Interstellar Communication

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

The ramscoop field blanks out electromagnetic communication but not modulated neutrinos. However:

any neutrino beams cast by Pytheas would disperse too rapidly to reach Earth;

the huge transmitter in the Solar System which would be able to reach Pytheas is tied up beamcasting to remote targets that might respond much later.

The targets are sources of indecipherable messages but are also located near probably uninhabitable sites like black holes or condensing nebulae. Starfaring civilizations would have dispatched robot probes to such sites and the probes in turn would send messages to attract or communicate with others. In fact, Earth has sent some such probes and Pytheas is moving in the direction of the nearest source.

Pytheas receives, from a short distance ahead of it, a broadcast of neutrinos with modulated pulse, amplitude and spin. The Pytheas AI, which reports verbally to and converses with Hanno, must "'...compensate for Doppler shift and time dilation.'" (p. 517) How is it possible to make sense of anything in such conditions? The ship detects a second, weaker but strengthening, source on the opposite side of its own projected course. Hanno infers that the aliens, knowing how Pytheas is headed but not knowing either the precise destination or the boost being used, have distributed several messengers through the zone that Pytheas will probably traverse.

Since Pytheas is moving at near light speed, its radiation is not far enough ahead of it to have given the aliens enough notice to dispatch anything but "'...low-mass, high-thrust robot craft, maybe made for this one purpose.'" (p. 518) Unless these aliens have instantaneous communication, FTL etc? However, Terrestrial scientists claim to know the limits of technological possibility.

The aliens cannot be near Sol or they would already have been detected. Since Pytheas, although decelerating, is still at near light speed, it will pass the messengers as it responds to them and their answers will take years to catch it. While Hanno and Svoboda discuss these problems, the alien transmission, its nearest source a light year distant, changes from "'...mathematically simple...'" (p. 517) to "'...considerably more complex...'" (p. 519). This could mean that the aliens can detect Pytheas instantaneously or just that they alternate between an alert signal and a substantial message.

The screened message is colored lights forming three-dimensional shapes. The ship explains that:

prime numbers define a coordinate space;
digital impulses identify points that are members of fractal sets;
an empirical seach is necessary for combinations providing images;
emerging intelligibility should give clues to refinements that will extract the full content.

Hanno and Svoboda watch dancing curves and surfaces become a picture of stars. They have not yet seen an alien.

"Thule" II

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

I missed one example of experiential knowledge:

"'...that long hull would never survive the North Atlantic. My friend, you haven't seen waves or storms till you've been yonder.'" (p. 12)

Of course Pytheas has seen waves and storms, or he would not understand the words, but we also understand what Hanno means, that Atlantic weather must be experienced to be appreciated.

One of Pytheas' ships has a "...cutwater." (p. 13) The meaning is clear enough although I had not encountered the word before - except in previous readings when I did not notice it. Hanno wears a "...chlamys..." (p. 13). Pytheas tries to locate the north celestial pole with a "...goniometer..." (ibid.) Hanno, without access to ancient records, knows that the heavens change over the centuries.

Pytheas' expedition is threatened by Keltoi (p. 16). His soldiers include hoplites and peltasts (ibid.). The Keltoi turn out to be Pictones (p. 19). In narratives set on Earth in the past, Anderson always remembers seasonal weather:

"Autumn was in the wind, chill and loud. Leaves were turning yellow, brown, russet and beginning to fly away...Cloud shadows and pale sunlight sickled across immensities of sallow grass." (p. 20)

Pytheas and Hanno are shown Stonehenge. Pytheas knows that it is ignorance to say that "'...giants built it in the morning of the world.'" (p. 21) By sighting from the center of the complex, he deduces that the Sun will rise above an outer stone on Midsummer's Day but they cannot wait to verify this. Pytheas concludes:

"'I've learned as much as I can...It isn't enough! It never will be. Our lives are a million years too short.'" (p. 22)

He echoes James Blish's philosopher at the end of the universe pronouncing the epitaph for man: "We did not have time to learn everything that we wanted to know." (See the concluding section, here.)

When Anderson writes about autumn, we need no Internet but when he writes about a goniometer or a peltast, we wonder how we managed without it.

"Thule"

Poul Anderson, The Book Of A Million Years (London, 1991), pp. 9-13.

The fictitious immortal Hanno meets the real geographer Pytheas who first wrote of Thule. Hanno sounds educated because he has traveled and studied. He mentions a trope, a penteconter and the Pretanic Isles. The Carthaginians are starting a war in Sicily but this cannot be one of the Punic Wars because it is much earlier.

What Hanno And Pytheas Say About Knowledge

Hanno: "'...I want to learn as much as I can about this earth and its peoples while I am still above it.'" (p. 10)

Pytheas: "'A consortium of merchants...want to know the chances and costs of a sea route to the far North, now that the Gauls are making the land dangerous.'" (ibid.)

Hanno: "'I have some acquaintance with [the Gauls]. That should help.'" (p. 11)

Hanno: "'...you are organizing this expedition.'"
Pytheas: "'To follow knowledge...two of the sponsors are more intelligent than most. They value understanding for its own sake.'"
Hanno: "'Knowledge has a trick of paying off in unexpected ways.'" (ibid.)

Hanno: "'...I've learned to pay attention.'" (p. 12)

Hanno: "You'll need sail. Let me counsel you on what ships to buy.'"
Pytheas: "'You claim a great many proficiencies...'"
Hanno: "'I have been through a great many schools...'" ((ibid.)

The dialogue refers to theoretical, experiential, practical and pragmatic knowledge. Hanno wants to learn while he lives. Merchants want to learn for practical reasons but some are intelligent enough to value understanding and its unexpected benefits. Some philosophers never learn to pay attention to politics.

The Others

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 22-23.

Pytheas is en route from Sol to Phaeacia Sun. "Others," exploring Star Three about 359 light-years to port from Pytheas' current position, have detected radio signals from Earth. Knowing that Earth might soon dispatch interstellar spaceships, the Other explorers send robots to intercept any such ship along the route from Sol to the nearest high tech civilization which is at Pegasi and which might also be the Others' home civilization. They also send such robots along the route from Sol to the nearest Sol-like star, Phaeacia Sun. Some of these robots send Pytheas pictures inviting them to detour to Star Three. A majority of the crew want to continue to Phaeacia but Hanno as Captain overrules them and now reveals that Pytheas is programmed to obey only him. First Contact is marred by human conflict.

A Time Patrol story set when Hiram was king in Tyre mentions the progression from seafarers to spacefarers to timefarers. Hanno, born in Tyre when Hiram was king, has been a seafarer and now a spacefarer and believes in the absolute authority of the captain.

The Golden Slave, Chapter XV: Numerous Details

The Golden Slave, XV.

Phryne, a Greek, says that the Pontines are more alien to her than the Romans, Sarmatians or Cimbri. (p. 204)

After mentioning no less than five current cultures or tribes:

"She looked out the window, down to gardens where paths twisted so a man could lose his way." (ibid.)

The garden of twisting paths - a maze? - symbolizes the ancient world where a traveler could easily lose his way among the disparate cultures and spheres of influence.

Musical instruments include a sistrum. (ibid.) (See image.)

Mithradates asks Eodan:

"'Is it true that sky and sea run into one another up there, as Pytheas has written?'" (p. 206)

For Pytheas as a character in a novel by Poul Anderson, see "Thule." For all blog references either to the geographer, Pytheas, or to the spaceship, Pytheas, see here.

Mithradates astonishes us by drinking hemlock in memory of Socrates. (p. 205) However, it turns out that he drinks several poisons in small quantities in order to immunize himself because poisoning is a frequent means of assassination.

Mithradates leads an expedition against the Tectosages because:

"'Their tetrarch has been a thorn in my side since I took Galatian territory. We have had border skirmishes and the Gallic cantons lean toward Rome and intrigue against me.'" (p. 207)

"Cantons" is familiar although unexpected in this context.

That brings us to the end of Chapter XV. However, XVI and XVII are even more detailed.

Virtual Phaeacia

See "Sentience."

I would take "sentient" to apply to animals as well as to human beings. And the Wiki article (see above link) does differentiate sentience from sapience. I make this point because I think that sf writers sometimes use "sentient" as if it meant "intelligent," e.g., James Blish in Cities In Flight wrote that every sentient being in the galaxy was horrified by an atrocity.

Pytheas' destination, the planet Phaeacia, named by Hanno, is nearly 150 light years from Sol, and is Earth-like although without sentience... Before Pytheas embarked, one robotic mission had reached Phaeacia and had sent twelve years of data. The robots will download more data to Pytheas on arrival. Meanwhile, the Survivors en route explore a virtual Phaeacia where they sense blue sky, clouds, snowpeaks, an equivalent of grass, trees, wind, wings and herds. Anderson is using "sentient" to mean "intelligent." The scene reminds Wanderer of Jackson Hole (Boat, p. 508).

Tu Shan orders robots to cut wood and make planks. How much of Phaeacia will be farmed and how much preserved for hunting? Tu Shan and Wanderer bring this ancient conflict, between Cain and Abel, with them from Earth.

On Pytheas, nanoprocessors recycle air, water and food and can transform any matter into any object or substance for which they have a program.

Course Change

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

See previous post.

Pictures show three stars identified by their spectrograms: Sol, Phaeacia Sun and another star three hundred and fifty light years from Pytheas' present position. A line joins the first two stars and another line appears joining a point on that line to Star Three. Star Three is like the star in Pegasus that "'...may be the home of the nearest high-tech civilization...'" (p. 524).

Interpretation:

Star Three is a recent colony from Pegasi;
the colony detected historically recent radio broadcasts from a Solar planet;
the colonists placed robotic messengers along the routes from Sol to Phaeacia and to Pegasus;
they are inviting Pytheas to change course and visit them.

A majority of the Survivors want an early end to their journey and think that it is more urgent to colonize Phaeacia than to visit the Others. Hanno thinks that the latter is more urgent - the Others might not stay at Star Three. He is outvoted but then pulls rank as captain. He had programmed Pytheas to obey only him but had not told the others, intending to pull rank only in an emergency. I think that he is right that the ship should have a captain but was wrong not to warn the others in advance.

This is the first major conflict between the human passengers during the voyage. Before, there was some sexual jealousy and a potential argument about hunting versus farming. Pytheas is now going to Star Three.

Pytheas

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 12-13, pp. 498-501.

Pytheas leaves the Solar System.

"...the ship approached Jupiter..." (p. 498)

The ship crosses the orbit of Mars without necessarily passing close to the planet. However, she does approach Jupiter in order to swing around that planet and out of the ecliptic. 

Near Jupiter, Sol is:

"...scarcely more than the brightest among the stars." (ibid.)

Thus, Sol would not appear to be a sun. How would anyone out there know that they were in orbit around it? Saturn and Neptune are even further out.

Although we highlight descriptions of the Milky Way, Poul Anderson's views from space usually encompass:

innumerable stars;

the Milky Way;

nebulae;

the Magellanic Clouds;

at least one other galaxy.

This passage is no exception. The sister galaxy is said to beckon. Such galaxies are usually beyond reach but are visited in Anderson's World Without Stars and Tau Zero.

The Survivors mark the course change with a ceremony involving drum, dance and song. The physical universe and human consciousness interact. The song:

"...called to the spirits." (p. 500)

All eight Survivors know that the spirits are in their imaginations and aspirations. Any local nature spirits have been left behind! As a philosopher, I write "human consciousness" but could have written "human spirit."

(If a "spirit" is an invisible subject of consciousness, then the universe is conscious of itself through individual psychophysical organisms and is mostly invisible so it is the omnipresent spirit of the Upanishads. Thou art THAT.)

Robots leave the ship to deploy the ramscoop and fire chamber. Acceleration under torch drive generates enough speed for the scoop and the computer-controlled harvester fields to gather many hydrogen atoms. Laser beams separate electrons from nuclei. The fields sweep the plasma safely past the hull to the magnetohydrodynamic vortex of the fire chamber where mutual annihilation with a small amount of released anti-matter transforms particles into energy which starts fusion reactions which in turn power the fields to hurl plasma aft so that reaction drives Pytheas forward, restoring full Terrestrial weight to the crew. In less than a year, they will travel half a light-year and approach light speed. 

Farewell

The Boat Of A Million Years, I, 8.

Hanno, who says that he is "'...everywhere an alien...'" (p. 32) refuses Pytheas' invitation to stay and accept Massaliot citizenship. Pytheas exclaims:

"'What else is life but always bidding farewell.'" (ibid.)

There are always echoes between timelines:

"Well, I had been warned at the beginning that a Time Patrol agent's life became a series of farewells."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 351.

Pytheas is an acquaintance of an immortal. Carl Farness, newly recruited into the Patrol, has become a time traveler. And we read about them.

Now I really must say, if not "Farewell," then at least "Good night." Next time, we visit China.

Leaving The Solar System

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

Pytheas moves from Earth orbit on torch drive and swings around Jupiter towards Pegasus. The Survivors celebrate with drums, dance and song. Robots go EVA to deploy the lattice ramscoop and fire chamber. Although the interstellar vacuum averages only one atom per cc, mostly hydrogen, the scoop gathers enormous quantities of matter.

The ramscoop field blanks out electromagnetic communication although Pytheas can receive the modulated neutrinos that are usually aimed at targets hundreds or thousands of light years away.

Laser beams separate electrons from nuclei. Fields sweep plasma away from the hull into the fire chamber. An energy engine releases and ionizes suspended anti-matter and mixes it with the plasma, causing annihilation, nine times ten to the twentieth ergs per gram, which in turn causes and maintains fusion reactions in protons, driving Pytheas to near light speed.

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.

Waves And Fog

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

What causes dangerously high waves when there is no wind? Demons in the deeps? Local gods angered by intrusive ships? Or, as Pytheas suggests:

"'...these enormous Atlantic tides, thrusting through a strait cluttered with isles and reefs.'" (p. 25)?

Hanno remarks that Pytheas is still a philosopher. Philosophy and science had not yet been differentiated.

Despite his age and experience, Hanno, in an unprecedented situation, gives advice that costs lives which could have included his own. In tumultuous waves and blinding fog, he suggests that rowing boats might warn of rocks and even pull a ship free. Instead, the single boat launched is dashed against the ship. The steersman who said:

"'You'll not send men down to the demon-beasts.'" (p. 23)

- spoke not superstition but common sense.

Beginnings

The Boat Of A Million Years, I, Thule, 1, pp. 9-13. 

The opening and closing chapters are entitled Thule. The opening line:

"'To sail beyond the world -'" (p. 9)

- is spoken by Hanno to Pytheas.

The concluding chapter opens with Hanno exploring Jupiter. 

Hanno speaks to Pytheas of his namesake, Hanno the Navigator. See here. Our Hanno is Phoenician. The Navigator was a Carthaginian. Carthage was a Phoenician colony. Are the two Hannos the same? Earlier chapters are of greater interest when read in the light of the concluding chapter. We are only just beginning...

Reconstructions II

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

Can all this be in a single novel? We seem to be discussing different books. And, in fact, Boat could have been broken up and published as a trilogy: The Past; The Twentieth Century; The Future - although not The Past Through Tomorrow...

See previous post. Surely knowing that they are models would prevent the constructs from being accurate models?

Hanno convenes a council of ancient explorers:

Fridtjof Nansen;
Ernest Shackleton (see image);
Marc Aurel Stein;
Peter Freuchen;
Henry Stanley;
William Barents.

Why not Pytheas? (He warned Svoboda not to call up people she had known...)

Shackleton: "'Endure...'"
Nansen: "'Think of the others...'"
Stein: "'Share your vision...'"
Freuchen: "'...why are they sniveling?'"
Stanley: "'You'll only find strength in yourself, sir...'"
Barents: "'Commend you soul to God, Hanno.'" (pp. 542-543)

Anderson imagines what the explorers reconstructed by the Pytheas AI would say. How many levels of reality are here?

With Hanno Through History

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

Pytheas' voyage was "'...in search of the Amber Island...'" (p. 30). I have not found this Island on google. It might be a suitably mythological name invented by Anderson. Pytheas lingers in Thule where a young woman brings him "'...a springtime you thought you'd lost...'" (ibid.) but Hanno persuades him to continue and return home, leaving the woman behind.

For the present, I have been drawn back into rereading Boat... Although I have reread and posted about this novel before (see here), there is a great deal more to be found in the text. Having paid closer attention to Hanno's exploits in 310 BC, I now want to reread his second appearance although I know that other immortals interweave and interact through successive periods from 310 BC to 1975 AD and ? (a remote future).

The immortals in Anderson's World Without Stars employ an artificial means to edit their memories whereas Hanno and his colleagues must deploy their own inner resources to avoid being overwhelmed by accumulating memories. Time Patrol agents are not only time travelers but also immortals because they receive a future anti-age treatment. However, this aspect is not addressed in that series.

The Immortals

Nornagest: born in Norway maybe 2000 BC.
Hanno: born in Tyre when Hiram was king, about 980 BC.
Tu Shan: born in China about 100 BC.
Patulcius: born in Rome in 27 BC.
Rufus: born in Gaul maybe 259 AD.
Aliyat: born in Palmyra about 550 AD.
Starkadh: born in Norway maybe in the ninth century.
Asagoa: born in Japan in the early twelfth century.
Svoboda: born near Kiev maybe in the tenth century.
Wanderer: born in North America before Columbus.
Flora: born a slave in the Southern States maybe about 1730.

In Chapter I, Hanno navigates for geographer Pytheas' northern voyage.
II, Tu Shan declines an invitation to advise the Emperor.
III, Hanno finds Rufus.
IV, Aliyat flees from Palmyra.
V, Nornagest and Starkadh meet and later die.
VI, Hanno and Rufus meet Svoboda in Kiev.
VII, They meet Aliyat in Constantinople.
VIII, Asagoa becomes a Buddhist nun.
IX, Svoboda ceases to be a Christian nun.
X, Asagoa meets Tu Shan.
XI, Hanno meets Cardinal Richelieu.
XII, Wanderer leaves his tribe.
XIII, Flora escapes from slavery.
XIV, Hanno and Rufus find Wanderer; Rufus dies.
XV, Flora finds Aliyat.
XVI, Hanno finds Patulcius.
XVII, Svoboda fights in World War II.
XVIII, The Eight meet.
XIX, They leave Earth.

That might provide a framework for comprehending a long, episodic novel that could instead have been presented as a series of short stories. Although Anderson realises each period well, the climaxes of the episodes become predictable. Either one of the characters has lived longer than is usual or two of the characters are immortals meeting for the first time. Chapter XVII is an exception. The immortals act as a team only in the last chapter.

One reader enjoyed the historical chapters but disliked the concluding futuristic chapter. I disagree with him here but another way to present the narrative would have been to publish Chapter XIX as a separate 145-page volume, a sequel. Thus, Volume I would comprise historical and contemporary fiction whereas Volume II would be speculative fiction but with eight characters in common. That might have been a more interesting way to do it?

Addendum, 9/6/12: If Boat had not culminated in the futuristic "Thule," then it would have had to reach some other sort of conclusion in the present. Chapter XVIII as it stands is merely a preparation for Chapter XIX.

Chapter XIV implies that Hanno and Wanderer manage to prevent white-Native American relations from being even worse than they were. Thus, here, as in Chapter I, there is an unseen influence of immortals on history.

Anderson, Poul, The Boat Of A Million Years, Orbit, 1991.

Stonehenge And China

I have just reread Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, Chapter I, and posted about it but not mentioned Stonehenge because we have covered this before. See here. We hover on the brink of Chapter II which is set in China. The Chinese New Year takes a long time to start. We had a concert in the Grand Theatre last Sunday and there will be street performances, including the dragon, today. This will always be associated in our minds with Poul Anderson because of his character, Adzel.

There is no doubt about the setting of II, The Peaches of Forever, because, in its opening sentence, the Emperor sends an inspector from Ch'ang-an:

"To Yen Ting-kuo, subprefect of the Tumbling Brook district..." (p. 33)

- where it is early summer. Nowhere could be further removed from the northern climes where Pytheas and Hanno voyaged in Chapter I. Clearly from the start, Boat is a novel about mankind throughout the world and its history.

Primitives

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 19, pp. 514-517.

"'Too bad, isn't it, that this tremendous quest of ours hasn't made us worthy of itself. We're the same limited, foolish, mixed-up, ridiculous primitives we always were. Today's Earth people wouldn't have our problems. But it is we, not they, who've gone out here.'" (pp. 516-517)

This is relevant to the two previous posts.

Well, that's something, then. It takes all sorts to inhabit a universe and a particular sort to explore it.

Pytheas has now been away from the Solar System for seven hundred and fifty Terrestrial years. We do not know what has become of Earth or its people in that time. Poul Anderson does not have to imagine it. If the Survivors do ever return to Earth, then it will be a considerably longer time later and long after the end of this novel. If there had been a sequel, then I would have preferred it to be about what they continue to find out in the galaxy.

Crew Members

The Boat Of A Million Years took many hundreds of years to draw its eight immortals together before they could venture beyond the Solar System as the crew of the Pytheas. Starfarers begins by listing ten crew members of the Envoy, then introduces them, some in different planetary systems, before they assemble:

Nansen, who will be captain, at Epsilon Eridani;

Jean Kilbirnie, second pilot, and Timothy Cleland, planetologist, at Tau Ceti;

Yu Wenji, engineer, at Sirius;

Selim Zeyd, biochemist, who has been to Epsilon Indi, in Istanbul;

Hanny Dayan, physicist, with Nansen in Paraguay;

Mamphela Mokoena, biologist and physician, and Lajos Ruszek, mate and first pilot, in South Africa.

That is eight of the ten and all that I can track down at this time of night.

It is late here although not where some of you are.

Strange Places

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIX, 15, pp. 504-506.

The Pytheas is in flight.

The indecipherable interstellar transmissions come from:

"'Black holes, condensing nebulae, free matrices -...'" (p. 505)

(What is a free matrix?)

Those are the places to which high tech civilizations will have sent probes which will then transmit messages back to their senders and also for others to detect. Eventually, inter-species contacts might be established.

I am drinking a hot chocolate between returning from the Gregson Centre and going to bed. Today it rained and there were ten short posts. During the day, workmen come and go in a new house. I would like to travel between the stars but we are doing, on a planet. We approach the Andromeda galaxy.