Adventures And Troubled Times

See A Sense Of Adventure.

We enjoy reading both adventure fiction and narratives set in troubled times. Poul Anderson conveys the sense of living in troubled times in:

Mirkheim

The People Of The Wind

The Rebel Worlds

The Day Of Their Return

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

The Game Of Empire

 

That list was longer than I had expected. In  A Stone In Heaven, there is a threat to the status quo, a planned coup, but it remains behind the scenes, suspected only by the central characters, so the general populace has no sense of "troubled times."

For a sense of adventure in works by Poul Anderson and SM Stirling, see the above link. Other examples in Anderson's works include the following opening sentence:

"Our part in the Grand Survey had taken us out beyond the great suns Alpha and Beta Crucis."

-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 3-22 AT p. 3.

This is pure Star Trek but much better. (See ...Better Than Star Trek.)

Also:

"We do not know where we are going..."

-see here.

"'You take the Long Trail with me!...'"

-see here.

"Lodestar" And Mirkheim

Mirkheim is "Lodestar" writ large, the same questions: can there be a giant, supermetals-coated planet like Mirkheim and, if so, who should do what about it? Thus, both a good sf novel and a good political novel. "What should happen?" is a different question from "What is likely to happen?" Also, since Mirkheim presents a convincing narrative of change in the lives of several disparate characters, it succeeds simply as a novel. Written to complete and conclude the Polesotechnic League series, it shows its readers Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan for the last time after all that they have been through which is a lot. Adzel has progressed from student days to retirement, Falkayn from apprenticeship to acting CEO of van Rijn's company, and it is made clear here that both will do more.

See also Issues In Mirkheim.

Filming Hloch

Filming Hloch's Introduction to The Earth Book Of Stormgate - 

We hear a narrator reading aloud the entire Introduction.

We see:

Hloch "...on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother..." (p. );

the Wyvan Tariat, elsewhere, speaking to Hloch;

the country around Spearhead Lake held by Hloch's parents;

aerial views of the human towns, Gray on Falkayn Bay and Centauri on the Gulf of Centaurs;

Hloch's father, Ferannian, working as an engineer alongside human beings;

guests roaming and hunting near Spearhead Lake;

the nearby copper mine;

Ythrian and human members of Stormgate Choth in flight;

Hloch's mother, Rennhi, writing The Sky Book Of Stormgate, assisted by Hloch;

Ythrian ancestors, Avalonian founders and their descendants;

space combat in the Terran War - previews of The People Of The Wind;

ruined landscapes and skies gone strange;

Hloch on Imperial planets in a merchant crew;

Ythrians and human beings on Avalon.

Three Ways

There have been three ways to read Poul Anderson's short story, "Wings of Victory."

(i) In an sf magazine, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, April 1972.

(ii) In a collection, Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979).

(iii) In a later collection, Poul Anderson, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009).

In (i), "Wings of Victory" can be read just as a one-off story. It is the first appearance of the Ythrians and is not obviously part of any series although it does refer to Hermes, Woden and Cynthia, the home planets respectively of David Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan who had appeared as series characters in previous stories.

In (ii), "Wings of Victory" is:

the first story in the collection;

the first story in Anderson's Technic History although that will change;

immediately preceded by Hloch's Introduction to the Earth Book.

 

Hloch's Introduction refers to the contents of The People Of The Wind, published in 1973, thus after "Wings of Victory" but before the Earth Book.

 

In (iii), "Wings of Victory" is:

the second story in the collection;

 

now the second story in the Technic History because "The Saturn Game," published in 1981, is set earlier;

preceded by "The Saturn Game" and by Hloch's Introduction to the Earth Book;

now read long before The People Of The Wind since that novel is not collected until the end of The Technic Civilization, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire.

 

Anyone reading the Technic History for the first time in The Technic Civilization Saga reads Hloch's references to people, places and events on the planet Avalon long before reading about those people, places and events at the end of Volume III and this reading order adds substance to the Technic History as a future history series.

Again Adam

Mirkheim, XXI.

Van Rijn again refers to Adam:

"'Back to school, children of Adam.'" (p. 284)

But I am not sure what he thinks we need to learn. On the one hand, he says that mankind has spoiled things but, on the other hand, he says that maybe we:

"'...will learn water not only flows downhill, it reaches bottom.'" (p. 284)

But we cannot prevent water from reaching bottom!

What mankind has spoiled, apparently, is a holiday from "'...an age of crats.'" (ibid.)

- and he lists the "crat"s:

autocrats

plutocrats

timocrats

bureaucrats

technocrats

democrats

 

But surely the merchant princes of the Polesotechnic League are plutocrats? He says of the "crats" that:

"'...they all tell everybody else at gunpoint what to do.'" (ibid.)

Earlier, Coya Falkayn distinguished between:

"'The state, which in the last analysis relies on physical coercion; or a changeable group of individuals, whose only power is economic....'" (XII, p. 177)

And van Rijn reiterates:

"'...the League was once a free association of entrepreneurs what offered goods and services but did not force them on nobody. It is not private outfits what fights wars and operates concentration camps, it is governments, because governments is those organizations what claims the right to kill whoever will not do what they say.'" (p. 285)

Private outfits exercising economic power, i.e., controlling the production of physical necessities, exercise physical power. Physically coercive states arose to protect economic power. Entrepreneurs selling food do not force it on anyone but everyone has to eat something! - and most people have to work for someone else to earn a wage or salary in order to eat. State coercion exists to prevent theft. Thus, the suggested absolute dichotomy between free entrepreneurs and coercive states does not exist.

Finally, as long as we are saddled with "crats," publicly accountable democrats are obviously a lesser evil than autocrats and it makes no sense to lump them together.

Hloch Of Stormgate Choth

Hloch, the compiler of The Earth Book Of Stormgate, is our watchbeing. From the period of the early Terran Empire, Hloch surveys the several earlier histories of the Grand Survey, the exploration of Avalon, the Polesotechnic League, the two-stage colonization of Avalon (first the Hesperian Islands, then the Coronan continent) and the Terran War on Avalon. We might draw more inspiration from Hloch when we have reread the concluding chapter of Mirkheim (but not tonight). If the Technic History had been extended, then it might have benefited from a later Hloch equivalent, surveying the entire histories of the Terran Empire, the Merseian Roidhunate and their aftermaths. Which species and which society would have been best placed to do this? Maybe a human-Ythrian pair on a fully integrated Avalon? Might a technological advance enable human beings to fly by flapping wings?

Do We Need Politicians?

Mirkheim, XX.

Some Andersonian action:

"Positioned, the artillery cut loose. Guns roared, rockets wooshed, explosives detonated in racket, smoke, and flinders. Slowly the Old Keep crumbled. At last from the wreckage stepped a Merseian waving a white flag." (p. 274)

What a welcome sight! A Merseian with a white flag! He is one of us, an oxygen-breather, even though he has been duped into merc-ing for the hydrogen-breathing Baburites. But they in turn were duped by oxygen-breathing human beings of the Seven In Space. Van Rijn can do business even with the Baburites who are well-informed enough to send their messengers directly to him. But he must ask the Hermetian government to broker the deal:

"'The Commonwealth government can never recognize the independents as rightful agents, no more than it could ever really recognize the League. Hemel! Something besides another government having the right to decide things? Might get folks at home wondering if they do need politicians and bureaucrats on top of themselves.'" (pp. 278-279)

Very occasionally, Poul Anderson gives us a glance behind the scenery:

Do we need politicians and bureaucrats?

 

Can technology not make conflict obsolete by enriching literally everyone? (See Interstellar Wealth.)

Cosmologies

Mythological cosmologies have been creatively imagined whereas the expanding multi-galactic cosmos has been discovered recently and is still being discovered. Since I value both imagination and truth, I value the many imagined universes and the one empirical universe. I mention this because another Zen practitioner could not see how it was better to know about the scientifically discovered universe than just to live conceptually inside one of the many mythological universes. I can only reply that I think that truth is a value in and of itself.

Poul Anderson wrote fiction set in the galactic universe and in different mythological universes and also linked them in a multiverse. We know that there is no Yggdrasil but we imagine what it would be like to go there.

Namu Amida Butsu

Mirkheim, XX.

Adzel says, "Namu Amida Butsu." (p. 274)

-which means:

"Homage to Amida Buddha" or "I take refuge in Amida Buddha" (see here)

- or:

"Hail to Amitabha Buddha" (see here).

Ordination as a lay Buddhist, the equivalent of baptism and/or confirmation, comprises "taking refuge" in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (the founder, the teaching and the monastic order) which is followed by the practice of meditation and precepts.

Amida/Amitabha is not the historical founder, Gautama, but a mythological figure like St. Michael or St. George. Pure Land Buddhists take refuge in Amida so that in return he will transfer some of his boundless merit to them, thus facilitating their rebirth in a realm where conditions are particularly helpful toward enlightenment. I just believe in the value of meditation here and now! (And also appreciate diverse mythologies.)

Adam And Aristotle

Mirkheim.

Determined though we are to note every quote from the Bible, we might miss some because they have become so embedded in our language that we no longer think of them as specifically Biblical. Thus, "Adam" has come to mean just "the first man."

Van Rijn sees his newborn great-grandson:

"'Hallo, hallo, harroo!' the old man boomed. 'Congratugoddamnulations! Is that the pup? Ah, a whopper. He has the family looks, I see - never mind which family, Adam's maybe, they are all crumpled red worms at this age. How is you?'" (XVIII, pp. 247-248)

Absolutely anyone can refer to Adam but van Rijn later displays erudition by mentioning Aristotle after waging war:

"'Halloo, harroo,' he chortled, 'how I feel youthed! We had what Aristotle called a cathartic, ja, and gives me an abysmal appetite.'" (XX, p. 267)

I have just read about Aristotle elsewhere and the content was highly relevant to this blog and to van Rijn's multifarious machinations:

"Aristotle thought that property served to make men more virtuous, giving them a responsibility to the earth that made them serious citizens. Plato, that proto-communist, thought that property corrupted men, and in The Republic sketched a vision where nothing was owned, and each man received a daily salary for his work. Two hundred years later, Virgil wrote of a halcyon age where:

"No fences parted fields, nor marks nor bounds

"Distinguished acres of litigious grounds

"But all was common."

-Nick Hayes, The Book Of Trespass (London, 2020), p. 28.

With that much disagreement between the first two written Greek philosophies, maybe we can be excused for remaining confused down to the present day?