The Sea Of Space

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

"Her gaze went back to the blackness; stars and nebulae and cold galactic river." (p. 176)

Poul Anderson regularly describes stars seen from space and I usually skip past such passages but now realize that I could instead compile a long comparative list of these descriptions by Anderson and other sf writers.

How often is the universe compared to water? Nearly every title on Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series makes this comparison:

In The Ocean Of Night
Across The Sea Of Suns
Great Sky River
Tides Of Light
Furious Gulf
Sailing Bright Eternity

James Blish wrote evocatively:

"It was the empty ocean of space that washes between galaxies."
-Earthman, Come Home (London, 1963), p. 56.

"...the Rift turned and eventually faded out into a rill of emptiness, soaking into the sands of the stars." (p. 59)

And, in Anderson:

"...Rax...had drifted about until it stranded at last on this tolerant shore." -Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 214.

"...a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space." -Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 195.

Space has no tides but we get the idea.

Faces

I have copied this article from my Science Fiction blog because it covers Anderson.

Many aliens in sf have heads with recognizable faces, minimally two eyes above and a mouth, for drinking, eating and speaking, below. A nose and visible ears are optional but usually present. Ears may be pointed. Star Trek has Spock of Vulcan and Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization has Aycharaych of Chereion, although Anderson does not commit the absurdity of suggesting that a Chereionite (descended from flightless birds) could interbreed with a Terrestrial. 

A fictional alien is generated, e.g., by putting a cat-like head onto a humanoid body. Thus, terrestrial features are projected onto extraterrestrial organisms as, in the past, onto supernatural beings. Closely linked to recognizable faces is easy communication. Like us, the aliens not only have faces but also use them for communication. Intelligible sounds emanating from mouths are supplemented by tones of voice and facial expressions as well as by familiar body language. We can learn each other's spoken languages. We may be friends, enemies or trading partners but in any case we understand each other. It is harder to imagine easy communication and friendship with faceless beings.

Probably all that can be said about alien intelligences is that, if they exist, they must have:

organs for perception and communication;
limbs for locomotion and manipulation;
orifices for ingestion and excretion. 

Anything lacking these functions is inanimate. Static, plant-like organisms do not interact with their environment enough to need to think about it so no motion or manipulation probably means no intelligence. Organs, limbs and orifices need not be immediately recognizable by us. They need not be organized in a way that we would recognize as bipedal, quadrupled, winged etc. The brain might be protected within the body or brain functions might be dispersed throughout the body. Organs etc should be identifiable by their functions if we have enough time to interact with their owners but their initial response to us might be fear, hostility, aggression, indifference etc.

 A bodily surface need not resemble skin, fur, feathers, rhinoceros hide etc. It will not have evolved in an exactly Earth-like environment. Too many factors could differ:

the mass of the planet, hence the strength of its gravity;
distance from its sun;
nature of that sun;
whether the "sun" is one of the fifty per cent of stars that have one or more stellar companions which might prevent the formation of any planets or at least of planets with stable orbits;
rate of rotation;
axial tilt;
the precise mixture of gasses in the atmosphere;
radiation levels;
the amount of free liquid on the surface;
whether chemistry on the planet is right- or left-handed;
whether there is a plant like grass that grows across the surface and that can be cropped down to ground level without being killed;
whether there is a large satellite whose gravity can thin out the atmosphere of the primary and can also cause tides, facilitating the evolution of amphibians and thus the transition of life from sea to land;
whether a quadruped climbed into equivalents of trees, stayed there long enough to develop opposable thumbs and came back down to the surface with forelimbs freed for manipulation;
whether such a biped was solitary and taciturn or social, thus potentially linguistic;
whether manipulation and communication could have developed otherwise;
whether predators, an ice age, a solar flare or a comet wiped out a promising species before it developed intelligence;
whether such a species has developed civilization, then technology, and managed not to destroy itself long enough to contact intelligences in other solar systems.

The Burgess Shale implies that a small difference in environmental conditions could cause large differences in organic forms.

A long series of contingent events and processes was necessary to generate technological civilization on Earth. Is it probable that such events and processes have been duplicated or paralleled elsewhere in the observable or even just the reachable part of the universe? There is as yet no positive evidence despite regular observation of heavenly bodies and, specifically, a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The expanding universe needed to reach a certain age, therefore size, before stellar fusion had synthesized, from the primordial hydrogen and helium, the heavier elements necessary for life. Thus, despite cosmic size, it is possible that we are the first intelligences. The discovery of several systems with super-Jovian planets near their primaries contradicts an earlier idea that the Solar System was a model for the formation of planetary systems, with at least one terrestroid planet in the temperate zone near the Sun and gas giants further out. A single datum from another planetary system is worth more than endless speculation.

Other optimistic sf premises are: 

easy faster than light interstellar travel;
humanly colonizable extra-solar planets (albeit sometimes requiring special equipment, precautions or dietary supplements).

Although I value Anderson's History, I doubt that our descendants will travel quickly or easily to other stellar systems there to meet equivalents of Merseians, Ythrians, Scothani, Donarrians, Cynthians, Wodenites, Chereionites, Diomedeans, Ivanhoans, Ikranakans, Starkadians (two species), Talwinians (two species), Didonians (three species symbiotically forming one intelligence), Martians (in this case, extra-solar aliens colonizing a solar planet) etc. The non-humanoid Ymirites and Baburites might be less unlikely. Although many sf aliens may be as impossible as the gods of fantasy, we still enjoy such fiction, particularly when it is brought to life by Anderson's prose. The old quarter of a city on a colonized planet has:

  "...a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out of the tides of space." (1)

Buildings are low because of Imhotepan gravity. The multifarious wares of the market place include a screen displaying:

"...an exquisite dance recorded beneath the Seas of Yang and Yin, where the vaz-Siravo [Starkadian refugees] had been settled." (2)

"Folk were mainly human, but it was unlikely that many had seen Mother Terra. The planets where they were born and bred had marked them. Residents of Imhotep were necessarily muscular and never fat." (3)

The view point character hears (Space) Navy men complaining about "Merseian bastards," then rushes to greet the first Wodenite, a giant centauroid, that she has ever seen. Such multi-species scenes are one glory of old sf.

 

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Game of Empire, New York, 1985, p. 1.
(2)  ibid, p. 3.
(3) ibid, pp. 3-4.

Space And Stars

Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein
A Life for The Stars by James Blish
The Game Of Empire by Poul Anderson
The Mercenary by Jerry Pournelle

These are the titles of:

a Scribner Juvenile by Heinlein;
the one Okie juvenile novel by Blish;
a Technic History novel by Anderson;
a CoDominium future history volume by Pournelle.

These four works also have in common early references to space travel and to a teenage protagonist, the right hooks to catch a certain kind of reader. Personally, if I read the first page, then I will continue to read. Anderson's character Diana sits under the sun Patricius and two moons in a place where the population drifts "...in and out on the tides of space." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 195)

Pournelle's fifteen year old character, John Christian Falkenberg, is in a spaceport and is described as "...a gangland youth..."
-Jerry Pournelle, The Mercenary (London, 1977), p. 15.

Many people glancing at these opening pages will read no further but some of us want to know about the tides of space and to accompany Falkenberg into a spaceship. I already know about Diana Crowfeather but let's learn more about this gangland youth.

The Game Of Empire

Two correspondents have explained how the opening and closing sentences of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire (IN Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, pp. 189-453) pay homage to Rudyard Kipling. I imagine that the title does as well?

The novel begins:

"She sat on the tower of St Barbara..." (p. 195)

The opening paragraph establishes that this tower is not on Earth by telling us that the sun is called Patricius and that two moons are in the sky. The paragraph closes by telling us that the planet is called Imhotep, that its Mt Horn is twelve kilometers high and that "her people" have modified the climate since coming here.

In the second paragraph, "she" becomes "Diana" as she looks from the old quarter towards the city center where "...the Pyramid ...housed Imperial offices and machinery..." (ibid.) Of course, we already know that this novel is part of a series. Nevertheless, we can study the text to find out how soon it informs us of its relationship, if any, to other works by the same author. Thus, we might at this stage wonder whether these "Imperial offices" indeed represent the Terran Empire of Anderson's Technic Civilization series. At the end of the second paragraph, and of the first page of the text, we learn that the old quarter has:

"...a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space." (ibid.)

Space has no tides but the metaphor is apposite. We expect interesting things from a varied and variable population.

The third paragraph not only informs us that Imhotep was colonized centuries previously but also refers both to the Troubles and to the Terran Empire, thus unequivocally confirming which fictitious timeline we are in. Also, we learn more about this particular planet, Imhotep, which has not appeared in the series before:

first, there was an exploration base, sometimes threatened by stampeding ice bull herds;
secondly, the planet was threatened by marauders during the Troubles;
thirdly, "...the hand of the Terran Empire reached this far..." (p. 196).

St Barbara's, originally part of the defensive works against ice bulls and marauders, has long since been obsolete, its guns scrapped, its chambers empty, its vine-covered yellow stone crumbling, its neighboring towers demolished and a market square surrounding it. It is "...in Olga's Landing...," which seems to be the name of the city (ibid.).

We do not yet know who Diana is or why she sits on St Barbara but a lot more information will be imparted before she speaks for the first time in our hearing in the middle of p. 199.

Time And Tide

"Time and tide" is an evocative phrase and I am surprised to find that I have not already published a post with this title. In an sf context, it suggests combining space travel with sea travel and this happens in Poul Anderson's "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," which refers to the fates of seafarers, spacefarers and timefarers. See here.

Anderson's The Game Of Empire refers to "...the tides of space." See here.

Gregory Benford's titles include Tides Of Light. See also here.

In Chase The Morning, the tide is changing but:

"'Not the tides of water...'"
-CHAPTER FIVE, p. 117.

In the Aquaman comic for a while, the letter column was called "Time and Tide" and was headed with a silhouette of a lighthouse and a man diving into the sea but I cannot find this image.

Google attributes the phrase to Geoffrey Chaucer.

"There Is A Tide"

See Seasons And Tides.

"There Is A Tide" is the title both of a story by Brian Aldiss and of one by Larry Niven.

In Aldiss' story, the first person narrator refers several times to "the Massacre," e.g.:

"He (and there were many others like him, unfortunately) thought of the Massacre as man's greatest achievement."
-Brian Aldiss, "There Is A Tide" IN Aldiss, Space, Time And Nathaniel (London, 1966), pp. 112-125 AT p. 115.

At the very end of the story, having learned of a coming catastrophe, the narrator reflects:

"The ten years to follow would be as terrible as the ten years of the Massacre, when every member of the white race had been slain.
"Now we negroes, in our turn, stood at the bar of history."
-op. cit., p. 125.

Reading that in my teens, I suddenly felt distanced from the narrator and his contemporaries. Now, I would primarily be concerned about the survival of the human race.

Niven's story is about the discovery in space of a small but high-gravity sphere of neutronium which causes unbelievable tides on a nearby planet. The same phrase could also have been used as the title of Niven's "Neutron Star," in which arrangements made by Puppeteers for orbiting a neutron star show that they are unaware of tides and therefore that their home planet lacks a moon. This is similar to Dominic Flandry's deduction about the nature of Chereion's sun from the fact that the range of wavelengths visible to Ayycharaych differs from the range visible to human beings. But, having shifted from tides to light, I will end the post.

Tide And Twilight

Toward the end of a long biographical novel or series of novels, the reader can share the central character's nostalgia for his early days as recounted in the opening chapters. We can also feel a vicarious nostalgia for (our idea of) a historical period. Poul Anderson conveys this feeling well in A Circus Of Hells (London, 1978):

"'...Listen. Five hundred years ago, the Polesotechnic League had a base here. You've heard?'
"Flandry...nodded wistfully. He would much rather have lived in the high and spacious days of the trader princes, when no distance and no deed looked too vast for man, than in this twilight of empire." (p. 18)

We can read of those "...high and spacious days..." in earlier volumes. We can also share the traders' nostalgia not only as their careers end but also as their League declines. Meanwhile, Flandry faces the decline of empire which Anderson describes with colorful metaphors, not only as "...twilight..." but also:

"Tonight Irumclaw [a planet] lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire." (p. 12)

Space is more than once compared to the sea. The non-humanoid Rax is said to have left its home planet and:

"...drifted about until it stranded at last on this tolerant shore." (p. 23)

And, in a later novel, the multiracial population of another colonized planet is described as:

"...drifting in and out on the tides of space." (Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, p. 195)

A Circus Of Hells describes three planets:

Irumclaw, when enclosed by the Empire, was a center of commerce and culture but, now that it is on the periphery, its mansions are empty or owned by oafs while the natives return to barbarism;

Wayland joins Satan and Mirkheim as an industrially valuable and exploited planet;

Talwin has a skewed orbit and two intelligent species and its characteristics were summarized in an earlier post.

Who Knows of Avalon?

In "The Problem of Pain"

"...intermediate in size between Earth and Ythri, surface gravity 0.8 terrestrial;
"slightly more irradiation, from a somewhat yellower sun, than Earth gets, which simply makes it a little warmer;
"axial tilt, therefore seasonal variations, a bit less than terrestrial;
"length of year about three quarters of ours, length of day a bit under half;
"one small, close in, bright moon;
"biochemistry similar to ours - we could eat most native things, though we'd require imported crops and livestock to supplement the diet.
"All in all, seemingly well-nigh perfect." (1)

South of the largest continent, a great gulf swarms with life. A strong eastward current is deflected north by an archipelago. Monstrous marine creatures graze on floating islands of densely interwoven "atlantis weed" probably also supporting lesser plants and animals. Higher solar energy input and rapid rotation make storms more violent than would be possible on Earth.

On an island in the gulf:

"A mat of mossy, intensely green plants squeezed out any possibility of forest." (2)

Surgeon trees' thin leaf-fringed bows, sharp enough to cut a wing from a swooping Ythrian, whip insanely in the wind which blows gorgeous blossoms torn from vines. Widespread low, russet-leaved, rankly odorous hell shrubs clutch at feet with raking twigs and emit vapours scarcely harming Ythrians but slowly poisoning human beings. Waterfowl fly through a rose, gold and silver-blue sunrise.

In "Wingless"

Ythrians and human beings settle different territories in the Hesperian Islands before jointly colonising the Coronan continent. Nat Falkayn, seventeen Avalonian (twelve Terran) years of age when visiting the Ythrian extended household of Weathermaker Choth:

"...stood on a balcony of that tall stone tower which housed the core families. Below were a paved courtyard and rambling wooden buildings. Meadows where meat animals grazed sloped downhill in Terrestrial grass and clover, Ythrian starbell and rye, Terrestrial oak and pine, Ythrian braidbark and copperwood, until cultivation gave way to the reddish mat of native susin, the scattered intense green of native chasuble bush and delicate blue of janie. The sun Laura stood big and golden-colored at morning, above a distantly glimpsed mercury line of ocean. Elsewhere wandered a few cottony clouds and the pale, sinking ghost of Morgana. A flock of Avalonian draculas passed across view, their leathery wings awkward beside the plumed splendor of Keshchyi's." (3)

Morgana is the moon, brighter and faster than Luna. Keshchyi is a young Ythrian.

Whirlpools around the dark coraloid reefs at a lagoon entrance hold "...thick brown nets of atlantis weed torn loose from a greater mass far out to sea..." (4)

In "Rescue on Avalon"

The highest Avalonian mountains are called the Andromeda Range by human beings and the Weathermother by Ythrians. (Hloch of the Stormgate Choth wrote The Earthbook of Stormgate on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother.) Ironleaf trees draw metal from the soil and concentrate pure particles in shining purple leaves which attract pollinating bugs and also absorb radio waves. A hospital window opens on Avalonian king's-crown, Ythrian windnest and Earthly oak.

The Parliament of Man and the Great Khruath of the Ythrians divided continental territory between the species. Human beings need prairies for crops whereas Ythrian hunters occupy the Weathermother.

In The People of the Wind, Chapter One

The city of Gray on Falkayn Bay is surrounded by human-owned grain-fields, Ythrian-owned pastures for maukh and mayaw, forests of oak, pine, windnest or hammerbranch and treeless areas of native susin where some barysauroids survive. Even in Gray, humans, with ample room on Avalon, build low. Highrises are for ornithoids (Ythrians).

"Laura, a G5 star, has only 72 per cent the luminosity of Sol and less ultraviolet light in proportion; but Avalon, orbiting at a mean distance of 0.81 astronomical unit in a period of 0.724 Terran, gets 10 percent more total irradiation than man evolved under." (5)

Christopher Holm, thirty years Avalonian old, has joined Stormgate Choth as Arinninan. The Stormgate compound:

"...stood on a plateau of Mount Fairview. At the middle lifted the old stone tower which housed the senior members of the family and their children. Lower wooden structures, on whose sod roofs bloomed amberdragon and starbells, were for the unwed and retainers and their kin. Further down a slope lay sheds, barns, and mews. The whole could not be seen at once from the ground, because Ythrian trees grew among the buildings: braidbark, copperwood, gaunt lightningrod, jewelleaf which sheened beneath the moon and by day would shimmer iridescent. The flowerbeds held natives, more highly evolved than anything from offplanet - sweet small janie, pungent livewell, graceful trefoil and Buddha's cup, a harp vine which the breeze brought ever so faintly to singing. Otherwise the night was quiet and, at this, altitude, cold." (6)

Avalonian constellations include Wheel, Swords, Zirraukh, Ship and Maukh.

Chapter Two

"Avalon rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds, on an axis tilted 21 degrees from the normal to the orbital plane. Thus Gray, at about 43 degrees N., knows short nights always; in summer the darkness seems scarcely a blink." (7)

Human fluid balance and kinesthesia have had to readjust to a gravity field only 80 percent Terran. Ythrians shifting their breeding cycle to Avalonian conditions had low fertility in early generations.

Humans who join choths "go bird." Ythrians who leave choths to become atomic individuals within the global community become "Walkers." Mistwood Choth, like the home world Ythri, has successfully adapted Terran technology.

Chapter Three

Equatorial diameter: 11,308 kilometers. Highest Andromedan peak: 4500 meters. Corona, the north polar continent extending past the Tropic of Swords: eight million square kilometers, comparable to Australia. In the Southern hemisphere, Equatoria, New Africa and New Gaiila are small continents or large islands.

2000 kilometres west of Gray, the Oronesian archipelago crosses the Tropic of Spears, separating the Middle Ocean to the West from the Hesperian Sea in the northern hemisphere and the South Ocean beyond the equator. Oronesia supports a distinct ecology. Eccentrics flee there to settle islands and found choths of only a single household. However, the more numerous Highsky Choth occupies much of the archipelago and controls the fisheries around latitude 30 degrees North. Tabitha Falkayn, Hrill of Highsky, is a third generation human member of her choth and was brought up by Ythrians. Western Corona and northern Oronesia must defend the Hesperian Sea against Terrans.

Upper slopes have susin and a few shrubs. Lower, cultivated ground has red Ythrian clustergrain to feed shuas and Terrestrial fruit trees to feed Highsky humans. A herder and his uhoth control flapping shuas while an Ythrian sailor scouts for piscoids and native pteropleuron lumber around.

Chapter Four is about Terrans preparing to attack Avalon from Esperance.

Chapter Five

The main Ythrian language is Planha, the equivalent of Terran Anglic. Khruaths, gatherings open to all free adults in a given territory, have judicial and limited legislative authority. Wyvans, the presiding officers, explain the law and try suits but cannot compel. If non-compliance is deemed sufficiently serious, then the Wyvans cry Oherran, calling on everyone in the territory to attack the offenders. Rejection of the call would be a deathpride matter, with suicide the Wyvans' only option.

Addendum, Sun 23 Nov 2015: I was too brief about the Khruaths -

an ancient Khruath was a periodic gathering open to all free adults in a territory;
later, regional Khruaths elected delegates to Year-Khruaths covering larger territories;
Year-Khruaths send delegates to the High Khruath of the planet, meeting every six years or on extraordinary occasions;
Wyvans are chosen at each level;
however, any free adult can attend a Khruath at any level.

Chapter Six

The only other Avalonian city is Centauri at the mouth of the Sagittarius in the Gulf of Centaurs. In the Phoenix House, Tabitha/Hrill orders a catflower cocktail. She and Chris/Arinnian eat piscoid-and-tomato chowder, beef-and-shua pie, salad of clustergrain leaf and pears and drink coffee spiced with witchroot and a bottle of vintage dago. 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.

Most of Highsky keeps to the Old Faith, using drugs in sacred revels. Other planets in the Lauran System are Elysium, Camelot, Phaeacia and Utgard.

Chapters Seven and Eight describe a battle in space.

Chapter Nine

Morgana is smaller than Luna but, being close, raises twice the tides. The Avalonian vertebrate design is hexapodal. Winged creatures have four legs. The dense mat of low-growing vegetation prevents native forests and helps to explain why animals remain reptiloid, unable to compete with mammals or birds. Trees are low and thick or slim and supple to survive high winds caused by rapid rotation. Imported domestic animals had to be revamped genetically because local food lacks some vitamins.

In Chapter Ten, the Terran Admiral parleys with Avalonian leaders and a fallen Avalonian, the First Marchwarden, is laid to rest.

Chapter Eleven

High Wyvan Liaw of the Tarns addresses the Great Khruath of Avalon from outside David Falkayn's house on First Island in the Hesperian Sea. On a North Coronan prairie, a flapping youth leads a herd of quadrupedal burden-bearing zirraukhs. South-East from Oronesia are the Brendan's, Fiery and Shielding Islands. Atlantis weed patches are entire ecologies grazed by peaceful but huge kraken. David Falkayn's granddaughter named Avalon. Equatorian centaurs use tools of stone and bone.

Chapters Twelve and Thirteen are mainly about the consequences of the war in space.

Chapter Thirteen

In winter, snow falls in North Corona and in the mountains but not in Gray where "...the susin stayed green on its hills the year around." (8)

Chapter Fourteen

Zirraukhs are warm-blooded quadrupeds smaller than horses and unlike them but used for the same purpose.

Chapter Fifteen

An Ythrian swoops on a pteropleuron that had been hunting piscoids near the surface of the sea.

Chapter Sixteen

Grief causes premature ovulation in a bereaved Ythrian female. A male seeks her out. This is not against choth law and the female's human chothmate, Arinnian, has no cause to challenge so he insults the Ythrian male until the latter challenges him.

Chapter Seventeen

On the Scorpelunan plateau in Equatoria, hexapods graze under their parasol membranes. Packs of dog-sized hexapodal lycosauroids and throngs of twenty centimeter long cockroach-like kakkelaks attack Terran invaders who are being slowly poisoned by hell shrubs. Furious tropical storms caused by high irradiation and fast spin delay evacuation.

Chapter Eighteen

Smaragdine susin, chasuble bush and Buddha's cup grow on a hill above Falkayn Bay. 

Chapter Nineteen

Trefoil and sword-of-sorrow grow in the grass. Harp vines ring. Jewelleafs twinkle. Morgana is less bright because scarred by Terran bombardment.

Why Am I Doing This?

I have summarized an alternative reading. We read an Anderson novel to follow the story. We appreciate that there are rich background details but do not usually pause to savor the details. I have noted as many details as I can of the planet Avalon.

(1) Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book of Stormgate, New York, 1978, pp. 26-48, AT p. 33.
(2) ibid., p. 40.
(3) Poul Anderson, "Wingless" IN The Earth Book of Stormgate, pp. 411-420, AT pp. 413-414.
(4) ibid., p. 417.
(5) Poul Anderson, The People of the Wind, London, 1977, p. 7.
(6) ibid., p. 10.
(7) ibid., p. 18.
(8) ibid., p. 127.

The Old Quarter

Having apparently disposed of the Ancients in The Day Of Their Return, Poul Anderson cleverly brings them back as the subject-matter of Fr. Axor's research in The Game of Empire. CHAPTER ONE of this latter novel is another of my favourite passages in Anderson's Technic History. Remember that, when reading the opening paragraph, we know nothing as yet. A feminine viewpoint character sits on:

"...the tower of St. Barbara."

-Poul Anderson, The Game of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 195.

The sky is deep blue, the sun Patricius small but fierce. The planet, called Imhotep, has been artificially heated by its colonists. Mt. Horn is twelve kilometres high. Visible from the tower is the city centre including:

the Pyramid which houses Imperial offices and technology;

the mostly new buildings of the Institute campus;

industries;

shops;

hotels;

apartments.

We infer (correctly) that the reference to Imperial offices entails that Imhotep is in the Terran Empire. The second paragraph also reveals that the viewpoint character is named Diana and that the tower on which she sits is in the old quarter as opposed to the horizon-blocking Pyramid, Institute etc. This old quarter has:

"...a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out of the tides of space." (ibid.)

We have reached the bottom of the first page of the text and have begun to feel at home on an Andersonian planet. We do not yet know Diana's surname, parentage or occupation or that she is about to meet Axor on his quest for the Ancients.

Anderson Celebrates Life II

See Anderson Celebrates Life.

Never more so than in the opening chapter of The Game Of Empire where the old quarter of Olga's Landing on Imhotep in the Patrician System:

"...had grown, but more in population than size or modernity - a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out of the tides of space."

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 195.

"Life spilled from narrow streets and surged between the walls enclosing the plaza." (p. 197)

 

Booths sell multifarious wares including "...miniature computers of the inner Empire...," recorded vaz-Siravo dances from beneath the Seas of Yang and Yin, illegal blasters found in wrecked Merseian spacecraft and hot, savory food. (ibid.)

 

From the top of St. Barbara's tower in the middle of the market square, Diana sees the new quarter with the Pyramid, housing Imperial offices, the Institute campus, industries, stores, hotels and apartments. (p. 195) She keeps her sleeping bag and few possessions in "...a ruinous temple..." (p. 196)

The crowd, mainly human beings physically adapted to different planetary environments, also includes members of several other intelligent species. This is human life in an exotic setting.

Scene Setting

"They walked on into the autumn."

-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT XIV, p. 188.

 

This concluding sentence reads like an expected or intended culmination of the entire Dominic Flandry series - and almost is. The following novel is a "coda":

 

"This book is a sort of coda to the biography of Dominic Flandry..."

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Flandry's Legacy, pp. 189-453 AT INTRODUCTION, p. 191.

 

This introduction, together with the fact that The Game Of Empire is collected in a volume of The Technic Civilization Saga, informs us, even before we have begun to read its text, that the novel is part of the Technic History. However, any text should be read and assessed without presuppositions. How soon does the novel itself tell its readers how it connects with any other works by the same author?

A young woman called Diana is on a colonized planet called Imhotep where a Pyramid houses Imperial offices and the sun is called Patricius. We appreciate the description of:

"...a brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space."

-CHAPTER ONE, p. 195.

We recognize this as good sf writing by Poul Anderson but, so far, it could be set in almost any fictional future.

p. 196 refers to the Troubles and the Terran Empire. p. 197 states that the vaz-Siravo have been settled in the Seas of Yang and Yin. Now we know that we are reading a sequel to Ensign Flandry. And when a marine growls, "'Merseian bastards...,'" (p. 198) we feel at home.

From Page To Screen

Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453. 

I am a stickler for accurate screen dramatizations of novels. However, extraordinary measures would be necessary to translate to screen all the information conveyed in CHAPTER ONE of this novel. Maybe a mixture of voice-over and scrolling script to inform us that:

the sun is called Patricius;

Diana's people had come to Imhotep;

the Pyramid houses Imperial offices;

the transient, multiracial population of the old quarter drifts "...in and out on the tides of space..." (p. 195);

"Who holds St. Barbara's holds the planet." (p. 196)

We would be directly shown the Miniature Computers and other wares on sale in the shops and booths of Olga's Landing, all of them.

Monobloc Formation

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTER 21.

In the preceding chapters, Anderson has described:

stars, galaxies, clusters and newly termed "clans," i.e., groups of clusters of galaxies;

cosmic processes - stellar aging and universal expansion and contraction.

Now, however, after the contraction, his space-traveling characters observe and even directly experience the pre-cosmic process of monobloc formation. Anderson's text has to become more poetic and epic, less prosaic or scientific:

space flames;
a firestorm;
glowing hydrogen;
a supernal sun forms and brightens at the heart of existence;
galaxies fall into it;
gaseous sheets, banners, aurora, flame, lightning and radiant spears hide it;
vast electric, magnetic, gravitational and nuclear forces tear through its atmosphere;
shock waves, tides, currents and cataracts burst across megaparecs;
the ship flies along the outer fringe while cycles of billions of years pass as moments -

- and my willing suspension of disbelief has fled in the attempt to quote/summarize (this post combines both).

A pilot rides the ship down a wave whose foam is supernovae. (No, he doesn't! - and there are no stars left to go nova.) Force fields burn and roil, spewing sparks and globes:

"It believed in the metal of the ship, in flesh and skulls." (p. 182)

"...believed..." is wrong but I am not sure what word it should be.

The deck pitches. If the forces are physically affecting the ship that much, how can human responses possibly cope?

They must hold the ship away from the lethally radioactive monobloc but must also keep it where the gas is dense enough to decrease their tau. They are still emulating their literary predecessor, the Time Traveler, although in conditions that neither he nor his creator could have imagined. Gigayears must become hours. Without instrumental or computational aid, human instincts and trained reflexes alone must ride the ship safely through forces that will reduce it to particles if they strike full on. The pilots are guided only by a screen somehow displaying those exterior force fields. Surely this is impossible?

Reymont, relieving a pilot, steers, eases, vectors, thrusts, brakes, swings wide...

The screen blanks, the ship darkens and everyone feels heavy, then light, as inertia and the natural constants change, space-time-matter-energy ultimately convulses, light returns, the storm worsens, the monobloc explodes, creation begins and the ship decelerates.

Imhotep

Diana Crowfeather is "...everybody's friend..." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 196) just as Kim is "'...The Friend of all the World...'" (Kim, p. 6).

The city of Olga's Landing on the planet Imhotep in the Patrician System began as an exploration base. Guns in the tower of St Barbara provided defense against stampeding ice bull herds and later against human beings during the Troubles but now the disarmed tower, sunseeker vine clambering up its crumbling yellow stone, stands in the middle of a market square in the old quarter.

From the tower, Diana sees the new sector with industries, hotels, apartments, the Institute and the Pyramid housing Imperial offices but she prefers the old quarter with its:

"...brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space." (ibid.)

Imhotep seems as real as Kipling's India.

All The World(s) Going And Coming

Science fiction writers have sometimes based Terrestrial colonials and extraterrestrial natives on European colonials and Asian or African natives. Equally, an account, for example, of British-ruled India can seem so exotic as to remind the reader of a science fictional setting:

"'Look! Brahmins and chumars [or see], bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters - all the world going and coming.'"
-Rudyard Kipling, Kim (London, 2010), p. 58.

And, on the extrasolar planet Imhotep, Diana Crowfeather sees, among the "...brawling, polyglot, multiracial population, much of it transient, drifting in and out on the tides of space..." (Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, p. 195), Tigeries, a Donarrian, Irumclagians, Shalmuans and a Wodenite.

Religions on Imhotep are also as diverse as in Kipling's India. Whereas Tigeries are inchoate pagans and Diana sleeps in "...a ruinous temple..." (p. 196), the Wodenite, Francis Xavier Axor, is ordained in the Galilean Order of the Jerusalem Catholic Church. The orphan Diana guides Axor just as the orphan Kim had guided a Tibetan lama (see image).

Read Kipling, then Anderson (if you haven't already).

Villages And Castles

"Tiger By The Tail."

Scotha is appropriately like and unlike Earth:

slightly larger;

slightly further out;

not one large moon causing rhythmic tides but three small moons causing turbulent tides;

a nineteen-hour day;

green vegetation but of different shades;

no pollution because industry was moved into space;

no mines, highways or megalopolises;

children taxed and untaxed children enslaved;

colonies in space and in other systems.

In particular, the "...picturesque old villages, steep-walled castles..." (p. 256) remind me of 1920s and '30s Europe as described in the novels of Dornford Yates.

Flandry admires the architecture and achievements and might here spot some clues as to whether it was the Merseians that had initiated Scothan industrialization.

Scotha cannot compete with Hermes, Avalon, Aeneas or Dennitza because it is described on only one page of only one short story but it is one of the many planets of the Technic History. 

Vorlak

After Doomsday, 5.

The planet, Vorlak, was unified into an imperium under the Overmaster eight thousand years ago and discovered by spacefarers two hundred years ago. Since that discovery, the Dragar, masters of sea warships, have become masters of space warships while the imperium has lost power but still embodies wisdom. Vorlakka history has been maritime because most of their land is islands made swamps by tides.

Through the open doors of the Dragar hall, Donnan hears surf, night-birds and a spouting, roaring saurian and smells cold unfamiliar odours. Battle banners hang from remote rafters.

One Draga advises Donnan to kill any of his men who question his authority but he cannot kill any human beings when so few remain!

When there is a pause in the dialogue:

"Even the fire and surf seemed to hush themselves." (p. 44)

Of course the fire and surf did not quieten down but the elements always seem to correspond to the conversation in Poul Anderson's works.

Draga honour grants four inalienable rights:

food and protection to groundlings;

justice and leadership to crew;

respect to colleagues;

deference to the Overmaster.

When Ger Nenna, an imperial scholar-bureaucrat and the Overmaster's representative, asks whether the Draga can deny the Earthmen's right to revenge:

"The fire roared on the hearth." (p. 48)

Of course the fire roars when revenge is mentioned! Ger Nenna does not believe in revenge but does believe in justice and also recognizes the value of humanity to the galaxy.

"The wind, wet and pungent, in his face, sobered Donnan." (ibid.)

The wind always contributes something in Poul Anderson's works.

Donnan and the European women have different ways of trying to find or to be found by other human survivors. Donnan's way is to become involved in the Vorlak-Kandemir war.

Same Space Or Other Space II

See Same Space Or Other Space.

Other worlds coexist along a fourth spatial dimension or occupy the same three-dimensional space while vibrating at different rates - or are the same world perceived differently as suggested in Chase The Morning where the language used is metaphorical rather than metaphysical.

Many tides ebb and flow on the shores of the world. Most people, when another tide laps about their feet, pull back from it because they prefer their familiar predictable reality, the Core, rather than the Spiral toward the Rim. Mathematicians, even deep within the Core, say that a sphere, a spherical world, has not no corners but infinite corners. Each corner is a place, corresponding to past, future or fiction. Many people never find these intermingling places whereas others pass easily between them. This reads like a completely different account of Anderson's Old Phoenix.

When a man returns from a fantastic vision of Liverpool to his mundane business office, he is able to find information about fantastic ships and their cargoes on his computer and the Wolves from the alternative reality pursue him into the Core.

Winding Up On World Without Stars II

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero mentions planets of an intergalactic red dwarf and his World Without Stars is set on one. World Without Stars mentions the cosmic collapse and Tau Zero is about it.

"...must we kill through all time, until time ends when the disgusted universe collapses inward on us?" (World Without Stars, New York, 1966, pp. 115-116)

Thus, cosmic collapse is invoked in a comment on conflict but it also reminds us of the novel's cosmic context.

The wise and capable Hugh Valland, spaceman, singer and sometime soldier, shows us that an ancient and apparently impregnable empire might be ripe for overthrow:

" '...there can't be an awful lot of Herd soldiers. The downdevils never needed many, and won't have time to breed a horde - which they couldn't supply anyway.' " (p. 118)

This is realistic, practical and also inspiring thinking.

The spaceship is lit by "evershine[s]," (p. 31) a phrase simultaneously suggesting both a future advance in technology and a part of the environment that has been around for a long time, like evergreens.

Back on Earth, Argens visits a man who looks young but has the manner of age. That paradox would exist with the antithanatic.

Argens' rented flying "flitter," "...had bunk, bed and food facilities." (p. 124) Here is another example of advanced technology, in this case suggesting that, beyond a certain stage of technical development, it should be possible for anyone to go anywhere in comfort. He is even able, inside the flitter, to tune in to "...multisense programs..." but they "...were not for a spaceman..." so he prefers to go for a walk. (p. 124):

"This was Manhome. No matter how far we range, the salt and the rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood." (p. 124)

That passage could have appeared in any futuristic novel about space travel and is a good place for me to discontinue these concluding remarks.

Earth And Home

Before I get to the point of this post, here is another future history ending, an advertisement:

"Your car is perfectly safe, provided it was built later than 3100 A.D."
-Larry Niven, "Safe at Any Speed" IN Niven, Tales Of Known Space (New York, 1975), pp. 217-220 AT p. 217.

The point: home is where we live wherever that is. Three examples -

On a planet, soon to be called New Earth, in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, John Amalfi says:

"'We're all Earthmen, Karst. Earth is more than just one little planet, buried in another galaxy than this. Earth is much more important than that.
"'Earth isn't a place. It's an idea.'"
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER NINE: HOME, p. 465.

Dominic Flandry tells the young Nyanzans:

"'When the Long Night comes for Terra, somebody will have to carry on. It might as well be you.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 303-339 AT VIII, p. 339.

Sandra Miesel writes a coda to Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"To Earth there's no returning. She vanished with the childhood of our race. Yet as a poet once said, 'No matter how far we range, the salt and rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood.' One chapter has ended. Humankind's saga flows on."
-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), p. 216.