Parallel Narratives

EE Smith has Arisians, Eddorians and Galactic Patrol;

Poul Anderson has Danellians, Neldorians and Time Patrol.

Parallel narratives, except that:

"Galactic Patrol" means space travel whereas "Time Patrol" means time travel;

the difference in the quality of writing could not possibly be greater.

I have compared Isaac Asimov unfavorably with Anderson and must do this even more so with Smith. The subject of EE Smith came up when I explained to some fellow comics fans that the Green Lantern called Arisia gets her name from Smith's Lensman series.

In fact, the Guardians of the Universe, the Weaponers of Qward and the Green Lantern Corps provide another parallel with Arisians/Eddorians/Galactic Patrol and Danellians/Neldorians/Time Patrol, especially since the first Time Patrol collection was called Guardians Of Time - and Green Lantern is better than Lensman.

I suggested earlier on this blog that Poul Anderson's squirrel-like Chee Lan flying into combat with a gravity harness resembles one GLC member who is squirrel-like and, of course, flies into combat with a power ring. But Anderson also explains the entire social and economic basis of the conflict. Fans of Lensman or Green Lantern can find more in the Time Patrol and the Technic History.

Colorful Fictions Continued

The Green Lantern Corps is part of the DC Universe which also includes Superman and Batman. The Trader Team is part of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation which also includes Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry. The DCU is bigger because older and multi-authored. However, the Technic History is impressive as a long narrative by a single author.

When comparing an Anderson character to a Green Lantern, it is appropriate also to mention Larry Niven, like Anderson an American sf writer, future historian and successor of Robert Heinlein.

The Joker from the DCU makes a guest appearance in Larry Niven's Known Space future history (although, when I first read Known Space, I had not yet got back into reading comics so I missed this explicit reference);

Niven wrote an article on Superman and plotted a Green Lantern story;

Niven's psychic detective and protectors have features of superheroes.

In fact, superheroes originated in sf, with Superman's scientifically rationalized extraterrestrial origin, then incorporated both fantasy, with Captain Marvel's supernaturally explained magical origin, and action-adventure fiction, with non-super powered masked avengers and costumed adventurers. The version of Green Lantern that has existed since 1960 defends not a single city, country or planet but an entire space sector and interacts with the GL's of neighboring sectors, all of whom take their orders from immortal Guardians of the Universe, or did the last time I looked although these scenarios can change and change again very quickly. Thus, this superhero series is more sfnal than most and was appropriate material for the application of Larry Niven's cosmic imagination.

Either this cover or another GL crowd scene features a Puppeteer GL. GL's are fearless whereas Niven's Known Space aliens the Puppeteers are cowardly unless insane so a Puppeteer GL must be mad indeed.

See "Comics And Science Fiction" on www.sciencefiction.blogspot.co.uk

Words And Texts

Sometimes one book reminds us of another, then reflection reveals the similarities. When a Superman comic had reminded me of a Robert Heinlein novel, I was surprised to realize the similarities: both works had a lunar setting and both referred to parallel universes.

Poul Anderson's The Night Face made me think of the science fiction-based superhero series, Green Lantern. Both works involve regular faster than light interstellar travel and a mysterious planet, peaceful but with a hidden conflict. This description makes them sound closely parallel, which is entirely misleading. In fact, it was another minor feature of The Night Face that initially evoked Green Lantern.

Any word can have a specific denotation, a general connotation and accidental associations. Thus, the phrase, "the Pope":

denotes the present incumbent, Bergoglio;
connotes an entire historical institution in the Catholic Church;
reminds me of my single visit to Rome decades ago.

An author skilfully deploys denotations and connotations but cannot control the accidental associations in his readers' minds. By the same token, a reader must not let his associations get in the way of the author's meaning. That I disliked something in Rome is irrelevant when reading an account of a Pope.

The unusual word "Oa" is the name of the mysterious planet in Green Lantern and is also an interjection used by a character in The Night Face. Associations cannot be more accidental than that.

Cosmic Conflicts

Sf writer, Larry Niven, helped DC Comics with the background for Green Lantern. See here. For previous references to Green Lantern on this blog, see here.

Green Lantern, an sf superhero, requires:

(i) a very old race that becomes the Guardians;

(ii) many non-humanoid species that can be represented in a single organization;

(iii) a very fast means of interstellar and intergalactic travel;

(iv) "evil" for the organization to fight.

("Evil" is vague. GL eventually asked whether evil was in crime or in the society that he was protecting from crime. Apparently, Niven replaced "evil" with entropy.)

Elements of GL's requirements are present in Poul Anderson's works:

(i) The Danellians in the Time Patrol series and the Others in The Avatar.

(ii) There are many such species. I am currently thinking of the intergalactics in World Without Stars. The Patrol is organized by the Danellians to guard history but has only human membership.

(iii) The space jump in World Without Stars and the T machines in The Avatar.

(iv) Neldorians, Exaltationists and temporal chaos in the Time Patrol series.

Cosmic Themes

Superheroes are derived from sf because Superman is extraterrestrial. However, some superheroes are more explicitly sfnal than others, e.g., the Green Lantern is not only a superhero based in a fictional American city but also a member of an interstellar corps organized by the Guardians of the Universe based on the ancient planet of Oa. Further, the Guardians' main enemies are from the antimatter universe.

Thus, those of us who read Green Lantern comics in the 60s encountered cosmic themes addressed more substantially by Poul Anderson and James Blish (see Between Galaxies), which explains why Larry Niven later contributed to Green Lantern.

Anderson, Blish and Niven are future historians. In Niven's Known Space future history, some non-human races are expected to flee to the Magellanic Clouds before the radiation from the galactic core explosion reaches the outer edges of the spiral arms. Thus, Niven's trans-galactic reach matches that of Anderson or Blish.

Colorful Fiction

Like a lot of people, I enjoy novels, films and comics, thus verbal, audiovisual and visual-verbal fiction. Films and comics have the advantage of full color visuals but prose fiction can be "colorful." First, it generates book covers and each new edition of a text can have a different cover.

Secondly, the writing can be "colorful." Many of Poul Anderson's descriptive passages are multi-sensory. We see, hear and smell a scene.

Chee Lan, a member of Anderson's "Trader Team" is squirrel-like, small with a large tail and white-furred except for a black nose and a dark mask around golden or green eyes. Thus, not only is she described colorfully. She also resembles a member of the DC Comics Green Lantern Corps, pictured lower left.

To complete the resemblance, Chee flies with a gravity harness in "Day Of Burning" and she and her team mates engage flying soldiers in a forest on another planet in Mirkheim. The Trader Team and the Green Lantern Corps, both interstellar multi-species outfits, differ in almost every respect. However, by basing an extraterrestrial on a terrestrial life form, Anderson and a comics script writer have generated visually similar characters.   

Elder Races And Law Enforcement

In the Green Lantern superhero comic book, the Guardians of the Universe are an elder race that organizes the Green Lantern Corps as a multi-species, intergalactic law enforcement agency. The Guardians combine aspects of the Others in Poul Anderson's The Avatar and of the Danellians in Anderson's Time Patrol series. 

The Others are a cosmic elder race that facilitates travel through space-time by less advanced beings but that rarely has occasion to intervene in the affairs of such beings. Law enforcement is not necessary. The Danellians, an elder race in time as opposed to space, are our successors rather than our predecessors. They do have to intervene in the affairs of their ancestors and therefore organize the Time Patrol as a time travelling police force to prevent interference in past events.

Another possible comparison is with EE Smith's Arisians organizing the Galactic Patrol against the Eddorians but that is hardly on the same level of writing. 

When a human spaceship revolves around a T machine constructed by the Others and arrives at a time before the galaxies had condensed, Poul Anderson brings home the implications of the concept of a species operating on the scale of cosmic space-time.

Guardians and Arisians: space.

Danellians: time.

Others: space-time.

A Missing Ancient Race

In some works of fiction, an older, wiser race intervenes benevolently in the destinies of less evolved beings.

(i) In EE Smith's badly written Lensman series, the Arisians organize the Galactic Patrol against the Eddorians.

(ii) In the Green Lantern comics, the Oans became the Guardians of the Universe who organize the Green Lantern Corps against the Qwardians.

(iii) In Julian May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy, the Lylmik organize the Galactic Milieu.

(iv) In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, humanity will evolve into the Danellians who will organize the Time Patrol against Neldorians, Exaltationists and chaos.

(v) Isaac Asimov's humans only galaxy did not allow for any older race but the mentally powerful Second Foundation usurped its functions, guiding history to a greater goal.

(vi) In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, many believe that the Ancients Went Beyond and Will Return.

However, Anderson maintains a credible ambiguity about the Ancients. Their expected Return is merely a belief, a fiction within the fiction. One version of the belief even divides the Foredwellers into consciousness-affirming Elders and entropy-embracing Others. But that is merely a ruse by an agent of a foreign imperialism who is trying to foment strife and even to incite an Empire-destroying jihad.

The agent, Aycharaych, is the last surviving member of an ancient race, the Chereionites, who, he privately claims, were indeed the Ancients whose ruins are found on many planets. It seems that they have departed not into transcendence but into extinction, leaving Aycharaych the sole heir of their technologically preserved heritage. But why should that have happened?

It seems that Anderson created Aycharaych as a telepathic opponent for Dominic Flandry merely to give Flandry the problem of how to lie to a telepath. However, Aycharaych, like Flandry himself, was a sufficiently interesting character that he returned several times. It became necessary to provide him with an origin and appropriate to locate that origin on an ancient, dying world. It was then logical to identify the ancient Chereionites with the Ancients. But that was sufficient for Anderson's story purposes. He did not present surviving Ancients secretly guiding or guarding galactic history. Instead, he left the idea of the Ancients as a myth in his characters' minds so that, in the last Flandry novel, a Wodenite convert to Jerusalem Catholicism seeks among Ancient inscriptions for evidence of an extraterrestrial Incarnation. We do not think that Fr Axor will find such evidence but it is plausible that he and others continue to look for it. While Flandry engages in Imperial conflict, his fellow beings continue to believe in Christianity and other religions. That is what we expect. This reads like real history.

Added, March 2012: 

There is always more to be said about Anderson. I am reminded that in "The Horn of Time the Hunter," a spaceship of the Kith interstellar traders travels at a relativistic sub-light speed ten thousand light years to the fringes of the galactic nucleus and back in search of "...the Elder Races that must dwell somewhere..." but does not find them. (1)

In Tau Zero, another relativistic spaceship, accelerating uncontrollably, survives this universe and settles on a planet in the next universe. A character comments:

"...I'd like us to become - oh, the elders. Not imperialists; that's ridiculous; but the people who were there from the beginning and know their way around, and are worth learning from. Never mind what physical shape the younger races have. Who cares? But let's make this, as nearly as possible, a human galaxy, in the widest sense of the word 'human.' Maybe even a human universe.
" I think we've earned that right." (2)

They have not. To me, "a human universe" does sound imperialistic. But here we see a potential Elder Race in an early universe.

(1) Poul Anderson, The Horn of Time, New Jersey, 1968, p. 16.
(2) Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, London, 1973, p. 186.

Parallels

Reading one work can remind us of another although we may have to analyze why. In a twelve page comic strip written by Alan Moore, a member of the Green Lantern Corps visits a very old planet that was, long ago, the center of an empire spanning three galaxies but that now is occupied only by entombed malign immaterial intelligences. In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows by Poul Anderson, an agent of Terran Naval Intelligence visits a very old planet that was, long ago, the center of an interstellar civilization but that now is occupied only by a single survivor who simulates a still living population hologramically.

I may be alone either in reading both of these works or in being reminded of one by the other despite their manifold obvious differences. Summarized as above, Moore's fictitious planet, Ysm-Ault, sounds like a more fantastic version of Anderson's fictitious Chereion although I am sure that there is no connection.

I am enjoying both rereading Alan Moore's comic strips and starting to read the first Modesty Blaise novel. Meanwhile, I am at the uncomfortable pause between September and October. This note, written late on 30 September, will be saved and posted on 1 October.

Between the Young Flandry trilogy comprising Ensign Flandry, A Circus Of Hells and The Rebel Worlds and the Captain Flandry series starting with "Tiger By The Tail," there are two "Outposts of Empire" works, "Outpost of Empire" and The Day Of Their Return. These works follow the Young Flandry trilogy. "Outpost..." refers to Starkad. ...Return refers to Starkad, Talwin and the McCormac rebellion. ...Return also prefigures later Flandry works by introducing Aycharaych and Chunderban Desai.

John Ridenour is seen entirely externally in Ensign Flandry, where he addresses the title character curtly by his surname, but is the viewpoint character of some passages in "Outpost...," so these contrasting views of Ridenour are a possible subject for an October post.

Elder Races

I have found the, or at least a, reference to Avalon in Diamond Mask and will quote the passage when I have time for a more leisurely post.

Meanwhile, consider seven Elder Races:

in Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Ancients are dead or gone and human beings run Technic civilization and will spread through several spiral arms;

in Anderson's The Avatar, the Others are alive but remote and human beings will become like the Others;

in Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the last of the Vro-Hi, half a million years old, plans the philosophy of the Second Galactic Empire;

in Anderson's Tau Zero, human beings will become the elder race of the next universe;

in Julian May's Galactic Milieu, the Lylmik are dying but humanity will take their place;

the Lensman and Green Lantern series both have a proactive elder race - and did Mentor of Arisia once reveal that his real form was a naked brain like May's Jack the Bodiless? I can't remember.

Comparisons With Superheroes

Alien Animals
Words And Texts
Hugh Valland And Superman
Watchmen
Green Lantern
Hawkman
Superman
Batman
A Mad Time Patrol Story

I hope that page viewers reread these earlier posts while I am out of town all day!

Addendum: Nineteen or so hours later, I am back from London and adding more links:

Aquamen
The Martian Manhunter 

A Lensman In The Old Phoenix

Here (scroll down) is where I have referred to EE Smith's Lensman series before. Here (see Comments) is where correspondent David Birr says that the:

"...large affable blond man in high boots and gray leather with an iridescent jewel on his wrist..." (Midsummer Tempest, p. 228) -

- must be from the Lensman series. So this is the only appearance of a Lensman in Poul Anderson's works and the Old Phoenix is probably the only appropriate setting. This single part of a sentence is better written than the entire seven-volume Lensman series.

Lensmen:

sound like and resemble superheroes;

are as uni-dimensional as all comic strip characters used to be;

specifically, are quite like the comic book superhero group, the Green Lantern Corps.

With superheroes, I have found that what matters is the script writer, not the character. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are able to do new things with old characters, even with Superman. Similarly, Poul Anderson would have been able to write a good Lensman novel even if the Lensmens' creator couldn't. I value that man in gray leather with an iridescent jewel on his wrist as Anderson's prose transmuting a cardboard space opera hero into a colorful and interesting character.

The General Unit

Sometimes fictional characters wield multi-purpose gadgets. Doctor Who has an undefined "sonic screwdriver." Green Lantern's power ring can do just about anything.

"A man in the field, who might have to work hundreds of kilometers from camp, couldn't pack twenty different meters and detectors. He needed a single device, which could be adjusted to perform twenty different functions."
-Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 7, p. 69.

Davenant connects the thermopile to the galvanometer, blinkers the lens for directionality, and thus has an infrared spotter with which he detects two "Outlaws."

"General unit" explained.

Resemblances And Outmoded Ideas

A Superman comic reminded me of a Robert Heinlein novel and Poul Anderson's The Night Face reminded me of another superhero, Green Lantern. See:

Words And Texts

Poul Anderson's World Without Stars reminded me of another Superman comic. See:

Hugh Valland And Superman

Yet another Superman comic, this one written by Alan Moore, reminded me of James Blish's Mission To The Heart Stars. In this case, the connection was that Superman's antagonist, Mongul, physically resembled Blish's Hegemon of Malis. 

Blish's Heart Stars federation, self-designated "the Hegemony of Malis," has become, like Asimov's planet Trantor, an outmoded sf concept. Blish's idea was that, since stars are much closer at the galactic core, an interstellar federation might develop more quickly there. Now, instead, it is generally accepted that there is a massive black hole at the centre as in Larry Niven's A World Out Of Time and Anderson's For Love And Glory.

(Asimov had the Galactic Imperial capitol at the galactic centre but a later contributor to Asimov's Foundation series moved Trantor further out so that the black hole could occupy the centre.)

See also Parallels.

Aquamen

Pantheons include sea gods like Neptune and Lir. Superhero teams include aquatic superheroes like Aquaman or the Submariner. After the continuity-changing Crisis On Infinite Earths, Editor and Writer Roy Thomas retconned Neptune Perkins and Tsunami to replace the Golden Age Aquaman. Such marine superheroes are fascinating but would be even more so if we were told more about their physiology and psychology and about how they function at different depths.

Once, trying to touch the bottom of an artificial lake, I swam down to a level that was suddenly dark and cold with a pain in the ears so I re-ascended as fast as possible. Our heroes would be comfortable at that depth and would be able to descend further.

Poul Anderson describes this process in The Merman's Children (London, 1981), pp. 53-54. In mid-Atlantic:

the halflings wave to wind and sun, then submerge;

for their first breath of sea, they blow out, then widen lips and chest;

water enters and permeates their bodies, activating the merfolk metabolism;

subtle humors decompose water to extract oxygen;

salt is sieved from tissues;

interior furnaces counteract the cold although it is still felt (merfolk are few because they need more food at sea than men do on land);

as they descend, light decreases, then departs;

there is complete silence;

the underwater dialect of the mer-tongue comprises hums, clicks and smacks;

each halfling has an undersea "lanthorn"/lantern strapped to his left forearm (not quite Green Lanterns);

they regularly work chest and stomach muscles to equalize pressure inside and out but still feel the weight of the water;

their leader feels that he nears bottom before uncovering his lantern;

he smells rank flesh and hears or senses the movement of the kraken's gills;

with the lantern, he sees the kraken.

We need this kind of description and more in superhero comics.

Avian Aliens

Flying aliens are not necessarily avian-descended aliens or vice versa. After posting about "Bird Folk," I checked out Poul Anderson's Ramri of Monwaing's Katkinu because of a vague idea that he was genuinely non-humanoid. However, Ramri also has familiar body parts, differing only in details:

two legs;
clawed toes;
thin arms, we assume two;
three opposable, four-jointed fingers on each hand;
long thick neck;
large round head;
hooked beak;
throat pouch;
blue feathers;
white tail and crest;
like the Bird Folk, wearing nothing except to carry things.

So how many avian-descended aliens have we got?

Monwaingi;
Chereionites;
blue-feathered, bipedal Arulians in "Outpost of Empire";
Benford's and Niven's Bird Folk;
Tomar Re in the Green Lantern Corps.

Edwin Cairncross's Ambitions

Imagine wielding so much power that you and you alone were able to initiate great and good works and projects on an interstellar scale! Edwin Cairncross has achieved much as Grand Duke of Hermes and aims to do more as Emperor of Terra. (He just needs to overthrow the incumbent first.)

One of his most cherished achievements is his estate at Lythe in the center of the single Hermetian continent of Greatland: an eyrie with ornamental battlements on an extinct volcano above a formerly arid steppe now transformed by canals, imported plants, birds and game animals and a town made prosperous by commerce. From Lythe, Cairncross governs the globe and beyond, receiving electronic reports from a dozen elite secret agents, bypassing their nominal superiors.

He enlarged the industrial operation in the Ramnuan system and held successive political posts before forcing his half-brother's abdication and his own election. Then, as Duke, he implemented popular public works. Now, half the Hermetian adolescents are Cairncross Pioneers for sports, outdoormanship and patriotism focused on him.

As Emperor, he will:

organize research to extend instantaneous communication beyond its current limit of one light year, thus "...rous[ing] enterprise again in the human race" -Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 132;
reverse the glaciation on Ramnu, thus gaining the reverence of an entire race "...for as long as their sun endures" (p. 134);
do much more than this, thus possibly being "...remembered through the lifetime of the universe." (p. 134)

Hey, steady on there, old chap! Can any one person possibly be remembered through the lifetime of the universe? He only stops short of imagining that he will be "renowned throughout the cosmos." I read this last phrase decades ago in a comic book loc (letter of comment). The loccer commented that Kal-El is renowned throughout the cosmos whereas the Green Lantern is known only in his own space sector.

I think that only the combination of antithanatics and instantaneous space jumps in Anderson's World Without Stars would give anyone the slightest possibility of being renowned throughout the cosmos. And, even then, he would be famous in some places but not in others as a man working for Babur tells the celebrity David Falkayn in Mirkheim.

Super Powers

SM Stirling, Drakon (New York, 2000).

A Draka and a Samothracian agent fight! These guys are superpowered! The Samothracian's powers, e.g., his relative invulnerability to direct hits by guns, derive entirely from his AI suit but that counts as superpowers in the comics: Iron Man; Green Lantern.

Superman is sf: extraterrestrial. He was so successful and inspired so many imitators that he generated a whole new genre but his roots remain in sf:

mentally powerful defenders of Earth in James Blish's "Citadel of Thought";
Poul Anderson's "Un-Men" and "Sensitive Man";
Larry Niven's Gil the Arm and protectors;
Julian May's Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask;
these characters created by SM Stirling.

Danellians And The Patrol

 By the end of the Time Patrol series, the Danellians know that there have been at least three timelines without any Danellians in them but that nevertheless the Patrol which they had founded kept working and restored the preferred timeline.

Danellians and Time Patrol are comparable to Arisians and Galactic Patrol and also to the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps. As far as I remember, the GLC kept working during a crisis when the Guardians had been somehow immobilized or neutralized. EE Smith's Arisians and Galactic Patrol I have no time for although a Lensman once showed up in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix.

Civilization-Clusters

Let us try to summarize the recent history of our immediate civilization-cluster since, in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday (St Albans, 1975), that is the only possible kind of galactic history.

On Kandemir, vast, fertile plains enabled nomads to domesticate animals, to sustain government, literacy and technology and to dominate the cities, where subject races labor in immobile industries like mining. T'sjudan space travelers arrived and began to trade. Kandemirian nomadism became an interstellar empire subordinating even T'sjuda but opposed by a coalition led by the Dragar of Vorlak, a warrior class who had displaced the Vorlakka imperium when space travelers reached Vorlak.

Monwaing which has spread through space by peaceful colonization, not by military aggression, supports the coalition but without joining the war. Other space-traveling races in the civilization-cluster are too weak to intervene. Like the Chereionites in Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Monwaingi are descended from flightless birds but the latter are more avian in appearance, with beaks and feathers. I am reminded of Tomar Re in the Green Lantern Corps. Monwaingi introduce Terrestrials to space travel, then Earth is destroyed and Kandemir is suspected.

While American men fight for Vorlak against Kandemir, European women found Terran Traders, Inc. on Zatlokopa in a capitalist civilization-cluster. By the end of the novel, Terrestrials will have upset the balance of power in both civilization-clusters but, of course, the estimated million other civilization-clusters in the galaxy will not be affected.