Port Nevada

"The Pirate."

Braganza Diane flies Trevelyan Micah from her medieval stone house at Laugerie Haute in Dordogne to Aerogare Bordeaux from where he takes a carrier to Port Nevada, arriving as sunset purples the western North American mountains. The city of Port Nevada comprises large square buildings, clamorous traffic, growling machines, shrill voices and flickering signs. Poul Anderson presents a list-description long even for him. We are told that, in this city, human and non-human beings:

hustle

jostle

chisel

brawl

clash

steal

evangelize

grow rich or poor

come

go

are forgotten

 

- that cargo ships bring "heedless vigor" (p. 139) to such enclaves;

 

that unspecified stinks assail Trevelyan, who is familiar with this kind of town on a hundred planets;

 

that smoke from a dozen drugs stings the eyes in several dives.

 

Trevelyan's target, Murdoch Juan, has requested privacy in the expensive, discrete Altair House. However, the Coordination Service recently prevented a war on the extraterrestrial headwaiter's home planet so Trevelyan, showing his ID, gains access.

 

This is all that we ever see of Port Nevada, one of the many cities and future cities in Poul Anderson's works.

"Third Stage" And Earth In The Stellar Union

"Third Stage" (Amazing Stories, February 1962) is a Poul Anderson short story that I might read on line although the text is microscopic. Since it is about then current space technology, maybe it is not sf?

Port Nevada is one of several Terrestrial "port cities" and:

"The port cities are mostly ignored by the rest of the planet, a regrettable necessity to be kept within proper bounds."

-"The Pirate," p. 144.

The rest of the planet is described in The Peregrine. Western North America is forest, rivers and grass. Scattered houses and villages reflect sunlight. Transportation and communication make the planet a socioeconomic unit with a population of half a billion. Autopilots steer flying ovoids through blue sky. A South American resident can work in Africa and holiday at Arctic Resort with Australian and Chinese friends. Many have left Earth, dissatisfied with its cybernetic society.

With Trevelyan Micah

The first three novels written (not published) by Poul Anderson were:

The Broken Sword (fantasy);
Vault Of The Ages (juvenile sf);
Star Ways/The Peregrine (a volume of his first future history).

A future history is event-driven, not character-driven. In this, the Psychotechnic, future history, three characters appear twice and that is it as far as character continuity goes:

"Un-Man," about clones of the dead but well remembered Stefan Rostomily, cameos Fourre;

"Marius," written later but set earlier is about Fourre and cameos Stefan;

in Star Ways, Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service bids farewell to Braganza Diane before departing on a mission;

in "The Pirate," written many years later but set a few years earlier, Micah again bids farewell to Diane before departing on a mission.

Thus, Fourre, Micah and Diane each appear twice.

Trevelyan refers to the Second Dark Ages which happened between "Brake" and "Gypsy." When he visits Port Nevada, we read one of Anderson's list-descriptions:

"...humans and nonhumans hustled, jostled, chiseled, brawled, clashed, stole, evangelized, grew rich, grew poor, came, went, and were forgotten..."
-Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 213-214.

Trevelyan's nonhuman colleague says of the man whom they are investigating:

"'Our information concerning his world line is fragmentary, and zero about its future segment.'" (p. 220)

Of course information about the future is zero! But does Smokesmith imply that his species does sometimes have information about future segments of world lines? The very fact he (?) discusses a man in terms of his world line is suggestive.

"...the mother-of-pearl iridescence on [Smokesmith's] rugose torso was lovely to watch." (p. 221)

(I took "rugose" to mean "red.")

Nerthus, like Tyrfing, is a name that links Anderson's hard sf to his mythological fiction.

Stars And Cities

This is a recurrent theme that I am focusing on again. Stars and cities are important in sf, travel between stars and futuristic, technological cities, and they can be connected:

James Blish has cities flying between stars;

Arthur C. Clarke has a novel called The City And The Stars;

Brrian Aldiss' future history ends with the phrase, "...the old city and the stars";

Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn story, "The Master Key," ends with a reference to the city beneath the stars;

Michael Moorcock has a novel called The City In The Autumn Stars;

both Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson have an interstellar empire ruled from a fully urbanized planet;

in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, interstellar spaceships arrive at and depart from one city on one planet in each planetary system, Stellamont on Nerthus and Port Nevada on Earth.

Lastly, for now, without any direct reference to stars:

there are large enclosed cities on the future Earth in A Torrent Of Faces by James Blish and Norman L. Knight and in The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov, in the latter work capitalized as "Cities";

Clifford Simak has a future history called City because it is about the dissolution of cities.

In Anderson's Psychotechnic History and in Simak's City, rapid transportation and communication make cities unnecessary but, in the Psychotechnic HIstory, interstellar travel revives them although only one per planet.

Time Passing

See the previous post. 

The theme of time passing, past and to come continues on the following page. Diane asks Trevelyan to add the rest of this leave to his next and to spend it with her but he avoids a promise.

"...he...phoned good-bye to some neighbors - landholders, friendly folk whose ancestors had dwelt here for generations beyond counting." (p. 213)

Then Diane flies Trevelyan to Aerogare Bordeaux. I thought that "Aerogare" sounded futuristic but it is just French for "Air terminal."

When he flies to Port Nevada:

"His timing was good. Sunset was slanting across western North America and turning the mountains purple when he arrived." (ibid.)

Slanting sunset, endlessly evocative, fits the elegiac tone of a story about actual and anticipated endings.

Cordies And Other Facets

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "The Pirate" is narrated neither by the omniscient narrator nor by its protagonist, Trevelyan Micah, but by an unseen character who defends the role of the organization that Trevelyan works for, the Stellar Union Coordination Service. In Virgin Planet, Davis Bertram:

"...knew enough Union law to be sure that just about anything he did to the Doctors would be all right with the Coordination Service." (CHAPTER XVIII, p. 133)

Thus, Davis is not a Cordy but is constrained by the laws that they enforce. We are shown different facets of life in the Stellar Union. One major cultural conflict is between the Cordies and the Nomads and Trevelyan will later change sides.

A future history series written over several years presents earlier and later stages of its author's development as a writer. "The Pirate" is a much later work than the rest of the series. Its narrator begins:

"We guard the great Pact..."

-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), pp. 137-165.

By "We...," he means the Coordination Service. He mentions two groups "...the younger generations, the folk of the star frontier..." who "...so often do not understand." (ibid.) The way this is phrased, the two groups are run together, but presumably they are different. The story ends:

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 165)

The elegiac tone fits the fact that its author is writing this story so much later than the others. Only Trevelyan has appeared before although in a "later" instalment so that anyone now reading the series in chronological order of fictional events reads "The Pirate" before The Peregrine. The narrator gives the new characters an added importance or significance by naming them before they appear:

"Now that the Service is ready, after a generation, to let the truth be known, I can tell you about Trevelyan Micah, Murdoch Juan, Smokesmith, red Faustina, and the rest, that you may judge the rights or wrongs for yourself." (ibid.)

That the story is being told a generation later adds to the sense of time having passed. The tone is reflective. We are being invited not just to read but to judge.

The Service is described as:

"...an organization operating across a fraction of the galaxy..." (ibid.)

This differs markedly from the talk in earlier written instalments of men having explored all over the Galaxy and of a Galactic civilization. Trevelyan flies to the city of Port Nevada to make contact with Murdoch. We understand from The Peregrine that there are no longer any cities on Earth. In any case, this is the one enclave that is necessary for the cargo ships with their human and non-human crews. The rest of Earth is quiet and intellectual.

Experience In Time And Space: Everard And Trevelyan

"To Everard the scene was eerily half-familiar. He had witnessed its like in a score of different lands, in as many different centuries."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield of Time (New York, 1991), PART TWO, 209 B. C., p. 24.

"He knew this town, on a hundred different worlds."

-"The Pirate," p. 139.

A powerful echo between Anderson's Time Patrol series and his Psychotechnic History. Everard is in Bactra in 209 BC and Trevelyan is in Port Nevada in 3115 AD of a different timeline. They could not be further apart and yet they are very close.