The Second Civilization-Cluster

By the first civilization-cluster, I mean the one that includes Earth. By the second, I mean the one where some Earthwomen trade temporarily. We know comparatively less about the second civilization-cluster but let us assemble the little that we know:

it is dominated by "...raw capitalism..." (Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, St Albans, Herts, 1975, pp. 84-85);

robotics are highly developed,including "...thousands of kinds of automaton..." and even "...body-waldos"; (p. 84)

Uru is "...the interstellar auxiliary language..." as in several other clusters, including the first; (p. 83)

after visiting only two clusters, the women heard rumors of this one, "..a free enterprise economy at a stage of pioneering and expansion...," that suits their plan to become rich enough to hire ships to search the galaxy for other human beings; (p. 86)

Terran Traders, run by the Earthwomen and helped by native investors, introduces "...profit sharing, systems analysis and motivational research among outworld cultures...," just as the Earthmen are meanwhile introducing new applications of paragravitics in the first civilization-cluster; (p. 85)

Terran Traders trade amicably with the sha-Eykza of Zatlokoopa but their innovations upset the Forsi, the "...second most powerful race in this cluster...," who respond by kidnapping one of the women, using the body-waldos. (pp. 85-86)

This is all taken from a single ten page chapter. As usual, when all the information has been gathered together, it turns out to be a lot more than might have been expected.

Civilization-Clusters

Let us try to summarize the recent history of our immediate civilization-cluster since, in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday (St Albans, 1975), that is the only possible kind of galactic history.

On Kandemir, vast, fertile plains enabled nomads to domesticate animals, to sustain government, literacy and technology and to dominate the cities, where subject races labor in immobile industries like mining. T'sjudan space travelers arrived and began to trade. Kandemirian nomadism became an interstellar empire subordinating even T'sjuda but opposed by a coalition led by the Dragar of Vorlak, a warrior class who had displaced the Vorlakka imperium when space travelers reached Vorlak.

Monwaing which has spread through space by peaceful colonization, not by military aggression, supports the coalition but without joining the war. Other space-traveling races in the civilization-cluster are too weak to intervene. Like the Chereionites in Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Monwaingi are descended from flightless birds but the latter are more avian in appearance, with beaks and feathers. I am reminded of Tomar Re in the Green Lantern Corps. Monwaingi introduce Terrestrials to space travel, then Earth is destroyed and Kandemir is suspected.

While American men fight for Vorlak against Kandemir, European women found Terran Traders, Inc. on Zatlokopa in a capitalist civilization-cluster. By the end of the novel, Terrestrials will have upset the balance of power in both civilization-clusters but, of course, the estimated million other civilization-clusters in the galaxy will not be affected.

Civilization Clusters In The Technic History?

For "civilization clusters" in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, see here and here.

Also:

The premises of After Doomsday are that:

the galaxy is full of intelligent races;
“superlight” travel is possible.

It follows that:

superlight is discovered somewhere some time, once or more than once;
explorers encounter many races, some of whom are willing and able to acquire superlight from them;
superlight travel spreads like dandelion seeds;
space traveling races deal with those with whom they can converse and ignore or bypass others;
they can deal regularly only with those in their immediate vicinity;
therefore, the galaxy is full of “civilization-clusters,” between which there is no regular contact;
within a cluster, space travellers learn a common language and one such language is used in several nearby clusters;
even within a cluster, every planet is economically self-sufficient so trade is in knowledge and luxury items;
 the civilized galaxy is so vast that there cannot be a single Empire or Federation and no one knows the history or current macro-status of the entire galaxy;
militaristic imperialism between nearby worlds is possible and, this being a work by Anderson, it does occur in our cluster – marine warriors on one planet and nomadic conquerors on another maintain their societies by expanding into space, engage in conflict with each other and involve other races in the hostilities.

-copied from here.

In the Imperial period of Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, the characters continually remind themselves, and thus also us, that they inhabit only one poorly explored sphere of space at one end of a single spiral arm of a single galaxy. In the Commonalty period, there are human civilizations in several spiral arms although the action of the only story set in this period is confined to a single region of space at the galactic periphery.

Might there be similar groups of interacting civilizations elsewhere in this galaxy or in neighboring galaxies? Several independent Histories could be written. Some of Anderson's short stories are set on extra-solar planets. Could some of these be construed as occurring elsewhere in the Technic History universe?

Uru

After Doomsday, 5.

Carl Donnan, now Captain of the USS Benjamin Franklin, converses with Hlott Luurs, the Draga of Tolbek on Vorlak and president of the Dragar Council.

"They both spoke in Uru, a modified form of the language used by the first interstellar visitors to this region. Some such lingua franca was necessary throughout a cluster; every spaceman mastered it as part of his training. Uru was flexible, grammatically streamlined, and included standardized units of measurement. Any oxygen breather could pronounce its phonemes, or at least write its alphabet, well enough to be understood. In fact, several other clusters, their own civilizations first seeded by explorers of that ancient race, had adopted the same auxiliary speech." (p. 43)

("Cluster" means "civilization-cluster," not "galactic cluster.")

This admirable summary deserved to be quoted in full. Imagine spacefarers learning a lingua franca as part of their training. This language has been modified and streamlined. In its inter-species use, it has probably departed far from its original form.

The scenario in After Doomsday is indeed unique.

Technic Civilization In Its Galactic Context

"Hiding Place."

"'Our intelligence reports, interrogation of prisoners, evaluation of explorers' observations, and so on, all indicate that three or four different species in this region possess the hyperdrive. The Adderkops themselves aren't certain about all of them. Space is so damned huge.'" (p. 567)

OK. We get it that space is big. But three or four species with hyperdrive? On "'...the very fringe of human civilization...'"? (p. 564) Then how many in the galaxy? Why do they not overlap and interact like the civilization-clusters in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday?

The Aenean rebels exiled by Dominic Flandry flee into another spiral arm. Do they enter another civilization-cluster? Why do exiles or explorers not arrive in known space from further away? Why not some very occasional intergalactic travel?

Intergalactic travel occurs:

in Anderson's Tau Zero, with relativistic acceleration;

in Anderson's World Without Stars, with instantaneous spatial jumps;

in James Blish's Cities In Flight, with spindizzies moving the mass of a planet.

 

It would be a very long journey requiring many stops for refueling and repairs with the quantum hyperdrive but it could be done.

Extension In Time And Space

We like to imagine Poul Anderson's Technic History extending into an indefinite future but why not also further into galactic space? Are there rival empires or other comparable civilizations in other spiral arms or even in other parts of this spiral arm? Might one civilization launch an exploratory mission around the galaxy? Might a scenario emerge more like that in Anderson's After Doomsday where discrete civilization clusters have little direct contact but nevertheless some mutual knowledge. It is a safe bet that there is no other civilization cluster very close to Technic civilization or it would have been heard of but there is plenty of room in the rest of the galaxy:

"...in a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."
-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

That is the universe of the Technic History whether or not it is also ours. Voluminous though it is, the Technic History notionally might be a very small part of a much vaster galactic history.

Uru And Feudalism

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER FIVE.

What connects the planets within a civilization-cluster? Usually, not:

a unified government;
any common culture, ideas or beliefs;
trade in necessities.

However, there is trade in:

luxuries;
arts;
cultures;
technologies, starting with the superlight drive;
knowledge.

And what is necessary for trade? Communication. Each cluster has a lingua franca, learned by spacefarers as part of their training.

Uru:

is a modification of the language spoken by the earliest interstellar visitors to this region;

is flexible and "...grammatically streamlined..."; (p. 54)

has standardized units for measurement;

can be pronounced or at least written intelligibly by any oxygen breather;

has been adopted by several clusters originally civilized by the same interstellar travelers;

is the language spoken between Donnan and the Dragar.

When the Dragar president, after a few minutes pondering, assents to a suggestion by the Overmaster's representative, we are told that:

"One refreshing aspect of feudalism was, to Donnan, the ease with which such decisions could be made." (p. 56)

Feudalism gets a good press in Anderson's:

The King Of Ys (with Karen Anderson);
History of Technic Civilization;
The High Crusade.

Greg Bear wrote:

"...give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson...."
-see Why Empires?

Uru cannot be more grammatically streamlined than Esperanto:

nouns end in "-o," adding "-j" for the plural and "-n" for the accusative, the only exception being that feminine names end in "-a";

adjectives end in "-a" with the same plural and accusative endings as nouns;

the verbal infinitive ends in "-i," past tense in "-is," present in "-as," future in "-os";

adverbs end in "-e."

many meanings are contained not in separate words but in affixes, e.g.:

viro, man, and virino, woman;
patro, father, and patrino, mother;
lordo, lord, and lordino, lady;
dextra, right, and maldextra, left.

Word parts can be combined creatively, thus:

Si respondis, "Jes." (She replied, "Yes.")
Si respondis jese. (She replied "yesly"/affirmatively.)
Si jesis. (She "yessed.") 

Human Superiority

Before returning to the theme of human superiority in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday (St Albans, Herts, 1975), let us pause to consider a splendid example of inferiority as expressed in perhaps the longest, most obsequious, "thank you" anywhere in literature. A Vorlakkan adviser asks:

" 'My captain...dare this worm express thanks for your graciousness in heeding his prayer, or should he accept it in silence as the winter earth accepts vernal sunshine?'" (p. 121)

Elsewhere in Anderson's works, only Pum, the ancient Tyrean recruited to the Time Patrol, has such a gift for exaggerated flattery and self-abasement.

Elsewhere in the same conversation, the human leader, Donnan, advises the Vorlakkan leader, Hlott:

" '...if a massive scientific-technological effort can be mounted. If the best Vorlakka and allied minds can work together. And that's the real technique we Earthlings have got that you don't. A feudal society like yours, or a nomadic culture like Kandemir, or a coalition of fragments like Monwaing, isn't set up to innovate on purpose. We can tell you how to mount a development project.' " (p. 123)

But Donnan must reinforce this argument by warning that he has also spoken to other Councillors who will cooperate if their current president, Hlott, does not. The moral is drawn at the end of the chapter:

"Practical politics was another art which had been more highly developed on Earth than it was here." (p. 126)

(In Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Dominic Flandry easily subverts the Scotani Empire when he becomes their prisoner.)

Is there anything at which human beings do not excel? Apparently not. In the following chapter, vassals of Kandemir are offered independence and assistance in return for helping to overthrow their nomadic oppressors:

"Soon allied agents were being smuggled onto those planets, to disseminate propaganda and organize underground movements along lines familiar to Earth's history." (p. 134)

And, in the chapter after that:

"Vorlak and Monwaing command ships by the thousands and troops by the million, but they listen to Carl Donnan with deepest respect...The newly freed planets...are already a great power...their deliberative assembly is presided over by a human." (p. 138)

(European feudal barons preside among extrasolar races in Anderson's The High Crusade.)

- while, in another civilization-cluster, the Earthwomen:

" '...ve got rich fast. In a few more years, Terran Traders, Inc., would have been the greatest power in that galactic region.' " (p. 139)

Finally, when it is revealed that a Monwaingi Society had sterilised Earth, the Monwaingi Ramri sets out to cleanse his race by civil war and, when the human beings remind him that his people lead the cluster, he replies, " 'You must succeed us.' " (p. 158)

But are human beings always superior in Anderson's science fiction? No. Anderson explored every possibility. The Ishtarians in his Fire Time are superior in many ways and one of his many collections is on the theme of alien races that are more advanced or more intelligent than humanity.

(Star) Wars

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER SEVEN.

Carl Donnan's humanoid Kandemirian captor says, "'Ah, so.'" (p. 76) - and thus sounds Japanese. This plus an American at war far from home recalls World War II, as in High Treason. For impacts of World War II on Anderson's fiction, see World War II. For similarities to occupied Europe, see An Occupied Planet and Flandry On Vixen.

With their long history of armed conflicts on Earth, the Terrestrials have something to contribute to their local civilization-cluster with its long drawn out struggle between two imperial powers, Kandemir and Vorlak. However, interstellar wars are rare.

Within a cluster:

"There was trading... There was tourism. There was a degree of interchange in science, art, religion, fashion. Sometimes there was war." (CHAPTER THREE, p. 34)

But:

"The civilization-clusters were never hostile to each other. There was nothing to be hostile about. Conflicts occurred among neighbours, not among strangers who saw each other once a year, a decade, or a century." (ibid.)

Civilization-Clusters; Dandelion Seeds: A Unique Interstellar Setting

After Doomsday, 3.

As a matter of fact, World Without Stars and After Doomsday each have a unique setting. In World Without Stars, a spaceship can make an instantaneous jump not only to another planetary system but even to another galaxy but must first accelerate to the relative velocity of its destination system or galaxy. Thus, any space journey does after all take time. However, human beings have unlimited time because, thanks to the antithanatic, they die only by accident or violence, not from disease or old age, and memories must be artificially edited so that a lot of people write journals. How long would they remain recognizably human?

In After Doomsday, a spaceship can cross the galaxy in months although there is no mention of any extra-galactic travel because there is more than enough to occupy a space travelling species not only within this galaxy but even in an immediate vicinity within the galaxy. There are a hundred billion stars, at least half of them with at least one life-bearing planet and many of these bearing intelligent life.

The superlight drive was invented once or many times. Some species explore. Others learn from the explorers. There is usually nothing to fear. There is room for all. Each planet is economically and politically self-sufficient. Most races are primitive or uninterested in space travel. However, among the few that are industrialized and outward looking, superlight tech spreads randomly like dandelion seeds. There is tourism and trade in non-essentials but each planet deals regularly only with others in its own immediate civilization-cluster because anything more than that would be too much. There are a million clusters numbering anything from one to one hundred planets.

A hundred and fifty years ago, a race that had been exploring space for centuries discovered Monwaing. Twenty years ago, the Monwaingi discovered Earth. A language of the first spacefaring race in a cluster is adapted for inter-species communication. Goldberg has studied scientific texts in Tantha and Uru as well as in translation. There is a sudden explosion of knowledge.

This novel is right about the size of the galaxy but optimistic about superlight and the number of intelligent species.

The Technic History and Potential Histories

The Technic History

Writing about a series necessitates re-reading it. Re-reading reinforces appreciation of future historical interconnectedness. To summarise again:

“The Saturn Game.”	Early exploration.
“Wings of Victory.”	Human-Ythrian first contact on Ythri under Captain Gray during the Grand Survey. (References to the planets Cynthia, Woden and Hermes.)
“The Problem of Pain.”	Early human-Ythrian interaction on a second Grand Survey planet, provisionally named Gray.
“Margin of Profit.”	Nicholas van Rijn, Master Merchant, Polesotechnic League.
“How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson.”	The Wodenite Adzel studies on Earth.
“The Three-Cornered Wheel.”	The Hermetian David Falkayn is an apprentice on the planet Ivanhoe.
“A Sun Invisible.”	Falkayn is a journeyman in van Rijn’s company.
“The Season of Forgiveness.”	Later events on Ivanhoe.
The Man Who Counts.	Van Rijn and the Hermetian ducal heiress are shipwrecked on the planet Diomedes.
“Esau.”	Van Rijn; first contact with Babur.
Trader to the Stars (three stories).	Van Rijn.
“The Trouble Twisters.”	Van Rijn’s trader team of Falkayn, Adzel and the Cynthian Chee Lan.
“Day of Burning.”	The trader team helps the Merseians to survive radiation from a nearby supernova.
Satan’s World.	Van Rijn and the trader team.
“A Little Knowledge.”	Later events on two other planets discovered during the Grand Survey.
“Lodestar.”	Secret exploitation of super-metals on Mirkheim by races that cannot afford to buy knowledge or technology from League companies. Falkayn, the discoverer of Mirkheim, has broken his oath of fealty to van Rijn but marries van Rijn’s granddaughter.
Mirkheim.	A League cartel engineers the Baburite invasion of Mirkheim and Hermes. Conflict in the League. The later lives of the major characters.
“Wingless.”	Falkayn’s grandson interacts with Ythrians on the jointly colonized planet Avalon, formerly “Gray.”
“Rescue on Avalon.”	Later human-Ythrian interaction on Avalon.
“The Star Plunderer.”	During post-League “Troubles,” Manuel Argos leads a slave revolt and founds the Terran Empire.
“Sargasso of Lost Starships.”	The early Empire.
The People of the Wind.	The Terran War on Avalon: a descendant of Falkayn meets a forerunner and possible ancestor of Flandry; “Gray” is now the name of an Avalonian city.
The Flandry period.	Dominic Flandry, active on many planets, including some introduced earlier, defends the Empire against rebels, barbarians and Merseians.
The Game of Empire.	During Flandry’s old age, his daughter, the son of an old acquaintance and a new Wodenite character foil a Merseian plot. Potentially, a new series begins…
The Long Night period (three stories and one novel, if we include the disputed “Memory”).	The Empire has fallen. In one story, Roan Tom roves the stars. Potentially, a new series begins… Later, humanity evolves.
“Starfog.”	Descendants of rebels expelled by Falkayn contact a new civilization, the Commonalty. Daven Laure is a Ranger of the Commonalty. Potentially, a new series begins…

(“Memory” is set after the fall of a human interstellar Empire but Anderson denied that this was the Terran Empire of the Technic History.)

The Imperial and post-Imperial periods, like the Polesotechnic period, could be analyzed story by story but I here resort to summarizing the later “History of Technic Civilization” in a few sentences. Nevertheless, the reader of this summary should be able to appreciate the scope of the complete series, despite its obvious pulp sf origins. The Terran Empire, introduced as a colorful backdrop for “space opera,” sf action-adventure fiction, later became the setting for novels reflecting on the process of imperial decline. If van Rijn profited from capitalist expansion but Flandry, later, resisted imperial decline, then what went wrong, or at least what happened, between their periods? The two periods were originally presented in unrelated series until Anderson, writing Flandry, suddenly thought to make him refer back to van Rijn and a new future history was born.

Aliens

Hermes is a Terrestrial colony so Falkayn is human. Ythrians are winged carnivores with gills adapted as superchargers to lift bodies massive enough for intelligence. Diomedeans also fly but with bat-like, not feathered, wings. Wodenites are large reptilian quadrupeds descended from hexapods whose forelimbs came to be freed for manipulation. Adzel played the dragon in Chinese New Year and Wagnerian opera when he was a student on Earth.

Cynthians, arboreal hunters and traders, sound like intelligent squirrels. The Cynthian Chee Lan, small, female and aggressive, is clearly written to be an antithesis to the Wodenite Adzel who is large, male and placid, even converting to Buddhism. Ivanhoans, Merseians and some other species are humanoid with relatively minor variations. Baburites are hydrogen-breathing giant centipedes. Ymirites, encountered by Flandry, inhabiting Jovian planets and also breathing hydrogen, have many legs and tendrilled heads but cannot be seen clearly through a Jovian atmosphere. Flandry’s main opponent, a Chereionite, is of avian descent but humanoid.

Thus, instead of designing new organisms from their molecules up, Anderson usually adapts terrestrial forms. His humanoids may have differently coloured skins, different numbers of fingers, thumbs or eyes and no visible ears or nose but they remain recognizably humanoid. As a hard sf writer, Anderson can defend this procedure:

“On an essentially terrestroid planet, evolution basically parallels our own because it must.” (1)

And psychologically:

“Those we encounter on a regular basis are necessarily those whose bent is akin to ours…” (2)

If there are many races, then many of them will be incomprehensible to us but we will deal with those who are not. Anderson applies this principle in other works.

Three Novels

Any story set in the future is potentially an episode of a future history. A novel written in 2000 but set in 3000 assumes a history connecting the known events of 2000 with the fictitious events of 3000. The author of a single story could add any number of sequels and prequels to it. The Star Trek series moved in this direction, becoming more than a single series set in a single period.

Tau Zero, After Doomsday and World Without Stars by Poul Anderson remained independent works - except that one short story, “Pride,” is set in the same future as Tau Zero, with Stockholm as the world capital. The earlier, shorter version of Tau Zero had not shared this political background with “Pride” but the novel does, thus potentially launching yet another future history.

Each of these three novels takes a basic sf premise and presents a comprehensive conceptual development from that premise. Tau Zero avoids alien contact because it concentrates on the human crew of a relativistic spaceship which accelerates uncontrollably. Through time dilation, the ship and its crew survive into the next universe. The central character hopes that surviving humanity can become the Elder Race of that universe but we are not shown this happening.

The premises of After Doomsday are that:

the galaxy is full of intelligent races;
“superlight” travel is possible.

It follows that:

superlight is discovered somewhere some time, once or more than once;
explorers encounter many races, some of whom are willing and able to acquire superlight from them;
superlight travel spreads like dandelion seeds;
space traveling races deal with those with whom they can converse and ignore or bypass others;
they can deal regularly only with those in their immediate vicinity;
therefore, the galaxy is full of “civilization-clusters,” between which there is no regular contact;
within a cluster, space travellers learn a common language and one such language is used in several nearby clusters;
even within a cluster, every planet is economically self-sufficient so trade is in knowledge and luxury items;
the civilized galaxy is so vast that there cannot be a single Empire or Federation and no one knows the history or current macro-status of the entire galaxy;
militaristic imperialism between nearby worlds is possible and, this being a work by Anderson, it does occur in our cluster – marine warriors on one planet and nomadic conquerors on another maintain their societies by expanding into space, engage in conflict with each other and involve other races in the hostilities.

This scenario could have been the basis of an indefinite number of novels. This one novel has two specific additional premises:

first, human spaceships re-enter the Solar System at different times to find that some other race has destroyed all life on Earth so – who murdered Earth and what can be done about it?
secondly, the American spaceship crew is all male whereas the Europeans are all female so – how can they find each other to continue the human race?

Anderson wrote detective novels and this sf novel clearly has elements of detective fiction. Deducing who murdered Earth involves realizing that whoever did it used equipment which required them to translate from a numeral system based on the power of six to a system based on the power of twelve. A six fingered race tried to frame a twelve fingered race.

The European women aim to get rich in a capitalist cluster so that they will be able to pay for a fleet of ships to search the galaxy. The American men aim to win the local interstellar war, then to devise a ballad about their victory in a multi-cluster language. One of the women hears the ballad sung in a multi-species bar, Yotl’s Nest. By the end of the novel, Terrestrial men and women have met and have changed the balance of power in two civilization-clusters.

World Without Stars has two basic premises:

antithanatics prevent death by illness or old age so that people now die only by accident or violence;
by a series of instantaneous jumps, although with time-consuming intermediate journeys, a spaceship can reach not only other stars but even other galaxies.

It follows that:

population is not a problem;
life-styles and perspectives adjust to the long view (Earthside property left in the care of robots is unchanged centuries later; a spaceman has wives in several ports and may not see any one of them for several decades but each wife also has several space traveling husbands);
some individuals live for millennia, for example three thousand year old Hugh Valland who has lived through the entire period of interstellar and intergalactic travel and who is content, every few years or decades, to revisit a certain grave on Earth.

Again, these premises could have been the basis of an indefinite number of novels. This particular novel has the specific premise that its characters, crash-landing on a planet in a system between galaxies, need to work hard and to organize native labor in order to get back home and are led by Hugh Valland. Getting back off this ancient planet where there are no heavy metals takes them four decades. For Valland, Mary O’Meara waits on Earth.

1. Anderson, Poul, “Wings of Victory,” Analog Science Fiction, April 1972, reprinted in Anderson, Poul, The Earth Book of Stormgate 1978, New York, pp. 3-22 at p. 14.
2. Anderson, Poul, The Trouble Twisters, 1966, New York, p. 56.

Three Scenarios

We are rereading works by Poul Anderson that involve faster than light interstellar travel and alien contact but that are not part of his Technic History. World Without Stars, After Doomsday and the Technic History each describe a different interstellar scenario.

The Technic History

Human beings invent the hyperdrive and build Technic civilization which influences many other intelligent species. Thus, several interstellar realms, mainly Terran, Ythrian and Merseian, overlap with the larger Dispersal of Ymir and occupy many planets that had previously belonged to the extinct Chereionite civilization but there is no knowledge of conditions elsewhere even in this one spiral arm. 

World Without Stars

Human beings live indefinitely extended lifespans and can make instantaneous jumps even across intergalactic distances. Thus, most people live off Earth and exploration is never-ending.

After Doomsday

Superlight travel, discovered once or many times, spreads like dandelion seeds. Explorers contact many species some of which become independent interstellar travellers. Planets remain self-sufficient but can benefit from wider contacts. Contact for trade or other purposes is usually within a local civilization-cluster because the galaxy as a whole is too big.

We would like to read future history series set in the second and third scenarios.

Interstellar War And Wealth

(Because I have stopped receiving email notifications of blog comments, I have to scroll down recent posts to search for any new comments and will miss any such comments on earlier posts so please tell me by email, paulshackley2017@gmail.com, if you leave such comments.) (Addendum: However, I am informed of new comments elsewhere on the blog.)

In Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, the American men stay in the local civilization-cluster where they become involved in an interstellar war whereas the European women travel to another cluster where they participate in a competitive economy. Does Anderson merely project human social norms out into the galaxy? Not exactly. A point made in the Polesotechnic League period of Anderson's Technic History was that, of many intelligent species, some will be similar enough to us for us to interact with them whereas others will not.

The species who compete either economically or militarily are surrounded by probably larger numbers of beings who conduct their affairs in entirely different ways. Explorers will either ignore or occasionally study such races and their cultures.

Dandelion Seeds And Civilizations II

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER THREE.

"A spaceship could cross the galaxy in months; but a news item, if sensational enough to make the journey at all, might take a hundred years." (p. 34)

FTL in After Doomsday is many times faster than in Anderson's Technic History or in most sf.

Reasons why an armada occasionally starts a new civilization cluster:

traders seek profit;
explorers seek knowledge;
refugees seek a home;
less humanly comprehensible motivations.

Interactions within a cluster:

trade, although not for necessities;
tourism;
"...interchange in science, art, religion, fashion..." (ibid.);
occasional wars.

Between the million clusters: almost nothing.

"No wonder the speculative writers had misunderstood their own assumptions. The universe was too big for them -" (p. 35)

Ingenious Schemes

After Doomsday.

Chapter 8 is an interesting change, about the European women running Terran Traders, Inc., in an expanding free enterprise civilization-cluster but two of the eight pages are a fight scene. By innovating with profit sharing, systems analysis and motivational research, the women hope to become rich enough quickly enough to hire enough spaceships to search the galaxy for other human survivors. Meanwhile, Donnan hopes, by participating in the Kandemir-Vorlak war, to become notorious enough to attract the attention of any other human beings. Are there other human crews with similar schemes? It seems that some of them will succeed in overcoming the obstacles to the perpetuation of their species. In any case, in this particular fictional scenario, the million civilization-clusters in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds would continue as before even if the human race were exterminated to its last member.

Another Means Of FTL

We have seen hyperspace as a series of quantum jumps in the History of Technic Civilization and have encountered the Mach hypothesis in The Star Fox/Fire Time. See here. Now, in After Doomsday (St Albans, Herts, 1975), we have a third means of faster than light travel (FTL).

The superlight drive is based on:

"The mathematical depiction of space as having a structure equivalent to a set of standing waves in an n-dimensional continuum." (p. 29)

(The "Standing Wave" is one of James Blish's means of FTL along with his Haertel overdrive, Arpe Drive and Imaginary Drive. Blish preferred to avoid the cliche of "hyperspace.")

In After Doomsday, where the waves interfere, a spaceship can move between them. In interstellar space, where gravitational distortion is minimal, interference fringes are sufficiently close that spaceships can skip most of the straight-line distance to their destination. Whereas galaxies recede as intergalactic space is generated, a superlight ship exploits zones where space is cancelled out - except that the field physicist winces at this summary by a mechanical engineer.

More interesting is the kind of interstellar society that Anderson imagines in this, and only this, novel. It is not known whether superlight ships were invented once or more than once. Explorers found primitives, civilizations not interested in space travel or those that were able to learn and apply superlight, which thus spread not like a cone of light but like dandelion seeds. Each space-traveling species deals regularly only with other species in its own civilization-cluster because there are too many for regular contact elsewhere. The galaxy is too big for any single Federation or Empire. No one can have an overview or know the full history. This makes sense and would have been a perfect premise for a series of novels.

The Nine And The Nest

Searching for something, we find other things of the same name. Searching this blog discloses that there are two groups called the Nine and two places called the Nest, three of the latter if we include Yotl's Nest (scroll down), a multi-species bar in another civilization-cluster in After Doomsday. This in turn displays the breadth of Poul Anderson's imagination. The two Nines and three Nests are scattered across:

"Time Patrol," the opening story of the Time Patrol series;

the King Of Ys Tetralogy, historical fiction with an element of fantasy, co-written by Karen Anderson;

"The Nest," a time travel short story;

The People Of The Wind, one volume of the History of Technic Civilization;

After Doomsday, an sf novel.

In The People Of The Wind:

The Nest, a tavern for ornithoids, is the tallest building in Centauri with a gravshaft to its rooftop for humans who have not brought flying gear. It is unwalled, protected from rain by a vitryl canopy. Insectoids circle fluoroglobes and a service robot serves New African beer.

-copied from here. (See: In The People Of The Wind, Chapter Six.)

SF Premises

An sf story or novel needs a good premise. The author presents either an original premise or an original treatment of a familiar premise. Some premises are standardized almost as sub-genres like robots, time travel, alternative histories etc. See SF Themes.

Poul Anderson
A science of society is possible - but its application is distorted by social conflicts.

A cyclical theory of history applies to future civilizations.

A police force is necessary to prevent time travelers from changing history.

Corridors constructed in space can be rotated onto the temporal axis.

Time travel is a psychic power.

A few mutant immortals survive through history into an indefinite future.

A relativistic spaceship accelerates indefinitely.

Faster than light travel is discovered and spreads but there are so many intelligent races that it is possible to communicate and trade only within a local "civilization cluster" and some human interstellar explorers return to the Solar System to find that Earth has been sterilized in their absence.

Lifespans are extended indefinitely, instantaneous intergalactic travel is possible and an intergalactic planetary system is inhabited.

Inorganic intelligences spread through a mostly lifeless galaxy at sublight speeds.

Human consciousness can be preserved in artificial cybernetic systems.

Human and animal intelligence suddenly increases.

Magic is a set of technologies. (From Heinlein.)

Shakespeare's plays were histories.

Medieval Englishmen do not know that they cannot defeat aliens with interstellar capability...

At sublight speeds, interstellar traders live in their ships.

After a nuclear war, civilization is rebuilt in the Southern Hemisphere.

Teleportation sends fuel to interstellar ships and is used to travel to extrasolar planets that the ships have reached.

SM Stirling
Nantucket time travels.

Technology stops working.

When a comet strikes Earth, the British Empire relocates to India.

Slave-owning society survives and thrives into the twentieth century and beyond.

Mars and Venus were terraformed a long time ago.

A small group from an Earth like ours colonizes a North America that had never been invaded by Europeans.

Premises And Conclusions
A conclusion can contradict its premise. The purpose of Anderson's temporal police force, the Time Patrol, turns out to be to counteract temporal chaos.

Out Among The Civilization-Clusters

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday, CHAPTER THREE.

In this one galaxy, there are a million civilization-clusters with no pattern between them and very little pattern within any given cluster. The U.S.S. Benjamin Franklin's three year mission is to begin to get an idea of the layout and characteristics of the galaxy beyond what has already been learned from the Monwaing complex. The ship visits a dozen planets in four clusters. Donnan's assignment is to study outplanet mechanical techniques.

This three year mission resembles the Grand Survey in Anderson's Technic History or the five year mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek: The Original Series. Some future history series, like James Blish's Cities In Flight, skip past this necessary early stage of interstellar exploration.

"Higgledy-piddledy, helter-skelter, civilization spread out among the stars." (p. 34)

We remember how the Polesotechnic League sprawled from Canopus to Deneb but these civilization-clusters sprawl much further and endure for much longer.

Technological Nomads

"'Ghazu is largely steppe. Its inhabitants are the only known beings who, nomadic, independently developed high technology.'"
-Poul Anderson, For Love And Glory (New York, 2003), I, p. 18.

That sounded familiar. See:

Interstellar Relations In The Local Civilization-Cluster

Kandemir: A Merseian-Terran Synthesis In Another Timeline

Kamdemirian nomads became spacefarers while remaining nomads because they were contacted by spacefarers. I think that there is more to Kandemirian society than that but I will have to check by rereading the relevant chapter of After Doomsday. Most references to nomads (scroll down) on this blog are to the interstellar Nomads in the Psychotechnic History.

On second thoughts, searching the blog for "Kandemir" brought up:

Civilization-Clusters

- which explains how, on Kandemir, technological nomads were able to dominate the cities.