A Post Of Two Cities

(i) The people of the city of Ys go forth into the Skippers' Market and the people of Lancaster go forth into Ryelands Park. (See image.)

(ii) We are two small cities...

(iii) ...on north west coastlines of the Empire.

(iv) Both need protection from high tides. Recently, Lancaster was flooded.

(v) Lancastrians also might have an ecological disaster because we have two nuclear power stations right on the coast.

(vi) Both cities are at the end of an Age...

(vii) ...and speculating about what is to come.

(viii) Seagulls circle around Ysan towers and also around Ryelands Park in seach of dropped food, in our cases chips and bits of burger.

I spent today at Ryelands Park. This is the 150th post for May and it is the 30th of the month so I will see you all here again in June.

Moving On

The page view count has been high during the week when Sean M Brooks' "The Three Phases Of Poul Anderson's Career" remained at the top of the blog. (I hope that no blog readers missed my shorter posts being published beneath it.) Now that "The Three Phases..." has begun to move down this blog, it has been copied to the Poul Anderson: Contributor Articles blog. See here. Other blog readers are invited to email articles on Poul Anderson's works to paulshackley2017@gmail.com.

The primitive centers of the brain are "...gustatory, splanchnic, olfactory..." (Starfarers, p. 396). Googling reveals that "splanchnic," unlike the other two centers listed, is not sensorial. The brain handles conscious mental processes, unconscious mental processes and unconscious biological processes. We really do not know what happens inside us.

Anderson refers to "...the value of e..." (ibid.) I checked this and it is not what I thought it was.

We have two British Bank Holiday Mondays, thus extended weekends, in May. Today, although still sneezing, I will join my family at the annual charity car boot sale in Lancaster Ryelands Park (see image).

Signing off till later.

Later: Ryelands Car Boot, as ever, was heaving, despite the impression generated by the one image that I found for it.

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!

Some Benefits Of Time Travel

(Portofino, Italy.)

(i) "'...let's go eat. We'll need a change of clothes, but it'll be worth the trouble. I know a local saloon, back in the eighteen-nineties, that sets out a magnificent free lunch.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT p. 362.

We can all imagine our own agenda here.

When Sheila and I moved to this district in 1973, the most expensive restaurant in Lancaster was the Portofino. We never ate there although we did eat in other restaurants that later occupied the same building. With time travel, we would be able to eat in the Portofino.

In the 1980s, we bought very tasty baked potatoes with grated cheese and egg mayonnaise from a takeaway placed called Plato's, since closed. We would be able to eat from there again.

A Bank Holiday Charity Car Boot Sale has taken place in Ryelands Park every May for decades. A time traveler would be able to attend more than once each year in disguise, occasionally glimpsing his other selves.

(ii) "You will have the capability of going back and visiting again your beloved dead, but you shall not, for you might feel temptation to fend off death from them, and you would surely feel your heart torn asunder."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 1988 A.D., p. 99.

We attended the funeral of a local guy called Kevin. On a timecycle, it would be possible to hover above Lancaster, see Kevin strolling through town on a weekend, then meet him for a casual conversation without divulging that we were from the future after his death.

A Few Short, Focused Future Histories

Long future histories - Heinlein's, Anderson's or Niven's - are just about the future whereas a few short future historical series focus on a single concept.

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles: Mars;
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot: robots;
James Blish, The Seedling Stars: "pantropy";
Poul Anderson, Tales Of The Flying Mountains: "gyrogravitics";
Poul Anderson, Maurai: post-nuclear recovery;
Poul Anderson, Kith: STL interstellar travel;
ERB, The Moon Maid: Lunar invasion;
Larry Niven, Teleportation: teleportation.

Eight loose examples, three by Anderson. Whatever is said about sf is usually said about Anderson.

Studying a future history, an sf fan's mind moves either forward along a single timeline, e.g., with van Rijn on Diomedes, or sideways between timelines as above. Although we imagine multiple timelines, each future history usually remains autonomous except once when van Rijn visits the Old Phoenix.

This Bank Holiday weekend:

May Day March;
a moot;
the big annual charity car boot sale at Ryelands Park.

For the retired, life is a long weekend.

Richard Chandos, Gentleman Adventurer, And David Falkayn, Master Merchant

Is Poul Anderson's Technic History literally endless? If so, then we will never know. We will just continue to reread and discuss indefinitely. Appreciating Anderson is also an occasion for appreciating other, very different, authors. Having crossed the Lune and walked through Ryelands Park on a sunny Sunday morning, I am all set to compare passages in Richard Chandos' first novel, Blind Corner (1927) and David Falkayn's opening short story, "The Three-Cornered Wheel." (1966) (How much modern history is encapsulated just by those two different years of publication?)

Chandos:

"When the first of these things happened, that is to say upon the twentieth day of April, 192-, I was twenty-two years old..."
-Dornford Yates, Blind Corner (London, 1947), CHAPTER I, p. 9.

Falkayn:

"...with the bitterness common at his seventeen years: Why does everything always go wrong?"
-"The Three-Cornered Wheel," I, p. 204.

Two careers just beginning and two interrupted educations:

"...a little stronger than most men my age, and very ready for anything that bade fair to prove more exciting than entering the office of my uncle, who was a merchant of consequence in the City of London.
"I had lately been sent down from Oxford for using some avowed communists as many thought they deserved..."
-Yates, ibid.

Falkayn was expelled from the militechnic academy for a prank, was sent away from Hermes by his father and has become apprenticed to Martin Schuster of the Polesotechnic League on Earth.

Falkayn will become a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League, leading a spacefaring crew, not sitting in an office, whereas Chandos will avoid his uncle's office by fighting villains for buried treasure. Adventures indeed.