Calidore  04-29-2021
02:44 UT
|
David “Lensman” Sooby said,
>But here you are citing not from Barsoomian canon, but from a guide written much later
>by a fan who apparently is indulging in fanfixes. That is, retroactive continuity done to "fix",
>or explain away, a problem where the canon is either inconsistent or, as in this case,
>is so wildly contradictory to modern science that the dedicated fan feels the need to come
>up with an after-the-fact explanation for what the author tells us.
It
appears you are right, as my efforts to find the reference in Burroughs
have so far been fruitless. Of course, there are 11 books in the
series, so that’s a lot to go through to find just one reference. But
one internet source calls the genetic engineering idea the “Eric John
Flint hypothesis”, which is probably a simple mistake for ‘John Flint
Roy’, the author of A Guide to Barsoom.
>The question is what the author intended for the reader to think is true within the context
>of the story. There's no hint or mention of the idea of a Martian origin of Terro-Humans
>within that story. The only possible rational conclusion, within the information the author
>presents in the story, is that parallel evolution has indeed independently produced a
>"race" of our species, /Homo sapiens/, on another planet by parallel evolution.
If
you prefer to only consider information in the story as presented, that
is your right. My own preferred method is broader in scope. I like to
look at all the evidence available, not just what is contained in any
individual story.
Having said that, you do make an excellent case
for parallel evolution. Perhaps I took John Carr’s introduction to the
story too literally when he wrote, “John W. Campbell…probably had fits
over the central idea of parallel evolution, as any good biologist would
(which means Beam probably had another ace up his sleeve as he did
nothing by accident, but what?)”
But I don’t think so. I believe
John was right. Because there are a couple of problems with the ‘alien
seeder’ option. I have posted these before, but perhaps newer members
of the group haven’t seen them yet.
1. There are no superior aliens in Piper’s Future History, or indeed any of his fiction.
This
is one of the ways in which Piper was among “the most Campbellian” of
writers, because John W. Campbell had a strong aversion to superior
alien races. In the classic Foundation series, “[Isaac] Asimov
described a totally human galaxy; partly to avoid Campbell’s prejudice
against relationships between humans and aliens in which the humans were
inferior.” (Gunn, Asimov, p. 38)
As Asimov himself put it,
“John [Campbell] could not help but feel that people of northwest
European descent (like himself) were in the forefront of human
civilization and that all other people lagged behind. Expanding this
view to a galactic scale, he viewed Earthmen as the “northwest
Europeans” of the galaxy. He did not like to see Earthmen lose out to
aliens, or to have Earthmen pictured as in any way inferior.” (Asimov,
Gold, pp. 243-4)
For this and other reasons, Asimov took it to an extreme, and the Milky Way of his Robot and Empire
series
include no sapient aliens at all. “Thus was born the “all-human
galaxy.” ” (ibid., p. 245) Piper was more reasonable; he has at least
nine sapient alien races during the Federation period, and fourteen in
the First Galactic Empire—and both of these universal states only
control a small part of his Milky Way. By extension, many more alien
races should be found during the Second through Fifth Empires.
But
as a Campbellian writer, Beam followed John W.’s preference, by having
none of his aliens superior to Terro-Humans. In fact, they’re usually
many centuries if not many millennia behind. The most advanced alien
race that we know of, the lizardlike Ullerans, are from 600 to 1200
years behind the Terrans, while the “Fairly early paleolithic” Fuzzies
are about 2 million years behind. This apparently continues to the end
of his Future History, since in “The Keeper”, the Fifth Galactic Empire,
which encompasses the entire Milky Way, is ruled by humans like the
Prince Salsavadran and the Lord Dranigrastan. No alien races are even
mentioned in the story.
So to postulate a superior alien race of
“seeders”, who place proto-humanity on Freya, Terra and Old Mars, goes
against what we know of Piper’s fiction. It makes more sense for a
common Martian origin to be the ‘hidden ace’ Beam had up his sleeve.
2. The timing favors a common origin from Mars.
In
“Omnilingual”, the last Old Martian died out “fifty thousand years
ago”. This means their civilization reached its height much sooner than
that; perhaps 75 to 100,000 years ago. And at their height, the Old
Martians “did know about atomic energy”. (Federation, pp. 2, 3, 48)
These elements closely parallel the Paratime series, in which Old Mars
is dying in precisely that ancient time, and the Martians attempt to
colonize Terra in an atomic-powered spaceship, with varying results.
Then
in “When in the Course—”, the modern Terrans arrive on Freya in the
Third Century AE, and find a culture about 700 years behind their own.
But the Freyans’ culture has been frozen by the Styphon gunpowder
theocracy for an unknown number of centuries; in the Lord Kalvan
version, it is two or three. (LKO, p. 4) By extrapolating back to the
original story, this means the Freyans should only be four or five
centuries behind the Terrans, rather than seven.
This suggests,
at least to me, that after their first attempt to colonize Terra met
with disaster, the Old Martians tried again a few centuries later. And a
few centuries is all it takes for Terro-Humanity to advance from early
spaceflight to hyperdrive. Meaning that the Old Martians could have
similarly developed a prototype hyperdrive a few centuries after
“Genesis”, before their civilization lost spacefaring capability. Why
they left the Solar System instead of shooting for Terra (again) or
Venus (assuming it is a warm, swampy world as in Paratime) is unknown,
but the timing between the civilizations on Old Mars, Terra and Freya
seems consistent for this scenario.
(Parenthetically, in “Second
Genesis”, Wolfgang Diehr—not Dietmar Wehr, that’s another writer—has the
Old Martians crash land on Freya, just as they did on Terra in
“Genesis”. The colonists therefore had to start over from scratch, just
as their Terran cousins did.)
Now, what about that race of
“seeders”? One would assume that Terra and Mars are seeded around the
same time, since they are in the same system. If so, then the two
groups started developing around the same time from a similar level.
Then why did the proto-humans of Mars progress so much more rapidly than
the proto-humans of Terra? It’s almost a ludicrous difference, with
the Old Martians achieving modern technology while the ‘Old Terrans’ are
stuck in the Stone Age.
Sure, Terra is in an Ice Age at the
time, but that doesn’t mean the regions closer to the equator were not
much more congenial. During the Ice Age, the Sahara was a fertile
grassland, with several large lakes and rivers. In “When in the
Course—”, the Freyans’ river-valley also seems to have an ideal climate.
So in the “seeder” option, the larger, younger, wetter, more verdant
worlds remain primitive, while the smaller, older, dryer, dying world
becomes far more advanced. The exact opposite of what one would expect,
given how in real history, the warmer, more congenial regions were
where civilization first developed. Such as in the Nile valley, and the
Tigris-Euphrates region.
I have no problem with the ideas of
parallel evolution and alien seeder races in science fiction stories,
and I understand your reasoning in preferring those options for the
human races in the THFH. I just don’t think they fit with what we know
of Piper and his fiction.
>Personally, I’ve never been an adherent of this idea…that Piper had some vast subtle plan
>underlying everything he wrote, perhaps like Heinlein did with his “Future History” series.
This
is of course a matter of opinion, and I certainly agree you have every
right to yours. My opinion differs. When Piper has Professor Chalmers
state that he can see “the history of the world, at least in general
outline, for the next five thousand years” (Empire, p. 21), I have
always felt that this meant Beam had written ‘a general outline’ of his
Future History by that time. This was previously suggested by Jerry
Pournelle, who stated in Federation that “His extensive notes have never
been found; yet I know that he kept a well-organized set of loose-leaf
notebooks, with entries color-coded; a star map of Federation and
Empire; a history of the System States War; and other materials…”
(Federation, p. viii) And John Carr added that “Piper’s original plan
had been to write at least one novel per century of his future history;
accordingly he had file folders for each century containing all the
pertinent data and characters.” (ibid., p. xviii)
Piper is
assumed to have burned all his notes before his suicide, but who knows?
Since it is unknown whether Jerry Pournelle ever actually saw them,
perhaps they never existed. In which case you may be right and I
overestimate him. But based on my research into his works over the past
20 years, I tend to think it is rather the reverse. Many people simply
underestimate him.
Because there’s more evidence in favor of a
Martian origin. The first is the Freyan language, which sounds very
much like Old Martian. Princess Rylla says to Roger Barron, “Me
Rylla-dad-Hostigos. Rylla-dad-Hostigos tsan vovaru. Roger Barron doru
vovaron.”. The Freyan words tsan vovaru and doru vovaron seem very
similar to the Martian words in “Omnilingual”, such as “Mastharnorvod
Tadavas Sornhulva”. (ibid., pp. 14, 217) This makes sense, if the
current Freyan language is related to Old Martian.
Then there are
Beam’s historical models. We know that the Terran Federation is
modeled on the British Empire, and Uller Uprising is based on the Sepoy
Mutiny. In that regard, Piper makes a couple of references to the
Freyans in relation to the Boers. One is that their muskets
“were…almost exactly like guns he’d seen in museums in Cape Town and
Johannesburg, which had been used in the Great Trek.” (ibid., p. 230)
Thus,
the Freyans seem to parallel the Boers, and the Terran acquisition of
Freya in the early Third Century AE parallels the British acquisition of
the Cape Colony in the early Eighteenth Century AD. How did the Boers
get to South Africa? Under their own power. This suggests that the
humans of Freya get there under their own power as well. Terra and
Mars, neighboring planets separated by a short stretch of interplanetary
space, parallel Britain and Holland, neighboring countries separated by
a short stretch of the North Sea. The much greater journey of the
Dutch to South Africa, across thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean,
would then be paralleled by the much greater journey of the Old Martians
to Freya, across tens of light-years of interstellar space. The Dutch
beat the British to South Africa, yet later fell under British rule,
even as the Freyans beat the Terrans to Freya, yet later fall under
Terran rule.
But, you may object, Charley Clifford denies that
historical model. “You wouldn’t claim, would you, that some Boers had
their oxcarts fitted with Dillinghams, and trekked out here to Freya
with their guns? No…” (ibid.) However, let’s remember that this is the
same guy who is wrong about the non-humanity of the Freyans! It is
therefore quite likely that Charley is wrong about the Freyans being
Boers. Not ACTUAL Boers, he’s right to that extent. Because one of
Charley Clifford’s shipmates is an actual Boer, Adriaan de Ruyter. And
what does Adriaan own? Why, a hyperdrive space-yacht! That’s right,
Piper included a Boer character who has traded in his ‘oxcart’
(Earth-bound transportation) for a ship fitted with Dillinghams.
It
seems significant that Adriaan and his hyperyacht are the first to make
a close approach of Freya, during a reconnaissance mission. (ibid., pp.
205-6) This strengthens the Boer historical model; it’s an ‘echo’ of
the Boer-parallel Martians who first approached Freya. Adriaan’s yacht
is a smaller, newer and faster vessel than the old, wheezy Stellex,
which in the story is strongly implied won’t last much longer. (ibid.,
pp. 205, 208, 280) The Stellex therefore seems very similar to the
Martian colony ship in “Genesis”, which at the beginning of the story
won’t last much longer, either; it is destroyed before it reaches Terra.
Extending the theme, Adriaan’s yacht would then be paralleled by ‘a
smaller, newer and faster vessel’, probably a prototype hypership, which
some Boer-parallel Old Martians use during their voyage to Freya,
sometime after “Genesis”. A parallel of the original Dutch migration to
South Africa.
That they are Piper’s ‘future version’ of the
historical Boers explains why Freya has three continents, but only one
is currently inhabited by the Freyans. (ibid., p. 206) Because when the
British arrived to take over the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State and
Transvaal did not yet exist. The British authorities eventually
abolished slavery, leading many Boers to leave the Cape with their black
slaves, out onto the open veldt—the Great Trek, which led to the
founding of the two Boer republics. Something similar happens on Freya.
After the Terrans set up the Chartered Freya Company on the inhabited
continent, one of their projects will be “to collect a lot of
free-companies [mercenaries] and use them in colonizing the other [two]
continents.” (ibid., p. 275) This is Beam’s future version of the Great
Trek.
And finally, a Martian origin is also supported
by Beam’s references in “Genesis” and “Omnilingual” which point to
mankind’s ‘Garden of Eden’, his place of origin, being on the Red
Planet. While the title “Genesis” may seem to refer to ‘the beginning’
of humanity on Terra, the flight from Mars to Earth actually parallels
the Biblical ‘expulsion from Eden’. The humans are forced to leave a
highly advanced society, and end up ‘back at the beginning’ again—as
uncivilized cave men. And the story makes clear that it is Mars which
contained mankind’s utopian Golden Age. “All that they remembered, in
the misty, confused, way that one remembers a dream, was that there had
once been a time of happiness and plenty, and that there was a goal to
which they would some day attain.” (Worlds, p. 170)
They lost
their Garden of Eden on Mars, but would someday regain it. That day
finally comes in “Omnilingual”, with the arrival of the Federation
spaceship Cyrano in Martian orbit. The ship name refers to Cyrano de
Bergerac, an early science fiction writer. In his first tale, Voyage to
the Moon, de Bergerac has his fictional self travel to Luna. There, he
finds the Garden of Eden. Mankind was not created on the Earth, but on
the Moon. The Terrestrial Paradise was really an Extra-terrestrial
one.
This is supported by the next ship to arrive. Because
“the main expedition” to Mars will come in the Federation spaceship
Schiaparelli. (Federation, pp. 20, 35) This ship name refers to the
Italian astronomer who gave us our current nomenclature used on maps of
Mars. And Giovanni Schiaparelli named several regions after paradise;
‘Elysium’, ‘Utopia’, and, more significantly, ‘Eden’. His Martian Eden
spans from near the equator to about 38 degrees north latitude.
Thus,
although the rational and agnostic Piper undoubtedly rejected
humanity’s religious creation in a Terran Eden, de Bergerac and
Schiaparelli gave him a way to apply his fascination with the Old
Martians. For the map of Mars suggests that his wry and subtle
scientific twist actually had his fictional human race evolve to
sapience in the Eden region of Mars. The Biblical Eden is also referred
to as the Earthly or Terrestrial Paradise; that would make the Martian
Eden the ‘Marsly’, or better, the Extra-Terrestrial Paradise.
>Here I must really protest. Piper didn’t see himself as a “serious” SF writer,
>as say Isaac Asimov did.
He
was not a ‘hard’ SF writer like Asimov, that’s true. What I meant by
serious is that he would not use a Burroughs- (or general pulp-)derived
idea, like multiple human races in the same system, or several systems,
without a rational, scientific explanation for that occurrence. You
prefer parallel evolution as the answer, which Piper presents as the
apparent answer in “When in the Course—”, and that’s perfectly fine.
Given Beam’s ambiguity on the subject, you may be right. I prefer a
common Martian origin, paralleling what he used in the Paratime series.
To me, that conclusion is much more supported by the broader, overall
evidence, not just limiting ourselves to the individual story of “When
in the Course—”.
>One can't read "Omnilingual" without asking oneself just why none of these brilliant scientists
>ever raises the possibility that the reason why Martians and Terro-Humans appear exactly alike,
>and are depicted in paintings as having cultures very like Terro-Human cultures, is that they
>are the same species, with a common origin.
There
is no mention by Beam, but since the story ends “a week” after Tony
Lattimer finds the Martians (ibid., p. 47), one would guess that Bill
Chandler and/or Ivan Fitzgerald (the expedition’s biologist and medic)
are in the process of dissecting the Martian remains. Once they finish,
and after the end of the story, the complete humanness of the Martians
would be proven, so is quite possible that the common origin idea is
raised at that time. But later expeditions, beginning with the
Schiaparelli, apparently do not find enough surviving evidence to
conclusively prove a direct link. This in turn would tend to suggest
that the Old Martians in the THFH are something like Beam’s Abzar Sector
in Paratime. “They had wasted their resources to the last, fighting
bitterly over the ultimate crumbs, with fission bombs, and with muskets,
and with swords, and with spears and clubs, and finally they had died
out, leaving a planet of almost uniform desert dotted with vast empty
cities which even twelve thousand years had hardly begun to obliterate.”
(Paratime, p. 240)
With the lack of surviving evidence on
Mars, a consensus grows among Federation scientists that a common origin
is not the answer—to agree with what you stated in a previous post.
But the idea persists, probably among unorthodox Federation scientists
as well as some ordinary citizens, leading at least one person to
fraudulently try and ‘prove’ it. “That fellow who carved a Late Upland
Martian inscription in that cave in Kenya, for instance.” (Little Fuzzy,
p. 51)
> That explains not only the existence of Humans on Mars, as explored in "Omnilingual",
>but also explains why the species Piper calls Terro-humans (and NOT Martian-humans) [etc.]
If,
in his later fiction, Piper was moving toward a purely Terran species, I
would have no problem with that. As I’ve said, you make an excellent
case for parallel evolution. Unfortunately for us all, he took his own
life before he could write more stories, which might have made things
more explicit. (Knowing Beam, though, I have a feeling he would have
kept it murky.) But in this case I think that by ‘Terro’-Human, he was
simply referring to the fact that all the universal states and cultures
of his Future History were descended from modern Terran civilization.
The cultural links from the Terran Federation all the way to the Fifth
Galactic Empire are never broken, and in “The Keeper”, Lord Dranigrastan
knows that Terra was “the world that sent Man to the Stars.” (Empire,
p. 241)
This does not preclude an origin on Mars, however. For
assuming that Terro-Humanity originally came from the Red Planet, they
completely lost their Old Martian culture, meaning that modern Terran
civilization was an entirely new and different one. The cultural link
between Old Mars and Terra was broken 75 to 100,000 years ago, and the
Terrans have even forgotten their Martian origin. Thus, a literal Dark
Age of at least 50,000 years separates the Terro-Human Future History
from what I call the ‘Martio-Human Past History’.
My apologies for the length of this post.
John
|
David Sooby 04-17-2021
03:21 UT
|
John Calidore said: >I would agree that Dr. Clifford likely concedes that parallel evolution is possible >after all, but the question is whether Piper meant for that to be the ‘apparent’ >answer, while he kept the true answer—a common origin from Mars—to himself. He was a >subtle man who had a long-standing habit of secrecy. The
question is what the author intended for the reader to think is true
within the context of the story. There's no hint or mention of the idea
of a Martian origin of Terro-Humans within that story. The only possible
rational conclusion, within the information the author presents in the
story, is that parallel evolution has indeed independently produced a
"race" of our species, /Homo sapiens/, on another planet by parallel
evolution. Not a different species, for we can interbreed, and that's
the very definition of "species". In fact, other notions
underlying the idea of parallel evolution can be found in this story;
notions that again owe more to older "planet story" SF than to science.
For example, when the explorers on the /Stellex/ first see the Freyans,
there is this bit of internal dialogue from the viewpoint of one of the
characters: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Humanoid form, of course, was to expected in any sapient race... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FEDERATION, p. 212 Needless to say, that notion wouldn't fly in a modern SF story. Periodically
throughout the story, Piper interrupts the action with passages that
indicate pretty strongly to the reader that in this story, parallel
evolution is indeed a reality, despite the protest of the stuffy
Clifford: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Charley's insistence on the
non-humanity of Freyans was getting a trifle tiresome, especially when
one is thinking, at the moment, of a tilty little nose with a dusting of
golden freckles across it. "Charley, have you found one
characteristic among these people that differentiates them from us?" he
asked. "Do they differ from us any more than a full-blooded Mongoloid
differs from a full-blooded Negroid or Caucasian?" "Well, no,"
Clifford grudged. But they can't be human! They evolved here on Freya;
there's no genetic connection at all between them and us." He was trying very hard to be convincing. Maybe it was Charles Clifford, M.D., whom he was really trying to convince. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FEDERATION, pp. 230-1 -and- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Wait
a minute, Charley. Every physical characteristic stems, originally,
from the gene for it; that's correct, isn't it? And you, yourself, have
admitted that Freyans do not possess any non-human characteristics, or
lack any human ones." "I see what you're getting at, Roger."
Charley frowned. "Superficially, it sounds convincing. But dammit, these
people..." He changed the subject... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FEDERATION, pp. 276-7 Piper
is clearly telling the reader that Charley, who is the main opponent of
the parallel evolution idea in this story, by this point knows he's
wrong, but simply isn't willing to admit it. At the end of the
story, the proof of inter-fertility of Terro-Humans and Freyans is
merely the resolution to that particular sub-plot, the resolution that
the author has been signalling all along. Now, John, referring
back to your assertion that Piper "...kept the true answer—a common
origin from Mars—to himself. He was a subtle man who had a long-standing
habit of secrecy." Personally, I've never been an adherent of
this idea, expressed by at least one or two on this forum, that Piper
had some vast subtle plan underlying everything he wrote, perhaps like
Heinlein did with his "Future History" series. One or two fans on this
forum even go so far as to say Piper never made a "mistake", that even
when he says the distance (or travel time) from one planet to another is
ten times the distance or travel time he stipulates in another, that
this was some sort of "grand scheme" he had, hints to "loyal fans" what
was "really" going on. In fact, it seems to me that Piper used
the same idea of parallel evolution in "Omnilingual", altho far less
explicitly than he does in "When in the Course—". How else to explain
that a bunch of anthropologists studying the remains of Martian
civilization on Mars, with every discovery showing they are more and
more human in appearance and culture, without any one of them even
raising the possibility of a common genetic origin? Can you imagine such
a thing happening with today's anthropologists? That's sheer nonsense!
The only rational way to explain this /within the context of the story/
of "Omnilingual" is that those anthropologists accepted parallel
evolution as entirely plausible; so plausible that the possibility of a
common origin is never even mentioned despite the growing evidence of a
startling amount of similarity between Martians and Terro-humans. >He was also a serious sci-fi writer. And John Carr states that when Beam submitted >“When in the Course—”, John W. Campbell “probably had fits over the central idea of >parallel evolution, as any good biologist would”. (ibid., p. 200) John says elsewhere >that Piper “was probably also the most Campbellian” of writers (Uller, p. viii), so >it is highly unlikely that he would have used such an objectionable scientific >premise. Here
I really must protest. Piper didn't see himself as a "serious" SF
writer, as say Isaac Asimov did. In fact, not far below in this
discussion do we find a quote from Piper himself on that very subject: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It
is not... the business of an author of fiction to improve or inspire or
educate his reader, or to save the world from fascism, communism,
racism, capitalism, socialism, or anything else. [The author's] main
objective is to purvey entertainment of the sort his reader wants. If he
has done this, by writing interestingly about interesting people, human
or otherwise, doing interesting things, he has discharged his duty and
earned his check." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ —H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill Symposium" interview Piper
was not writing to give his readers subtle lessons in science, as did
Isaac Asimov and later, Larry Niven. He was writing to entertain them,
and possibly himself. And no offense to John Carr, but Campbell had any
number of authors in his stable who would have tried to claim the title
of "the most Campbellian of writers". To nit-pick, they all would have
been wrong, for Campbell often published his own stories under
pseudonyms, at least in the early years of his editorship of
/Astounding/ when he was trying to set a new tone, more science and less
fantasy, for the pulp magazine. Sure, John Campbell was Piper's
primary market. But not his only market; there were other SF pulps of
the era. And what of Campbell himself? He wrote his own series of planet
stories, collected in THE PLANETEERS / THE ULTIMATE WEAPON, an Ace
double. THE PLANETEERS is a fix-up of a series of stories published in
1937-8, in /Thrilling Wonder Stories/. Of course that was (very shortly)
before he became editor of /Astounding/, and "got religion" on the
subject of scientific accuracy, or at least plausibility. However,
Campbell's insistence on at least a superficial basis in real science
for SF extended mostly to just the hard sciences, physics and chemistry.
When it came to biology, Campbell was quite willing to let his writers
wander off into "planet story" or "planetary romance" territory, just as
he himself had done in THE PLANETEERS. Now, that's not at all to
say I think John Carr is wrong when he says it was probably Campbell
who suggested to Piper that he change his story of "When in the Course—"
to fit into the Paratime series. And I'm very glad of the change, since
LORD KALVAN OF OTHERWHEN is one of my very favorite Piper yarns! Sure,
Campbell probably balked at the idea of parallel evolution being such a
central part of the story, just as John Carr speculates. Campbell wanted
his stable of writers to move away from the science fantasy of
"planetary romances" (or planet stories), toward what we today call
Campbellian SF, much closer to hard-SF than to the Burroughs-type
science fantasy of an earlier era. >Another fact to keep in mind is that Barsoomian women originally bore live young, >just like Earth women. One of the last great scientific advances of ancient times >was in genetic engineering. ... >Scientists in the medical field had long given thought to having their women >oviparous—as were the green women—rather than womb-bearing. What had hitherto been >strictly a moral problem became a necessity. The change was made slowly but surely, >and now the women of all the branches of the human race on Barsoom are egg-laying >creatures.” (A Guide to Barsoom, p. 9) But
here you are citing not from Barsoomian canon, but from a guide written
much later by a fan who apparently is indulging in fanfixes. That is,
retroactive continuity done to "fix", or explain away, a problem where
the canon is either inconsistent or, as in this case, is so wildly
contradictory to modern science that the dedicated fan feels the need to
come up with an after-the-fact explanation for what the author tells
us. Now, I hasten to say I've never read the later entries in the
Barsoom series, so perhaps it's a mistaken impression on my part that
what you cite there is a fanfix, not anything Burroughs himself wrote.
But at least one reader, in an Amazon dot-com review, indicates this is
the case: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is actually a good resource,
even if Roy does sometimes neglect to tell us when he's straying from
canon and sticking his own stuff in (i.e., the Barsoomians are oviporous
due to bioengineering). Not that his own stuff is bad (I could accept
bioengineering), but it IS his, not Burroughs'. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I
also should hasten to say that I myself often indulge in making
fanfixes. I was quite gratified when William Tuning, in FUZZY BONES,
followed up on the implications in LITTLE FUZZY and FUZZY SAPIENS that
Fuzzies are not native to Zarathustra, but somehow emigrated from a
distant planet. I was sorry to see, in the posthumously published
FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE, that Piper contradicted his earlier hints
about an extra-Zarathustran origin of the Fuzzies, and stipulated that
they had evolved on that planet. Sadly, that has rendered FUZZY BONES
incompatible with canon. Too bad; it's a fine story! But like
William Tuning, I prefer a scenario of "ancient spacefarers", which in
my scenario carried /H. sapiens/ to Freya. I go further; I postulate
that in an earlier era, they took proto-humans from Earth to Mars, where
they evolved into /H. sapiens/ before a group of them was carried to
Freya. Only later did the humans on Mars journey back to their ancestral
planet, as the last gasp of a race doomed to extinction by a planet
grown too dry to sustain life. That explains not only the existence of
Humans on Mars, as explored in "Omnilingual", but also explains why the
species Piper calls Terro-humans (and NOT Martian-humans) has what
modern science has established as a very clear genetic heritage from
Earth. If Terro-humans had evolved on Mars, then it's impossible, by
modern genetics, that we could be so very closely related to chimpanzees
and other apes, not to mention other Terran mammals, and to a lesser
extent, every species of life on Terra. No offense to Dietmar
Arthur "Wolf" Wehr, but the scenario in his Piper pastiches where humans
on Mars can plant a successful (in terms of survival of the
descendants) colony on light-years distant Freya, but their similar
attempt on the vastly closer Terra is such a disaster that the very few
survivors leave only their genetic heritage, without any trace of their
superior Martian technology or knowledge... that's not a very plausible
scenario. David "Lensman" Sooby Edited 04-17-2021 19:43
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 04-16-2021
02:09 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote:
> So by "new species differentiation", I don't think John Carr
> meant a "new species" per se, but merely a new
> differentiation within the Terro-Human species, which
> had become more or less homogeneous in the centuries
> following WWIV.
That's
how I see it too. Unike with her own great-grandparents, no one will be
wondering what happened should Ham O'Brien happen to marry one of Paula
Von Schlichten's great-granddaughters and they have some kids, and if
one of O'Brien's great-umpty-ump-grand nieces on Agni ends up having
some kids with a Space Viking that won't surprise anyone either. . . .
Cheers,
David
--
"A
girl can punch any kind of a button a man can, and a lot of them know
what buttons to punch, and why." - Conn Maxwell (H. Beam Piper),
~Junkyard Planet~
~
|
Calidore 04-16-2021
01:48 UT
|
My responses to some recent comments.
David “Lensman” Sooby said,
>Piper appears to be possibly the last hard-SF writer to cling to the “parallel evolution” idea,
>which by modern genetics is nonsense, but it was a very popular notion in early American SF.
And
>But obviously, Piper was strongly arguing in favor of parallel evolution in the story.
And
>Anyway, in “When in the Course—”, the idea of parallel evolution is discussed directly
>by the characters, and while serious objections to the concept are raised, the end of the
>story pretty firmly establishes that Piper was saying that yes, it did happen in that universe.
I’m
afraid I must disagree, because Beam never makes the answer explicit.
Charlie Clifford, the expedition’s doctor, states the modern biologists’
opinion that parallel evolution is a practical impossibility. He
clings to his belief that the Freyans cannot be human throughout the
story, until Nancy Patterson marries Harmakros and gets pregnant. At
that point, Clifford is forced to admit that the Freyans are indeed the
same species as Terrans. “A couple of humans…Of two different sexes,
from two different planets. That’s right.” (Federation, p. 284)
Notice
that he only admits the Freyans are human. But the why and how are not
revealed. I would agree that Dr. Clifford likely concedes that
parallel evolution is possible after all, but the question is whether
Piper meant for that to be the ‘apparent’ answer, while he kept the true
answer—a common origin from Mars—to himself. He was a subtle man who
had a long-standing habit of secrecy.
He was also a serious
sci-fi writer. And John Carr states that when Beam submitted “When in
the Course—”, John W. Campbell “probably had fits over the central idea
of parallel evolution, as any good biologist would”. (ibid., p. 200)
John says elsewhere that Piper “was probably also the most Campbellian”
of writers (Uller, p. viii), so it is highly unlikely that he would have
used such an objectionable scientific premise. Particularly in a story
he wanted to sell to Campbell, his “first and best market.” (Piper
Biography, p. 174)
Which brings me to
Dave Eden said,
>One possibility is that Piper just liked the Martian origin for his story, and
>didn’t care about possible implications for arguments about evolution.
I
certainly agree with the first half of that sentence (the second half
is addressed below). As John Carr also says, “Like many other writers
of the late forties and early fifties, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, and
others, Piper seemed fascinated by the red world and its Lost
Civilizations.” (Paratime, p. 11) And, “Not all of Piper’s stories and
themes were concerned with nuclear war or the fall of civilization. He
was also fascinated by the idea of lost races—especially the Old
Martians—a theme that dominated a good part of the science-fiction of
Piper’s youth.” (Worlds of H. Beam Piper, p. 7) Moreover, when he
decided to become a writer, one author Beam wished to emulate was none
other than Edgar Rice Burroughs. (Piper Biography, pp. 20, 79)
That
would make the Freyans a ‘lost Old Martian race’, whose ancestors,
sometime after “Genesis” but before Mars lost spacefaring capability,
took ship for the stars. Wolfgang Diehr came to a similar conclusion,
and wrote “Second Genesis”, his story about how some Old Martians made
it to Freya. (Published in The Rise of the Terran Federation.)
David “Lensman” Sooby also said,
>A question Burroughs never answered is: Just how could John Carter impregnate an egg-laying
>Dejah Thoris? That’s so ridiculous as to be comical, yet that’s the story Burroughs gave us.
You’ve
hit it on the head, as I believe that’s exactly why Beam wrote “When in
the Course—”. To tackle the issue of how, in sword-and-planet stories,
Earthmen are interfertile with allegedly ‘alien’ women.
Burroughs
has his Earthly heroes fall in love with women from Mars (John Carter
with Dejah Thoris, Ulysses Paxton with Valla Dia), Venus (Carson Napier
with Duare) and the Moon (Julian 5 with Nah-ee-lah). There are also
humans on at least one of the moons of Mars (Ozara of Domnia, a
blue-haired Thurian woman who falls in love with John Carter, in Swords
of Mars), and on Jupiter as well (the blue-skinned Savators, in John
Carter of Mars).
Thus, it is not Piper, but Burroughs, who
“didn’t care about possible implications for arguments about evolution.”
Edgar’s stories are greatly entertaining, no doubt about it; but he
was not a hard-SF writer. Any mature, intelligent reader like Beam
would ask, how is this possible? Parallel evolution on Earth and Mars
is far-fetched enough, but on four planets and two moons in the same
system?!
And yet, there is a potential answer. The ancient
Orovar civilization on Mars was highly advanced. The modern Red
Martian culture retains only some of its lost technology; a few items
being the all-important Atmosphere Plant, which keeps the whole planet
of Barsoom habitable, ‘radium’ (atomic) small arms, antigravity air
travel and locks opened by thought waves. In Swords of Mars, Fal Sivas
and Gar Nal independently invent space ships which can reach Thuria; and
the robotic brain of Sivas’ ship is also controlled by thought waves.
But
do Fal Sivas and Gar Nal really invent space flight, or do they
RE-invent it? Because some of the science of the modern Red Martians is
so far in advance of Earthly technology (even in the Twenty-First
Century!), that it is no great stretch to suppose the ancient Orovars
achieved space flight as well. And if they colonized Thuria, the Earth
and Moon, Venus and Jupiter before their civilization collapsed, that
would explain how all these interfertile human beings ended up on
different planets in the same system.
It is my belief that Piper
figured out something similar to this long ago, and became his ‘real’
answer. Old Mars colonized Terra, then Freya, before its civilization
collapsed. Only two planets were settled, one of them outside the Solar
System; instead of the four plus two moons which presumably happened
within Burroughs’ Solar System. But Beam purposely left the issue
vague, as was his habit.
He changed the sword-and-planet theme
up a bit, by having his hero come from Venus rather than Terra (Earth
would be too obvious), arriving with a small group of people rather than
alone (in keeping with his British Empire historical model of colonial
expansion), and locating his ‘alien’ princess in another stellar system
(because by the time Piper created his Future History, alien princesses
in the Solar System had become cliché.) It is also the Earthmen who
possess the antigravity vessels and radium weapons, rather than the
‘Martians’.
Another fact to keep in mind is that Barsoomian
women originally bore live young, just like Earth women. One of the
last great scientific advances of ancient times was in genetic
engineering. When the Orovar civilization fell, “Another major and
immediate problem was the care and transporting of children and pregnant
women in a world where it was necessary to be on the move constantly,
either in search of food or fleeing from the green barbarians.
Scientists in the medical field had long given thought to having their
women oviparous—as were the green women—rather than womb-bearing. What
had hitherto been strictly a moral problem became a necessity. The
change was made slowly but surely, and now the women of all the branches
of the human race on Barsoom are egg-laying creatures.” (A Guide to
Barsoom, p. 9)
Thus, John Carter and Dejah Thoris, just like
Nancy Patterson and Harmakros, are “A couple of humans…Of two different
sexes, from two different planets.” Ancient Earth was probably settled
by Barsoomian humans. So when John and Dejah mate, his sperm and her
ovum contain the same genetic code, and can therefore successfully
combine to create a fetus; but due to genetic engineering, her womb
apparently surrounds the fetus with a shell, instead of an amniotic sac
(if I have my biology right).
Piper improved on Burroughs by
getting rid of the egg-laying, but also by adding what in hindsight
should be obvious—a reverse in the sexual roles. For if Earthmen can
fall in love and procreate with alien women (John and Dejah, Roger and
Rylla), then an ‘alien’ man (whether Freyan or Barsoomian) can certainly
fall in love and procreate with an Earth woman.
Fair is fair.
David “Piperfan” Johnson wrote,
>With all due respect to John, Mohammed Ali O’Brien whose “skin was almost black,”
>was also “born on Agni, under a hot B3 sun,” but he doesn’t seem to be a different
>species of Terro-Human…
My
post was getting overlong, so I glossed over the middle part of the
story. Guess I shouldn’t have; my apologies. After WWIV destroys the
Northern Hemisphere, the surviving populace congregates in the Southern
Hemisphere. Terra is “Completely unified”; nation-states are abolished,
and by the Fourth or Fifth Century AE, “homo sapiens has become
racially homogeneous.” (Federation, p. xxiii ) This is evident in
“Naudsonce”, where Paul Meillard is “as close to being a pure Negro as
anyone in the Seventh Century of the Atomic Era was to being pure
anything.” (ibid., p. 61)
Being named for a Hindu deity, Agni
is presumably not settled until the Fifth or Sixth Century AE, a full
century or two after Terro-Humanity has become racially homogeneous.
Its hot B3 sun would naturally favor a dark-complected people, and this
probably played a role in why Ham O’Brien’s ancestry includes an Arabic
strain. Such a strain would adapt more easily to the planetary
environment.
So by “new species differentiation”, I don’t think
John Carr meant a ‘new species’ per se, but merely a new differentiation
within the Terro-Human species, which had become more or less
homogeneous in the centuries following WWIV.
John
|
Dietmar Arthur Wehr 04-11-2021
01:02 UT
|
After a long absence, I'm back on the forum. Years ago, I self-published
a sequel to Piper's Cosmic Computer titled Cosmic Computer Legacy: The
Tides of Chaos. For reasons that I still don't understand, Amazon had a
problem with it and removed it from availability. I've now been able to
re-publish a revised and edited version under the same title. If you've
read The Merlin Gambit co-authored by me and John Carr, then be aware
that Tides of Chaos and The Merlin Gambit share roughly 50,000 words of
material that I wrote. Carr added another 30,000 words or so for The
Merlin Gambit and later on I added another 30,000 words of my own to my
original 50,000 for an expanded Tides of Chaos. So the first 60% is
going to be the same in both books. My other Piper sequels (to Space
Viking) were also taken off the market by Amazon and I have no plans
right now to do anything with them. I am working on the first novel(of a
new series) which starts right at the end of the System States Alliance
war. I'll have more to say about that when it's published.
D.A.W.
|
David Sooby 04-08-2021
13:19 UT
|
David Johnson said:
> I don't understand is how Rylla would have managed to learn the language of an
> "apparently unrelated" foreign society. Knowing how to speak the language--and
> assuming that unfamiliar strangers might be from this place where she knows the
> language--would seem to suggest some degree of interaction and therefore that the
> Northron society [i]isn't[/i] "unrelated" after all. . . .
Yet
generations of English schoolboys were taught Classical Greek and
Latin, despite their teachers having no interaction with either the
Roman Empire nor Classical Greece.
If Rhylla had been taught a
second language for /whatever/ reason, it's hardly a surprise that she
might have, probably would have, tried to communicate with that if her
attempt to converse in her native tongue failed. Probably no harm in
trying!
David Sooby aka "Lensman"
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 04-08-2021
00:37 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote:
> . . . while as noted by John Carr, the modern Terran
> expansion into space eventually causes "new species
> differentiation. On Agni, a hot-star planet the
> inhabitants are said to be tough for Neo-barbarians,
> and to have very dark skin." (Federation, pp. xxiii-xxiv)
With
all due respect to John, Mohammed Ali "Ham" O'Brien whose "skin was
almost black," was also "born on Agni, under a hot B3 sun," but he
doesn't seem to be a different species of Terro-human. . . .
Cheers,
David
--
"The
amount of intermarriage that's gone on since the First Century, any
resemblance between people's names and their appearances is purely
coincidental." - Walt Boyd point-of-view (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day
Planet~
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 04-08-2021
00:23 UT
|
~
John "Calidore" Anderson wrote:
> I think David answered his own question in his original post.
> It's the language of the "small and apparently unrelated patch
> [of civilization] at the northern corner of the continent."
> (Federation, p. 206) When the Terrans don't answer Rylla
> in Sosti, she realizes that they're not native to the river-valley
> kingdoms. So she would naturally think they might be from
> that other civilization--the only other one she would know
> of--and try talking to them in that tongue.
I
agree this seems like a reasonable possibility but what I don't
understand is how Rylla would have managed to learn the language of an
"apparently unrelated" foreign society. Knowing how to speak the
language--and assuming that unfamiliar strangers might be from this
place where she knows the language--would seem to suggest some degree of
interaction and therefore that the Northron society [i]isn't[/i]
"unrelated" after all. . . .
> The idea of a separate, priestly language is interesting, but
> unfortunately not supported by the story. "The language,
> they found, was called Sosti; it was spoken all over the
> river-valley system to which the Freyan civilization was
> confined. The civilization was an ancient one; the language
> was uniform, and the culture and economy unified." (ibid.,
> p. 229)
I
also recognize that there is no mention in the yarn (or subsequently in
~Lord Kalvan~) of any sort of "religious" language but it [i]is[/i]
actually possible to understand how Rylla might have learned such a
language, unlike whatever language those "unrelated" Northrons spoke.
It's a conundrum.
Cheers,
David
--
"And
if he went back, there was a warrant waiting for him from the
Federation Member Republic of Venus." - Roger Barron (H. Beam Piper),
"When in the Course--"
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 04-08-2021
00:02 UT
|
~
Dave Eden wrote:
> John's comment of the Martian colonization of Terra
> brings something to mind. Does anyone have any
> insight on why Piper chose this idea for his world?
I'm
guessing it may simply be that those sorts of "planetary romances" were
still popular enough in 1951 to earn Piper, perhaps with a bit of
urging from Fred Pohl, a welcome $72.
Cheers,
David
--
"It
is not . . . the business of an author of fiction to improve or inspire
or educate his reader, or to save the world from fascism, communism,
racism, capitalism, socialism, or anything else. [The author's] main
objective is to purvey entertainment of the sort his reader wants. If
he has done this, by writing interestingly about interesting people,
human or otherwise, doing interesting things, he has discharged his duty
and earned his check." - H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill Symposium"
interview
~
|
David Sooby 04-07-2021
23:49 UT
|
Dave Eden said:
> John's comment of the Martian colonization of Terra brings something to mind. Does
> anyone have any insight on why Piper chose this idea for his world?
This
has been thoroughly explored before in previous discussions, but I
think most of us old-timers don't want to discourage newer readers from
asking familiar questions. There's nothing wrong with going over that
ground again for new readers. Those who don't want to re-plow this
ground can ignore this discussion.
Let's keep in mind that while
the Martian origin of Terro-Humans is firmly established in early
Paratime stories, Piper himself abandoned the idea in later stories,
having the characters talk about the differences in the timelines being
based on human mutations rather than the earlier concept of the degree
of success or failure of the Martian attempt to colonize Earth.
As
far as whether or not "Genesis" also suggests a Martian origin for
Terro-Humans in the THFH (Terro-Human Future History), that's a
controversy which has raged on this and other Piper discussion forums
for ages, and it's not going to be resolved. The reason it's not going
to be resolved is that Piper himself gives us contradictory indications.
One can't read "Omnilingual" without asking oneself just why none of
these brilliant scientists ever raises the possibility that the reason
why Martians and Terro-Humans appear exactly alike, and are depicted in
paintings as having cultures very like Terro-Human cultures, is that
they are the same species, with a common origin.
Piper appears to
be possibly the last hard-SF writer to cling to the "parallel
evolution" idea, which by modern genetics is nonsense, but it was a very
popular notion in early American SF. The "planet stories", such as
Burroughs' well-known Barsoom series, set on Mars, but also the Amtor
series, set on Venus, postulated human inhabitants of those planets
which were not only close enough to Terro-Humans to look like them, but
also to interbreed with them. (A question Burroughs never answered is:
Just how could John Carter impregnate an egg-laying Dejorah Thoris?
That's so ridiculous as to be comical, yet that's the story Burroughs
gave us. John Carter and Dejorah Thoris have both a son and a daughter.)
I'm pretty sure Burroughs wasn't the first to get "planet story"
science fiction published... or what I prefer to call "science fantasy"
since it's closer to fantasy than hard-SF. But he certainly did more to
popularize planet stories than any other writer.
It's amazing how
long the precedent set by the planet stories lingered on in SF. I just
re-read Heinlein's FARMER IN THE SKY (1950) the other day, and there is a
passing reference to Martians and Venusians, as natives of those
planets. They were not specified to be near-human or humanoid, but were
firmly enough in possession of those planets that Terrans were unable to
colonize those worlds which were much more attractive than the Ganymede
where Terrans wound up founding their first major colony, in that
story. Even Isaac Asimov's juvenile DAVID STARR, SPACE RANGER (1952)
included native Martians, altho in that story they are just a few very
non-human survivors hidden beneath the surface of the planet, and remain
unknown to even the humans who colonized Mars. (I won't point to THE
MARTIAN CHRONICLES as a precedent. The various stories there are so
wildly self-contradictory that I don't believe Bradbury intended it to
be SF, but only social commentary.)
> One possibility is that Piper just liked the Martian origin for his story, and
> didn't care about possible implications for arguments about evolution.
Piper
certainly did address the question of parallel evolution very directly
in "When in the Course—". However, that remained unpublished, so
arguably he didn't consider himself to be bound by what's in the story.
But obviously Piper was strongly arguing in favor of parallel evolution
in that story. When was it written? John Carr doesn't say in the intro
to the story in the FEDERATION collection, but clearly it had to be
before the publication of "Gunpowder God", the first of the Lord Kalvan
stories, as it has many of the same elements. That story was pubbed in
1964.
Anyway, in When in the Course—", the idea of parallel
evolution is discussed directly by the characters, and while serious
rational objections to the concept are raised, the end of the story
pretty firmly establishes that Piper was saying that yes, it did happen
in that universe.
However, altho I side here with John Carr in
arguing that "Genesis" suggests a Martian origin for Terro-Humans in the
THFH, nonetheless, as I said, there are contradictory indications. In
one THFH story there's a passing mention of a "scientific hoax" of
Martian script found on a cave on Earth. Clearly the general public in
the THFH doesn't believe they are related to Martians, let alone
descended from them. I myself rationalize this away by saying this
merely proves that scientific dogma exists in that universe, and the
dogma rejects the idea that Martians and Terro-Humans have a common
ancestry. Note that scientific dogma is very much a part of the story of
"Omnilingual", so we can't simply ignore it. Each reader will have to
decide for himself what the truth is; whether the Martians in
"Omnilingual" were so very, very Terro-Human-like in every possible way,
both anatomically and culturally, only by almost mathematically
impossible random chance, or because they did share a common origin.
Occam's Razor definitely shaves in the direction of a common origin, but
of course no writer of fiction is bound by Occam's Razor!
David Sooby aka "Lensman"
|
Dave Eden 04-07-2021
18:12 UT
|
John's comment of the Martian colonization of Terra brings something to
mind. Does anyone have any insight on why Piper chose this idea for his
world? It just strikes me as an odd choice for a scientifically informed
atheist who was an adult at the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial. It
could be seen as a concession to creationists, positing a situation
where humans didn't evolve on earth ("look, Piper is hinting that he has
doubts about men evolving from monkeys..."). One possibility is that
Piper just liked the Martian origin for his story, and didn't care about
possible implications for arguments about evolution.
Sorry if this has been discussed before and if so please
|
Calidore 04-07-2021
16:42 UT
|
Some comments on a few recent posts.
1. Languages of the Freyans
I
think David answered his own question in his original post. It’s the
language of the “small and apparently unrelated patch [of civilization]
at the northern corner of the continent.” (Federation, p. 206) When the
Terrans don’t answer Rylla in Sosti, she realizes that they’re not
native to the river-valley kingdoms. So she would naturally think they
might be from that other civilization—the only other one she would know
of—and try talking to them in that tongue.
“She spoke
again—different intonation, probably different language.” (ibid., p.
215) This suggests that the other tongue Rylla speaks isn’t too
different from Sosti. Otherwise the Terrans would be sure it’s another
language. And that subtle difference is probably because the two
languages are related. The Freyans’ ancestors came from the north, as
evidenced by her castle’s architecture. “There was no window-glass, and
the fireplaces had an unused look. Evidently it never got cold here.”
(ibid., p. 223) Through cultural inertia, the Freyans still build
fireplaces, even though they’re not needed; a remnant of the time when
they dwelt farther north, in a colder climate where fireplaces were a
necessity. And that locates the Freyans much closer to the ‘northern
corner’ civilization, which they may well be an offshoot of.
The
idea of a separate, priestly language is interesting, but unfortunately
not supported by the story. “The language, they found, was called
Sosti; it was spoken all over the river-valley system to which the
Freyan civilization was confined…The civilization was an ancient one;
the language was uniform, and the culture and economy unified.” (ibid.,
p. 229) A single, “uniform” civilizational language is also seen in the
Lord Kalvan version, where the priests of Styphon simply speak
Zarthani.
2. Ten Thousand Refugees from Abigor
While
Piper was known to ‘inflate’ his figures at times (like his 700 and 650
light-year distances to Freya and Fenris, which are really 70 and 65),
in this case his number is roughly correct. We know that Beam modeled
the System States War on the American Civil War, and as I show in the
Piper Atlas, the “ten thousand refugees from Abigor” have a historical
model; the ten to twenty thousand Confederate refugees who refused to
live under the victorious Union, and left the Southern States for
Brazil.
While a base population of 10,000 is small, it’s actually
much larger than the original base human population of Terra. In
“Genesis”, we learn that Terra was colonized by only a handful of
Martians. (I know, that’s from his Paratime series; but evidence in
“Omnilingual” suggests he was using the same colonized-from-Mars premise
in his Future History.) From that tiny group, it took about 100,000
years to achieve a planetary population of 3.5 billion (Terra in the
mid-Twentieth Century); while the 10,000 refugees from Abigor take only
800 years to achieve 3.5 billion people spread out over 12 planets (the
Sword-Worlds). (Space Viking, p. 10)
So it appears that Beam
didn’t think much genetic variation was necessary in these processes.
In fact, genetic variation is often the result, as the humans increase
and spread, and adapt to these new planets. On Terra, the ‘Cro-Magnon’
Martians slowly evolve into the various ethnic and racial groups of
modern Terra; while as noted by John Carr, the modern Terran expansion
into space eventually causes “new species differentiation. On Agni, a
hot-star planet…the inhabitants are said to be tough for Neo-barbarians,
and to have very dark skin.” (Federation, pp. xxiii-xxiv)
3. Early Expansion of the Sword-Worlds
Why
do the Sword-Worlders begin expanding after only two generations? I
think partly it has to do with youthful dynamism. A new, young
civilization, in an unknown region of space far from the Federation,
would certainly be curious about the other stellar systems in its
vicinity.
A second reason would be politics on Excalibur,
starting with the “Development of loose feudalism from earlier and even
looser town-meeting democracy.” (Piper Biography, p. 213) Every society
has political divisions, and the Alliance refugees—originally united in
their purpose—will be no exception. After Excalibur is firmly
established as a town-meeting democracy, divisions would inevitably
arise. And all it would take would be a single vote. An election is
held on some important issue, and the majority vote wins. The voters
who lost can either accept the results, or they can move.
But
moving to another continent on Excalibur might not be far enough for
these dissidents, because the government in Camelot would probably try
to force them to obey its lawfully-voted rules. For by this time in the
Future History, global states are the norm. The Federation contains
almost 500 Planetary Member Republics, colonies and chartered companies,
and the former System States were probably ruled from the habitable
planet in each system. Similarly, Excalibur is likely established as a
global state from its founding.
With space travel an easy option,
however, the discontented citizens can go find their own planet. This
would parallel the “irreconcilable minority-groups” mentioned in
“Naudsonce”, who colonize planets “to get away from everybody else”.
(Federation, p. 58)
That’s how some of the American colonies came
to be. In 1636, Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay
Colony for his religious views, so he founded what became the colony
and state of Rhode Island. And in contrast to Puritan New England, the
colony of Maryland was founded to provide a haven for England’s Catholic
minority, who were persecuted by the majority Protestants.
Aside
from the urge to explore or losing a vote, a third way Joyeuse and
Flamberge and Durendal could be settled would be through violence. All
the Sword-Worlders are armed (Space Viking, p. 149), and disputes in
general often end in fighting. When the dust clears, the losers are
either dead; imprisoned or driven out. On Fenris, “Half the little
settlements on the other islands and on the mainland had started when
some group or family moved out of Port Sandor because of the enmity of
some larger and more powerful group or family, and half our shootings
and knife fights grew out of grudges between families or hunting crews.”
(Four-Day Planet, p. 49)
With three planets and three reasons,
perhaps we can just split the difference. Joyeuse is settled by
explorers, Durendal by a peaceful but irreconcilable minority-group, and
Flamberge by outright rebels.
Consider too that this situation
would only get worse over time. As town-meeting democracy slowly gives
way to feudalism, those in charge would quite literally begin ‘lording
it’ over the people. And feudalism is an inherently military system.
If you don’t like the way your liege-lord is running things, you can
either grit your teeth and accept it, revolt against it (as on Gram), or
emigrate. And for those who leave, there’s still plenty of room to set
up their own societies. For even after eight centuries of expansion
across twelve planets, Lucas Trask says “There’s still too much free
land and free opportunity in the Sword-Worlds…Nobody does much bowing
and scraping to the class above him; he’s too busy trying to shove
himself up into it.” (Space Viking, p. 148)
In this future
feudalism, everybody wants to be a lord, and some of the Sword-Worlders
who leave set up their own lordships in the Old Federation—the Viking
base planets. Including Prince Viktor of Xochitl (nominally allegiant
to King Konrad of Haulteclere) and Prince Trask of Tanith (nominally
allegiant to King Angus of Gram). It is predicted that Tanith will “be
another Sword-World in forty or fifty years”, and Prince Trask becomes
King Lucas by the end of Space Viking; while Prince Viktor may become
the next King of Gram. (ibid., pp. 11, 242, 243)
John
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David Sooby 04-04-2021
06:07 UT
|
I recall being surprised, some months ago, to stumble across a reference
to Marduk as being a Babylonian god. Well, I shouldn't have been
surprised that it wasn't a name Piper just made up, as it's made very
clear in the THFH stories that planets were, by preference, named for
gods of various pantheons.
One thing we should keep in mind is
that in Judeo-Christian mythology, or more specifically in Jewish
tradition, the names of gods of foreign countries were often re-cast in
the role of demons and devils. So it shouldn't be surprising if names
such as Lucifer and Beelzebub are to be found as planetary names...
altho the latter would perhaps be closer to the original source if it
was Baal or Ba'al.
And let's not single out Jewish tradition for
that, either. The Roman Catholic church tended to "adopt" local gods
from countries conquered by Christians, re-casting them either as
pseudo-Catholic saints or as demons.
Did Piper consciously take
into consideration this trend of Jewish tradition recasting names of
gods of foreign countries as demons or devils? I don't know, but it
would not at all surprise me if he did.
What were Piper's
personal views on religion? Stories like "Gunpowder God" and "Temple
Trouble" seem to suggest he regarded formal religion as more of a con
game than anything else, with few True Believers among the priesthood.
If Piper's intent was a subtly satirical treatment of formal religion,
then perhaps including names of gods which Jewish (and therefore
Christian) tradition regarded as demons or devils, might have been part
of that.
The latter is, of course, pure and utter speculation on
my part, and I won't suggest it's anything supported by Piper's
writings.
David Sooby AKA "Lensman"
|
Jon Crocker 04-04-2021
02:31 UT
|
Ah, yes, thank you - I'd forgotten the Amaterasu and Marduk references!
You're
probably right, if I had to bet I'd say that Piper put them in to show a
more secular age in the future, unburdened by the superstitions of the
past - but when I wrote that I'd forgotten the two worlds above. It
would be a bad pun to say I suspected something more devilish afoot, so I
won't.
Perhaps for the capital ships, it was "fierce face"
naming. After all, who in their right mind wants to fight a dragon?
Some of the others wouldn't seem so 'terrible' to modern readers,
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 04-03-2021
17:21 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> I'm doing some research on what little we know about the
> worlds of the Systems States Alliance.
>
> They all seem to be named for the leading demons of hell.
Perhaps
this is what you meant but I think it's more accurate to say that many
of them seem to be named from traditional Judaeo-Christian sources
(which, by the time these worlds were being named, was likely considered
to be "mythology").
Not all of the Alliance worlds were named in
this manner though. Consider this comment from Zareff: "It took over a
year to move a million and a half troops from Ashmodai to Marduk, and
the fleet that was based on Amaterasu was blasted out of existence in
the spaceports and in orbit." Both Marduk and Amaterasu would seem to
have been Alliance worlds but neither name comes from a Judaeo-Christian
tradition.
> The signature, "Remember Ashmodai! Remember Belphegor!"
That
Alliance battle cry is my invention but both are identified by Beam as
Alliance worlds. Ashmodai, besides being the world from which those
troops were moved to Marduk, was Zareff's homeworld which was destroyed
by the Federation in 851 A.E. Belphegor and Baphomet--another
Judaeo-Christian traditional reference--were also destroyed by the
Federation.
> Was Piper sending a message with those names, 'these
> were the bad guys'? Or was he imagining a very contrary
> ship captain making a series of discoveries of planets,
> after all the Norse names had been used?
One
of the things Beam was showing, I think, was that it was getting more
and more difficult in the later Federation era--when many of the worlds
which eventually seceded to form the Alliance were originally
settled--to name new worlds from traditional mythological sources. Thus,
you have all the Cabell-sourced planet names in the Gartner Trisystem,
including Poictesme itself. But Beam was showing this in other ways too
with planet names--not just in Graveyard of Dreams / ~Junkyard
Planet~--from a variety of ancient Levant region mythological sources
(e.g. Anath, Behemoth, Chermosh, Dagon, Lugaluru, Melkarth, Nergal and
Rimmon) and other literary references (e.g. Hiawatha, Malebolge, Moruna
and Obidicut)
I wonder if Ashmodai and Belphegor and Baphomet
were simply meant as allusions to "hell" which served Beam's dramatic
purpose because they were destroyed by the Federation rather than being
specifically related to the circumstances of their naming when they were
founded. But Beam also seemed to be up to ~something~ with the
Alliance.
Zareff, who uses "Gehenna" as a curse (a practice which
re-occurs among the Alliance-descended Sword-Worlders--who also use
"Satan"), named his gunboats "for capital ships of the old System States
Navy." They're all monsters: ~Banshee~, ~Dero~, ~Dragon~, ~Goblin~,
~Poltergeist~, ~Werewolf~, ~Vampire~ and ~Zombi~ (four gunboats, I
think, are unnamed), which gives us some sort of insight into the
Alliance navy, at least.
> Others have probably noticed this before, but I just
> found this out and I admit a degree of surprise.
I
suspect many of the Judaeo-Christian references would have been more
familiar to Beam's audience at the time he was writing than they are to
contemporary readers today. That leads me to suspect that rather than
signalling that the Alliance--and their Sword-Worlds descendants--were
the "bad guys," Beam was doing something similar to what he'd done with
Nazi-descendant Carlos von Schlichten and Vichy-descendant Paula
Quinton. He was showing that some of the negative connotations which
were taken for granted among his contemporary readers would fade /
evolve over a future history spanning centuries.
Remember Ashmodai! Remember Belphegor!
David
--
The
first extrasolar planets, as they had been discovered, had been named
from Norse mythology--Odin and Baldur and Thor, Uller and Freya, Bifrost
and Asgard and Niflheim. When the Norse names ran out, the discoverers
had turned to other mythologies, Celtic and Egyptian and Hindu and
Assyrian, and by the middle of the Seventh Century they were naming
planets for almost anything." -- H. Beam Piper, "Graveyard of Dreams"
~
|
Jon Crocker 04-03-2021
06:57 UT
|
I'm doing some research on what little we know about the worlds of the Systems States Alliance.
They all seem to be named for the leading demons of hell.
In
the first meeting in Kurt Fawzi's office, Colonel Zaref was lamenting
about wartime security. "I remember, once, on Mephistopheles..."
Mephistopheles was the demon 'from German folklore' wikipedia says and,
his agent got him a gig in Doctor Faust.
The signature, "Remember
Ashmodai! Remember Belphegor!" Both demons. Ashmodai is one of the
many forms of Asmodeus, a prince of hell. Belphegor is another prince
of hell.
Abigor, the world that those ten thousand folks took
what was left of the SSA fleet and left from, is named after a 'great
duke' of hell, who commanded 60 legions of demons, don't you know.
I
admit I am not sufficiently up on my christian demonology and so I
never recognized the names. I don't know if any had a guest spot on
Supernatural, either.
Was Piper sending a message with those
names, 'these were the bad guys'? Or was he imagining a very contrary
ship captain making a series of discoveries of planets, after all the
Norse names had been used?
Others have probably noticed this before, but I just found this out and I admit a degree of surprise.
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