Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Page 31

  Still, as with the best sages of SF, Poul wrote most passionately and intrepidly about change, pointing out so many ways that change might threaten us, or rescue us . . . or simply make us weird. (As a Californian, he didn’t find the latter prospect daunting at all.)

  And talk about weird . . . I still can’t believe he’s not there, ready and willing to be called or emailed or asked a bit of advice . . . (though there’s still wonderful Karen . . . )

  A few weeks before he passed away, Poul learned that an asteroid was named for him by the discoverer, Glo Helin, (who graciously rushed the bureaucratic process through in time). 11990 Poulanderson is about five miles across, in an orbit that can easily be perturbed to become an Earth-crosser, and then . . . Well, I’d rather have watched Poul spend a hundred years conspiring with clever collaborators to develop his real estate in High Orbit. What fun he’d have had!

  Funny, I don’t feel too bad right now, just knowing that humanity is capable of bringing forth such men.

  The stars burn bitterly clear . . .

  —David Brin

  AN APPRECIATION OF POUL ANDERSON

  by Jerry Pournelle

  In addition to being an acclaimed science fiction author, Campbell Award-winner Jerry Pournelle holds degrees in engineering, psychology, and political science, and contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte. He’s probably best-known in the field for his long series of collaborative novels with Larry Niven, the most famous of which is The Mote in God’s Eye, but which also includes Inferno, Lucifer’s Hammer, The Gripping Hand, Footfall, Escape from Hell, The Burning City, Burning Tower, and Oath of Fealty; he’s also written Fallen Angels with Niven and Michael Flynn, and the two-volume Heorot series with Niven and Steven Barnes. Pournelle is also author of the three-volume CoDominium series, which started with A Spaceship for the King; the four-volume Falkenberg’s Legion series, related to the CoDominium series, some written with S. M. Stirling; and the five-volume War World series, also related to the CoDominium series, with John F. Carr; and of the four-volume Janissaries series, some written with Roland J. Green. Pournelle has also contributed to the Planet of the Apes and the Man-Kzin War series. He’s the author of solo novels Birth of Fire, High Justice, and Exiles to Glory, and two early novels written under the name Wade Curtis. As an editor, Pournelle edited the long-running seven-volume Far Frontiers anthology series with Jim Baen; the nine-volume There Will Be War anthology series (some volumes with John F. Carr); and, also with John F. Carr, the four-volume Endless Frontier series, the three-volume Imperial Stars series, and Nebula Award Stories 16. He’s also edited the anthologies 2020 Visions and Black Holes, and produced a large number of non-fiction books about computer science.

  I met Poul Anderson at the 1961 World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle. I had been reading his stories since I first encountered him in Astounding Science Fiction in high school. I was still reading Astounding (it was Analog by then). I had never taken any interest in fandom, but I wanted to meet Poul Anderson. I had never been tempted to go to SF conventions—indeed my idea of a SF Worldcon was formed from reading about them in Mad magazine and other unsympathetic sources—and I neither knew or cared about SF fandom; but for some reason I thought Poul Anderson and I would hit it off. I was at that time a Boeing engineer involved in space system proposals, and I thought I might have some things I could tell Anderson if I could wangle a meeting. Mostly I had been greatly influenced by his stories, and I wanted to meet the author.

  Meeting him was no problem at all. A friendlier author never lived. We met in the hotel lobby and in five minutes had planned an evening party that turned out to last all night, and by the next day we had formed a friendship that has never ended, not even when I was given the honor of being MC at Poul’s memorial in 2001. Over time we went to both amateur and professional conferences, collaborated with others in devising the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative AKA Star Wars, bashed each other with wooden swords in Society of Creative Anachronism events, and got into an argument with Edward Teller at the Open Space and Peace conference at Stanford Hoover Institution. I forget what Poul and Teller disagreed on, but Poul more than held his own in the entirely civil discussion that followed.

  I was on the Boeing team assigned to think about possible new projects and products—after all, Boeing designers had invented the Flying Fortress—and our first task was to try to understand what space warfare might be like. We arranged for Boeing to pay Poul for a paper on his conception of the future of space war. It turned out that our concept(s) of space war was (were) wrong in most details, but so were everyone else’s.

  As to the argument with Teller at the Open Space and Peace Conference: In those days most space observations were recorded on film and the physical film capsule was de-orbited and the parachuting capsule was caught by an airplane. Poul thought that would change soon, and this would affect Teller’s scheme for Open Space. He was correct. The technology was already changing—but none of us (except possibly Teller) knew just how dramatically the technology of observation from space and returning that information to earth had advanced. It was an interesting conversation in the Hoover Library. Poul was always civil and polite, and he always at least held his own in that discussion as he did in every discussion I ever heard him in.

  That’s hardly surprising. Poul Anderson was the very definition of the polymath. He read everything. If there was a subject he didn’t know about, I never found it. He was very deferential to authorities, but he often knew at least as much about how their subject connected to the universe as the expert did. Sometimes more.

  He could also sail a boat, and when it came time for me to get Ariadne, my twenty-foot midget ocean racing sloop, from Seattle to Los Angeles, I enlisted Poul’s aid as crew. It says a great deal about his temperament that he didn’t throw me overboard when we were weatherbound in Neah Bay in a port that was then a Bureau of Indian Affairs Reservation where federal regulations prohibited the sale of alcohol—including beer. The result was an even firmer friendship, and a memorable folksong about the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Some of that trip made it into my second novel, Red Dragon, and here and there into a number of Poul’s stories.

  A few years later, Poul was struck with some kind of writer’s block and asked if we could go sailing again. We sailed Ariadne out of Los Angeles harbor to the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, down to Catalina, and home again. It was a glorious trip. About the time we got back to Catalina Island we realized that we had an infinite amount of beer—that is, there was enough aboard that we couldn’t possibly drink it all (at least not and expect to get back to Los Angeles alive). We had learned that much from the previous trip.

  While on Catalina we got our first look at what later became a phenomenon: lava lamps. When we got back on board for the night Poul was inspired to construct a song about the things we called “blob makers” because we didn’t know their common name. I wish I had written down the song that came out of that experience.

  Many things drove Poul to poesy and song composition. Once, at a not-very-well-managed Westercon in San Diego, our “banquet” consisted of some unidentifiable meat and a small round object that proved to be a boiled potato. I lifted mine and dropped it to the plate. Twice. At which point Poul looked up and said, “I have written about these for years, but this is the first time I have actually heard a dull, sickening, thud.” Before the week was out Poul had written “Bouncing Potatoes,” which is a filk song classic. If you don’t know what filk songs are, Google will be glad to enlighten you. Poul wrote a lot of them. There was a period when hardly a month went by without a new one appearing in the mail.

  By mail I mean mail. I don’t believe I ever got an email from Poul. Like me, he was a bit hard of hearing—one reason we got on well, I suspect, is that we both talked loud enough that each could easily hear and understand the other—and he didn’t like talking on the telephone. He wrote letters. I was an early convert to writing with computers, but my attempts to d
rag Poul into the computer age ran afoul of the fact that he was a good typist who saw no need for these new-fangled machines. After all, he turned out more and better work with his big standard typewriter than just about anyone could manage with a computer.

  There was a time when Poul, Gordy Dickson, and I were a fixture at science fiction convention parties: we’d go off somewhere so as not to disturb the party, because while it was a matter of discussion as to whether Poul or I had the worse voice (Gordy actually sang well), I don’t think anyone who ever heard us doubted that between us we had the two worst voices in science fiction. One might wonder why anyone would listen to us, but in fact there’s no real doubt. It wasn’t the singing, it was the words. Poul composed hundreds of songs, all intriguing. Here’s one of them. It contains truth as well as humor. Much of Poul’s work does.

  Black bodies give off radiation

  And ought to continuously.

  Black bodies give off radiation

  But do it by Plank’s Theory.

  Chorus:

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back that old continuity!

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me.

  Though now we have Schroedinger functions,

  Dividing up h by 2 pi

  That damn differential equation

  Still has no solution for psi.

  (Chorus)

  Well, Heisenburg came to the rescue,

  Intending to make all secure.

  What is the result of his efforts?

  We are absolutely unsure.

  (Chorus)

  Dirac spoke of energy levels,

  Both minus and plus. Oh, how droll!

  And now, just because of his teaching,

  We don’t know our mass from a hole.

  (Chorus)

  This book is an appreciation of the man and his work.

  And what work it was. He built characters. He turned simple ideas into stories. He constructed worlds in less time than it takes to spade up a garden. He built worlds and civilizations, often quite effortlessly, or at least it appeared that way. Sometime he had an idea for a story that needed a very weird world. He could dash that off, apparently effortlessly, done so well that it might later serve as the basis for new stories and novels.

  He built characters, and he connected the future to the present. He understood the need for humanity to expand into the universe, and said so, in both fiction and non-fiction. He could see the consequences of not going to space, and told of the chilling consequences. He also told of the potential glory for conquering both the solar system and the galaxy. Bob Gleason, then editor in chief at Tor, worked at nominating Poul for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Bob understood that given the politics of the world this was highly unlikely, but that didn’t stop him. “Simple justice,” he once said. It would have been.

  A CANDLE

  by Raymond E. Feist

  Raymond E. Feist is the author of numerous worldwide fantasy bestsellers, perhaps best known for his extremely popular Riftwar series, which began in 1982 with Magician: Apprentice, and continued on through another five volumes. Feist followed this up with the related four-volume Riftwar: Serpent War sequence and later with the three-volume Riftwar: Legacy sequence, and has also written Riftwar novels in collaboration with Janny Wurts, S. M. Stirling, Joel Rosenberg, and William R. Forstchen. Feist is also the author of the three-volume Demonwar Saga, the three-volume Darkwar series, and the three-volume Conclave of Shadows series. His most recent novel, Magician’s End, is book three in the Chaoswar series.

  Here Raymond E. Feist delivers another fast-paced Dominic Flandry adventure, one that’s not quite what it seems, and contains something of a passing of a torch. Or perhaps a candle.

  Men groaned or wept, were silent or cursed fate, as was in keeping with their nature. The man in the gray hooded robe watched. It had taken some time to find those he had been seeking, but once he had found them, things had proceeded quickly.

  Oddly enough, his search had been hampered by the fact that Spriacos was a human world, far enough off major trading lanes that few aliens bothered to visit. Without significant industry, no exports more valuable than bulk metals and processed foodstuffs, and no tourist attractions due to no indigenous sapients occupying the world before the Empire claimed it, there was little anyone wished to see here. The hooded man had seen one Wodenite, a few Tigeries, and a pair of Donarrian iron traders. Otherwise, Spiracos was a place one came to catch another ship to somewhere else.

  Still, the Empire’s business had brought the hooded man to Tanhis, the capital city, seeking a man. In the end, he had found his man, wrung the truth from him, and was about to depart when another band of unlikely visitors to Spiracos had come to his attention; a slaver crew pillaging the Pits, as the poorest quarter of the city was known. Bordering massive mining pits, the Pits was home to day laborers, gambling halls, and strip clubs, a place where a man could find any vice he sought if he had the price.

  “Celia, how are you receiving?” the hooded man asked sub-vocally. A pair of clicks in his ear told him that he was being received five-by-five. A tiny transmitter sewn into the hood broadcast on a sub-carrier to the ship in orbit above. Even if the encrypted message was received and decoded, it would have appeared to be only a mercantile communication unless one could determine which of the fifty subcarriers embedded in the signal was transmitting the real data.

  Sir Dominic Flandry, Agent of the Terran Empire, considered it something of a technological overkill, but he conceded that the gadgets Special Branch’s researchers cobbled together for him always worked, so he choose not to be a critic. He leaned back against the rear wall, part of the concrete foundation of the building, and took stock of his surroundings.

  The cell was beyond filthy, a thirty-foot square of bare earth in the basement of an abandoned warehouse, defined by three walls of iron bars and the concrete against which he rested. Flandry had quickly ascertained that the simple cage wasn’t bolted to the floor or ceiling; the two side walls were bolted to an ancient cinder block wall. Men were packed so closely that no one could move without jostling someone else, but so universal was the misery that there were only faint complaints at the discomfort.

  The warehouse was otherwise empty, a single double door in the opposite wall leading up to the surface. The guards who had herded Flandry and the others into the cage earlier that night had vanished back through those doors, leaving the prisoners unguarded. It was a safe bet; they had all been searched and anything resembling a weapon or potential tool had been confiscated.

  Flandry had already calculated the risk from the guards and decided that it all depended on timing; they were lax, as they counted their job already completed, even though the prisoners were still under their supervision. Flandry suspected that they would soon be moved. No water or food had been provided, but slavers were disinclined to diminish the worth of their inventory, so transportation soon was the most likely answer. Once on the ship, they would be given food and water certain to be dosed with drugs to render the slaves docile; if they were to escape, it would have to be before they were taken off-world.

  Flandry knew that he could be extracted with a single word—Celia had already alerted local police to stand by—but that would likely involve a great many casualties, and while he had no compunctions seeing the guilty instantly killed when needed, he had qualms about unnecessary collateral damage; it was inelegant.

  Flandry studied those around him, trying to determine who he needed to talk to first. Two men were possibilities. One appeared to be moving from despair to anger, and soon a mindless outburst of rage might bring unwelcome attention from the guards. He might be an asset, but he might also prove a dangerous liability, Flandry finally judged.

  He turned his attention to the second man, and saw in him a likely candidate as the natural leader in this group. He was calm, studying the surroundings and the other men, constantly recalculating his chance
s to change circumstances rather than merely giving in to hopelessness. For a brief second, his gaze met the hooded man’s and in that instant each acknowledged in the other someone of like mind.

  Rising, Flandry moved as best he could through the press, gaining rising complaint and curses for his efforts, but he reached the man he had been studying without anyone objecting violently. Softly, he asked, “You ready to fight?”

  The other man spared him a glance, then nodded once. “What are you called?”

  The hooded man threw back his hood and said, “Flandry.”

  Absent the hood, Flandry’s features were strong. Dark eyes that in brighter light would have revealed flecks of amber, dark hair cut short in military fashion, a determined expression that immediately communicated this was a dangerous man.

  “I’m Laren,” said the other man; he was of like height, well muscled and fit, despite being older. His leathery face and gray hair did nothing to diminish Flandry’s estimation of him.

  “You’re not from Spiracos?”

  “Off-world,” Flandry answered.

  “How did an off-worlder end up in the Pits, getting caught up in a slaver raid?”

  “It took a bit of doing,” he said. Raising his voice just enough to be heard by the other men in the cell, he spoke. “Listen. I’ll only say this once. This man, Laren,” He glanced at the man next to him, “and I, we are going to fight.”

  Instantly there came muttering and objections.

  “Shut up!” Flandry said, not loud but forcefully enough to silence the men. “These are Alcaz Slavers. Some of you have been here for only hours, others no more than two days. Their style is grab and dash, quickly culling brothels, gambling halls, and bars, and away again to avoid detection by local police. They are in and out swiftly, and once you’re chained in the hold of a cargo ship, your life will never again be your own. This is your last hope for freedom. They will kill you if need be. But you are of no value to them dead or severely damaged, so they will hesitate in that killing, and that hesitancy will be your salvation.