Poets Of Space

Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire, Chapter 10.

"How ironic that this ship of fools bears the name of Verdea (scroll down), the first Lunarian poet." (p. 147) (Scroll down.)

Heinlein's Rhysling sang "The Green Hills of Earth." Verdea wrote a poem containing the line, "The stars are also fire." Nicol's great works are still ahead of him.

Verdea and Venator appear in Poul Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire. Download Venator travels in Verdea in Harvest The Fire. Nicol is unique to Harvest The Fire, the only volume of this future history that does not feature any version of Anson Guthrie, whether original, downloaded or resurrected.

We have perhaps reached the end of this rereading of the Harvest of Stars future history but have certainly not exhausted its content or significance.

Songs

Volume II of Robert Heinlein's Future History, The Green Hills Of Earth, is named after a song written and sung by Heinlein's character, Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways. Rhysling expresses the nostalgia of spacemen who have traveled into the Solar System.

Volume II of Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars Tetralogy, The Stars Are Also Fire, is named from a line in a song (34, p. 459) written by Verdea, a Lunarian daughter of Dagny Beynac, the "Mother of the Moon." Verdea expresses Lunarian defiance of the Terrestrial Federation.

Volume I of the Future History is The Man Who Sold The Moon.

Reading Anderson's later future histories, we still hear the echoes of Robert Heinlein.

In Tychopolis

The Stars Are Also Fire, 12.

Anson Guthrie visits Edmond and Dagny Beynac who live comfortably on the Moon.

Guthrie:

"'My impression was the servant problem on Luna is so intractable nobody remembers what the word means.'" (p. 162)

The servant problem! In some societies, the affluent feel entitled to domestic servants and it is a "problem" if they cannot find them.

More fiction within the fiction: in his spare time, Edmond writes deep-space adventure stories under the pen name of Jacques Croquant although we are told neither titles nor plots. In that society, such works would not count as sf. (Some earlier sf described exploration of as yet unvisited parts of this planet whereas, in Edmond's time, the outer Solar System is being explored and there is a colony at Alpha Centauri. Deep space exploration is no longer sf.)

Two young Lunarians wrote the program that generated their artificial language but Dagny's daughter Verdea adds to its vocabulary. As part of their language, Lunarians change their names. Of the Beynac children:

Anson becomes Brandir;

Gabrielle becomes Verdea;

Sigurd becomes Kaino;

Francis becomes Temerir;

Helen becomes Fia;

Carla becomes Jinann.

Edmond calls Anson Guthrie one of the enlightened super-rich, "enlightened" because they keep scientific and technological progress alive. If there are super-rich at the social apex, then previously we would have expected to find sub-poor at the base. But the issues have changed. Now the "Low World" is:

"'...the vast majority, in every land, who can find no real place in this high-technology universe you have created...'" (p. 158)

 

What is so "enlightened" about creating a technology that super-enriches its owners while leaving no place for the vast majority? And will the kind of capital-labor relationships that had previously enabled a minority to accumulate wealth continue to operate when production has become cyber-automated? Fireball continues to operate as a company with employees but for how long?

War, this time in the form of a "Jihad," is coming on Earth as at the end of the interplanetary period in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Guthrie expects the High World to win the war but to be changed. That is better than everyone being killed. This anti-Jihad War, like World Wars I and II, will change society but how? Surely the social division between a controlling ("super-rich") minority and a vast majority has to be recognized as redundant? A united humanity would be able to thank AI for stabilizing the Terrestrial environment but should otherwise retain collective control of its own social relationships and insist that from now on human and AI destinies peacefully parallel each other. 

 

However, as this future history unfolds, human divisions enable AI to extend its control over both the natural and social environments and eventually to constrain human development.

Latin, Poetry And The Milky Way

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire.

Venator quotes more Latin:

"'Ave atque vale.'" (42, p. 518)

Download Dagny quotes Hamlet:

"'"He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf;
At his heels a stone."'" (43, p. 527)

We read more verse from Verdea:

"With your Pacific eye, observe my scars
Of ancient wars.
Your bones remember dinosaurs." (28, p. 373)

"Stonefall, fireflash,
Cenotaph of a seeker.
But the stone has lost the stars
And the stars have lost the stone." (46, p. 555)

We see the Milky Way and Earth from the Moon:

"Stars stood above in their thousands, the galactic frost-bridge, nebulae and sister galaxies aglimmer, but Earth was no more than a blue arc along a wan disc, low above that horizon." (46, pp. 554-555)

And we appreciate Poul Anderson's universes.

On The Moon

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 12.

In Lunar gravity, it can be comfortable to remain standing even while eating.

Two young Lunarians wrote "...the program that constructed the basic Lunarian language..." (p. 161) Now I understand how a language developed so quickly. Dagny's daughter, Verdea, adds to its vocabulary.

In SM Stirling's Emberverse, speakers of Tolkien's Elvish have to expand its vocabulary. Also, the Sword gives its wielder extended but consistent knowledge of the language. How does that work? The Emberverse series is fantasy. Gods are involved.

Fiction and fictional languages fit well together, e.g., subtitles for Klingon and Vulcan in Star Trek films. Let's see Anderson films with Eriau, Planha, Temporal, Exaltationist, Lunarian etc.

Verdea's Song

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 34, p. 459.

Although the Lunarian song is almost untranslatable, Terrans translate some of its phrases, quote them in conversation, shout them at night, scrawl them on bulkheads or flash them on screens. I did not get a lot out of the song on a first reading but let's have another crack at it. In the text, the words are italicized. My comments follow the quoted passages.

"-You: Law alone, sight unbloodied, and never a heart ripped loose for gods that never were."

A challenge to the Terrestrial Federation which imposes its laws and nothing else, nothing good, on Luna. The Lawmakers lack vision to perceive the harm caused. They live without feeling or passion despite traditionally believing in (in fact nonexistent) gods.

"Death is no more than stones that lie still in the groundgrip of waterless wastelands;..."

Earth is compared to a wasteland? Their deaths are meaningless because their lives were? (I am struggling here.)

"ever obedient whirl the worlds;"

The rest of the universe faithfully orbits according to physical laws despite whatever is happening on Earth?

"their ways you will understand and their whys will be born of your brains. You have given yourselves to serve and to master the steadiness of the stars."

Terrestrial civilization at least accumulates intellectual/scientific knowledge of the universe.

"But the dust of stones shall be bones, dry bones rising for a journey from doubt into darkness."

I can't get a lot out of this one. While alive, we doubt. Then death is darkness.

"Your forgotten begotten shall trouble your dreams, the heart shall break its cage, and death shall laugh at your law."

Terrestrials begot, then forgot, Lunarians but cannot forget them completely. Caged by Terrestrial restrictions, the Lunarians will passionately break free. Nothing last forever. Death laughs...

"For the stars are also fire.-"

There is fire/passion/energy off Earth, not just on it.

Deaths On The Moon

"He was on the Moon!

"He lay back still while a bath of content flowed over him like a tide at flood, and soaked to his very marrow."

-Robert Heinlein, "Requiem" IN Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), pp. 222-238 AT p. 238.

 

"They found Dagny Beynac on the north rim trail. She had left her car at the shelter and gone afoot, alone, in an hour when no one else was about."

-The Stars Are Also Fire, 38.

 

That is all for this post, folks, but it is plenty. Both the Man Who Sold the Moon and the Mother of the Moon die on the Moon. Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars future history is not as pivotal an sf work as Heinlein's Future History. In fact, it is overshadowed by Anderson's own Technic History and Time Patrol series. Nevertheless, Harvest Of Stars and its sequels are in the Heinlein tradition. Rhysling wrote the song, "The Green Hills of Earth," in the story, "The Green Hills of Earth," in the collection, The Green Hills Of Earth, which is Volume II of the Future History. Verdea wrote a poem including the line, "For the stars are also fire." in The Stars Are Also Fire (34, p. 459) which is Volume II of the Harvest Of Stars future history.

Four Senses Inside A Diamond

The Stars Are Also Fire, 7.

Kenmuir joins Lilisaire at the center of a giant artificial diamond:

his slightest movement causes every visible color to flash, spark, flow and shift around him;

the air carries odors of spice and honeysuckle;

a canto by Verdea, the first Lunarian poet, is barely audible;

they eat superb canapes and drink wine that is said to sing.

The Selenarch Lilisaire is about to stoop to politics, "...monkey dealings...," (p. 102) but, before she stoops, readers should pause to appreciate her giant diamond - and they might remember that Larry Niven's feline kzinti also disparage Terrestrials as "monkeys." However, human beings genetically altered to live and breed in Lunar gravity are more plausible antagonists than intelligent alien cats.

Blind Rhysling

"This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways..."

-Robert Heinlein, "The Green Hills of Earth" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 131-141 AT p. 131.

 

The Green Hills Of Earth is Volume II of Heinlein's Future History. Rhysling's song, "The Green Hills of Earth," is played at a crucial point in Volume IV, Methuselah's Children. Volume V, Orphans Of The Sky, mentions Rhysling as a poet. Although I do not accept Time Enough For Love as a valid Volume VI, one of its least offensive passages comes when Lazarus Long reminisces about Rhysling.

 

"There are references to Rhysling and his songs in a definitely non-Future History novel, Farmer in the Sky..."

-Alexei Panshin, Heinlein In Dimension (Chicago, 1968), V, p. 123.

 

Having read Farmer in the Sky, I can confirm this although, not having a copy to hand, I cannot quote from it. (I also think that Farmer... belongs to what I call Heinlein's Juvenile Future History.)

 

Poul Anderson's "Loser's Night" lists "blind Rhysling" as among those who have visited the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. Works of fiction by both Heinlein and Anderson accept the multiverse idea. It follows that it would be possible to travel between the Future History and the Technic History either via the Old Phoenix or directly as in Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions and Operation Luna.

 

Perhaps Rhysling is a predecessor of some other sf characters like Anderson's Verdea or his Hugh Valland. (The latter combines aspects of Rhysling and Lazarus Long.)