L.L.?

Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, 8.

Another quote from Machiavelli:

A line from The Prince came: "... it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman—"

Kintyre finds that the murdered man had scribbled "L.L." several times in the margin of the Book of Witches. He has no idea what it means. Neither have I, despite having read this novel once before. I could list the Superman supporting characters who have the initials, L.L., but Poul Anderson fans would not thank me for that.

Chapter 8 (of 20) ends with the palimpsest stolen and it is time for me to drive to the Gregson Centre (scroll down) to meet John and Kevin. England prevails!

(Lancaster for Europe meets every Wednesday in the Gregson and hogs the top table that we Englishmen (but that is not a political label) like. They are probably even more active at present.)

The Weathermaker Choth

In Mirkheim, we also see the birth of David and Coya Falkayn's second child, Nicholas, whose son, Nathaniel/Nat, is the viewpoint character of "Wingless" in the Earth Book.

In "Wingless," the Weathermaker Choth (scroll down) is an extended household. Peter Berg tells us that Ythrians live in small groups, either single families or extended households, and also mentions, without explaining, "choths." 

See:

Families, Households And Choths 

Now we are told that one choth, Weathermaker, is identical with an extended household and vice versa. However, choths vary in size and scope so that "Wingless" and Weathermaker do not tell us the whole story of choths but that is as far as we are going to go this evening.

This evening, at our small and informal sf group meeting in the Gregson Institute, two guys said that they were unfamiliar with Isaac Asimov's Foundation books but had appreciated the Foundation TV series online. I replied by extolling Poul Anderson, the Technic History, Ythrians, choths, Khruaths, antlibranches, Oherran, deathpride etc. Let us see all these on screen.

Deimos Or Phobos?

The Fleet Of Stars.

Is it proposed to transform and inhabit Deimos (see 10, p. 131, and Fenn's Futuristic Speculation) or Phobos (see 26, p. 338, and Israel And The Space Program)? I had to check which Martian moon was meant and found references to both. This was not meant to be a new post but it seemed easier to do it this way than as an addendum to the preceding post.

We will come to the details of how the cybercosm had planned to demoralize and demotivate mankind which is an abysmal story. More positive stuff is going to happen in the further future but the tetralogy ends with the thwarting of this dismal plot.

And now I will try to close down operations for tonight. Tomorrow, some gardening, some exercise, the Gregson and probably some more posts about The Fleet Of Stars. Good night.

Three Senses At The Fjord

The Merman's Children, VII.

When the black cog, Herning, hired by the halflings, stands out of Mariager Fjord, Poul Anderson describes:

receding hills;

clear day;

dazzling sun;

glittering waves;

skirling wind;

thrumming rigging;

creaking timbers;

surging cutwater;

mewing gulls;

snowstorm-like wings;

smells of salt and tar blowing around.

A well-described scene, as ever. That is short but all that we have time for this evening. Next, other reading and bed. Tomorrow, gym and Gregson. Ever onward.

An Oblique Late (K)Night Association

The Hammer, CHAPTER EIGHT.

I am just back from the Gregson Centre and should not be blogging at this time of night.

"The Cuirassiers had a little polished ceremonial breastplate on their tunics, a reminder of the time when they had worn back-and-breast armor. To Raj it had always seemed a curious habit in a combat zone - rather like hanging a shoot me here sign on your chest - but Dalhouse swore by the tradition." (p. 434)

The original Batman wore all-dark garb. Later, he gained a bright yellow circle on his chest. Frank Miller explains: when Wayne is shot in the chest, the bullet-proof plate holds... That is why he wore a target on his chest. After that, he returns to all-dark garb.

How much combat activity is practical and how much for show or morale? (I have no idea.) I prefer the covert activities of Bond or Flandry to the battlefield heroics of some other characters but also await the military climax of The Hammer with interest. Some time tomorrow...

Music Event

Occasionally, I explain how local life interrupts posting. This weekend, our time and attention are consumed by a "Love Lancaster Live" music event. There is live music in the Castle, the Priory Church, Market Square, the Gregson Centre, the John O'Gaunt pub, other pubs and also less likely venues, e.g., a folk singer's audience filling a small second hand bookshop, a "busker" guitarist with an audience of one or two performing inside a Pharmacists (drug store?).

I have come home to eat and am going out again which is why I offer this short explanatory post.

Two Technic Civilizations

"The Snows of Ganymede," V.

The phrase, "Technic civilization," is used both in the Technic History and in the Psychotechnic History. In the Technic History, the cartelization of the Polesotechnic League is the beginning of the decline of Technic civilization whereas, in the Psychotechnic History, the period following the suppression of the Psychotechnic Institute is described as "...the adolescence of Technic civilization..." (p. 178) The Institute is related to Technic society as the medieval Church was to Western civilization, we are told on p. 175.

I want to pursue this comparison between two Technic civilizations but must prepare to visit the Gregson Centre as described in previous posts. See you-all back here later.

Buddhist Monasticism In The Solar Commonwealth And In Britain

At the beginning of Mirkheim, Adzel has spent three years as a lay brother in a Buddhist monastery in the Andes Mountains but he returns from retirement when his former employer, Nicholas van Rijn, reassembles the original trade pioneer crew of David Falkayn, Chee Lan and Adzel for one last diplomatic/intelligence gathering mission.

This week, I will spend Friday and Saturday nights at Throssel Hole Buddhist Priory (see here) but that will be enough monasticism for me for a while. As another member of the Lancaster meditation group said, from behind her lap top in the Gregson Centre with her earphones on, "There are things that I want to do that I would not be able to do there!" 

I will, of course, be off line and incommunicado from Friday afternoon until maybe Sunday evening.

Strange Places

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 15, pp. 504-506.

The Pytheas is in flight.

The indecipherable interstellar transmissions come from:

"'Black holes, condensing nebulae, free matrices -...'" (p. 505)

(What is a free matrix?)

Those are the places to which high tech civilizations will have sent probes which will then transmit messages back to their senders and also for others to detect. Eventually, inter-species contacts might be established.

I am drinking a hot chocolate between returning from the Gregson Centre and going to bed. Today it rained and there were ten short posts. During the day, workmen come and go in a new house. I would like to travel between the stars but we are doing, on a planet. We approach the Andromeda galaxy.

Important Names

See "Pride," here.

Anna Lovinda (to hear the song, click here)
Gertrud
Leonora Christine
Valkyrie
Nemesis 

Near Nemesis, two light years from Sol, there are more stars than darkness and Sol is barely brighter than Sirius and this is a brief post because it will soon be time to drive up to the Gregson Centre.

The exploration of the Nemesis system should continue tomorrow.

People In Different Timelines

(Nikola Tesla.)

There is a reference to a "Father Flandry" in SM Stirling's Black Chamber, TEN, p. 204. An ancestor of Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry? No. Father Flandry is a celibate Catholic priest and not in the same timeline as Dominic. But there could be a third timeline in which they are directly related.

In the Black Chamber timeline, Nikola Tesla works for President Theodore Roosevelt's National Advanced Research Projects Institute. We anticipate rapid technological advances in the twentieth century of that timeline.

In Lancaster Real, I will visit Ketlan on the Marsh Estate and attend the Zen group at the Friends' Meeting House tomorrow and meet the guys in the Gregson on Wednesday and we will have a big family birthday party here at Blades Street (scroll down) on Saturday. As ever, I strive to blog.

Time And Place: Chinatown And Pub Crawling

Murder Bound, iii, pp. 30-31.

See:

Time And Place: A Tagline
Time And Place: Steam Beer
Time And Place: Bar Hopping
Time And Place: Eating In San Francisco

A two-hour dinner in a Chinatown restaurant where Chinese eat and the menu is in Chinese script;

a beer joint/pool hall where most customers play Go (as some do in the Gregson);

costumed Scotch pipers striding through a tavern;

a drunk Portuguese fisherman dancing with Diana and Judith in a smoky jazz club;

a string quartet playing Brahms in a candle-lit taproom;

others blurred in memory;

Lauring and Judith imagining a Danish-ruled world (like the Swedish-ruled world in Tau Zero).

More From Rome

This is indirectly relevant. We have discussed Romans in fiction by:

Poul Anderson

Neil Gaiman

L. Sprague de Camp

SM Stirling

Alan Moore 

Lew Wallace

In 1989, DC Comics refused to publish "Morning of the Magician" by Rick Veitch, a Swamp Thing story in which the time travelling title character meets Jesus who is a powerful white magician. This month, that story has been very belatedly published. Last night, at the Gregson, John the farmer lent me a copy. Among its surprises are the revelations, so to say, that the DC character, the Golden Gladiator, who claims to have been a galley slave in the Roman navy, was a customer of Mary Magdelene and was also the Roman captain who said, "...truly...this man was the Son of God."

Authors insert their fictional characters into historical events.

Mosunic-Lopez

The Star Fox, Part Two, II.

When a futuristic sf writer presents a list of authors that are read in the future, we expect that maybe the last name on the list is of someone that does not exist yet. Sure enough, Gunnar Heim's former friend, Jocelyn Lawrie, displays reproductions of Matisse and Hiroshige and her bookshelf holds volumes by:

Catullus

Yeats

Tagore

Pasternak

Mosunic-Lopez

Maybe I am wrong here but has anyone heard of that last guy? 

I am giving myself indigestion here so that I can drive across town to the Gregson Centre. Back here later or tomoz.

Onsars

 

A Stone In Heaven, VII.

Onsars are more than Ramnuan horse-equivalents. They carry burdens as well as riders and are platforms from which hunters can spy prey, then launch themselves on long glides. Onsars have enabled Ramnuans to spread across plains dominated by tall-growing pyrasphale. See also A Ramnuan Landscape.

We must apologize for even greater brevity than usual because it is necessary to eat, then to get across town to the Gregson.

Starward.

Smouldering Sunset

"Star of the Sea," 17.

Characteristically, a chapter begins by describing a natural scene which I will summarize succinctly rather than quote verbatim:

sunset smoulders;

boughs are black;

puddles are red;

sky is green;

cold wind whimpers;

dusk swallows hoarsely crying crows.

We find many such descriptions in Poul Anderson's works. I do not quote this one here because I have quoted it twice before (see here) and, on both occasions, I find that I had analyzed it in ways that I would not have thought of doing this time!

This is the last post tonight. Now fully recovered from that cold, I must soon return to other activities like gym or walking around town, meditating in the Cathedral and lunching in the Gregson Centre so I might be posting less often. 

Follow The Texts

I am about to sign off until some time tomorrow but, before I do, just look at how much we get out of Poul Anderson's texts, from Danish geography to medieval history. I happen to be interested in social philosophy but we discuss it here because Anderson does, not because I have brought it in as a hobbyhorse.

New points of interest can be found on multiple rereadings so, having just reread There Will Be Time and wanting to stay with the theme of historical and futuristic time travel, I have re-engaged with The Corridors Of Time and so far have read only as far as Chapter Four of twenty one.

Must go: meeting the guys in the Gregson.

Valduma

We find that we have compared the legendary Morgan le Fay and the Andersonian villainess, Raor, twice.

See:

Raor And Morgan Le Fay

Morgan Le Fay And Raor

An earlier Andersonian villainess named Valduma is also of their ilk.

See:

Whimpering Wind, Different Species And Primeval Chaos

Wildness And Domesticity

Sargasso: Some Details

Ambiguity

Jansky, Valduma And Morzach

Wildness And Un-Men

Freedom And Chaos

Rereading "Sargasso of Lost Starships" would probably give us some appropriate quotation from Valduma. However, I am on my way out to the Gregson which is why I have resorted to a few blog links. And I am amazed at how much completely forgotten information is to be found in earlier posts.

"De Mortuis..."

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
-Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, ebook, Chapter 2.

We have quoted so much Latin that I thought that another aphorism would be appropriate. This one is particularly appropriate in a detective novel. A man has been killed. A man who had argued with him says, "Speak no ill of the dead..." I don't agree with that. If I called a man dishonest or corrupt before he died, then I will continue to call him it after his death.

Would it be possible to find relevant Latin, Biblical and Shakespearean quotations as headings for every chapter in a novel? In Dante's Purgatory, not having heard of Shakespeare, they illustrate every moral point with a story from the Classics, the Old Testament and the New Testament, respectively. Earlier literature enriches later.

The top image shows Berkeley, the setting of the novel. Our small sf group meets tonight in the Gregson Centre. See second image and here.

On Staurn

The Star Fox, Part Two, I.

Fox II took two weeks to cross the hundred light-years to Staurn and has been there for three weeks so that only five weeks have elapsed since the end of Part One. Two men called Koumanoudes and Wong have been on Staurn for two months and they interpret. Fox II, with its crew of about a hundred, is in orbit, being fitted for war. Heim and a crew of about six are on the surface with Heim's yacht, Connie Girl, which has become an auxiliary to Fox II. Heim buys weapons from the Hurst of Wenilwain and the Aerie of Trebogir. Staurni have seven-metre-span wings and are covered in a growth intermediate between hair and feathers. This is a summary of some of the information imparted in this chapter.

Regular readers will understand when I say that blogging is being cut short by a visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop and that this evening I will join others in the Gregson Centre so that posts might be sparse for the rest of today.