The Daily Life Of The Future II

Orbit Unlimited, part four. 

What details have we already noted? See Some Details On Rustum. (I was bound to have noticed Joshua Coffin's reference to Lazarus.)

Although Jan Svoboda thinks of the airbus that he flies as "...this old rattletrap...," (p. 97) it and others like it are:

"...still so scarce and expensive as to be publicly owned..." (p. 100)

Svoboda, an engineer on Earth, is an iron miner on Rustum and has built his house beside the line that carries ore from his pit to the steel mill. In his garden, a phoenix nest lit by luminous fungi is "...like a goblin lantern." (p. 114). I am picking out colourful or notable details but there is much more where this came from.

"The wind, slow and heavy, rustled withering leaves with a sound which was not like October in New England, nor like anything Earth had ever heard." (ibid.)

Poul Anderson always tells us what the wind is doing: "...slow and heavy..." matches the mental states of his characters at this stage of the narrative. Although this wind is not October in New England, merely mentioning this does evoke October in New England! (Ray Bradbury, very unlike Anderson, has an evocative title, The October Country.)

There is more pathetic fallacy with the wind:

"The wind ruffled a loose lock of Mother's hair and made the trees sigh around her voice. She talked low and carefully..." (p. 103)

Appropriately, this wind, not heavy, makes the trees sigh around Mrs Coffin's low voice. Even casual readers must be subliminally affected by Anderson's fully integrated texts.

Some Relevant Passages In Works By James Blish

Even in James Blish's more accurate description of Jupiter as a gas giant planet, Helmuth finds life forms which resemble jellyfish floating through the atmosphere. Because Jupiter occupies four fifths of the sky of Jupiter V, the Bridge gang feel as if they are falling down onto the planet whereas, in Anderson's "Call Me Joe," Jupiter occupies a fifth of the sky of Jupiter V and, if there had been any significant gravity, Cornelius would have felt that the planet was falling onto him but instead he feels sucked upward. (Different sensations in different timelines.)

On Ganymede, an Adapted Man thinks:

"To an Earthman, nothing could have looked more desolate  - but no Earthman was looking at it."

-James Blish, "Seeding Program" IN Blish, The Seedling Stars (London, 1972), pp. 5-66 AT p. 66.

In The Seedling Stars, the omniscient narrator spells out that the viewpoint character is living through a pathetic fallacy even though that character cannot realize this because he has never read any fiction!

There is bound to be a lot more that I have not noticed.

When They Sit Up

Some by now familiar features of Poul Anderson's prose texts:

descriptive passages addressing three or more of the senses;

pathetic fallacy, particularly focusing on the wind which can roar, shriek, moan or whisper as appropriate and once whips a villainous character immediately after a vile act;

comprehensive exploration of alternative answers to basic questions about consciousness, time, the future etc;

moments of realization when problem-solving heroes spot solutions but do not yet elucidate us.

In that last example, characters typically tense or stiffen. Twice in "Call Me Joe," they sit up:

"If he wasn't so tired...

"Joe sat up. Sleep drained from him as the realization entered. He wasn't tired, not to speak of. Anglesey was."

-"Call Me Joe," p. 26.

(That passage even uses the word, "realization.")

"'We speculate in a vacuum,' said Cornelius. 'Tomorrow, maybe I can tell you. Now I know nothing.'

"Viken sat up straight...

"'You know a good deal more than you've admitted,' said Viken. 'Don't you?'" (p. 28)

In the second case, Viken realizes that Cornelius has realized something.

Wind In Gotham City

Sometimes late at night, I want to add once last post for the day but don't want to have to do any complicated reading first. I am really going out on a limb with this one but I can't help it. Poul Anderson's texts really have sensitized me to the wind as a sound effect, as punctuating or underlining the dialogue, as commenting on the action, as pathetic fallacy, sometimes almost as an additional dramatic character. But this means that I notice the wind in other authors' works probably even where it has no significance whatsoever. Thus, the plant elemental, the Swamp Thing, has greened Gotham City. The streets are full of trees with normal life at a standstill:

"I listen...to a city that has not known silence...since the coming of the automobile...

"The cars are dead now...and wind strums the high branches."

-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing: Earth To Earth (New York, 2002), p. 24, panel 5.

Yes. Wind strumming the high branches expresses and symbolizes the guardian of the environment triumphing over urban civilization!

(I would not have thought that without Poul Anderson.)

Alright. That's it. Normal service will be resumed tomoz or soon.

Summer Wanes, Wind Screams

The Broken Sword, XXV.

Pathetic fallacy highway:

"...the summer was waning at last. But so was Trollheim." (p. 183)

Valgard is drunk and despondent:

"Would the rain never end? He shuddered at the wet breath through the window. Lightning glared blue-white and his bones shook to the thunder." (ibid.)

When he enters his bedroom:

"Lightning blazed anew. Thunder sent quiverings through the floor. Wind screamed and dashed rain against glass. Tapestries fluttered and candles flickered in a cold draught." (ibid.)

We read it and want to see it on screen.

When Valgard screams that he is "'...but the shadow of Skafloc...'":

"Lightning leaped and flamed, hellfire loose in heaven. Thunder banged. Wind hooted. The rain flung itself down rivering panes. A gust within the walls blew out the candles." (p. 184)

There is an exact parallel between inner and outer turmoil.

Before even hearing their message, Valgard has killed one of the messengers that had come to tell him that the elves have landed in England and that the Sidhe from Ireland are in Scotland. Only two of a band of fifteen messengers had survived attacks by elven outlaws.

Chapter XXVI begins:

"Under cover of an autumn storm, Skafloc led the best of the elf warriors across the channel." (p. 185)

The storm both reflects Valgard's inner conflicts and works against him.

Earlier in Chapter XXV, we were told how Skafloc appears to his enemies:

"A demon on a giant horse, with a sword and a heart from hell, led the elves to victory over twice their number." (p. 180)

It can be amusing to hear how we are seen by others. In Lancaster, someone said, "One of the big leftists in town was there...," then added, "Eugene, I think he's called." Yes, I know Eugene!

Darkness, Rain, Storm, Wind And Thunder

World Without Stars, XII.

Pathetic fallacy abounds. Tied up below decks in a galley, Argens hears the Herd capture the human camp. Then:

"I heard the Ai Chun wallow past my prison, bound ashore. I sat in darkness and heard the rain begin." (p. 83)

Argens' incarceration in darkness and the beginning of the rain coincide, appropriately, with the subjugation of humanity. This continues. Leaving the galley, Argens and his guard descend:

"...to a canoe, through a lashing blindness of rain and wind to the beach. Day had now come, tinting the driven spears of water as if with blood." (ibid.)

This is all good descriptive and atmospheric stuff: blindness, blood and the wind that is our constant companion in many Andersonian texts. The present text continues:

"My goggles were blinkered with storm; I shoved them onto my forehead and squinted through red murk. I couldn't see our spaceship. The headland where our compound stood was a dim bulk on my left. No one was visible except my giant guard and the half dozen canoe paddlers." (ibid.)

Through the redness that is like blood, Argens sees neither the spaceship nor the compound but only his captors. All is lost...

Well, not everything. Next we read a characteristic Andersonian fight and escape scene. Prodded and enraged, Argens grabs his guard's knife and stabs him with it, then is chased through bawling thunder and hissing rain but rescued by his allies, the Pack.

How many captured Anderson heroes assault a guard and escape?

A Clean Sky

When mankind, except for a single aged individual, has evacuated Earth:

"Toward evening, the clouds lifted and the sky showed a clear pale blue - as if it had been washed clean - and the grass and leaves glistened. Kormt came out of the house to watch the sunset. It was a good one, all flame and gold."

-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Star Ship (New York, 1982), pp. 253-281 AT p. 278.

Andersonian pathetic fallacy:

when mankind has gone, the clouds of illusion lift?;

the sky is washed clean - that is explicit;

the renewed Earthly environment glistens appropriately;

the sunset of mankind on Earth but a suitably colourful one.

All the detail that action-oriented sf readers might miss.

Read everything at least twice.

Starward.

Rising Moaning Wind

"For a while, we sat in silence, broken only by the moan of a rising wind at the casements and the short sharp panting of the dying man's breath."

-Adrian Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of Arnsworth Castle" IN Richard Lancelyn Green (Ed.), The Further Adventures Of  Sherlock Holmes (London, 1985), pp. 148-168 AT p. 164.

Pathetic Fallacy: the wind not only rises but even moans as a man is dying. Also, it underlines or emphasizes the silence that intervenes in the dialogue.

See:

The Ever-Howling Wind

- and also many other references to wind on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog.

Adrian Conan Doyle writes a good pastiche, even including:

"'Elementary, my dear Watson.'" (p. 149) (See The Birth of a Quotation.)

Happy New Year.

(The woman in our corner shop is a Hindu and told me that their New Year is some time in March.)

This post has been copied from Personal And Literary Reflections.

Other postings on other blogs yesterday:

Traditions

Cessations Of Publication

A Bleak December

Poul Anderson refined his narrative technique as his Time Patrol series proceeded. Working our way backwards from the very end of the series, narrative passages, or short "chapters," in "Death And The Knight" are headed with place, day of the week and exact date. Thus, the text opens:

"PARIS, TUESDAY, 10 OCTOBER 1307"

-Poul Anderson, "Death And The Knight" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 737-765 AT p. 741.

In The Shield Of Time, we are given just a year. Thus, the novel opens:

"1987 A. D."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART ONE, p. 3. 

Before that, in "The Year of the Ransom," passages were headed with an exact date but without either place or day of the week. Thus:

"10 September 1987"

-Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Time Patrol, pp. 641-735 AT p. 641.

Before that, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" gave us just a year:

"372"

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT p. 333 -

- or a period:

"302-330" (p. 379)

"337-344" (p. 395)

"366-372" (p. 426)

Before that, narrative passages were simply numbered. Thus:

"1"

Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Time Patrol, pp. 1-53 AT p. 1.

This has been a long route back to The Shield Of Time where, on p. 374, we find the heading: 

"1137 A. D."

Patrol agents are still addressing the divergence of the beta timeline but they are also still in the past of that divergence so that their year date does not have to be followed by "beta."

And my only point here is this:

"In the paneled room upstairs, Everard, Tamberly, and Volstrup sat as bleak as the December day outside." (p. 374)

Thus, the heading does not tell us the month but, in this case, the text does. Secondly, it is a perfect example of Anderson's Pathetic Fallacy.

Meditation group in less than an hour.

Light Up Lewis

I got to some of Light Up Lancaster this evening. The most impressive display consisted of images projected onto a building accompanied by an actor playing CS Lewis completing a letter of advice to a younger writer before accepting his own death and walking away with a suitcase. He said, among other things (paraphrase): "Do not tell your readers that an experience was frightening but describe the experience in such a way that they will think, 'That would be frightening.'"

Many of us appreciate and analyze what fiction writers do without being able to do it ourselves. This observation is relevant to what we are doing here on Poul Anderson Appreciation. James Blish wished that Lewis had written more fiction because of his psychological and moral insights. I have recently reread Lewis' Ransom Trilogy but Anderson left a vaster output to reread. We have learned to appreciate Anderson's multi-sensory descriptions of nature and the seasons and his use of the Pathetic Fallacy. Lewis would have approved.

See:

Writing Advice From C.S. Lewis

(The young American writer was called Joan Lancaster.)

Cutting Wind

13,211 B. C., VI, IX.

Aryut walks out in the snow to die. He will be killed either by the elements or by the pursuing Cloud People. Of course his surroundings are appropriate:

shadowy ravine;

hunched alders;

glimmering stars;

smoking breath;

rumbling waves;

grinding ice.

When Ralph Corwin asks Wanda Tamberly to step out of her dome to hear some bad news, he adds:

"'I'll wait.' And only the wind sounded." (p. 235)

"When she emerged, the wind cut at her." (ibid.)

- as does the news that Red Wolf has killed Aryut.

For anyone who is new to this blog, we trace the Pathetic Fallacy in Poul Anderson's texts: the forces of nature parallel human responses and emotions.

Wind Shrilled

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TEN.

"North Jutland was still a ghostly country after last year's revolt, broken by the cannon of Johan Rantzau." (p. 85)

A historical statement about Denmark in 1535 AD. This sentence is immediately followed by:

"The wind shrilled through leafless branches." (ibid.)

Pathetic fallacy: leafless branches represent a devastated country and, of course, this wind is not inappropriately peaceful but appropriately shrill. By now, we can almost predict that the wind will comment on the action and will almost punctuate Poul Anderson's text. The two travellers approach Viborg. 

Grief And The Elements

The People Of The Wind, XV.

Pathetic fallacy. Eyath learns that Vodan has been killed in battle and nature responds:

night falls;

wind rises;

clouds break;

the moon, Morgana, flees;

surf threshes;

trees roar;

air chills;

Eyath flies alone.

An Ythrian grieves in the elements, not under shelter. Arinnian had thought that she could be the sun or the wind... Oneness with nature is natural for intelligent flying carnivores. 

Wind And More On Beta

The Avatar, XI.

One woman, Chris, asks another woman, Joelle, for advice about personal relationships. The conversation reaches a dramatic point when a choice has to be made. Then we notice what happens during a pause in the dialogue:

"They tramped on. The wind loudened, the sea ramped. Clouds in the east lifted their wall higher, startlingly fast. Wrack blew off them, to scud across indigo heaven.

"Chris hunched shoulders against a gathering chill." (pp. 198-109)

Pathetic fallacy: nature does everything that it can to underline the impasse of the conversation -

wind does not whisper or caress but loudens;

sea does not touch the shore gently but ramps;

clouds lift a wall, a barrier;

they raise it fast;

they raise it startlingly fast;

wrack scuds;

it scuds across what otherwise would have been a peaceful heaven;

chill gathers;

the woman who seeks advice hunches her shoulders against this gathering chill.

Everything indicates that personal relationships will remain problematic. A problem-solving conversation would have been accompanied by very different weather!

Thunder And Wind

Starfarers, 28-29. 

"Summer heat lay on the settlement like a weight. Forest stood windless, listless beneath a leaden overcast. Thunder muttered afar." (p. 264)

Pathetic fallacy: windlessness means eventlessness but muttering thunder threatens something. Sure enough, when a Tahirian relates something that shakes Nansen:

"Thunder rolled closer." (p. 266)

The conversation is about reasons why civilized species cease starfaring. When two other characters broach this topic:

"'...society went more and more conservative for a variety of reasons. Although -'

"The wind shrilled. 'Yes?' prompted Nansen after several seconds.

"'I don't know,' he heard the trouble in her voice. 'Something else in the equations -...'" (p. 273)

The text is building up to something and the sound-effects of thunder and wind help. My problem is that, from what I remember, the big reveal, when it comes, will not make sense but let's read on with open minds.

Three Whispering Breezes

A breeze whispers on the planet called "Good Luck":

Confrontation And Conclusion In "The Pirate"

- in the legendary city of Ys:

Pathetic Fallacy And Pagan Experience

- on the future Earth:

Ghosts, Gods, Time And The Milky Way

- and in many other times and places but these are the only three that I found when I searched the blog just now. 

On Good Luck, Trevelyan asks a question and a breeze whispers while he awaits an answer. It emphasizes the fact that he does not receive an answer so that then he proceeds to the next stage of the confrontation:

"'Very well,' he said..." (p. 163)

The wind, or in this case the breeze, serves the roles of punctuation and of background accompaniment. Poul Anderson's prose would be almost silent without it. 

Hooting And Banging

"Virgin Planet."

Barbara joins Davis in bed. He addresses her as Val. They fight. Val bursts in. Things get worse:

"'It's all a mistake!'

"'The mistake was ever bringing you along,' snarled Valeria.

"The wind hooted and banged the shutters.

"Above it, suddenly, he heard a roar..." (p. 97)

OK. Let's slow down. Barbara and Val are identical clones with the same feelings for Davis. The wind, of course, contributes to the argument. It must hoot and bang while the women screech and snarl. But something else is happening. That roar above the wind is other women coming to kill Davis as a Monster...

Comedy, drama and pathetic fallacy in a single page of prose. We read on to find out how Davis will get out of this one.

Black Clouds, Skirling Wind And Stinging Scud

"Virgin Planet."

"Cloud masses piled blackly out of the west, wind skirled, and scud stung his face. He felt the weariness of being hunted." (p. 95)

An Andersonian description of nature becomes a pathetic fallacy. Davis Bertram is simultaneously oppressed and wearied both by his human hunters and by the scud in his face. Of course these clouds are not white but black and this wind does not sigh but skirls. Pulp fiction readers following Poul Anderson's action narrative probably do not reflect on his descriptive and evocative prose but are nevertheless affected by it. I do not summarize the story, which blog readers can read, but pause to appreciate these and other rich details and there are always more such minutiae to find.

The action continues. Davis thankfully retires to a bedchamber but is all too predictably interrupted and that passes beyond the scope of the present post.

Into Night

"Marius."

It is night and Reinach sits with his back to a closed but un-curtained window, showing rain and darkness. He asks Fourre:

"'...what way are we heading?'

"Fourre looked past him into night. 'Toward war,' he said quite softly. 'Another nuclear war, some fifty years hence. It isn't certain the human race can survive that.'

"Rain stammered on the windowpanes, falling hard now, and wind hooted in the empty streets." (p. 20)

Observations

Clearly, Fourre looks into two nights: the darkness outside the window and the Long Night, so to say, for the human race. Fourre is like an Ythrian seeing the shadow of God the Hunter across the future.

I had meant to stop there but the pathetic fallacy continues. Not only does the rain speak - stammers hard - as the human character speaks but also the omnipresent Andersonian wind hoots in the appropriately empty streets. The elements underline and punctuate Poul Anderson's dialogues. Readers who do not consciously reflect on these background sound effects must nevertheless be affected by them.

Chill In The Spirit

Fire Time, FOREWORD.

The two opening paragraphs are an extended pathetic fallacy. The first three sentences describe the impact of a man:

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a wholly just man.

"His image had been chilling enough in court. Now we were summoned to himself." (p. 1)

The three remaining sentences follow this chilling man with appropriate natural phenomena -

First:

"Dusk took us as we stepped from the flyer..." (ibid.)

The flyer is a futuristic prop but also appropriate in this case because Fire Time follows The Star Fox in which Gunnar Heim had travelled in a flyer.

Secondly, a satellite passing out of sight:

"...vanished as if the thin cold wind that whittered about us had blown it out." (ibid.)

Of course the wind is cold when visiting a chilling man! (And the wind is everywhere in Poul Anderson's works.)

Thirdly:

"There streamed a smell of glaciers and distances." (ibid.)

Glaciers underline all the chill and cold. I have asked before when analysing an Anderson text: what do distances smell like? (See here.) In this case, the "glaciers and distances" suggest that this fearfully just man is both chilling and remote.

Lastly, for now, we notice that all the chill, cold and glaciers contrast with the title, Fire Time. We remember the beginning of another Anderson novel:

"Every planet in the story is cold - except Terra, though Flandry came home on a warm evening of northern summer. There the chill was in the spirit."

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT I, p. 342.

More chilliness.