This Afternoon And Evening

Hello. I am having lunch before heading over to Morecambe to try to visit Andrea. A more complicated post about Didonians is gestating but will have to wait until this evening. The Indian curry mentioned recently here is postponed because a friend is unwell. Rereading Poul Anderson blends with the rest of life. Sheila will visit her family in Northern Ireland and I might revisit the friend in Birmingham. Because Sheila likes Malta, we might revisit there although I do not want to make a habit of flying in the current climate.

Laters...

(Andrea's brother's Old Pier Bookshop, front and interior. Andrea inhabits the two floors above the shop.)

Andrea And Another Interstellar Empire

OK. An afternoon with Andrea above his brother's Old Pier Bookshop. Relevant to this blog:

Andrea thinks that current technology would be able to reach Proxima Centauri in 92 years;

he has well-informed ideas about what will happen next in the UK, the US and elsewhere but I will wait to see how his ideas pan out;

he has been listening to Empire Of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio.

Comments:

I have not kept up with recent sf!;

this novel - correct me if I am wrong - projects Roman historical situations into an interstellar future - like some we know already (Asimov, Anderson);

the novel involves STL interstellar flight with suspended animation and instantaneous interstellar communication by quantum entanglement.

We are familiar with these themes in sf: a (maybe) credible means of interstellar travel and a scientific rationale for instantaneous communication.

One problem is that such concepts begin to sound like cliches but I would obviously have to read the book to judge for myself and I am reading or rereading more than enough already.

Anderson And Andrea

 

(That is a neat post title, literally meaning "Son of Andrew and Andrew.")

Regular readers remember that Andrea is a male friend of Italian descent who lives above his brother's Old Pier Bookshop (see the attached image) where I visit him once a month.

The word from Andrea this month:

The world is in a bad state and getting worse. I think that each of us can fill in some of the details.

Reality reflected in Poul Anderson's works:

Time Patrol

"It was a peculiar feeling to read the headlines and know, more or less, what was coming next. It took the edge off, but added a sadness, for this was a tragic era."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 3, p. 17.

"Here also it was fall, the kind of crisp and brilliant day New York often enjoyed until it became uninhabitable..." (my emphasis)

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 342.

"[Manse Everard] didn't like dirt, disorder, and danger any better than I did. However, he felt he needed a pied-a-terre in the twentieth century, and had grown used to these lodgings before decay had advanced overly far." (my emphasis)

-"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" AT 1980, p. 352.

The Technic History

"The Technic Civilization series...begins in the twenty-first century, with recovery from a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos."

-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 611.

We are in the twenty-first century and entering the Chaos. Anderson's fantastic fiction resonates now.

Watching DUNE

When, like today, I visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop, I do not post on this blog during the day but often have something to post about when I get back home. Today Andrea and I watched Dune, TV series, episode one. I do not think that Frank Herbert's Dune deserves three different screen adaptations when Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization still has none.

Observations:

Interstellar empires, complete with Emperors, are big in American sf! What happened to Presidents? In James Blish's The Quincunx of Time, the President of the Milky Way announces federation with the Magellanic Clouds in 3480. In Isaac Asimov's The Stars Like Dust, the Constitution of the United States is considered for use on an interstellar scale. However, in novels set later in that future history, there is a Trantorian Empire that becomes the Galactic Empire. Dune presents an already established Empire whereas Anderson shows us the rise, decline and fall of the Terran Empire together with some very different and plausible individual Emperors.

Herbert presents organized religion only as a vehicle for cynical manipulation of planetary populations whereas Anderson shows us genuine piety and devotion, e.g., in Kossara Vymezal who wants to be married in St. Clement's Cathedral by Father Smed who had christened and confirmed her. Andrea went as far as to say that the evil of organised religion was the entire point of Dune but that might be going too far.

A Big Disappointment

The following observations are appropriate on a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. 

Today, in Andrea's place above the Old Pier Bookshop, he and I were disappointed to learn that a probe to seek out life inside Callisto had been cancelled probably due to lack of funds. Andrea thought that NASA should have retained copyrights to all its discoveries and thus would have been able to establish a Moon Base by now. Also, we do not know the current state of the space program in the midst of the general turmoil and apparently it is getting harder to find reliable information anywhere. We want jetpacks and maybe self-driving flying cars. With jetpacks, we would be able to hop across the Bay from Morecambe to Grange. Currently, we just look out Andrea's window towards Grange.

Interesting times in the Chinese sense.

Galactic Civilizations And Global Conflicts

No posts today until now because we (editorially speaking) have been with Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. 

 Andrea usually says something blog-relevant. He knows of an sf TV series with the premise that there is about one technological civilization in every twenty or so galaxies but some of them have FTL (faster-than-light space travel). 

Observations:

the FTL must be very F if there is regular intergalactic travel;

are they taking any steps to populate the galaxies?;

Poul Anderson would be able to take that premise and write prose fiction set in that universe;

I am inclined to accept the scarcity of technological civilizations but not FTL.

Andrea's other contribution today: although nothing much is changing internationally right now, we are heading for a major conflict and indeed are already in the first stage of World War III although it is not yet recognized as such - it took a while for 1939-'45 to become a global conflict.

Are we the only intelligences in a vast volume of space and also about to destroy ourselves? 

Poul Anderson wrote a few short dystopias.

Mice And Men

I am thinking about Lazarus Long in Robert Heinlein's Future History, Volume IV, Methuselah's Children, and about Hanno and his fellow immortals in Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years. These guys are un-aging mutants without benefit of any artificial antiagathics, antisenescence, antithanatics etc. If there are any such people in our world, then they wisely conceal their longevity from the rest of us as do the fictional characters. When Hanno reveals his nature to Cardinal Richelieu, the latter prudently/pragmatically judges that public knowledge of the existence of even one un-aging individual would further destabilize an already unstable civilization. When, during the general social liberation after the Second American Revolution, Heinlein's Howard Families go public about their longevity, they are persecuted. Social liberation is temporarily thrown into reverse until a way is found to rejuvenate people by putting artificial blood into their veins. Andrea tells me that there has recently been some research in this direction.

I did not blog this afternoon because I was visiting Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. However, conversation with Andrea usually discloses information relevant to this blog. He informed me that, with a single injection, scientists have reversed aging in mice and that human beings might be next. This is inherently a good thing but what might be its consequences in the current deteriorating world situation where even good news might be bad?

Lightning And Lunch

If you are struck by lightning, then the most likely result is that you will be thrown into the past! See Lightning.

Similarly, if a shop manager announces that he proposes to take a lunch break, then we can be certain that, while walking from the shop to the food court, he will be summoned to another world where he will have to complete a quest before he can be allowed to return to mundanity. At least, this is certain if we know what kind of fiction we are reading, like Tad Williams' contribution to the book displayed above. But now I really must get back to some other reading not directly associated with blogging.

(Regular readers might be pleased to learn that today Sheila and I walked from Lancaster to Morecambe where we ate on the Promenade, then "visited" Andrea, he who lives above his brother's Old Pier Bookshop. (See also here.) We stood on a side street while Andrea appeared naked to the waist (at least) on his walled balcony. Another such "visit" will be made next month but the sooner I can get back into that upstairs three dimensional maze with Andrea's lavish Italian hospitality the better.)

Sequels And Prequels II

Captain Dominic Flandry fights Merseians who employ the Chereionite telepath, Aycharaych. The conflict between Flandry and Aycharaych climaxes in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Prequels:

a Christian from Aeneas (see below) is among the human beings employed by Ythrians during the exploration of the planet Avalon;

Nicholas van Rijn's trader team led by David Falkayn spearheads the Polesotechnic League mission to save Merseia from the effects of supernova radiation;

aristocratic Merseians disaffected from Technic civilization join the Baburite space navy which occupies both the supermetals-rich planet Mirkheim discovered by Falkayn and Falkayn's home planet, Hermes;

the Merseian Roidhunate is a growing threat during the period of the early Terran Empire;

the Young Flandry Trilogy recounts Flandry's early career, including his defeat of the McCormac Rebellion centred on the planet Aeneas;

Aycharaych foments potential jihad on Aeneas between the defeat of the Rebellion and the Chereionite's first encounter with Flandry. 

That is a lot of prequels.

Addendum on the Bookshop and Holmes: While I was with Andrea, Sheila texted that she was downstairs in the Bookshop and had found a Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Hudson book so Andrea went down to invite her up and we bought the book.

Twentieth Century Space Travel

Andrea thinks that NASA could have paid for itself by selling and profiting from its discoveries and technological off-shoots, also that Projection Orion would have been able to send a large craft to Alpha Centauri in 99 years. Maybe sf ideas of the later twentieth century and early twenty-first century could have come about after all?

Back home from Andrea's place overlooking Morecambe Bay, I need to clear my head from a bus journey (no longer driving a car), meditate and read or blog or maybe just read. 

Back here later today or tomoz, maybe.

Wings

Time today has been taken up both with a (fourth) covid vaccination and with a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop.

Andrea and I recently watched a feature film starring, among several other comic book characters, a superhero who flies not by his own power but by flapping artificial wings while wearing a belt of anti-gravity metal. The belt answers the question: how would an organism with a brain and a central nervous system heavy enough to carry intelligence be able to lift itself and to fly under terrestroid conditions? Such a character would be a worthy candidate for admittance into an Ythrian choth.

In a comic book, we do not see the wings move whereas on screen we do and it looks good, my point of course being that it will now be an easy matter to put Poul Anderson's Ythrians and Diomedeans onto a cinema or TV screen so let's see it.

High is heaven and holy. Fair winds forever.

Conscious Simulations

 

Andrea usually says something relevant. 

In Poul Anderson's Genesis, a far future post-organic intelligence creates simulated environments with conscious inhabitants who think that they really are living in ancient Greece, in nineteenth century England or in an alternative history etc. Andrea summarizes current arguments to the conclusion that we are now living in such a simulation.

(i) If there is one material environment containing many simulated environments, including simulations within simulations, then it is statistically more probable that we are living in one of the simulations than in the original material environment.

(ii) Apparently, sub-atomic particles are observed to exhibit properties that would conform to the simulation theory but I have lost track of the argument. 

See:

Simulation hypothesis

It gets complicated - and it is getting late here. But Anderson's sf is still at the forefront of speculation.

Best SF

Andrea, whom I visit above his brother's Old Pier Bookshop, asked me what I thought was the best single work of sf that I knew of in any medium. He thought that I was finding it difficult to answer the question whereas I was pausing in order to formulate my answer. There are many good individual works like HG Wells' The Time Machine and Poul Anderson's Genesis but the work that I thought of was Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate. It might be argued that that is not a single work but a collection although it is bound together into a unity by the new introductions. Far from objecting to my choice, Andrea said that he would read it. Describing the Earth Book involved describing its connection to five previous volumes and, to a lesser extent, to the subsequent Technic History volumes. But I have already summarized the Earth Book and the Technic History far too often on this blog to need to do it again.

Full Of Days

By searching the blog, I have discovered that Poul Anderson used the Biblical phrase, "full of days,"  at least twice. See:

Old And Full Of Days

Full Of Days; Stars

This came as a surprise. It is possible to find many details in Anderson's works but not to remember them all simultaneously. And that is as far as we go tonight. It is time for me to read Andrea Camilerri. But the search for previously unnoticed details in Anderson's Genesis will continue tomorrow and maybe the day after when I will again visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop.

Information Overload

I am experiencing information overload and can only enumerate several disparate inputs, mostly Poul Anderson-related, whether directly or indirectly.

(i) SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall is a military leader mentally advised by a self-conscious strategic computer, the technological equivalent of supernatural inspiration, which is what he regards it as. A neat idea.

(ii) Today, I visited the Old Pier Bookshop in order to buy a few remaining Dornford Yates titles but also found a copy of Isaac Asimov's Universe, Volume I: The Diplomacy Guild, containing "The Burning Sky" by Poul Anderson.

(iii) I also visited Andrea who lives above his brother's bookshop. Andrea told me of another reason for war-time French resentment of Britain. French POWs understood that they would be released at the end of the war - which the British indefinitely prolonged! (Like Anderson's Avalon refusing to surrender when expected.)

(iv) Yates mentions Francois Villon.

These inputs will generate further posts.

The Blogverse III

See Blogverse search result. (Scroll down.)

Posts about time travel should be published on Logic of Time Travel. However, such posts are often about works by Poul Anderson so instead they are published here on Poul Anderson Appreciation. Search this blog for, e.g., time travel or Time Patrol.

When there is time travel either in a comic strip or in a screen adaptation from a comic strip, then it is discussed on the Comics Appreciation blog. Search that blog for time travel.

Because time travel paradoxes are relevant to Poul Anderson Appreciation, I will draw attention to:

The Time Travel Paradox In Avengers: Endgame I
The Time Travel Paradox In Avengers: Endgame II
The Time Travel Paradox In Avengers: Endgame III

In II, I argue that there is a contradiction.
In III, I summarize Andrea's different view.
In the combox to III, Andrea confirms my understanding of his view.

Warped Reality

OK. Walked to Morecambe, ate a veg breaker with fried egg and hash browns (see The Food Thread) and visited Andrea (scroll down) above his brother's second-hand bookshop.

Andrea informed me that, in the current Marvel superheroes film, reality is somehow warped so that future films in this series will refer back to an altered history. Such reality alteration has become a standard superheroes gambit.

Something like this could have happened in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. Imagine:

a novel set in future centuries;

villains who change the course of history so that it no longer leads to the Danellians;

Time Patrol agents who restore a course of events that leads to the Danellians but that also has major differences from what they remember, e.g., one of the agents is now in a timeline where some historical events are different and where his own birth and previous life did not happen.

Maybe only he remembers or maybe others realize that there are some differences but also judge that they do not matter. Careful writing would be necessary to keep the plot consistent within the level of discontinuity that is allowed by the variable reality concept. But we get the impression that the history protected by the Patrol is already patched together at various crucial points in any case. Was there an "original" timeline in which Veleda was raped and killed and never became an avenging prophetess capable of disrupting the timeline further? And what was the original history of Cyrus the Great? Etc.

In Gaiian

"Lodestar."

Coya Conyon:

"...found she could control her thoughts, somewhat, but not the tingle through her blood." (p. 342)

Can she control her thoughts? In zazen, we practice awareness, not control, but that is one vast topic.

Scottish ancestry has gone to Hermes, African to Nyanza, and both have returned to Earth in Malcolm Conyon, father of Coya. We are already doing this, as far as we can, on Earth. Andrea, whose parents came from Italy to Morecambe (instead of New York) via Glasgow knows about Italian Scots.

"Sprawled in a lounger, [van Rijn] waved a two-liter tankard of beer he clutched in his hairy left paw." (ibid.)

See "More Beer!"

Have we begun a new thread about references to beer or should we just take it as read that van Rijn does drink a lot of beer?

I will shortly resort not to a temple of Bacchus but to the historic Lancaster Quaker Meeting House where our meditation group hires an upstairs room. Tomorrow: Andrea has told us that he will cook a curry and maybe bake a cake. Life continues to be good for some Earthlings some of the time. 

Backgrounds

Bruce was the favorite. All his life he was the favorite. Oh, he deserved it—the well-behaved kid, the bright and promising kid. But it must have been hard for you to take, with your Italian background, where the oldest son normally has precedence.
-copied from 6, here. 

I know something about large Irish and Italian Catholic families! They remain "Irish" or "Italian" for generations after emigrating. At Andrea's (scroll down) mother's funeral, a very old guy in a wheelchair who looked like everyone's great-grandfather turned out to be the oldest brother. Andrea knows how to manage a cafe or restaurant just from his upbringing. He told me that one of the rules of such a family is: "This has not been forgotten! And, if there's another row, it will be the first thing to be brought up!" And his family in Italy represented every part of the varied Italian political spectrum. One thing to be valued in Britain and the US is the varied ancestries of friends and neighbors.

Multiverses

See Anderson And Andrea. 

In addition to discussing the state of this world, Andrea and I also watch superhero TV series that involve inter-universal crossovers within a fictional multiverse.

Worthwhile prose sf that I have read about multiverses includes:

Conquistador by SM Stirling;

Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest in which -

the Prince Rupert of the Rhine from the Shakespearean universe of this novel (A Midsummer Tempest),

Holger Danske from Carolingian myth and from Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions,

and Valeria Matuchek from the magical universe of Anderson's Operation Otherworld -

- meet each other in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, from Anderson's "House Rule" and "Losers' Night," the first cameoing Nicholas van Rijn from Anderson's Technic History and the latter featuring among others Winston Churchill.

We can't get enough of it. (But fortunately Anderson gives us quite a lot.)

Addendum, 29 April: Life has gotten busy here. (I use an Americanism out of respect for Poul Anderson.) So far this year, we have had 440 posts in 4 months so maybe that is enough until some time early next month? On Saturday, there will be a May Day March and Rally in Lancaster and, on Sunday, I might get a lift to a Wesak (The Buddha's Birthday) Festival in Northumberland. Did both last year. (Maybe not many people celebrate both.) Anderson-wise, we are still rereading Harvest The Fire. After that, who knows? Onward through the multiverse.