A Momentous Meeting On The Coral Sea

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 12, Database.

Database chapters are flashbacks:

10 is to Anson Guthrie's bodily life well before 2018;

11 is to Kyra Davis' time as a student;

12 is to Guthrie's life some time after 2018 before he has made his fortune and while the Renewal movement is rising in what, politically, is still the United States, not yet North America.

Guthrie and Juliana Trevorrow, whom he will do business with and marry, meet on a schooner on the Coral Sea. See image.

Guthrie is a conservationist but not an environmentalist. The Renewal is "'Environmentalism run amuck.'" (p. 135) Guthrie classifies "'eco-fascism'" as one side of "'fascism'" which he identifies with "'purtitanism'" (p. 136) This is a misuse of "fascism."

Guthrie, in his own word, "rants." The Renewal, apparently, will:

stop nuclear power, making people shiver in winter;
use coal, polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, carcinogens and radioactivity;
use expensive and inadequate solar units;
ban plastic that could be made recyclable;
use paper, turning forests into monoculture plantations;
tax and regulate all but the biggest corporations out of business;
protect consumers from themselves by taxing and eventually banning alcohol, tobacco and junk food;
indoctrinate children (doesn't that happen already?);
tax fuel excessively;
discourage joyriding and comfortable house temperatures;
make medicines difficult to access (?);
enforce proportional employment of men, women, transsexuals, ethnic minorities and the disadvantaged;
have educational quotas not only for the bright, literate and hard-working but also for the "'...mentally special...'" (pp. 136-137);
ban books containing "'...insensitive remarks...'" (p. 137);
persecute anyone guilty of "'...wrong talk...'" (ibid.)

That is quite a rant. Might I comment on some items without defending the Renewal?

When I was in public employment in Britain, there was an "Equal Opportunities" policy, not a quota system. It was known that some (many?) members of minorities, assuming that they would not be employed, would not even apply - a self-fulfilling prophecy. To counteract this, they were encouraged to apply. The vacancy was advertised as "Equal Opportunities" and it was explained what this meant. A three-person interviewing panel would ask the same questions of each candidate. Each member of the panel would place a numerical assessment beside each answer received. The assessments were totaled. An appointment was made on the basis of the highest score. The job had to be offered to the best qualified and most suitable candidate, whatever his or her gender, ethnicity etc. Unsuccessful candidates could request feedback. Shown how their answers had been inadequate, they were able either to improve their performance at their next interview or to apply for more suitable employment elsewhere. If anyone alleged discrimination, then the allegation had to be taken seriously and investigated without prejudicing the outcome of the investigation. I benefited from this system, having not prepared properly for interviews. A black colleague who suspected discrimination when applying for a higher-paid post was satisfied when he was shown how his answers had been unsatisfactory.

Surely tobacco and junk food must be discouraged?

Special educational needs should be addressed without denying college places to the able. Education is one service that should never be restricted or rationed.

A World War II thriller by Dennis Wheatley, written both as fiction and as propaganda during the War, alleged that the Germans were less intelligent as evidenced by the shape of their heads! This book should not be republished without a footnote and a disclaimer of racist views by the publisher.

Extra-Solars And Supers

Last night, I reread the Prologue of Julian May's Galactic Milieu Trilogy, Volume I, Jack The Bodiless. This Prologue is set on a human-colonized extra-solar planet like many in the works of Poul Anderson. The Trilogy also features individuals with superior powers like the title characters, Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask. Thus, I thought, May's series occupies a conceptual mid-way point between Anderson's interstellar sf and the superhero tradition. However, Anderson's Psychotechnic History also echoes the latter tradition with "UN-Man," "The Sensitive Man" and human beings able to fly across interstellar distances in a later era. The nature and scope of the powers differ considerably but that fits with the tradition.

Superheroes, a distinct genre, split from sf. Superman is extraterrestrial whereas some of his colleagues are supernatural. Sf still contains superheroic elements, e.g., Larry Niven's Protector and Gil the Arm. It feels as if all fictional worlds are parallel universes. Niven even cameos the Joker in one Known Space story.

History In A Future History

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 11, Database.

(I might add a bunch of Internet links tomorrow or later but this evening I am just going to summarize historical information from Poul Anderson's text.)

Varangian merchant adventurers founded Novgorod in the eighth or ninth century;

they traded with Constantinople and far into Asia;

Rurik came to Novgorod from the North in his dragon ship;

an early wooden cathedral burned down;

then, Yaroslav the Wise built St. Sophia's in the eleventh century;

the Gates of Korsun, incorporated into St. Sophia's, had been brought from the Crimea sixty years earlier by Grand Prince Vladimir;

Novgorod has a restored kremlin.

This is an unexpected chunk of Andersonian historical knowledge right inside one of his future histories.

Why does the name, "Vladimir," evoke another of Anderson's future histories?

How am I feeling, cold-wise? Lousy enough that this post is a bit of a chore.

The following morning: Links added. Does anyone know what I meant about Vladimir?

Watching TV Instead Of Reading

This post exists because:

sf writers comment on and extrapolate from current issues;

there was recent combox discussion of climate change (see Futures and The Relevance Of SF);

this evening, instead of reading, I watched some TV;

BBC News reported that, according to the British Met Office (see here), British weather is becoming more extreme because of human-caused climate change;

in view of this and other recent reports, both climate change and its human causation seem by now to be scientifically established?;

assessments and policy proposals have to be informed by current evidence;

sf, however futuristic, often becomes dated because of advances in scientific knowledge;

we know that Poul Anderson would have responded to new evidence but not how he would have responded.  

A Sense Of Adventure

There is a lot of action-adventure fiction out there but how much of it conveys a sense of adventure, like James Elroy Flecker's poem about the Golden Road to Samarkand?

Even if the premise is familiar - another planet or an alternative Earth - the treatment must be fresh as if we were encountering the idea for the first time.

Examples
(i) Poul Anderson quoting Shelley:

"The world's great age begins anew..."
"A loftier Argo cleaves the main..."

- before two Polesotechnic League stories.

(ii) Young Flandry when we first see him, shot down by Merseians but rescued and traveling on a native ship on Starkad.

(iii) Manse Everard arriving at the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene.

(iv), (v) and (vi) SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, Conquistador and The Sky People. It is an adventure:

to live in the British Empire relocated to India;
to travel to a North America with no white men, including a San Francisco Bay with no Bridge;
to colonize a retro inhabitable Venus.

Sorry, folks. I am still mostly out of it with this cold and cannot sustain the usual rate of posting on the blog.

Work And Relaxation

Rereading Poul Anderson has not ceased to be enjoyable but has become work, utilizing study skills developed during years at Dublin and Lancaster Universities. It has become necessary to take notes, find cross-references and think for blogging purposes. That is why today, incapacitated by a cold, I am avoiding Harvest Of Stars and instead rereading graphic fiction purely for relaxation.

Fantasy and science fiction extend but also reflect reality. Even while presenting an alternative twentieth century history dominated by super heroes, Garth Ennis makes us feel World War II, the transformation of the OSS into the CIA, the Cold War and the Korean War. Although Poul Anderson mainly focuses on other, both past and future, centuries, several decades of the twentieth century also feature in some of his works and we wonder whether the Time Patrol had to oversee the transition from the OSS, which survives in SM Stirling's Draka History, to the CIA.

More Relevant Other Late Night Reading

See:

Relevant Other Reading (scroll down)
The Boys, referenced here
alpenglow, referenced here

I illustrated the "alpenglow" post with appropriate images and was reminded of them by this panel from The Boys: Highland Laddie (and see here).

I do not live far enough north to experience the "simmer dim." And, at this time of year, it is pitch dark outside now at 9.00 PM. Good night.

Youth

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 10, Database.

To answer an earlier query, here, this chapter is set shortly after Guthrie and his friend had been University students so it is well before 2018. Guthrie drives away with his friend's dead body:

"Later he understood that what he had also left behind was his youth." (p. 129)

Parallel Dominic Flandry:

"She enjoyed the rest of the voyage, even after she had identified the change in him, the thing which had gone and would never quite come back. Youth."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT p. 152.

Alpenglow And Guerillas

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 10, Database.

Guthrie, looking across altiplano, sees "...alpenglow [which] tinged rosy the snowpeaks beyond." (p. 123)

He is almost shot in the head by a guerilla. If that had happened, then Guthrie's entire future existence, both embodied and download, would have been prevented. What are the consequences of killing a person? Does even a hypothetical omniscient being know all the alternative possibilities?

Guthrie wonders whether, instead of firing, fleeing and taking shelter in a cabana, he and his companion should have surrendered to the Maoists. No way. "Maoists" might be anyone, of course, but they could be fanatics who will shoot even each other for alleged ideological impurity. There were some real head cases in London a while back.

If I had any hand in the matter, then I would want, first, to get Guthrie out of there alive and, secondly, to discuss with him the social contradictions that make him a billionaire and (some) other people want to kill him. In this future history, those contradictions are eventually transcended but others emerge.

I discovered today that, in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, "Mao" means "the Peacock." See here.

The Future Begins

Poul Anderson wrote so many "future histories" - several series and one single novel - which in turn can be favorably compared with so many similarly themed series or single works by other authors that a reader's attention can be diverted from Anderson's vast canon of works as such to the literary genre of future histories in general. See, on the Science Fiction blog:

Future Histories
Future Histories II
Four More Future Histories

Returning to Volume I of Anderson's four volume Harvest Of Stars future history, we find that Chapter 10 Database is a flashback to Anson Guthrie's bodily life before his personality was downloaded into an artificial neural network.

Since Guthrie was born in 1970, he would have been forty eight in 2018 so I will reread this chapter with interest while looking out for any clues as to Guthrie's age. Although most of this series is set centuries in our future, the life of its leading character overlaps with ours. Yet again, the future begins now. (Wells' Time Traveler tells his dinner guests how he traveled into that strange territory, "tomorrow.")