Star Trek And The Future Histories

David Birr explains this bizarre cover image in a comment here.

Star Trek TV series, films and novels have become a future history and a cultural reference point. When I told a friend about a "reality storm" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, he remarked that that sounded like something out of Star Trek, then laughed when I told him that one of the characters had said that that sounded like something out of Star Trek.

A narrator in Robert Heinlein's The Number Of The Beast compares the bridge of Lazarus Long's spaceship to the bridge of the Enterprise - although I would prefer not to refer to The Number Of The Beast.

Isaac Asimov scientifically advised Star Trek. James Blish adapted episodes as short stories and wrote the first Star Trek novel. At a Memorial evening for James Blish in London, Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber described Blish's Cities in Flight future history as "a higher and greater Star Trek."

Larry Niven adapted a Known Space story as a Star Trek animated episode. Niven and Jerry Pournelle place a Chief Engineer from New Scotland on a Navy spaceship and say that this ethnicity is common among Engineers.

If Kirk were in Intelligence and Vulcan were in the Klingon Empire, then Star Trek would parallel Poul Anderson's Flandry series. Many sf stories about spaceship crews exploring extrasolar planets could be adapted as Star Trek episodes.

Addendum: Are Moties like intelligent tribbles?

Starships And Star Trek

I have made many comparisons with Star Trek.

Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships" has a human spaceship trapped in a Black Nebula by beautiful humanoid aliens with superior psychic powers and therefore obviously is a potential Star Trek episode. Larry Niven adapted a Known Space short story as a Star Trek animated episode, then Alan Dean Foster novelized the animation. A.E. van Vogt's The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is another potential Star Trek sequence and even has a Spock-like Japanese character. Charles Montieth, the British publisher, described James Blish's Cities In Flight as "...a higher and greater Star Trek." (Quoting from memory.)

I have posted about Spaceship Stories which obviously include Star Trek and much prose sf by Anderson and others. Some works would be easily adapted to Star Trek; others not.

Page And Screen II

See Page And Screen.

This post presents some general observations and Poul Anderson is part of it.

Of course, if anyone likes screen sf and dislikes prose sf, then that is their choice like what they eat or which church, if any, they attend. However, Star Trek fans read Star Trek novels. It is a short step from James Blish's Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, to Blish's future history series, Cities In Flight, which was to have been filmed although it wound up not being. Cities In Flight was described as a "higher and greater Star Trek" (see here) and this characterization is valid even down to the focus on the bridge team instead of on the large crew of a starship or the population of New York.

It is a short step from kzinti in an animated Star Trek episode scripted by Larry Niven to the Man-Kzin War series written by Niven, Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling etc. From there, readers may proceed to:

the rest of Niven's Known Space future history;
Anderson's and Pournelle's future histories;
Stirling's alternative history series.

It is difficult to see how anyone can fail to conclude that these writers do what Star Trek does but do it better.

Doctor Who, which also presents a long list of novels based on the TV series, used to alternate between historical and futuristic or extraterrestrial settings:

Daleks and Thals are like Morlocks and Eloi;
Daleks: Invasion Earth is like The War Of The Worlds;
Danellians and Time Patrol are a vast improvement on the Time Lords;
the Time Patrol series realizes many historical periods.

So I still maintain that those who restrict their attention to Star Trek or Doctor Who miss out on a lot that is potentially there for them.

Tech Or Trek

A visit to Andrea always generates material for blogging. Today, we watched the first two episodes of the sixth Star Trek live action TV series, Discovery.

(i) "How To Be Ethnic..." was written as a prequel to the trader team stories;
the Young Flandry Trilogy was written as a prequel to the Captain Flandry series;
Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Discovery were written as prequels to Star Trek.

(ii) Poul Anderson describes space battles whereas Star Trek shows them.

(iii) Vulcans and Chereionites are telepathic.

(iv) Klingons and Roidhunate Merseians are racial supremacists.

I advise Star Trek fans to read Anderson.

STAR TREK And AFTER DOOMSDAY

Although Star Trek: The Original Series was prematurely cancelled after only three seasons, the Star Trek media franchise has become vaster than any prose sf future history series and has familiarized TV and cinema audiences with dramatic scenes set on the bridges of faster than light interstellar spaceships. We reflect on this Star Trek-prose sf parallelism once again as we reread Poul Anderson's accounts of the starships, Benjamin Franklin and Europa, in his After Doomsday: infinitesimally briefer but also infinitely better than Star Trek.

See also:

On The Bridge

Star Ways

Star Trek ought to serve as a introduction to prose sf rather than as a phenomenon per se. However, people out there are going to continue to have tastes that differ from yours or mine. May we all flourish.

Star Trek And Other SF

I visited Andrea who was able to tell me how many seasons each Star Trek series has had. We calculated that a Trekkie could spend all of his or her time watching and reading nothing but Star Trek which is unfortunate because there is a lot of much better prose sf to be read. There is also an indirect connection that could potentially lead Trekkies out of Star Trek. Poul Anderson, among others, wrote Man-Kzin Wars stories for Larry Niven's Known Space future history series and Niven imported his kzinti into the Star Trek universe.

Apart from his various well-known series, Anderson also presented several potential series. Only two installments of his Psychotechnic History feature Stellar Union Coordinator Trevelyan Micah and only one installment of his Technic History features a Ranger of the Commonalty. In terms of sheer quantity, the Coordination Service and the Commonalty cannot possibly compete with Starfleet. However, continuations of both these series written by Anderson himself would be worth far more than any number of additional Star Trek series.

Cross-Cosmic Kzinti

Kzinti connect Larry Niven's Known Space future history to Poul Anderson's works because Anderson wrote three Man-Kzin Wars stories and to Star Trek because Niven adapted "The Soft Weapon," a kzinti story, as "The Slaver Weapon," a Star Trek animated TV episode that replaces a Puppeteer with a Vulcan but imports Slavers and kzinti to the Star Trek universe. Consequently, there is fannish information about kzinti in Star Trek (see here) although no direct connection between Poul Anderson and Star Trek. Some of us would like to see screen adaptations of Known Space, including the Man-Kzin Wars, and of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, both of which, if done well, would be far more successful than Star Trek - which is unbelievably successful with thirteen feature films and an unending series of TV series.

Interstellar Fiction

Poul Anderson's The Peregrine, about the interstellar Nomads, was originally called Star Ways. Two of the Nomad spaceships are called Trekker and Voyageur. Anderson wrote this novel decades before the existence of Star Wars, Star Trek or Star Trek: Voyager. However, certain words and terminologies recur in an interstellar sf context.

We recognize the scenario from Star Trek and from other sf works, e.g., by James Blish. A large spaceship with a crew of hundreds or thousands enters a planetary system and goes into orbit around an inhabited or colonized planet. Crew members shuttle to the surface in ship's boats. Star Trek introduced the transporter (teleporter) in order to avoid scenes involving boats. Extrasolar planets are either colonized from Earth or inhabited by surprisingly humanoid natives. One Nomad "marries" (not legally) a very beautiful native woman with white skin and long silver hair.

Thankfully, at least, the Nomad and his new wife are not interfertile - although Star Trek does allow even that in the case of Vulcan. The Vulcans should have been a separated colony, not the result of independent evolution, just as the Time Lords should have been not aliens but future humanity.

Poul Anderson is able to write convincingly and to address significant issues despite such sf cliches, which he later transcended.

Tenuous Threads

Another future historian connects with Star Trek because James Blish:

adapted Star Trek scripts as prose short stories;

wrote the first Star Trek novel albeit one that became retroactively non-canonical unless, unbeknownst to me, some other writer has "saved the appearances" by explaining how the Klingon Empire was revived after Blish had brought it to an abrupt end.

It is a long way from Blish's Star Trek novel to Larry Niven's animated Star Trek episode to MKW stories by Poul Anderson and others yet a tenuous thread links these two (or more) alternative future histories in their respective franchise universes.

TV series are multi-authored so why not also some prose sf? Franchising works with MKW but I would not like to see similar treatment of Anderson's Flandry period. In fact, I thought that the two Technic History stories in Multiverse seemed inauthentic but maybe I ought to reread and discuss them further?

A Curious Parallel

Endless posts about Poul Anderson's Technic History are the equivalent on this blog of endless Star Trek reruns on TV. Star Trek, being multi-authored, out-competes Anderson in quantity although not in anything else.

Poul Anderson contributed to several other fictional universes although not to Star Trek. James Blish's original Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, is prima facie non-canonical because it closes down the Klingon Empire way earlier than screen Star Trek. Robert Feist's Technic History story, "A Candle," is prima facie non-canonical because it treats the Chereionites as still extant, not extinct. This is a curious parallel.

See "A Candle" by Robert E. Feist.

"A Candle" describes the Chereionites as:

"'...the intellectual power within the Merseian Empire.'" (p. 303)

They are not. A single surviving Chereionite uses his planet's resources to dupe the Merseians into thinking that a planetary population is leading their intelligence service.

The Technic History And Star Trek

If Kirk were in Intelligence instead of Starfleet and if Vulcan were in the Klingon Empire instead of the Federation, then Star Trek would parallel Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. Both Spock and Aycharaych are humanoid telepaths with pointed ears - although Spock's telepathy would have to be extremely enhanced before it could rival Aycharaych's.

To anyone who likes Star Trek but is unfamiliar with the Technic History, I would say that:

Merseians, Chereionites and Ythrians are more imaginative aliens than Klingons, Vulcans or Romulans;

Flandry and Aycharaych are better characterized than Kirk or Spock;

Star Trek achieved future historical status by spreading from the original series into one prequel, three contemporaneous sequels and three time travel films whereas the Technic History became a future history by seamlessly blending two interstellar series either of which could have stood on its own.

On this last point, either van Rijn versus the Borthudians or Flandry versus the Merseians is more than a match for Kirk versus the Merseians, as indeed are Philippe Rochefort versus the Avalonians, Roan Tom struggling through the Long Night or Daven Laure navigating the Cloud Universe.

A greater and higher Star Trek as, years ago at a Memorial Evening for James Blish, Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber described Cities In Flight.

References And Resonances

Characters in works by Poul Anderson refer to Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Superman. Anderson wrote a Star Ways novel long before there was a Star Wars film and a passage in the novel resonates with Star Trek. See Star Ways. Thus, there are references and resonances.

More references:

in SM Stirling's works, the Vulcan greeting from Star Trek, "Live long and prosper," is quoted both by a Nantucketer and by a Shadowspawn;

in a Philip K. Dick short story, TV space operas are called "captainkirks";

Robert Heinlein's Number Of The Beast (not that I recommend it) refers to Star Trek.

Thus, Star Trek has popularized some sf ideas and made its mark, although I do not think that it was ever referenced by Poul Anderson.

Time Patrol And Star Trek

There are some (not many) parallels between Time Patrol and Star Trek:

two sf series;

two high tech organizations, the Time Patrol and Star Fleet, visiting often lower tech environments;

Enterprise crew members "transport"/teleport onto planetary surfaces just as Time Patrol agents materialize in earlier periods;

three episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series featured time travel and James Blish linked these episodes together in his screen adaptations as if initiating a time travel sub-series;

after seeing Star Trek: Generations, I wanted to read something good about time travel so I reread Anderson's "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Consequences Through The Continuum

"Brave To Be A King," 1.

"Ages before the first hieroglyphics there had been wars and wanderings, discoveries and achievements, whose consequences reached through all the continuum. The Patrol had to know them. Charting their course was a job for the Specialist ratings." (p. 60)

Consequences from pre-hieroglyphic times stretching throughout the continuum? Again, the Time Patrol series connects past with future and Earth with cosmos.

I first heard of Star Trek because, looking for second hand paperbacks by James Blish, I found Star Trek, his first book of script adaptations. I bought Star Trek 3 when it was first published fifty one years ago and never expected to quote it here.

According to Blish's adaptation of "Assignment: Earth,":

Kirk, Spock and McCoy had time traveled from the City on the edge of Forever;

the Enterprise had time traveled when it hit a black star;

now the Enterprise has been sent to 1969 because, in the confusion at the end of that crisis year, crucial documents had been lost or falsified and their contents:

"...were possibly of political as well as military interest, and in a galaxy that contained the Klingon Empire as well as the Federation, they might be a good deal more than interesting."
-James Blish, "Assignment: Earth" IN Blish, Star Trek 3 (New York, 1969), pp. 54-65 AT pp. 54-55.

I misunderstood that to mean that Klingons were descended from Terrestrials.

Thus, both the Time Patrol and the Enterprise search in Earth's past for information of future interstellar significance. Also, Blish used futuristic sf to comment on his present.

Miscellania

"Dark energy" is an invisible omnipresent prime mover and cause of cosmic expansion so it has some of the properties of God.

Travelers to the past or to other timelines might encounter dodos. This happens again in SM Stirling, Against The Tide Of Years (New York, 1999), Chapter Seven. A teacher shows children "...a live dodo in a wicker cage..." (p. 124)

I have speculated about Poul Anderson writing Superman and rationalizing Kryptonian powers. In fact, there are at least three popular sf series that I think need an overhaul:

Star Trek - the Vulcans should be not aliens but descendants of a small population of human colonists of an extrasolar planet;

Doctor Who - the Time Lords should be not aliens but our descendants;

Superman - there should be some explanation not only of Kryptonian powers but also of the Kryptonians' remarkable resemblance to white North Americans. (See here.)

Poul Anderson could have done all of these.

Star Trek has permeated our culture. To cite two examples -

when I told a friend of a "reality storm" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, he remarked, "That sounds like something out of Star Trek," and I replied, "One of the characters says, 'That sounds like something out of Star Trek.'" (People from different realities shelter from the storm and the different realities include ours);

when one of SM Stirling's Nantucketers meets the King of Babylon:

"'O King, live long and prosper,' he said solemnly, holding up his right hand with the fingers spread in a V. I always wanted to say that, he thought, then there was a sharp pain in his ankle as Doreen kicked him; she hadn't believed he would actually go through with it." (Chapter Eight, p. 131)

We were concerned when we read that strangers in big ships were bringing many gifts to the King of Babylon. Walker? We were relieved when we read that the strangers' king was called "'...Yhared-Koff'in...'" (p. 128) - the Nantucketers' Chief Executive Officer. Not military conquests but peaceful alliances will "...make all things new."

Cats And Monkeys

One of my questions is answered. The question, in What Happened Long Ago, was:

"Did Kzin have evolutionary equivalents of monkeys to which the feline kzinti contemptuously compare human beings?"

The answer, in "The Asteroid Queen," Chapter III, is:

"...Claude's own superior habitually referred to humans as kz'eerkt, monkey. That was a quasi-primate on the kzinti homeworld. A tree-dwelling mammal-analog, as much like a monkey as a kzin was like a tiger, which was not much." (p. 73)

So kzinti are not much like big cats and human beings are compared to animals that are not much like monkeys. The back cover blurb of Man-Kzin Wars III proclaims:

"...all that stands between freedom and a feline-filled universe is the human race. Good luck, monkey-boys." (p. 73)

Cats versus monkeys in spaceships sounds cartoony and makes good paperback blurb but is not really what the stories are about. Pierre Boulle's La Planete Des Singes has genuine intelligent monkeys in space.

Accessing a Public Library is a new experience. It is necessary to make an appointment not only to make an inquiry but even to browse. It is impossible to order books from other libraries. Morecambe Library did not have any of the Known Space novels that I wanted. Other than that, I had a pleasant afternoon in Morecambe and conversed with the half-naked, tattooed, incredibly long-haired Andrea (scroll down) by shouting up to his balcony. He confirmed that the kzinti are in the Star Trek Role Playing Game. See here.

There is no direct connection between Star Trek and Poul Anderson. Nevertheless, a Star Trek fan might:

find references to kzinti in Star Trek;

see kzinti in action in an animated episode adapted by Larry Niven from a Known Space story;

read Niven's Known Space future history;

read Man-Kzin Wars stories, including those written by Poul Anderson;

go from there to Anderson's Technic History which has not kzinti but Merseians but also much more than that;

read other works by Anderson;

think, "I should have done this in the first place!"

I am advised that searching for "Emperor Josip" on this blog discloses some interesting posts and discussions so here goes: Emperor Josip. (Scroll down.)

This is probably the last post for this month since it will make a round number of posts for the month. Late in the evening here, I relax from enjoyable posting and resume enjoyable other reading. Chase The Morning (scroll down) is indeed intriguing in its different approach to interpenetrating parallel worlds but currently is losing out to competition from the severalth rereading of the incomparable Stieg Larsson.

I will see you all back here next month which means tomorrow.

May that happen which the gods will.

Greater Treks

Years ago, at a Memorial Evening for James Blish in London, the British publisher, Charles Monteith, described Blish's Cities In Flight future history series as "a higher and greater Star Trek" (quoting from memory). This same description could also be applied to Poul Anderson's Technic History. "Wings of Victory" and "The Sharing of Flesh" could be adapted as Star Trek episodes. The Merseian Roidhunate is a higher and greater Klingon Empire. Aycharaych is like a more substantial Spock although on the wrong side.

One of the early Star Trek films was advertised with the slogan: "The adventure continues..." This phrase certainly applies to the Technic History. The comprehensive The Earth Book Of Stormgate completes an entire historical narrative stretching from the Star Trek-like Grand Survey to the aftermath of the Terran War on Avalon yet this same Earth Book is followed by the nine-volume Flandy period and its one-volume sequel. The Merseians are perhaps finally being worn down by the end of The Game Of Empire. The post-Flandry volume covers no less than four periods, millennia apart, and a new era of unprecedented interstellar wealth is just beginning at the end of the concluding installment when human civilizations have spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy. The adventure continues.

The Star Fox: A Series?

In Poul Anderson's The Star Fox (London, 1968), I have so far read only as far as p. 30, of 204, and, after today, will be away from computers for about a week so that, although I might finish reading the novel in the next few days, I will not be discussing it for a while.

I notice that the publishing history near the front of the book informs us that "these stories" were originally published in a slightly different form in a magazine. Further, the blurb informs us that the "Star Fox" of the title is a spaceship in which a crew of volunteers wages a hit-and-run battle against alien aggressors. This sounds like the perfect subject matter for a series of stories so perhaps The Star Fox was a series before being repackaged as a novel? I will be checking to see whether the narrative is structured episodically.

"Star -" is a generic title for sf works about interstellar travel. Everyone knows about Star Trek and Star Wars. Poul Anderson fans also know that he wrote an early novel called Star Ways which later had to be republished as The Peregrine to avoid the appearance of mimicking Star Wars. I expect to encounter more substantial speculative fiction by reading about the Star Fox in The Star Fox than by watching the Enterprise in Star Trek. 

Science Fiction: Parallel Narratives

This evening, Nygel, Ali and I at Art Questor's 64th birthday pArty. Also present, Chris Gregory, author of:

Star Trek: Parallel Narratives
The Prisoner: Be Seeing You
Who Could Ask For More: Reclaiming The Beatles

Topics of conversation:

Dune screen adaptations;
Star Wars;
Star Trek;
Doctor Who;
Poul Anderson Appreciation;
mundane cultural phenomena.

Unspoken by me - Poul Anderson wrote:

better time travel than Doctor Who;
better interstellar empires than Dune or Star Wars;
better interstellar exploration than Star Trek.

Read Anderson's Time Patrol, Star Ways (written earlier), Starfarers and  Rise Of The Terran Empire.

Glory to the Emperor! 

Star Ways

Poul Anderson's novel, The Peregrine, published over twenty years before Star Wars, was originally called Star Ways, an appropriate and  resonant title. Something else in this novel sounds familiar:

a spaceship captain sits on his bridge, waiting for his communications officer to contact the planet around which they are in orbit;

an exotically garbed figure speaks from the screen;

invited to the surface, the captain leaves his First Mate in command and descends with a few other officers.

Everything that was done in Star Trek had already been done better in "spaceship stories" by Poul Anderson, James Blish and other authors of prose sf.

The Peregrine is the name of this particular Nomad ship. Thus, this title is the equivalent of calling a Star Trek episode The Enterprise. Somewhere else on the blog, I have already compared the main theme of The Peregrine to a particular Star Trek episode and another comparison of this novel with that TV series is here.