A Silhouette And Birds Of Prey

"Inconstant Star," Chapter V.

Raptor class warship Swordbeak leaves hyperspace and approaches the Father Sun of Kzin:

"Watchers in space saw laser turrets and missile launchers silhouetted against the Milky Way, sleek as the plumage of its namesake, overwhelmingly deadlier than the talons." (p. 204)

Thus, this ship is named after a bird of prey. The Klingons have a type of warship called Bird-of-Prey. The Merseians have a type of gunboat named after the fangryf, a bird of prey. Star Trek fans know about kzinti because Larry Niven exported that species to the Star Trek universe but they also need to learn about Merseians.

Gwydionian Scenery

Water falls noisily into a tree-filled dell with shifting patterns of light and shadow;

rainbows dance in smoke thrown up from the water;

currents swirl around growth-covered rocks;

riverbed stones ripple;

the air is cool and damp;

a bird of prey wheels overhead.

Noise, light, coolness and dampness: three senses.

Having mentioned that the Merseians name a spacecraft after their bird of prey, the fangryf, we should also remember that one class of Klingon spacecraft is called "Bird of Prey."

Bird Of Prey On Cain

"The Master Key."

"'Far, far overhead a bird of prey (scroll down) would wheel, then suddenly stoop - in the thick air I could hear the whistle through its wing feathers - and vanish into the treetops down in the valley. Those leaves had a million different shades of color, like an endless autumn.'" (p. 289)

This passage contributes to our Andersonian birds of prey theme. Often, the author or narrator points out that flying organisms on other planets are not really birds. The autumnal leaves present another colorful detail.

Our changeable weather is currently summery so I expect another long walk today.

Conversation And Scenery On Gwydion

When a Gwydiona has recounted an undersea adventure, Tolteca teases him by asking him what it might symbolize. Llyrdin accepts the question as valid although he does not know what answer to give:

"'I don't know. I'm not much of a thinker, myself. Maybe God likes a joke now and then. But if so, Vwi has a pawky sense of humor.'"
-The Night Face, VII, p. 602.

"Vwi" is the universal pronoun. For deities with pawky senses of humor, see Answers To Prayers.

Quiz question: which character is said to have an odd sense of humor elsewhere in Flandry's Legacy? (The pronoun is masculine, not universal.)

Another conversation occurs in this colorful setting:

"The water foamed down into a dell filled with young trees. Their foliage made a shifting pattern of light and shadow under the deep upland sky. Rainbows danced in the water smoke, currents swirled about rocks covered with soft green growth, the stones on the riverbed seemed to ripple. Cool and damp, the air rang with the noise of the fall. High overhead wheeled a single bird of prey." (p. 604)

Three senses and yet another bird of prey.

Buffer Zone

Any future history series has an indefinite number of potential spin-off series. Star Trek has become a future history because it covers more than one generation. Years ago, in Waterstones Bookshop, I came across a paperback novel, title and author's name long forgotten, which was the opening volume of a series about a Klingon Bird of Prey Commander. Does anyone know whether this Bird of Prey still flies?

One sentence in Poul Anderson's Technic History suggests a comparable spin-off:

"Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 82.

OK. A Terran Navy special forces team works in the buffer zone where it explores, establishes advance bases, covertly contacts any natives that have not yet been contacted by Merseia and spies on any that have been. The Merseians maintain a similar force, not necessarily all of their own species, although we know that they have no Chereionites to spare.

What would it be like for intelligent species to live in such a zone? Such a series could have legs.

A Hermetian Bird Of Prey

Mirkheim, XVI.

Above the Falkayn domain at Hornbeck:

"Far overhead a steelwing hovered, alert for prey." (p. 215)

I note this here first because it is yet another hovering bird of prey and secondly because it is one that I seemed to have missed in all previous readings. Its presence is symbolic in this passage. The Falkayn settlement has withdrawn:

"- as if in preparation for onslaught." (ibid.)

What better reminder of the orbiting Baburite occupation fleet than a hovering "steelwing"?

David Falkayn and his mother walk and talk about the crisis. This is the first and only time that we encounter Athena Falkayn. Poul Anderson conveys much with little. 

Belated Blogging And The Spiral Arm

Today should have been a big return to blogging but, as I explained in the combox here, I have lacked Internet access for most of the day. Let's try to get back into Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series.

On Merseia:

"High overhead wheeled a fangryf, hunting, and the light burned gold off its feathers."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 22.

And on Unan Besar:

"High overhead, a bird of prey soared among the last ragged mists. Sunlight struck its wings and made them gold."
-Poul Anderson, "The Plague of Masters" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-147 AT VIII, p. 70.

So how many gold-winged birds of prey are there? I don't know but sometimes one passage resonates with another, as here.

In "Hunters of the Sky Cave," the omniscient narrator informs the reader that:

interstellar domains have indefinite borders;
stars, of intermingled types, are many although scattered thinly;
the Terrestrial Empire is a sphere 400 light-years in diameter containing four million stars;
less than half have been visited;
a few hundred thousand might have slight contact with the Empire;
only one hundred thousand have regular contact;
many planetary systems are unusable or uninhabitable;
the Empire is tenuous -

"And its inconceivable extent is still the merest speck on an outlying part of one spiral arm of one galaxy; among a hundred billion or more great suns, those known to any single world are the barest, tiniest handful."
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Sir Dominic Flandry..., pp. 149-301 AT III, p. 170.

Shifting POVs

The Boat Of A Million Years, XII.

In the opening paragraph, the omniscient narrator describes young men galloping over the plain. There is yet another bird of prey:

"A hawk rode the airflows..." (p. 241)

In the opening sentence of the second paragraph, the narrator informs us that children see the approaching riders. The second sentence takes us into the viewpoint of the oldest boy who becomes:

"...filled with importance..." (ibid.)

The boy is called Little Hare and we see the last of his pov (point of view) at the end of the third paragraph on p. 242. He has passed the message about the returning hunters to the berdache, Three Geese, who succeeds Little Hare as viewpoint character and relays the information to his father, the shaman called Deathless. We then read a third person account of Deathless walking out to meet the hunters and conversing with their leader, Running Wolf. 

Deathless becomes the pov character when he reenters the stockade:

"Upon his own entry, he found tumult." (p. 246)

"Insight escaped him." (p. 248)

- although most of the narration remains impersonal.

His pov ends when:

"...he slept." (p. 251)

There should then be a double space between paragraphs because the text continues with an external scene and an account of an attack on the village. A man bounding from the lodge, recognizable to us as Deathless, is described in the third person. The rest of the narrative is impersonal, including another dialogue between Deathless and Running Wolf.

"After such knowledge" In GENESIS

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART TWO, X.

Two further passages are set in the eighteenth century emulation:

"Early morning in the garden, flashes of dew on leaves and petals, a hawk aloft on a breeze that caused Laurinda to pull her shawl about her. She sat by the basin and looked up at him where he strode back and forth before her, hands clenched at his sides or clutched together at his back. Gravel grated beneath his feet." (2, p. 218)

Andersonian attention to detail: flashing dew, a hovering bird of prey, a breeze, our last sight of the fish basin, grating gravel - three senses.

"They followed a lane to a hill about a kilometer away. Trees on its top did not obscure a wide view across the land. The sun stood dazzling in the east, a few small clouds sailed across a blue as radiant as their whiteness, but an early breath of autumn was in the wind. It went strong and fresh, scattering dawn-mists off plowland and sending waves through the green of pastures; it soughed in the branches overhead and whirled some already dying leaves off. High beyond them winged a V of wild geese." (6, pp. 229-230)

This is the last sight of eighteenth century England both for the characters and for their readers. We see this emulation only when they do. Thus, the breath of autumn and the few dying leaves are appropriate. I do not fully appreciate all these nuances until I blog about them.

Christian and Laurinda will be together but as memories in Alpha. Gaia will not maintain them in an emulation:

"'After such knowledge as they have tasted of, how could they return to me?'" (XII, p. 246)

I don't see why not. But I have just noticed James Blish's title, After Such Knowledge, a quotation from TS Eliot, in Anderson's text. There is always more to be found.

Four Senses And A Hovering Carrion Bird

Fire Time, V.

" A wind boomed cruelly hot. The canes where Arnanak stood rattled in its blast. It smelled of seared brush. Red and white light together cast double shadows of different lengths and colors, weirdened the whole landscape..." (p. 48)

Stop there. There is more but that is plenty. 

Bodily sensations: wind; cruel heat.

Sounds: boom; rattle; blast.

Smell: seared brush.

Sight: red and white light.

Two suns contend. Conflicting sources of light and shadow alarmingly change the environment as if the end were nigh although everyone knows of old that Fire Time is a cyclical event. Other colours mentioned are yellow shrubs, grey soil, ocherous crags and brazen sky. In that sky:

"A carrion ptenoid hovered far, far aloft..." (ibid.)

This time, appropriately, it is a carrion bird, not a bird of prey.

On Nike

"A Tragedy of Errors."

Before disembarking from Firedrake:

"High overhead [Dagny] descried the gleam of..." (p. 480)

Yet another hovering bird of prey?

"...a wheeling delta wing." (ibid.)

The same sort of thing, we suppose. The text continues:

"The forest roared with wind." (ibid.)

We are sensitized to textual references to wind, expecting metaphor, pathetic fallacy or oblique commentary on the action. For once, I think that this is just a description of the physical environment. In fact, two pages later:

"Here the wind had gentled, and the clouds were dissipating fast. (Odd to have such small cells of weather, she thought in a detached logical part of herself. Another indication of an atmosphere disturbed by violent solar conditions?)" (p. 482)

Indeed. Inability to forecast their turbulently changing weather conditions handicaps the Nikeans and the new arrivals will be able to help when the language problems have been straightened out. Human cooperation is a marvelous thing when human conflicts have been resolved. 

Eagle And Silvery Cataract

Conan The Rebel, XIII.

Conan, Daris and Falco proceed by wingboat to Taia. Daris has declared her love for Conan and he could make love to her. However, Belit would reproach Conan not for disloyalty to her, Belit, but for treachery to Daris when leaving Daris to return to Belit. Falco remains besotted with Senufer, not accepting that Senufer must be Nehekba. 

"High above the boat, on wings that shone golden in the sun, an eagle kept pace." (p. 135)

At first sight, yet another hovering bird of prey. However, if we remember Nehekba's earlier dialogue, then we know that this eagle is Nehekba in magical bird form following the wingboat. In how many works by Poul Anderson do sorceresses spy in bird form? (Maybe I can get blog readers to do some of the research work?)

This will be a good place to break off because, turning the page, we must cope with a description of Taia as the wanderers arrive there:

"XIV WAYFARERS IN TAIA" (p. 136)

And we spot on the facing page a "...silvery cataract of Milky Way..." (p. 137) that we seem to have missed before.

Apes And A Waterfall

The Night Face.

"'We've both had encounters before now with animals on the verge of intelligence, not to mention fully developed nonhuman races.'" (VIII, p. 613)

Here is one further reminder that nonhuman intelligences still exist in this post-Imperial period of the Technic History even though they do not appear. 2001: A Space Odyssey coped with the problem of what aliens look like by just not showing them. These four stories could have been written from that perspective although now CGI makes the visuals of any kind of screen aliens possible.

Chapter VII informed us that parallel evolution had made anthropoid animals, apes, common on terrestroid planets. We had not known that till now.

Chapter VII also described:

foaming water;

"...a shifting pattern of light and shadow..." (p. 604);

dancing rainbows;

swirling currents;

riverbed stones seeming to ripple;

a waterfall ringing in the cool, damp air;

a high, wheeling bird of prey.

Familiar descriptive details in new combinations.

On Arzun

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

There is an "...old ruined highway..." (p. 408) but would the Arzunians, able to teleport, have needed roads? (If yes, then they would have constructed them telekinetically.)

"A lonely bird, cruel-beaked and watchful, hovered on great black wings far overhead, waiting for them to die." (ibid.)

Yet another bird of prey.

When I knew that there was an as yet uncollected Technic History installment entitled "Sargasso of Lost Starships," I expected something like a hard sf story set in a planetary system where disused interstellar spaceships had drifted together into a common orbit, as had happened once in a Dan Dare story, not an action-adventure story where men from Earth fight beautiful humanoid aliens with swords. (As in the first two Dominic Flandry stories, the use of swords in a technological future is rationalized.)

Donovan is a defeated enemy of the Terrans and has previously established a rapport with an Arzunian so which side is he on? Does he know?

Return To Avalon II

What does this mean?

"'I'm afraid we've no time for gaiety...We've walking weather ahead.'
"'Indeed?'
"'The Empire's about to expand our way.'" (my emphasis)
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT p. 467.

Walking weather? The speakers, Christopher Holm/Arinnian and Tabitha Falkayn/Hrill, are human beings but each of them is also a member of a choth. Choths are social organizations of the winged Ythrians. Many of the human beings who share the colony planet Avalon with Ythrians have joined choths. Thus, these "bird-humans" are under choth law and custom, not human law, even though there is a Parliament of Man on Avalon, and, lacking wings, they fly with anti-gravity belts. Thus, "walking weather" must mean "weather too bad to fly in"?

Tabitha uses other bird talk:

"'...a man or woman who tries to be an Ythrian is a rattlewing.'" (p. 502)

"'Can't have it on both wings, son.'" (p. 504)

"'How blows your wind?'" (p. 506)

But when Chris, who is very Ythrianized, asks her why she speaks Anglic to him, she replies:

"'We are humans, you and I. We haven't the feathers to use Planha as it ought to be used. Why do you mind?'" (p. 500)

The intricate Ythrian feathers are so closely connected to muscles and nerve endings that "...their movements constituted a whole universe of expression forever denied to man.'" (p. 455)

When First Marchwarden Ferune of Mistwood Choth addressed Second Marchwarden Daniel Holm in Planha:

"Irritation, fret, underlying anger and dismay, rippled across his body." (ibid.)

His "...rippling 'reminder' note..." accompanied by a quirking of "...certain feathers..." (p. 459) is equivalent to an Anglic sentence. When he says, "'Walkers,'" (p. 462) this reminds Holm that, although many human beings have joined choths, some Ythrians have adopted the human lifestyle of atomic individuals in a global community. (Not participating in choths, do they instead vote, or run for election, in the Parliament?)

When Ferune adds, "'Influence,'" (ibid.) this alone is enough to remind Holm that many Avalonian Ythrians resent human influence and that this might be what makes them more reactionary than any on Ythri. Finally, since Ythrians have always hunted and still hunt live prey and regard their own deaths as God the Hunter stooping on them, Ferune comments, "'...we don't catch time in any net.'" (ibid.)

Quantity Versus Quality

Star Trek has proliferated into multiple series but can do that because it is multi-authored. Larry Niven's Known Space grew by becoming multi-authored. CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union future history series is twenty seven novels plus seven anthologies. Poul Anderson's Technic History is impressively vast for a single-author work, comprising forty three installments, including at least ten novels, depending on how we classify them.

I gather that Picard, Enterprise Captain in the second Star Trek series, has acquired his own series. I once saw a paperback that was a volume of a series about a Klingon Bird of Prey Commander. Anderson was not able to match all that quantity. However, in his "Wings of Victory," both the Grand Survey and the character of Aram Turekian are what I call proto-series and one passage in The Game Of Empire recounts a mission led by Afal Uroch of the Vach Rueth, commanding a Fangryf-type gunboat. Everything is there in Anderson except, impossibly, more quantity.

History And Biography

Young Flandry is three novels.

Captain Flandry is two collections and one novel.

Admiral Flandry is two novels although Flandry only cameos in the second because the central character has become his daughter. Thus, a potential new series.

Future history includes future biography. Flandry has a son and daughter. His Starkadian friend, Dragoika, has a son who becomes a friend of Flandry's daughter. Falkayn had a daughter, son and granddaughter. Van Rijn has a granddaughter who marries Falkayn and a son who will become the Grand Duke of Falkayn's home planet. Emperor Hans Molitor had three sons, a granddaughter and a grandson.

The spaceship on this cover of The Trouble Twisters resembles a Klingon Bird of Prey, I think. Trekkies need to read Anderson, of course. There are two levels of sf. I was in an sf shop that had no sf novels, no Wells, Anderson etc, only media-related items, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who etc. Some people say that they like sf and mean that stuff. Anderson does future histories, interstellar wars and time travel better. It ought to be easier to communicate that message.

Soaring Hawk

Conan The Rebel, XI. 

Conan and his three companions are fugitives and Daris suggests that they steal the lightly guarded wingboat. Conan ponders, staring into heaven. And what happens while he does this?

"A hawk soared there." (p. 107)

Not the wind this time but yet another hovering bird of prey. Such birds are another Andersonian motif although not as ubiquitous as the wind. This hawk might represent the troops searching for the fugitives or the freedom of the fugitives if they steal the wingboat. 

We realize that the text has been carefully constructed. Both Daris and Falco have been been transported in the wingboat and have heard the monosyllabic spells spoken by the acolytes to control the motion and speed of the boat. Probably escape by this route will proceed as planned but we will have to read on to find out and, as some of you might now, I turn to other reading at this time of the evening. I will be up early tomorrow morning for an adventure of sorts in another town but should be back to blogging again later in the day.

Some More References

The Day of Their Return.

Fraina calls Rolf (Ivar) a "sitter," then corrects herself:

"'...wait, Rolf, I'm sorry, you're too good for that word, you're a strider -...'" (9, p. 148)

But, when she has taken custody of all his Imperial credits and Aenean libras, she changes her tune:

"'Kill me that dog!'" (10, p. 156)

Ivar learns. Nature reinforces the lesson:

"High overhead, the wings of a vulch at hover caught the first daylight.'" (11, p. 158)

Yet another hovering bird of prey.

When Ivar has become Firstman of Ilion, he might be able to help the tinerans to overcome their addition to the telepathic parasites, lucks/slinkers, that cause their emotional instability.

Eagle And Aurochs

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FIVE.

Here is a bird of prey that I do not think that we have noticed before:

"High overhead wheeled an eagle, the young light like gold on its wings." (p. 38)

Whatever their means of travel into the past - and Poul Anderson's time corridors are unique -, any time traveller must have a moment when it suddenly hits him that he is indeed here and now. When Storm tells Lockridge that a remote but thunderous "...bass bellow..." (ibid.) is not a bull but an aurochs:

"The fact that he was really here, now, personally, stabbed into him." (ibid.)

This should remind Anderson's readers of the corresponding moment for Manse Everard of the Time Patrol, quoted in full at least three times before on this blog:

Reality And Interpretation

Not A Museum

In The Past

 And we also find that we have compared Lockridge's and Everard's moments before:

The First Moment