Ivanhoan Religion

Juan Hernandez learns that:

"'To keep going through endless hardship, [the Ivanhoans] must believe in something greater than themselves, like the Imperial dream of Dahia or the freedom of the desert. They're ready to die for those ideals.'" (The Van Rijn Method, p. 335)

Dahia is an old ruined city. A Dahian says:

"'...Dahia was the crown of an empire reaching from sea to sea. Though it lies in wreck, we who live here preserve the memories of our mighty ancestors, and faithfully serve their gods.'" (p. 324)

What are the gods like? We are told only that:

"...a few priests carried on rites behind porticos whose columns were idols..." (p. 323)

A desert dweller says:

"'This country is ours. It is strong with the bones of our fathers and rich with the flesh of our mothers. It is too holy for an Imperial foot to tread.'"  (p. 330)

Ancestor worship? Nature worship?

When offered "things" (trade goods), the desert dweller replies:

"'Do you imagine things matter more to us than our liberty or our land?'" (ibid.)

When both Ivanhoan factions realize that the Earthlings are not mere materialistic merchants but are prepared to celebrate Christmas and to practice its message of peace, their attitude changes. Perhaps these Earthlings will not just side with whichever faction offers them the more profitable deal but can indeed be trusted to negotiate in good faith with Dahians and desert dwellers alike and even to broker peace between them? In fact:

"'They should have special wisdom, now in the season of their Prince of Peace.'" (p. 334)

Pagans can recognize Christ as a powerful god as evidenced by the deeds and achievements of his followers. In Anderson's Mother Of Kings, it is thought that Christ must be especially powerful during the season of his death and resurrection - if I may interpolate an Easter note into a Christmas story.

Where do we go from here? I think that we stay on Ivanhoe but move a short span pastward to the time when Falkayn was there and the Ivanhoan religion of another continent interacted with Jewish mysticism.

Three Celebrations In The Technic History

Chinese New Year happens in Poul Anderson's Technic History and in Lancaster. This evening, we will attend the concert and the street procession will be next week.

Christmas happens everywhere on Earth and on the planet Ivanhoe in the Technic History. Poul Anderson's Christmas story is a conceptual sequel to Arthur Conan Doyle's.

The Terran Emperor's Birthday happens only in the Technic History: carnival; crowds; pleasure houses; near riot; the court following daylight around the globe. A hundred years before Flandry's time, Birthday had meant something. Fathers showed their sons the Imperial stars.

Dates In Fiction

As Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series progressed, it became usual to begin each narrative passage with a heading informing the reader of the date of the events to be recounted. Thus:

the opening section of "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" is headed 372;

the opening section of "The Year of the Ransom" is headed 10 September 1987;

the opening chapter of The Shield Of Time is headed 1987 A. D.;

the opening section of "Death and the Knight" is headed PARIS, TUESDAY, 10 OCTOBER 1307.

The information is presented in a slightly different way in each case.

Dates are of interest even when the narrative does not involve time travel.

"When the first of these things happened, that is to say upon the twentieth day of April, 192-, I was twenty-two years old..."
-Dornford Yates, Blind Corner (London, 1947), CHAPTER I, p. 9.

The last novel narrated by Richard Chandos is set some time after World War II.

CHAPTER 1 of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is headed Friday, 20.xii. Thus, we know that it is five days before Christmas in a year when Christmas is on a Wednesday. Later, we are told the year:

"'Mikael Blomkvist was born on 18 January, 1960, which makes him forty-three years old.'"
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), CHAPTER 2, p. 44. 

(But see the attached calendar.) (But the one-day discrepancy will mean that it is on the other side of the date line.)

This is twenty-first century fiction which would once have been science fiction.

Endings And Beginnings

This might be the last post of 2016. 1800 is a good round number of posts and I am (temporarily) running out of inspiration. Thank you all for page views, attention and interest during 2016. Merry Yule (21 December) and Christmas (25 December) and Happy New Year (1 January). Also, Happy Birthday (1 January) to me and neighbor, Derek.

Now is a time to contemplate endings and beginnings. A Poul Anderson time traveler spent some time with pre-men. Afterwards, they thought:

"You send stranger, Old Father? Stranger is Old Father?...
"Thank you, Old Father. This holy fire you have given us - we must never let it die."
-Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 142-163 AT pp. 162-163.

That sounds familiar.

SM Stirling's Nantucketers celebrate Christmas in 10 AE. Jared Cofflin, reflecting on the immigrants from Britain, thinks:

"...before the Alban War, back home they'd have given Sky Father a man, too, so the boss-god would be strong enough to chain the Wolf that would otherwise eat the sun and leave the world in eternal darkness."
-SM Stirling, On The Oceans Of Eternity (New York, 2000), Chapter Twenty-Nine, p. 575.

That also sounds familiar. How close are we still to our origins? See also here.

Addendum: On the other hand, a few relevant posts might appear:

on the Science Fiction blog. See here.
Also on the James Blish Appreciation blog. See here.
And the Logic of Time Travel blog. See here.
Also, the Personal And Literary Reflections blog. See here.

Christmas Under A Red Dwarf Star

"The Season of Forgiveness" is the sixth of twelve works collected in Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate and the eighth of eleven works collected in Baen Books' omnibus volume, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I. It is a sequel to the first story about David Falkayn and the second story about the Ivanhoans who later join Falkayn's Supermetals Company.

A pagan can either acknowledge Christ as another god or convert to the belief that he is the one god. In Anderson's Technic History, the Wodenite Axor converts to Christianity whereas the Ivanhoans recognize that Christ is the Prince of Peace of the Terran traders who therefore should have special wisdom to negotiate peace during his season.

Meanwhile, I am considering how Avalon, a mixed human-Ythrian colony, should conduct its affairs both internally and externally, but this is probably too complicated an issue for Christmas day when we take a rest from practical politics.

Admiral, Marchwarden And Wyvan

The People Of The Wind, X.

(Although the pandemic curtails Christmas, some Christmas activities curtail blogging.)

Draun, introduced in Chapter IX, was the seventeenth major character in the novel. In X, after the farewell between Ferune and Daniel Holm, there is a teleconference between three already familiar characters:

Admiral Cajal, representing Terra;

 

Holm, now First Marchwarden (we are not told who, if anyone, has become Second);

 

Liaw of the Tarns, High Wyvan, Holm's colleague.

 

Cajal wants to negotiate the surrender and the two Avalonians pretend to think that he proposes to surrender to them! Holm boasts that his defense systems can resist any Terran bombardment. Cajal is convinced that a siege will suffice and that Ythri will cede Avalon after the war. But, before that, he pleads with them not to compel him to bombard. If he did, then it would be because he had decided to, not because they had compelled him to.

Cajal and Holm are two contrasting Admirals: the former neat and correct; the latter unkempt but defiant. Readers have no doubt whose side they are on.

A Pivotal Story

Is "Lodestar" a pivotal story in Poul Anderson's Technic History? (See "Further Repercussions Of 'Lodestar,'" here, and its combox.) Yes. The story was written to end a saga. In it, David Falkayn and Coya Conyon independently realize that the Polesotechnic League has gone bad. Coya's disagreements with her grandfather, van Rijn, and Falkayn's conflict with his employer, that same van Rijn, dramatize the scale of the problem. An Ythrian sees the shadow of God the Hunter across van Rijn's way of life. This foreshadows the civil war in the following installment, Mirkheim. Meanwhile, van Rijn has all but retired. His grown granddaughter sees that he is indeed old. The van Rijn series at least approaches its end.

The installment after Mirkheim, "Wingless," which immediately follows "Lodestar" in the Earth Book, is about David's and Coya's grandson on Avalon, far removed from the Polesotechnic League. When, after just one more Avalonian story, Hloch tells us that The Earth Book Of Stormgate is ended, his AFTERWORD is followed by an INTRODUCTION written by a very different historian. Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archeological Society, discusses the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy, which depict the legendary Founder of the First Empire. We are reading not only a future history series but also the works of its historians.

Will there be a post tomoz? See:

Happy Christmas

At This Time Of Year... 

Christmas II

An Appropriate Christmas Present

(Another one this year. For earlier posts today, see Revision And Expansion and Christmas Under A Red Dwarf Star. For previous Christmases, see links from A Pivotal Story.)

Edward Brook-Hitching, The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps (London, 2016).

Interesting information about places mentioned by Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman:

The Phantom Atlas summarizes the story of Atlantis and Anderson, of course, wrote The Dancer From Atlantis;

Hy Brasil (scroll down) was purged from maps only as recently as 1865;

the opening and concluding chapters of Anderson's long novel, The Boat Of A Million Years, are entitled "Thule" and, in the former, the central character, Hanno, joins the northern expedition of Pytheas whose lost account is cited in The Phantom Atlas.

There are Brendan's Islands on Anderson's fictional planet Avalon and there was a fictional St Brendan's Isle on maps of the Atlantic well into the seventeenth century.

Also relevant here is an earlier post, Anti-Magic.

The Everlasting Light

Arthur Conan Doyle's Christmas story, "The Blue Carbuncle," includes the phrase, "the season of forgiveness," which became the title of Poul Anderson's Christmas story (see combox here) which concludes:

"-the hopes and fears of all the years

"Are met in thee tonight."

-"The Season of Forgiveness," p. 139.

Sheila sings in a choir which today sang carols in the town centre. Aileen (daughter) and I sat opposite, drinking coffee. The choir concluded with "O little town of Bethlehem," which Aileen then said was her favourite carol. Fiction and life converged. 

Someone must be able to bring the Abrahamic and other theistic traditions together. By "bring together," I do not mean "doctrinally unify." Impossible and unnecessary. We can live with doctrinal differences in such matters. I mean "understand and acknowledge instead of misunderstand and condemn." There are different versions of stories. What I call a story, some call literally true. OK. That is another difference.

Years ago, we had a Service for Peace in Lancaster Catholic Cathedral with readings from the Veda, the Torah, the Koran and the Fourth Gospel. The Bishop said that it was good to hear the Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic. 

An Ivanhoan says that the Earthlings:

"'...should have special wisdom, now in the season of their Prince of Peace.'" (p. 137)

These Ivanhoans, unlike those in the previous story, "The Three-Cornered Wheel," have the Pagan attitude of accepting the reality of other gods.

"The everlasting light" (think of a menorah) is universal. In the Buddha Dharma, a man is enlightened. In the New Testament, the light becomes a man.

"From delusion, lead us to truth.

"From darkness, lead us to light..."

-my adaptation of the Gayatri Mantra.

In The Pleiades

We soon learn what apprentice Juan Hernandez means by "...a strange and lonely place..." (see here) He and five other human beings are in:

an old ruined city
surrounded by wilderness
on a chill planet
orbiting a red dwarf star
in the Pleiades region of space!

I reproduced that description as a list in order to convey that there are no less than five levels of increasing bleakness. In fact, the sense of isolation is increased by the fact that the ruin is not just old. It is said to have been great five thousand years previously. The window shows:

"...the stark, sullenly lit landscape and a snag of ancient wall..." (The Van Rijn Method, p. 320)

Poul Anderson knew how to create atmosphere. In these surroundings, sixteen year old Juan proposes to celebrate Christmas against the opposition of Master Trader Thomas Overbeck. Have fun, guys! Because this story is written by Anderson, there will be a serious problem, Juan will resolve it and his determination to celebrate Christmas will turn out to be symbolically appropriate. It is just a matter of reading on to learn how the story unfolds.

Christmas

Maybe it is time to reread "The Blue Carbuncle" and "The Season of Forgiveness"? The latter adds substance to Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

Anderson had already introduced both Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn, the latter on the planet Ivanhoe;

in "The Season of Forgiveness," he presents other characters on another continent on the same planet some time later;

next, he continues the intertwined stories of van Rijn and Falkayn.

An Ivanhoan, with his polytheist world view, thinks that the Terrestrials should have special wisdom during the season of their Prince of Peace.

Less posts at present due to Christmas preparations and to visiting Ketlan, son-in-law and technical assistant, who is back in hospital.

Happy Christmas

(The issue with Poul Anderson's "The Season of Forgiveness.")

Happy Christmas, everyone.

I am mentally drafting an ace post on "Mental Powers In The Galaxy." Back here later today or tomoz.

Return To The Camp

(Trouble with uploading an image, hopefully to be resolved tomorrow.)

(Shortly afterward: resolved now.)

In The Day Of Their Return, 10, when Ivar and Erannath return from the waterfront tavern in Boseville to the Waybreak Train tineran camp:

they see by starlight, then by lamps on poles above wagons;
the air is moist;
they smell growth;
gravel scrunches and voices break off at sight of the alien, then music is heard.

Thus, a four-senses account of a short night walk and, talking about night, it is time I wasn't here. Maybe more Christmas preparations tomorrow. Christmas advice to Poul Anderson fans: reread "The Season of Forgiveness."

On The River II

The Day Of Their Return.

(I can't find an image of a riverboat answering the description of the Jade Gate but here is a picture of one in Vietnam.)

I am not going to look for it at this time of night but I had a book about Isaac Asimov's works. The author suggested that some prose is like clear glass - we look through it at the objects described - whereas another kind of prose is like stained glass - we look at it. Asimov's prose is like clear glass. Anderson's is like both.

On the Jade Gate:

"Two sizable deckhouses bracketed the amidships section, their roofs fancifully curved at the eaves and carved at the ends." (11, p. 158)

We visualize the ship. At least, most of you do. I can't visualize. We also appreciate the language: curved and carved, at eaves and ends. Perfect. I cannot speak for anyone else, let alone for a prolific professional author, but, when I begin to write a sentence like that, I try to complete it with as much alliteration and assonance as possible. We start to enjoy the words quite independently of whatever it is that they describe. Are we depraved by nature or deprived by nurture? As an Aldous Huxley character observed, "Black ladders lack bladders."

Christmas preparations are like a black hole sucking in all the energy that would usually go into blogging. Some people here celebrate on the Solstice, 21 December. One couple here parties on Christmas Eve afternoon, then repairs to the Water Witch or the Toll House. Sheila is having another of her musical evenings here tomorrow. Posts will be sparse.

Christmas Dinner 1250 B.C.

Poul Anderson has space travelers celebrating Christmas light years from Earth and SM Stirling has time travelers celebrating it millennia in the past. Festivals mean what we make them mean.

Stirling's Nantucketers consume:

turkey
mashed potatoes
peas
squash
carrots
pumpkin pie sweetened with honey
no cream (milk too expensive)
dried-cranberry muffins
cookies
drinks

After the dinner, a marriage is announced. A woman who was married in the twentieth century needs no divorce to remarry in 1250 B.C. Her first husband is not dead. He has not been born yet.

The Future

Sf is often about the future and sometimes features characters learning about their futures:

the Time Traveler can describe human devolution and the end of life on Earth because he has traveled through time and returned;

The Shape Of Things To Come begins with a man dreaming that he is reading a history of the future;

in Stapledon's Last And First Men, a time traveler mentally influences the author who thinks that he is writing fiction and in fact distorts most of the future history that he receives;

Heinlein's Future History begins with the inventor of a machine that can accurately predict the date and time of anyone's death;

Asimov's Seldon and Anderson's Valti and Desai predict the futures of their civilizations;

Anderson's psychic time traveler, Jack Havig, describes the future periods of the Maurai Federation and the Star Masters to Anderson's relative...;

Anderson's Starfarers will build holontic time communicators;

Blish's Dirac transmitter receives messages from the future;

Herbert's users of the drug, melange, exercise prescience -

- a substantial list with Wells appearing twice and Anderson four times.

Happy Christmas, page viewers, and thank you for so far 225 page views on Christmas Day.

A Pocket Continuum?

Robert Silverberg, "Christmas in Gondwanaland" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 215-244.

"'So the five of us have been pinched off into a pocket continuum of our own,' [Everard] said. 'The whole original Patrol has.'" (p. 230)

This is the sort of statement that appears in sf and that readers think they understand but I do not understand it, at least not in this context. The original Time Patrol is not in its own "pocket continuum" but is/was in the space-time continuum of a deleted timeline whereas Everard and his four colleagues are, unaccountably, in the current timeline.

Everard continues:

"'...our world-line descends from the Alpha Point Convocation; the Patrol that's running things now descends from a different one.'" (ibid.)

Each person has or is a "world-line" extending or enduring from his/her birth to his/her death. Five people do not share a common "world-line" descending from the founding of an organization to which they belong. But at least Everard's statements acknowledge that the five agents are not the versions of themselves that were born in the second timeline as Lora Spallanzani implies on p. 229.

When Everard and Gonzalez see their younger selves, Everard wonders:

"Why didn't we see ourselves before?" (p. 237)

and answers:

"Because we weren't there before..." (ibid.)

But they were. This is time travel. My understanding of the Time Patrol scenario is that, except in certain circumstances, the current timeline always acts like the single timeline of the kind of story (e.g., three novels by Anderson, three works by Heinlein, The Technicolor Time Machine, The Anubis Gates, The Time Traveler's Wife etc) that allows for the circular causality paradox though not the causality violation paradox. In such a scenario, if a time traveler's older self sees his younger self, then the younger can also see the older. They are in the same timeline, the one and only timeline, not in different timelines.

The "certain circumstances" are when the course of events is diverted either by the action of a pastward time traveler or by a random fluctuation in space-time-energy. Then, in that case, there is an alternative timeline in which, again, circular causality is possible and there seems to be only a single timeline, except to someone who, having traveled pastward along the original timeline, returns futureward through the moment of change into the alternative timeline.

"Christmas in Gondwanaland" is rich in discussion points about time travel and I will continue to reread it to find more.

Where Were We?

The blog is primarily about Poul Anderson.
This has involved comparing Anderson with many other writers.
Some posts have focused on SM Stirling as a colleague and worthy successor of Anderson.
Before Christmas, I began to read Dies The Fire. See also here.
At Christmas, I received Alan Moore's voluminous Jerusalem, which I am still reading and posting about here.
I have tried to link everything.
Multiple blogging is like juggling.
Normal service will be resumed.

The Food Thread

A Bar With Food
Bradshaw
An Indian Meal
Good Food
Morning
Food For Thought
Harvesters' Lunch
Harvest Supper
Evening Picnic

Descriptive Passages
Curry And Naan
Lunch At Sea
Dinner At The Winged Cross And in An Airship
Van Rijn
Open Sandwiches
Bhang Lassi
The Peshawar Club

Dinner At His Desk
Another Meal And Another Adventure
Barfi And Samosas
Dinner At The French Embassy
Festival Food
This Month
Food In Khartoum
China
Draka Food

A Buffet Lunch
Burritos
A Chinese With Weak Coffee
Beautiful Scenery And Good Food 
"The Best Hamburger He'd Ever Tasted" 
Some Vivid Descriptive Passages 
Not only Times But Also Places

Spartan Food
Faith, Food And Freedom
More Food 
Yrsa's Upbringing 
Yule Eve In Leidhra
The Twilight Of The Elves
A Bird Made Of Fog
"Tea Or Coffee, Sir?"

A Bronze Age Feast
Welcome Home Feast
Another Meal 
Venison
Harvesters' Lunch II 
Clambake
Christmas Dinner 1250 B.C.
Initiation Feast 
Another World
A Civic Harvest Festival Meal 

Hospitality To Odysseus
Ivanhoe: Miscellania
Delfinburg
In The Saturn Room Of The Hotel Universe, Lunograd
In The Phoenix House
Fanciful Comparisons: Ythrians And Japanese
Palatial Privacy, Lack Of
Four Senses And Good Food
A Nasty Shock
An SF Villain

Can't Resist It! 
Bread And Venison
A Camp Meal
Yule Feast
Dinner In A Barn 
Dinner In The Aylward Household
Hash Browns And Conversations
Harvest Supper
An Understated British Resurrection? (And Another Meal) 

Engineering And Tea
Preserving Civilization
Eating And Killing (Or Vice Versa)
A Welcoming Feast
Breakfast
Dinner At The Sheaf And Sickle
Dinner In A Hunting Lodge
Caviar And Toast
The Fife And Drum Tavern
A Paxton

Meal Before Battle
Vegetarian Food In A Buddhist Monastery
Grill And Bar Food
Camp Breakfast
An Iowan Dinner
A Banquet
Feast
Winter Meal

Feast Before Seidh
Ironrede 
Two Meals
Another Camp Meal
The State Banquet
A Sheriff's Hospitality
A Cold Collation
A Conference Dinner
A Dunedain Feast 
A Meal In A Tent In A Desert
Paces II

Another Sea Battle And Another Meal
The Fifth Sense
A Meal On The Ceram Sea
Outsystem Food
From The Lavishly Stocked Terran Embassy Larder
An Altaian Banquet
Rich Texts, Drink And Food
Modjo Fruit
Two Rijstaffels

Breakfast At Biocontrol Central
Captain's Dinner
An Evening And A Morning On Vixen...
In The Hooligan 
High Living In The Future
Luxury
Dinner In A League Outpost
Warped Reality
Another Meal
Life In 209 B.C.
Fiction Set In The 21st Century
L'Etoile de Diana
Pleasures

Some Parallels
A Meal In Hiding
The Meal Before The Metapsychic Rebellion
A Meal On The Moon
Christmas Food
Satan And Food
The British Raj
Cross-Temporal Cheese Cake

Restaurants
Furniture And Food
Future Facts Of Food
Follow-Up On Food
One Breakfast And Three Alternative Histories
Milky Way, Steak And Revolutionaries
Hail And Good Night
Sacrifice And Feast
Warmth And Light In Two Timelines

Full Marks To Eric Wace
New Lemurian Food
Some Notes To Recent Posts
A Meal In The Command Tent 
Like Chicken
Avocati
Many Descriptive Details And One Old Friend
Time And Place: Eating In San Francisco
Time And Place: Steam Beer
Bowls Of New Potatoes
Time And Place: Chinatown And Pub Crawling

Russian Eggs And More About Films
A Meal And Four Senses
An Ad Libitum Breakfast
The Devil's Game: Interval Three
Breakfast
Five Senses And A Meal
Forests In Minds And A Fight At A Meal?
Shadows Of Annihilation, Chapter Four

Shadows Of Annihilation, Chapter Five, And Food
Pancakes And Cars
A Few Details
Some Observations Near The End Of A Novel
In The Nest
A Few Words
A Few More Words
Sensations And Anticipations
To Ear Or Not To Eat
Warmth And Light
Breakfast In The Hooligan

Some Details In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

A Meeting With Snacks

Operation Luna: Miscellaneous V  

Gerard, Demons And Coffee

Breakfasts

Breakfast In The Air

An Omelet And Fresh-Baked Bread 

An Ocean From A Wet Dishcloth

I am frankly amazed that so much information can be extracted from a light weight novel like Poul Anderson's The High Crusade:

the Nine Worthies and a comparison with GK Chesterton;

the Third Heaven and comparisons with Dante and Milton;

the contrast between adventure fiction and speculative fiction but also their incorporation into a single future history series here;

comparisons with ERB and Michael Moorcock here;

medieval and modern concepts of survival after death here.

I will continue to reread and post about this novel as Christmas festivities allow. (An academic once said to me that we lose about a week at Christmas.)

Johan might submit a second article. Hopefully, Nygel and Ali, either independently or jointly, will review a Trygve Yamamura novel in the New Year. We approach the end of the second decade of the third millennium of our era.

The title of this post is taken from an obscure sf story.