Dido, Vanrijn And Barsoom

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER NINE.

Flandry compares the tripartite Didonians to the bipartite Togru-Kon-Tanakh of Vanrijn whom we saw in the very first story if we read the collected Technic History in its original order, starting not with The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, but with Trader To The Stars, the "trader" in question being van Rijn, of course. There was a similar bipartite race on Barsoom in ERB's The Chessmen of Mars.

It is impossible to remember the details of the Didonians between rereadings of The Rebel Worlds.

"...stalls for nogas, perches for krippos, benches for rukas." (p. 459)

Rhinoceros-like nogas, winged krippos and chimpanzee-like rukas link their nervous systems to generate intelligent Didonians.

"Cubs, calves, and chicks, too small for education, bumbled about like the pet animals they were." (ibid.)

Noga calves, ruka cubs and krippo chicks.

But we have to keep reminding ourselves while reading.

Speech is contrapuntal with droning, fluting and coughing sounds. Pidgin is necessary to communicate with human beings.

Didonians cannot conceive of privacy but what else might they conceive of?

Didonians: A Synopsis

In The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER NINE, Dominic Flandry encounters Didonians.

For Didonian mentality, see Didonians.
For their physicality, see Didonians (different).
For their nomenclature, see Didonian Designations.
For their evolution, see Alien Evolution.
For their lack of privacy, see Privacy.
For their alleged mystical significance, see Ch'an and Many-Mindedness And Allness.
For comparisons with other composite consciousnesses, see Ice Ships And Brains, "Let Words Stand In" and Central Empire And Imperial Band.
For Didonian experience of learning, see Aliens in Anderson and Niven.
For anything else, search this blog or read The Rebel Worlds.

Three Didonians

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER NINE.

The rhino is a noga.
The bird is a krippo.
The ape is a ruka.

Three Didonian entities, Master of Songs, Cave Discoverer and Many Thoughts, differ only in their krippos. I think that that makes them the same person with only a third of their memories different - assuming that each of the three units carries a third of the memories.

However, these three Didonians have different skills:

Master of Songs, self-explanatory;

Cave Discoverer, explorer and adventurer;

Many Thoughts, the wisest in the communion, journeying in the spirit.

The shared noga and ruka provide a common vigor and boldness.

I am learning more about Didonians by heeding these details.

Didonians And Souls

How would the Platonic-Cartesian concept of "soul" apply to Poul Anderson's tripartite Didonians? Is a new immortal soul created every time a new entity is formed? When it is no longer possible to form a particular entity, does that entity's soul then enter a hereafter or, in the Platonic scenario, prepare to reincarnate? If, as I was taught at school, only an organism linked to an individual, immaterial and indestructible soul is capable of reason, then the answer to these questions would have to be yes. But the Didonians are unlikely to deduce such a metaphysical conclusion from their inherently overlapping and demonstrably transient way of experiencing life.

CS Lewis argued that materialism cannot explain reason. I reply in section (7) here.

In Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones, a monkey-like alien animal has a limited linguistic capacity. When, with this fictional creature in mind, I suggested to a teacher who was a member of a religious order that, if animals were slightly more intelligent, then we would be able to converse with them, he replied by drawing an absolute doctrinal distinction between species with and without souls. I began to realize that my education and my private reading were giving me contradictory world-views. Another example was the familiar question: which story is true - Adam And Eve or dinosaurs and cavemen?

Knowing Oneness II

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

In Knowing Oneness, we compared Didonian and Upanishadic onenesses. The novel addresses this issue:

"'Oneness is the ideal in this culture, I'm learnin', as 'tis in a lot of others,' she told Flandry. 'They consider the whole world to be potenti'ly a single entity. By ceremonies, mystic contemplation, hallucinogenic foods, or whatever, they try to merge with it. An everyday method is to make frequent new interconnections. The matin' season, 'round the autumnal equinox, is their high point of the year, mainly 'cause of the ecstatic transcendental 'speriences that then become possible.'" (p. 472)

The whole world is a single unity but not even potentially a single entity in the Didonian sense. Their "entity" is a single self-consciousness generated by an interconnection between three units of different species. My disagreement with Vedanta is precisely that I say that the universe is one and conscious but not one consciousness. It is conscious of itself through many individual conscious organisms. Of these, many experience only animal sensation. Some, human beings, are self-conscious and linguistic, able to abstract and conceptualize. Of these, many experience only alienation and separation, not oneness. Some intuit and realize oneness. The universe itself is not a single self-conscious individual but the totality of subjects and objects, selves and others.

Flandry asks whether pantheism is not natural to Didonians. Kathryn replies that pantheism is no more natural to Didonians than monotheism is to men. Some Didonians, exalting their own communion as distinct from everything and everyone else, resemble human mobs supporting a warring state. Yes, Didonian oneness might well stop short at that point.

Many-Mindedness And Allness

Why does the Riverfolk chaplain here describe the Didonians as "many-minded"? Each Didonian entity has three interconnected brains but the brains, when disconnected, are merely animal, not rational, minds. However, the animals containing these brains can connect in different combinations. Thus, there can be not only ABC and DEF but also BCD, EFA, ABD etc. ABC and ABD have two thirds of their memories in common. Thus, each entity is able to remember some experiences of other entities. This makes them "many-minded."

What is the "...ch'an - understanding..." that the chaplain says the Didonians are better at?

"'Allness...Unity, harmony.'"
-op. cit., p. 173.

I can dig it:

in meditation, we intuit allness, unity and harmony;

thus, we transcend illusory separate selfhood;

this should come easier to the Didonians who remember having been more than one self and who should therefore be less inclined to identify exclusively with the current self.

The Complexities Of Didonians

The Rebel Worlds.

The bird-like krippos are also viviparous. 

Cave Discoverer and Many Thoughts can never meet because they share two units although they share memories from those units.

Unless my Maths are wrong, the nine units of three entities can be reassembled into twenty-six other entities. However, a Didonian "communion" (society) pragmatically deploys the appropriate units to spend most of their time within outstanding entities, like Cave Discoverer for exploration, Many Thoughts for wisdom or Master of Songs for music. These three entities share the same noga and ruka, differing only in their krippo. Their noga and ruka are unlikely to spend much time in less talented entities. While Cave Discoverer accompanies Flandry's group across the mountains, neither Many Thoughts nor Master of Songs can be formed back in Thunderstone. Temporary entities must know that they are temporary and not object. Altruism within a communion is so natural that it has not been conceptualized.

When Cave Discoverer travels to an annual fair, his noga links with a ruka from one place and a krippo from another to form Raft Farer. Thus, Raft Farer exists only annually and only as long as three entities from different communions remain able to visit that fair.

Experiencing the transience of their consciousnesses, the Didonians can hardly conceptualize individual entities as immortal souls.

Forever Beyond Our Reach

The Rebel Worlds, IX. (Alternative title: Commander Flandry.)

"It was all one enormous room. Privacy was surely an idea which Didonians were literally incapable of entertaining. But what ideas did they have that were forever beyond human reach?" (p. 85)

See also Privacy.

A Flatlander cannot visualize a solid.

We cannot visualize colors corresponding to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are invisible to us.

Maybe minds cannot understand how they are generated by brains?

Didonians experience a different relationship between consciousness and intelligence. Units watch or perform routine tasks until they detect a situation that requires them to combine into intelligent entities. Do the entities remember the animal experiences of single units?

Revisiting The Technic History Chronology

Sam Hedin spoke of four centuries of mankind on Aeneas. See here. The scientific base on Aeneas was established to study the Didonians. Chunderban Desai reflects that human beings have been trying to communicate with the Didonians for seven hundred years. See Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 7, p. 129.

A very careful rereading of the Technic History might enable us to draft a provisional chronology with explanations for disagreements between characters or possible mistakes on their part.

Didonian Communication

(I neither understand nor like this cover image but we need variety.)

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER NINE.

A Didonian speaks through all three linked organisms simultaneously:

"Three voices answered her." (p. 454)

Flandry thinks that the linguistic structure must be contrapuntal but I am not sure what that word means in this context.

"'Skilled With Soil is evidently just what the name implies, a gifted farmer. In other combinations, heesh's units might be part of an outstandin' hunter or artisan or musician or whatever. That's why there's no requirement for a large population in order to have a variety of specialists within a communion.'" (p. 455)

Human beings need a large population of diverse individuals to run a complex society. If everyone wanted to be an electrician, who would do the plumbing, let alone the brain surgery? Didonians, like Ythrians and Ishtarians, are Andersonian aliens with appropriately alien societies.

Of the Didonian units:

nogas eat, therefore remember botany;
rukas manipulate, therefore remember manual trades;
krippos fly, therefore remember meteorology and geography;
all species remember language and some other general information.

I think that there will be more posts on Didonians.

Oneness And Morning Star

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

The text begins with a quotation: Job iv, 12-16.

Chapter 1, on pp. 75-76, occupies less than one page of text and is scriptural in tone, beginning:

"On the third day he arose, and ascended again to the light." (p. 75)

The viewpoint character, Jaan, reflects:

"To be man is to be radiance." (ibid.)

It is or at least it can be but we are to learn that Jaan's "...resurrection..." (p. 76) is a deception.

The chapter ends:

"Above them paled Dido, the morning star." (p. 76)

This is the first textual indication that the novel is set not only in Poul Anderson's Technic History but also, more specifically, in the Virgilian System in Sector Alpha Crucis. Jaan must be on Aeneas where Dido is the morning star. And, since, according to Jaan, the morning star is:

"...the planet of the First Chosen..." (p. 75)

- those First Chosen are the tripartite Didonians. We know, if we are reading the Technic History consecutively, that the Didonians practise oneness. Now Jaan's inner voice, Caruith, speaks of mankind being:

"...received into Oneness..." (p. 76)

In Chapter 2, beginning on p. 76, an opening reference to Windhome and the introduction of a viewpoint character with the surname, Frederiksen, confirm that the action is on Aeneas.

Didonian Designations

See:

Didonians, 12 June 2013;
Didonians, 22 May 2014.

A Didonian entity is known not by a name but by a designation indicating either a personal quality or a past event. Three entities, Cave Discoverer, Harvest Fetcher and Smith, accompany Flandry's party and can switch around to form Iron Miner, Guardian of North Gate or Lightning Struck The House. "Smith" amuses Flandry's crew but, in fact, the English/Anglic name, "Smith," began as a designation.

In a Clifford Simak novel, some aliens were introduced to a small town American mayor. The mayor was told (something like), "This being does not speak. He is a telepath." The mayor was all sympathy. "That's too bad," he said. Then:

"You can call him 'Smith.'"
"What do you know? They have names just like us!"

I used to be a Simak fan but stopped being but Poul Anderson regarded him highly. See here. (Scroll down.)

More About Didonians

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER NINE.

Every human being welcomes unconsciousness at night, confident that, other things being equal, s/he will regain consciousness in the morning. Of course, we will die sometime and that could be in our sleep.

A Didonian entity ceases to exist when heesh's three units end their linkage. Presumably, the entity expects to be reassembled sometime but that will not happen if even one of the three units dies in the meantime.

The entity designated Cave Discoverer is an explorer and adventurer who shares two units with the wisest, Many Thoughts:

"'Many Thoughts gets the vigor and boldness of the same noga and ruka, but heesh's journeys are of the spirit....'" (p. 460)

When Many Thoughts' krippo replaces Cave Discoverer's, Many Thoughts takes a minute to absorb the information conveyed by the noga and ruka that the two entities share. Then Kathryn has to repeat whatever information went away with the departing krippo.

The loss of either the noga or the ruka would mean that neither Cave Discoverer nor Many Thoughts could be reassembled although much of their knowledge would be preserved in the surviving units.

Primary education comprises two-way linkages between mature and immature units. Didonians cannot have any concept of privacy. Poul Anderson invites us to imagine a fundamentally different form of consciousness.

Battle On Dido

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER TWELVE.

The woman on this cover of A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows is Kossara Vymezal but could equally have been Kathryn McCormac and in fact the image is re-used on a volume collecting both novels. See Time With Kathryn And Kossara.

Barbaric Didonians, undetected by krippo scouts because hiding in a cave, attack Flandry's group but are driven off by Terran guns. After the battle, the Thunderstoners, Flandry's Didonian allies:

"...could assemble one full person at a time." (p. 481)

- and opt for Guardian Of North Gate, then for Lightning Struck The House whose units have learned pidgin by combining with those of Cave Discoverer who, it seems, is no more. (Later: Yes, Cave Discoverer's ruka has been killed.)

Flandry reminds Kathryn that:

"'...this particular fracas was an incident in your precious revolution." (p. 482)

The barbaric Didonians have no understanding that they are attacking Imperials who have been shot down by barbarian mercenaries hired by a pretender to the Terran Throne - a reminder that the universe is bigger than any of us can imagine.

In Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, the slogan "Coal, Not Dole," appears on a wall in a scene set in London. Thus, the Great British Miners' Strike of 1984-'85 was one small part of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Didonians

Let's try to get a better grasp of what Didonians look like. Flandry sees what initially resemble rhinoceroses but, on closer examination:

each of these "nogas" does have the size, general build and horned nose of a rhino;

but their skin is nearly hairless, slate-blue and smooth;

they have no tails;

their ears are big and fan-like;

the shoulders extend sideways as small platforms;

when a goose-like "krippo" and an ape-like "ruka" sit on the platforms and join their "tongues" to the noga's extensible "tentacles," then and only then is a rational Didonian present.

As with other complicated situations described by Anderson, I had remembered in a general way how tripartite Didonian consciousness works. However, the details have become clearer through writing an account of them. Each complete Didonian has partial memories of experiences of other such entities that its members have temporarily participated in. Thus, their concept of self cannot possibly be anything like ours and they say things like:

"Make oneness.
"I/we: Feet belonging to Guardian of North Gate and others who can be, to Raft Farer and Woe who will no longer be..."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 369.

The novel begins like that without any explanation but it all makes sense if we persevere.

Ch'an

The Sanskrit word for meditation, dhyana, became ch'an in China, then zen in Japan. Thus, "Zen meditation" literally means just "Meditation meditation" although "Zen" has come to mean a particular kind of meditative practice. A Riverfolk chaplain says that human beings have:

"'...less gift for the whole ch'an - understanding - than the many-minded people of the Morning Star.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 13, p. 174.

Despite his evident religious certainties, the chaplain has no scientific knowledge of the Didonians. The human scientists based on Dido would not make any such grandiose generalizations about Didonian consciousness but would instead acknowledge their own ignorance. They have yet to get beyond communicating with the Didonians in pidgin languages. Tatiana Thane is hopefully beginning to construct a semantic model of one of the native Didonian languages.

Meanwhile, the Caruith persona coerces Jaan to accept that murder is necessary to further their cause. If we needed any evidence that Caruith is not a good spiritual influence, then here it is.

Knowing Oneness

The Rebel Worlds.

"Make oneness." (p. 369)

"Be not afraid of the strangers with single bodies. Terrible are their powers, but those We can someday learn to wield like them if we choose. Rather pity that race, who are not beasts but can think, and thus know that they will never know oneness." (p. 520)

Thus begins and ends The Rebel Worlds. Thus also, a Didonian first becomes self-conscious, then reflects on humanity.

"Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.

"When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?"

-Juan Mascaro (trans.), Isa Upanishad IN The Upanishads (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1984), p. 49.

"'An invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Truth. THOU ART THAT.'"

-Chandogya Upanishad IN op. cit., p. 118.

Human beings can know a greater unity than that of the Didonians. 

I have one philosophical disagreement with Vedanta: sages realize their identity with the essence of the universe but that essence is conscious of itself only through human beings and other conscious organisms. Before the evolution of such organisms, THAT was pre-conscious. I think.

(I might be having computer problems so don't be surprised if I am off-line for a while.)

Aeneas And Barsoom

Poul Anderson's fictional planet, Aeneas, has some features in common with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom:

a breathable atmosphere, even though Barsoom is the ERBian Mars;
dead sea bottoms;
thus, a wharf now on dry land;
military traditions, defensive on Aeneas but barbaric on Barsoom;
buildings of an ancient race used by a current race;
custodians (therns, Companions) of a mystery (the Valley Dor, the Ancients);
knowledge of the next Sunward planet (Barsoomians observe Earth, Aeneans study Didonians);
a visibly moving moon;
six-legged green draft animals, although the Aenean stathas are imports.

When I seek parallels, I find more than I expect. However, the differences are greater. No one in his right mind would think that Aeneas was a copy of Barsoom - although Anderson could have written a good Barsoom novel (Sword and Science), just as he contributed to the Conan series (Sword and Sorcery), but I do not think that the Burroughs Estate commissions continuations?

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.)

The Weirdest Species

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Flandry to Kathryn:

"'My business has put me in contact with various breeds. I remain convinced we humans are the weirdest of the lot; but your Didonians come close.'" (p. 473)

Why should human beings be the weirdest? Editor John Campbell wanted them to be not only distinctive but also superior. To avoid conflict with his editor, Asimov invented the humans only galaxy. Anderson's multi-species Technic History is infinitely richer. But I think that any reflective species would think itself the weirdest merely because it knows itself better, from the inside out. Flandry has mere "contact" with many others.

Maybe Aycharaych is the being to ask.?