Italian Connections

Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, 8.

Robert Kintyre, still amateur sleuthing, lists the Italian connections of nearly all the relevant characters. I thought, "Mafia." He comments:

"'Holy Hieronymus,' muttered Kintyre, 'next thing I'll be looking for a Black Hand.'"

A guy I knew who teaches in Sicily and has seen Montalbano filmed said that:

protection money is like tax;

Sicilians who say that the Mafia is a myth are Mafia whereas those who say that of course there is Mafia are not;

when a company receives a phone call saying, e.g., "Your new cleaner stars on Monday," the correct response is "Thank you."

More Villains

Searching the blog for "villains," I find an extraordinary number of posts analyzing villains created by Poul Anderson and related authors. I do not want to repeat that analysis. However, it might be of interest to note that I have found an author who, I think, presents the most interesting succession of villains. In Ian Fleming's novels:

Bond discredits Le Chiffre, who is then assassinated by SMERSH;

Beria directs SMERSH;

G succeeds Beria;

Bond kills Mr. Big, Donovan Grant and Goldfinger and captures Rosa Klebb, all of SMERSH;

Bond meanwhile also fights the Russian-backed Nazi, Hugo Drax, and the Spangled Mob - the latter later joins Goldfinger's Hoods' Congress;

while recuperating from the SMERSH attempt to assassinate him, Bond eliminates the independent operator, Dr. No;

 
when Khruschev disbands the discredited SMERSH, some of its members join SPECTRE;

Bond defeats Largo and Uhlmann of SPECTRE and destroys the organization twice;

Bond kills the founder and director of SPECTRE, Blofeld;

because of the aftermath of his fight with Blofeld, Bond must kill Scaramanga to regain his position in the Secret Service;

the Mafia is represented in the Hoods' Congress, SPECTRE and Scaramanga's Group;

SPECTRE poaches men from the French equivalent of the Mafia, the Union Corse, which then helps Bond against SPECTRE.

And I did not expect that list to grow so long.

What To Look Out For

When you read SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies, after it has been published on May 7, look out for:

languages, including Latin;
a Biblical quotation;
an exotic travelogue;
not only heroic deeds during a war but also the effects of war;
a returning villain;
a meeting of a German military committee;
patient Empire-building;
no doubt much more because I am less than half way through the book.

We always enjoy reading the deliberations of the other side in a fictional conflict. Poul Anderson gives us the Roidhun's Grand Council on Merseia. Ian Fleming gives us:

Russian intelligence heads (GRU, RUMID, MGB, SMERSH);
Goldfinger's Hoods' Congress, which includes the Mafia;
SPECTRE, chaired by Blofeld;
SPECTRE, chaired by Largo;
The Man With The Golden Gun's Group, which includes the Mafia and the KGB.

(I think that Fleming outdoes his competitors in this department.)

Possible Fates Of A Continuing Villain
killed at the end of the series
lives to fight another day
changes sides (very rare)

I am giving nothing away here because I have no idea what will happen to the Black Chamber's German antagonist.

Merseian Language And Psychology

In Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry, A Circus Of Hells and The Game Of Empire, there are scenes where Merseians converse among themselves. I think that, on screen, CGI-generated Merseians speaking to each other in English would not be credible. The dialogue would have to be in Eriau with subtitles. Unlike Tolkien, Anderson did not create any nonhuman languages so that someone else would have to invent some Eriau, Planha etc. And, of course, Merseian, Ythrian etc voices must not sound human.

The Gethfennu is Merseian organized crime, therefore comparable to the Mafia. However, having just read:

Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia (London, 1997) -

- I can confidently assert that the psychology of individual Merseian criminals would not be remotely like that of the Italian-Americans described by Pistone! (That guy is still alive. What an achievement!)

Organized Crime In Sicily And Russia And On Merseia

The meaning of a word may be either specific or generic. Thus, a Sikh man confused me by using the word, "Bible," in a generic sense to refer to the Sikh scripture, the Granth. I advised him that "Bible," "Koran," "Granth" etc are specific scriptural names whereas "scripture" is the appropriate generic term.

Similarly, "Mafia," having meant specifically "Sicilian organized crime," has come to be used more generically at least to include "Russian organized crime" - although perhaps not also Japanese organized crime, the Yakuza.

In any case, organized crime has existed in Russia since Tsarist times and flourished since the collapse of the Soviet Union (see here), becoming a new collective villain in Western spy fiction. My relevant point finally is that organized crime, the Gethfennu, had existed on Merseia since before the intervention of the Polesotechnic League and might be expected to flourish again after the collapse of the Roidhunate?

I suggest that:

the Sicilian Mafia was a survival of feudal relationships (loyalty to the capu/boss, exaction of tribute and violent enforcement combined with overt religiosity) into modern times;

the Gethfennu was the Merseian equivalent - "...the baronial tradition survived, in a distorted form...," (David Falkayn: Star Trader, p. 244);

the conditions following the collapse of the Roidhunate would parallel those after the collapse of the USSR.

Thus, we might read a Long Night story about a revived Gethfennu?

Clandestine Lunarians And Others

In Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars, the Inrai guerillas do a lot of damage but perform the pivotal role of putting Fenn in touch with download Guthrie. In the preceding volume, Harvest The Fire, a secret organization, the "Scaine Croi," hijacks anti-matter for Proserpina - I think (I am currently rereading this volume).

We enjoy reading about secret organizations without having to encounter them in reality. Two such organizations in twentieth century fiction were the revolutionary Cabal in Robert Heinlein's Future History and Ian Fleming's SPECTRE, the latter uniting former members of the Gestapo, SMERSH, the Mafia, the Unione Corse, the Yugoslav secret police and Blofeld's previous organization, RAHIR.

With such a pedigree, I think that SPECTRE has to be the ultimate fictional criminal organization, overshadowing any others, including even Poul Anderson's Exaltationists whom Manse Everard tracks through time as James Bond tracks SPECTRE through the 1960s.

Trade Routes And Vachs

Although the Cynthian, Chee Lan, resembles a squirrel, she is also like a Narnian Talking Beast, i.e., larger than her dumb equivalents and also, I think, with a proportionately larger head. Nevertheless, she remains much smaller than a human being and therefore is dwarfed by a Merseian or a Wodenite.

On Cynthia, there are trade routes but no tribes, clans, nations, states, choths or Vachs. Trade routes that have joined interstellar Technic civilization feel no obligation to help those that have not.

When, flying above Merseia, Chee Lan sees a cultivated plain with villages surrounding castles, she wonders whether the Merseians have combined feudalism with industrialism. The set-up sounds feudal, Vachs sound like feudal realms and also:

in the social dislocation following the industrial revolution, the baronial tradition survives as the Gethfennu, organized crime;
-copied from Merseia.

I think of the Mafia as a survival of feudal relationships.

Thus, a Cynthian applies a Terrestrial concept to Merseian society.

Post-War Crime

"He came to Italy as a Quartermaster officer in the war. Perfect chance for black marketing, if a man didn't mind taking a few risks. The miracle is not that a few QM people went bad but that most stayed honest...by the end of the war he was in touch with some pretty big figures in the Italian underworld, and saw the opportunities. He came right back after his discharge and went to work at it full-time... He got in on the postwar reconstruction of crime, along lines borrowed from gangland and Communism."
-Poul Anderson, Murder In Black Letter, Chapter 16.

It makes sense:

in the chaos of war and post-war reconstruction, there would be opportunities for black-marketeering and other criminality;

when legitimate society reconstructed itself, so did the Mafia;

there were opportunities for people in the US Army;

Communists had had to adopt a secretive "cell" organizational form that was adaptable to criminal activities.

Thus, in novels of the fifties and sixties, the War was more than a recent event. It and its aftermath provided motives for the characters. Some of James Bond's villains are WWII left-overs. In the recent UNCLE film, Napoleon Solo:

was in the US Army in Europe;
smuggled art works;
had to choose between prison and joining the new CIA;
worked with Waverley of British Naval Intelligence and Kuryakin of the KGB against a new common threat;
thus became part of a new team, UNCLE.

Pretty smart stuff.

Proto-Feudalism

Gratillonius, tribune of Confluentes, and Rullus, curial of Geoscribate, discuss military defence in the event that the Empire becomes unable to send reinforcements. Gratillonius proposes local lines of communication, including beacons and runners. My thought was that, since he is starting to talk about military organisation in Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire, he is preparing the way for feudalism.

Sure enough, Rullus replies that, when free men have been wiped out by exorbitant Imperial taxation, it will be:

" 'Better to seek some great landholder's protection. Not that I'd make a serf he'd want; but the monks at Turonum may take me in...' " (Poul and Karen Anderson, The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989), p. 399)

Rullus has here summarized all the features of feudalism:

great landholders;
protection;
serfs;
monasteries as also landholders.

The landholder does not own the land in the modern sense. He can neither sell it nor develop it as he sees fit. Fortunately, cities and trade grew up alongside feudalism and eventually overthrew it.

I think that the Mafia ethos of protection, violence, religious observance and personal loyalty to individual leaders as against the rule of law is a modern survival of feudal social relationships.

In The High Crusade, Poul Anderson imagined European feudalism succeeding on an interstellar scale but this was a joke, I hope.

Intelligence Services And Criminal Organizations

Might Intelligence services sometimes employ or otherwise cooperate with criminal organizations? The two kinds of outfits act in secret and have a common interest in maintaining the status quo, the former because such maintenance is their raison d'etre, the latter because their preferred modus operandi is to operate within and to prey upon an orderly economy.

Dominic Flandry helps to enrich gang boss Leon Ammon on the frontier planet of Irumclaw because a wealthier Ammon will be better equipped to lobby Imperial officials to continue defending that part of the frontier. Flandry is canny enough to work part-time for Ammon as a private operation but might his Service get the same idea, to defend the Empire by enriching local gang bosses?

James Bond cooperates with a major smuggler of cigarettes, gold, diamonds, people etc against an even less scrupulous smuggler of heroin, opium etc. The CIA and MI6 buy intelligence from SPECTRE and the French Deuxieme Bureau pays them to assassinate a defector. Bond works with the Union Corse, the French equivalent of the Unione Siciliano or Mafia, against SPECTRE and even marries the daughter of the Capu of the Union Corse.

It will be evident that I am continuing to reread Ian Fleming and also to find points of comparison with Poul Anderson.

Organized Crime

The Polesotechnic League protects Merseia from the effects of a nearby supernova. Merseia is not yet politically united so the League deals with the Merseians' only international organization, the Gethfennu, organized crime. Thus, humanity earns the enduring enmity of the Merseian aristocratic party.

Flandry enriches a vice boss on Irumclaw but only so that the vice boss will then pressurize the Empire to continue defending that Imperial frontier - against the Merseians.

In Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's "The Children's Hour," the Yakuza, Japanese organized crime, still operate in the Solar System and have also moved to the Alpha Centaurian colony where they will help UN agents against the kzinti occupation without charge. Kzinti estates are squeezing out human society. Yakuza can try to deal with either but are safer with the latter.

I think that the Mafia is a survival of feudal social relationships (tradition, protection, violence, personal loyalty, religious observance) into capitalist society. A survival and an adaptation: organized criminals want either to transfer into legitimate businesses or to continue to prey on legitimate society. Either way, they need to protect that society against any invader (Nazi, Draka, kzin) that would really try to change the rules of the game.

Who Is The Enemy?

James Bond
Russians and their agents
surviving Nazis
North American gangsters
SPECTRE
the Mafia (in the "Hoods' Congress," SPECTRE and Scaramanga's Group)

Dominic Flandry
Merseians and their agents
barbarians
a corrupt governor
usurpers

Manse Everard
Stane
Neldorians
Exaltationists
Castelar
chaos
a personal causal nexus

Flandry's enemies are internal as well as external.

Civilization Loyalism

Who says that he is a "civilization loyalist" in the Dominic Flandry series?

Obviously Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, and Dominic Flandry, agent of the Terran Empire, are civilization loyalists because each of them struggles to prolong the lifetime of a particular civilization and both fight barbarians.

Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn prefer to strive and thrive within an ordered society rather than in a disordered one but who doesn't? Organized crime is socially and politically conservative. It wants to preserve the status quo in order to continue to operate within it. I do not compare van Rijn or Falkayn to the Mafia although such a comparison would be valid in the case of some other Polesotechnic League merchants.

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol preserves Danellian civilization by preserving the history that leads to it even though this obliges him to preserve the Fall of the Roman and other Empires. 

Nicholas van Rijn, Detective

Van Rijn and Adzel spend three weeks in an automated spaceship with Thea Beldaniel, human slave of the Shenna. (I have just noticed the two components of that surname: "Bel..." and "...daniel." And "Thea" means "goddess.") At mealtimes, van Rijn talks over the food, then over large quantities of wine and brandy. At first, Beldaniel excuses herself early but soon stays to listen at length. Van Rijn has briefed Adzel on what to say, ask and either agree or disagree with. Van Rijn also experiments with conversational and anecdotal styles. His purpose is to gain her attention, then to learn from her responses. He is both an actor and a detective.

By the half way point, he has learned how to keep her attention and no longer needs Adzel. He maintains the Jovian/Jovial character he has adopted by flamboyantly rejecting some perfectly acceptable wine. When Thea indignantly rejects his suggestion that the Shenna fear Technic civilization, he realizes that she worships them. He gets her slightly drunk and plays Terrestrial melodies while Adzel slowly adjusts the light to a romantic glow. Van Rijn's purpose is not physical seduction if only because that "...would have triggered her defenses." (David Falkayn: Star Trader, p. 529)

Beldaniel rightly says that "'...human nature is plastic...'" (ibid.) but then follows this with a non sequitur: "'I don't believe you can call us warped, any more than you yourself are because you were brought up in a particular tradition.'" (ibid.) What is the truth about our species?

Each of us is brought up in a tradition that is not and cannot be of our own choosing;
traditions vary across a wide spectrum (the species is "plastic");
some traditions allow or enable individuals to learn and develop;
however, other traditions warp and distort individuality in many weird and wonderful ways.

"Neither of us is warped because each of us was brought up in a tradition" is nonsense if my tradition was law-abiding and yours was the Mafia.

Look how much Beldaniel discloses in a casual reminiscence:

"'My earliest memory is...Isthayan, one of my master's sons, took me exploring...he wanted someone to carry his weapons, even their toddlers have weapons. ...We went out of the household, into the ruined part of the old, old building...we found some machinery in a high tower room, it hadn't rusted much, the sunlight struck through a hole in the roof like white fire, off metal, and I laughed to see it shine... We could look out, across the desert, like forever -'" (pp. 531-532)

We could make a long list of how much Nicholas van Rijn, Detective, has learned from those few unguarded sentences.

Immediate Future Blogging

(i) I might start switching off the lap top earlier in the evening.

(ii) I will definitely be in London and away from computers from the afternoon of Thursday, 6 July, until very late on Sunday, 9 July.

(iii) I have been diverted into reading a very helpful book about Buddhist practice which has generated one post but is unlikely to generate any more.

(iv) Blogging will, of course, continue longer term.

Addendum: The blog has covered politics, among many other important issues, so let me add what I learnt today, that my friend of Italian descent had a Fascist father, a Royalist mother, a Communist uncle, Communist cousins and other cousins in the Mafia and has recently joined the British Labour Party.

Swords And Humour

I have read to the end of The Alchemist's Revenge by Peter Cakebread. An initially straightforward plot becomes increasingly elaborate - wheels within wheels. Apart from the Mafia-like criminal gang, the Association, there is a secretive organization of powerful people called "the Tinkers." Are they the Clockwork & Chivalry universe equivalent of the Masons?

I have found two other parallels with Poul Anderson. One is vividly described battle scenes and sword fights - although such passages should be common enough in historical fiction?

The second parallel is unexpected humor. In A Midsummer Tempest, this is mainly at the expense of the Puritans. Told that France is a Catholic land but tolerates Protestants, Nobah Barker replies:

"'A Catholic land. That means they tolerate Catholics too, does it not? Wherein lies freedom there?'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), p. 139.

Cakebread describes a Cambridge in which "...the only religious orthodoxy...was a lack of an orthodoxy."
-Peter Cakebread, The Alchemist's Revenge (Swindon, 2013), p. 168.

Street preachers rant, spectators cheer and:

"William wondered if these ranters were fulfilling a need for public entertainment..." (p. 169)

(That sounds like a joke but is probably historically accurate.)

I was amused by this passage:

"Perhaps Ma Grindrake would have invited them to stay for another night, if they hadn't been such a sour-faced bunch. The only traveller who wasn't wearing a grim expression was Ralph - but then again, he was covered in bandages, so who's to say?" (p. 144)

And there is a comical climax when William and Ralph each sit in a "'...fancy little cage...'" (p. 184) above great striding metal legs. Warned that first gear called "slow" is quite fast, that second gear called "fast" is very fast and that third gear is dangerous and to be avoided, they manage to attack their enemies in third gear which makes them unstoppable and, when Ralph's gear lever breaks off in his hand, he can stop only by crashing into something.

So the "First Book of the Companie of Reluctant Heroes" ends and when can we expect the Second?

The Nest Is History

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp.71-111.

There is an excellent slave revolt with many a war cry:

"'Kill the Yankees!'"
"'...smite the Papists...'"
"'Allah akbar!'"
"'Vive le Republique!'"
"'Ho La Odin!'"
"'St. George for merrie England!'"
"'Ave, Caesar!'"(p. 103)

- the cry of the centuries!

Another that could have been used is: "Morte alla Francia Italia anela!" ("Death to the French is the cry of Italy!) (Mafia.)

Now we return to time travel issues. Trebuen and his friends capture the Rover, a hundred foot long cylindrical time machine. The Normans who, having stolen the Rover from its owners, had used it only to plunder through history from their base in the American Oligocene, had never checked their future. Superstition had prevented them from really using the Rover as a time machine. They had never doubled back on their own past, never tried to change the past and always let a day elapse at their base, the "Nest," for every day spent in another era. The intricacies of time travel were to be avoided as far as possible.

Trebuen moves the Rover forward one thousand years and looks out, whether through a window or by opening the door is not clear. The chamber of the Rover is dark, still and full of dust and has become the lair of an animal. Eerie - imagine being able to do that with the room you are sitting in now. Trebuen either deduces or checks that the Norman castle is now empty. He knows that a million years of rain, wind and glaciers will destroy it utterly so the secret of time travel to the Oligocene is safe.

Next he does play a trick with the time machine but, because it is nearly time for meditation group, that will have to wait till the next post.

Organized Crime

On Ikranaka, phratries specializing in sorcery serve the Emperor. There are also phratries specializing in murder, theft, armed robbery, gambling and prostitution:

Italy has the Mafia, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita;
France has the Unione Corse;
China has Triads;
Japan has the Yakuza;
Merseia has the Gethfennu;
Ikrananka has the antisocial phratries as well as remnants from earlier cycles resentful of the Deodakh conquest.

Antisocial and resentful phratries skulk in the Old City of Katandara where Ershoka go in groups although Adzel counts as a group by himself. Every inhabited planet described by Poul Anderson is more complicated than we think.

Cells

We Claim These Stars, CHAPTER X.

"...it was only a matter of time before [the Ardazirho] started questioning humans in detail, under drugs and duress. Then you needed cells, changing passwords, widely scattered boltholes, or your underground was done for." (p. 65)

I have read of "cells" but never experienced the need to organize in such a manner.

"The other eighteen men consisted of cells of three (Blofeld accepted the Communist triangle system for security reasons) from six national groups and, within these groups, from six of the world's great criminal and subversive organizations."

-Ian Fleming, Thunderball (London, 1961), 5, p. 43.

 

But, if they are sitting around a table together, then the members of these six cells are known to each other which means that they are not "cells" as I understand the term.

The six organizations represented in SPECTRE are:

 

the Mafia

the Union Corse

SMERSH

the Gestapo

the Yugoslav Secret Police

Blofeld's own former RAHIR

Confession

Rogue Sword, CHAPTER VI.

Before a battle, a priest stands in a booth to hear confessions and every soldier receives Communion. Only the allied Turks do not fear clerical disapproval. Lucas confesses a few sins of anger or envy and is given a penance of twenty Paternosters:

"Pater noster qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie; et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos demittibus debitoribus nostris, et ne nos inducas in tentationem; sed libera nos a malo. Amen."

What else do we know about confession in fiction? 

In a novel by John Gardner, Moriarty commits an ultimate blasphemy by posing as a Jesuit priest in order to hear a Mafia boss's confession!

On TV, Fr. Brown, in the confessional box, hears a cheerful voice proclaim, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is so long since I have done this that I do not remember the procedure!" Recognizing the voice, Brown says, "Hercule." His enemy, Flambeau, has come not to make a confession but to impart some information. For this, they exit the confessional and Flambeau stretches out on a church bench.

Back to Lucas:

"Now, with spears awaiting him beyond the mountain, he felt a sudden wish to be genuinely at peace with God." (p. 99)

However, what does trouble him is not guilt but doubts and lostness. When the Host is elevated at dawn, he is not awed but alone. That strikes me as a good way to approach the ultimate but what do I know?