Two Intersecting Literary Traditions

Classical and Post-Classical
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

That sequence forms a neat tetralogy. Aldiss knew what he was doing with that title.

Biblical and Post-Biblical
Genesis
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Perelandra by CS Lewis
A Case Of Conscience and Black Easter/The Day After Judgment by James Blish
Genesis by Poul Anderson

In the second sequence, the theme is creation:

God creates Adam and Eve;
Frankenstein creates the monster;
Maleldil creates a new Adam and Eve on Venus;
Satan possibly creates the Lithians and becomes God;
an Artificial Intelligence re-creates extinct humanity on the future Earth.

Milton retells the theocentric Biblical narrative.
Mary Shelley, quoting Paradise Lost on her title page, initiates the anthropocentric sf tradition which is rejected by Lewis who reaffirms the Biblical-Miltonic tradition.
However, the sf tradition continues:

Blish responds to Lewis;
Anderson is arguably a culmination of this tradition.

The question is: was, or would it be, right to (re)create humanity?

Percy Shelley

I quote Percy Shelley's poetic response to a massacre here.

In Poul Anderson's works, Shelley provides:

"The world's great age begins anew...," quoted at the beginning of the Nicholas van Rijn story, "Hiding Place";

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main...," quoted at the beginning of the van Rijn story, "The Master Key."

Shelley wrote Prometheus Bound.
His wife, Mary, wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Brian Aldiss wrote Frankenstein Unbound. Anderson addresses the Frankenstein theme in Genesis. See here. 

Unseen Presence II

Since Poul Anderson quotes Percy Shelley twice in Trader To The Stars (see Percy Shelley), it seems appropriate to quote here another poetic "unseen presence":

"O wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being

"Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

"Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing..."

-see here.

 

Literary allusions abound. I would have gone on to say that Shelley's wife, Mary, wrote the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, asking whether it was right to create human beings, and that Poul Anderson wrote perhaps a culminating novel on this issue, Genesis. The first link above shows that I have already said this - but it bears repetition.

The Spirit is like a wind (Acts 2:2) and Clifford Simak connects wind with religious images. See A Winter Wind.

Inter-Textuality And Why We Keep Books

Genesis.

Ironically, we learn more about Christian Brannock's birth period when he converses with Laurinda in emulation than in the chapters when he was alive. See:

Brannock Meets Laurinda

The Wealth Of GENESIS

The last Montalbano novel by Andrea Camilerri contains a surreal passage in which the capitalized "Author" converses with the character. This reminded me of Brian Aldiss' Frankenstein Unbound in which Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein, together with his Monster, coexist. This decided me to reread Aldiss' novel which has been on a shelf upstairs all these years. This in turn is relevant to Poul Anderson Appreciation. After the literary precursors, Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus and Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley, the science fiction Frankensteinian tradition comprises, together with perhaps lesser works:

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

R.U. R. by Karel Capek, which introduced the word, "robot"

the Frankenstein Complex in Isaac Asimov's Robot stories

Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

Genesis by Poul Anderson

Since I am rereading Genesis, have borrowed seven Montalbano books from the Library and am doing other things, like a day trip to London on Saturday, I am not sure when this extra reading will be done but I hope to live for at least another twenty years.

Comparing A Trilogy, A Diptych And A Novel

CS Lewis' trilogy, set on Mars, Venus and Earth, features the creation of a new human race on Venus. SM Stirling's diptych, set on Venus and Mars, is called "The Lords of Creation." These are similarities. However, as I understand it, Stirling's "Lords of Creation" are powerful beings who terraformed Venus and Mars, then populated them with human beings that had already evolved on Earth.

Thus, these Lords did not face the moral question: is it right to create self-conscious beings who can suffer and will die? Was the (presumed) Creator right to create humanity? If we gained that power, would we be right to exercise it? This question was faced by Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein and by the post-human inorganic presiding intelligence of Earth in Poul Anderson's Genesis. Thus, Mary Shelley wrote the first science fiction novel and Anderson wrote a culminating sf novel on the Frankenstein theme.

I am still reading Stirling's Island in The Sea Of Time but have been diverted by theological questions raised by his characters. Such questions always invite comparison with answers suggested by other authors.

Introducing "The Master Key"

Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327.

In this second volume of The Technic Civilization Saga:

p. 272 is a half page of text concluding the second trader team story, "Day of Burning";

p. 273 is empty except for a very appropriate six-line quotation attributed to Shelley:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
"Fraught with a later prize;
"Another Orpheus sings again,
"And loves, and weeps, and dies.
"A new Ulysses leaves once more
"Calypso for his native shore."

p. 274 is blank;

p. 275 is the opening page of the text of the sixth Nicholas van Rijn story, "The Master Key."

CONTENTS, p.V, informs us that "The Master Key" begins on p. 275, overlooking the fact that the Shelley quotation is intended not as an interesting interpolation between stories but as a brief introduction to "The Master Key." Thus, this story, complete with its evocative introduction, begins on p. 273.

For previous discussion, see here.

Blog Rationale

(Can anyone explain this cover?)

I never know how many blog readers are regular or new so I do not know how often to explain the blog. The focus is Poul Anderson. However, this can involve discussing Anderson's relationships to his predecessors, contemporaries or successors. Sometimes several posts shift to one of those other authors although, so far, the focus has always returned to Anderson. Those predecessors etc are pretty impressive -

Predecessors
science fiction: Mary Shelley
artificial life: Mary Shelley
time travel: Twain, Wells, de Camp, Heinlein
future history: Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein
cosmic fiction: Stapledon
alien invasion: Wells, Heinlein
space travel: Wells, Verne, Heinlein
hard fantasy: Heinlein

Successors
future history: Niven, Pournelle
alternative history: SM Stirling

Having explained this, I will continue to mention Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye. Can anyone explain this Star Trek/Mote cover? I did not find an answer by googling.

In Mote, Imperial Space Navy regulations about alien contact define sentient beings as employing tools and communication in purposeful behavior but then state that an alien hive rat meets this definition yet is not sentient. Surely the regs just need to clarify "communication" as language, not mere signals? Hive insects signal to each other but do not converse about or discuss anything.

From GENESIS To GENESIS

It may be thought that the works listed in the preceding post are too dissimilar in content and quality to be anything more than a nominal sequence. However, that is kind of the point. A long odyssey goes to many places. Geoffrey of Monmouth's History Of The Kings Of Britain, a major source on Arthur and Merlin, begins by tracing the Britons back to Troy just as Virgil's Aeneid had traced the Romans back to Troy.

There are other long sequences.

A Torah scroll in a synagogue

A Bible on an eagle lectern in a church

A Koran in a mosque

A Granth in a gurdwara

Milton's Paradise Lost, retelling the Biblical narrative

fiction quoting scripture

The Bible incorporates the entire text of the Torah.

The Koran incorporates Biblical stories and the prophetic line.

Some Granth hymns were written by Muslims.

Poul Anderson frequently quotes the Bible.

James Blish quotes the Bible and, in The Triumph Of Time, the Koran.

 

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

Genesis by Poul Anderson

 

Anderson's Genesis asks whether it would be right to re-create human beings and thus, by implication, whether it would have been right to create us in the first place. Milton's Adam, quoted on the title page of Frankenstein, asks:

 

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man? did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me...?

-copied from here.

Three Introductions

Each of the three stories collected in Poul Anderson's Trader To The Stars is preceded by a different kind of introduction:

(i) a passage specifically written for this volume that begins by quoting the opening line of Percy Shelley's "Hellas: Chorus" and ends with the fictional signature, "Le Matelot";

(ii) a passage quoted from Anderson's own "Margin of Profit";

(iii) the third stanza of "Hellas: Chorus."

Thus, an almost equal Shelley-Anderson mix.

The three introductions convey the sense of adventure and achievement that is the spirit of the Polesotechnic League. Thus, they, together with the stories introduced, pave the way for the four subsequent volumes that chart both the glory and the decline of the League. Anyone expecting endless stories about the League in its heyday learns that this series is about historical processes, not just about a single historical period.

Wind In Beringia

The Shield Of Time.

Paleo-Indians from Siberia, led by Red Wolf, arrive in Beringia and confront the archaic Caucasoids, led by Wanda's friend, Aryut, whose ancestors had come from Asia earlier. 

"Red Wolf stopped three paces from [Aryut]. Eyes stared into eyes. Silence stretched amidst the wind." (p. 156)

Wind often underlines pregnant silences.

Wanda, now absent, had protected Aryut at his first encounter with Red Wolf but:

"'Where is your protector today?' Red Wolf jeered. Only the wind replied." (p. 157)

This means that there is no reply but often the wind comes across as an active participant. 

Poul Anderson's universes are haunted by winds. Anderson quotes Shelley in Trader To The Stars so here is some relevant Shelley:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

-from here. 

Unexpected Connections

I don't believe it.

(i) Poul Anderson's use of the word, "brake," reminded me of a poem that I had read at school so I linked to that poem here.

(ii) Then I googled that poem's author, Alfred Noyes, who turns out:

to have converted to Catholicism;

to have written an sf novel, The Last Man, which is thought to have influenced 1984.

(iii) Mary Shelley, who wrote the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, also wrote an sf novel called The Last Man. (I have a copy but have not read it.)

(iv) Olaf Stapledon wrote Last And First Men and Last Men In London.

(v) Anderson's Genesis, Stapledonian in scope, readdresses the Frankensteinian question whether it is right to create human life.

(vi) "The last man on Earth knew not that he was."
-Poul Anderson, "In Memoriam" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 57-67 AT p. 59. (The opening sentence of the story.)

One universe encompasses the imaginations of Shelley, Stapledon, Noyes, Orwell and Anderson.

Wells, Heinlein, Shelley, Doyle And Anderson

Poul Anderson leaves HG Wells and Robert Heinlein behind. Read The Time Machine, then Time Patrol and There Will Be Time. Then read Heinlein's Future History to be followed by Anderson's Technic History. The latter presents a future history not only of human beings but also of two other intelligent species, Ythrians and Merseians. To these works we may also add Anderson's Genesis, a restatement of the theme of the first science fiction novel, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. 

Although Anderson did create a detective series character, Trygve Yamamura, he did not surpass Sherlock Holmes! However, Holmesian references are an important sub-theme in Anderson's Time Patrol series. Our paperback omnibus Holmes collection disintegrated for obvious reasons but we have acquired another omnibus collecting only the Adventures, the Memoirs and the Return. I do not remember which story began with the reference to an ancient British barrow that initiated Manse Everard's first case for the Time Patrol but maybe I will find it when rereading Holmes while still laid up with a cold.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, which I reread like some people reread The Lord Of The Rings, includes cultural references to Mr Spock, Miss Marple and Holmes' dog that did not bark. I am drowning in literary references. The game is afoot.

Socratic Fiction

Poul Anderson wrote philosophical fiction. Let me explain.

In the European tradition, Thales, the first pre-Socratic philosopher, initiated natural philosophy, now called "science," by theorizing that "all is water." Socrates differentiated conceptual philosophy, now called "philosophy," by analyzing concepts like goodness and justice instead of theorizing about material substances.

Mary Shelley initiated science fiction by writing a novel about a natural philosopher who creates life. Thus, science fiction is already and essentially about philosophy in its original sense. Frankenstein is a successor of Thales.

In the futuristic sf of Alan Moore's Halo Jones, philosophy and horror fiction have been synthesized (not a serious suggestion!), thus generating titles like Frankenstein Meets Wittgenstein. That imaginary title is not as far-fetched as it might seem because, although Frankenstein and his Monster have become cinematic horror fiction characters, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley is a reflection, full of Biblical, Miltonic and mythological references, on the consequences of natural philosophy. I suspect that Alan Moore was conscious of this when he wrote a throwaway line in Halo Jones.

Isaac Asimov addressed "the Frankenstein Complex." Poul Anderson's Genesis re-asked: Would it be right to (re-)create human life? Anderson's Starfarers summarizes modern scientific cosmogony, thus addressing the philosophical question of the nature of reality. Recent blog discussion of Anderson's Technic History and of SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers addressed the philosophical question of the nature of morality.

Thus, science fiction at its best is speculative or philosophical fiction. We might say "Socratic fiction," to preserve the initials. CS Lewis, who addressed theology and morality through science fiction, belonged to a Socratic Club, more properly a Christian Socratic Club, Christians debating with sceptics. The Club was "to follow the argument wherever it led them." However, natural philosophers have moved from mere argument to the scientific method. For the rest of us, important issues are decided by our total experience of life, including our ability to reason about it, but not by the abstract arguments of comfortable academics!

Anderson's characters learn about life by acting in the world. I am forever locating Anderson in appropriate traditions but this is the first time that I have traced science fiction back via science to Thales.

Collections And Introductions

Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place," starring Nicholas van Rijn, was first published in Analog, March 1961, and has since been collected twice:

it is the first of three van Rijn stories to be collected as Trader To The Stars;

it is the last of eleven installments of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization to be collected as The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I (of VII), The Van Rijn Method.

Van Rijn is the title character of both these collections.

In my copy of Trader To The Stars (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975) (see image):

"Hiding Place" begins on p. 9;

p. 8 is blank;

p. 7 is a fictional quotation from "Le Matelot," beginning with an authentic quotation from Shelley -

"The world's great age begins anew..." (see here)

Thus, Le Matelot seems to introduce the volume. However, I have reason to believe that Le Matelot specifically introduces only "Hiding Place" and therefore possibly appeared with it in Analog. (Later: Le Matelot was not in Analog. See the Acknowledgments in The Van Rijn Method, pp. vi-vii.)

In my copy of Trader To The Stars, "Hiding Place" is immediately followed by an extended quotation from Anderson's first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit" (1956):

"Hiding Place" ends near the bottom of p. 47;

the quotation from "Margin of Profit" begins at the bottom of p. 47 and continues to the top of p. 49;

p. 50 is blank;

the second story in this collection, "Territory," begins on p. 51.

However, despite this misleading layout and pagination, the quotation from "Margin of Profit" is intended as an introduction to "Territory," not as a postscript to "Hiding Place." The compiler of The Technic Civilization Saga, Hank Davis, reproduces Le Matelot as introducing "Hiding Place" and the "Margin of Profit" quotation, now entitled "A Historical Reflection," as introducing "Territory," which is the first of seven works collected in Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader.

Finally, in Trader To The Stars:

"Territory" ends on p. 103;
p. 104 is blank;
p. 105 quotes a further stanza from Shelley's "Hellas" (see the above link);
p. 106 is blank;
the third story, "The Master Key," begins on p. 107.

Thus, the stanza beginning, "A loftier Argo cleaves the main...," clearly introduces "The Master Key" and is reproduced as such when this story is republished as the fourth installment in David Falkayn: Star Trader.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Source: Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)

-copied from here.

(First, I copied the poem, then I searched for an appropriate image - and found the poem.)

This is the poem by Shelley mentioned in the previous post. See also Sultan After Sultan.

Such poems are relevant to Poul Anderson's Technic History which shows the twilight of Empire, then a later period when Anglic has become a dead language. 

Three Traditions

As I said in a combox, we are preparing to move house so life will be chaotic and unconducive to regular blogging. Meanwhile, let's reiterate some points worth reconsidering. We can identify three literary traditions fulfilled by Poul Anderson.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus:

follows Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and is followed by Brian Aldiss' Frankenstein Unbound;

quotes John Milton's Paradise Lost which is an epic retelling of the Biblical Genesis;

is the first modern science fiction novel according to Brian Aldiss;

is pivotal between Gothic fiction and sf just as Superman is pivotal between sf and superheroes;

is a novel about science and mankind;

asks whether God was right to create Adam and whether Frankenstein was right to create the monster.

Poul Anderson's sf novel, Genesis:

asks whether post-organic intelligences will be right to re-create extinct humanity;

was published at the summit of Anderson's career;

presents technological extrapolation that will not be outmoded in the foreseeable future;

is a future history on a Stapledonian time-scale;

like Aldiss' Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand, combines the Wellsian/Stapledonian and Heinleinian future history models.

The other two traditions are from HG Wells' The Time Machine to Anderson's Time Patrol and from Robert Heinlein's Future History to Anderson's Technic History.

Introductions

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III, inherited not only Hloch's twelve introductions and one afterword from The Earth Book of Stormgate but also six introductions from the other two earlier collections:

Trader To The Stars

"Hiding Place": Le Matelot, who quotes Shelley

"Territory": an extract from the first van Rijn story, not collected here

"The Master Key": a longer quote from the same poem by Shelley

The Trouble Twisters

"The Three-Cornered Wheel": Vance Hall, Commentaries on the Philosophy of Noah Arkwright

"A Sun Invisible": Noah Arkwright, An Introduction to Sophontology

"The Trouble Twisters": the diary of Urwain the Wide-Faring (about meeting Noah Arkwright)

The three "Arkwright" essays are not introductions but works in their own right. In any case, this shows that fictional introductions are a big part of the Technic History and not just of the Earth Book. 

Of the six remaining works in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III:

"The Saturn Game" and "The Star Plunderer" each already came with a fictional introduction;

Satan's World, Mirkheim and The People of the Wind do not have introductions;

the Earth Book Compiler, Hank Davis, added an appropriate introduction for "Sargasso of Lost Starships."

Literary Comparisons

Appreciating Poul Anderson has involved comparing his works to those of:

William Shakespeare
Mary Shelley
Lewis Carroll
Rudyard Kipling
HG Wells
Olaf Stapledon
Jules Verne
CS Lewis
JRR Tolkien
Michael Moorcock
Brian Aldiss
Mark Twain
Edgar Rice Burroughs 
L Sprague de Camp
Robert Heinlein
Isaac Asimov
James Blish
Ray Bradbury 
Ward Moore
Jack Finney
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
Greg Bear
SM Stirling
Peter Cakebread
Alan Moore
Neil Gaiman 
Mike Carey
Jamie Delano
Audrey Niffeneger
Richard Matheson
Tim Powers
Harry Harrison
Kim Stanley Robinson 
Frank Herbert 
Julian Holt
Dante
John Milton
Jex Collyer
Stieg Larsson
John C Wright 
Carl Sagan
James Elroy Flecker
Karel Capek
Percy Shelley
Bob Shaw
Kurt Vonnegut
Fritz Leiber
Andrea Camilleri
PG Wodehouse
Ian Fleming
Edgar Allan Poe
David Drake
Len Deighton
Philip K. Dick
Peter Frankopan
Agatha Christie
GK Chesterton
Clifford Simak
David Brin
Samuel Butler
Hal Clement
Harry Turtledove
Jane Austen (and Pride And Prejudice here)
Cordwainer Smith
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Mack Reynolds
Theodore Sturgeon
Elliot S! Maggin
Damon Knight
Jonathan Swift
Dan Brown
Barbara Vine
Arthur Conan Doyle
Edmund Cooper
Alfred Bester
Kingsley Amis
Arthur C Clarke
Hesiod
Homer
Virgil
Stanislaw Lem
Yuval Noah Harar
John Buchan

I had forgotten many of these comparisons until I searched for them.

Addendum, 5 Mar: In fact, the list has more than doubled since it was first posted. I had to be reminded of Kipling, then other names kept recurring to memory.

Introductions III

Of the seven works listed in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader by Poul Anderson (New York, 2010):

one is introduced by an extract from "Margin of Profit," collected in Volume I;

one is introduced by an extract from the diary of Urwain the Wide-Faring, recounting his meeting with Noah Arkwright;

three are introduced by Hloch of the Stormgate Choth in his Earth Book Of Stormgate;

one is introduced by a quotation from Shelley;

one is not introduced.

Thus, the net widens:

Hloch and Arkwright persist, although each appearance by Arkwright has been different;
two real literary quotations, from an Anderson short story and a Shelley poem, are used;
for the first time, one work is not introduced.

Urwain's introduction is effectively a separate story about Arkwright and I am not sure how it connects with the story that it introduces. I am going to have to look at the three Arkwright-related introductions in more detail.

Frankenstein And The Future

The sf question, propounded by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, is what might scientists do - today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and on into the future?

Frankenstein creates human life -

- as does a post-human AI in Poul Anderson's last future history, Genesis.

In Olaf Stapledon's future history, mankind biologically engineers subsequent human species for increased brain power, then to inhabit other planets.

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, mankind conquers nature, thus creating a paradisal environment in which industrial workers degenerate into the Morlocks and the leisured classes into the Eloi.

I gather that SM Stirling's Draka will change the species by enhancing themselves and reducing the faculties of their serfs - although I have yet to read that further future volume.

Thus, here is a definite continuity of theme from Shelley to Stirling.