Four Arms

"Lodestar."

Van Rijn:

"'What can we try and predict in advance? Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and the four arms I want right now is a knife, a blaster, a machine gun, and a rover missile, nothing fancy, maybe a megaton.'" (p. 395)

Verbal redundancy: all prediction is "in advance."

I thought that it was appropriate to conclude an evening of posting with a van Rijn pun.

If I remember right, John Carter carried four arms: long sword, short sword, dagger and pistol. And, of course, many of his antagonists were four-armed.

Tomorrow, I hope to drive Aileen and Yossi to Leighton Moss (scroll down) and to attend the meditation group. But I have not yet finished rereading "Lodestar." Coya Conyon appears only in this story and in its sequel, Mirkheim. But Anderson's texts seem to be inexhaustible.

Incidental And Interconnected Other Reading

Notionally:

during the day, when I am not doing anything else, I reread and post about Poul Anderson;

in the evening, I read works by other authors.

However, these "other authors" often generate comparisons with Anderson. Notable examples are:

Neil Gaiman
SM Stirling
Julian May
Stieg Larsson

Nowadays, English pubs and cafes have shelves of books that you can read while sitting there. Thus, in the Leighton Moss cafe, I recently enjoyed rereading selected chapters in Larsson's Millennium Trilogy Volume III. At Ketlan's place, I reread Volume I of the graphic adaptation of the Millennium Trilogy. These experiences have inspired me to reread the Trilogy Volume I even though I in fact reread the entire Trilogy relatively recently. This might generate more comparisons with Anderson. Meanwhile, there should be more today about Orbit Unlimited.

Some Preliminaries

SM Stirling, Shadows Of Annihilation, Advance Reading Copy.

Among his many acknowledgments, Stirling thanks:

Joe's Dining (see first image)
Ecco Express and Gelato

- for letting him sit interminably and write.

No environment is friendlier than a cafe that allows this. My equivalent is Leighton Moss (scroll down) Cafe here (and see second image).

The PROLOGUE includes a very well deserved acknowledgment to HG Wells who predicted events both in our timeline (A) and in the fictional timeline (B). B gets its MAD before we get ours.

Once again, characters in an alternative history comment obliquely on our history, this time by grimacing at the thought of Woodrow Wilson as President in 1917.

See:

Theater Of Spies: Prologue
Our Alternative History
Our Alternative Universe

In Chapter ONE, look for a multi-sensory description:

good view;
hot and dry;
drinking;
heavy scent;
clicking and buzzing -

- and a deft summary of the previous conflicts between heroine and villain. The adventure continues.

Iyeyasu

(Today is granddaughter Yossi's 25th birthday so I drove her and her mother Aileen, both bird watchers, to Leighton Moss bird sanctuary, then I walked to Silverdale and meditated in the church. We will have a family birthday meal on Sunday.)

When I summarized Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited, part one, here, I omitted one significant character, Commissioner Svoboda's long-term personal bodyguard, Iyeyasu, a gray-clad Okinawan karate man with black, shoulder-length hair. (Apparently, Okinawan karate differs from Japanese: see here.)

Svoboda, with his bad foot, leans on Iyeyasu who senses his master's moods. Even in his own departmental tower, Svoboda is surrounded by six other guards who either precede or follow him down "...a long luminous-walled corridor..." (1, p. 9) whereas Iyeyasu remains beside him.

When Svoboda is about to be visited by his son, Jan, he clears all the guards, except Iyeyasu, out of his office. When Svoboda knowingly provokes Jan, the latter attacks him but is stopped by Iyeyasu.

(Svoboda, in charge of education, proposes to replace literary analysis with rote memorization and also to introduce instruction in the use of hallucinogens... He is prepared to damage a lot of people for a Machiavellian end.)

When Jan has left, Svoboda explains his devious scheme to Iyeyasu and thus to us so Iyeyasu's role, although understated, is very important.

Wine, Mysteries And The Good Goddess

The Golden Slave, XII.

A ship called the Bona Dea, the Good Goddess, carries wine from Puteoli to Miletus. Her captain wears a plumed casque.

When Eodan has ordered an attack on the Bona Dea, he sees that Hwicca and Phryne:

"...held each other's hands, unspeaking in that mystery of woe whose initiates are all womankind." (p. 161)

Initiates to mysteries, e.g., to the Mystery of Mithras, were members of mystery religions. The Catholic liturgy still refers to the celebration of "Sacred Mysteries." See here.

On the Bona Dea, a German attacks Eodan with a longsword which is also a glaive but Eodan, who has only a shortsword, nevertheless kills the German and appropriates his longsword.

Eodan's crew hesitate to board the Bona Dea but one runs up the boarding plank and the others pour after him. That is what I mean by a "leader": someone who has no power to coerce but who gives a lead which may or may not be followed. Every human society has leaders. Not every society needs rulers, let alone bureaucrats ("rulers from offices").

I want to reread the rest of this chapter about combat on the Good Goddess but am flaking out after an early start to drive Aileen and Yossi to Leighton Moss. (Scroll down.)

Laters.

Meanwhile...

(Thor's hammer.)

This lap top is nearly dead and will be replaced with a new one when the shops open tomorrow. There may then be a delay in getting the new lap top set up. While not using a computer, I have visited Leighton Moss bird sanctuary and have attended the Wandering Wain Heathen Moot in the Royal Hotel, Heysham. At the moot were the former secretary and the former treasurer of the Association of Polytheist Traditions which I linked to here. Small world. The former treasurer had set up the altar at a camp which I visited recently. Smaller world.

The future histories referenced in the post, 2044 x 10, are:

Heinlein's Future History;
Asimov's I, Robot;
Blish's Cities In Flight;
Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles;
Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
Anderson's Technic History;
Niven's Known Space future history;
Pournelle's CoDominium future history;
Stirling's Emberverse.

Other Anderson future histories deserve to be in this list but they do not give dates which was the point of this particular comparison. By coincidence, Stephen Byerley became the first World Co-ordinator and the first High King of Montival, Artos, died in the same year, 2044. In that period, there were, in different timelines, an American theocracy, a ban on spaceflight, the colonization of Mars, a UN world government etc.

While reading SM Stirling's The Golden Princess with its strong Japanese connection, I have again been drawn back into rereading Ian Fleming's Japan-based novel, You Only Live Twice (see here), and therefore have also reflected on two Japan-themed Sean Connery films, You Only Live Twice and Rising Sun.

I will strive to be better focused in future but right now am cramming as many observations as I can into a single post before the lap top switches itself off again.

Onwards and upwards!

Between Posts

The page view count always goes way down when I do not post for a while but I cannot maintain a steady pace all the time! This week, Monday was my daughter's 40th birthday and today is my son-in-law's ?th birthday. Earlier today, some of us had lunch in the Wolfhouse Gallery cafe (see first image) and all will share a family meal tonight. (An alternative lunch venue is the Leighton Moss Bird Reserve cafe - see second image.)

However, when there is more time for posting, these questions will be addressed:

are multiple worlds real?;
what does "existence" mean?;
is the Draka Final Society utopian or dystopian?;
what would persuade slave-owners that they are wrong?

Misfits Or Refugees Leave The Solar System

Eight examples by five authors:

Methuselah's Children by Robert Heinlein;

They Shall Have Stars and The Seedling Stars by James Blish;

Orbit Unlimited, The Boat Of A Million Years and Harvest Of Stars by Poul Anderson;

The Stone Dogs by SM Stirling;

Seed Of Light by Edmund Cooper.

These scenarios differ. Misfits feel uncomfortable whereas refugees might flee for their lives. In The Boat Of A Million Years, the handful of mutant immortals, nicknamed "the Survivors," leaves a utopian Earth whereas, in Seed Of Light, a handful of genuine survivors flees from a now uninhabitable Earth.

Resolution of conflicts on Earth and exploration of the universe are two major challenges but it is unlikely that the latter will provide an escape route from the former and, in any case, most people, except in Seed Of Light, would remain to live with or resolve the local problems. Interstellar travel has become a symbol of freedom in American sf but, for most of us, freedom is to be found on Earth.

I discussed Prefaces, Introductions and Forewords in Foreword. Cooper gives us "Proems."

Today, we drive to a Christmas Fair at Leighton Moss. (Scroll down.)

On Board

Rogue Sword, CHAPTER III.

The oarsmen are:

"...mostly Sclavonians, hired from Venice's Dalmatian possessions..." (p. 59)

Hired, not enslaved: useful, paid, healthy work.

Passengers sleep on the deck. Lucas dislikes the unsanitary West. Looking at the stars, he remembers studying them "...with quadrant and astrolabe..." (p. 61)

I will shortly drive Aileen and Yossi to Leighton Moss (scroll down) where I will sit in the cafe with Rogue Sword, paper and pen.

Alternative Histories

I know that I should not apologize for this but I really have got sidetracked from rereading Poul Anderson today by a vigil, a goodwill visit to a mosque, a visit to a friend in hospital and interest in another shared fictional history. See also here and here. In addition to future or alternative histories, authors can also present alternative accounts of what was happening in our timeline but behind the scenes in the late nineteenth century, WWI, WWII, the Cold War etc. And Anderson applied this retro-history approach to his own Technic History so I have found a connection with Poul Anderson after all.

Maybe a return to the Swedish timeline of Tau Zero tomorrow - after I have driven Aileen and Yossi to Leighton Moss (scroll down) and back.

The Current Agenda

To finish reading The Hammer by SM Stirling and David Drake where it seems that much battle preparation is soon to be followed by much battle.

To read for only the second time Murder In Black Letter by Poul Anderson which is on line here and was previously discussed here.

This evening, instead, to reread a Stieg Larsson novel while recuperating from a comrade's late night sixtieth birthday party with Irish rebel songs at the Toll House followed by an early drive to Leighton Moss. (Scroll down.)

Maybe to see some TV news about British politics, currently weirder than fiction.

Britain's relationship to Europe has gone Heisenberg. Alternative presents and immediate futures are superimposed. Sf writers might contribute by conceptualizing alternative speculative outcomes.