Alice References

Alice (Wonderland or Looking Glass) references permeate popular culture and we do not need to be told what they are. Thus:

White Rabbit
Mad Hatter
Red Queen
White King
etc

For this blog, see search results for:

Alice In Wonderland (scroll down)
gyres (scroll down)
Alice Through The Looking Glass (scroll down) 

For Comics Appreciation, see here.

Thus, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling do not need to explain when they tell us that:

"A small girl in antique dress slept in an armchair before a mirror; a white-haired figure with a pipe and smoking jacket was seated beside her, only the figure was an anthropomorphic rabbit..."
-"The Asteroid Queen," Chapter VII, p. 130.

- or when:

"The rabbit touched the young girl on the shoulder; she stretched, yawned, and stepped through a large and ornately framed mirror on the study wall, vanishing without trace."
-op. cit, p. 131.

Thus, both Alice books are referenced.

Alice

Literary influences on Poul Anderson:

the Bible

the sagas

Shakespeare

Sherlock Holmes

Lewis Carroll

Carroll is a lesser influence but nevertheless present in the Dominic Flandry story, "The White King's War."

Alice In Wonderland has been with us all our lives. I remember posters advertising a dramatization of Alice at my primary school in about 1955. In the centre of Lancaster right now, prominent posters advertise a promenade performance in Williamson Park, which overlooks the city. There have been many stage and screen adaptations between 1955 and 2024.

I want to plug a graphic work about Alice but find that I have already done so here (scroll down) and here.

I might spend this evening rereading Alice In Sunderland but with some excursions back into Anderson.

More About Alice And Kipling

See "Alice," combox, here. 

"The story that Queen Victoria, delighted by Alice, requests another book from Carroll and receives an impenetrable mathematical treatise is unfortunately not true.

"It's just one of the many myths that surround him."

-Bryan Talbot, Alice In Sunderland (London, 2007), p. 227, captions 1-2.

I thought that if I added this quote in the combox to the first "Alice" post, it might be missed.

As was pointed out in that combox, one literary influence on Poul Anderson that I missed was Kipling. See Anderson's The Enemy Stars and The Game Of Empire. 

See also "Harvest Of Stars II" (here) where I respond to Anson Guthrie's remark about Kipling.

Tabitha

Tabitha Falkayn's grandparents were accepted into Highsky Choth which occupies a long stretch of the Oronesian archipelago and controls the fisheries around latitude 30 degrees north. Perhaps a quarter of the choth are human. Smaller eccentric Oronesian choths, sometimes only a single household, expect their children to form separate communities.

Tabitha's parents and their children grew up in Highsky. Because her parents were lost at sea when she was young, an Ythrian family adopted her. They encouraged her to observe the Highsky custom of a wandertime. Thus, she spent several years in human country over most of Avalon as an itinerant huntress, trapper, sailor and prospector. She won enough at poker for her share in a private commercial fishery business that she runs in partnership with the Ythrian Draun of Highsky. Thus, human economic practices influence the choth.

Tabitha lives entirely among Ythrians on St Li in the archipelago. In my first year or so at school, a performance of Alice In Wonderland was advertised with posters showing Alice with the Gryphon, a child with a monster, as I thought, although Alice did not look frightened. Now, of course, I know Alice as a work of literature as the teachers and parents would have done at the time. Tabitha grows up entirely surrounded by winged, feathered, proud carnivores - but takes them for granted.

Tabitha smokes a pipe and says, "'Most of us [in Highsky] keep to the Old Faith, you know.'" (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 502), although I am not sure whether she means to include herself in the "Most of us..."

Alice

Perish By The Sword, 10.

We can find in a text only what is there to be found. However, every Poul Anderson text has a wealth of content. For example:

"'An un-birthday present.'" (p. 98)

- is a literary reference:

‘It’s a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say. It’s a present from the White King and Queen. There now!’
‘Is it really?’ said Alice, quite pleased to find that she had chosen a good subject, after all.
‘They gave it me,’ Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands round it, ‘they gave it me—for an un-birthday present.’
-copied from here, Chapter VI, Humpty Dumpty.

Quiz question: How many Alice references are there in Anderson? You can check here (scroll down) although not all blog references to Alice are Anderson quotes.

Those Were The Days

"The Problem of Pain."

On his first job after graduating from the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas, Peter Berg explored the future Avalon with Ythrians who had not only scientific curiosity but also a sense of adventure. We have quoted his enthusiastic description twice before:

"'Oh, it was a wonderful thing to be young in that band!'"

-see here.

 

Berg is not yet thirty but it is possible to feel nostalgia for very recent times. In fact, I think that nostalgia is too precious a commodity to waste on the past. We can realize that we are now in times for which we will be nostalgic when they are gone. I managed to spin out my time in University and also to return to Higher Education twice later. Thus, while a student, I could remember being a student. In Dublin, someone said that he would read Ulysses in thirty years time when he was feeling nostalgic about Dublin. That was fifty years ago. Alice In Wonderland ends with Alice's older sister looking into the future to Alice looking back:

"...the dream of Wonderland of long ago..."

Other Literary Associations

For more about Poul Anderson and Rudyard Kipling, see the combox here.

Other literary associations are more complicated. CS Lewis replied to the secularist sf of HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon whereas Poul Anderson and James Blish wrote Wellsian and Stapledonian sf while respecting Lewisian theological issues.

Lewis:

hinted at time travelling in the concluding sentence of his first Ransom novel, Out Of The Silent Planet;

discussed time travel in the opening passage of his unfinished Ransom novel, "The Dark Tower," and in the Preface to his The Great Divorce.

However, it was Anderson who most fully developed Wellsian time travel.

Alice In Wonderland pervades our culture and impinges on Poul Anderson's works at least in one Dominic Flandry story. While recuperating from a cold, I have reread in full Alice In Sunderland by Bryan Talbot and The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. Like a reward near the end of the Lewis work, comes:

"'And she couldn't make herself smaller? - like Alice, you know.'"

-CS Lewis, The Great Divorce (London, 1946), p. 113.

Yes, we all know.

This and other important works by Lewis are set in England during World War II. Manse Everard of the Time Patrol visits London during the Blitz. All fiction is one.

Curiouser

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER TWO.

When Runei comments that Abrams' chess move is curious, Abrams tells him that:

"'It'll get curiouser.'" (p. 18)

This is an Alice reference by Poul Anderson that I have not noted before despite having previously quoted James Blish's use of this same phrase from Alice. See here.

See also other blog references to Alice, here.

Alice Roberts

This evening at a packed book launch talk in Morecambe, a short distance along the Promenade from the Old Pier Bookshop, Alice Roberts said that the neolithic revolution in Britain involved a 90% genetic shift but that it is not yet known whether this was caused by violent invasion or by gradual immigration.

Professor Roberts doubted that human beings hunted many mammoths. Unless very old or ill, a mammoth was big and dangerous. People would have scavenged mammoths and mainly hunted smaller animals. She has spent time visiting modern hunters and gatherers.

Regular readers know that this is as relevant to Poul Anderson's works as any new information about exo-planets and SETI. It is also too late for me to be on the computer so good night.

(Addendum: For a correction, see the combox.)

Demagogues

Poul Anderson's Dan Coffin dismisses "demagogues preaching revolution." See recent post, " The Future Of Rustum." (Here.) I defend some "demagogues." In my experience, those who might be described as demagogues are of two kinds: racists or anti-racists; would-be dictators or opponents of dictatorship.

Currently, xenophobia marches through Europe, sometimes unopposed. Recently, an elderly Jewish man was attacked in London. There was an immediate street response. Local clergy (Catholic priest, rabbi and imam), City Councillors, the Member of Parliament and political campaigners addressed a crowd who rejected antisemitism and celebrated diversity.

Some of the speakers at that rally would have looked and sounded like demagogues preaching hate, especially to a non-English speaker, but their message was the exact opposite. Some loud angry public speakers preach hate. Other loud angry public speakers oppose hate. The latter make a positive contribution to society and should not be dismissed as if they were Tweedledum fighting Tweedledee. (Alice reference. Alice can be relevant and topical.)

Some English History

Rereading Poul Anderson's works has slowed down because I have:

worked my way through most of the Technic History;

been reading Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise for the first time;

begun rereading Bryan Talbot's Alice In Sunderland.

Since I have met Bryan Talbot a few times and saw Poul Anderson at a couple of World SF Cons, that leaves Peter O'Donnell as the only one of these three writers with whom I have had no personal or visual contact.

Talbot's Alice... summarizes a lot of English history and thus covers some familiar Andersonian territory. Talbot mentions Romans, Vikings and Normans but, so far, has skipped over Harald Hardrada. He reminds us that it was the Venerable Bede, the father of English history, who invented the BC/AD calendar. 

Does anyone out there know which Poul Anderson book this cover illustration is for?

"Things" And Alice Again

Brain Wave, 2.

Peter Corinth keeps remembering and linking "things." (p. 18) Authors should usually avoid vague terms like "things." However, Poul Anderson uses this word more than once in this passage:

"'What're you talking about?' asked Helga.

"'Things.' Corinth explained while she finished eating." (p. 23)

We all know what it is suddenly to remember "things" that we have forgotten until now. This process is "boiling" inside Corinth so that new chains of thought rattle "...in his skull." (ibid.) He notices the elevator operator as if for the first time, suddenly realizing that this human being is not just "...part of the machinery..." (p. 19) but a living, unique part of the universe. The operator in turn has woken up wanting more than a job and a pension. He agrees to Corinth's suggestion that he "'...take a night course...'" (ibid.)

One of Corinth's two assistants has got a new idea similar to Corinth's. The other man, usually silent, discusses it eagerly. Corinth's colleague, Nathan Lewis, studying neurons, finds that neuronic signals have intensified while the inactivation time between signals has shortened. The computer and other instruments are making errors. Lots of researchers are conceiving new projects and competing for use of, e.g., the centrifuge. 

Corinth quotes:

"'"Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice.'" (p. 23)

Are nerve cells speeding up? Has something happened to electrochemical phenomena? Sf readers are used to new inventions and to alien invasions but not to changes in natural forces. But it is the task of sf writers to imagine everything.

A Few Details

SM Stirling, Shadows Of Annihilation, FOURTEEN-FIFTEEN.

The shadows move closer.

Luz was taught philosophy by a Professor Ganz, a surname familiar to readers of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. See here.

Another real person is mentioned, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. When the timelines have diverged for a generation or two, they will no longer have any individuals in common. For example, the course of Alice's life in timeline (B) will differ from its course in timeline (A). Consequently, whether or when she has children will also differ. Therefore, the children, if any, will be genetically different and will also grow up differently.

Luz wishes an early, painful death on an enemy. I would wish only for his early death.

Luz and Ciara share a tarte Normande (see The Food Thread):

pastry crust;
slivered almonds;
egg custard;
sweetened cream;
creamed butter;
Calvados;
spices;
apple slices;
caramelized apricot glaze.

(A tired blogger takes refuge in easily accessible details.)

Dodos

The previous post listed several comparable literary devices including Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole, SM Stirling's Gate and some of Poul Anderson's routes between universes. Dodos also link these three authors.

Alice meets one (see image). Stirling's Tom Christiansen, investigating the smuggling of rare species, recognizes a caged, and just dying, dodo. Later, when he is being introduced to the alternative timeline:

"'Dodos?' [Tom] murmured. 'And tigers and bears, oh my!'"
-SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004), p. 248.

When Poul Anderson's Wanda Tamberly realizes that she can join the Time Patrol and study live prehistoric animals, she thinks:

"Mammoths and cave bears and dodos, oh my!"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 735.

We strive for literary unity between the universes!

This Evening And Tomorrow

(From Alice In Sunderland.)

Blogging till midnight and beyond was disrupting my sleep pattern so I now stop about 09:00 pm, which means a longer gap till the breakfast posts, if any.

After about 09:00 pm, I sometimes want a visual break from reading prose and prefer graphic works to TV. Alan Moore's graphic fiction, Miracleman, led to a comparison of Poul Anderson's obscure flying men with several more famous ones here whereas Bryan Talbot's graphic documentary, Alice In Sunderland, led to a comparison of Anderson's Dominic Flandry with the historical Jack Crawford.

I expect to continue rereading Talbot this evening. Either this or other inputs will probably lead to more posts here tomorrow.

Red King, White King, Last Viking

Bryan Talbot says that Alice "...pervades our culture." (p. 132)

Poul Anderson wrote a Dominic Flandry story called "The White King's War";

Alan Moore's Miracleman, Book Two, is called The Red King Syndrome;

John le Carre wrote The Looking Glass War;

James Blish's John Amalfi thinks, "Curiouser and curiouser." (Cities In Flight, p. 251);

Talbot says that there is an Alice influence on Heinlein. (?)

In "The White King's War," incorporated into A Circus Of Hells, Flandry refers to a "'...rockinghorsefly...'" and a "'...bread-and-butterfly...'" (Young Flandry, CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 249) and almost says, "'Ahoy, ahoy, check.'" (CHAPTER NINE, p. 251)

Talbot summarizes every invasion of England but skips over Harald Hardrada's failed attempt at conquest. However, Anderson gives us this in his The Last Viking Trilogy.

Miltonic References

This blog celebrates substantial popular fiction with deep literary roots. Poul Anderson's character, Svoboda, refers to both Alice and Dante. This led to a combox comparison of Dante with Milton, then to a combox discussion of Milton's "Better to reign in Hell..." as quoted both in Star Trek and in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Earlier, I had compared Milton's Precosmic Chaos to Anderson's and Heinlein's accounts of Hell. (For Heinlein's account, see Heinlein's Hell.)

Milton and/or Dante are referenced in novels by CS Lewis, James Blish, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle and Sir Philip Pullman and no doubt others.

Xeno- Studies

In the Solar Commonwealth period of Poul Anderson's Technic History, a Solar Spice & Liquors trade pioneer crew comprises a Master Merchant, a planetologist and a xenobiologist, according to van Rijn in "Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters." Elsewhere (here), I have referred to the last two as a planetographer and a xenologist. "Xenologist" is the usual name for Chee Lan's profession in the Technic History.

I mention this because, in James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, a young woman called Dr. Liu Meid is a leading xenozoologist. Authors have not yet settled down on a single terminology. Anderson and Blish wrote the same kind of sf but Anderson wrote a lot more of it which is why this blog is mainly about him.

As I blog, Dr. Alice Roberts on the Digging For Britain TV series covers the periods of Norse and Anglo-Saxon settlements in Britain which we read about in Poul Anderson's fiction.

From the past through the present into the future.

In the historic Merchants pub, a Greek comrade asked a member of staff whether he was Italian but he turned out to be Portugese. I remarked that Lancaster is an international city - as well as historical. We welcome diversity and hope for more in the future, as in Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic..."

Reading And Rereading

I have allowed my first ever reading of SM Stirling's On The Oceans Of Eternity to be interrupted by rereading a bunch of Poul Anderson stuff. Nothing particularly wrong with that. I hope that the blog remains fresh because I am always taking a fresh approach to whichever work I am currently rereading, not plodding systematically through each series in turn. We can dip in and out of Anderson's Technic History without rereading it from "The Saturn Game" to "Starfog." (And who would have guessed that those two stories were the first and forty third installments of a single series?)

However, I am finding it hard to pick up one or two of the narrative threads. What had Raupasha done to annoy Kashtiliash? I have flicked back through the text but not found it yet. Meanwhile, Brigadier Kenneth Hollard's audience with Kashtiliash demonstrate how allies should negotiate. There are common interests and mutual respect but also, crucially, strength on both sides. Hollard is able, indeed obliged, to tell Kashtiliash that he may exile but must not kill Raupasha because she is under the protection of the Republic.

By contrast, personal relationships between William Walker's followers are, as we expect, dreadful. Odikweos (Odysseus) swears by the Kindly Ones (another Neil Gaiman connection) that he will kill Alice Hong if he can. Let me guess now that that is how she is going to die...

Had the Furies been renamed the Kindly Ones that far back?

So Many Years Ago

See A Four Stage Literary Progression.

An author of a popular fictional series presses buttons by referring to earlier episodes. Characters and readers reminisce. (Alan Moore did this big time in his "last Superman story." See Life And Art II.)

When, in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, I, Dominic Flandry is reminded of:

"...Persis d'Io as she had been when she and Flandry said farewell on a planet now destroyed..." (p. 344)

- this refers to Ensign Flandry, the first Flandry novel.

When we are told that Persis had never recontacted Flandry, not even when he:

"...well-nigh singlehanded put down the barbarians of Scotha and was knighted for it..." (p. 346)

-this refers to "Tiger By The Tail," the first published Flandry episode.

Let me conclude this post with two similar examples from Ian Fleming, then a peculiar one.

"'Remember that Moonraker job I was on a few years back?'"

-Ian Fleming, Thunderball (London, 1961), 17, p. 141.

Bond remembers:

"...the great battle across the baize he had had with Le Chiffre so many years ago."

-Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (London, 1965), 2, p. 21.

A few years, so many years - but we are not told how many. Fictional time can be more fluid than real time. We can check the precise year of publication for each volume. In Royale-les-Eaux, Bond also visits the grave of "Vesper Lynd. RIP." (ibid.) Le Chiffre and Vesper are, respectively, the villain and heroine of the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale.

I have referred before to the haunting ending of Alice In Wonderland which refers to this work itself as a tale of long ago.