Dinosaurs On Venus

Progress in reading SM Stirling's The Sky People has been slow. Bed-ridden today, I have not felt up to reading a new text that I would want to blog about. Making a start in the evening, I find that Stirling's Venus has a breathable atmosphere and dinosaurs used as draught animals in 1988.

Such a retro text invites comparisons with fiction that we read when it was thought that Venus might really be like that. I further expect to make some comparisons with the works of Poul Anderson. First, however, I remember that Dan Dare's Venus had dinosaurs. A sedated dinosaur was being transported by spaceship to London Zoo. However, a Treen crew member who was secretly a Mekon loyalist deliberately roused the animal, causing havoc inside the ship.

In past ages, the Treens had transported Terrestrial organisms, including even blue-skinned Atlanteans, to Venus. I suspect that Stirling's Venerian species are also connected to Earth but will have to read on to find out. Thus, this novel should evoke:

many memories of earlier sf;
also, of course, appreciation of Stirling's narrative in its own right.

Treens have some similarities to Anderson's Merseians.

Faked Broadcasts

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the revolutionary Cabal fakes a broadcast by the First Prophet returned from Heaven calling on the faithful to overthrow the current regime. Congregations in churches see the broadcast and attack their clergy.

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars, the Selenarchs fake a broadcast by Anson Guthrie calling on Fireball Enterprises to assist the revolutionary Chaotics if they rise against the Avantist regime in North America.

In Doctor Who, the Doctor's granddaughter grabbed a mike and ordered the robomen to attack the Daleks, forcing the Daleks to kill all their robomen.

In Dan Dare, Cadet Flamer Spry grabbed the Mekon's mike and, imitating the Mekon's voice, ordered the Elektrobots to attack the Treens, forcing the Treens to destroy all their Elektrobots.

Similar situations in four timelines.

Tharks, Treens, Martians, Merseians, Vulcanians, Chereionites And Ferrans

I said three posts back (here) that hostile green aliens were a Golden Age sf cliche and, in fact, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Green Martians of the Thark, Warhoon and lesser hordes are both green-skinned and warlike. (The one good thing about the John Carter film is its accurate depiction of ERBian Green Martians. Computer-aided graphics get that much right.) Further, Dan Dare's Venus-based Treens were also green and warlike. Thus, Poul Anderson's green, warlike, extra-solar Merseians are part of a grand tradition.

Anderson's The Rebel Worlds parallels other sf works. When Dominic Flandry commands the escort destroyer, HMS Asieneuve, his executive officer is a Ferran who does not share human morality just as, when James T Kirk commands the starship, USS Enterprise, his exec is a Vulcan who does not share human emotions. However, Rovian of Ferra is fanged, has four arms of which the lower pair can double as legs and goes naked except for weapons and insignia. In all of this, he resembles the ERBian Greens although his black fur and tail differentiate him from them. Tharks etc are bald.

Kirk's friend, a Vulcan, has pointed ears and can telepathically "mind-meld." Flandry's opponent, a Chereionite, has pointed ears and is a universal telepath. But lastly, of course, Poul Anderson's sf is of a far higher imaginative and literary quality than that of ERB, Dan Dare or Star Trek.

Spacemen And Cowboys

"'Come on, into the saddle, and do you know any ancient cowboy ballads?'
"'No, sir, I regret I do not even know what a cowboy is,' his companion replied."
-A Stone In Heaven, XIII, p. 173.

The spacesuited speakers, Dominic Flandry and Chives, are about to ride a missile through space. See A Death-Horse And The Milky Way, here. The notion of spacesuited missile-riders discussing cowboys inspire reflections already expressed in Westerns And SF but see also that post's extremely informative combox discussion.

"Cow" and "boy" each mean something different whereas "cowboy" means something else. "Cattle man" might be more accurate although we do not think of them as herding cows. At least, I don't. In my childhood a "cowboy" was a man on horseback wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a holstered pistol for use against either Indians or outlaws whereas a "spaceman," not yet an "astronaut," was a man in a spacesuit wielding a futuristic gun for use against Treens or other aliens. It is good to find an echo of those old days in this Flandry-Chives dialogue.

Alien Archetypes

Poul Anderson's Merseians, like Dan Dare's Treens, are bald, green, humanoid conquerors whereas William Dexter's Vulcanids, like HG Wells' Martians and Doctor Who's Daleks, are evil, non-humanoid monsters. These five archetypes are not equally known to the public. In fact, the public thinks that "Vulcans" are not giant adaptable anemones but pointed-eared logicians inter-fertile with Terrestrials and Star Trek adds the humanoid Klingons to the list of aliens-as-threats.

In some sf, e.g., Quatermass, all aliens are threats whereas Anderson presents every kind of alien from Merseians and Chereionites to Cynthians and Wodenites - those are just four of many in one series - and CS Lewis deliberated reversed the archetype, presenting aliens as threatened.

(Couldn't sleep so got up to write this short post.)

West, Space And Time

This is one of those posts that starts somewhere else but works its way back to Poul Anderson.

In the early 1950's, I got the weekly British comic strip paper, The Eagle, even before I could read it. This comic featured "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future" and "Riders of the Range," a Western series that had a fictitious central character but that also incorporated historical figures and events. I realized even then that, although I loved Westerns, I preferred pictures of men in spacesuits to pictures of cowboys on horseback, thus sf to Westerns.

Many of my contemporaries had the same enthusiasm for football that I had for Westerns and sf. Why do people have such strong, and different, interests from such an early age? I don't know.

Dare's main adversaries, the Treens, were bald, green, hostile, humanoid extraterrestrials, thus similar to Dominic Flandry's opponents, the Merseians. Dare was a preparation for Poul Anderson's Flandry - who sometimes also wears a spacesuit. Despite his mastery of many genres, Anderson never wrote Westerns, except a joke Hoka story with Gordon R Dickson. ER Burroughs, who is also relevant here, did write four Western novels. ERB wrote comic book type characters but in prose fiction, including sf.

In addition to a fascination with space travel, I also acquired slightly later on a very great fascination with two other sf ideas, time travel and future histories. Flandry, of course, is a major figure in a long future history series. My introduction to time travel was another comic strip, the Classics Illustrated adaptation of HG Wells' The Time Machine. And Wells' novel was a precursor to Anderson's Time Patrol.

Merseians

The Merseians were originally created to be green-skinned space opera villains in the Dominic Flandry series. As such, they are perfect, sharing some characteristics with Dan Dare's green-skinned villains, the Treens. See image.

When the Dominic Flandry series came to be incorporated into a future history series, three earlier stages of the Merseians' history were added, as represented by (i), (iii) and (iv) in the preceding post.

(Similarly, a Star Trek film added an earlier stage of human-Vulcan contact.)

Poul Anderson also continued the Flandry series with full length novels and gave more thought to the Merseians' motivations. Their goal is not an impossible single galactic dictatorship but a number of autonomus Merseian-ruled realms. The race, not the regime, matters. But this is true only of those who serve the Roidhunate regime. Beings that are biologically Merseian but resident on the human colony planet, Dennitza, are loyal to the Emperor, not to the Roidhun.

To answer the question, "Why did the Roidhunate not take over after the Empire fell?" we must read between the lines. Merseian morale was eroded by:

several defeats inflicted by Dominic Flandry, including the loss of their Chereionite intelligence service;

the failure of the Magnusson Rebellion, a very long term plan that had been engineered by Aycharaych.

Without Flandry's intervention, the Saxo nova would have destroyed the Terran fleet, leaving Earth defenseless. Merseian hopes were raised, then dashed, several times. This must have blunted their motivation.

Margin Of Profit

"Margin of Profit":

was an early sf short story by Poul Anderson (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1956);

introduced Nicholas van Rijn;

had to be rewritten to be incorporated into Anderson's major future history series, the History of Technic Civilization;

was quoted but not included in the first van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars;

thus, for some readers, acquired the special status of a defining van Rijn story that we had not read yet;

was included in The Earth Book Of Stormgate and, of course, in the definitive The Technic Civilization Saga.

What's not to like?

Personal flashback to September 1956:

I was seven and living in (a different part of) the North West of England;
in that very month, September, I started to attend a boarding school near Glasgow in Scotland;
I read comic strip science fiction and superheroes;
Dan Dare fought bald, green, imperialistic Treens just as Dominic Flandry, whom I did not know yet, fought bald, green, tailed, imperialistic, green Merseians;
that first term in Scotland was when I realized that years were numbered and that we would very soon be in 1957;
I did not suspect that, in late December 2014, I would be discussing the works of an American prose science fiction writer on a planetary computer network.

A Powerful Anti-Racist Statement By Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson did not, as far as I know, make any major political statement about racism. However, he wrote works of fiction carrying an implicit message.

Some sf characters are not black, white, red or yellow but green:

Dan Dare's Treens from Venus;

ERB's Tharks, Warhoons and lesser hordes on Barsoom;

Anderson's Merseians.

Thus, sometimes sf addresses current issues obliquely through a sort of "knight's move," two squares forward into a fictional future and one square sideways into an alternative reality. We know that Mars is not like Barsoom but still read ERB. An Alan Moore-style deconstruction of Rupert Bear might show teenage Rupert working in an office in a city beset by species riots between Elephants and Rabbits - ("I'm a Bear!") - simultaneously bizarre- and familiar-sounding.

Anderson introduced the Merseians as space opera villains and would-be galaxy-conquerors in a pulp magazine. (See image.) After such an introduction, these greenskins could have retained that uni-dimensional role throughout an interminable Captain Flandry adventure series. Instead, as the series progresses, we see:

Merseians protecting Flandry on Talwin;
later friendships between Terran and Merseian scientists on Talwin;
cultural integration on Dennitza;
Kossara's life-long friendship with Trohdwyr;
ychani definitely not wanting Roidhunate rule on Dennitza;
Flandry and Kossara marching with ychani to the Dennitzan Parliament;
and -

"...moonlit gravbelt flight over woods, summer air streaming past her cheeks, a campfire glimpsed, a landing among great green hunters, their gruff welcome..."
-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, IV, p. 401.

Perfect: the green aliens have been effortlessly transformed from stereotypical villains into great green hunters giving a gruff welcome. The most powerful anti-racist message is a narrative showing the complete absence of any conflict between members of the two groups.

Concluding Conversations

Mirkheim, XXI.

Three concluding conversations at the Tamarin estate, Windy Rim, on Hermes:

Eric Tamarin-Asmundsen and David Falkayn;

Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen and Nicholas van Rijn;

Adzel and Chee Lan.

Four continuing characters; Sandra, who has appeared once before; Eric, introduced only in this novel.

This is what I wanted when I read Dan Dare comic strips in the 1950's and 60's: prose novels with adult characters who routinely travelled between planets but who also discussed adult matters that were at that time beyond my comprehension. Or, rather, I did not consciously want this yet but now realize that it is what I was moving towards. Where else could we go? We could not stay with mere action-adventure fiction although Poul Anderson skillfully incorporates fight scenes, which I then loved, into more serious novels. Dan Dare's antagonists, the Treens, from Venus, were green and bald although not tailed. We had no way of knowing that we would later read novels about Merseians. For that species, Mirkheim is transitional between "Day of Burning" and Ensign Flandry. 

Greens

In the background of a single panel of a Dan Dare comic strip, a bald, green-skinned Treen wearing a business suit and a bowler hat sits in a London bus, reading a newspaper - a Venerian immigrant to Earth, exactly paralleling the Merseian immigrants to the human colony planet, Dennitza, in Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. We hope that this Treen is not a covert Mekon loyalist - and also that none of his fellow passengers are anti-green racists.

We escape from reality into fiction but fiction reflects reality. There are two acts of the imagination here:

first, imagining hostile green extraterrestrials;

secondly, imagining plausible relationships with such extraterrestrials in peace as well as in war.

Anderson's Dominic Flandry series began as space opera, requiring only a standardized collective villain, then became part of an extended reflection on social change, requiring a more sophisticated treatment of several civilized races. Needless to say, Anderson did this second job more effectively than Dan Dare's script writers.

Sf writers have had to move out of the Solar System. CS Lewis' sinless, green-skinned human beings are, like the Treens, Venerians whereas James Blish's sinless, giant reptiles are, like the Merseians, extrasolar.

An Occupied Planet

This post continues a line of thought started here.

Dan Dare: The Reign Of The Robots;

Doctor Who: Dalek Invasion

and Poul Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave" -

- all recall World War II:

occupation;
street patrols;
underground resistance.

In Anderson's story, the Ardazirho have invaded and occupied the human extrasolar colony planet, Vixen. Unlike Dare's Treens and the Doctor's Daleks, the Ardazirho are not continuing villains. However, Aycharaych is behind them.

After landing covertly on Vixen and joining the resistance, Dominic Flandry reflects that a local man's hunting skills are transferable to resistance fighting. But surely such skills are also part of Intelligence work? In a Frederick Forsyth novel, a British secret agent organizing resistance in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait remains hidden and motionless but alert for eight hours while watching a possibly compromised dead letter drop before concluding that it is safe to approach it. Sure, his life depends on it. Nevertheless, this is admirable. To remain motionless and alert for eight hours is not only a day's work but a skilled day's work, and the skill is transferable to meditation, in particular to zazen. I try unsuccessfully to remain focused for half an hour.

How is Intelligence gathered? Flandry allows himself to be captured in order to learn the enemy's language, then escape. The easiness of escape is implausible. Of course, escape from capture by armed enemies is a familiar routine in action-adventure fiction and Anderson always writes his escape scenes well although their frequency diminishes their plausibility.

Robots And Me

Nicholas van Rijn deduces that most of the large Shenn fleet is robotic and that the Shenna are good at robotics. I have been reading or hearing about "robots" since before I was able to read sf.

(i) In a Dan Dare story called "Reign Of The Robots," robots did not reign but the Mekon and his Treens from Venus conquered Earth with an army of robots as, later the Daleks from Skaro conquered Earth with an army of "robomen," roboticized men. Dare's experience gave me the idea that robots were bad.

(ii) Despite this, other fictional spacemen used robots for "good"
purposes.

(iii) Someone at school told a cock-and-bull story about an experimental robot that had escaped and could have been anywhere by now.

(iv) There was a prose paperback on sale called I, Robot.

(v) Asimov made a robot a character in a novel.

(vi) Now I must tick that I am not a robot to comment on my own blog.

Thus, the use of robots in Poul Anderson's Satan's World evokes a long tradition in our experience of reading sf.

Subordination

We see human beings subordinated to:

Martians in The War Of The Worlds;

extrasolar aliens in Martian-like machines in John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy;

Borthudians in the van Rijn period of Poul Anderson's Technic History;

green Merseians in the Flandry period of the Technic History;

feline kzinti in Larry Niven's Know Space History;

green Treens in Dan Dare;

Daleks in Doctor Who;

fellow human beings who make themselves biologically superior in SM Stirling's Draka History.

(That is another of those lists that grew in the writing.)

I was reminded of Draka and serfs when reading about a kzin and his human secretary. Like a Draka, the kzin promises to attend the secretary's offspring's naming-day celebration.

Subordination can be one way to survival. In a novel by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, workers asked what they thought about the prospect of an alien invasion, said that, under the aliens, they would still have to work. In one of Aesop's fable, a donkey carrying a heavy burden is advised to run away from an invading army but, when told that they are unlikely to make him carry anything heavier because he is already at his limit, says that he will stay where he is.

Having said all that, slavery is definitely worse than paid work and should be resisted at all costs!

Alien Archetypes III

See Alien Archetypes II, here.

Once started, this theme never ends:

Wells' Martians invaded Earth and Venus;

Stapledon's Martians invaded Earth, then later his Terrestrials invaded Venus and Neptune;

ERB's Moon Men invaded Earth while his Jovians prepared to invade Mars and other planets;

John Christopher unconsciously plagiarized Wells with a future Earth ruled by extra-solar aliens in tripods;

the Treens conquered Earth with un-Asimovian robots;

Daleks and Thals recalled Morlocks and Eloi, then Daleks invaded Earth, transforming some Earthmen into "robomen";

Heinlein, Blish, Simak, Niven & Pournelle and William R. Burkett Jr. described extraterrestrial invasions of Earth;

Poul Anderson has -

Martians manipulated by extra-solars conquering Earth in a novel;
extra-solars secretly ruling or manipulating Earth in three (?) short stories;
humanoid extra-solars conquering Earth economically in one short story.

A vast theme with, as ever, several contributions by Anderson. 

"Glory To The Race!"

SM Stirling's Draka say, "Glory to the Race!" (see here) as does Ghrul-Captain when concluding his recorded statement of mission intent. ("Pele," 9, p. 61) We find some parallels between Klingons, kzinti, Merseians, Treens, Draka, Daleks, Wellsian Martians etc.

This evening, rereading "Pele," I found two points of interest but then searched the blog and confirmed that I had already posted about them. Some, although not all, repetition is avoided.

Craig Raden, lacking Tyra's extensive experience of kzinti, has unrealistic ideas about the possibility of scientific cooperation with them. That species at that stage of its social development can only resist cooperation, reject help and aim to monopolize scientific knowledge hopefully for its military applications.

Venus

According to the Internet, Farewell, Fantastic Venus and All About Venus are two anthologies, both edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, both published in 1968, with a lot of common contents. I had not heard of All About Venus, which is perhaps simply the American edition of Farewell..., although with not exactly the same contents?

After space probes into the atmosphere and onto the surface of Venus had disclosed that the Venerian environment is lethally acidic and hot enough to melt lead, Farewell, Fantastic Venus celebrated what had then become the redundantly speculative Venus of oceans, swamps, jungles, breathable atmosphere and intelligent inhabitants.

The anthology appropriately contains, among many fictional and non-fictional items:

extracts from novels by Olaf Stapledon, ER Burroughs and CS Lewis;
"The Big Rain" and "Sister Planet" by Poul Anderson.

Brian Aldiss told me at the 1970 British Science Fiction Convention that:

when Robert Heinlein was asked for permission for his Venus story, "Logic of Empire," to be included in Farewell..., he refused on the ground that it was part of his Future History;

when Poul Anderson was asked for permission for his "Sister Planet" to be included, he agreed but offered instead the earlier, unpublished version which was very religious.

Comments:

the Stapledon novel, Last And First Men, is Stapledon's future history and as such is a literary successor to HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come;

Wells wrote nothing about Venus except a very short passage near the end of The War Of The Worlds where Terrestrial astronomers saw that the Martians had launched capsules towards Venus so that very short passage could have been included in Farewell...;

"The Big Rain" is part of Anderson's Psychotechnic future history, which was modeled on Heinlein's Future History;

the two Anderson stories present contrasting desert and ocean Venuses (as the two Genesis creation myths present contrasting water-covered and desert Earths);

contra Heinlein, the anthology should have included "Logic of Empire" before "The Big Rain";

the anthology should also have included extracts from the Dan Dare comic strip in which equatorial volcanoes on Venus separate the southern warlike green Treens from the northern peaceful blue Therons;

having said all that, I have yet to read "Sister Planet" for the very first time but will now do so.

Green Aliens

One ERBian Martian species.
The DC Comics Martian Manhunter who is a metamorph and sometimes invisible and therefore need not appear green.
Dan Dare's Treens from Venus.
Poul Anderon's Merseians.
The HHGTTG Vogons.
Daleks inside their machines.
Vulcan blood, if not skin, has a green tinge.

That is all unless, of course, you know better. See combox. (There is nothing in it yet but there will be.)

Addendum: C.S. Lewis' Venerian Adam and Eve are humanoid but green. Unlike a computer, the human brain does not instantly recall all relevant data.

We have:

two kinds of Martians;
two kinds of Venerians;
six extra-solar races;
two references to Star Trek - for the second, see combox.

Why Empires? III

Just under three years ago, I posted about "Space Secret Service Stories" here. "A Style In Treason" by James Blish and the early pulp magazine Dominic Flandry stories by Poul Anderson are good examples of works that are enjoyable to read but not presented as plausible futures.

Blish's High Earth-dominated confederation served - or betrayed? - by a thousand year old "Traitors' Guild" confronts an alien interstellar empire called the Green Exarchy which:

"...drew tithes from six fallen empires older than man..."
-James Blish, Anywhen (New York, 1970), p. 19.

Anderson's Terran Empire, served by the heroic Dominic Flandry, confronts the green Merseians with their interstellar Empire and plans for galactic conquest.

In these works at least, neither Blish nor Anderson seriously proposed empires as probable forms of interstellar government. They were instead exotic settings for futuristic adventures. "Earth" is not enough. It must become High Earth or Terra. The language is colorful and, coincidentally, both sets of villains are green. Or, rather, the Merseians, like ERB's Tharks and Dan Dare's Treens, are green whereas the mysterious Exarch is "Green."

"A Style In Treason," in particular, reads more like an alternative universe fantasy than like hard sf. However, despite Flandry's pulp origins, Anderson was able to transform the Flandry series into a serious dramatization of the reasons for the rise and decline of civilizations. The series matures with its hero.

What Do They Look Like?

If you were transported into a fantasy realm, would you be able to get used to living and working in close proximity with beings answering the descriptions of fiends, ogres, trolls, goblins etc? In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Master Merchants of the Polesotechnic League must get used to dealing with fearsome creatures like the Shenna that Nicholas van Rijn confronts in Satan's World and the Baburites that he begins to do business with near the end of Mirkheim.

A Shenn's mane hangs half way to his hips (see Gahood) yet, when van Rijn sees Moath in a telescreen:

"His nostrils were dilated and his mane stood erect." (Chapter XX, p. 544) (For full reference, see here.)

 When Falkayn, guided by the human slave, Latimer, entered Gahood's battleship, he carried a grenade that would explode as soon as he relaxed the pressure of his thumb. Gahood stood in an inner doorway, protected by a thick sheet of transparent material. He tipped the sheet forward and ordered Latimer to join him behind it so that a robot would be able to attack Falkayn without endangering either Gahood or his human slave. Realizing this, Falkayn, still holding the grenade - his only insurance - jumped past the sheet onto the same side of it as Gahood! I would not even have entered that battleship.

In Satan's World (ASF, 1968), the Polesotechnic League has a Ferran Fleet Admiral and, in The Rebel Worlds (1969), Dominic Flandry has a Ferran first officer. For what Ferrans look like, see:

A Multi-Species Civilization II
Tharks, Treens, Martians, Merseians, Vulcanians, Chereionites And Ferrans