Between The Dark Ages

I am handicapped by still not having read "The Acolytes" or "The Green Thumb." Thus, of the works set between the Second and Third Dark Ages of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, I am familiar with these six:

"Gypsy";
"Star Ship";
"Virgin Planet";
"Teucan";
"The Pirate";
The Peregrine.

"Virgin Planet" begins with quotations from:

the Argus 293 Region Pilot's Manual;
the General Encyclopedic Dictionary;
the Argus 293 Region Coordination Service Chief's Diary.

However, the central character, Davis Bertram, is a stellagraphic survey man, not, as I had thought, a Cordy. Thus, this is not really a Coordination Service story.

However, three of the six works do form a triad:

the Nomads begin in "Gypsy";
Trevelyan Micah is a Cordy in "The Pirate";
Micah joins the Nomads in The Peregrine.

Because of faster than light travel, all of these works are set outside the Solar System. Only the two Trevelyan Micah stories show their central character as on Earth before he embarks on an interstellar mission. After eight centuries, Earth is no longer the scene of ideological conflict and global chaos that it was immediately before the Second Dark Ages. In fact, it sounds like the quiet, studious Earth of Anderson's non-series novel, World Without Stars. Trevelyan appreciates Earth's "...quiet..." and "...intellectuality..." (Star Ship, New York, 1982, p. 212). Homes are scattered over the green landscape of western North America (The Peregrine, New York, 1978, pp. 23-24). There is an "Arctic Resort," as in some other Anderson works.

Comparing the stories, I find another connection. The Cordy Chief on Nerthus reflects that, if Davis finds either an intelligent species or a colonizable planet, then "...he will go down in history with Carsten." (Star Ship, p. 88) And a Service machine directs Trevelyan to "'The planet Carsten's Star III, otherwise called Nerthus...'" (The Peregrine, p. 23).

Anderson devised a consistent background, which readers may or may not notice, for each of his many series.

The Pirate And The Peregrine

"The Pirate" is a prequel to The Peregrine, although the latter was the earliest written installment of the Psychotechnic History and the former was the last. "The Pirate," as a new installment of this future history, has to account for faster than light interstellar flight in terms of "hyperspace" but adds the phrase, "...the tachyon mode...," (Starship, p. 219). This mode gives "...only a weak emission of super-light particles..." (ibid.) but nevertheless enables a Cordy ship to track a suspect.

Poul Anderson wanted to make a point about the importance of valuing the past (see The Pact) and the Coordination Service suited this point so this story got written. It was not intended to add to the History as such.

"The Pirate"/The Peregrine diptych forms the culmination of the Stellar Union period of the Psychotechnic History. This period is characterized by the Coordination Service, which tries to prevent chaos, but also by the Nomads who cause it - or who at least travel and trade freely without any thought of the long term consequences. The novel describes a fruitful collaboration between one Cordy and a Nomad crew who come to realize that they face a common threat to humanity.

We have come a long way from the covert war between the UN and its protean enemy but this is an authentic fictitious history.

Solman

What do you identify yourself as? American? British? Something else? Personally, I do not call myself British. I just say that I was born and live in the North West of England and have a British passport although my parentage could equally have entitled me to an Irish one.

Now imagine that some human beings have been living elsewhere in the galaxy for a very long time and that, when you travel there, you are identified as - a Solman! (Or Solwoman.) That is what happens in Poul Anderson's The Peregrine.

Peregrine Thorkild Sean is responsible for bringing both an Alorian and a Cordy onto the Peregrine. Is it just coincidence that both the Cordy Trevelyan and the Peregrine are investigating a possible threat to humanity and that the Peregrine is the Nomad ship that Trevelyan deliberately gets himself shanghaied onto? I am not going to find the answer at this time of night.

My night time prayer or invocation, if anyone wants to share it, is:

"From delusion, lead us to truth;
"From darkness, lead us to light." (three times)

I adapted it from an Upanishad. In the morning, I say:

"We meditate on the lovely light of the god, Savitri; may it stimulate our thoughts."

Virgin Planet, Chapter II

Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (London, 1966), Chapter II, pp. 15-19.

This chapter is rich in future historical background details:

Davis Bertram (surname first, given name second, see here);
the Coordination Service;
a facetious reference to "the Cosmic All" (there is a Cosmic religion);
the planet Nerthus, a thousand light years from Sol, on the edge of the known, recently colonized;
local Cordy headquarters in Stellamont on Nerthus;
city spires and plains beyond;
an "infomaster" (p. 16) instead of an infotrieve;
the (Stellar) Union dominated by Earth;
a dangerous "vortex" near Delta Wolf's Head;
cities, outgrown on Earth, have returned on the frontier;
colonists had disliked Terrestrial civilization (see here);
the local Cordy chief must approve stellagraphic voyages;
there are rules about how to handle primitives.

Thus, Davis Bertram flies towards the "Virgin Planet."

The Pact

Poul Anderson's "The Pirate," about Stellar Union Coordination Service field agent, Trevelyan Micah, is narrated a generation later by another Cordy who begins:

"We guard the great Pact: the young generation, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand."
-Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), p. 211.

What "Pact"? The Social Contract? A Constitution? A Pax? A Pax enforced by nuclear or other futuristic weapons? (Remember the Space Patrol in Robert Heinlein's Future History or the Lunar Guard earlier in Anderson's Psychotechnic History.)

In this story, a planetary population has been killed by radiation. The title character aims to get rich quick by selling the idyllic planet with its empty dwellings to would be colonists. The Cordies say no, first, scientists and scholars need as long as it takes to study the dead civilization. The story ends as its narrator explains what he meant by the Pact:

"We guard the great Pact, which is the heart of civilization, of society, and ultimately of life itself: the unspoken Pact between the living, the dead, and the unborn, that to the best of our poor mortal abilities they shall be kept one in the oneness of time. Without it, nothing would have meaning and it may be that nothing would survive. But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

Anderson had to put the narration into the mouth of another Cordy. The omniscient narrator would not have been able to preach or philosophize like this. Having read to the end, surely we realize that "The Pact" would have been a more appropriate title?

More About Nerthus

We proceed from "The Green Thumb" to:

Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (London, 1966) -

- where we seek further information about the planet Nerthus.

"A thousand light-years from Sol, on the edge of the known and settled by humans for barely two generations, Nerthus was the local Cordy headquarters..." (Chapter II, p. 15)

Observations

"Cordy" is an abbreviation for the Coordination Service. This Service also appears in "The Pirate" and The Peregrine. Thus, there are tight links between most of the instalments in the second half of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Virgin Planet is set two generations after "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb." However, in those stories, human beings had explored the Galaxy, there was a Galactic civilization and settlers on planets like Nerthus could come not only from Earth but also from other, already colonized, planets. In Virgin Planet, Nerthus is on the edge of the known... I am trying to see the Psychotechnic History as a coherent series but its background keeps shifting.

According to "AUTHOR'S NOTE" (pp. 150-156):

constellations as seen from several base planets are named;

Nerthus, a thousand light-years from Sol toward Argus, is one base planet;

one Nerthusian constellation is the Wolf's Head;

as in Terrestrial astronomy, "Delta" is the fourth brightest star in a constellation;

thus, one star as seen from Nerthus is (Ar 293) Delta Capitis Lupi;

but that is our Latin translation of the name in Basic.

(However, I do not know what the number, 293, stands for.)

Mystery And Investigation

The Peregrine, CHAPTER II.

This chapter refers to Galactic Survey which, of course, features in Virgin Planet.

Spaceships, although not those of either the Coordination Service or Galactic Survey, have been quietly disappearing in a particular volume of space. The Tiunran response is to avoid that volume. The human response, both Cordy and Nomadic, is to investigate, surely a wiser policy or am I biased? Not entirely. The threat, whatever it is, might grow. Some attitudes have a higher survival value than others.

Neither the characters nor the readers realize that the threat is already present on Rendezvous and will infiltrate the Nomad ship that is conducting the investigation. That ship will also be joined by the Cordy investigator. Everything comes together when the author knows what he is doing.

The Venturers Beyond

Any spacefaring civilization has a permanent frontier in every direction whether that frontier is Earth orbit or further away. Sf writers can tell us about those who live within the civilization or about those who venture beyond its frontier. Astutely, Nicholas van Rijn in Poul Anderson's Technic History sends robot probes and trade pioneer crews not beyond the frontier but into unexplored volumes within known space. 

Anderson's Psychotechnic History presents an impressive list of venturers beyond the frontier:

colonists

explorers

Nomads

a Trader

an interstellar voortrekker

a stellagraphic surveyor

Cordies

Let me explain. An agent of the Stellar Union Coordination Service is a Coordinator. "Coordinator" is abbreviated to "Cordy." Anderson renders the plural of "Cordy" as "Cordys." I think that "Cordys" looks as if it should be pronounced like "Cordis" so I spell it "Cordies."

Today, real life and other reading have been two major interference factors, blog-wise.

Cordies, Nomads And Galactics

The Stellar Union Coordination Service, or "Cordies," feature or are referred to in four successive installments of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"Virgin Planet" shows us what a Cordy Chief thinks of a stellagraphic survey man;

"Teucan" tells us what a Trader thinks of Cordies;

"The Pirate" shows us how Cordy field agent Trevelyan Micah deals with an entrepreneur;

The Peregrine shows us how Trevelyan cooperates with and later joins the Nomads.

Thus, this one Service introduces us to four other sections of interstellar society. The Service cannot survive the collapse of the Union or the subsequent Third Dark Ages but the Nomads, especially when guided by Trevelyan and other ex-Cordies, are equipped to survive and to influence later civilizations.

The Nomads, like James Blish's Okies, perpetually travel through space, trading and stopping on planets but never to stay. In Blish's Cities in Flight, cities, lifted by antigravity and an FTL drive, leave Earth for economic reasons, thus de-urbanizing Earth. In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Earth is de-urbanized because technological communication makes cities redundant but they re-emerge on the frontier as spaceports. Much later, in Galactic Civilization, cities are even rarer when individuals are able to cross space without vehicles by controlling cosmic energies.

Guarding The Pact

In the first part of Poul Anderson's Technic History, six stories and two novels were published as the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy which was followed by one Ythrian novel, The People Of The Wind. Then, eight further League instalments and four Ythrian stories were collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate but this time an extra layer of commentary was contributed by the twelve introductions and one afterward fictitiously written by the Ythrian, Hloch. 

Something similar although on a much smaller scale happened in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. "Gypsy" and The Peregrine are two instalments about the Nomads. The latter also features Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service. "The Pirate" is a later written story about Trevelyan set between "Gypsy" and The Peregrine but it also contains an extra layer of commentary contributed by its first person narrator who remains off-stage and speaks from one generation later than the events involving:

"...Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, red Faustina, and the rest..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 211-251 AT p. 211.

We are partially prepared for the narrative by the enunciation of the names of its main protagonists. The tone is reflective and elegiac. The narrator, a Coordinator (Cordy) begins:

"We guard the great Pact: but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand." (ibid.)

- and ends:

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)

These sentences match Hloch's commentaries. It is as if the unnamed narrator mourns in advance for the end of the Stellar Union which we know will come later in this future history series.

"Any Hyperdrive Ship"

The Nomads view an alien spaceship:

"It had the elongated shape necessary to any hyperdrive ship, where field generators must be mounted fore and aft. But it was no vessel of man's building. The cylinder was beveled into flat planes; the stern bulged, and the nose held a spear-shaped mast of some kind. Its metal was a coppery alloy, flaming ruddy in the harsh sunlight, and they could see that the hull was patched and pitted - old."
-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), Chapter XIV, p. 123.

Sf fans have been reading about hyperdrive spacecraft all our lives but did we know that any hyperdrive ship must be elongated with field generators at each end? No but Poul Anderson makes us believe this. We view the alien craft through the eyes of a Nomad crew and one Cordy.

I have already discussed hyperspace in the Psychotechnic History and another (humorous) kind of elongated spaceship here.

Interstellar Society

Eight of the twenty works in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History cover the early FTL and Stellar Union periods and introduce six sections of interstellar society:

Nomads;
colonists;
natives;
entrepreneurs, including "Traders";
Cordies (Coordination Service field agents);
stellagraphic survey men.

These social groups are not presented in a linear sequence but weave in and out of the narrative:

Nomads, introduced in the opening story of the period, and a Cordy, introduced in an intermediate story, join forces in the concluding novel of the period;

colonists and natives interact in two of the stories;

a survey man discovers an unusual isolated colony in "Virgin Planet," which exists both as a story and as a novel;

one story features one Trader who disparages Cordies but would have benefited from their advice.

Clearly, this period could have been expanded indefinitely.

The successive periods of the History are:

World War III aftermath;
UN world government;
Solar Union;
Second Dark Ages;
early FTL;
Stellar Union;
Third Dark Ages;
interstellar Empires not covered by any of the stories;
Galactic Civilization.

Anderson compares his "Traders," who flourish in the Stellar Union period, to the Vikings, who were celebrated in the First Dark Ages, and to the Martian war lords, who were celebrated in the Second Dark Ages, so, by implication, these Traders will be celebrated during the Third Dark Ages. Ironically, Anderson gives us several volumes about Vikings but no story about his Martian war lords.

The outcome of "Teucan," the story about the Trader, is entirely predictable so it is to Anderson's credit that he is able to keep the story going interestingly for seventeen pages.

The Psychotechnic History II

See The Psychotechnic History.

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, clones (not yet called that) are grown exogenetically, not in a host mother.

On reflection, this History should definitely be collected in two omnibus volumes:

Vol I, THE SOLAR UNION - the entire contents of The Psychotechnic League and Cold Victory plus The Snows Of Ganymede;

Vol II, THE STELLAR UNION - the entire contents of Starship plus "The Acolytes," "The Green Thumb," the longer version of "Virgin Planet" and The Peregrine but maybe minus "The Chapter Ends."

For comparison, the first three omnibus volumes of the Technic History should be:

RISE OF THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE;
DECLINE OF THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE;
RISE OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE -

- and we know that the political framework of the League is the Solar Commonwealth. Thus, in Anderson's first future history, the Solar Union is succeeded by the Stellar Union whereas, in his second, the Solar Commonwealth is succeeded by the (interstellar) Terran Empire.

Recently, when I began to reread this future history, I became entirely focused on the future historical content of its opening three stories:

Etienne Fourre;
Stefan Rostomily;
political gangsterism;
the protean enemy;
the Pacific Colony;
the three class education system.

However, this post-World War III period is dwarfed by the much vaster context of two Dark Ages and two periods of interstellar civilization. The Un-man, Naysmith, flies his air boat to the Rockies; the Stellar Union Coordination Service field agent (Cordy), Trevelyan, flies his air car to that same mountain range but over a thousand years later in a different civilization facing different problems.

Naysmith identified the UN's protean enemy as man himself. This "enemy" destroys the Solar Union. Trevelyan, psychologically integrated, instead confronts the external problem of cosmic complexity overwhelming any cerebral or computational attempt to coordinate it. This problem destroys the Stellar Union.

Nerthus And Thunderhouse

The planet, Nerthus, Carsten's Star III:

is newly settled in "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb";
has been settled for barely two generations and is the local Cordy HQ in Virgin Planet;
is a port of call for a Nomad ship in The Peregrine;
is Dunham's base planet in "Symmetry";
is briefly mentioned in "The Pirate."

Thunderhouse has:

a notoriously slack astronautical academy in Virgin Planet;
the Half Moon bar by the Grand Canal in The Peregrine.

These places are not as solid as Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza etc in the Technic History but they do make acceptable future historical background locations, nevertheless. I do not think that we are finished with Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History just yet.

This One

Poul Anderson captures slight differences in modes of speech. On Aeneas, Nords speak Anglic without the articles, "a" and "the," e.g.:

"'Do I have choice?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 7, p. 121.

"'I don't think "supernatural" is right word... I'd call Cosmenosis philosophy rather than religion.'" (p. 128)

- although I have found one instance of the indefinite article:

"'What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin' universe whose creation was meanin'less accident?'" (p. 129)

Aenean Riverfolk replace "a" with "one":

"'That was one coffin.'" (12, p. 169)

In the Psychotechnic History, Nomads sometimes replace "I" with "this one." Peregrine Joachim Henry says of himself:

"'This one has been sort of curious for the last few years...and he's been keeping his eyes open.'"

-The Peregrine, CHAPTER II, p. 9.

However, Joachim immediately reverts to the first person pronoun:

"'You might think I was a Cordy, the way I've been reconstructing the crime.'" (ibid.)

In spiritual practice, "this one" might be more appropriate than "I." Who or what is present in all experience and thus also in meditation? First, an individual subject of consciousness. Second, the universe conscious of itself through the individual. I usually call these the individual self and the universal self but "this one" and "the One" would be simpler. This one is not separate from the One which is much more than this one. This one exists by responding to others and must also respond to the One which is experienced as transcendent other. That other is personified but persons are self-conscious individuals, thus individual subjects, not the universal subject. 

Three Periods

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History comprises 20 works set in three periods -

UN: 4 works about political conflicts;
Solar Union: 3 about social conditions + 4 about political conflicts;
FTL: 4 about Nomads, Cordies or both + 5 others.

In "Gypsy," Nomad culture begins;
in "Virgin Planet" and "The Pirates," Cordies (members of the Coordination Serice) address interstellar problems;
in The Peregrine, a Cordy cooperates with, then joins, the Nomads.

The Psychotechnic Institute has only one story, in the UN period, but psychotechnics as a science of society is a major issue throughout the series. The parallel Institute of Human Biology is mentioned only once, leaving a problem that we do not see resolved.

The Order of Planetary Engineers gets two stories in the Solar Union period but, we infer, ceases to exist during the Second Dark Ages, as do the Cordies during the Third Dark Ages which, presumably, the Nomads are equipped to survive.

Polesotechnic League Or Coordination Service

"Private enterprise, ranging over greater reaches of space than any government, frequently where no effective government whatsoever existed, and soon becoming richer than any state, took over most of the Technic economy. The companies formed the Polesotechnic League as an association for mutual help and, to a degree, mutual discipline. The Pax Mercatoria spread among the stars.

"When did it go bad? Did it succumb to the vices of its very virtues?"

-Mirkheim, II, pp. 53-54.

"'It's fantastically complex, and the problem is getting worse. It's a case of transportation outstripping communication. We've got to bring all the components of our civilization together. You need only recall what happened on Earth back around the Second Dark Ages. Nowadays it could happen between whole stellar systems!'...

"'Sure... That's what the Union was organized to prevent. That's what Cordy work consists of.'

"'...we can't coordinate as many planets as are included in our civilization-range today. And that range is still expanding.'

"'[The Nomads]'re the worst disruptive factor our civilization has... They go everywhere and do anything, with no thought of the consequences. To Earth, the Nomads are romantic wanderers; to me, they're a pain.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), CHAPTER IV, pp. 29-30.,

In the Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History:

no interstellar government;

the unrestrained League.

In the Stellar Union period of the Psychotechnic History:

an interstellar government, the Union, and its enforcement arm, the Coordination Service;

the unrestrained (except by the Cordies) Nomads.

Which system is better?

See the comment by Anonymous in the combox here.

Cordies And Other Facets

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "The Pirate" is narrated neither by the omniscient narrator nor by its protagonist, Trevelyan Micah, but by an unseen character who defends the role of the organization that Trevelyan works for, the Stellar Union Coordination Service. In Virgin Planet, Davis Bertram:

"...knew enough Union law to be sure that just about anything he did to the Doctors would be all right with the Coordination Service." (CHAPTER XVIII, p. 133)

Thus, Davis is not a Cordy but is constrained by the laws that they enforce. We are shown different facets of life in the Stellar Union. One major cultural conflict is between the Cordies and the Nomads and Trevelyan will later change sides.

A future history series written over several years presents earlier and later stages of its author's development as a writer. "The Pirate" is a much later work than the rest of the series. Its narrator begins:

"We guard the great Pact..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), pp. 137-165.

By "We...," he means the Coordination Service. He mentions two groups "...the younger generations, the folk of the star frontier..." who "...so often do not understand." (ibid.) The way this is phrased, the two groups are run together, but presumably they are different. The story ends:

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 165)

The elegiac tone fits the fact that its author is writing this story so much later than the others. Only Trevelyan has appeared before although in a "later" instalment so that anyone now reading the series in chronological order of fictional events reads "The Pirate" before The Peregrine. The narrator gives the new characters an added importance or significance by naming them before they appear:

"Now that the Service is ready, after a generation, to let the truth be known, I can tell you about Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, red Faustina, and the rest, that you may judge the rights or wrongs for yourself." (ibid.)

That the story is being told a generation later adds to the sense of time having passed. The tone is reflective. We are being invited not just to read but to judge.

The Service is described as:

"...an organization operating across a fraction of the galaxy..." (ibid.)

This differs markedly from the talk in earlier written instalments of men having explored all over the Galaxy and of a Galactic civilization. Trevelyan flies to the city of Port Nevada to make contact with Murdoch. We understand from The Peregrine that there are no longer any cities on Earth. In any case, this is the one enclave that is necessary for the cargo ships with their human and non-human crews. The rest of Earth is quiet and intellectual.

Six Instalments

The Peregrine, CHAPTER II.

Peregrine Joachim Henry tells the Nomad Captains' Council:

"'I even talked my way into the Cordy office on Nerthus, and got a look at their Galactic Survey records." (p. 11)

The Nomads were founded in "Gypsy."

Nerthus was introduced in two stages in "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb."

The Coordination Service office on Nerthus had to deal with a Galactic Survey man in Virgin Planet.

Coordinator Trevelyan Micah, having already appeared in the chronologically earlier "The Pirate," will shortly join the Nomad ship, the Peregrine, when it stops at Nerthus.

Thus, these six instalments form a closely integrated future history series. They are not the whole of this second part of the Psychotechnic History but they are most of it.

Three Narrative Modes

Thorkild Erling, the first Nomad captain, narrates "Gypsy."

In chronological order of fictitious events, although not in the order of publication, "The Pirate" introduces Trevelyan Micah, a Coordination Service field agent or "Cordy."

In The Peregrine, Trevelyan travels with Nomads and reads Thorkild's memoirs which include the text of "Gypsy."

Thus, these three works form a triad although each has a different narrative mode. Listing them this time in order of publication:

"Gypsy," first person narration;

The Peregrine, third person narration;

in "The Pirate," there is a first person narrator but he is not the central character, Trevelyan, and is evident only in the opening and concluding passages. Otherwise, the story is a third person narrative about Trevelyan.

"We guard the great Pact: but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand."
-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), pp. 137-165 AT 137.

A generation after the events of the story:

"...I can tell you about Trevelyan Micah..." (ibid.)

"I suspect [Trevelyan] also wanted to renew his humanity at the wellspring of humankind..." (ibid.)

"We guard the great Pact... But the younger generations so often do not understand." (p. 165)

The unusual perspective enables this first person narrator to comment in a way that is closed to the omniscient narrator.