Form-Fitting Furniture And Other Futuristic Props

The Star Fox, Part Two.

Form-fitting furniture (scroll down) is another standard Andersonian futuristic prop. (Note who invented it here.) Here is another example of such furniture that we have not noted before:

"She waved him to her lounger, but he took a chair instead. Jocelyn chuckled and relaxed in the form-fitting seat." (II, p. 87)

Later, Heim does unwind enough to move to the lounger...

I suspect that I have read past some form-fitting furniture recently without stopping to make a note of it. We need to be alert at all times when rereading Poul Anderson.

Another sf writer would be able to create a narrative incorporating every such prop which also include aircars, TrafCon, autopilots and gravshafts. Earlier in this novel:

"Heim claimed his flyer at the garage and fretted while TrafCon stalled about sending him aloft. Quite a time passed before the pattern of vehicle movement released him." (Part One, II, p. 32)

"He set the autopilot for Orly..." (ibid.)

- then bathed, ate and slept while travelling.

"They went downshaft in silence to the garage, and entered his flyer..." (Part One, IX, p. 63) 

Furniture And Stars

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 7-8.

"The living couch received them and responded to them." (7, p. 108)

More Futuristic Furniture.

"Night on Lunar Farside is a glory of stars." (8, p. 108)

Another Glory Of Stars. (See also here.)

Six thousand or more stars visible in blue, gold, amber or red, the galactic belt not milky but icy:

"...a winter river banked and islanded with night." (ibid.) (See The Milky Way Thread and The Sea Of Space.)

There are planets, nebulae, the Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda galaxy and possibly even one or two further galaxies. The observer is one with the universe.

Wanda And Kinna

In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time, Wanda Tamberly enrolls in the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene period and is invited to dinner by Guion, an Unattached agent who works within the Patrol. A machine brings them drinks. In Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, 7, Kinna Ronay enrolls in the University of Cromelin on Mars and is invited to dinner by Chuan, the synnoiont (human-AI liaison) of Mars. At a signal from Chuan, a servitor brings wine and Mozart plays. I thought that these two scenes were similar. Future domestic technology will make it unnecessary to move.

Yet again we encounter futuristic furniture:

"Kinna took a chair but did not at once relax into its form-fitting embrace." (p. 91)

Often, Anderson's characters are too tense to relax and enjoy their comfortable furniture.

Interiors

In a human lodging in the Columbus Avenue district of San Francisco:

"She did set the lounger straight upright and ignored its sensuous self-adjustments to contours and skin temperature."
-Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, II, p. 145.

(More Futuristic Furniture.)

In the Beynac's living room on the Moon (12, p. 152):

space and grace;
appears to be above ground on old Earth;
perfume from colorful flowers against ivory walls above blue carpet;
air like a summer breeze;
massive furniture;
giant viewscreen showing a medieval Dordogne castle;
a Winslow Homer seascape (see image);
a sleeping cat;
Lunar gravity;
most of it built by themselves over years;
Anson Guthrie says it is quite a place;
we vicariously enjoy.

Future Furniture

How often, in Poul Anderson's futuristic sf, do we read about self-adjusting furniture automatically molding itself to the body shape of whoever sits on it - provided that they relax and cooperate, of course?

In the Technic History:

"Torres gave the chair no opportunity to mold itself to him. Perched on the edge, he proceeded harshly..."
-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 135-173 AT p. 140.

"[Coya] sat down on the edge of the spare lounger, ignored its attempts to match her contours..."
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 633-680 AT p. 649.

Both Torres and Coya are confronting Nicholas van Rijn, which explains why neither is relaxed.

And at the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene period:

"Dard Kelm demonstrated the gadgets in a typical room. They were the sort you would have expected by, say, A.D. 2000: unobtrusive furniture readily adjusted to a perfect fit, refresher cabinets, screens which could draw on a huge library of recorded sight and sound for entertainment. Nothing too advanced, as yet."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2006), pp. 1-53 AT p. 8.

Well, who invented such self-adjusting furniture? You are not going to believe it:

"The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us...Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon..."
-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), Chapter 1, p. 7 (the opening page of the text)

Identities

Poul Anderson, "Horse Trader," See here.

Our pov character has:

"...the somewhat improbable name of Auchinlek Welcome..." (p. 262)

We keep thinking of "Welcome" as his job description rather than as his name.

He uses futuristic furniture:

"The chair molded itself to his angular contours with a sensuousness..." (p. 265)

He converses and negotiates with extra-solars. However different the body, Anderson usually imagines a recognizable face in front at the top. The popeyed, billed, round-headed Epsilonian speaks English that might have been understood after long practice but also wears a transponder that makes his speech intelligible. When he burbles:

"'That is a scheme of the slyest magnanimity...'" (p. 271)

- Welcome wonders whether "slyest" is innocent or insinuating - or both or neither?

Welcome welcomes extra-solars to Sol. On a recent demonstration outside the British Parliament, someone held up a placard saying, "I Am Not A European." What a deplorable sentiment! Whatever we think of the current European Union, which is only one possible political dispensation in Europe, we are Europeans and Terrestrials and Solarians. Although we inhabit one part of the Eurasian land-mass, the term "Eurasian" would suggest recent common ancestry which not all of us have - but we are all descended from Africans who moved North, changing their pigmentation.

That would be a different way to identify ourselves - not by sun, planet or currently inhabited continent but by continent of origin. We could go out into the galaxy as "Africans."

Rapid Technological Advances

(What is the book beneath?)

Poul Anderson, "The Children of Fortune." See here.

Taylor, Oregon, the capital city of the North America Union, has made remarkable advances during the mere twenty nine years since World War III:

rearing buildings, rushing steel traffic, hastening crowds, blinking signs, constant noise (the way New York is described in "Time Patrol");

on a mountainside above the city, a cluster of large buildings with curving lines, flat planes, enormous windows and smooth, pastel, plastic fronts;

"'...turning out some fine new machines...'" (3, p. 84);

a lot of gadgets in a private home, including a color television, a visiplate and a chair that molds itself to the body (see Futuristic Furniture);

synthetic sponges;

moving murals in a tavern;

gamete deposits;

a tall capitol building with many columned tiers in its own parks and gardens;

inside the building, an automatic elevator and door and a clear plastic wall overlooking city and mountains;

the President and his cabinet remind me of the UN in the Psychotechnic History, rulers of a high tech society in the wake of a nuclear war - another example of this is Judge Dredd and his colleagues.

I suspect that many of the advances are due to the genius of Alaric Wayne but will have to continue rereading to confirm this.

Falkayn's Interview With The Serendipity Computer

Poul Anderson, Satan's World In Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 329-598 AT Chapter III.

"He sat in an ordinary self-adjusting chair..." (p. 348)

Such chairs are ordinary in Anderson's fictional futures. See Futuristic Furniture.

When the computer speaks:

"The voice was not the flat baritone of most human-built robots; it was high, with a curious whistling quality, and varied both pitch and speed in a way hard to describe." (p. 349)

Anderson has described the experience quite effectively. This computer is not of human manufacture. A customs inspector bribed by van Rijn had said that Serendipity received a shipment of computer components that he was sure were not human-made. He had acquired an eye for style and his hunch was confirmed when the computer worked in ways that no one else was quite able to duplicate.

The computer connects Falkayn's name with incidents involving Beta Centauri, Ikrananka and Merseia. Thus, Anderson refers back to three of the four previous Technic History installments featuring Falkayn. Only Ivanhoe, where he was an apprentice, is not mentioned here.

On p. 350, Anderson describes how "...the machine thought...":

"...electrons and quanta hurtled through vacuum...";
"...charges and the absence of charges moved through crystal lattices...";
"...distorted molecules interacted with magnetic, electric, gravitational, nuclear fields..."

Charge and absence of charge correspond to binary 1 and 0. We can use lines of 1's and 0's to record information but the mechanism processing the 1's and 0's is not conscious. Nor are electrons, quanta, molecules or fields. Thus, it sounds as if the Serendipity computer is not "consciousness-level." (See AI Again.) Falkayn thinks of it as "...the great quasi-brain..." (p. 347) as "...a gadget...," (p. 349) that does not warrant an apology and as "...the huge blind brain." (p. 351)

Further Future Furniture

See search result for Future Furniture. (Scroll down).

"Leaning back in a lounger...softness changing beneath her at every slight motion to fit every contour..."
-Poul Anderson, The Byworlder (London, 1974), VI, p. 68.

"Avery lowered himself into a chair. Thornton sat stiffly on the edge of his, obviously disliking the idea of furniture which molded itself to his contours."
-Poul Anderson, Planet Of No Return (London, 1971), Chapter 2, p. 14.

One more comment on each of these novels:

the end of The Byworlder demonstrates how ideology can transform a scientist and family man into a murdering moron;

although Planet Of No Return has the futuristic sf cliche of "...an aircab..." (p. 13), this turns out to be not a flying car but a "copter" which -

hovers by Lorenzen's hotel balcony;
extrudes a gangway;
states the fare in a mechanical voice;
accepts payment in a slot and gives change;
flies above Quito;
sets its passenger off at another hotel where a door opens for Lorenzen when he states his name.