only successive times but also contemporaneous events in different parts of space. Before the complete collection of the Technic History as The Technic Civilization Saga, we read:

"A Sun Invisible" and "The Trouble Twisters" in The Trouble Twisters;

"The Season of Forgiveness," The Man Who Counts, "Esau," "Day of Burning" and "A Little Knowledge" in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

"Hiding Place," "Territory" and "The Master Key" as Trader To The Stars;

Satan's World as a single volume.

How can the series be presented not linearly but concurrently so that the audience is made aware of and directly experiences the overlapping of the stories? Serialized screen dramatizations of the van Rijn stories and of the Falkayn stories could be broadcast on different days of the week. Thus, on Monday evening, we would see part of "A Sun Invisible" and, on Tuesday evening, part of The Man Who Counts.

Later:

"Territory" concurrently with "The Trouble Twisters";
"Day of Burning" concurrently with "The Master Key";
Satan's World concurrently with "A Little Knowledge."

Thus:

van Rijn is on t'Kela while Falkayn is on Ikrananka;

Falkayn is on Merseia while van Rijn is in the Winged Cross;

van Rijn and Falkayn tackle different aspects of the Shenn problem while less worthy characters are up to no good on Trillia.

Receding Beginnings

Bad title but good cover illustration. Not an Ythrian but a Diomedean.

Here, I listed three ways to start reading Poul Anderson's Technic History:

Trader To The Stars introduces interstellar trade;

The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins with interstellar exploration;

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, begins with interplanetary exploration.

(To this extent, these three volumes go backwards through the History.)

The opening page of Trader... is "Le Matelot," which does indeed beautifully introduce the Polesotechnic League period of the History. Let us leave that volume where it is for the time being.

The first story collected in the Earth Book is about the Grand Survey. However, the Introduction to this volume presupposes and refers to the events of Anderson's The People Of The Wind, set centuries after the Grand Survey. This need not concern us if we are reading the volumes of the History in chronological order of fictitious events although, if we are doing this, then the Earth Book does not after all serve to introduce the History. The Earth Book is itself a historical work compiled at a particular stage in the Technic History and collecting narratives from earlier periods.

The Saga, collecting everything in chronological order for the first time, begins with:

an Introduction by its Compiler, Hank Davis;
"The Saturn Game," the story about interplanetary exploration;
the Introduction to the Earth Book, here presented as an introduction just to the first story in the Earth Book;
that first story, "Wings of Victory," about the Grand Survey.

Thus, after Davis' non-fictional Introduction, we read, in this order, information about the periods of:

interplanetary exploration;
the compilation of the Earth Book;
interstellar exploration.

The first and third of these are "beginnings" whereas the second has now become a piece of futurity that will not make complete sense to us until we have read The People Of The Wind at the end of Volume III of the Saga. This is not a complaint. I appreciate the History's narrative complexity, comparable to that of real history. When we reread the seven-volume Saga, as it needs to be reread, we know where everything fits and do not object to reading Hloch's words centuries before his Avalonian society, including the Stormgate Choth, is due to exist.

Although Trader... was originally the opening volume of the Technic History, it contained hints of greater complexity. The second of its three stories was introduced by an extract from "Margin of Profit," which turns out to be an earlier Nicholas van Rijn story. Its third story, "The Master Key," refers to van Rijn as:

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes and t'Kela!"
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 281.

These are three planets. Borthu and t'Kela have appeared earlier in Trader... but Diomedes is in The Man Who Counts which had been published in 1958 as War Of The Wing-Men so that was the earliest published Technic History volume.

A Wealth Of Details In A Single Story

"The Master Key."

The narrator's flitter lands on the Winged Cross at the beginning of the third paragraph only two lines above the bottom of the opening page of the text, p. 275.

The opening two paragraphs set the scene. The first paragraph refers to the public discomfiture, by the narrator and his friend, Harry Stenvik, of a local king on an unnamed planet. The second informs us that Nicholas van Rijn has invited these two experienced merchants, the narrator and Stenvik, to dinner in his penthouse on the Winged Cross.

The narrator, on a very brief business trip to Earth, has recently been to a planet with ammonia in the atmosphere; previously, methane. Stenvik, Norse and married to Sigrid:

"...had built a house on the cliffs above the Hardanger Fjord..." (p. 276) 

His oldest son, Per, was apprenticed on a Solar Spice & Liquors ship in the Hercules region several years previously and has recently become a Master Merchant. 

Per's ensign, Manuel, attends dinner wearing a much-used, holstered blaster. Would you feel safe in the society of the Polesotechnic League? Manuel is from Nuevo Mexico which is beyond Arcturus. Someone with a grasp of astronomy might figure out these different interstellar directions. Per drinks Ansan vermouth: yet another background reference to the colony planet, Ansa.

Although the narrator remains anonymous, van Rijn addresses him as "'...Captain...'" (p. 277) The narrator in turn describes van Rijn as:

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes, and t'Kela!" (p. 281)

When we read "The Master Key" in Trader To The Stars, we knew only of t'Kela. Diomedes had been in War Of The Wing Men/The Man Who Counts. The Earth Book of Stormgate includes The Man Who Counts and also "Margin of Profit," about Borthu, amended to fit into the Technic History.

Cain, where Per has been stationed, is a planet of a G-nine dwarf star "'...out Pegasus way.'" (p. 280)

The characters proceed to outline the details of the intelligent life forms on Cain. There is an action-adventure story but also a problem in alien biology and psychology that is solved by van Rijn who remains sunk in his lounger until near the end of the story. They eat dinner after the discussion.

The Early Van Rijn Stories II

The CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION in The Technic Civilization Saga wrongly states that Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" was published in 1971. This is impossible because it was collected in Trader To The Stars, which was published in 1964.

In 1960, John W. Campbell changed the title of the Astounding sf magazine to Analog Science Fiction & Fact. Thus, ASF can mean the same magazine both before and after the name change.

In ASF
"Margin of Profit," September, 1956.
"The Man Who Counts," February-April, 1958.
"Hiding Place," March, 1961.
"Territory," June, 1963.
"The Master Key," 1964.
"Esau," February, 1970.

Collections
Un-Man And Other Novellas (1962)
"Un-Man" (Psychotechnic History)
"Margin of Profit" (unrevised ASF version)
"The Live Coward" (Wing Alak series)

Trader To The Stars (1964)
"Hiding Place"
"Territory"
"The Master Key"

The Earth Book Of Stormgate (1978)
- collects twelve Technic History installments, including:
"Margin of Profit" (revised)
"Esau"
The Man Who Counts

The Technic Civilization Saga, (seven volumes, 2009-2012)
- collects the entire Technic History in chronological order, including revised versions if appropriate.

A Novel (with changing title)
War Of The Wing-Men (1958)
The Man Who Counts (1978)
The Earth Book Of Stormgate-2 (1980) 

Thus, this van Rijn novel was republished both in a collection and as a discrete volume in a single year, 1978.

Van Rijn appears in eleven works by Poul Anderson, including ten Technic History installments.

Rise And Decline Of The Polesotechnic League III

Continuing the reasoning from the previous post:

(xi) "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "A Sun Invisible" show Falkayn's pre-trader team career and are rightly the sixth and seventh stories in Volume I. In the latter, Falkayn is working for van Rijn's Company and we have already met van Rijn.

(xii) "The Season of Forgiveness" describes later events on the first planet visited by Falkayn and is rightly the eighth story in Volume I.

(xiii) The Man Who Counts is van Rijn's second appearance. Until now, we have not known that he will become a series character. He appeared once, then became part of the background. It makes sense for him to return in this novel which is the ninth work in the series.

(xiv) I find it easier to think of Volumes I and II as nine works each rather that the eleven in Vol I and seven in Vol II of the Baen Books Technic Civilization Saga. With nine each, the contents of Trader To The Stars do not get split between volumes.

(xv) In any case, as things stand in the Baen volumes, the tenth work is the van Rijn story, "Esau," and the Earth Book Introduction to this story informs us that at this time the early League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic or obsolete so maybe this work should come later?

(xvi) The eleventh work is the van Rijn story, "Hiding Place," which is preceded by an introductory passage beginning "'The world's great age begins anew...'" However, this passage originally introduced not just this story but the collection Trader To The Stars and it refers to the Polesotechnic League period as a whole so maybe this introduction should be moved to before "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," which I would place fourth in the series?

(xvii) I would therefore have "Hiding Place," without this introduction, opening Volume II where it would be followed by another van Rijn story, "Territory," and two trader team stories, "The Trouble Twisters" and "Day of Burning." That gets us four stories into Vol II which must end with "Lodestar" so there are only four stories left to be accounted for.

(xviii) Van Rijn having sent trader teams out, it makes sense that he now stays at home where problems can be brought to him so "The Master Key" and "Esau," the latter with its hint that early League practice is becoming archaic, can fit here.

(xix) Satan's World features an external threat to the League requiring a response both from van Rijn and from the Falkayn trader team and there is also a hint that the League could have internal problems as well.

(xx) As its Earth Book Introduction says, "A Little Knowledge" gives a glimpse of troubles internal to Technic civilization so this story rightly comes between Satan's World and "Lodestar".

Conclusion
In this way of presenting the series:
three stories precede the League;
eleven works from "How To Be Ethnic..." to "The Master Key" show the League rising;
five works from "Esau" to Mirkheim show the League aging, then declining.

Entry Point

Although Trader To The Stars, a single collection of three short stories about Nicholas van Rijn, has been superseded by The Technic Civilization Saga, seven omnibus volumes collecting Poul Anderson's entire History of Technic Civilization in chronological order of fictional events for the first time, Trader..., originally Volume I of the Technic History, might still serve as a convenient entry point to this future history series, allowing readers to decide whether they want to learn more about van Rijn and the Polesotechnic League as well as about the longer fictional history encompassing them.

Trader... collects:

"Hiding Place"

"Territory"

"The Master Key"

Placing these three stories in their future historical contexts, we find that:

10 instalments (3 pre-League, 3 van Rijn, 2 Falkayn, 1 Adzel, 1 other) precede "Hiding Place";

2 trader team stories come between "Territory" and "The Master Key";

3 van Rijn and trader team instalments plus 1 other follow "The Master Key."

That completes the pre-League and League periods of the Technic History. The final League instalment, Mirkheim, is the first of six instalments collected in Saga, Volume III. My fascination with the mercurial structure of the Technic History focuses on the pre-Flandry periods, collected in Saga, Volumes I-III. The Flandry period covers Volumes IV-VI and the first half of VII but there are more millennia of history in the four remaining instalments. What a future history series!

Concluding Details, Josserek And Van Rijn

Poul Anderson, The Winter Of The World.

Is this yet another description of the Milky Way?:

"...beneath a winter-stark Argent Way." (XXI, p. 190)

Sensory Descriptions
In XIX, p. 173:
the myriad greens of the prairie grass pale and shine almost silver;
the wind smells of grass and of sunlight;
red-patched blackbirds cry sweetly;
high above, swans are white amidst blue.

(Since wind is felt as well as smelled, this paragraph evokes four senses.)

In XXII, p. 200:
ridges and valleys glitter;
warmth grows;
mists glimmer and vanish;
the breeze ruffles pools in hollows;
grass is intensely green;
forget-me-nots are blue;
pines abide;
willows shake;
new birch leaves dance;
sun, wings and song fill a cloudless sky;
cows are red;
hares bolt;
pheasants fly;
bees and dragonflies quest;
eddying air smells of earth or of river.

(Again, four senses.)

Josserek concludes that "...Rogaviki are wild animals." (XXII, p. 207)

- whereas all other human beings are domesticated.

In Anderson's "The Master Key," Nicholas van Rijn concludes that, on the planet Cain, the dominant species, the Yildivians, are intelligent wild animals - wild in the way that tigers or buffalo are - whereas the subordinate species, the Lugals, are not slaves but intelligent domesticated animals. Van Rijn concludes the story by claiming that he and his friends are wild animals doing what they want or what is right but that most human beings are domesticated at heart:

"He glared outward across the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet. 'Do you think they yonder is free?' he shouted. His hand chopped downward in scorn."
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 327.

I quote this passage partly because I like the image of the city winking and glittering beneath the stars around the curve of the planet, especially since we know that these characters travel to those stars and that their lives are a single phase in a long History.

Van Rijn is at least partly wrong. Wild animals do what they want but not what is right. Doing what is right, or even just knowing what is right and not doing it!, is specific to human beings and therefore is something that van Rijn shares with the scorned "domesticated" human beings who must include many of his co-religionists. The collective labor by hand and brain of human beings who stay at home and raise families builds and maintains a city that curves around the planet so I feel solidarity with them as well as with van Rijn's little band of wild adventurers.

In The Winter Of The World, at the end of Chapter XXI, Captain General Sidir, unwillingly plunged into a river, draws his saber and swims to the shore where his Rogaviki enemies wait. Will his story continue? Will the Rogaviki take him prisoner, then send him home to bear their defiant message to his Emperor? We should know better than that by now. The Rogaviki do not take prisoners.

On the concluding page, XXII, p. 208, the Rogaviki woman, Donya, demonstrates her "inhumanity" by tearing up the letter from her former human lover, saying that his words want their freedom.

This has been a long morning of blogging. My agenda for the rest of today is:

lunch with Ketlan;
start rereading and posting about Anderson's Twilight World;
read Leon Trotsky's My Life.

Onward, Earthlings!

"The Master Key"

We appreciate Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" less for the unpleasant happenings on the fictional planet, Cain, than for this story's position within Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.

(i) "The Master Key" is the sixth and last Technic History instalment to feature Nicholas van Rijn unaccompanied by any of his regular supporting cast.

(ii) By this time, van Rijn has initiated his first trade pioneer crew, led by David Falkayn from "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "A Sun Invisible" and also including Adzel from "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," and we have seen the crew in action in "The Trouble Twisters" and "Day of Burning" but now we see what van Rijn is doing meanwhile back on Earth.

(iii) This is the second of three occasions on which we are shown the inside of van Rijn's penthouse on the Winged Cross in Chicago Integrate. Van Rijn solves a problem on an extra-solar planet while lounging in his penthouse surrounded by subordinates and dinner guests.

(iv) The story introduces several new one-off characters and imparts a strong sense of the power and prestige of the Polesotechnic League and its members as well as the vast volumes of space that their activities encompass.

(v) The story immediately precedes four instalments outlining growing and eventually fatal problems within the League:

Satan's World

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar"

Mirkheim

What's not to like?

A Man And His Rep

A reputation is a curious phenomenon. When a man gets one, he and it can part company or he can find himself in a time and place where his reputation is unknown so that he is back to being just a regular guy. If a series character routinely saves the world, or whatever they do, then later instalments should reflect his growing reputation among his equally fictitious contemporaries. We can illustrate this process by comparing:

Poul Anderson's Big Four (we know who they are by now - OK, they are van Rijn, Falkayn, Flandry and Everard);
James Blish's Kennedy/Ktendi;
Ian Fleming's James Bond;
Alan Moore's Evey Hammond;
Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist;
SM Stirling's Aylward the Archer.

I compare Anderson with a regular rota of other writers of rich texts.

To begin on a more modest scale, once when addressing a public meeting in Lancaster, I introduced myself, then added, "I am generally known around here as Aileen's dad, which gives me some street cred in Lancaster!" (Laughter.)

The narrator of "The Master Key" knows that Nicholas van Rijn is:

"...the single-handed conqueror of Borthu, Diomedes, and t'Kela!"
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), pp. 275-327 AT p. 281 -

- and so do we if we have read the relevant three instalments.

David Falkayn becomes famous when he and his crew together with their employer, van Rijn, avert a threat to Technic civilisation but, later, when he is held prisoner in another planetary system, he is told that he is not famous in that volume of space.

The second time we meet Flandry in his original series he is rightly addressed as:

"'Dominic Flandry, the single-handed conqueror of Scothania...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Honorable Enemies" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), pp. 277-302 AT p. 280.

When Duke Edwin Cairncross meets Flandry, he says:

"'So this is the legendary Admiral Flandry.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), pp. 3-188 AT p. 37.

Flandry replies by distinguishing between the legend and the reality:

"'No, the objectively real, Admiral Flandry, I hope.'" (ibid.)

He hopes that he is the real Flandry, not a fictional one! Cairncross knows what Flandry achieved on Chereion even though this exploit has not been publicised.

A Time Patrol colleague tells Manse Everard:

"'Heard something about you at the school. Seems you led quite an adventurous life even before you joined. And afterward -'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 333-465 AT p. 353.

We know about the "afterward." We also gather, as the series progresses, that Everard gains an informal senior status even among his fellow Unattached agents.

James Blish's character, Kennedy:

The Night Shapes combines two Edgar Rice Burroughs themes: African adventure and living dinosaurs (Tarzan and The Land That Time Forgot). Its central character, Kit Kennedy, has a strange affinity not with apes but with snakes and is a living legend: Ktendi, Son of Wisdom, King of the Wassabi, Master of Serpents. One officious European, unaware that he is addressing the source of the legend, says:

“There’s no such thing as Ktendi…And, as for you, Mr Kennedy, why don’t you mind your own business?" ²
-copied from here.

James Bond is a secret agent but some of his exploits are publicised. A former friend and colleague then writes some inaccurate popular accounts.

Alan Moore's Evey assists the terrorist, V. She overhears one of her interrogators commenting, "So this scrawny specimen is the famous Evey Hammond!" He is simultaneously contrasting the reality with the legend and flattering her as "famous." (Quoting from memory rather than digging DC Comics V For Vendetta out of a box in the cellar.)

Mikael Blomkvist, journalist, exposes some bank robbers and is nicknamed "Kalle" after a fictitious character. Then he gets a rep as an investigative journalist and is much seen on TV.

When a messenger announces:

"'I'm looking for the First Armsman of Clan Mackenzie, Aylward the Archer...'"
-SM Stirling, A Meeting At Corvallis (New York, 2007), Chapter Nine, p. 221 -

and Sam replies:

"'That's me...'" (ibid.) -

he gets:

"...the expecting someone taller look he often did from those who knew him by reputation only." (ibid.) -

and responds:

"'Sorry if I don't live up to the stories.'" (ibid.)

I couldn't have put it better myself.