Fransai

Chunderban Desai, having inquired about the planet Jean-Baptiste, receives in the mail from Terra the following reply:

"- no planet named, nicknamed, or translated as Jean-Baptiste, assuredly not in any language or dialect of the Empire, nor in any exterior space for which records are available. Saint John, Hagios Ioannes, and the continent of San Juan on Nuevo Mexico were all named after a co-author of the basic Christian canon, a person distinct from the one who figures as active in events described therein and is termed in Fransai Jean-Baptiste, in Anglic John the Baptist..."
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 9, p. 143.

Notes:

(i) Do not confuse John the Baptist with John the Evangelist.

(ii) Notice the Latin translation of the opening verses of John's Gospel, shown in English here.

(iii) Does the reply from Terra mean that "Saint John," "Hagios Ioannes" and "San Juan" are the names of three places on Nuevo Mexico, the first and second places not described although the third is identified as a continent - or does "on Nuevo Mexico" refer only to "San Juan"?

(iv) Whereas English has become Anglic, French has become Fransai.

(v) When the reply goes on to identify Aycharaych's home planet as Chereion, one of the Intelligence sources quoted is "Cmdr. Dominic Flandry." (p. 144) We know that Flandry gathers intelligence. Here we see how some of it is used. We want to be shown different aspects of future society.

Numbers Of Sophont Species

Can there really be:

Scores Of Thousands Of Sophont Species -

- in the Terran Empire? Yes. We are repeatedly told that the 400 light-year diametered Empire encompasses an estimated four million stars, most with planets, that maybe half of these planetary systems have been visited at least once and that a mere hundred thousand have, often sporadic, Imperial contact and bear, often purely nominal, allegiance. See Djana And Rax. Djana asks who can remember all the races in the Empire and reflects that even the hundred thousand are too many to keep track of.

Thus, within the Imperial sphere:

two million stars have never been visited;

one million, nine hundred thousand have merely been visited, maybe just once;

one hundred thousand have contact that, in many cases, is sporadic.

 

So there is plenty of room for scores of thousands of intelligent species. One hundred is five score. Among those one hundred thousand planetary systems:

 

Do some species occupy more than one planet?

 

Does this number include the humanly colonized planets, Hermes, Aeneas, Vixen, Dennitza, Unan Besar, Germania, Atheia, Imhotep, Daedalus, Llynathawr, any others?

 

How many have more than sporadic contact?

 

Sean Brooks estimates that each Imperial sector encompasses 1,000 planets. See:

 

Sector Governors in the Terran Empire by Sean M. Brooks.

When Aycharaych arrives on Llynathawr, the capital planet of Sector Alpha Crucis, he claims to be from the planet of Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran. Some Merseian agent has inserted false data in the files on Llynathawr, confirming the existence of the non-existent Jean-Baptiste. There is no interstellar internet connection. When Chunderban Desai, High Commissioner of the Virgilian System in Sector Alpha Crucis, requests information about Aycharych, a data reel must be physically transported under high security from Catawrannis on Llyanathawr to Nova Roma on Aeneas where Desai is based.. See Imperial Administration III. The size of the Empire works against it. Deception is easy, even including a falsehood about the existence of an entire planet and its rational species.

This MIGHT be the only post for today:

running out of inspiration (?);

needing to slow down (?);

other stuff going down (!)

It would be possible to reduce the frequency of posts significantly while still continuing to post regularly but this would require some mental readjustment on my part. We will find out.

A Scandinavian Family

Many of Poul Anderson's characters are movers and shakers, men who make things happen. While reading Stieg Larsson's summary of the history of his fictional Vanger family, I was struck by parallels with several Andersonian scenarios and also with SM Stirling's Lorings:

Alexandre Vangeersad, a soldier, came from France to Sweden with King Jean Baptiste Bernadotte and, in 1818, was rewarded with an estate in Norrland where he also bought forested land;

his son, adminstering the estate, applied new European methods to farming and forestry and founded a pulp and paper mill;

his grandson, who shortened the surname to Vanger, developed trade with Russia, founded a merchant fleet that served Germany, the Baltics and the English steel industry and diversified into mining and metal industries;

although his two great-grandsons engaged in power struggles that threatened the survival of the company, they also laid the basis for the high-finance Vanger clan.

That story sounded familiar more than once.

Imperial Administration III

The Day Of Their Return.

Aycharaych, having already met the Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis, now tells the High Commissioner for the Virgilian System:

"'If you wish to examine my documents, you will find I already have permission to carry out my studies here. But of course I would never undertake anything you disapprove.'" (3, p. 93)

On the contrary, having read the Governor's mind, Aycharaych now seeks an opportunity to read the Commissioner's.

Commissioner Desai apologizes for not having already checked the data and quickly scans them now. When he touches the information-retrieval panel, its screen shows an identifying holograph followed by annotated correspondence. An official courier at the Sector capital on Llynathawr had deposited the reel, with its tagged molecules, on a spaceship where it went into the captain's safe and, after arrival on Aeneas, was brought by the captain himself to the Imperial House memory bank. Aycharaych, after arriving at Catawrayannis, had claimed to be an anthropologist from the obscure planet Jean-Baptiste whose existence and description were confirmed by the files. 

Everything is above board...

Communication And Intelligence-Gathering In Two Future Histories

The Peregrine.

"'Incredible as it seems, I'm beginning to think that the forest here forms a communication network.'

"'The original grapevine telegraph, huh?'"

-CHAPTER XVII, p. 149.

On Freehold in the Technic History, a specially created kind of plant carries signals across a continent at neural speeds. John Ridenour comments:

"'Grapevine telegraph!'"

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 44.

- and has met similar setups on nonhuman planets which would include the Alori if they were in the same timeline.

In an interstellar multispecies civilization, it will be easy for "barbarians" in the Roman sense, outsiders, to pass themselves off as members of just another species from within the borders:

"'Among so many races, it was easy to pose as members of yet another. I myself have spent years wandering about your territories, investigating them in every aspect."

-CHAPTER XVI, p. 145.

And, in the Technic History, a leader of the Scothani tells Flandry:

"'You're typical of your kind. I've studied the Empire long enough to recognize you; I've traveled there myself, incognito, and met persons aplenty.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Tiger by the Tail" IN Captain Flandry..., pp. 241-276 AT p. 246.

And Aycharaych from Chereion within the Merseian Roidhunate passes himself off as from the Imperial planet, Jean-Baptiste, which does not exist.

Finally, here we have two more Latin plurals: Alori and Scothani.

Favourite Chapters And Stories

My favourite chapters in Poul Anderson's Technic History include The Day Of Their Return, 3, and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, III.

In the former, Chunderban Desai converses with:

Uldwyr of the Vach Hallen;

Aycharaych, supposedly of "Jean-Baptiste";

Peter Jowett of the industrial Web in Nova Roma on Aeneas.

In the latter, Dominic Flandry converses with:

the Duke of Mars;

Emperor Hans Molitor;

Chunderban Desai. 

A spectacular cast of characters. I agree with Sean Brooks that A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows could also have included a conversation with an ennobled Leon Ammon, the man whom Flandry had met when he, Ammon, was still a gangster on an Imperial border planet. Future histories include fictional biographies, like those of Falkayn and Flandry, and Ammon would have been a sound addition. 

My favourite Technic History short stories are "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "Lodestar" for reasons previously stated. The Technic History is better than good both as a series and as a (large) number of individual narratives.

Religious Symbols

The Day Of Their Return.

Aycharaych, who initiates the false Messiah, Jaan, pretends to come from a nonexistent planet called Jean-Baptiste.

When Gabriel Stewart (both names are significant) visits Tatiana Thane, he tells her that the Builders will make her son more than human.

Poul Anderson knew how to incorporate these religious symbols which affect the reader whether or not they are recognized. Gabriel's visit to Tatiana is preceded by this passage:

"In awe: 'I have heard about one seer who walks there now, who will call back the Old Shen from the stars. Will our dead then rise from the waters?'" (12, p. 169)

The Size Of The Terran Empire Again

"Tiger By The Tail."

The Scothan Empire is in unknown space outside the Terran Empire. The Scothan Prince Cerdic leads a dozen spaceships that loot several planets, including a couple that are under Terran suzerainty although only tenuously connected, and Cerdic leaves no witnesses, thus avoiding open conflict with the Terrans until he has sufficiently prepared for it.

His agents on the Imperial planet, Llynathawr, are of different races, probably including some human beings and also Scothans pretending to be from another part of the Terran Empire - like Aycharaych who had claimed to be from the non-existent planet of Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran. The size of the Terran Empire makes it easy to infiltrate it.

Pete And Joe On Nerthus

Poul Anderson's juvenile hero, Wilson Pete, solves two mysteries on the colony planet, Nerthus:

What is the ecological role of the tinklers?
Are there intelligent natives?

The alien says, "'...call me Joe.'" (The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3, p. 23), the title of another Anderson story. See here. He claims to be from "Astan IV," which would mean the fourth planet of a star called "Astan." Pete makes an insightful deduction from this name. We, reading later, recall the spy, Aycharaych, claiming to be from the planet, Jean-Baptiste. Nerthus reappears in "Virgin Planet"/Virgin Planet and in The Peregrine.

Volume 3 is in any case incomplete because it excludes The Peregrine. The Psychotechnic History needs to be called that, not The Psychotechnic League, and, I suggest, should be collected in two omnibus volumes:

I, ten works, pre-FTL;
II, eleven works, FTL.

Aycharaych

Ydwyr tells Djana that:

once he got leave to visit the old, eldritch planet, Chereion;

the Chereionites had a possibly trans-galactic civilization a million years ago but it disappeared;

it suits a few Chereionites to be useful to the Roidhunate;

Aycharaych, who received Ydwyr among his disciples in his castle at Raal - we never hear of Raal again - has looked deeper into pandemic Mind than anyone else.

Ydwyr asks Flandry if he has heard of Aycharaych's techniques but Flandry lets slip that he has not yet heard of Aycharaych.

Chunderban Desai has a visitor called Aycharaych from the planet, Jean-Baptiste...

There is no such planet, of course.

Aycharaych In Conversation

We see Aycharaych of Chereion in conversation with Chunderban Desai once and with Dominic Flandry twice. He lies to Desai, claiming to be from a planet called Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran of the Terran Empire. Despite this dishonesty, we have no reason to doubt his stated interest in humanity:

he knows of the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping Rebellion and Christianity;

he has studied Aeschlyus, Li Po, Shakespeare, Sturgeon, Mikhailov, Bach, Richard Strauss, Rembrandt and Hiroshige;

he borrows and reads a volume of Tagore while waiting in Desai's office.

Fictitious characters are usually fictions to each other. Anyone can refer to Sherlock Holmes and many do (although, in the case of Anderson's Time Patrolmen, Holmes is not a fiction). We have to accept that, in the Technic civilization timeline, there was an American science fiction writer called Theodore Sturgeon but not one called Poul Anderson. (Beowulf Shaeffer in Larry Niven's Known Space future history refers to Heinlein and also to Carter (?). Known Space does have a John Carter on Mars, obviously an ironic reference to ERB's Warlord of Mars.)

Aycharaych tells the philistine Flandry that Johann Strauss is not to be compared to Richard who is more misunderstood than Xingu. He admires an orchid seen against a null-gee sphere of water with the universe beyond:

"'Black against the quicksilver water globe...the universe black and cold against both. A beautiful arrangement, and with that touch of horror necessary to the highest art.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 162.

I do not agree about the horror but thus Aycharaych rationalizes his art "'...of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings...'" (p. 391)

- to quote Desai in conversation with Flandry.

By calling the violet flower black, Aycharaych lets slip that Chereion's sun "'...is cooler and redder than [Flandry's].'" (p. 162)

Honorable Enemies In Two Timelines

After the negotiations that ended the Jihannath crisis, Chunderban Desai of the planet Ramanujan and the Terran Empire and Uldwyr of the Vach Hallan and the Merseian Roidhunate had dinner in a private room at a restaurant.

"It became a memorable evening."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 85.

 

Desai, as high Commissioner of the Virgilian System in Sector Alpha Crucis of the Terran Empire, interviews Aycharaych, supposedly of the planet Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran but really from Chereion in the Roidhunate.

 

"It became a memorable afternoon." (ibid., p. 95)

After the Whale War, Laury Birken of the Northwest Union and Terai Lohannaso of the Maurai Federation have a gourmet meal in a dining room in the Seattle chapter of the Wolf Lodge, then attend a strip dance.

"It became a memorable evening."

-Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER TWO, p. 29.

Inter-Species Interactions

The Game of Empire.

Diana Crowfeather, human, Imhotepan daughter of a Terran and an Atheian, travels to Daedalus where she is visited in her hotel by Shan U, Cynthian, who enquires about her Wodenite companion, Axor. At the time of Shan U's enquiry, Axor is visiting the local priest of his church who is probably human. 

Later, when Diana and her Tigery companion, Targovi, walk through an unterraformed area of Daedalus, some of the odours are:

"...indescribable in Anglic or Torboko."

-CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 348.

Targovi, having:

"...acquired a good many tag-ends of human languages other than Anglic..."

-ibid., p. 354 -

- refers to "'...the mise-en-scene.'" (ibid.) Having just googled this French phrase, I realize that I had not known what it meant. In Targovi's time, the phrase must be Fransai. French has become Fransai just as English has become Anglic:

"...in Fransai Jean-Baptiste, in Anglic John the Baptist..."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 9, p. 143.

This post has referred to four intelligent species:

human

Cynthian

Wodenite

Tigery

- to six planets:

Imhotep

Terra

Atheia

Daedalus

Cynthia

Woden

- and to three languages:

Anglic

Toborko

Fransai

The Eriau-speaking Merseians are not far. Indeed, some are hidden on Daedalus.