"Practics"

"Soft" sf, so to call it, by Ray Bradbury, Clifford Simak or CS Lewis, does not require any scientific or technological knowledge whereas hard sf by James Blish, Poul Anderson or Larry Niven is enhanced by such knowledge. See past posts referring to Lewis' idea of the "Engineer's Story," here. (Scroll down.) Years ago, my friend, Fran Cobden, Engineering student and fellow sf reader, was able both to bodge machinery and to calculate planetary orbits. He was aghast at how little I noticed of the world around me - which was because my thought processes were almost entirely abstract. I think that I eventually inquired my way to a deeper philosophical understanding than Fran. He saw the trees whereas I saw the wood. Philosophical understanding can help with which political movements to support and which kind of meditation to practice so it does not have to remain theoretical. (Fran would say, "Let's get back to practics...")

These reflections are prompted by the immense wealth of technical information to be found in Poul Anderson's deceptively simple story, "A Tragedy of Errors." A star rover and his two wives land on a planet where they need help with spaceship repairs but there is much more going on than that. Why are the planetary environment and the current state of technology of its human colonists the way they are? These are the kinds of passages that I would once have skipped past in order to hurry on to the action, character interactions and plot resolution. On this rereading of the story, I aim to value every detail. There will be more to post about this.

Mainstream And SF III

I am reading Petals On The Wind by Virginia Andrews, the sequel to her Flowers In The Attic. The characters talk for page after page about their relationships but all of these conversations happen in a vacuum. The novel begins in 1960 but the plot is not set against the background of world affairs in that decade, still less against the background of the universe. Maybe I am beginning to understand why someone might prefer sf to mainstream fiction.

Fran Cobden, a fellow sf reader, thought that sf could only be described as "escapism." However, he laughed and did not disagree when I replied that sf deals with mankind's place in the universe and with the challenge of the future which, whatever else it is going to be, will be different from the past because of science and technology. Therefore, I concluded, sf is the most realistic fiction.

Fran remembered with affection David Falkayn's "merry crew" and that van Rijn was "a good guy" because he made profits but not as an arms merchant.

Uppingham

 

In haste on way to bed to get up to go to Glasgow. Search this blog for references to Charles I, James Elroy Flecker and Fran Cobden. Charles I's chaplain, Flecker and Fran all attended Uppingham School. That's all for today, folks.

Falkayn Going To Babur

Mirkheim, IV.

David Falkayn calls an unorthodox game of poker. I do not understand the references to wild cards etc. 

"'Om mane padme hum,' whispered Adzel shakenly." (p. 76)

In an American TV comedy, a young man who had made a difficult catch in football was asked what had passed through his head as he watched the ball descend and he replied, "The Lord's Prayer?" Obviously, he had not been reciting the Lord's Prayer but we use such phrases to express strong feelings and what feel like life or death situations. "Om mane padme hum" and "Our Father..." are equivalents.

When my late friend, Fran Cobden, referred to "David Falkayn and his merry crew," he must have been thinking of passages like this chapter.

Falkayn quotes Tennyson's Ulysses:

"'I am a part of all that I have met...'" (p. 79)

In this poem, I prefer the later lines:

for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Roan Tom's Competencies

"A Tragedy of Errors."

"The controls of the plane were simple to a man who'd used as wide a variety of machines as [Roan Tom]." (p. 519)

Practical experience counts. I envy Tom such familiarity with machinery. Fran Cobden claimed to be able to "bodge," make improvised repairs, to most machines. I would not know where to start.

The text continues:

"Trickiness came from the broken and twisted airfoil surfaces." (ibid.)

Tom is competent enough to cope with damaged machinery.

And:

"And, of course, he must keep a watch for Weyer's boys." (ibid.)

Alertness to the opposition: he hopes to be able to shoot one down with a lucky shot if it comes to it.

"...you could do special things with gravs if you had the knack in your fingers. Or whatever part of the anatomy it was." (pp. 519-520)

It is in the whole organism and either you have it or you haven't.

Some Short Future Histories

Future histories differ in length. A long future history series is multi-themed, dealing only with whatever happens in the future, whereas a shorter series can have a single theme with a definite conclusion. Although Poul Anderson's Twilight World is not listed as one of his future histories, it is a collected series covering more than one generation and concluding in a further future. Its single theme is that World War III causes so many mutations that some are beneficial and even enable subsequent generations to colonize other planets so that the outer Solar System is inhabited after Earth has become uninhabitable. Without that War, would the race have survived?

James Blish's The Seedling Stars is a single volume in four parts, originally five stories, about the single theme of pantropy, the science of adapting human beings to other planetary environments. It conclusion is that, when Adapted Men have filled the galaxy, Earth has changed so much that it is colonized by Adapted Men.

Twilight World and The Seedling Stars both address changes to the human form and extraterrestrial colonization.

Anderson's Maurai And Kith is a collection of only three Maurai stories and two Kith stories although later a third story was added to the Kith series and a long novel to both series. The theme of the Maurai Federation series is that, after a nuclear war, seafaring people of the Southern Hemisphere become the world power. We get a sense of Poul Anderson exploring every possibility.

James Blish's Okie series was complete as four stories in one volume. However, Blish added a prequel, a juvenile novel and a sequel. Okie culture ends in Volume III and the universe ends in Volume IV.

Larry Niven's Known Space is a long future history series with a definite ending. Because human beings are artificially selected for the inheritable psychic power of luck, Known Space and the Thousand Worlds become utopian societies of lucky people about whom Niven becomes unable to write any more stories! As Fran Cobden remarked, "...an amazing idea!"

Other short future histories:

The Moon Maid by ERB (a sequel to John Carter);

City by Clifford Simak;

Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand by Brian Aldiss.

Fiction And Non-Fiction

Fiction and non-fiction are two such different kinds of writing. This blog focuses on Poul Anderson but let's get Isaac Asimov out of the way first. Asimov progressed from science fiction reader to science fiction writer to science writer, then back to science fiction writer, producing his later Robots and Empire novels which are nowhere near as effective as Poul Anderson's Technic History. In fact, Asimov almost shows us how not to write a future history series. If we were to be shown the younger Hari Seldon, then we should have seen him as a mathematics student on his home planet with no thought as yet of a science to be called psychohistory just as Anderson shows us Adzel as a student on Earth with no preliminary hint that this, so far, junior character is to become the planetologist in Solar Spice & Liquors' first trade pioneer crew. No text should blatantly present itself as primarily a "prequel" to a previously published work. In The Early Asimov, Asimov's earliest published stories alternate with lengthy autobiographical passages that are more interesting than the stories. (Fran Cobden enthusiastically agreed - "Exactly!" - when I said this.)

Maybe the two kinds of writing could be brought together in a collection of alternating stories and articles with the stories dramatizing the issues raised in the articles and the articles discussing the issues raised in the stories? Dramatization and discussion are the main distinguishing features. (Greek drama originated by the addition of extra speakers, then of actions, to ritual narrations.) A non-fiction writer directly addresses his readers whereas fiction is mediated through an omniscient narrator and one or more viewpoint characters.

There can also sometimes be an apparently unbridgeable gap between fiction and non-fiction. Thus, Anderson dramatized the effects of time dilation on a spaceship crew in his novel, Tau Zero, then later discussed time dilation in the essay, "Our Many Roads to the Stars," which - maybe only for reasons of space? - did not refer to the novel. It was as if there was an unwritten rule that Anderson as science popularizer must not refer to Anderson as sf writer. Of course this is not the case. The essay begins by referring to sf in general and also mentions Frederik Pohl's "starbow."

Anderson wrote:

non-fiction about thermonuclear war and several works of fiction set during the aftermaths of nuclear wars;

both fiction and non-fiction about space travel and extraterrestrial intelligence.

Engineers

One of my best friends at University, Fran Cobden, was an Engineering student and an sf reader. 

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History includes an Order of Planetary Engineers.

Larry Niven's second Ringworld novel is The Ringworld Engineers.

Clifford Simak wrote Cosmic Engineers.

CS Lewis called hard sf "the Engineer's Story."

Colin Kapp wrote the Unorthodox Engineers stories.

A review of a Kapp collection informs us that one downside of puzzle-solving sf is the protagonist figuring the problem but not revealing the solution until the end of the story. I have commented on David Falkayn and other Anderson characters doing this.

Where would we be without the Engineers? 

Genre Overlaps

As we know, and there is no need to list every example yet again, Poul Anderson wrote:

science fiction, including space opera, speculative fiction, future history, alternative history etc

historical fiction

historical science fiction

fantasy

historical fantasy

heroic fantasy

historical fiction with an element of fantasy

a contemporary novel with one element of fantasy (or just of psychology?)

detective fiction

 

- so genres can overlap.

 

How much is permissible in a contemporary novel before it tips over from mainstream into genre fiction? Psychic abilities and apparitions are attested, although not yet scientifically explained, so does the following dialogue belong in a contemporary novel?

"'Do you ever see the future?'

"'Yes, but there are many futures and not all of them come true.'"

-Susan Howatch, Glittering Images (London, 1996), PART TWO, ELEVEN, VIII, p. 424.

- as well as a visible "ghost" in a later volume?

My friend, Fran Cobden, claimed to be able to see the future in this way. The proposition that there are many futures not all of which come true does not surprise us in sf but pushes a boundary in contemporary fiction. See SM Stirling's character, Yasmini. Poul Anderson also presents a single, unalterable future in There Will Be Time.