For Love And Glory

All One Universe has been located and the pessimistic story in it is indeed "In Memoriam." However, I am now reading For Love And Glory (New York, 2003) and the next task is to track down Going For Infinity, "...a collection and retrospective of his life's work" (For Love And Glory, jacket).

For Love And Glory, 290 pages of text divided into LIV short chapters:

incorporates in changed form two stories set in a multi-author universe created by Isaac Asimov;

combines recognizable elements and themes from Anderson's Technic Civilization and Harvest of Stars future histories.

Despite these connections and similarities, it is a distinct and independent novel of interstellar civilization and exploration, well illustrated by its cover.

A noticeable difference from the Technic Civilization History is that hyperbeaming, communicating long distance by a hyperspatial equivalent of radio, is possible. For Love And Glory is set not only in a different timeline but also apparently in a much further future. Earth is not the capital of an interstellar empire but a quiet, depopulated planet where people are somehow merging their consciousnesses into a quantum internet.

Human beings live for centuries as they are periodically rejuvenated to a physical age of twenty. It is known that the galactic center is a monstrous black hole. Anderson imagines yet another unlikely astronomical event: a collision between two massive black holes in galactic orbits, with human explorers arriving just in time to observe. I await the outcome.

THE THREE PHASES OF POUL ANDERSON'S CAREER, by Sean M. Brooks

This article outlines and dates the three phases of Poul Anderson's career as a writer, with representative examples taken from his works. Considering how vast Anderson's output was from 1947 to his death in 2001, it will not be practical or desirable to cite more than a few of his many short stories and novels.  And one weakness of this essay is how I have completely ignored his mysteries, historical novels, and non fictional works.  One last point: this arbitrary carving up of a writer's career into phases is an artificial construct by critics, commentators, and fans, and should be done cautiously, with a grain of salt.

Strictly speaking, it would be correct to date Anderson's career as beginning in September 1944, when AMAZING published his first short story, "A Matter of Relativity."  However, dating the beginning of the early phase of his career to the publication of "Tomorrow's Children" (ASTOUNDING, March 1947) is more realistic.  Because Anderson only began to write regularly from 1947 onwards.

I argue for dating Anderson's early phase from 1947 when "Tomorrow's Children" (which became the first part of TWILIGHT WORLD) was published. And I date the end of this early phase in Anderson's career to 1958, when THE ENEMY STARS was published.  This early phase was when Anderson was still learning how to write, to find his natural voice as a writer, and when he began writing about many of the ideas and themes dearest to his mind.  This early period is also when we can detect a few false starts, or perhaps merely a change of mind in how he thought about and wrote his stories.  The clearest example of that being the Psychotechnic stories (found in collections such as THE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE, COLD VICTORY, STARSHIP, and novels like VIRGIN PLANET and THE PEREGRINE).

One of the false starts I believe can be found in Anderson's early phase is "Genius"  (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, December 1948). I base this on comments by a critic whose name I cannot convincingly recall (it may have been Sandra Miesel) who argued this very early story contradicted the moral values and beliefs of Poul Anderson.  I wish I could cite the author by name and quote the exact text.  I apologize for this vague and unsatisfactory paragraph and hope I can replace it if I find the text I am incompletely remembering.

Besides hard science fiction Poul Anderson also wrote a smaller but still impressive amount of fantasies, both novels and short stories.  The most significant example of that, during his early phase, being THE BROKEN SWORD (Abelard: 1954).  It's interesting to note how he became dissatisfied with the original form of that novel and published a revised version 1971. Which means THE BROKEN SWORD can be found in both his early and middle periods.  The following bit from Anderson's "Foreword" to the 1971 Del Rey/Ballantine Books edition of THE BROKEN SWORD gives us some understanding of why he became dissatisfied with the first version: "I would not myself write anything so headlong, so prolix, and so unrelievedly savage.  My vein is more that of THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS."

Going back to the Psychotechnic stories, in an "Author's Note" that Anderson placed at the end of THE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE (New York, Pinnacle Books, 1981) we are given some comments about his first "future history" and why he eventually became dissatisfied with it.  On page 284 Anderson wrote:

    A good reason for this abandonment was that the real world had, predictably, not been behaving as described.  For example, World War Three remains ahead of us, rather than behind.  No doubt I could have fudged my dates a bit. However, I could not explain away important scientific discoveries and technological advances which I had failed to foresee.
    People and institutions had also changed profoundly, as had my view of them. Once I was a flaming liberal, a fact which is probably most obvious in "Un-Man." Nowadays I consider the United Nations a dangerous farce on which we ought to ring down the curtain.  (In justice to it and myself, though, please remember that when I wrote this novella the U.N. had quite a different character from that it has since acquired, and looked improvable.)

I date Anderson's middle period as beginning with the publication of WE CLAIM THESE STARS! (Ace, 1959).  This middle period is marked by the confidence and strength with which Anderson wrote.  Two of his most prominent series of stories which began in his early phase, the stories featuring the Polesotechnic League/Terran Empire and the Time Patrol, reached their full maturity in this middle phase (although Anderson wrote one last Time Patrol story late, in 1995).  I would date the end of this middle period to 1989, when THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS was published. BOAT shows both definite similarities with Anderson's earlier works and touches on the ideas and themes which would dominate the works he wrote during the last twelve years of his life.

David G. Hartwell contributed a prefatory essay to the fourth volume of NESFA Press' reprinting of many of Anderson's shorter works in ADMIRALTY: THE COLLECTED SHORT WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON (2011).  What he said on page 10 admirably describes qualities which can be found in the stories Anderson wrote during his middle period (in fact, in all three phases).  Hartwell wrote: "Instead, again in the hard SF tradition, he most often wrote about strong men and women pitted against the challenge of survival in the face of the natural universe.  Some of them die.  But Anderson was optimist enough to see beyond the dark times into both a landscape, sometimes a starscape, and a future of wonders--for the survivors.  Anderson's future is not for the lazy or the stay-at-homes.  He was fairly gloomy about current social trends, big government, repression of the individual, so he catapulted his characters into a future of new frontiers, making them face love and death in vividly imagined and depicted environments far from home.  I recall the power and beauty and pathos of his fine black hole story, "Kyrie," the wit of THE MAN WHO COUNTS (THE WAR OF THE WING MEN) the good humor of "A Bicycle Built for Brew," the enormous scope and amazing comprehension of "Memorial."  His range was impressive."

(Hartwell's mentioning of "Memorial" puzzles me, I can't find it among Anderson's works.  The item closest to it being "In Memoriam," which can most conveniently be found in ALL ONE UNIVERSE, published by Tor Books in 1996.)

And I would date the beginning of Anderson's middle period in his writing of fantasies to the publication of THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS in 1961. However, since this edition was only an expanded version of the original form of the novel first published by the MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION in September/October 1953, this story belongs more to Anderson's early phase.  A truer representative of Anderson's work in fantasies dating to his middle phase is A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST (Doubleday, 1974).  An especially interesting thing to note about this book is how it was written almost entirely in blank verse, the form of poetry used by William Shakespeare for his plays.  In other words, TEMPEST was written as an act of homage to the Bard.

I am convinced Poul Anderson was a master short story writer.  In both fantasy and hard science fiction.  By turns poetic and elegiac, and scrupulously faithful to known science or not too impossible extrapolations from what was known.  He also excelled in describing his characters and the backgrounds of his stories.

What were some of the ideas and themes which Anderson took up with, in my opinion, magnificent success, in his later years?  Immortality, artificial intelligence based on computer technology (AI, for short), the uploading of human personalities into computer networks (and their downloading into human bodies created for them via DNA engineering and cloning), nanotechnology, even raising animal species to human levels of intelligence, etc. Albeit, as of this writing, we are seeing results in the actual world only in cloning and nanotech.  I am skeptical some of the themes Anderson speculated about in his later years will ever actually come to pass, such as immortality and AI.

One of the ideas which came most strongly to me as marking Anderson's late phase was how WELL he wrote during the period 1989-2001.  It is my opinion that THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS marks both the end of his middle phase and the beginning of his late period.  These years shows Anderson as not being content to rest on his laurels and rehash old ideas and themes from his earlier years.  Instead, his late phase is marked by how boldly he tried out new ideas, some of them very strange to me!  I refer, of course, to his four HARVEST OF STARS books, STARFARERS, GENESIS, and the posthumously published FOR LOVE AND GLORY.  I ardently recommend readers to try out the HARVEST OF STARS books, despite the difficult ideas found in them (some of which, as noted above, I am skeptical will ever actually come to pass).

One of the themes which marked Anderson's later years was how he preferred to speculate about STL means of mankind reaching the stars.  Mostly, of course, because that was, given our current knowledge of science, more likely than having a FTL drive.  But he did use FTL for his last novel, FOR LOVE AND GLORY.

Compared to his early and middle phases, Anderson wrote fewer fantasies during his late period, 1989 to 2001.  The first being "Faith" (co-authored with Karen Anderson) published in AFTER THE KING (1992).  And the first of only two fantasy novels he wrote during his later years was WAR OF THE GODS (Tor: 1997).  Truth to say, I consider WAR to be one of Anderson's very few weaker books.  The second being OPERATION LUNA (1999), placed in the same "world" as OPERATION CHAOS.

I should also note that during his later years Anderson continue to write short stories, both hard SF and fantasy.  Examples being "Death and the Knight," and the posthumously published "Pele" (set in Larry Niven's Man/Kzin wars series) and "The Lady of the Winds" (set in the Thieves World fantasy series).

For Love And Glory II

A feature film is audiovisual whereas a novel is entirely verbal. A cinema audience sees what a novel-reader is invited to visualize. Thus, the two media are, simply as media, completely different. Their only common point is words, whether heard as part of a sound track or read in print. However, in a film, words are dialogue or, far less frequently, narration whereas, in a novel, they are also description.

On the other hand, a film and a novel can have similar or even identical content. In Star Trek, Star Wars and Dune, as in Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization History and For Love And Glory (New York, 2003):

civilization is interstellar;
large spaceships move through warp- or hyper-space;
they sometimes fight battles in space.

In my opinion, Anderson's novels present this fictitious scenario far more effectively than any of the films mentioned. The only visual aspect of For Love And Glory is its cover illustration which, of course, is not the work of the author. "Book design" is credited to Jane Adele Regina (p. 4) but I am not sure whether this means that she drew the illustration (but see below) which in fact depicts a scene from the novel. The spacecraft are not in combat but are being affected by gravitational waves from a collision between black holes.

Anderson shows:

the collision ("The black holes met..." (p. 141));
psychological conflicts within his characters;
personal conflicts between the characters;
political conflicts between the intelligent races witnessing the black hole collision;
potential military conflict between the discoverers of the imminent collision and later arrivers.

Thus, good science fiction and a good novel.

Addendum: What might resemble a skull in the bottom left hand corner is not when seen on the book.

Addendum, 10 August: Inside the back flap of the jacket, the jacket art is credited to Vincent Di Fate, which is the name that I had expected.

FLAG III

(Going For Infinity is coming from the US.)

I am enjoying the experience of reading a Poul Anderson novel for the first time, especially since this is the last time that I ever will. I have read as far as p. 200, of 300, in For Love And Glory (New York, 2003) so I cannot yet comment on the book as a whole.

So far, and this could change, the novel has confounded any expectations:

the guy who we thought would be the villain becomes instead a sympathetic character (in this respect, although not in any other, he resembles Mr D'Arcy of Pride And Prejudice);

neither the Gargantuan who resembles a Wodenite nor the issue of the Forerunners remained on-stage for very long;

the collision between two massive black holes has come and gone without as yet any dramatic cosmic repercussions (there was a description of the explosion but the main narrative emphasis was on its consequences for the characters);

the heroine and the guy who is not the villain are back together looking for a lost friend down on a planetary surface;

there have been hints of human-AI interaction on Earth but no details as yet;

there are interstellar, inter-species politics but no wars or imperialism;

in fact, life seems to be quite relaxed in accordance with the extended lifespans of the human characters - every time they rejuvenate to the physical age of twenty, they begin a new "cycle";

there has been a threatened space battle but no hostilities as yet;
no fisticuffs, characters held at gun-point, escaping, being pursued etc.

Christianity survives not as the Jerusalem Catholic Church of Anderson's Technic Civilization History but as Neocatholicism and Josephanism. (p. 169)

Comments on the macro-relationships between some future histories might be appropriate:

Isaac Asimov wrote the Robots and Empire future history and created Isaac's Universe;

Poul Anderson incorporated his own two Isaac's Universe stories in changed form into For Love And Glory and wrote, among others, the Technic Civilization future history.

Thus, Robots and Empire, Isaac's Universe, FLAG and the Technic History are four distinct series, of which I can vouch for the quality and readability of the third and fourth. (FLAG is presented as a single novel but nevertheless incorporates two originally separate stories and its narrative structure is episodic.)

Back To FLAG

Back To The Future
For Love And Glory
For Love And Glory II
FLAG III
FLAG IV
FLAG V
FLAG VI

These links gather together the previous posts on FLAG (For Love And Glory) (New York, 2003) by Poul Anderson. Experience of blogging shows that a close rereading, which will begin soon, will generate more posts.

Chapter I, paragraph 1, on p. 11, does not reveal that this narrative will have a science fictional content. Lissa and Karl, walking out of a wood towards a river, see in midstream the iridescent curved top of a twenty-meter long, five-meter wide, unidentified artifact.

However, the second paragraph gives us the context:

"But there were no native sophonts anywhere around this star. Scant though exploration had been in the seven Terran years since the system was first visited, that much was certain."

Of all the genres tackled by Poul Anderson, we have narrowed down to hard sf, almost certainly with faster than light interstellar travel. Before the end of p. 11, Karl gives us some surprises:

he refers to "'...the Orcelin civilization...,'" thus strongly suggesting a multi-species context;
he points with his tail;
his language is mostly inaudible to Lissa but the translator on her backpack renders it into Anglay;
he is "...a huge creature..."

So those were not a woman and a man walking out of the wood. A visual medium would have shown us this immediately - unless the focus had initially been on Lissa and had then pulled back to make us aware of Karl's physical characteristics. If enough of us think about how these texts might be filmed, then maybe some of them will be.

Back To The Future

My edition of Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings ends with a five page trailer for For Love And Glory, Anderson's last futuristic hard science fiction (sf) novel, which I have also not yet read.

Regular readers look out for any clue that a new novel belongs to an existing series. For example, a reference to an alien race of "Merseians" would instantly place any  new novel within Anderson's main future history series, the History of Technic Civilisation.

Theoretically, this need not be the case. A fictitious species could inhabit more than one future timeline just as readily as terrestrial human beings do. For example, Lithians and their planet are destroyed in 2050 in James Blish's Trilogy yet still exist millennia later in one of his tetralogies. Nevertheless, an author usually signals that two stories are set in different futures by having the human protagonists of the stories meet different alien species.

This question arises here because For Love And Glory does return to the earlier sf idea of faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel in a multi-species galaxy where at least some extra-solar planets are humanly inhabitable whereas Anderson's other later works, the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, had featured slower than light (STL) interstellar travel by artificial intelligences encountering very little organic life.

The trailer mentions:

" '...the Orcelin civilization...' " (p. 615);
"...an anthropard from Rikha or a Rikhan colony..." (p. 616);
the planet Gargantua;
Asborg - Sunniva III.

(That last must be either a planet called Asborg which is the third planet of a star called Sunniva or a city called "Asborg" on the third planet etc.)

None of these names is familiar so most probably this new novel exists in its own timeline. Another clue is that the human language spoken is "Anglay," not "Anglic" - as it would have been in the Technic History.

Artifacts left by Forerunners, clearly an earlier space traveling race, are mentioned. There were such forerunners in the Technic History although there they were variously referred to as Foredwellers, Ancients, Elders, Others and Old Shen. Even the use of a slightly different term, "Forerunners," implies that the new novel is set in a different timeline.

The Gargantuan resembles a tyrannosaur which makes him sound like a Wodenite from the Technic History except that the latter are centauroid/quadrupedal. Also, Wodenites appropriately speak in deep, rumbling voices whereas the Garagantuan, called "Karl" for human purposes, speaks inaudibly and communicates through an artificial translator.

Characters in the Technic History often refer to " '...this fraction of a single spiral arm which we have somewhat explored...' " (1) whereas Lissa Davysdaughter Windholm of Asborg reflects that "The galaxy's so huge, so various, and always so mysterious." (2) So maybe Lissa's people have fared further - with faster FTL?

The word "Windholm" occurs in the Technic History but as a place name, not as a surname. Patronymics are familiar from Anderson's Norse fiction. I cannot avoid the impression that familiar story elements are being rearranged somewhat.

(1) Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, Riverdale, NY, 2012, p. 207.
(2) Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings, New York, 2003, p. 617.

FLAG IV

In Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization History, characters sometimes wish that hyper-spatial pulses could be modulated to send messages further than a light year. In Anderson's For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), longer distance hyperbeaming is possible but:

"Not for the first time, Lissa wished quantum encryption had been made to work for transluminal communication." (p. 63)

So people are always aware of limits to their technology.

Lissa negotiates with a Susaian -

long, red body;
four short legs;
long curving tail;
two three-fingered hands;
long, swaying neck;
individuals alternating between male and female;
sometimes disparaged as "'...lizards...'" by human beings. (p. 183)

In the planetary system of the star Sunniva, the third planet, Asborg, is Earth-like whereas the second, Freydis, is hot and cloudy with a surface of swamps and deserts, as Venus was sometimes imagined. Human beings have colonized Asborg and own land on Freydis where they sell the large island of New Halla to the Susaian Old Truthers, a persecuted group wanting a new start.

On Freydis, only the worldwide forest maintains liquid-water temperatures. If the Susaian population, expanding from its island, reduces the forest, then there will be runaway greenhouse effect:

increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will trap more solar energy;
rising temperatures will evaporate water;
water vapor will also trap more solar energy;
there will be drought, fires and spreading deserts;
species will die;
oxygen and nitrogen, no longer renewed by life, will become locked in minerals;
oceans will boil;
ultraviolet will split rising water molecules with hydrogen escaping into space and oxygen being imprisoned in rocks;
result, "..a searing hell..." (p. 205)

Meanwhile, however, economics clashes with ecology:

the expanding Susaian population will be a growing market for Asborgans who had previously failed to make Freydis profitable;
serious ecological trouble is not extrapolated for another five centuries;
the planet's albedo will be increased, thus mass extinctions prevented, by orbiting a cloud of reflective particles, by reducing sunlight with a giant reflective mirror at the L2 point or by other expensive space-based technology;
however, the planet will then be covered with cities, machines and gene-engineered plantations;
also, with regular rejuvenations, Asborgans expect to be alive five centuries hence so this is not a problem to be consigned to a remote future.

Meanwhile, a human-owned company, Venusberg Enterprises, accelerates environmental destruction by mining, pumping, refining, synthesizing and lumbering with robotics and nanotech in order to sell locally produced housing, tools, vehicles, robots, factories and chemical plants to the Susaians. The alternative, requiring much research, would be gene-modification, leading to:

mineral-extracting and -refining microbes;
soil-grown buildings;
food, fiber and chemicals from the forests, not from farms or factories.

Having so far read only as far as p. 216, of 300, I do not know the outcome. Nor do I yet know how the issues of the Foreunners or of the black hole collision will be tied together. But I do pause at this point to appreciate the enormity of the ecological/economic conflict that Anderson imagined for the planets Asborg and Freydis, whose names recall Asgard and Freya. I have had to reread several chapters carefully in order to extract the relevant details. Maybe someone better versed in the appropriate sciences would be able to scan through the text once and summarize its content but others, while appreciating Anderson's ability to create fiction from science, need to work at the text in order to get the full benefit from words that are deceptively full of and charged with significance.

Machiavelli Etc

(Niccolo Machiavelli.)

For Love And Glory, IV, p. 28.

Hebo speaks of historical figures unknown to Lissa, including:

Machiavelli (scroll down)
Hiroshige
Buxtehude

I usually expect the last figure in such a list, in this case "Buxtehude," to be in our future and thus not to be found by googling but this time I was mistaken. We always learn by reading Poul Anderson.

A while back, I discussed the plot and themes of For Love And Glory. Currently, this late novel by Poul Anderson is proving to be a fertile source for short miscellaneous posts.

Until tomorrow.

WAS THE DOMINATION INSPIRED BY MERSEIA? by Sean M. Brooks

I have wondered how S.M. Stirling was inspired to write his four Draka books (MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA, UNDER THE YOKE, THE STONE DOGS, and DRAKON).  One source to investigate is what Stirling himself said, such as the Introduction he wrote for DRAKAS! (a collection of short stories featuring the Drakas he had consented to other authors writing).  This is what Stirling wrote on page 2 of  DRAKAS! (Baen Books, 2000): "So a thought came to me, suppose everything had turned out as badly as possible, these last few centuries.  Great change make possible great good and great evil. The outpouring of the Europeans produced plenty of both."

I agree that Mr. Stirling's Draka books are dystopian alternate history science fiction, based on the premise of everything turning out as badly as possible.  BUT, what if, unbeknownst to Stirling, he had also been influenced in shaping the basic premises of the Draka stories by Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization stories?  Assume a small group of people with ideas similar to those of the Draka had left a hostile Terra soon after a FTL drive was invented to settle a planet deep in what became the dominions of Merseia in Anderson's Technic stories.

There actually was a human ethnic group within the Terran Empire whose ideas might have developed along the lines taken by the Draka if circumstances had been different!  I refer to the Zacharians, whom we see in THE GAME OF EMPIRE.  Matthew Zachary and Yukiko Nomura, the founders of the Zacharians, lived around the time when a FTL drive had been invented and mankind was beginning to leave the Solar System.  Their desire was to use genetic science to create an improved form of humanity which would provide the leaders of the human race.  To quote Kukulkan Zachary, from Chapter 17 of THE GAME OF EMPIRE: " ' Travel beyond the Solar System was just beginning.  Matthew Zachary saw what an unimaginably great challenge it cast at humankind, peril as well as promise, hardihood required for hope, adaptability essential but not at the cost of integrity.  A geneticist, he set himself the goal of creating a man that could cope with the infinite strangeness it would find.  Yes, machines were necessary, but they were not sufficient.  People must go into the deeps too, if the whole human adventure was not to end in whimpering pointlessness.  And go they would.  It was in the nature of the species. Matthew Zachary wanted to provide them with the best possible leaders.' "

All too predictably, the appearance of the genetically modified Zacharians aroused suspicions of them wishing to become a master race tyrannizing over mankind.  It caused the Zacharians to be alternately shunned or persecuted (with Kukulkan Zachary admitting the Zacharians MIGHT have become such a caste in the right circumstances).  It ended with the Zacharians settling the island they called Zacharia, on the planet Daedalus, orbiting the star named Patricius.  By the time the Terran Empire arose and restored order after the Time of Troubles, the Zacharians had become merely one more ethnicity in an Empire containing thousands of them.  Their resentment at this eventually led them to become traitors, co-conspiring with Merseia to place its agent Olaf Magnusson on the throne as a puppet Emperor.  Kukulkan Zachary tried to justify this in Chapter 20 of THE GAME OF EMPIRE by saying: " ' We owe the Terran Empire nothing.  It dragooned our forebears into itself.  It has spurned our leadership, the vision that animated the Founders.  It will only allow us to remain ourselves on this single patch of land, afar in its marches.  Here we dwell like Plato's man in chains, seeing only shadows on the wall of our cave, shadows cast by the living universe.  The Merseians have no cause to fear or shun us.  Rather, they will welcome us as their intermediaries with the human commonality.  They will grant us the same boundless freedom they desire for themselves.' "

Oh, the irony!  From aspiring to becoming the leaders of mankind, leaders who MIGHT have become like the Draka, the Zacharians eventually decided they would settle for becoming Quislings governing mankind under Merseian supervision.  And I disagree with Kukulkan Zachary--nothing prevented Zacharians from either enlisting in the Imperial armed forces or entering the Civil Service.  Being able and intelligent, many would rise to be among the leaders of the Empire.  But that would have meant adopting the preferred view of the Empire taken by both the other humans and non-humans within its domains, of becoming ASSIMILATED by the Empire, and renouncing the dream of ZACHARIANS being the leaders of mankind.

I wish to examine what we know of the ideology of racial supremacy which dominated Merseia in the days of the Terran Empire, to see how closely it resembled the beliefs of the Draka.  A few quotes from Chapter XIV of A CIRCUS OF HELLS will help: "They [the Merseians] didn't want war with Terra, they only saw the Empire as a bloated sick monstrosity which had long outlived its usefulness but with senile cunning contrived to hinder and threaten THEM..."  And: "No, they did not dream of conquering the galaxy, that was absurd on the face of it, they simply wanted freedom to range and rule without bound, and "rule" did not mean tyranny over others, it meant just that others should not stand in the way of the full outfolding of that spirit which lay in the Race..."

I did not believe a word of this!  As the Merseians expanded into the galaxy they contacted other intelligent races with as much right to exist as theirs.  Yet their reaction was to scorn them as beings inferior to them, and to dominate them because they were not Merseians.

In Chapter XIII of A CIRCUS OF HELLS we see some of Dominic Flandry's reflections about the Merseians and the beliefs driving them: "You gatortails get a lot of dynamism out of taking for granted you're the natural future lords of the galaxy," the man thought, "but your attitude has its disadvantages.  Not that you deliberately antagonize any other races, provided they give you no trouble.  But you don't use their talents as fully as you might.  Ydwr seems to understand this.  He mentioned that I would be valuable as a non-Merseian--which suggests he'd like to have team members from among the Roidhunate's client species--but I imagine he had woes enough pushing his project through a reluctant government, without bucking attitudes so ingrained that the typical Merseian isn't even conscious of them." 

The points I wish to stress about this otherwise out of context quote are these: Merseian belief in their superiority and destiny as rulers of the galaxy, their at best condescending attitude toward non-Merseians, a hint of how ruthless the Merseians could be to any who opposed them, etc.

The human ruled Terran Empire was Merseia's greatest and most powerful rival among oxygen breathing races.  How did at least some Merseian leaders regard humans and how would they treat humans?  An answer to these questions can be found in Chapter 10 of ENSIGN FLANDRY.  Brechdan Ironrede, Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council, said of the human race: " ' They were magnificent once.  They could be again.  I would love to see them our willing subjects.'  His scarred features drooped a little. ' Unlikely, of course.  They're not that kind of species.  We may be forced to exterminate.' "  Note the casually chilling acceptance of the idea of exterminating an entire intelligent race.  And, by extension, all other non-Merseian races who dared to resist Merseian domination.

In ENSIGN FLANDRY we see one Merseian who did not believe in the evil ideology of racial supremacy and felt betrayed by his own leaders.  As Dwyr the Hook said in Chapter 12: " ' What was the conquest of Janair to me? They spoke of the glory of the race.  I saw nothing except that other race, crushed, burned, enslaved as we advanced.  I would have fought for my liberty as they did for theirs.' "  Dwyr concluded; " ' Do not misunderstand.  I stayed loyal to my Roidhun and my people.  It was they who betrayed me.' "  Dwyr thought like that because he had discovered how badly his own superiors had lied to him as regards being healed of severe war injuries.

To see how humans inside the Empire reacted to Merseians claiming their race was superior to all others I'll quote from Chapter XII of A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS what Bodin Miyatovich, Gospodar of Dennitza and governor of the Taurian sector said: " ' The Empire would have to get so bad that chaos was better, before I'd willingly break it.  Terra, the Troubles, or the tyranny of Merseia--and those racists wouldn't just subject us, they'd tame us--I don't believe we have a fourth choice, and I'll pick Terra.' " Here we see Merseian rule considered so harsh it amounted to treating non-Merseians as mere animals.

I have reviewed Merseian ideas of racial superiority and how both humans and non-humans reacted to them.  What was the political form desired for giving Merseian ambitions a practical shape?  In Chapter 9 of ENSIGN FLANDRY Lord Hauksberg remarked that the electors from the landed clans chose the Roidhun from the landless Vach, the Urdiolch, dismissing that, however, as an unimportant detail.  Commander Max Abrams disagreed, saying: " ' It's not a detail.  It reflects their whole concept of society.  What they have in mind for their far future is a set of autonomous Merseian ruled regions.  The race, not the nation, counts with them.  Which makes them a hell of a lot more dangerous than simple imperialists like us, who only want to be top dogs and admit other species have an equal right to exist.  Anyway, so I think on the basis of what information is available. While on Merseia I hope to read a lot of their philosophers.' "

 I'm grateful how Dr. Paul Shackley's commentary on Stirling's DRAKON (Baen Books: 1996) brought to my attention certain passages in Chapter 14 of that book which strengthens my argument.  After becoming aware of Samothracian advances in science, the New Race Draka had discovered there was a faster means of reaching the stars.  A few quotes from a discussion held by the Archon and the Directors of his cabinet will show how Draka ambitions resembled those of the Merseian Roidhunate.  On page 275 of the paperback edition of DRAKON, the Director of Colonization said, "We anticipated thousands of millennia to bring the Galaxy under the Domination of the Race.  This will reduce the timescale by orders of magnitude." Another Director responded saying, "Something that the Archons of the colony worlds may not be entirely happy about."  Because the Draka colonies were completely independent of the Domination on Earth, they might fear the Domination would try to rule them.  Archon Alexis Renston replied: "Needs must--and they will need us to defend against the Samothracians.  For that matter, even with better communications, interstellar government will never be very tightly centralized."

What I quoted above fits in neatly with what Brechdan Ironrede said to his son in Chapter 3 of ENSIGN FLANDRY: "But we cannot merely fight for our goal.  We must work.  We must have patience.  You will not see us masters of the galaxy.  It is too big.  We may need a million years."  And, to repeat what Commander Abrams said in Chapter 9 of the same book: "What they have in mind for their far future is a set of autonomous Merseian-ruled regions.  The race, not the nation, counts with them."  Both the Draka and the Merseians thought it would take their races many thousands of years, even a million years, to conquer the galaxy.  And neither proposed to attempt setting up a galactic empire--rather, regions and planets would be ruled by autonomous Draka and Merseian states.

I previously mentioned Merseian philosophers--which reminded me of what S.M. Stirling's character, William Dreiser, had done on page 64 of MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA (Baen Books: 1988): "He had done his homework thoroughly: histories, geographies, statistics.  And the Draka basics, Carlyle's PHILOSOPHY OF MASTERY, Nietzsche's THE WILL TO POWER, Fitzhugh's IMPERIAL DESTINY, even Gobineau's turgid INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES, and the eerie and chilling MEDITATIONS OF ELVIRA NALDORSSEN." It's disturbing to think there might be Merseian analogs of Draka philosophers like Naldorssen.  I can think of one possibly modifying factor: the Merseians belief in "the God" MIGHT soften the ruthless logic of their racist ideology.

To give a more adequate idea of what the Draka and their ambitions were like I'll quote from Stirling's fictional Draka philosopher Elvira Naldorssen's MEDITATIONS: COLDER THAN THE MOON (possibly the same invented book as the one mentioned in the previous paragraph), from page 230 of Stirling's MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA: "The Draka will conquer the world for two reasons: because we must, and because we can. Yet of the two forces, the second is the greater; we do this because we choose to do it.  By the sovereign Will and force of arms the Draka will rule the earth, and in so doing remake themselves.  We shall conquer: we shall beat the nations into dust and re-forge them in our self-wrought image: the Final Society, a new humanity without weakness or mercy, hard and pure.  Our descendants will walk the hillsides of that future, innocent beneath the stars, with no more between them and their naked will than a wolf has.  Then there will be Gods in the earth."

In conclusion it will help if I listed the ways Merseia resembled the Domination of the Draka:
1. Racial superiority of Merseians over all non-Meseians.
2. Inferior status, within the Roidhunate, of all non-Merseian races.
3. Willingness to exterminate entire races.
4. Enslaving of conquered non-Merseians.

In Poul Anderson's Terran Empire stories the focus was on the decline of the Empire and the urgent need to defend it, to prevent civilization from falling, not primarily on Merseia (except as the enemy of the Empire). Still, I believe I have collected enough evidence to show that the Roidhunate was a nasty place for non-Merseians.  I regret how Poul Anderson never thought of writing a few stories set entirely inside the Roidhunate, showing us the views of both Merseians and non-Merseians.  If he had, and if based on the evidence I collected, Merseia would strongly resemble a non-human Domination of the Draka, on an interstellar scale.

S.M. Stirling is a known fan and admirer of the works of Poul Anderson. I think it was at least possible that, besides experimenting with writing dystopian science fiction, unconscious reflection on Merseia's racism and its consequences was a factor shaping how Stirling developed the Draka.  To say, nothing, of course, of how the Zacharians might have contributed to this process.

Earth In FLAG

Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), Chapter IX.

The human population is about fifty million;

human, parahuman and quantum-net consciousnesses are linked, subtly and changeably, although "...not joined in one entity..." (p. 52);

cities have been replaced by a few buildings among gardens and woods;

there are only two hostels for extra-planetary visitors, one on Oahu;

Hebo has Hanauma Bay (see image) to himself and the coral has been rehabilitated;

extrasolar colonies preserve archaic societies and interact superficially with non-human beings;

a Beta Centaurian society sends an anthropological team to gain a better understanding of Earth than is possible through verbals, visuals or virtuals;

technological progress during Hebo's nine hundred year life span is shown by the fact that a scanner checks him for pathogens in about a minute whereas previously nanoprobes would have taken several hours;

extinct species of birds have been recreated from old records;

the space traffic control officer, a modified-human, converses by beamphone and might be a virtual;

the Enigma, a research instrument comprising curved girders surrounding a glowing core, has orbited in the asteroid belt for two centuries;

the basic physics equations were formulated several centuries ago;

"'A person on Earth today can at any instant attain any chosen emotional state...'" (p. 54);

a room in the hostel can have any virtual surroundings;

an interactive program, or possibly live human beings, will deal with Hebo at the memory editing clinic. 

And, if we feel nostalgic for the more populous Solar Commonwealth (and here) or Terran Empire, then we can revisit those settings in earlier works.

Other Series

Recently for this blog, I:

reread Poul Anderson's contributions to the Medea and berserker series;

discovered that Anderson's For Love And Glory was based on his two contributions to the "Isaac's Universe" series;

was surprised to learn that his Cappen Varra stories crossover with Thieves' World.

Now I notice that his contribution to Isaac Asimov's Robots series is called "Plato's Cave" (Martin H Greenberg, Editor, Foundation's Friends, London, 1991) and therefore should be of interest to a Philosophy graduate. I will shortly reread it, having previously read it just once on purchasing Foundation's Friend when that was newly published.

As far as I remember, this story was a fully consistent addition to the series, featuring the United States Robots and Mechanical Men trouble shooters, Donovan and Powell, while referring to the robopsychologist, Susan Calvin, and the politician, Stephen Byerley.

I, Robot is perhaps Asimov's best work, beginning with experimental robots and culminating in a Stapledonian apotheosis when giant robotic Brains control the global ecology and economy for the human good. They apply what later came to be called the Zeroth (pre-First) Law of Robotics, preventing harm not to individual human beings but to humanity. Asimov surpassed himself in the sequel, "That Thou Art Mindful of Him," when the Brains, having judged that self-determination is the greatest human good, have phased themselves out but there is now a threat from another robot model called the Georges.

Foundation's Friends comprises:

one contribution each to the Black Widowers, Wendell Urth and thiotimoline series;

one sequel each to "Nightfall" and "The Dead Past";

two stories about Asimov, in the future and in an alternative present;

four non-future history Robot stories;

six contributions, totaling 241 pages, to Asimov's Robots and Empire future history, including "Plato's Cave."

I think that this future history was later diluted by too many new Hari Seldon novels by other authors but the idea of expanding Asimov's future history was new when Foundation's Friends was originally published in 1989.

Memories

World Without Stars
The Boat Of A Million Years
For Love And Glory
Time Patrol and The Shield of Time

These three novels and one series are all very good hard sf by Poul Anderson. In each, human life-spans are extended indefinitely. The three novels address the problem that indefinitely accumulating memories would overwhelm a finite brain. In The Boat..., each of the immortals must somehow solve this problem for him- or herself whereas, in World... and FLAG, there is a technology that can selectively erase memories.

In FLAG, Torsten Hebo is about nine hundred Terran years old. Thus, he joins the ranks of:

Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long;
Poul Anderson's Hugh Valland and Hanno;
James Blish's John Amalfi;
Larry Niven's Louis Wu.

Failures of memory put Hebo in a socially embarrassing situation and then nearly get him killed. He will return to Earth for memory editing and thus we, the readers, will see what has become of our home planet in that remote future.

FLAG's fifty four chapters fill only 290 pages so the chapters are short. Chapters I-VII, pp. 11-41, are set on a single planetary surface. In Chapter VIII, the spaceship Dagmar has returned Karl to his home planet, Gargantua, and will return three other beings to their home planet, Xanadu, before returning the human beings to their home planet, Asborg. Conversation on the ship informs us about the politics and economics of Asborg. The chapter ends by telling us that something important awaits Lissa on Asborg but we forget about this as soon as we turn to Chapter IX which begins with Hebo approaching Earth.

And I will now leave blog readers in suspense while I go about other business for a while...

Exploding Heads And Immortality

"Thunder smote. His skull exploded. Blood and brains fountained."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 13, p. 160.

 

"...Mister's head was exposed for a split second, and the sniper blew it off."

-John Grisham, The Street Lawyer (London, 2010), TWO, p. 20.

 

Late night reading: two sniper shots to the head.

 

"The human brain has a finite data-storage capacity; a thousand years will fill it."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 6, p. 82.

 

Therefore, an immortal would have to edit his memories and thus would attenuate his personality. This problem is addressed in different ways in Anderson's World Without Stars, The Boat Of A Million Years and For Love And Glory. Also, his Time Patrolmen live indefinitely prolonged lifespans but can electrocram, then delete, linguistic knowledge so can probably edit experiential memories.

 

Apart from cerebral storage of unconscious memories, think about our experience of conscious memories. (This argument comes from a book that I cannot find on the shelves right now.) The conscious mind forgets most of its experiences but retains enough key memories to maintain a sense of personal identity and continuity. However, if we were to live indefinitely - a million years, a billion years etc - then we would have more key memories to recall and would be able to recall each particular memory, among all the others, less and less frequently. Eventually, either earlier experiences would be completely forgotten or they would not be recalled often enough to maintain any personal continuity. A billion-year old being would surely have forgotten his early life and could hardly be described as the same person any more.

 

Maybe the answer is in World Without Stars where they delete most memories, leaving only enough for an individual to remember who he started out as and what he has done recently. His experience remains that of a much younger person.

Connections With Fiction III

In Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963):

The Star Fox and Fire Time

(vii) A spaceship isolated from the inertia-generating cosmic gravitational field might accelerate indefinitely (p. 166).

This is the kind of hyperdrive used in what I call Anderson's Star Time diptych.

(viii) "...I suspect that [future Terrestrial society] will be poor, with great wealth reserved for the very few..." (p. 185)

This is the kind of global economy that Anderson envisages in Star Time and in some other futuristic sf works but why? Surely technology opens the possibilty of abundant wealth for all - as Anderson also acknowledges.

Miscellaneous

(ix) "I...imagine the long-run consequence of a hyper-drive as not one galactic civilization but widely scattered clusters of civilizations." (p. 168)

This is the brilliant setting of Anderson's After Doomsday and it is a pity that he did not write an entire series about it. At the end of that novel, dispossessed human beings have changed the balance of power in two neighbouring civilization clusters without, of course, affecting the rest of the galaxy in the slightest.

(x) Anderson hopes that human beings will never colonize an inhabited planet and exterminate its inhabitants (p. 177) but they do in his "Terminal Quest". He does not always present positive outcomes.

(xi) Anderson thinks that it is unlikely that rational species will differ greatly in intelligence (p. 139). However, in one of his short stories, human beings are more intelligent than the galactic average and, in another, they encounter a far more intelligent race.

(xii) Exogenesis (p. 184) is used for extra-Solar colonization in Orbit Unlimited and in Virgin Planet.

(xiii) "...the government itself might want to get rid of...misfits [to extra-Solar colonies]..." (p. 185)

This happens in Orbit Unlimited and in The Boat Of a Million Years.

(xiv) An Elder (older, wiser) Race (p. 135) is sought in the Technic History, is located at the galactic centre in For Love And Glory and is encountered in The Avatar. Humanity might become the Elder Race of a new universe in Tau Zero.

The Green Of Earth And Home

Let us follow a chain of associations through the works of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, James Blish and Poul Anderson.

"We pray for one last landing
"On the globe that gave us birth;
"Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
"And the cool, green hills of Earth."
-Robert Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth (London, 1967), p. 141.

Asimov: a story called "Mother Earth."

Blish: a novel called Earthman, Come Home and, in another work, sister planets called "Home" and "Rathe."

"...Homelike splashes of green."
-Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 273.

"...a longing seized her for the cool green hills of home."
-Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), p. 178.

I propose the Terrestrial tricolor:

blue for the oceans;
white for clouds;
green for life.

Further, alternative human traditions could be celebrated by an optional symbol in the lower corner of the green band. I favor a red star but expect blog readers to have other ideas.

Reread And Banned Books

I regard every work by Poul Anderson as worth multiple readings. Star Prince Charlie (with Gordon R. Dickson) and For Love And Glory are two works acquired comparatively recently and so far read only once. Both should be reread. We know from experience that, even when the prospect of rereading a particular work remains unappealing, the text itself always yields much to discuss. We have recently demonstrated this with The Winter Of The World, Vault Of The Ages and The High Crusade.

I have reread and re-posted about SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers and Conquistador. I may or may not reread his Change series. If not, then my current reading of the concluding volume, The Sky-Blue Wolves, will be my last encounter ever with the politics of the High Kingdom of Montival and its Chancellor, Father Ignatius. That would be quite a thing.

Ignatius proposes banning a book. The High Queen thinks that, under the Great Charter, she cannot ban books; however, the Cardinal-Archbishop can put this one on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum locally and petition the Pope to do so universally. The Wiccan High Priestess says, perfectly reasonably, that her people, the Mackenzies, do not hold with banning any kind of book. However, the work in question is indeed some sort of supernatural threat in the Changed world, e.g., we might suspend freedom of speech if we knew for certain that a particular speaker was not just a persuasive propagandist but a powerful and malign hypnotist.

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, Finnegans Wake is on the Index and a Jesuit character has access to it only because of his Order. Was the Wake banned and did anyone take such prohibitions seriously?

Susaians On Freydis

For Love And Glory, XXXIV.

Imagine working with beings that can sense emotions.

"Excitement often spread with explosive speed through beings so directly perceptive of emotions." (p. 179)

That is logical. Some beings detect an emotion and others detect their detection of it.

"She begrudged the admission and knew that Coppergold felt that she did." (ibid.)

Lissa cannot conceal her inner begrudgment from a Susaian. But Susaians might be more sympathetic than human beings? (p. 180)

A group of them have settled on Freydis which is:

"Not the global hell of jungle and swamp that most people imagined; no, as diverse as Asborg. But dear Asborg was well-nigh another Earth, renewed and again virginal. Humans soon made it theirs, and in its turn it claimed them for itself." (ibid.)

Earth and Venus are Sol III and II. Asborg and Freydis are Sunniva III and II. A "...global hell of jungle and swamp..." was one idea of what Venus might be like. Anderson's Sunnivan System is like a retro-Solar System.

There is a Venusburg on Venus in Robert Heinlein's Future History and Torben Hebo runs Venusberg Enterprises on Freydis.

Specialists And Generalists

For Love And Glory, XIV.

Lissa thinks:

"What's waiting in space for me? I'm only a planetarist. And even that title is a fake. I don't do geology, oceanography, atmospherics, chemistry, biology, ethology, or xenology. I dabble in them all, and then dare call myself a scientist." (p. 85)

Anderson has stopped rendering inner thoughts in italics. In the Technic History, a "planetarist" is a "planetologist."

"I help get the specialists together, and keep them together, and sometimes keep them alive. That's my work." (ibid.)

The growth of knowledge makes specialists necessary. The need for integration makes generalists necessary. But generalism must be deep, not superficial.

Decades ago, the Head of the Philosophy Department at Lancaster University thought that teams of philosophers needed to specialize in very specific questions but then asked who could possibly bring it all together.

I heard of a guy who inherited a mine and wanted to know just enough Mining Engineering and just enough Business Management to enable him to run the mine as a business so a University put together just enough modules of both subjects to construct a Degree course specifically for him - a kind of specific generalist.

Forest And Ruins

Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), Chapter XIII, pp. 78-81.

In order to decide which memories to erase, Torsten Hebo travels around on the Earth. Over eight centuries ago, he was married in a church in a town where there is now a forest. He wonders where his first wife is. She might still be alive, like him. However, for practical purposes and even for survival, he needs to preserve his more recent memories. They must even be reconstructed and reordered.

But, on the other hand, the deleted memories will be recorded on crystal and given to him for playback. Some can be virtualized. Others will be mere words and indistinct images. When reading World Without Stars, we theorized that a character wrote an autobiographical journal precisely because his memories were periodically edited. FLAG presents superior technology capable not only of deleting but also of recording and playing back.

This chapter also discloses more about Earth. People who spend most of their time communing with AI's are more interested in the occasional sensory experience of nature than in the recollection of human history. However, the database can present history in virtuality or can even physically rebuild the Parthenon, Broadway, Cape Canaveral etc. (I think that that is what the text means.) The original state of an ancient structure must be half imagined but by immense artificial intelligences utilizing every recorded datum.

I think that I would be able to find a place in such a peaceful and intellectually active social environment.

Going Hyper

When fictional characters travel in a jet plane, the technical parameters of their journey are laid down by factors external to the fictional text whereas, when an sf writer invokes "hyperspace," he can say what he wants. Thus:

in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, travelers take time to cross interstellar distances faster than light and cannot communicate by hyperspatial pulses across more than a light year;

in Anderson's For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), travelers take no time to jump across even greater distances and can communicate between planetary systems by hyperbeam;

Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and others have their different versions of hyperspace - indeed, Niven rightly raises further questions about his version later in the Ringworld series.

In FLAG, a spaceship melodiously says:

"Stand by for hyperjump,'" (p. 88)

- and, in Ensign Flandry, a ship's captain announces:

"'Stand by for hyperdrive. Stand by for combat. Glory to the Emperor.'" (Young Flandry, p. 172)

But they are talking about different kinds of hyperspace.