FUTURISTIC SEX by Sean M. Brooks

Fair warning to the prurient minded, despite the title of my article, this essay is not pornographic, so get your minds out of the sewers!

 

Over a career in writing spanning more than half a century Poul Anderson used or touched on a vast range of topics. Here I want to note how sex might be used or abused in the future, using his Technic stories for some striking examples.

 

Two basic premises for Anderson's Technic series are (1) a FTL interstellar drive was invented; and (2) many non-human intelligent races were discovered. With these premises many, many possibilities becomes thinkable.

 

I absolutely expect humans in the future to continue using and abusing sex in all the ways we see that being done in the real world, here and now. I also expect sexual encounters between humans and non-humans to happen, especially if these species are not physically repellent to each other.

 

I should also stress that intelligent races which had independently evolved on different worlds over billions of years will not be mutually interfertile. And that will remain true no matter how much two such species resembles each other.

The text quoted below came from Chapter II of A CIRCUS OF HELLS, one of Anderson's stories about Dominic Flandry, Intelligence officer for an interstellar Terran Empire set more than 1000 years from now in the future.

 

Outside a particular joyhouse, otherwise undistinguished

from the rest, an Irumclavian used a vocalizer to chant

in Anglic: "Come one, come all, come in, no cover, no

minimum. Every type of amusement, pleasure, and thrill.

No game too exotic, no stakes too high or low. Continuous

sophisticated entertainment. Delicious food and drink,

stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers, to your

order, to your taste, to your purse. Every sex and every

technique of seventeen, yes, seventeen intelligent species

ready to serve your desires, and this does not count racial,

mutational, and biosculpt variations. Come one, come all--"

 

A little later, in the same chapter,  as Flandry left the "gravshaft" on the level where he was going to a "business" meeting with Leon Ammon, proprietor of this dubious establishment,  we read: "He was glad when Door 666 admitted him; that was on the sado-maso level, and he had glimpsed things. Further on in Chapter II, "Flandry had his suspicions about the origin of many of the subjects on the floor below. Consenting adults . . . after brain channeling and surgical disguise..."

 

The extremely disreputable business establishment Flandry had entered was a brothel, set more than a thousand years in the future. The distaste he had for the sado-maso shows readers he was not "into" the really gross and perverted types of sex. Over and over, in the Flandry stories, readers will see he was a normal male heterosexual who liked and preferred women. And, in the right circumstances, xenosophont females!

 

It's right to quote again from  A CIRCUS OF HELLS, to illustrate how kinky futuristic sex might be. The text quoted below came from the beginning paragraphs of Chapter III.  A major character, a prostitute named Djana, went to meet what she thought would be a human customer but was not.

 

Bracing herself and wetting her lips, she said, "I don't. Not with xenos--"

and in haste, fearing  offense might be taken, "I mean non-human sophonts.

It isn't right,"

 

"I suspect a large enough sum would change your mind," the other

said. "You have a reputation for avarice. However, I plan a different

kind of proposition. It moved slowly closer, a lumpy gray body on four

thin legs which brought the head at its middle about level with her

waist. One tentacle sent the single loose garment swirling about in

a sinuous gesture. Another clutched the vocalizer in boneless

fingers. The instrument was being used with considerable skill;

it actually achieved an ingratiating note. "You must know about

me in your turn. I am only Rax, harmless old Rax, the solitary

representative of my species on this world. I assure you my

reproductive pattern is sufficiently unlike yours that I find your

assumption comical."

I agree that, assuming a FTL interstellar community with thousands of intelligent races, some humans and xenosophonts will have sex. But others like Djana will believe that to be wrong or disgusting. Others, like that of Rax's species, will have reproductive patterns so different from those of other races that the idea of sex with them was merely laughable.

 

I wish to backtrack a bit  to comment about Rax, in the text quoted from Chapter III. I noted how Rax was referred to as "it," instead of either "he" or "she." That made me wonder if Rax came from a race which did not have male or female sexes, reproducing in other ways.

 

The quotes taken from A CIRCUS OF HELLS gives Anderson's readers some fascinating if speculative glimpses into the sordid, seamy underside of what an interstellar civilization could be like. And these glimpses Anderson gave us can be easily paralleled in many similar brothels and prostitutes of both sexes in the real world. The more squalid aspects of the steamy night life of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, in the US, comes to mind as two examples!

 

To be strictly fair even to Leon Ammon not everything offered at his disreputable establishment will be morally repugnant, such as his restaurant services. Or even some gambling, in moderation and only if the games are honest.

 

In Chapter 4 of ENSIGN FLANDRY, we see Dragoika, a ship captain and a very influential member of the Sisterhood of Kursoviki. She belonged to a species, the Tigeries of Starkad, physically resembling humans so closely that Dragoika found Flandry attractive.

 

"Pity you must wear that helmet," Dragoika said. "I'd like to taste your lips.

But otherwise we're not made so differently, our two kinds. Will you come

to my cabin?"

 

For an instant that whirled, Flandry was tempted. He had everything he

could do answer. It wasn't based on past lectures about taking care not

to offend native mores, nor on principle, nor, most certainly, on fastid-

iousness. If anything, her otherness made her the more piquant. But

he couldn't really predict what she might do in a close relationship,

and--

 

"I'm deeply sorry," he said. "I'd love to, but I'm under a--" what was the

word?--"a geas."

 

She was neither much offended nor much surprised. She had seen a

lot of different cultures. "Pity," she said. "Well, you know where the

forecastle is. Goodnight." She padded aft. En route, she stopped to

collect Ferok.

--and besides, those fangs were awfully intimidating.

 

This amusing quote from ENSIGN FLANDRY shows Anderson speculating that parallel evolution would make humans and some non-humans physically resemble each other closely enough to be sexually attractive. I also noted mention of those lectures stressing the need to avoid offending Tigery mores. Flandry was wise to very tactfully decline Dragoika's proposition. A thousand years and more must have taught humans and non-humans alike many hard lessons on the need for caution in such intimate matters. It was also entertaining for Flandry to be intimidated by Dragoika's fangs!

I want to touch on one more example of futuristic sex between a human and non-human from the Technic stories. Years after both ENSIGN FLANDRY and A CIRCUS OF HELLS, Captain Flandry was kidnapped by unusually humanoid aliens in "Tiger by the Tail." This quote segues into how he was able to act as he did on Scotha: "The being was remarkably humanoid. Certain differences of detail could quite likely be found beneath the clothes, and more basic ones beneath the skin. Among countless worlds, evolutionary coincidences are bound to happen now and then, but never evolutionary identities. Yet to the eye, crew member and captive resembled each other more than either resembled, say, a woman. Or an alien female? Flandry wondered. I'll bet this is a male, and equipped pretty much like me, too. (AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, revised Gregg Press edition, 1979, page 2). That last part, "equipped pretty much like me, too," was Anderson's way of alerting readers that Scothans and humans were sexually compatible.

After being taken by these xenosophonts to their home planet Flandry met the wife of their king, Queen Gunli. Because of soon becoming aware of her unhappiness, he was friendly and obliging to the queen, as part of his efforts to undermine Scotha. Another apt quote is this: "Flandry gave her an appreciative look. He had ascertained that Scothanian and human females were extremely similar in outward anatomy. Queen Gunli was a stunblast, with dark rippling hair, big violet eyes, daintily sculptured features, and a figure that a thin, clinging gown scarcely hid." (AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, page 20). Meaning humans and Scothans could be attracted to each other. 

 

Queen Gunli did not like the Frithians, the Scothan nation which conquered and unified the planet, or their plans for more aggression and war.  The text copied below came from the revised version of the story in AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE (Gregg Press: 1979), page 30.

 

"War is what they want."

"But not what the females want. Not to wait and wait and wait for the ships

to come back, never knowing whether only his sword will return. Not to rock

a baby and know that a few years hence he will be a corpse on the shores

of some alien planet. Not to--" She broke off and straightened her slim

shoulders. "Let me not whimper. Naught can I do about it."

 

"You are very brave as well as beautiful, Gunli," said Flandry. "Your kind

have changed fate ere now." And he sang, low, a stave he had made in

the Scothan bardic form:

 

"So I see you standing,

sorrowful in darkness.

But the moonlight's broken

by your eyes, tear-shining--

moonlight in the maiden's

magic net of tresses.

Gods gave many gifts, but,

Gunli, yours was greatest."

All at once she was in his arms.

 

It was danger, loneliness, common ends they both desired, as well as mutual attraction that brought Flandry and Gunli into having an affair, despite being of alien races. Anderson had too much good taste to feel any need to be sexually explicit, that was left implicit. I also appreciated the verse he wrote here, it moderated the breakneck pacing of the story, giving readers a moment for reflecting on the issues that story raised.

 

Last, near the end of "Tiger by the Tail," on page 40 of the Gregg Press edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, we read this, as Flandry and Gunli waited for the Terrans to land on Scotha:

 

She brought her left hand from beneath the cloak and took both his.

"And what will you be doing?" she asked.

He met her gaze. Loneliness was sudden within him. How beautiful

she stood there.

 

But what she meant could never endure. They were too foreign to each

other. Best he depart soon, that the memories remain untarnished in

them both. She would find someone else at last. And he--well-- "I have

my work," he said.

 

I agree with Flandry's decision, because he and Queen Gunli belonged to different intelligent species. No matter how much two such races may look like each other, billions of years of separate evolution on different planets inevitably means both races will have fundamental differences from each other. And that's going to remain true even if males and females can have sexual intercourse. Also, the genetic barrier would make it impossible for them to have children. It was right of Flandry to decide it was better, for both Gunli and him, that he soon leave Scotha, parting from each other in friendship.

 

I consulted the second edition of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (ed. John Clute and Peter Nicholls. St. Martin's Press, 1993) to get some idea of how other science fiction writers handled the theme of human/alien sex. Alas, all I found on page 1090, in Nicholls' article "SEX" I thought relevant to Anderson's work was this: "A sensitive treatment of love between alien races is STRANGERS (1974, NEW DIMENSIONS; exp 1978) by Gardner DOZOIS, which draws attention to the ghastly errors that can occur from trying to understand a foreign society in terms of the assumptions of one's own."

But, when I looked up John Clute's entry for Dozois, this is what I found on page 352 of the ENCYCLOPEDIA: "...his first solo novel, STRANGERS (1974, NEW DIMENSIONS; exp 1978), an intense and well told love story between a human male and a ALIEN female, set on her home planet, in a Galaxy humans signally do not dominate, her death from bearing his child is biologically inevitable (the plot's derivation from Philip Jose FARMER'S The Lovers [1961] can be seen as homage) and stems from a mutual incomprehension rooted in culture and the intrinsic solitude of beings (see also SEX)."

 

This exasperated me! I agree it might be possible some intelligent races, human and non-human, could so strongly resemble each other that sexual attraction and desire will be likely. I also agree it's highly probable mutual alienness will breed strains, stresses, problems, and tragedies. I do not agree, given totally alien genetics and separate evolution over billions of years on different planets, that humans and aliens will be able to have children. I was disappointed that Clute and Nicholls seemed unaware of that scientific absurdity. That absurdity also discredits any stories by other SF authors who write of humans and aliens being able to have children.

Before offering some general conclusions I'll quote from Chapter III of THE REBEL WORLDS to show how some non-humans might reproduce: "I know of intelligent hermaphrodites, and sophonts with more than two sexes, and a few that regularly change sex. They all tend to look on our reproductive pattern as obscene." I can too easily imagine beings from some of these species "working" as prostitutes in Leon Ammon's "joyhouse."

 

Being, as I am, both Catholic and a conservative, I would not be at all surprised to find out brothels and sexual perversions of all kinds will exist in the far future. I believe in having no illusions about how flawed humans and xenosophont races, if they exist, are likely to be if they too have fallen.  Humans being what they are--and xenosophonts, as I suspect they will be--there will be sexual encounters between members of different species, but that will not always occur because of force and violence. I appreciated how Anderson drew out such implications without needing to be pornographic!

Appendix: JIHANNATH I

 

For the sake of completeness I am discussing here a few details which did not quite fit into the main body of this article. In Chapter V of A CIRCUS OF HELLS Djana said to Flandry: "I came up from slavery--in the Black Hole of Jihannath--what I've been through makes the worse they've thought of in Irumclaw Old Town look like a creche game--"  And in Chapter XV Djana also said: "Where were the Emperor and his law when I tried to escape from the Black Hole, fifteen years old, and my contractor caught me and turned me over to the Giggling Man for a lesson?" As far as this goes, the point  we need to keep in mind is to have no illusions about prostitution, far too many times "sex workers" did not enter that "profession" freely, but by force and are often kept obedient and in line by abuse and torture.

 

But, the complication here was that Jihannath was not part of the Empire when Djana was  a child. A few years later, in Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS, as Vice Admiral Kheraskov was briefing Flandry we read: "I'm not letting out any great secret when I tell you the latest Merseian crisis is worse than the government admits to the citizens. It could completely explode on us. I think we can defuse it. For once, the Empire acted fast and decisively. But it demands we keep more than the bulk of our fleets out on that border, till the Merseians understand we mean business about not letting them take over Jihannath." And we know from THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN that the Roidhunate was forced to back down and let go of Jihannath. 

 

What I quoted above made nonsense of Djana's complaint about the Emperor and his law, because that planet was not ruled by Terra in her childhood. It was a formerly independent border world of little interest to the Empire until Merseia tried to seize it. Terra most likely took such decisive counter measures because the location of Jihannath would make Merseian occupation of the planet a threat to the Empire. But a lengthy explanation of all this in the middle of my article would have been too disruptive!

Appendix II: L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

 

The disappointment I felt when I tried to use the second edition of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION to find out how other science fiction writers used the idea of human/alien sex irritated me. So much so that my memory was joggled into recalling how L. Sprague de Camp had some very pertinent things to say about that topic in his novel THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR (Berkley/Putnam: 1977).

 

From THE HOSTAGE OF ZIR, Chapter Nine, page 119:

 

Reith was going to explain that hybridization of species from different

worlds, no matter how superficially alike, was a biological impossibility.

On  second thought, he decided to say nothing for the present. If he

made a point of their mutual sterility, Shosti might find his presence an

embarrassment and have him pitched off the cliff. He finished lamely:

"Nought, madam. I did but hope that--ah--the key would fit the lock."

 

"Fear not, my lord. I have made trial of you Ertsuma before and find

them compatible...."

 

And from HOSTAGE, Chapter Ten, page 146, a non-human character asked if it was possible for males and females of their two species to have children: "Reith shook his head. "That were impossible, sir. Earthmen and Krishnans are as mutually sterile as-as an aya and a shomal. Professor Mulroy, among my tourists, could explain it; something to do with the tiny cells whence living things originate. The-the-our word is chromosomes-it fit not together."

If, in a book meant by de Camp to be humorous science fiction serious, even obvious points like these were made, the authors of the entries I quoted from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION s

An Incompletely Critical Look At DAGGERS IN DARKNESS, by Sean M. Brooks

I am calling this article of mine "incomplete" because I am commenting only on some of the highlights in that book which especially caught my attention the first time I read it. DAGGERS IN DARKNESS is the latest in the series of linked novels by S.M. Stirling which features Luz  O'Malley, an Irish American/Cuban field agent of the Black Chamber, an Intelligence agency created by President Theodore Roosevelt in an alternate universe where he won the Presidential election of 1912, after the premature death of President William Taft opened the  way to TR's victory.

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS gradually shows us how Luz and Ciara were coming into usually violent contact with increasingly senior agents of "The Mad Baron," Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a real, historical person who in our timeline briefly succeeded in making himself ruler of Mongolia in 1921. In the Black Chamber universe he came to rule Mongolia earlier and succeeded in staying in power.  His ambitions of gaining chemical weapons and the steps he took for achieving that were what drew the attention of the US and the Black Chamber to him.

 

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS opens in 1922, after WW I ended in a drastically different way from the Great War of our timeline. The US had conquered Mexico and annexed Canada; a Greater German Reich overran France and vast parts of eastern Europe and Russia; the British Empire was forced to evacuate Great Britain and relocate to India; Japan seized eastern Siberia, Manchuria, and chunks of China.

 

In the US, Theodore Roosevelt's "Progressive Republican" policies were so popular and seemingly successful that he had become virtually President for Life, easily winning every election since 1912. One of the things that first caught my eye and which I thought deserving of comment was this bit from Chapter 1, pages 8-9, about TR's eldest son Theodore: "Organizing the American Legion for veterans in '18 had shown he could move men to action in peacetime by his words and force of personality. The job in Manila [as Governor General of the Philippines] was a chance to show what he could do as an administrator. If he did well in it, there was no reason he couldn't be President himself someday, perhaps after a stint in a Cabinet post... Secretary of State or War, say... or nomination as Vice President in '28, and in either case in '32, when the young man was in his prime."

 

The US had become so vastly more powerful and larger that it was more an empire than anything else.  What we are seeing here, whether TR himself understood it, were  the old institutions coming to seem too small and inadequate for managing the demands of ruling an empire. We see TR coming more and more to think in dynastic terms, of his eldest son eventually succeeding him as President. If the younger Theodore governed as successfully as his father and was also blessed with an able son, would that son be proclaimed Emperor of America, instead of being only President?

 

Next, on page 27, I saw this: "Luz and Ciara's theoretically and legally adopted orphans were in biological fact half-sisters who now unmistakably resembled their mothers AND their sire, a man named Sven Lundqvist, who'd met her and Ciara under carefully arranged false circumstances. With the expectation that he'd soon be five thousand miles away and under the impression that his extremely entertaining weekend at a hot-springs resort in West Virginia had been just good luck and charm on his part; in fact his ship had disappeared on the way back to Stockholm; possibly a U-boat, probably a mine."

 

In many ways, I found Luz and Ciara's behavior here open to criticism. They wanted children, but refused to get them by either marrying men or honestly asking a man to knowingly become the father of their children.  I did not like the obvious implication that Luz had no intention of ever telling Sven that he had become the father of four daughters. He too had rights over those children!

 

It was too convenient, to have the hapless Sven Lundqvist disappearing on the way home to Sweden.  It meant there would be no awkward personal and legal difficulties in the future if Sven found out about his hitherto unknown children. It also meant there would be no trouble when the twins started asking questions why there was no father in their lives when other children they knew had fathers. And these children might want to know about Sven's parents and possible brothers and sisters. Which again could be awkward for Luz and Ciara. His too convenient death made that less likely, at least for a long time!

 

Candidly, I thought Luz's treatment of Sven callous and cynical, he was a mere sperm donor for her and Ciara. An impression which this bit from page 161 (Chapter Nine) did not lessen, after Luz learned of how the Swedish ship carrying Sven and other diplomats had been sunk by a German mine or U-Boat early in 1918: "...sinking a Swedish flagged merchant liner not far off the Kattegat, while carrying diplomats back to Stockholm in the spring of 1918. She'd been mildly sorry to hear that via naval connections, and hoped it had been quick at least..." A casually used and discarded sperm donor!

 

I also thought it very implausible that both Luz and Ciara would have twins, and that ALL of those children would be girls. it's far more likely that either Luz or Ciara would have had only one child, not twins. And I thought it very unlikely, even granting that,  that none of them were boys. It was far more likely that at least one or two of them would have been boys. It was too neat and schematic, for Luz and Ciara to both have twins and that all four children were girls.

 

Despite my distaste for the methods Luz took for her and Ciara to get children, that does not mean I am hostile to those children! Colleen, Mary, Patricia, and Luciana are thoroughly likable, bright, active, and energetic. I did wonder if they seemed too ideal, too perfect to be entirely convincing. But, I can see how, if the parents were healthy, intelligent, and free of any overt disabilities, that kind of selective breeding would maximize the chances of any children they had also being intelligent and healthy. But I continue to have my doubts about the plausibility of all four of them being girls.

 

And here is as good a place as any to state frankly I did not like the lesbianism of Luz and Ciara. Because I believe homosexuality is a distorting, a warping of the sexual and reproductive drive. So I read through the more lesbian parts of DAGGERS with resignation.

 

And in Chapter Three, page 66, I saw this: "...plenty of Jews but not as many since the Germans and Austrians plagued them now far less than now-defunct Russia and Romania had before 1914."  The question I had being: what happened to the rest of Russia? I would expect a victorious Germany to annex Russian Poland, the Baltic States, and much of Ukraine, but not ALL of Russia (I assume Austria-Hungary annexed Romania). Because I read of how, in the earlier Black Chamber books, Nicholas II abdicated as Tsar in 1916, with his son succeeding as Alexis II, under the regency of their respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas.  While I would expect the Regent to often be compelled to yield to German demands, I saw no mention of Germany deposing Alexis II and annexing all of Russia at least as far east as the Ural Mountains. But DAGGERS IN DARKNESS seems to clearly indicate that was what happened by 1922. Did Germany seize all of Russia east of Ukraine or not? Was there a Russian remnant state in western Siberia? We see no mention of what happened to Alexis II and the Regent.

 

I don't think Wilhelm II and Paul von Hindenburg would have tolerated a gruesome massacre of the Romanovs, of the kind ordered by Lenin in our timeline, which occurred at Ekaterinberg and Alapayevsk on July 17-18, 1918 in our universe! 

 

I especially loved the Chinese parts of DAGGERS, because of how I went through a Chinese phase earlier in my life, leading me to read a lot about Chinese history, including translations of parts of historical works such as Ssu-ma Chien's RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN.  But I do have one quibble: Stirling's use of Pin Yin for Romanizng Chinese names and words jarred on me, felt like a false note. Because, in OUR timeline (and presumably the Black Chamber's), the Wade-Giles system for Romanizing Chinese words and names is what was actually being used a century ago. Lastly, I simply don't like Pin Yin, "Beijing" strikes me as inelegant and poor English compared to "Peking."

 

Next, a minor point. In Chapter Five, on page 96, I read this: "A big Marine marching band in smart dress blues and billed saucer hats cane first..." It was a mistake for Stirling to say Marines wore HATS, because the Navy (of which the Marines are a part of) insists on calling head wear "covers." A US Navy officer I used to know online made a point of stressing Navy personnel wore COVERS, not "hats."

 

 Mr. Stirling is a scrupulously careful writer. After showing so many of the seemingly beneficial things brought about by the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt's so called "Progressive" Republicans, he was careful to show us some of the darker things underneath the glossy surface. For instance, in the same Chapter Five, on page 103, I read this: "...San Francisco had always been a strong union town, and the Party heartily approved of labor unions, as long as they were safely Party-affiliated." 

 

"SAFELY Party-affiliated"?  I don't like that. It sounds all too ominously like the puppet "unions" controlled by the Communist Party both in and out of the USSR. It looks menacingly like the United States becoming a de facto one party regime ruled by TR's so called "Progressive" Republicans. The text quoted below came from the same page 103 of DAGGERS.

 

   "The International Workers of the World hadn't been. The Wobblies had tried

to call strikes during what they called the capitalist-imperialist Great War. Many

of the Wobbly leaders and militants had been summarily shot in the back of

the head for that under the Espionage Act, as de facto enemy agents, so estab-

lished in nice fair fifteen minute executive-court hearings. Others had been

lynched by local patriots on a free-enterprise basis; one group had been

locked in boxcars and left in the Arizona desert to die of thirst and heatstroke

just to drive home the neighbors disapproval.

 

 "Most of the remainder were still repenting their sins in Federal Bureau

of Security corrective-labor camps in very remote places doing very hard

work for very long days in very unpleasant climates on a diet of just

enough scientifically enriched and fortified corn-and-soy mush to keep

them going; it was also scientifically designed to be absolutely tasteless.

You didn't die of starvation on that, or of scurvy or pellagra, and the

profoundly unsympathetic FBS guards didn't beat you to death with their

lead-weighted rubber truncheons or shoot you or lock you in a small iron

box to broil or freeze... unless you tried to escape or shirked or disobeyed

orders... but after a while you might not want to live very much."

 

The understated sarcasm in the passages I quoted above makes it plain Stirling himself did not approve of how the Wobblies were treated.  And I agree with him!  However much I would disagree with the views of the so called International Workers, they had every right to their own ideas and beliefs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. They should never have been treated so brutally and any trials of the Wobblies should have been in the regular state or US courts, with all the protections granted to accused persons in United States law. AND only for charges based on actual crimes allegedly committed by the Wobblies. Not for mere political opinions.

 

In Chapter Seven, page 136, I saw this: "This is Universal Imports," a voice said at the other end." As all readers of Ian Fleming's James Bond stories should immediately see, Stirling was having a little joke with the "Universal Exports" used as a cover by 007 and other agents of the British Secret Service.

 

Here I digress to touch on a minor misprint I noticed on page 276 (Chapter Fourteen): "Beds of chrysanthemums glowed gold and white and red in the dusk against the green LAWS...."  Of course I realized at once this was simply a misprint and Stirling had meant "lawns."

 

Some of my comments above, especially of Luz and Ciara, were critical. But I don't want readers to think I did not enjoy reading DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. I did! So much so that I stopped taking as many notes as I should have for writing a really satisfactory article about this book. I loved the story and it was a true page turner.

 

DAGGERS is very much an action/adventure novel, and not all readers might care for that, especially the more violent incidents to be found in the book. But Stirling, like Poul Anderson, always added so much more than simple blood and thunder and derring-do to his stories. Many times, through out the tale, readers will find historical and philosophical asides adding richness, depth, and nuance to the plot.  The example I quoted below, selected almost at random, came from Chapter Thirteen, page 268 of DAGGERS, Luz speaking first.

 

"What I've heard is that the Red Gang...the Honghang...and a faction within the

Green Gang...don't want to cooperate with Mr. X. Partly it's a regional thing; the

Red Gang are linked to southern China and the Canton triads, and so are some

elements within the Green Gang. Politics are involved too; the Green and Red

gangs were allied for a while to support Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang a few

years back, before and during the war...they called it the Mutual Progress Asso-

ciation of the Chinese Republic. The Honghang want to revive that."

    "We heard about that," Tommy said. "Didn't come to much, after Yuntai's Dad

declared himself Emperor."

 

Here Stirling shows his knowledge of Chinese history, in particular of how Sun Yat-Sen's base of support was mostly limited to southern China, with the northern provinces either indifferent to or hostile to his aspirations of founding a Republic of China after the fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911-12.  And "Yuntai's Dad" was none other than the treacherous Yuan Shikai who, after deliberately not fighting as hard as he could have for the Ch'ing, made a deal with the naive Sun that in return for forcing the abdication of the last Ch'ing Emperor, Sun would agree to Yuan becoming President of China. In our timeline Yuan tried to secure his grip on power firmly enough that he could proclaim himself Emperor, but failed. In the Black Chamber timeline, he succeeded, but only at the heavy cost of becoming a puppet of Japan. To quote some more from page 268:

 

    It's ever so common, just being a President,"  Holly said, with an ironic quirk

at the corner of her mouth, as she glanced sidelong at the Americans. "Even a

President for life with a son being groomed for the job."

"As opposed to being Lord Protector," Ciara said, her tone equally pawky-dry.

    The fact that he'd chosen Cromwell's title didn't endear Viscount Milner to her,

and she hadn't liked him to begin with. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had

sympathized with the Boers during the South African War and its guerrilla after-

math, and she'd heard a good many stories--some even true--of Milner's and

Kitchener's cruelties when she was an impressionable child.

 

In the Black Chamber's timeline Theodore Roosevelt had become de facto President for Life and was grooming his eldest son to eventually succeed him. And in our history the British had been harsh in breaking Boer resistance to their rule, including the use of concentration camps as a means of doing that. And anyone knowledgeable in British history understands at once what "Lord Protector" means!  All these are good example of how much Stirling could "pack" into his stories.

 

"How Many Heads Do Ymirites Have?" by Sean M. Brooks

 

One of the things I most admire about Dr. Paul Shackley's work in the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog is the detailed attention he pays to the texts of the works of Poul Anderson.  Far more attention than what I have usually done since the last time I was writing letters to Anderson himself (and before my participation on this blog).

 

Currently, I have been slowly rereading the stories about Dominic Flandry, set during the era of the Terran Empire in Anderson's Technic Civilization series.  And while doing so I have been striving to pay attention to, and appreciate, even the smallest details to be found in those stories. One example, from the Gregg Press (August, 1979) edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, is from the beginning of Chapter II of HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE (also called WE CLAIM THESE STARS), in an artificial satellite orbiting Jupiter called the Crystal Moon:  "He wasted no time on excuses but almost ran to the cloakroom. His feet whispered along the crystalline floor, where Orion glittered hundreds of light years beneath."  In all my previous readings of HUNTERS I don't think I had ever really NOTICED that bit about Flandry racing along a crystalline floor, beneath which Orion could be seen hundreds of light years away!

 

But the textual detail I wish to pay special attention to is a truly obscure one: how many heads do Ymirites have?  The only time we see any members of this hydrogen breathing non human intelligent race is in HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE.  And while I was reading Chapter IV of that story I noticed a tiny but intriguing detail (quoting from page 115 of the Gregg Press edition): "Flandry looked into the screen.  The Ymirite didn't quite register on his mind.  His eyes weren't trained to those shapes and proportions, seen by that weirdly shifting red-blue-brassy light. (Which wasn't the real thing, even, but an electronic translation.  A human looking straight into the thick Jovian air would see only darkness.)  "Hello, Horx," he said to the great black multi- legged shape with the peculiarly tendrilled heads."

 

It was that last bit, "...the peculiarly tendrilled heads," which caught my eye. How literally are we supposed to understand that word "heads"?  Do Ymirites have at least two heads?  We see Flandry conversing with two Ymirites in HUNTERS, his guide/interpreter Horx and the Ymirite governor of Jupiter, Thua.   But no mention is made of those beings having multiple personalities if they have more than one head, which is what we see in human conjoined twins.  Rather, if Ymirites have more than one head, only one personality is seen as using and speaking with those heads.

 

I was surprised!  In all my previous readings of HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE, I had never noticed that bit about Horx having "...peculiarly tendrilled heads."  I wondered if that might have been just a misprint for "head" and decided to see what the other copies I have of that story said at exactly the same place in those texts.

 

From Chapter IV of WE CLAIM THESE STARS (Ace Books: 1959), page 26 : "Hello, Horx," he said to the great black multi-legged shape with the peculiarly tendrilled heads."

 

AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE (Chilton Books: 1965), from Chapter IV of HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE,  page 100: "Hello, Horx," he said to the great black multi-legged shape with the peculiarly tendrilled heads."

 

WE CLAIM THESE STARS (London, Dobson Books: 1976 [rpt. of the 1959 Ace Books text]), from Chapter IV, page  26: "Hello, Horx,"  he said to the great black multi-legged shape with the peculiarly tendrilled heads."

 

ALL the copies I have of HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE have "heads" at precisely this same part of the text. Based on this evidence, I have to conclude "heads" was not a misprint for "head."  I feel forced to at least tentatively say Ymirites have more than one head. Even though that single sentence I have been quoting is the only time where Ymirite heads are mentioned.  And Ymirites are not described as being any kind of conjoined twins, two different persons sharing the same body or parts of bodies.

 

Despite everything, was  this use of "heads" still a mistake? Did Poul Anderson actually intend "head"?  If he meant the former, he certainly left us a mystery!  All the other few mentions of Ymirites in the Technic stories (such as in ENSIGN FLANDRY or THE GAME OF EMPIRE), says nothing about their bodies and appearances. E.g., this is what we see near the beginning of Chapter 9 of ENSIGN FLANDRY, about the Ymirites, as Lord Hauksberg's ship was traveling from Starkad to Merseia:  "Once, also, another vessel passed within a light-year and thus its "wake" was detected.  The pattern indicated it was Ymirite, crewed by hydrogen breathers whose civilization was nearly irrelevant to man or Merseian."

 

I have to admit that these questions would only be of interest to Andersonian obsessives! If I had noticed this detail and thought of writing to Anderson about it while he was alive, I think he would most likely have replied it was "head" he meant at that part of WE CLAIM THESE STARS/HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE.  Another way of settling this question, after Anderson died, would be to check what the original manuscript of HUNTERS had at this part of the text.  Assuming that manuscript still exists, of course.

 

I think some commentators who discuss science fiction stories have complained that too many writers make their non-human aliens look too much like  human beings.  A hydrogen breathing, multi-legged intelligent species with "peculiarly tendrilled heads" could not be considered as humanoid by any reasonable interpretation of that word.  Poul Anderson's Ymirites cannot be accused of being too humanoid looking.

Human Population Throughout The Technic History by Johan Ortiz

What this is

The Technic civilization future history takes off in our near future, in the year 2055 (THE SATURN GAME), and the Great Survey begins in 2150. Thus, the earliest part of the Technic history falls within a period for which we now have plausible world population projections. Armed with these projections and some guesstimates regarding mean population growth rates per annum, it is possible to extrapolate - roughly - the Human population in the Polesotechnic and Imperial Eras.

I will in this endeavour make use of Sean Brooks revision of Sandra Miesels chronology of the Technic civilization, because it just makes sense. Thus I take the Empire to have been founded in the early 27^th century rather than the 28^th and Flandry’s time to be the 32^nd century, him being born around 3100 AD, not in 3000 AD.

We also know the rough number of inhabited planets at the height of the Empire - 100.000 worlds acknowledged the supremacy of the Terran Emperors, although even in the late Empire there were occasional human colonies who did not, and some worlds were primarily inhabited by non-human sophonts. Even so, we can calculate a rough average population for a human world during the height of the Empire. But we also see that average might well not be typical. There is reason to believe that only the earliest human colonies ever became worlds with populations counted in the billions.

Since the Technic stories give some data regarding the population and time of founding for certain colonies like Nyanza, we can use our growth estimates to count backwards and determine the likely size of the initial colonising population. Armed with this information, we can speculate somewhat informedly about the difference between old, populated worlds and the typical colonial Imperial world. For example, we will find that even in the late Empire, Terra herself would have been exceptional for its massive population, outstripping any other human world by a large margin.

Where to begin?

The UN at present estimates (World Population prospects, 2019) that the world population will reach around 10,9 billion in 2100, although warning that it might grow as much as to around 13 billion or more worst case. If we interpret the “Time of Chaos” as a serious disturbance of civilization – famines, plagues, ecological disasters, wars – perhaps even nuclear - then those numbers would have to be knocked back a bit – but on the other hand increased wealth after the end of those upheavals and consequent raised standards of living compared to those the UN predicts might, ironically, knock them back more!

The Time of Chaos

The Technic History begins with a “Time of Chaos” taking place in the decades before THE SATURN GAME – although the nature of those troubles is left unclear. It might have been no more than our present sorry times being looked back at with horror from a better future, a time when indeed we are risking ruining both Earth and civilization. But we can make an educated guess.

In 2009, prof. John Beddington, chief scientific adviser to the British government predicted what he called “a perfect storm of shortages” – energy, food and water by 2030, which would usher in an era of international conflict and upheaval. This is around the same time we’d expect the coming climate disaster to really start to bite, which of course only reinforces the good professors projections.

This indeed sounds a lot like a “Time of chaos”.

It is not necessary to speculate on the actual sequence of events, but by 2055 the world was unified under one government, there was ample energy thanks to the introduction of efficient fusion power, and other environmental issues had been solved or were in the process of being solved by means of moving production and mining into space. Fusion power alone could well have solved the energy and climate crisis – but it is almost unimaginable that we would peacefully arrive at a World Government, the core of the future Solar Commonwealth. It is more likely that a period of savage wars over dwindling resources begun in the 2030s and/or 2040s.  This might have caused a powerful coalition of nations to confederate to restore global order, in effect creating the embryo of the future Solar Commonwealth. In any case, the World Government, whether already known as the Commonwealth or not and whether by military means or not, won a complete victory. The only hint PA gives as to the identity of the winning faction is that the Technic civilization was a heir to the Western one – so reasonably, we could guess that the coalition was at least lead by western powers. It is also notable that Anglic is the dominant Technic language.

Assumptions regarding world population and growth rates in early Technic Era

Given the probability of large scale casualties from the climate crisis and wars, possibly even limited nuclear war, plus the expected lower birth rates at higher standards of living during the 2^nd half of the 21^st century, I’m going to assume a world population of 10 billion in 2100, somewhat down from UN estimates.

As for the rate of growth until then, the most developed countries (Europe and North America) are expected to have virtually zero population growth during the coming 80 years, growing very slightly until 2050, and then contracting in the following 50 years back to 2020 levels. But assuming essentially zero growth is incompatible with what we know of the Technic era. World population will peak because the resources of Earth are not inexhaustible, leading to the cost of raising children gradually raising until  a balance is struck. But Technic civilization, eventually expanding to a hundred thousand worlds, knows not such limitations. Also, Technic civilization is not quite the same as Western. Standards of living are higher, the society richer. The number of children each couple decides to have will be dictated only to a very small extent by economic opportunities, most people will afford to have about as many or as few children as they want.

And this, in fact, comes very close to the current situation in Sweden, a country whose rates of births to deaths is notably higher than most other western countries. While taxes are admittedly high, child care is all but free, schooling is free, even higher education is free. “Free” is of course deceptive, since taxation still has to be payed – but this is regardless of having children or not, and children are in fact also directly subsidized by the state.  Of course, children still need to be clothed, feed, housed and brought up, but for the vast majority of Swedes, the number of children they choose to have is limited far more by their life style preferences than by financial considerations. Thus I am going to assume that the proportion of net births (births minus deaths) to population in Sweden is close to the natural growth rate of a human race living in affluence, security and with mostly western values. There will of course be groups retaining religious and/or cultural mores dictating much larger families – but so are there in Sweden, where roughly 20% of current population is either born abroad or born of two parents born abroad. Much if not most of this group originates outside of Europe.

So Swedish growth rates it is. And this annual rate of net births to total population was for the period 2013-2019 on average  0,25% per annum, varying between 0,23% and 0,27%. This gives a reasonable growth rate to be applied to the human population as a whole in the Technic Era.

The first colonies

Another thing we can perhaps infer is that in the World-State that followed the time of Chaos, it eventually became possible to allow open borders and global freedom om movement. The reason for this supposition is that it is stated that the first wave of colonization was driven by a desire to preserve national identity in a world that was gradually moving towards a monoculture. Thus were founded ethnic-based colonies such as Germania, Nuevo Mexico, Dayan, Denitza and many others. This freedom of movement is only imaginable if the less developed areas of Earth were able to catch up with the more developed ones, which is also part of the underlying assumptions influencing the overall human growth rates. Compare with the European Union, where freedom of movement before the inclusion of the former eastern bloc countries caused no resentment whatsoever, while afterwards, it contributed substantially to Brexit. Migration that moves small numbers both ways is much less threatening, indeed is seen as much more as personal opportunity than threat. But over a span of centuries, even such limited migration would undoubtedly meld the nations of the world ever closer together, a process reinforcing the effects of a global mass culture. This was a likely a very drawn out process, still very much uncompleted by the times of van Rijn and Falkayn (see HOW TO BE ETHNIC IN ONE LESSON) but more so in Flandry’s days.

This desire to preserve national cultures explains the otherwise puzzling appearance of League Latin as a trader lingua franca. To the newly formed ethnic worlds, using the Anglic of the Solar Common-wealth as a common language was probably unthinkable, at least early on. A resurrected, dead language like League Latin was much more palatable.

Using these assumptions defined earlier, we’ll find that by 2150 when the Great Survey was launched, human population would have reached roughly 11,3 billion, making conditions on Earth rather cramped. In the following 50 years, humans colonised a number of worlds in a first wave of expansion. These worlds must later have become the most important and populous worlds of the Empire, as we will now show.

If we follow our extrapolated growth curve, human population would rise from 11,3 to 12,8 billion by the end of the 23^rd century.  Given that Earth would have been rather crowded at the time, we can assume that most of this increase went off-world, indeed it is likely that Earth population dwindled somewhat. But with many planets colonised already, and especially if the initial wave of colonisation was driven by “ethnic” motives as is implied, then there would have been much less incentives to start new colonies in the following centuries – there are not that many nations on Earth! Rather than founding a new colony, most people would emigrate from the “old country” on Earth to the new “national” planet where there would still be ample space. There are currently around 6.000 ethnic groups on Earth, if we go by language as a definition, but most of these are very small and already on the verge of assimilation into larger groups at present in 2020 AD. A century on, most of these would have disappeared. On the other hand, the largest ethnic groups would have had little reason to fear assimilation into a Globish culture already in the 23^rd century. Thus, it would be mainly small to middle size ethnicities that would feel the need to set down roots in a new world. This might explain why we never hear of a Han Chinese planet, but we do hear about Germania, Sassania (Persian), Dayan (Jewish/Israeli), Nuevo Mexico, Hermes (Scandinavian), Unan Besar (Malayan) and so on. Even adding a few planets colonised not on ethnical but ideological basis (like pacifist Esperance), these colonies numbered at most a couple of hundred. Some of the first colonies would not necessarily have been ethnic but merely a cross-section of the polyglot populations of Earth – Alpha Centauri springs to mind, being likely among the first worlds colonised.

I will refer to these first colonies as the “Great Worlds” because of their later prominence among others in terms of population and importance.

By the end of the first wave of colonization, we would have nearly 3 billion humans living on perhaps 200 major colonies at most, and any number of much smaller colonies set up not for ethnical/ideological reasons but for commercial, like mining or trade, or simply pure pioneering drive. Their population would remain largely insignificant although growing in the coming two-three centuries, unless for some reason attracting a large number of colonists from Earth. The average Great World would have perhaps 15 million inhabitants, mostly emigres arriving over the course of the last half century. The largest would have more. Consider for example the planet of Germania, one of the most important of the early “ethnic” colonies. If we start with the current estimate of 150 million Germans of all subgroups in 2020, and always assuming that there will be no real population growth in the developed nations from here to 2100, then we could assume that by 2200, Germans as a whole would number a little over 190 million. If, again, we assume most of the growth to go off-world, then Germania could have as much as 40 million inhabitants by that date, maybe slightly more. Other worlds would have correspondingly less.

The Polesotechnic league era

Total human population would approach 24 billion by the mid-25^th century, the start of the era of Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn. If we assume more or less constant Earth population – maybe growing to 12 billion to allow for increased wealth and technology making room for more, then we have another 12 billion people distributed across roughly 200 Great Worlds and any number of smaller ones.

Given that even these “Great Worlds” were still virtually empty compared to Earth, and that inevitably they would have grabbed the best, most human-inhabitable worlds available after the Great Survey, it is reasonable to assume there was very little colonisation of new worlds going on - most of those wanting to emigrate from Earth choosing one of the existing colonial worlds. And any emigration from the larger colonies would be mainly by those fed up with their rustic monoethnic surroundings, instead longing for the cosmopolitan sophistication of old Earth, since untouched land would still have been plentiful on their existing worlds. This would not change throughout the era of the Polesotechnic League – even by its very end around 2600 AD, with around 35 billion human beings in total, the average Great World had no more than 120 million people – the same as Earth around 1000-500 BC. Smaller colonies remained minuscule for the most part, unless one for some reason caught the fancy of would-be emigres from Earth. Even so, their inhabitants were likely counted in the thousands, rather than millions.

Break-up of the Commonwealth and The Times of Troubles

The collapse of the Commonwealth would cause not only the birth of the Terran Empire, but a second wave of human colonisation. The first of these new colonists were driven by a will to escape the ever more overbearing and corrupt Commonwealth – among these would be Avalon, founded by David Falkayn among others. While not driven by ethnological motifs, like the first wave, they would in many cases have originated from monocultural Great Worlds and thus at least start also monocultural. Soon though, the violent collapse of the Commonwealth would drive a number of people to escape from the wrecked Earth and Great Worlds of the fallen Commonwealth. In the case of the Great Worlds, they were still so sparsely inhabited that even after having been devastated by invasion and plunder, the colonists could revert to farming to feed the population. This means that, unless several Great Worlds were depopulated by war, on the whole the growth of Human population would not have been greatly affected. In the case of Earth however, the devastation would have caused severe scarcity, even famine. While there would have been refugees from every Great World, those from Earth would logically have been the most numerous.

Probably in many cases, those small colonies founded earlier for commercial purposes would now receive waves of refugees – others would settle on entirely new worlds, hoping to escape attention from raiders. Among these would be less than ideal planets, like Ocean-covered Nyanza (THE GAME OF GLORY), which after five centuries and a second wave of colonization had 10 million inhabitants in Flandry’s time. The original ones had South African roots, but did most likely not escape directly from Earth, but rather probably some unmentioned Bantu Culture Great World. There is mention of a second German colony from which the land-bound Lubbers hail – Deutschwelt. This might be a parallel case of a colony set up by refugees from Germania.

This second wave of colonies were probably numerous, because the need to escape and hide would have been ongoing during the Times of Troubles. These extended for long enough that some planets, like Denitza, Hermes, Aeneas or Ansa became culturally militarised. If we assume that humanity suffered no great genocide during this era, and that emigration to the Great Worlds from Earth more or less stopped during this time, then at the close of the Times of Troubles around 2700 AD there would be around 44 billion humans, with about 10 billion still living on Earth, 28 billion inhabiting the two hundred or so Great Worlds and another 6 billion descended from refugees spread out over much of the remining 100.000 worlds of the future Empire – with on average around 60.000 inhabitants each. Of course, some would be substantially larger, like Avalon or Nyanza.

The Imperial Era

During the rule of the Terran Empire, the Imposition of the Pax and resumption of Trade would have allowed Terra herself to prosper again. Being the centre of Empire, we could expect her population to swell – emigration would largely stop, or even be reversed, especially early in the history of the Empire when Terra and her immediate neighbourhood were safe, but many human worlds were not. Also, as the Empire expanded, the administrative needs for manpower would have grown enormous so that at it’s peak, Terra held an population far above over what it could sustain with its own resources. Similar to Italy in the Roman Empire, the capital became parasitic, dependent on the provinces even for its basic needs.

By 2900 AD, towards the end of the era of Imperial expansion, the human race would amount to about 73 billion people, whereof perhaps as many as 18 billion lived on Terra herself, 45 billion on the Great Worlds (average population above 200 million) and the final 10 billion spread out over the 100.000 worlds mostly settled during the Times of Trouble (average population ca 100.000).

By Flandry’s time in the 32^nd century, total numbers of the human race surpassed 120 billion. Because even the Great Worlds were still sparsely populated by this time, there was little colonisation going on, there still being plenty of space on each. The population of Terra stagnated around 20 billion and remained at zero growth. Around 75 billion lived in the Great Worlds of the Empire, still with on average below 400 million inhabitants, similar to Earth in the High Middle Ages. But on the on the 100.000 worlds of the Empire, now 25 billion people made their lives. On average, there were still no more than a quarter of a million people on each. Given that a few, like Nyanza, had populations counting in the millions though, the typical colonial world would have been even less densely populated. Even at this late stage, Terra outstripped the population of almost any other human world by 20 to one.

The Long night

Before the fall of the Empire around 3500 AD, human population surpassed 325 billion. Of these more than 200 billion were on the Great Worlds, by now with an on average population of a billion each. Terra herself, remained at 20 billion and the small worlds made up the remainder with now, on average, a million people each. But this time, the greater the world, the larger the fall. With much larger populations, and dependent on the produce from a myriad smaller colonies, the Great Worlds suffered a collapse similar of that of Terra during the Time of Troubles. Terra herself was completely unable to sustain her swollen population after the fall of the Empire, and having been thoroughly plundered, there were few star ships to allow the surplus to escape, nor industries left to build new ones. In the decades following the ravage of Terra billions died of famine and epidemics. The resulting turmoil rendered the planet essentially ungovernable – it become a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Most likely, 70-80% of the peak Imperial population perished. What was left was an agricultural world not much more populous than some of the former Great Worlds, its natural resources depleted to the point of hampering any resurrection of civilization. The Great worlds suffered less, but were still plundered to the bone and left with little more than agriculture to barely be able to sustain their populations. And the myriad small colonies, too small to fend for themselves could do little more than subsist – if they were lucky - as imports of everything from energy cells to star ships ceased. Those who depended on imported nutrient supplements were doomed. It would be a thousand years before some of the former Great Worlds had rebuilt enough to relaunch civilisation, but we can be certain that it was on those planets that it happened, given the disparity in human resources and potential for self-reliance between Great Worlds and second wave colonies.

After the fall of the Terran Empire, our population growth projections no longer hold. Probably total population plummeted, even if Terra made up only a small part of humanity by then. Many colonies would have died out entirely, although the vast majority did not. The Human race eventually recovered and took to the stars once more. But that is a different story.  

"Sandra Miesel's Technic Civilization Chronology," by Sean M. Brooks (Revised)

Prefatory Note.  Dr. Shackley kindly published on his blog (April 26, 2012) an earlier version of this essay written by me.  Since then, I decided it needed to be revised, mostly from dating the birth of Nicholas van Rijn to 2421 instead of my earlier suggestion he was born in 2424.  And that made it necessary to revise my suggested dates for the birth of David Falkayn and many of the stories set during the Polesotechnic League. I also found it necessary to change some of the dates for the stories set in the Imperial era.

Several editions of the Technic Civilization stories of Poul Anderson (Gregg Press, Ace Books, Baen Books) have attached to them a chronology compiled by Sandra Miesel, an excellent commentator on the works of Anderson.  This chronology lists in internal chronological order all the stories and novels of the Technic Civilization series through periods like that of the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire.  Miesel also added many annalistic notes to her chronology.

For those who wish to read the Technic Civilization stories in chronological order, or merely to have a list of the stories in a correct temporal sequence, Sandra Miesel has done readers of Anderson's works a real favor.  However, commentators like Dr. Paul Shackley have discovered inconsistencies in some of Miesel's proposed dates which contradicts what the texts says.

For example, Miesel dates the birth of Nicholas van Rijn to AD 2376 and the crucial Polesotechnic League's Council of Hiawatha to 2400.  However, as discussed by Dr. Shackley in his note "Inconsistencies II," Nicholas van Rijn was born too late to have attended that council.  The section of Chapter IX of MIRKHEIM which discussed the Council of Hiawatha ended with "But when a century had passed--".  Nicholas van Rijn could not have attended that council because he was 80 years old at the time of the Mirkheim/Baburite crisis.  He would need to have been, implausibly, well over a century in age.

I have no objection to keeping Miesel's dating of the Council of Hiawatha to 2400, but I believe dating van Rijn's birth to 2421 is more accurate.  And since the Mirkheim/Baburite war came when van Rijn was 80 years old, that means it should be dated 2501 (not in 2456, Miesel's date).  This has the advantage of not contradicting what Chapter IX of MIRKHEIM said about "But when a century had passed."

Another error in Miesel's chronology contradicting what the texts say are her dates for "Lodestar" and MIRKHEIM.  She dates the events in "Lodestar" and MIRKHEIM to 2446 and 2456.  However, the Prologue to MIRKHIEIM clearly dates the events in that book to EIGHTEEN, not 10, years after Mirkheim was discovered.  My revision of her chronology dates "Lodestar" and MIRKHEIM to 2491 and 2501.

The next major inconsistency in Miesel's chronology contradicting what the texts say came from her dating the foundation of the Terran Empire to the 28th century and the birth of Dominic Flandry to AD 3000.  These dates clash with what Chapter 10 of ENSIGN FLANDRY says, as the Merseian prime minister Brechdan Ironrede was going to the Imperial embassy for an official reception: "His destination was another offense, a compound of residences and offices in the garish bubble style of the Imperium four hundred years ago."  This indicates the Empire had existed for over four centuries by the time of ENSIGN FLANDRY (because it is reasonable to think schools of architecture needed some time after the Empire arose to become popular).

Some evidence supporting the argument I made in the immediately preceding paragraph can be found in "Day of Burning," after David Falkayn explained to a powerful Merseian leader, Morruchan Long-Ax, that the lethal radiation from the explosion of the star called Valenderay would take less than three of his years to reach the planet. We then read: "The time unit Falkayn actually used was Merseian, a trifle greater than Earth's" (THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE, Berkeley/Putnam, 1978, page 293). Since Merseia's year was only a "trifle" longer (possibly three percent?) than Earth's year, that supports my argument that the Empire was older than the three centuries or so Miesel's Chronology gives it by the time of ENSIGN FLANDRY.

Moreover, Miesel herself contradicts her chronology when she wrote in her "Introduction" for THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND (Gregg Press: 1977): "The Empire is its third century when it moves against the Domain in its first aggressive campaign against a civilized foe."  Another chronological indication can be found in Chapter 8 of Anderson's THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, as Ivar Frederiksen briefly summarized the history of relations between the Empire and the Domain of Ythri: "Still, it [the Domain] grew.  So did Empire, Terra's, that is, till they met and clashed.  Couple centuries ago, they fought."  Now, if the Empire had existed a little over two centuries by the time of the Ythrian War and then that conflict was at least two centuries in the past by the time of THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, that can only mean it had lasted more than four centuries by then.

Therefore, I would argue for dating the birth of Dominic Flandry to AD 3100, not 3000 (the year Miesel chose).  The later date better fits the chronological evidence I collected from the texts.  I am still puzzled how Miesel could have missed, for example, such crucial indications as the Prologue of MIRKHEIM saying the Baburite war occurred 18 years after "Lodestar."

Because of Dr. Paul Shackley's zeal and devotion to accuracy, I became aware of mistakes I made in my proposed ordering of the Dominic Flandry stories beginning with "Tiger By The Tail" and ending with WE CLAIM THESE STARS.  While working on a revision of Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, I erred in too quickly accepting Miesel's listing of these stories when I should have paid attention to certain texts in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS and WE CLAIM THESE STARS.  This time I made what I believe is a more accurate listing and "dating" of these six stories.

"Tiger By The Tail" is at the head of this listing because Dominic Flandry  was not yet a knight in that story.  That honor was conferred on him by the Emperor because of how he had nullified the Scothanian threat.  And also because we see Aline Chang-Lei saying in "Honorable Enemies," while trying to cheer up an anxious Flandry: "Dominic Flandry, the singled-handed conqueror of Scothania, brought down by that overgrown buzzard?" So I placed "Honorable Enemies second after "Tiger By The Tail."

"The Game of Glory" begins with mention of how an agent  serving Merseia escaped the Terrans from a planet named Conjumar in a spaceship so badly damaged that this agent, Aa'u, was forced to hide on another frontier world of the Empire. Then we read: "Two years went by. He was sent to Betelgeuse and discovered how to lie to a telepath," referring to "Honorable Enemies," which happened before the "Game of Glory" proper.  So we arrive at this partial listing: "Tiger By The Tail," "Honorable Enemies," and "The Game of Glory."

Next comes the problem of where to most accurately list, chronologically, "A Message in Secret" and THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS.  In Chapter II of PLAGUE we read: "The Betelgeuseans were ubiquitous throughout this sector of space.  Flandry had engaged passage on one of their tramp ships, as the quickest way to get from his completed assignment  on Altai to the big Imperial port at Spica VI." Which means "A Message in Secret " came immediately before THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS.  Last, in Chapter I of WE CLAIM THESE STARS, we see Flandry saying to Lady Diana Vinogradoff: "The Nyanza business was a trifle wearing, y' know,"  to remind her  of yet another exploit of his on yet another exotic planet.  "I came home for a rest. And the Merseians are such damnably strenuous creatures.  It makes me tired, just to look at one, let alone spar with him." And that places "The Game of Glory " not long before WE CLAIM THESE STARS.  Summing up, we get this listing: "Tiger By The Tail," "Honorable Enemies," "A Message in Secret," THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS, "The Game of Glory," and WE CLAIM THESE STARS.

 In addition, I suggested below that Josip died in 3142 rather than in 3141 (Miesel's date was 3041) because a slightly longer reign for that Emperor fitted better the background of the stories.  That is, it gives more time for the events recorded in those stories to take place without being crowded together too tightly.

If the argument I gave above is correct, then that means many, not all, of the dates given by Miesel in her chronology needs to be changed.  Mostly by proposing dates later than the ones she chose.  In the chronology given by me below, the dates I advocate are given first while Miesel's dates are given in square brackets.  For the most part I used the "Chronology of Technic Civilization" to be found in the Gregg Press edition of ENSIGN FLANDRY.  I also thought it best, for simplicity's sake, to omit many of the annalistic notes added by Sandra Miesel.  I omitted many bibliographical details for similar reasons.

In my proposed revision of Sandra Miesel's Chronology I preferred to list the stories by their first magazine or book publication dates.  To be strictly accurate I should say that Poul Anderson revised a few of these stories: "Margin of Profit," "The White King's War," "Tiger by the Tail," "Honorable Enemies," and "Warriors from Nowhere." These later versions should be considered canonical and first appeared in THE EARTHBOOK OF STORMGATE ("Margin of Profit") and in the Ace Books and Gregg Press editions of the Dominic Flandry stories ("The White King's War," GALAXY, October 1969, was incorporated in A CIRCUS OF HELLS.)

The Breakup and the Polesotechnic League

2055  "The Saturn Game," ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION (cited as ASF), February, 1981

2150  "Wings of Victory," ASF, April, 1972
24th century  "The Problem of Pain," FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, February, 1973
2400  The Council of Hiawatha
2421 [2376]  Birth of Nicholas van Rijn
2451 [2406]  Birth of David Falkayn
2461 [2416]  "Margin of Profit," ASF, September, 1956
2461 [2416]  "How to be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," FUTURE QUEST, ed. Roger Elwood, Avon Books, 1974
2468 [2416]  "The Three Cornered Wheel," ASF, October, 1963
2471 [2426]  WAR OF THE WING MEN, Ace Books, 1958
2471 [2426]  "Esau," ASF, February, 1970
2472 [2427]  "Hiding Place," ASF, March, 1961
2472 [2427]  "Territory," ASF, June, 1963
2473              "A Sun Invisible," ASF, April, 1966
2476 [2427]  "The Trouble Twisters," as "Trader Team," ASF, July-August, 1965
2478 [2433]  "Day of Burning," as "Supernova," ASF, January, 1967
3478 [2433]  "The Master Key," ASF, July, 1964
2482 [2437]  SATAN'S WORLD, Doubleday, 1969
2482 [2437]  "A Little Knowledge," ASF, August 1971
2482 [2437]  "The Season of Forgiveness," BOY'S LIFE, December, 1973

2843 David Falkayn discovers Mirkheim

2488 The Supermetals Company is founded
2491 [2446]  "Lodestar," ASTOUNDING: THE JOHN W. CAMBPBELL MEMORIAL ANTHOLOGY, ed. by Harry Harrison, Random House, 1973
2501 [2456]  MIRKHEIM, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1977
Early 26th century [late 25th century], settlement of Avalon
26th century, "Wingless on Avalon," BOY'S LIFE, July, 1973
26th century, "Rescue on Avalon," in CHILDREN OF INFINITY, ed. Roger Elwood, Franklin Watts, 1973
26th  centruy, dissolution of the Polesotechnic League

The Time of Troubles and the Terran Empire

2600-2700 [27th century]  The Time of Troubles
Late 27th century, "The Star Plunderer," PLANET STORIES (cited as PS), September, 1952
2700  Manuel Argos founds the Terran Empire, Principate phase begins
28th century, "Sargasso of Lost Starships," PS, January, 1952
29th century [30th C], Covenant of Alfzar
2925 [29th century], THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND, New American Library, 1973

2935 THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE pub. on the planet Avalon
3100 [3000]  Birth of Dominic Flandry
3119 [3019]  ENSIGN FLANDRY, Chilton, 1966
3121 [3021]  A CIRCUS OF HELLS, New American Library, 1971
3122 [3022]  Josip succeeds Georgios as Emperor
3125 [3025]  THE REBEL WORLDS, New American Library,1969
3127 [3027]  "Outpost of Empire," GALAXY, December, 1967
3128 [3028]  THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, Doubleday, 1973
3132 [3032]  "Tiger by the Tail," PS, January, 1951
3135 [3033]  "Honorable Enemies," FUTURE COMBINED WITH SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, May, 1951

3137 [3037]  "A Message in Secret," as MAYDAY ORBIT, Ace Books, 1961
3137 [3038]  "A  Plague of Masters," as EARTHMAN, GO HOME, Ace Books, 1961
3139 [3040] "The Game of Glory," VENTURE, March, 1958
3140 [3040]  WE CLAIM THESE STARS! (also HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE), Ace Books, 1959
3142 [3041]  Hans Molitor succeeds Josip as Emperor after brief civil war, supplants short lived Imperial relative as Emperor.
3143 [3042]  "Warriors from Nowhere," as "Ambassadors of Flesh," PS, Summer, 1954
3148 [3047]  A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, New American Library, 1975
3155  Dietrich succeeds Hans as Emperor
3157  Gerhart succeeds Dietrich as Emperor
3162 [3061]  A STONE IN HEAVEN, Ace Books, 1979
3167 [3064]  THE GAME OF EMPIRE, Baen Books, 1985
Early fourth millennium, the Empire enters its Dominate phase
Circa AD 3500, Fall of the Terran Empire, the Long Night begins.  War, piracy, anarchy, economic collapse, and isolation devastate countless worlds.

The Long Night

3600  "A Tragedy of Errors," GALAXY, February, 1968
3900  THE NIGHT FACE, Ace Books, 1978
4000  "The Sharing of Flesh," GALAXY, December, 1968
7100  "Starfog," ASF, August, 1967