Poul Anderson Appreciation: Search results for Milky Way

(The Milky Way as seen in Thailand.)

From the bridge of Muddlin' Through, Falkayn sees:

"...the Milky Way an argent cataract..."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Chapter IV, p. 78.

From another spaceship, Coya had seen:

"...argent torrent of Milky Way..."
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 631-680 AT p. 642.

Here is a new Andersonian exercise: find descriptions of the Milky Way. There are bound to be many. In fact, I have just found fifteen more. Van Rijn sees that:

"The Milky Way was a quicksilver river..."
-Mirkheim, Chapter III, p. 65.

Before that, Falkayn and Coya together saw:

"...the ghost-road of the Milky Way..."
-Mirkheim, Chapter I, 33.

Van Rijn sees:

"...the spilling silver of the Milky Way..." (See "A Glory Of Suns," here.)

Earlier explorers had seen that:

"The Milky Way was a torrent of silver." (See "The View From Space," here.)

In a novel outside the Technic History:

"...the glittering belt of the Milky Way." (See "The War Of Two Worlds II," here.)

In another such novel:

"...the Milky Way cleaving [the dark] with frost..."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part One, Chapter 1, p. 3.

In The Peregrine (part of the Psychotechnic History), the Milky Way is described as:

"...the ghostly bridge of stars." (See "Navigating," here.)

In Tales Of The Flying Mountains:

"...the shining belt of the Milky Way." (See "Stark Splendor And Drifting Clouds," here.)

-and:

"...the Milky Way cataracted around the sky..."
-Poul Anderson, "Sunjammer" IN Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains (New York, 1984), pp. 207-248 AT p. 207.

In The Boat Of A Million Years, the Milky Way is:

"...like a river of frost and light." (See here.)

On Ishtar, the Milky Way is called the Ghost Bridge. (See "Fire Time, Chapters I and II," here.)

During the Man-Kzin Wars:

"...the Milky Way torrented..." (See "Stars thronged...," here.)

In "SOS," a character sees:

"...the Milky Way's cataract..."
-Poul Anderson, "SOS" IN Anderson, Dialogue With Darkness (New York, 1985), pp. 193-221 AT p. 197.

In another period of the Technic History:

"...the argent torrent of the Milky Way..."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT Chapter IV, p. 479.

In Tau Zero:

"...the Milky Way belted heaven with ice and silver..."
-Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (London, 1973), Chapter 2, p. 18.

Friday, 17 July 2020

Cold Rush

"Iron."

"...the thronging stars and the cold rush of the Milky Way." (15, p. 103)

As usual, I have linked the phrase, "Milky Way," to the "The Milky Way Thread" post. However, nowadays, I have to check whether this description has already been linked to the Thread. This time, when I searched the blog for the phrase, "the cold rush of the Milky Way," I found, after the Thread (see here, scroll down):

"frosty rush of Milky Way"
"the great curdled rush of the Milky Way"
the Milky Way as "a rush of cold silver"

- but I seem not to have logged "cold rush" before. Some day I might have found every Andersonian description of the Milky Way, at least in the texts to which I have access.

Wednesday, 1 August 2018

Shadow And Milky Way

Chinook's boat, Williwaw, has been incommunicado but is at last returning safely from the turbulent atmosphere of the gas giant planet, Danu. Brodersen announces:

"'Good night. A real good night, ain't it? A real good night.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XXX, p. 262.

Usually, in an Anderson text, such a piece of dialogue would be followed by something like: "Suddenly, the sun rose from behind the planet." We have often commented on the Pathetic Fallacy. Instead, this time, we get:

"(Chinook entered the shadow cone of Danu, and half of heaven was blotted out.)" (ibid.)

A negative Pathetic Fallacy, clearly intended to warn us that all is not alright. Anderson would have known the effect of what he was writing.

Meanwhile, the Milky Way is never far away:

"He felt her tense in his arms, saw in the ring of the Milky Way how she mastered her lips." (XXX, p. 264)

"...the galactic river..." (XXXI, p. 265)

"The Milky Way in a viewscreen crowned her uplifted head." (XXXI, p. 268)

Again we distinguish between descriptions of the Milky Way and objects, including human heads, seen against the Milky Way.

Tuesday, 17 June 2025

The Milky Way Seen From Earth

Some things are taken so much for granted that usually we do not reflect on them. For instance, Sun, Moon, stars and Milky Way are perennial parts of our environment as perceived from the Terrestrial surface where we and all our ancestors have always lived. Therefore, they are often mentioned in passing in works of literature and fiction. In fact, their creation is even described in Genesis. These heavenly bodies adopt a completely different significance in science fiction where the human environment extends outwards so that people can now inhabit bases on the Moon or Mars or even travel between the stars etc.

It is of no interest or concern to most authors that the Moon or Mars might be inhabited. Their conceptual universe does not include anything like:

Wells' Selenities or Martians;

ERB's Moon Men or Martians;

Robert Heinlein's or Poul Anderson's several races of Martians;

many others, of course.

(Mars is the most populated planet in fiction.)

Nor do non-sf authors ask us to willingly suspend our disbelief in future dwellers on the Moon, like Anderson's Lunarians and Selenarchs. This is self-evident because any author who did treat such ideas as if they were realities would thereby become an sf author.

These observations are occasioned by finding the Milky Way in a James Bond novel:

"The Milky Way soared overhead. How many stars? Bond tried counting a finger's length and was soon past the hundred. The stars lit the sea into a faint grey road and then arched away over the tip of the mast towards the black silhouette of Jamaica."

-Ian Fleming, Dr No (London, 1958), VII, p. 63.

Of course, Bond's, and our, attention must re-descend to Earth, to the sufficiently exotic setting of Jamaica. On the following page, Bond steers by the North Star.

Poul Anderson often describes the Milky Way as seen from space or from the surface of some other planet. Bond's perception of the soaring Milky Way gives him a remote kinship with sf characters.

Monday, 8 June 2020

Valeria Matuchek And The Milky Way

Operation Luna, 41.

Valeria flies by night:

"The moon stood high, well-nigh at the half. The Milky Way swept crackling bright among uncountable stars." (p. 368)

(She will soon be on the Moon.)

This is the fourth post about descriptions of the Milky Way in Operation Luna. See also:

Steve Matuchek And The Milky Way
A Tremendous, Upholding Arch And An Ice-Clear Galaxy
Prayers And The Milky Way

I do not expect any more between p. 368 and p. 438 but you never know.

Addendum: See Escape Velocity At Night.

Addendum II: See also The Milky Way From The Mesa

Tuesday, 9 June 2020

The Milky Way From The Mesa

Operation Luna, 48.

"Stars gleamed in their thousands, the Milky Way as a river of frost." (p. 423)

This is the sixth post about the Milky Way in Operation Luna. See here.

The Milky way is like:

"...a river of frost and light..."

- in The Boat Of A Million Years.
-see The Milky Way.

I am on an endless mission to track down every Andersonian description of the Milky Way. I had never expected to find so many.

Wednesday, 25 July 2018

The Milky Way And Ginnungagap

Our old friend, the Milky Way, returns three times in the first half of Poul Anderson's The Avatar:

"...the Milky Way, the nebulae, the galaxies beyond our galaxy...." (XVI, p. 140);

"...the Milky Way gleamed around its lanes of darkness..." (XVIII, p. 160);

"The Milky Way rivered in silver, nebulae glowed where new suns and planets were being born, a sister galaxy flung her faint gleam across Ginnungagap." (XXIII, p. 201)

Poul Anderson compares intergalactic space to the Ginnungagap of the Norse creation myth. I think that this myth comes closest to scientific cosmogony (see here):

void;
within the void, opposed material forces, heat and cold;
interaction between the opposed forces;
emergence of life and consciousness from the interaction;
thus, no conscious creator in the beginning;
eventual destruction of the worlds by fire;
renewal;
a cosmic cycle.

Friday, 24 April 2020

Dayspring And Milky Way

The Peregrine, CHAPTER XIV.

I will quote a short passage in full because it has at least five points of interest:

"By the hazy sheen of the Milky Way, river of suns spilling across infinity, he saw Nicki. Remembered words came to him, as if someone else were speaking into that great silence. "Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place?..."
"Joachim stared out at heaven. 'Where are we?' he asked.
"'The constellations don't look any different! No, wait, they do a little. ' Ferenczi was at another port, his body black against the Milky Way." (p. 116)

Points of Interest
(i) A new description of the Milky Way: "...hazy sheen..."
(ii) It is immediately followed by a further description: "...river of suns spilling across infinity..."
(iii) A Biblical passage which we have cited before. See The Peregrine II.
(iv) Scripture sounds like Someone Else speaking. (That's the idea.)
(v) Yet another object seen against the Milky Way.

Sunday, 11 July 2021

Frozen Fire And Glowing Maelstrom

Starfarers, 29.

"Optical amplifiers turned the stars into a sphere of dazzlement, bright ones become beacons, thousands upon thousands more leaping into visibility, the Milky Way a river of frozen fire, the Andromeda galaxy a glowing maelstrom. Only the pinpoint neutron star was dulled, lest it sear eyes that strayed in its direction." (p. 268)

On this occasion, the Milky Way is a river of frozen fire and the Andromeda galaxy is a glowing maelstrom. Quite often, sister galaxies are mentioned alongside the Milky Way although I have not separately listed such references.

We have separately listed objects seen against the Milky Way and another of those shows up over the page.

"A blackness crossed the Milky Way. 'Here comes the repair robot.'" (p. 270)

Wednesday, 11 December 2019

The Milky Way; Falkayn's Family

Mirkheim.

When Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen challenges Nicholas van Rijn about the "buccaneer companies" of the Polesotechnic League:

"...he made no demand, but only looked off into the Milky Way and said, rough-toned, 'Is not your problem...'" (XX, p. 279)

I quote this passage only because it is yet another reference to the Milky Way. However, this time, it is not really about the Milky Way. The galaxy is mentioned only because Sandra and van Rijn are on board a spaceship and van Rijn is able to look out into space. However, he is not looking at the Milky Way. People look into the distance when they are thinking about something else. Van Rijn is just beginning to address the consequences of a fatal split in the Polesotechnic League...

Several centuries later, Philippe Rochefort, on Avalon, asks:

"'What incurable romantic named this planet?'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT XI, p. 570 -

- and Tabitha Falkayn replies that it was David Falkayn's granddaughter. Before leaving Earth, David and Coya had had at least two children, Juanita and Nicholas. The latter has a son, Nathaniel, on Avalon. So was it Juanita's daughter that named Avalon?

Sunday, 20 July 2025

River And Circle

Brain Wave, 14.

"The Milky Way flowed as a river of radiance..." (p. 121)

"The huge circle of the Milky Way...glimmered..." (p. 126)

Here are two phrases to describe the Milky Way. I must have posted about both phrases before, so I thought. However, I cannot find either phrase by searching the blog.

The search for "river of radiance" had only one result:

Poul Anderson Appreciation: A Beautiful Paragraph

This post contains the words "radiance" and "river" but not the phrase, "river of radiance."

The search for "The huge circle of the Milky Way..." had no result.

This post, "River And Circle," will now be added to The Milky Way Thread which must surely be approaching completion.

In Brain Wave, humanity stands at the threshold of a galactic civilization but it is one that we would not be able to understand. In Poul Anderson's Technic History and many other such works, human beings as we know them go out into the galaxy.

Brain Wave has many covers but we have nearly exhausted the supply.

Saturday, 4 May 2019

A Mountain Against The Milky Way

"Territory," see here.

"Due north rose the sheer black wall of Kusulonga the Mountain, jagged against the Milky Way. The city carved from its top could be seen only as a glimpse of towers like teeth." (p. 13)

Anderson describes night on t'Kela with unfamiliar constellations, the larger moon and the Milky Way which must be visible from everywhere in the Milky Way. I always look out either for a description of the Milky Way or for some object seen against it, as above.

Anyone who wants to know what happens in "Territory" had better read the story. Although I am rereading it, I am currently posting only about details that catch my attention like van Rijn's hoarse basso or Kusulonga the Mountain. Alternatively, searching the blog either for this title or for the name of the planet, T'Kela, generates a search result of previous posts on the subject. And there have been enough posts for today, I think (ten). Tomorrow, we will walk by the river or canal and attend a moot with food and a ritual. "High is heaven and holy."

Friday, 21 June 2019

Different Descriptions

Poul Anderson often:

describes natural scenery;

does so by appealing to at least three of the senses;

describes the Milky Way, usually as seen from space but sometimes also as seen from a planetary surface.

Other authors might:

describe scenery in completely different terms from Anderson, appealing only to sight;

describe the night sky again in completely different terms and without referring to or naming the Milky Way.

"The Milky Way" meant a patch of light in the night sky. Then it was learned first that our sun is one star in a galaxy and secondly that that patch of light is the disc of our galaxy as seen from some parts of the Earth's surface. Thus, "the Milky Way" became the name of our galaxy.

Since other galaxies were recognized as such only in 1925, the year before Poul Anderson's birth (see Significant Dates), literary references to the Milky Way understood as a galaxy are very recent and form part of the perspective of modern sf writers even when they appear in non-sf works.

Monday, 11 May 2020

A Bit Of The Milky Way

We have a list of descriptions of the Milky Way here and a list of objects seen against the Milky Way here. Next we find another celestial object compared to a bit of the Milky Way:

"...the supernova nebula, thirty parsecs off, was only an irregular blur, a few minutes across, among the constellations opposite, as if a bit of the Milky Way had drifted free."
-"The Pirate," p. 148.

Poul Anderson writes as if he had been there. Now mankind needs to go there.

Thursday, 11 January 2024

Pathetic Fallacies, The Milky Way And A Future Christmas

Being without a computer for a few days was an opportunity to catch up with some other reading and rereading. I have become sensitized to literary devices that I had first noticed in Poul Anderson's works. For example, in graphic works by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman:

Meteorological Pathetic Fallacy

"Thunderheads , iron-black in the blue distance. The air is suddenly dry and heavy. The sky holds its breath...

"It's coming this way. And it's a monster."

-Alan Moore, Miracleman: A Dream of Flying (Forestville, California, 1988), CHAPTER 3, p. 2, panel 7, captions 1-2.

This "monster" is an approaching storm.

"Uneasy, Mike Moran can hear it, prowling around the perimeter of their conversation. A tiger, circling, closing in...

"It's coming this way. And its a monster."

-ibid., p. 4, panel 7, caption 2; p. 8, panel 1.

This "monster" is the man with whom the viewpoint character, Moran, is conversing. Moran articulates what he feels:

"'I can tell by your voice, by the way you stand... You're not human, John. I can feel it.'"

-ibid., p. 8, panel 7, caption 1.

Scary. Maybe even more evocative than some of Poul Anderson's storm-dialogue parallels? And I have appreciated Moore's text more by quoting it here.

A Colourful Description of the Milky Way Seen from Space

"I met with Avril in deep space, her costume bright against the Milky Way's pearly blur..."

-Alan Moore, Miracleman No. 14 (Forestville, Calif., April 1988), p. 4, panel 2, caption 1.

A Future Take on Christmas

"...Christmas, when we remember all the dead gods and lost mythologies, and exchange presents."

-Neil Gaiman, Miracleman No. 20 (Forestville, Calif, March 1991), p. 3, panel 1.

Each of these passages reminded me of Poul Anderson to whom we must soon return.

Monday, 4 March 2019

Ghost Road

Poul Anderson, New America, "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

The Milky Way as seen by a human child brought up by Rolandic natives:

"...the stars...crowded heaven, and Ghost Road shone among them as if it, like the leafage beneath, were paved with dew." (p. 186)

And the Milky Way has been called the Ghost Bridge before. See The Milky Way, which was the first part of our lengthy Milky Way Thread.

Sunday, 29 July 2018

Starting The Jumps

Is that what a Betan looks like? Reading prose sf, I mostly forget how the aliens have been described. In a visual medium, they would be in front of us all the time.

I reread and posted about The Avatar in June 2012. See the posts from "An Elder Race?" to "The Avatar VIII." However, I am pausing on more details this time.

In XXVII, Brodersen's ship, Chinook, has made its first random jump. I previously summarized the jumps here and here.

After the jump, the stars as seen from space are so numerous that an untrained eye cannot see how the constellations have altered:

"...nor did the argence of the Milky Way pour through channels greatly different from those above Earth or Demeter." (p. 233)

In XXIV, Caitlin had seen:

"...the Milky Way stream past Fidelio's head." (p. 208)

We have one list of descriptions of the Milky Way and another of objects seen against the Milky Way.

Friday, 24 January 2025

Frost-Road, River Of Frost

Nowadays, when rereading Poul Anderson and coming across a colourful description of the Milky Way, I usually pass it by on the assumption that I have noted it in an earlier post. We find:

"...a night crowded with unwinking brilliant stars, girded by the frost-road of the galaxy..."

-The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 28, p. 550.

Searching the blog for "frost-road" brought up The Milky Way which does quote a phrase from this novel but not this phrase. Furthermore, for the reference to the phrase that is quoted, "...like a river of frost and light...," I had linked to a post entitled "Pytheas" which the computer informs me does not exist! And searching the blog for a post with that title reveals that there is none. A while back, a couple of posts were deleted for a reason that came up at the time.

This time round, I started to reread The Boat Of A Million Years not from the beginning but at its long concluding section, XIX, Thule, because I wanted to treat Thule in and of itself like an independent interstellar novel comparable to Tao Zero or Starfarers. Now I think that, when I have read to the end of Thule, I will again reread I-XVIII with a view to reperceiving the eight continuing characters as they had been in historical periods while now knowing where they are destined to wander in a remote future. While rereading, we can look out for any descriptions of the galaxy although these are less likely pre-space flight.

Indeed, now checking XIX, 12, where Pytheas leaves the Solar System, we find:

"The Milky Way coursed heaven like a river of frost and light." (p. 499)

Thus, that earlier quotation has been found easily enough. I will now edit "The Milky Way" to link to here.