Lords Of Xibalba

"Operation Xibalba."

A falcon vomits a snake which vomits a toad which vomits a louse which is a divine/demonic messenger whose speech is comprehensible to Sophia who informs the narrator, Anibal, that the man whom they have entered the hell universe to rescue, Boatright, is in a Mesoamerican region which, at a first approximation, she identifies as a Mayan analog.

Anibal then reflects that, if this Mesoamerican region bears a close approximation to the Mayan region, then it is probably ruled by the Lords of Xibalba, thus explaining the story's title. The Wikipedia article confirms that these Lords are as horrible as Anibal's description of them.

We have just been told about the hell universe that:

it is divided into regions, including Mesoamerican ones;

its Mesoamerican regions include not only a Mayan region but also several analogs of it.

So:

How big is this hell universe?
How many regions does it include?
How many analogs of the Lords of Xibalba does it incorporate?
Are all these regions and pantheons projections of human beliefs?
Does each pantheon rule a separate universe?

Multiverse: Operation Xibalba, Introduction

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014).

Sorry to flake out, folks, but I cannot do justice to "Operation Xibalba" by Eric Flint right now. Today, I have:

read and posted about "Bloodpride" by Gregory Benford;

prepared some Latin texts;

attended the last Latin class of this academic year, where we started to read Caesar on the Druids;

attended a campaign organizing meeting in Lancaster Friends' Meeting House (Latin there earlier, Zen last night);

engaged in a facebook discussion;

watched and posted about two episodes of Smallville;

started to read "Operation Xibalba."

"If you've read Steven Matuchek's account of the expedition he and his wife Virginia undertook into the hell universe to rescue their infant daughter, you'll remember his depictions of their terrain there. Those depictions are about as accurate as everything in his book." (p. 162)

If a previous text is regarded as a previous text not only by the readers but also by the first person narrator, then that narrator is free to present his own more "accurate" account. On the other hand, the author writes in an afterword:

"...the world of Operation Chaos...that story was one I could write completely and fully in Poul Anderson's own spirit.
"Such was my intent at any rate. You've now just read the story, so you can decide for yourself if I have succeeded or not." (p. 182)

Well, I have not yet read the story in its entirety because I skip ahead to check out interesting items like introductions and afterwords. However, so far, this is an excellent and authentic continuation of Anderson's Operation... series.

Multiverse: Operation Xibalba, A Metaphysical Question

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014).

I finished reading "Operation Xibalba" by Eric Flint over breakfast and it is an authentic addition to Poul Anderson's Operation... series, with an unexpected way of completing the mission. It doesn't matter that the rescued expedition to Hell is not brought back in one piece...

When discussing "...the Mesoamerican deities and spirits...," the narrator refers to:

"The underlying belief system that had created them..." (p. 168)

This implies that the denizens of the supernatural realms have been brought into existence by belief in them. This is the premise of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Mike Carey's Lucifer and related works but was it stated in Anderson's Operation... books? I can't remember but, if not, it is a valid addition which, of course, could generate unlimited sequels - and this new team deserves its own series.

Fear Or Fun

"Operation Xibalba."

Gods began as fears, I think. Life-threatening forces like ice and fire were personified so that they could be placated and, in Norse myths, the interaction between extreme heat and cold generated the earliest life, both giants and gods.

Later, it became possible to laugh at the gods. In one of the Greek comedies, Herakles has left an unpaid hotel bill in Hades. When someone tries to get Dionysus to settle the bill, the god, from the stage, appeals for help to the priest of Dionysus sitting in the audience. Somewhere in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, we are told that it is embarrassing to know that you are a god of a world that only exists because every probability curve has a lowest point.

The Lords of Xibalba are fearsome but:

"As deities went, these were some real lowbrows." (p. 176)

They are easily tricked: fake a rejuvenating death and resurrection routine, then accede to their request for the same treatment... Resurrection can be faked because weres are able to recover quickly from what would otherwise be mortal wounds. This was demonstrated in Operation Chaos when Steve, as a werewolf, survived jumping off the Temple.

A Last Word For Now On The Hell Universe

"Operation Xibalba."

"...this was a mythos that took blood magic more seriously than any other the human race has ever produced." (3, p. 178)

This definitely confirms that the hell universe is a projection of human beliefs whereas, in Operation Chaos, it was an independently existing cosmos whose inhabitants had previously been regarded as supernatural.

"Not even the harshest Scandinavian or Slavic deity would fault us...
"...human embassies touring the so-called 'morally neutral' portions of the nether regions were being feted everywhere they went. Especially in those mythos which placed a premium on sneakiness, treachery, and guile. Which was just about all of them." (5, p. 181)

This definitely confirms that the so-called "hell universe" is not just a hell universe because it also includes the "morally neutral" realms of many mythologies which, furthermore, can be visited safely, all of which contradicts Operation Chaos.

Multiverse: The Next Generation

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014).

Two Time Patrol couples have started families.

Dominic Flandry has more children and even a grown up grandson.

Alianora has three grown up children.

The boy who was rescued from the Queen of Air and Darkness has grown up and now has a baby girl.

The hero of "The Long Remembering" has a grown up daughter.

Poul Anderson's fantasies had already featured Steven Matuchek's daughter from birth to adulthood but "Operation Xibalba" introduces a new couple...

This list covers seven, just over half, of the Multiverse stories because there are two Flandry narratives. Thus, extend any series long enough and it will feature the sons and daughters of the original characters, which is only be expected.

Two Composite Hells

"Operation Xibalba."

This story by Eric Flint is a sequel to a novelized series by Poul Anderson. We appreciate Anderson's works both by discussing and analyzing them and by comparing them to other works of imaginative fiction. Anderson's range is vast. Comparable authors are many. For example, I need not repeat the list of works describing Hell. See All We Need Of Hell II and All We Need Of Hell (linked).

Here I want to focus on composite Hells because Flint's characters, traveling through Anderson's hell universe, enter "'...a Mayan mythos... Close analog, anyway.'" (3, p.169) Are all the analogs there?

In Mike Carey's Lucifer: Evensong, YHWH withdraws and is succeeded as God by His granddaughter, Elaine Belloc, Who dismantles Heaven and Hell and builds a new afterlife because She is trying to move away from all that vultures eating livers stuff. While walking through fragments of afterlives grafted onto a prelinguistic substrate, Elaine's agents, two former demons, see:

a Japanese raiju;
the stairway to Heaven, AMA-NO-HASHIDATE;
CHALMECACIVATI, (scroll down) an Aztec children's afterlife;
AL-SIRAT, the Zoroastrian Purgatory;
Cerberus;
the peach trees of Khun-Lun;
PHLEGETHON, the river of fire;
a macho mead hall, Valhalla;
Remiel, hiding in the defunct hereafters while resisting Elaine Who, I have just realized, has an "El" name.

I thought that all that composite imagination deserved to be recorded.

A Planet Or A Projection?

"Operation Xibalba."

Hell is believed to be a postmortem state administered by incorporeal demons. However, in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, corporeal, and mortal, organisms called demons inhabit a "hell universe" which is an entire low energy/high entropy physical cosmos with dark stars and chaotically orbiting planets - although surely random orbits would require more energy than Newtonian ones? Demons, when summoned, make an inter-cosmic transition from one particular planet in the hell universe to Earth. Similarly, human beings can travel bodily from Earth to the surface of a hellish planet - always the same one?

Just as Steve Matuchek, the narrator of Operation Chaos, was a werewolf, Anibal Vargas, the narrator of Eric Flint's sequel, is a small were-dinosaur. He and his traveling companion, Sophia Loren (not that one), find their way to the top of a great pit which she recognizes as a Mayan hereafter or at least as a close analog to it. This suggests that Flint's version of Hell is not a planet in another universe but a composite projection of human beliefs. See here.

Where Hermes Goes

"A Feast for the Gods."

the Underworld;

Yggdrasil;

Nan's coral palace;

the caverns of Xibalba;

the Jade Emperor's "...infinite intricate rooms-within-rooms..." (p. 221);

"...storms and stars and immensities commanded by Yahweh..." (ibid.);

Tir-nan-Og;

the Paradise of Mohammed;

the Christian Paradise;

New York;

cyberspace, the eeriest, the rim of a new age or an abyss.

Infernal Regions

"Operation Xibalba."

"'That idiot Boatright managed to wander into a Mesoamerican region of the hell universe. A Mayan analog, at a first approximation. Of all the places to look for allies against the forces of evil!'" (1, pp. 167-168)

Observations
(ii) Yes, this is a composite Hell with many ethnic regions.

(iii) Boatright is in "...a region of the hell universe." This does not sound as if he is on the surface of a planet in a stellar universe.

(iv) Boatright does not seem to have understood the Matucheks' experience. While Steve and Virginia were in the hell universe, she invoked beings that were friends of mankind and enemies of Chaos and that responded from elsewhere, not from within that same universe. Two of the responses were from Asgard and Olympus. We see part of the Norse universe in Operation Luna.

"None of the early pagan religions were what you'd call filled with the milk of human kindness." (ibid.)

Are we to understand that the pantheons of all those religions are to be found in diverse infernal regions?

Our narrator reflects that the main premise of the underlying belief system that had created Mesoamerican deities and spirits was that human blood drawn from pain and suffering fed the gods that maintained the universe. Does the multiversal hypothesis entail that some universes are maintained in that way?

Christians believe that the blood, pain and suffering of a single perfect victim does satisfy their deity.

The Boatright Expedition

"Operation Xibalba."

When the Matucheks were about to be defeated by the demons in the hell universe, Virginia summoned other powerful beings who turned out to be Thor, Athena and one of those South American feathered serpent deities. Now, following Virginia's example, a guy called Rick Boatright has led an expedition into the hell universe in search of:

"'"...morally neutral allies in the struggle against the Adversary."'" (1, p. 155)

But Virginia summoned those three deities into the hell universe from somewhere else so Boatright is not going to find such beings there.

Scholars who have studied the Matucheks' data think that the serpent was an analog of a North, not South, American deity so Boatcheck has entered "'...Hell from Yuma...,'" (ibid.) thinking that this will make him more likely to find that deity. But the deity is not in Hell! (Note that the word, "Hell," not the phrase, "the hell universe," is used.)

Are the deities projections of human beliefs or are the beliefs intuitions of independently existing beings? In Operation Luna, it is clear that the Norse mythological universe with Yggdrasil etc exists independently and has moved further away or become less easily accessible. We are still very much in the multiverse.

One Wet Saturday

It is a rare day that I do not leave the house, not even to walk across to Ali's shop. However today has been nonstop rain so Sheila has knitted for Yossi, granddaughter, while I have met my daily quota for Poul Anderson Appreciation blog posts and also watched two Watchmen TV episodes which I will discuss on the Comics Appreciation blog. (Later in the evening: see here.)

A short story, read quickly, can later be reread and analyzed lengthily. Right now that is happening with several of the Multiverse sequels to some of Poul Anderson's works. In particular, Eric Flint's "Operation Xibalba" is like a bottomless pit.

Infernal Alliances

Eric Flint, "Operation Xibalba" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Mutliverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 151-182.

(Have I said before that this cover image looks like a demonic SwampThing? See here.)

Evil distorts infernal geometry just as gravity curves space-time. (1, p. 156)

A State Department representative informs two DIA (Department of Infernal Affairs) men that the US has some:

"'...existing alliances with forces in the netherworlds.'" (1, p. 159)

Later, she adds that:

"'...too many of our netherworld alliances with pagan forces are based on rigid honor codes.'" (1, p. 168)

This hellish universe is a comprehensive one because it includes:

"'...a Mayan mythos, sure enough. Close analogue, anyway.'" (3, p. 169)

I have only just noticed, first, that this story has only three numbered sections and, secondly, that they are numbered 1, 3 and 5. Maybe even numbers don't work in Hell?

Just as we compare Anderson's Old Phoenix with Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End, we can also compare Anderson's hell universe as elaborated by Eric Flint with Alan Moore's Hell as elaborated first by Neil Gaiman, then by Mike Carey - who tells us something of the nature of infernal alliances. See the demon Lord Arux's remark quoted here.

Missions To Hell

"Operation Xibalba."

Missionaries go to the hell universe to preach to its inhabitants and are instantly martyred. But surely they then enter the hereafter, if there is one, thus proving that it is confusing to call the "hell universe" that?

Our narrator argues that the missionaries should:

"'...understand that, pretty much by definition, the denizens of the hell universe are...
"Well. Damned. That means 'not subject to salvation.'" (p. 154)

If the hell universe were Hell, then I would agree with him. However, applying the word "hell" not to a hereafter but to another universe does not establish anything "by definition." It just confuses the issue.

An elderly Salvation Officer interviewed on British TV said that, if she found herself in Hell, then she would preach Christ and then it would not be Hell anymore. I imagine that, if you can think like that, then you are not going to find yourself in a condition called "Hell" in the first place. But faith can be tested in this life.