Two Mighty Rivers

"Where the mighty Sagittarius flows into the Gulf of Centaurs, Avalon's second city - the only one besides Gray which rated the name - had arisen as riverport, seaport, spaceport, industrial center, and mart."

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), VI, p. 499.

This is one of my favorite passages in Poul Anderson's works so I need scant pretext to quote it again. See here.

"The armadas clashed off the mouth of the mighty Columma River, on a day when half a gale drove icy rain mingled with sleet out of the west."

-Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER TWO, 3, p. 36.

"Mighty" is an appropriate adjective for a river but it has to be a really big river, much bigger, I think, than our River Lune. Meanwhile, here, we are housebound as the Lune is swollen by a day of non-stop rain so, after meditating in the attic, I will probably return to blogging.

Meanwhile...

Well, nothing has arrived from Amazon yet. Meanwhile:

we have discussed Hell;

I have ordered Niven and Pournelle's Escape From Hell at the public library and have briefly commented on this and two other Niven collaborations on the Science Fiction blog;

I have continued to reread Mike Carey's Lucifer and have summarized the history of comics selling in Lancaster on the Comics Appreciation blog;

I have attended Lune Pagans Moot and reported about this on facebook;

Sheila and I have walked along the River Lune to the village of Halton and back;

with others, I have leafletted Lancaster City Center against the British National Party;

I have walked to the Sports Center to use its swimming pool;

I have driven to the village of Bentham for a regular social gathering at the Punch Bowl Inn.

I think it is appropriate to mention some life as well as all the fiction! - but I look forward to reading more works by Anderson and Niven when they arrive.

Bygds, Umiaks, Kayaks And An Angakok

The Merman's Children, Book Three, Chapter VI.

In Greenland, the Norse have three settlements:

the Eastern, the Ostri Bygd;
the Mid Bygd;
the Western (really northern), the Vestri Bygd.

Chapter VII
"An umiak was traveling with land to starboard, at the center of a school of kayaks." (p. 156)

(My daughter has had some kayak lessons in the river Lune, after which Lancaster is named: "Lune Castle.")

"The umiak was a big canoe, leather across a framework of whalebone and driftwood, paddled by a score of women. As many kayaks accompanied it, each bearing its man." (p. 157)

These are Inuit. (p. 156) The singular is "...Inuk." (p. 158)

In the umiak:

"The hull was ladend and bloody with a catch of auks." (ibid.)

There is "'...an angakok...'" (ibid.), described as:

shaman
sorcerer
familiar of ghosts and demons
healer
foreseer
wreaker of harm on enemies -

- and a Norse woman who refers to Markland. (p. 16)

The angakok put a tupilak on one of the Norse settlements - and, since this evening has been spent watching Superman Returns (and see here), there has not been time for any more Poul Anderson research.

Addendum, 16 November 2017: see here.
Addendum, 31 March 2019: see here and here.

Sunset On Nike

"Sunset rays turned the hilltop fiery. Farther down, the land was already blue with a dusk through which river, bay, and distant sea glimmered argent. Cloud banks towered in the east, blood-colored, dwarfing the Sawtooth Mountains that marked Hanno's frontier."
-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 518.

Poul Anderson's works are full of such scenic descriptions that can often be reread afresh as if for the first time. Place names give a sense of place. Colors are vivid and varied. We remember such scenes on Avalon and Dennitza and we, changing the meaning of the word "we," are about to walk inland along the River Lune. (Scroll down.) Back here later.

Dahut And Nemeta

The Dog And The Wolf, XVIII, 1.

Dahut can pursue her vengeance as far as the tidal waters reach up the rivers. Yesterday, walking by the River Lune, we met two Coast Guards whose work extends as far as the tidal waters reach up the river. 

Nemeta is content to remain a witch with her cats in the woods, especially since Dahut cannot reach here there. Nemeta tells Gratillonius:

"'Father, 'tis you I sometimes weep for.'

"Wind moaned in the trees. The first raindrops fell down it." (p. 358)

The wind is going to moan, isn't it, when Gratillonius' daughter talks about weeping for him? And the rain falls in sympathy. Nemeta is the last worshipper of the Three of Ys and the first witch of the Dark Ages. The narrative moves gradually from the last days of the Western Roman Empire to the earliest days of the subsequent history that is already known to us. 

Giants

There is a saying that we see far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Thus, we are not ourselves giants. We might adapt this saying and apply it to Poul Anderson by observing that Anderson stands shoulder to shoulder with giants and thus is himself a giant. Recently, we have compared Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys to very different works by:

James Blish;
Mike Carey;
Thomas Malory;
CS Lewis.

If we have not all heard of all these authors, this proves a point about diversity. The Andersons make the legendary King of Ys a heroic but realistically described fourth century Roman centurion whereas, in Lewis' treatment, Arthur remains the legendary King who did not die.

Two domestic points:

I must start switching the computer off earlier in the evening because it is keeping me awake;

a busy Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday stretch ahead with, for me, swimming, walking, an open air concert, a Superman dvd and the big annual car boot sale at Ryelands Park just across the River Lune so a lot less time for blogging.

Meanwhile, thank the gods and glory to the Emperor - both Norton and Molitor!

Two Kinds Of Series

Walking by the River Lune (see image) today, I mentally drafted at least two posts that will be of general significance but that will also be applied specifically to Poul Anderson's works.

There are two kinds of fictional series because a mono-generational sequence features a central character with a supporting cast and/or a group of characters, like an Intelligence team or a spaceship crew, but they remain a single generation whereas a multi-generational saga, like a future history series, links together individuals, possibly although not necessarily including some mono-generational series characters, who live in different periods. Star Trek graduated from mono- to multi-. In a very long range future history, the individuals get lost in the history although, in Anderson's Genesis, human personalities that have been incorporated into the collective post-organic intelligence can be re-individuated and re-embodied billions of years later.

Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Psychotechnic History have some prominent characters although few appear more than once and none appear more than twice:

in the Future History, Harriman, Libby and the Vanguard crew; 
in the Psychotechnic History, Fourre and Trevelyan Micah.

Contrasts And Continuities

(Good Friday. Good weather. Long walk along the River Lune. See image.)

I am impressed by the contrast yet continuity between HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come and Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars franchise universe, also by the extent of Poul Anderson's contribution to this literary sequence:

not just one future history but eight or nine and of different types;

a Man-Kzin Wars trilogy that is a sequel to Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's Man-Kzin Wars trilogy;

one War World work.

Wells presents twentieth century conflicts and a twenty first century resolution, a World State, as do some American future historians - the Space Patrol,  the Un-Men, the ARM etc. The Man-Kzin Wars are an interstellar conflict with a longer term resolution: tamer kzinti, although don't tell them that. The kzinti are like the barbarians in Anderson's Technic History, savages given spaceships and nuclear weapons by another race. Trotsky called this "uneven but combined development": Native Americans given rifles by Europeans; large factories in Tsarist Russia - serfs proletarianized in a single generation; not gradual change but sudden upheaval and social revolution.

Contemplate:

Wells' airmen;
Stapledon's seventeen successive sapient species, including winged Venerians and Neptunian Last Men, then his Cosmic Mind and Star Maker;
Heinlein's astrogators;
Bradbury's Martians;
Asimov's robots and psychohistorians;
Blish's medieval monks, modern magicians, Lithians, Okies, pantropists, Angels, Traitors and Service agents;
Anderson's Un-Men, Ythrians, Maurai, asterites, Rustumites, Kith and sophotects;
Niven's Belters, ARM's, kzinti and protectors;
Pournelle's mercenaries;
Niven's and Pournelle's Moties -

- and, in the words of one Blish character, go with God! (In fact, He is already on the list.)

Generations

Sorry to be so absent lately but other retirement activities are time-consuming like walking from Lancaster to the village of Caton along the River Lune and getting the bus back, going to see The Batman and rereading CS Lewis.

Future history series are paced differently. Centuries elapse between the installments of Poul Anderson's Maurai History whereas his Rustum History advances by generations. Thus, near the beginning of "A Fair Exchange," Dan Coffin's wife, Eva, nurses their baby - who will not be able to live in the lowlands. That problem, physically separating Rustumites, persists. Dan has now lived at Lake Moondance for thirty-five Rustumite years, twenty Terrestrial, so this future history progresses although more slowly than many others. As yet, we know of developing events only on a single planet but that will change in the remaining two installments.

Plesiosaur

There is a Wikipedia article on "Plesiosaurus" of the Jurassic Period and another on "plesiosaurs" of the Mesozoic Era. It makes sense when you start to read them.

"The plesiosaur hissed monstrously and flipper-slapped the water. It was like a cannon going off."

-"Wildcat," p. 7.

This is a telling detail. Flippers in water become wings in air. Once, walking near the River Lune, I suddenly heard a loud furious sound as if someone had gone berserk and begun to chastise the water with a paddle. It was swans taking off, their wings striking the water. I have only heard this once.

Some of us thought, based on a certain amount of evidence, that there were plesiosaur-like animals in Loch Ness but they would have been confirmed by now if they had been there. A swan, seen in conditions of poor visibility by someone mistaken about scale and distance, looks exactly like a plesiosaur.

Correcting The Latin?

(You behold the cover of my Latin dictionary.)

Sheila is a linguist. While walking by the River Lune today, I told her about:

Vae Victoris!
Vae Captoris!

We now think that:

"Woe to the victor"    = Vae victori;
"Woe to the victors"  = Vae victoribus;
"Woe to the captors" =  Vae captoribus;

"Vae victis" as "Woe to the vanquished"(plural) is correct.

Kyra And The Comet

Harvest Of Stars, 5.

Kyra dreams of a comet about to strike Earth. If she deflects it, then the necessary force will crack it apart and its fragments will be almost as destructive so she will have to atomize it with nuclear blasts that might also destroy her spaceship... Then a knock at her door wakes her up.

This is not science fiction. A comet might be en route now and we have no defense against it.

We here are about to go for a long walk by the River Lune. Meanwhile, I leave this thought for blog readers to contemplate.

"Beyond The Fields We Know"

A key theme of this blog is that Poul Anderson's works are comparable to those of many better known authors of both fantasy and sf. I need not list the names yet again.

However, I have also acknowledged the limits of my own knowledge. In particular, I have not kept up with more recent sf. Consequently, I am grateful to the correspondent who advised me to check out the works of SM Stirling, whom I now regard as a worthy successor of Anderson.

In fantasy, comparisons can probably be made with Terry Pratchett except that I have never got into Discworld so let me now invite comments and contributions from any page viewers who are fans of that humorous fantasy series. I can think of two probable points of contact:

Anderson describes many real or imaginary cities (Ys, York, Amsterdam, Archopolis, Ardaig, Starfall etc) - Pratchett presents Ankh-Morpork (see image);

Anderson's Cappen Varra stories are humorous fantasies and part of the shared "Thieves' World" series.

These observations have been prompted by someone remarking on facebook that Ankh-Morpork is partly based on the City District of Lancaster and Morecambe (L-ANC-aster and MOR-ecambe) where I live. Pratchett indeed had local connections and there are reasons why, e.g., "the Unseen University" might be an appropriate ironic description of Lancaster University. Also, that does look like our River Lune on the map.

Last post for March, folks. Round numbers and all that.

The Latest News From Hadrian's Wall

Archaeologists now have reason to suspect, and are digging to confirm, that the Roman fort at Lancaster was much bigger than previously thought, housing thousands of cavalry. Roman ships would have sailed up the River Lune and the fort would regularly have sent troops the short distance north to Hadrian's Wall, where we first meet Poul and Karen Anderson's Romano-British centurion, Gaius Valerius Gratillonius, who, in the course of their fictional narrative, becomes Grallon, the legendary last King of the city of Ys on the coast of Armorica/Brittany.

I was told this by Andrew, the tutor of our Latin class which meets in the historic Lancaster Friends' (Quakers') Meeting House. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle. Andrew, a member of the Choir of Lancaster Priory Church, was informed of the new dig at a Church Council meeting because the Church is right beside the Castle which was always known to be on the site of a castra (fort). This is what it is to live immersed in history. See here.

Classic Characters

Poul Anderson wrote Sherlock Holmes into "Time Patrol."

Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint, wrote the Sherlock Holmes radio series, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

Thus, both Anderson and Charteris wrote about Holmes.

Anderson's David Falkayn used the alias, Sebastian Tombs, a tribute to Simon Templar, the Saint, so I have been reading some Charteris, who turns out to be a humorous author.

We are about to embark on a Sunday morning walk by the River Lune so I will be back with you folks later.

Gods And Demons

(Meanwhile in real life: Bank Holiday Monday, walk along the River Lune, stalls and refreshments at a village church flower festival.)

Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000).

Steve Matuchek thinks of:

"...starting a movement to restore woodlands and flowery meadows on Earth, so the Fair Folk could visit their mother more often." (Chapter 48, p. 424)

We can think of:

"...starting a movement to restore woodlands and flowery meadows on Earth..."

- because this would be worthwhile in any case. The Fair Folk are in our imaginations, literature and visual art. Earth should be made worthy of them and us.

Valeria Matuchek pursued by demons from the Moon need not decelerate while approaching Earth because Native American gods absorb her momentum. Next, there is a gods and demons battle on Earth. The gods include Coyote and Shalako, the latter described as bird-headed and twice as high as a tall man.

Steve, werewolf, kills a mandarin;
Fjalar, dwarf, kills an armored, sword-wielding demon with his hammer;
Svartalf, cat, fights a cat demon until Steve kills it for him;
Svartalf and Edgar, raven, chase two rat-sized demons;
Curtice, celestonaut, kills a seven foot boar-headed demon with the sentient sword;
Coyote confuses a woman-shark demon by changing shape, then gets on its back and breaks its neck;
Ginny, witch, disperses a goryo with her wand;
a Native American priest and two kachinas repulse demons trying to reach Valeria and the broomstick;
the Twin War Gods fight with spears and shields;
the fire god's torch sets foes aflame;
the ogres of discipline club;
the kachinas smite;
the Mudheads bounce;
the Shalako tread the enemy underfoot;
Water Strider, Grandmother Spider and the Northwest Raven arrive;
the surviving demons panic, break and scatter.

My summary is condensed but Anderson's text is almost as condensed. It is too easy to read through it quickly and not to retain most of its details.

(Con)current (Re)reading

Currently, I am:

still, for posting purposes, rereading Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time probably to be followed by the Maurai stories, then maybe Orion Shall Rise (we have been there before but have we exhausted these texts yet? - we can find out);

taking it slowly with Downbelow Station because I have not yet been fully drawn into Cherryh's substantial future history series - which I believe the Alliance-Union universe to be;

rereading Stieg Larsson's long and complicated Millennium Trilogy from the beginning;

interspersing periods of reading and blogging with fairly long walks along Lancaster Canal and the River Lune. 

Rogue Sword And The Golden Ball

This afternoon, I drove Aileen and Yossi to the Golden Ball Hotel ("Snatchems") on the River Lune (see image) so that they could sit out front bird-watching while I sat inside taking notes from Poul Anderson's Rogue Sword, AUTHOR'S NOTE, PROLOGUE and CHAPTER I, pp. 25-26, so there will be some resultant posts but not immediately because Sheila and I have to meet Nygel and Ali to watch more fireworks and hopefully also eat in town and I am breathlessly writing a single-sentence post while hearing some TV news about, of course, the current General Election and related issues so let's meet here again tomorrow some time.

Meanwhile...

Not much Anderson reading or thinking today. We have had a good Fathers' Day. My daughter, her husband, their daughter and I drove to a village (see image) where we ate lunch on a canal bank and were passed by boats and swans with cygnets. Later, I walked by the Lune River in Lancaster (= "Lune Castle").

Since returning home, I have posted on the companion blog, Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments, so hopefully, readers of this blog will click here. The Patrician System has nine planets and an asteroid belt although the characters visit only two planets and only one continent on each. Thus, even this single planetary system, imagined by Poul and Karen Anderson, presents an immense scope for additional narratives.

We never expected, when we read Ensign Flandry, that we would see where the relocated Starkadians were going to wind up. The Game Of Empire is a fitting "...coda to the biography of Dominic Flandry, Intelligence agent of the Terran Empire." -Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 191.

Among Aliens

There has been a revolution in astronomical knowledge in our lifetimes. In my childhood and teens, there were no known extra-solar planets. Now there are thousands. This greatly increases the chances of extra-terrestrial intelligence, maybe some of it close enough to contact. Which is the nearby star that seems to be orbited by large asymmetrical objects? 

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, there is faster than light interstellar travel (FTL) and many aliens whereas, in his much later single-volume future history, Genesis, there is slower than light interstellar travel (STL) and no aliens. The truth might be STL and some aliens.

Coya Conyon does not mind being alone among winged, feathered Ythrians, apart from her grandfather. Much later, her remote descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, grows up among Ythrians. I would welcome alien contact but would also find the close proximity of large partly bird-like bodies covered with feathers unsettling and unpleasant. Coya enjoys communicating with the Ythrians as we might see when I return from a walk along Lancaster Canal and the Lune River.