The Pyramid

The Game Of Empire.

Looking from St. Barbara's in Old Town toward the centre of Olga's Landing on Imhotep, Diana Crowfeather sees that:

"...the Pyramid, which housed Imperial offices and machinery, gleamed above the campus of the Institute..." (CHAPTER ONE, p. 195)

Dominic Flandry comes to Imhotep:

"In Olga's Landing he took lodgings at the Pyramid..." (CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, p. 449)

"...he commandeered an official dining room and gave personal attention to the menu and wine list." (ibid.)

"From this high level, a full-wall transparency looked far over splendor." (ibid.)

Flandry sees:

the city;

scarlet, russet and amber woods;

boulders, crags and native growth;

frozen rivulets and ponds;

the summit of Mt. Horn;

snow glowing on further mountains;

gleaming glaciers.

The dining room is an enclave of Terran air, warmth, gravity, recorded violin music and fragrance.

It is a measure of how far Diana has come that she is now one of Flandry's dinner guests in the Pyramid which, previously, she had glimpsed from afar.

In Olga's Landing II

Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), CHAPTER ONE.

See In Olga's Landing.

We try to convey the feel of Anderson's descriptive passages and have come close in the above linked post although we omitted some details:

the sky is not just blue but "...clear, deep blue..." (p. 195);

the breeze is cool although -

"It would have been deadly cold before [Diana's] people came to Imhotep" (ibid.);

Mount Horn is twelve kilometers above sea level;

the city holds not only the Pyramid but also the Institute, industries, shops, hotels, apartments and spaceport;

Diana is in the old quarter whose description we have quoted several times before (search the blog for "old quarter" although at least one other such quarter will come up!);

pioneers built in brick and low because of Imhotepan gravity;

in the market, videos show Terran sleaze and a vaz-Siravo dance from the Seas of Yang and Yin;

a gun dealer sells rifles, stunners and illegal Merseian blasters.

Every scene in Anderson's works reads as if the place exists and has not just been created at the stroke of a pen - or on a typewriter or a computer screen. We want to read more but can gain immensely just by rereading.

The Game Of Empire II

The fourth paragraph of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire (IN Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, pp. 189-453) informs us that Diana, still with no surname revealed, is homeless. She hides her few possessions in a ruined temple and sleeps there in a sleeping bag when she does not find a doss anywhere else.

She sits on the tower of St Barbara in the middle of the market square in the old quarter of Olga's Landing on the planet Imhotep:

"...to enjoy the ever-shifting scenes..." (p. 196);
to spy chances to earn credits by guiding newcomers - "Nonhumans were safe." (ibid.);
to run errands or find information for acquaintances who pay with money, meals, a doss etc.

The fifth paragraph, a colorful description of the life in the market square, refers to two intelligent species that we know from earlier in the Technic Civilization series. We learn that Imhotep is where the vaz-Siravo from Starkad were settled and that the Merseians have attacked recently.

The sixth paragraph begins:

"Folk were mainly human..." (p. 197)

- so some were not. Imagine living in such an environment. The human beings, most of whom have never seen Earth, differ in appearance according to the planets that they inhabit. Because of Imhotepan gravity, the locals are "...muscular and never fat." (p. 197) and, if their families have been on the planet for the generations since Olga's Landing was just a scientific base, are usually dark and aquiline.

That gets us to the end of the third page of the text. Unless we pause to savor these details, we miss many of them because we continue reading until the dialogue and action begin.

New Settings

In Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, the city of Olga's Landing is so well realized that a new reader might be forgiven for thinking that it was an already established setting whereas, in this case, Anderson is exercising the sf writer's prerogative to create ex nihilo an entire inhabited planet in any new story, even when that story is the concluding installment of a series or sub-series.

Continuity in the Technic History is provided more by the characters and by the interstellar situation than by any particular planetary environment although these also may recur:

Diomedes, the setting of The Man Who Counts, reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows;

Aeneas, introduced in The Rebel Worlds, becomes the setting of The Day Of Their Return;

Talwin, introduced in A Circus Of Hells, reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Further details on Imhotep include:

Olga's Landing, like the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas, began as a scientific base;

descendants of the original settlers are "...dark-skinned and aquiline-featured" (Flandry's Legacy, p. 197);

the landlord at the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle is called Hassan;

outback miners, joygirls and Tigeries drink at tables but a Wodenite is so large that he must lie on the floor.

So far, this information covers only one city. However, other regions of Imhotep have been colonized by Tigeries and vaz-Siravo and there is another colonized planet in the same planetary system.

In Olga's Landing

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER ONE, is one of my favourite scenes in Poul Anderson's Technic History. Sitting on the tower of St. Barbara's, Diana sees blue sky, the small, fierce sun Patricius, two moons, the Pyramid that houses Imperial offices, sunseeker vine climbing the tower, the market square surrounding the tower, life spilling from narrow streets and surging between enclosing walls, shops and booths with multifarious wares, occasional clopperhoof-drawn wagons, muscular Imhotepan colonials, a spaceman and a marine badmouthing "'Merseian bastards,'" (p. 198) Tigeries (land Starkadians), a centauroid Donarrian, Irumclagians, Shalmuans and the first ever Wodenite on Imhotep...

That is where the narrative begins.

We are also informed that:

ice bull herds used to stampede through Olga's Landing when it was only an exploration base;

hot, savoury odours waft from foodstalls and music from taverns;

folk are mostly human but not Terran.

The scene is worthy of a Heinlein Juvenile. Technic civilization is most alive in this moment.

Places Visited In The Patrician System

According to information imparted in a recent combox, Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire is an expansion of a shorter narrative conceived as the premise of a computer game that did not come to be. The setting of the game would have been a planetary system incorporating multiple locations. In any given game, a player would have entered some but probably not all of these locations just as anyone touring through Europe enters some but probably not all of its capital cities and certainly not all of its places of interest. And what happens in the novel is precisely that the characters mention more places than they visit.

Places Visited

On Imhotep

Olga's Landing old quarter, including the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle

a single continental forest like the Land of Trees Beyond

Toborkozan

sea between the northern continent and the Larboard and Starboard Islands

Naval HQ in the Pyramid in Olga's Landing new quarter

 

On Daedalus

the capital city, Aurea

Ju Shao's inn perched on a cliff with an infinite view

a prosperous businessman's house in Aurea

Targovi's van parked in the outback

Olaf Magnusson's home in a terraformed tract facing primeval Daedalus

the veterans' colony at Paz de la Frontera

the Highroad River

the Cynthian community of Lulach (also here and here)

Zacharia, an island in the Phosphoric Ocean

A Few Details In "The Pirate"

"Ship Harpsong of Nerthus, out of Highsky for David's Landing, is long overdue..." (Starship, p. 211)

Three words in this passage remind us of no less than four features of the same author's later Technic History:

Highsky Choth on Avalon;

David Falkayn, Founder of Avalon;

Thursday Landing on Diomedes;

Olga's Landing on Imhotep.

A mother trying to protect her child is said to be "...driven by the instinct of Niobe." (p. 238)

A planet with a slain population is described as "'...an archaeological and biological Golconda.'" (p. 243)

Two spaceships are called the Campesino and Genji. (p. 219)

Trevelyan "...had been living for a while at Laugerie Haute..." (p. 212)

On the dead planet, he found an "...ossuary..." (p. 238) - where people, poisoned by radiation, gathered to die.

There are a few unfortunate typos, e.g.:

"...clouds panted briefly to show high towers by a lake..." (p. 232)

On The Highroad River I

A long boat journey down a river offers comfort, in the boat's saloon or a cabin, and adventure as the travelers encounter each new place along the river. Poul Anderson describes two such journeys, the first in The Day Of Their Return, the second in The Game Of Empire. The place names on the maps at the beginning of The Game Of Empire become invested with meaning as the characters travel to and through them.

The relevant map of one part of the surface of the planet Daedalus shows the capital Aurea as just upriver from Paz de la Frontera, which is the head of navigation on the Highroad River. Targovi arrives on Daedalus by landing his ship, Moonjumper, at the spaceport in Aurea. The original town, which had been small because "...colonization was far-flung, enclaves in wilderness..." (Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, new York, 2012, p. 221) has been mostly demolished or engulfed by sector defense command, civil bureaucracy, private enterprises, towers and industrial plants linked by streets, elways and air-space with round the clock traffic.

Aurea is on a plateau above a steep slope retaining a small part of the old town. Descending from the plateau, Targovi walks along a lane down the side of a cliff with, on his left, time-worn walls and, on his right, beyond the railing, a view of:

ice fields beyond northern mountains;
the headwaters and the river valley;
native growth;
farms and plantations;
southern plains receding to invisibility.

Ju Shao, a Cynthian, runs an inn perched on the cliff.

Hospitable inns are a major feature of Anderson's fictional worlds. There is one between the universes and there are several in the city of Ys as well others scattered among many times and places. In the Patrician System, Hassan runs the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle in the old quarter of Olga's Landing on the planet Imhotep and Ju Shao runs her place in old Aurea on Daedalus.

Three Market Squares On Two Planets

We have discussed the market squares (scroll down) in Lancaster and in Olga's Landing on Imhotep. Today Lancastrians had a procession with two lions and a dragon around the town centre, then music and food in Market Square.

There is also a market-square in Solis Township on Earth in the far future of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." The statue of the dancing girl on the fountain in the centre of this square is one of the memorable images in Poul Anderson's works, I think because mankind is about to evacuate Earth so that the statue will be left to crumble without ever again being seen.

Searching this blog for "dancing girl" (scroll down) brings up two references to this fountain and two others to a living dancing girl in Tyre.

The Game Of Empire, Contents Of Chapters

The Game of Empire, CHAPTERS

ONE Diana meets Axor in Olga's Landing on Imhotep

TWO Targovi investigates on Daedalus

THREE Targovi recruits Diana and Axor at sea on Imhotep

FOUR Olaf and Vida Magnusson at home on Daedalus

FIVE Targovi etc travel to and arrive on Daedalus

SIX Tachwyr and the Grand Council on Merseia

SEVEN Diana with General Gatto in Aurea

EIGHT Interstellar war and Helen Kittredge

NINE Diana and Axor embark on Waterblossom

TEN On the Highroad River

ELEVEN The Merseian attack on Gorrazan

TWELVE Dominic and Miriam Flandry at home in Archopolis on Terra

Eleven more chapters... Maybe later.

Olga's Landing Old Quarter

A tame clopperhoof draws a wagon. Anyone making an authentic screen adaptation of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire would have to decide what a clopperhoof looks like. Human beings whose families have lived on Imhotep for generations are dark-skinned and aquiline-featured and should not look like dark-skinned Terrestrials. (There is a squat, black, planetary population in Larry Niven's Known Space - on Jinx?)

Like any good installment of a future history series, The Game Of Empire mixes old and new information. By this time, the series is so well-established and rich that there is much familiar information. There are references to:

Imperial offices
the Troubles
the Terran Empire
the inner Empire
the vaz-Siravo
a Merseian onslaught
Mother Terra
a regenerated arm
a centauroid Donarrian
Irumclagians
Shalmuans
Anglic
Toborko
Woden
Greater Terra
Adzel the Wayfarer
Tigeries
probably more but I must go out 

Aurea

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER TWO.

Capital city of the colonized planet, Daedalus, in the Patrician System.

The original small town has been demolished or engulfed by the newly built sector defence command with its accompanying civil bureaucracy and private enterprises.

Soaring towers and sprawling industry.

Non-stop traffic on streets and elways or in the air.

Settlements elsewhere are enclaves in the wilderness.

A small part of the original town clings to a steep slope beneath the plateau with a view across hundreds of kilometers on this horizonless planet. 

Colonists of Daedalus are of many species from within the Terran Empire.

Targovi, a Tigery trader and covert Intelligence agent from Imhotep, visits an inn owned by a Cynthian, Ju Shao.

Aurea and Daedalus are as fully realized as Olga's Landing and Imhotep although these cities and planets appear only in this single novel.

From Page To Screen

Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453. 

I am a stickler for accurate screen dramatizations of novels. However, extraordinary measures would be necessary to translate to screen all the information conveyed in CHAPTER ONE of this novel. Maybe a mixture of voice-over and scrolling script to inform us that:

the sun is called Patricius;

Diana's people had come to Imhotep;

the Pyramid houses Imperial offices;

the transient, multiracial population of the old quarter drifts "...in and out on the tides of space..." (p. 195);

"Who holds St. Barbara's holds the planet." (p. 196)

We would be directly shown the Miniature Computers and other wares on sale in the shops and booths of Olga's Landing, all of them.

Appointed Or Chance Met

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER ONE.

We can be told how series characters met in their opening installment, in a flashback or in a prequel. There are perhaps two main ways that a group of people can come together.

The team of David Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan exists because Nicholas van Rijn appointed a Master Merchant, a planetologist and a xenobiologist of different species as his first trade pioneer crew whereas the team of Diana Crowfeather, Axor and Targovi exists because Diana, having "...passed her life among Tigeries and Seafolk...," (p. 214) already knew Targovi and happened to spot Axor in the old quarter of Olga's Landing. Axor might believe that their meeting was ordained... When he says that Diana is a godsend, she replies that she is no saint but God does not send only saints - assuming that He sends anyone or anything, of course.

We read about van Rijn, Falkayn, Adzel and references to Cynthia before that team is formed. Diana is Flandry's daughter, Targovi is Dragoika's son and Axor is a Wodenite like Adzel. So both of these teams are well grounded in earlier Technic History.

Diana thinks that Axor looks tired and reflects that he has trudged a long way in Imhotepan gravity which is only 30% greater than Terrestrial whereas Wodenite gravity is two and a half Terrestrial.

Targovi's Van

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER THREE.

Flying cars are so common in some futuristic sf that I am sometimes surprised when a car doesn't fly but I did not expect Targovi's van to. It is a scratched, dented metal box with a control cab, passenger benches, gravs, retractable wheels and pontoons and hidden capabilities. The gravs, wheels and pontoons mean first that this is a land, sea and air vehicle and secondly that it does not need wings unlike the van-like flying car design in the attached image.

On Imhotep, Targovi flies in his van from the Olga's Landing spaceport to Toborkozan to visit his mother, Dragoika, then intercepts the ship Firefish as it transports Diana and Axor to the Starboard and Larboard Islands in search of Forerunner ruins. Extending pontoons, Targovi lays alongside, accepts a towline tossed to him and flies across on a gravity impeller. If only travel were that easy.

I am just about to drive my car to the garage for its twelve month service. Should be back here later.

Anderson Celebrates Life II

See Anderson Celebrates Life.

Never more so than in the opening chapter of The Game Of Empire where the old quarter of Olga's Landing on Imhotep in the Patrician System:

"...had grown, but more in population than size or modernity - a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out of the tides of space."

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 195.

"Life spilled from narrow streets and surged between the walls enclosing the plaza." (p. 197)

 

Booths sell multifarious wares including "...miniature computers of the inner Empire...," recorded vaz-Siravo dances from beneath the Seas of Yang and Yin, illegal blasters found in wrecked Merseian spacecraft and hot, savory food. (ibid.)

 

From the top of St. Barbara's tower in the middle of the market square, Diana sees the new quarter with the Pyramid, housing Imperial offices, the Institute campus, industries, stores, hotels and apartments. (p. 195) She keeps her sleeping bag and few possessions in "...a ruinous temple..." (p. 196)

The crowd, mainly human beings physically adapted to different planetary environments, also includes members of several other intelligent species. This is human life in an exotic setting.

The Spirit Of Van Rijn

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Search this blog for:

Daedalus
Imhotep
the Patrician System
Olga's Landing
Diana Crowfeather
Axor
Targovi
the Highroad River
Lulach
Zacaharia
Magnusson
etc

- and you will find more information about Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire than I can remember or intend to repeat! But, so far, it remains possible to find more to post about by rereading the text. Some time is spent in what I call "blog maintenance," making slight corrections and adjustments to spelling, grammar, punctuation, paragraph spacing, links etc. I think that this improves the blog although no one else is going to notice it.

The Cynthian, Wo Lia, a wandering gambler and occasional racketeer from Catawrayannis, was stranded on Daedalus by the interdiction on civilian space travel. Aiming to set up in business in the Cynthian town of Lulach, she has agreed to travel there, simultaneously employing the disguised fugitive, Targovi, as a performing animal that dances and does tricks while she plays a flute and collects coins. On arrival in Lulach, she puts Targovi's cage in the stable of the inn but later returns to release him. Now she must put on an act. How much commercial activity is dramatic performances? See Smug And Something Else and its links. John Buchan has an American character, John S. Blenkiron, who carries on in this manner but his purposes are political, not mercantile. Wo Lia's performance perpetuates the spirit of Nicholas van Rijn:

"Wo Lia waited a while before scurrying back and screaming for the landlady. Her priceless trained animal, the mainstay of her livelihood, was gone! She had cast about unavailingly, finding no trace. Had it escaped because the stablehands were careless? Had it been stolen? She demanded help in searching, the entire staff, the patrol, a posse of citizens. If the magnificent, irreplaceable creature was not found, she would have compensation. She would demand justice, she would file suit, she would not cease until she had her rightful due!" (pp. 328-329)

Meanwhile, Targovi, with mane and black dye removed and now wearing clothes, looks nothing like the escaped animal.

(I am unable to link to the Wikipedia article for "John S. Blenkiron," hopefully just for atmospheric reasons. Later: It is done.)

Imhotep

Diana Crowfeather is "...everybody's friend..." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 196) just as Kim is "'...The Friend of all the World...'" (Kim, p. 6).

The city of Olga's Landing on the planet Imhotep in the Patrician System began as an exploration base. Guns in the tower of St Barbara provided defense against stampeding ice bull herds and later against human beings during the Troubles but now the disarmed tower, sunseeker vine clambering up its crumbling yellow stone, stands in the middle of a market square in the old quarter.

From the tower, Diana sees the new sector with industries, hotels, apartments, the Institute and the Pyramid housing Imperial offices but she prefers the old quarter with its:

"...brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space." (ibid.)

Imhotep seems as real as Kipling's India.

A Few Details On Imhotep

Imhotepan gravity is thirty percent greater than Terran so:

colonists have adapted;
Navy men are fit enough to walk easily;
civilian freighter crews tire and are afraid of falling.

Lowland Tigeries visiting the higher altitude of Olga's Landing wear air helmets or surgically installed oxygills.

The visiting Wodenite rumbles thunderous and accented but fluent Anglic and this touches on a point that I noticed when watching a Narnia film. When on screen an extraterrestrial or a Narnian Talking Beast speaks, the voice should not sound as if it has issued from the vocal organs of a human actor. How would a speaking lion, owl, Wodenite etc sound?

In a Technic History film, we should hear Merseians speaking Eriau and Ythrians speaking Planha with subtitles but, even when they speak the Emperor's Anglic, which we hear as English, the sound effects department should make them sound alien, deep resonance from Merseians and trilling speech from Ythrians. Every species should sound different and should be identifiable by voice alone.

Dakotia

A Starkadian (see here) or Imhotepan Tigery should not look too much like a Terrestrial tiger. (Nor should a kzin.) On this cover, he looks like something else because he is disguised.

As Diana Crowfeather's surname suggests, her heritage is already one that many would regard as sufficiently exotic although she remembers little of it, having "...passed her life among Tigeries and Seafolk." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 214) Some Dakota people, after trying to revive their identity in North America, left Earth during the Breakup and formed the autonomous community of Dakotia (scroll down) on the planet Atheia. The Dakotian Maria Crowfeather, Diana's mother, came to Imhotep as a xenologist.

During the Allied Planets period, it will be said that Atheia has retained or regained most of the amenities of old Earth. Thus, here is a direct link from the twentieth century, and earlier, to about 4000 AD:

Dakota on Earth;
Dakotia on Atheia;
Dakotians on Imhotep;
Atheia in the Allied Planets.

Olga's Landing on Imhotep was only a scientific base until the Starkadian resettlement. The planet happened to have environments suitable for both Tigeries and vaz-Siravo.

The Game Of Empire "...does homage to Rudyard Kipling." (p. 192) Thus, reading Kim has got me back into rereading relevant passages of The Game Of Empire.

"'Here begins the Great Game.'"
-Rudyard Kipling, Kim (London, 1944), p. 209.