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Is the Compact In The Alliance/Union Universe?
Topic Started: Feb 2 2015, 10:07 AM (2,314 Views)
starexplorer
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This is pretty fascinating to me. Both the topic and people's recollections.

" 'tac"
 
Sorry folks, but as well as several implied references and generalised comments early in the text, there is an explicit reference to Earth's interaction with the Compact in Cyteen.


I would be happy to be educated on this. My recollection was that the references in Cyteen were implicit only. I recall something that had the sense of "What was found in another direction", and no mention of words like "Compact", "Hani", etc., so that there was room to believe this was or wasn't a reference to Chanur.


"BCS"
 
I also think we learn Earth has sent out exploratory missions, trying to gain a foothold on the opposite side from Pell and Cyteen.


But isn't this an inference? I mean the words "Cyteen" and "Pell" do not appear in the Chanur books. It seemed to me that while it was tempting to see the explorations toward Compact as opposite A/U, you really couldn't know for sure.

"Hakk-ji"
 
Indeed. CJ said [more recently than that page] that Tully's ship was Earther, not A or U, & that EC had deliberately explored for resources in Compact's direction due to losing control of Alliance & still needing to oppose Union in addition to Pell-centred Alliance. WWAS, and in emails to various of us.


I think I have an idiosyncratic view of this. To me what CJC reports as the idea in her mind is interesting, I don't see it as definitive. To me, what is in the books is what matters. But I recognize many others regard the author's intention as determinative.

I look forward to recovering and reviewing the actual references in the texts.
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Surtac
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Star.

The hard Compact reference is on p 316 of both the NEL trade paperback and the Warner hardcover. Good hunting.

:invert
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starexplorer
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Thanks 'tac. Sorry to be a nuisance, but I'm looking on p. 316 of my Warner hardcover, and clearly I'm not at the place you mean. In my book, this is Chapter 6, section X.

I think it would be easier to search by Chapter and section. When you have a chance, perhaps you could send that? I realize it's now more than 25 years later, but that book still has the ability to generate a passionate need for analysis!

:thnx :thnx
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Surtac
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Ok. I've just checked again and it's p 316 of the May 1988 first Warner hardcover printing of Cyteen. In this edition, it's two pages before the start of Chapter 8 on p 318.

The section it's in is called Verbal Text from: A Question of Union, Union Civics Series : #3.

:invert
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starexplorer
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:fworks :fworks :fworks


Eureka!

There it is. Resolved. Thank you 'tac!

One mystery of the Universe dispensed with! Onward!
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hrhspence
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the Number one book on my wish list is for a Hani ship to head past earth, through the A/U occupied space, to Eversnow.

That would make a great story.
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BlueCatShip
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starexplorer,Feb 4 2015
01:34 AM
This is pretty fascinating to me. Both the topic and people's recollections.

[ ... ]

But isn't this an inference? I mean the words "Cyteen" and "Pell" do not appear in the Chanur books. It seemed to me that while it was tempting to see the explorations toward Compact as opposite A/U, you really couldn't know for sure.

[ ... ]

I think I have an idiosyncratic view of this. To me what CJC reports as the idea in her mind is interesting, I don't see it as definitive. To me, what is in the books is what matters. But I recognize many others regard the author's intention as determinative.

I look forward to recovering and reviewing the actual references in the texts.

Aha! OK, now I see where you're going with this, StarExplorer-ji. It puzzled me that you weren't taking into account what the author had said about her books' background, yet you were counting the Timeline page, and you were looking only otherwise at the source text, in-story.

I see why you'd take the route of looking ~only~ within the source texts for direct proof of references to A/U and EC, but hmm, to me, what the author says about the back-story of what she wrote is what she intended for it, and is therefore as true as what actually was written within the work. Even if her opinions about it may change over time, I'd take it that the facts of the back-story she intended do not change over time. However, yes, I can see your point of view as a way of literary analysis of the text. Heh, that helps me understand where you were going with this. Good, now we're on the same page (oh, bad pun, bad) on this, though I still maintain my idiosyncratic (or contrary ;) ) viewpoint. Heheh.

(No reply from CJC as yet.)

I'm entering the (lengthy) quote to file, before pasting it here.
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starexplorer
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"BCS"
 
Aha! OK, now I see where you're going with this, StarExplorer-ji. It puzzled me that you weren't taking into account what the author had said about her books' background, yet you were counting the Timeline page, and you were looking only otherwise at the source text, in-story.

I see why you'd take the route of looking ~only~ within the source texts for direct proof of references to A/U and EC, but hmm, to me, what the author says about the back-story of what she wrote is what she intended for it, and is therefore as true as what actually was written within the work. Even if her opinions about it may change over time, I'd take it that the facts of the back-story she intended do not change over time. However, yes, I can see your point of view as a way of literary analysis of the text.


Apologies if I've been obscure on this issue. But yes, I am sympathetic to the point of view that authors do not have a privileged position on their own work once it is out in the public domain. At that point, any art becomes subject to all the reflection, interpretation and revision that culture applies so ubiquitously. Readers' views become as valid as those of the creator of the art. Texts remain while interpretations change. Artists are sometimes quite inarticulate about their own work. Not especially :cherryh: in particular, of course.

By way of example, sometimes pianists are asked to play a piece "as Bach intended it". This is not possible. No pianist can erase all the years of music listening, all the things she has heard that Bach never heard, all the music that followed Bach, all the various interpreters of Bach subsequently and all the cultural events that alter how Bach is heard and understood.

I hope if I'm misguided, at least now I'm more clearly misguided.
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BlueCatShip
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I had some idea that's where you were coming from, but wasn't sure what I was seeing. :)

My own feeling is that the artist's view of his/her work does have precedence. The facts of the back-story, at least, how the artist sees the story-universe she has created. What's where, who's who, and so on. That the artist/author can discuss that in interviews, correspondence, art books or encyclopedia guidebooks about the story-universe, is a boon for the audience, the fans.
This further illuminates and enlarges the source text, or the corpus of the œuvre, to put it that way. For example, Tolkien was quite ready to give a great deal of added content about the background of his Middle Earth story-universe.

Beyond that, yes, each reader, fan, listener, viewer, will have his/her own unique interpretation of the work, and the audience or fans as a whole will have a collective understanding of the body of work that will have a somewhat different take on it, at least on some points, than did the author/artist. Star Trek fans notably have a different viewpoint on a few things than Roddenberry himself did about his creation's intents and meanings.

I do take your point that a pianist or other musicisan who plays a piece of music is always going to have his/her own interpretation of the piece, his/her own style, by necessity and by training and experience. In that, a fan/reader will also have his/her own unique interpretation of a text, similarly by necessity and experience and any training. But I'd argue that a musician's art is a little different, in playing and interpreting the written musical notation of a piece, in working the instruments or the voice, and thereby transmitting it to an audience in audible form, is somewhat different than a reader who reads directly the words of a novel's source text. In that point, I'd say that the musician or singer is more directly analoguous to an actor in a play or in an audio or video production, in that the actor interprets what's written in the play (or teleplay) the script, which is often more minimal than a musical score, and presents that in a live or recorded form, to the audience. To me, the experience of reading a novel (or poem or other written work) is more analoguous to the musician, singer, or actor, who reads the source material directly, and internalizes it and expresses it, both internally and, in the case of reading aloud, externally. There could also be the analogy that a reader who reads a book is reading the source code, and interprets and executes the program, though that analogy would strain the patience of an artist/author.

In interacting with CJC by email or on her blog, or seeing other comments she's made, I note, however, that she may have a viewpoint more similar to your own about the artist/author to artistic work to audience/fan relationship. She carefully demurs on some points and leaves things open to the fans' or audience's interpretations. For instance, when I'd asked about pronunciations or meanings, she has given some details, but it was also apparent she was leaving it open, in the knowledge that no matter what she said, most fans would pronounce words how they saw/heard them. This makes sense to me too, though on that point, I'd value the author's preference over my own, on how to say words she's made up for the story, and I'd see it as further edifying my understanding of the text and the alien (and human) cultures therein. This was also brought home to me in beginning to read that French translation. Because a French-speaking reader, unaware of how English-speakers sound out words, is going to read alien words primarily as if they were French, unless given a specific pronunciation key otherwise. This has quite an effect on the way those words sound. :) Yet that's equally valid, from the French-speaker's point of view, as an interpretation of the artwork, the writing, the story. If the French-speaker then understands how the writer, in the original English, intended the pronunciation of those alien words, then that gives the French reader a new, larger or additional set of clues into the work's interpretation.

So my viewpoint is slightly different, but I see, I think, why you hold to your viewpoint on it.

As an aside, my mother was an artist, an oil painter, and though she had a very strong ego (very!) and strong opinions (very!), she also was always anxious that people should see and understand (and enjoy) what she painted. She was an English major, with a B.A. from Rice U., so on arts and letters, she'd have her own opinions too. But she was pretty much like any fan on books she loved. On her own art, she'd ask my dad and me what we thought, to see if she was getting across in a painting what she meant to, and whether it was accurate on form, for instance. And that puts one in an odd position, if one is not sure, or if it doesn't strike one some particular way, when what one is viewing is mostly a tableau and not so much an allegory. From that, I did learn that other artists have both the experience as creator of their own works, and as audience of others' works. I've seen somewhat my own experience with that, as someone who creates, but as someone who experiences other forms of artwork. ... Ah, and I'd add that there is "art" in many things which are considered "technical" rather than art. I found calculus beautiful too, and the form and function of a good tool or a technology or, oh, some item or theory, can be artful in its way. My dad was an engineer, but who loved history on the side, and other things, and so his expression of art was to make something that served a useful purpose, filled a need, and yet should have a beauty of function, even if its beauty of form was never particularly (in most of what he created) a priority.

A very fine discussion! Carry on, folks!
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BlueCatShip
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Here is the lengthy quote from the dinner table discussion, after they've put together the uruus decoy in the spacesuit.

Note, I'll get out my paperback copy soon and hunt up the page reference.

(This quote is intended for fannish literary discussion and enjoyment, and remains the copyright © of C.J. Cherryh. No copyright infringement is intended.)

One hopes the spaces/tab before each paragraph will make it through the forum software's transformation process, or one will need to re-add paragraphing in the post afterwards.

-----

Here's the quote where Tully gives his first account of what he's been through, to the crew of the Pride. This is about his third encounter with Pyanfar. Tully has just asked if it's OK for him to talk also, in the captain's discussion with the crew. Pyanfar has said yes, then they've discussed it's a two-jump hop from Urtur to Kita Point to Kirdu. N.B. -- Urtur is a mining station, not much else there. Kita Point is a jump mass, not a star nor a star system. Kirdu is a major mahen station, "civilization," per Pyanfar's opinion. Pyanfar will later meet with Ahe Stasteburana-to, the stationmaster of Kirdu, to negotiate and to register Tully as a sapient and citizen and as crew on the Pride. Tully's reveal begins with his need for trank drugs to sleep through jump. Pyanfar is the second speaker.

"The Pride of Chanur, Kindle edition
Loc 1284 of 4091"

    "#. Need #, captain. #."
    He was sorely, urgently upset. Pyanfar drew in a breath, made a calming gesture. "Again, Tully, say again. New way."
    "Sleep. Need sleep in jump."
    "Ah. Like the stsho. They have to, yes. I understand; you'll have your drugs, then, make you sleep, never fear."
    He had started shaking. Of a sudden moisture broke from his eyes. He bowed his head and wiped at it, and was quiet for the moment. Everyone was, recognizing a profound distress. Perphas he realized: he sitrred in the silence and clumsily picked up his knife and jabbed at a bit of meat in his plate, carried it to his mouth and chewed, all without looking up.
    "You need drugs to sleep," Pyanfar said, "and the kif took you through jump without them. That's what they did, was it?"
    He looked up at her.
    "Were you alone when you started, Tully? Were there others with you?"
    "Dead," he said around the mouthful, and swallowed it with difficulty. "Dead."
    "You know for sure."
    "I'm sure."
    "Did you talk to the kif? Did you tell them what they asked you?"
    A shake of his head.
    "No?"
    "No, Tully said, looked down again and up under his pale brows. "We give wrong # to their translator."
    "What, the wrong words?"
    He still had the knife in his hand. It stayed there with his next morsel, the food forgotten.
    "He fouled their translator," Tirun exclaimed in delight. "Gods!"
    "And not ours," Pyanfar observed.
    Tully's eyes sought toward her.
    "I thought you ran that board too quickly," Pyanfar said. "Clever Outsider. We, you said. Then there were more of you in the kif's hands at the start."
    "The kif take four of us. They take us through jump with no medicine, awake, you understand; they give us no good food, not much water, make us work this translator keyboard same you have. We know what they want from us. We make slow work, make we don't understand the keyboard, don't understand the symbols, work all slow. They stand small time. They hit us, bad, push us, bad—make us work this machine, make quick. We work this machine all wrong, make many wrong words, this word for that word, long, long tape—some right, most wrong. One day, two, three—all wrong." His face contorted. "They work the tape and we make mistake more. They understand what we do, they take one of us, kill her. Hit us all, much. They give us again same work, make a tape they want. We make number two tape wrong, different mistake. The kif kill second one my friends. I—man name Dick James—we two on the ship come to station. They make us know this Akukkakk; He come aboard ship see us. He—" Again a contortion of the face, a gesture. "He—take my friend arm, break it, break many time two arms, leg—I make fight him, do no good; he hit me—walk outside. And my friend—he ask—I kill him, you understand. I do it; I kill my friend, # kif no more hurt him."
    The silence about the table was mortal. Pyanfar cleared her throat. Others' ears were back, eyes dilated.
    "They come," Tully went on quietly. "Find my friend dead. They # angry; hit me, bring me out toward this second ship. OUtside. Docks. I run. Run—long time. I come to your ship." He ducked his head, looked up again with a wan, mahendo'sat smile. "I make the keyboard right for you."
    "That kif wants killing," Haral said.
    "Tully," Pyanfar said. "I understand why you're careful about questions about where you come from. But I'll lay odds your space is near the kif—you just listen to me. I think your ship got among kif, and now they know there's a spacefaring species near their territories; either one they can take from—or one they're desperately afraid is a danger to them. I don't know which you are. But that's what the kif wanted with you, I'm betting—to know more about you. And you know that. And you're reluctant to talk to us either."
    Tully sat unmoving for a moment. "My species is human." She caught the word from his own speech.
    "Human."
    "Yes, they try ask me. I don't say; make don't understand."
    "Your ship—had no weapons. You don't carry them?"
    No answer.
    "You didn't know there was danger?"
    "Don't know this space, no. Jump long. Two jump. # we hear transmission."
    "Kif?"
    He shook his head, his manner of no. "I hear—" he pointed to the com, which remained silent. "That. Make that sound."
    "Knnn, for the gods' sake."
    He touched his ear. "Say again. Don't understand."
    "Knnn. A name. A species. Methane breather. You were in knnn territory. Worse and worse news, my friend. Knnn space is between stsho and kif."

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BlueCatShip
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Oh, rot, it ate the tabs / paragraph indent spaces. OK, going back in to add them another way.

EDIT (Ben W. | BCS) — Better. The forum software will not show a leading tab character. It will keep in leading spaces. I entered 4 spaces as a paragraph indent, rather than introducing a carriage return / newline or a paragraph symbol (pilcrow) i.e., " ¶ ".

So we don't get much more solid from Tully, except a species name, a general location near kn. space, between kif and stsho, and details on what happened to him, plus a shipmate's name and the sex of another shipmate. I think it's later revealed that second shipmate was also male, and Tully here doesn't specify, at least in a way an English speaker would note. (In several other human languages, the gender of each crewmember would be given by the form of the nouns and/or adjectives he uses to refer to them.) We do get that humans need trank (tranquilizer) drugs to sleep during jump.

So there were 4 survivors: Tully, Dick James, a woman, and (presumably) a man.

They were on an (ostensibly) unarmed ship, so either a civilian ship or a research vessel, perhaps comparable to a space agency mission. But I'd tend to think even then, a ship going into new, unknown territory on purpose for exploration would be armed. So this tends to say Tully's ship was a civilian ship. It's also possible he dissembled, but given that he's seen the hani and the kif do have armed ships, it seems unlikely he'd dissemble in favor of unarmed ships.

It also seems more likely their ship was a medium- to small-sized craft, but we don't know that for sure.

We do know mahendo'sat and kif have sizable ship's crews on some ships. We never see that evidenced on hani ships, as though they have smaller kinship-run merchant ships only, which could fit, given that they were not starfaring when mahendo'sat made contact, and their original technology was from mahendo'sat. (That's supported in the text, I think in book three or four.)

As I recall, we don't get a lot in the first book, on Tully's origins, but in the next two, and then in the two ending books, we get what more there is.

In rereading, I get the feeling Tully himself is a civilian, not an experienced fighting man from a naval fleet. He's canny, but at first, we see mostly reaction instead of proaction, as he's too busy trying to learn what all these alien species, particularly hani and kif, are like, what to do, and how to communicate. ...And how to avoid getting killed doing it. Heh.

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Xheralt
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I'm going to have to dig out my Chanur Homecoming and re-read the last chapter. Yes, just about any Earther would call the homeworld "Sol", which they did. But there is the matching (jump) stardrive mechanics. In my former hopes to associate atevi and A/U/C, I had...not so much overlooked the dissimilarity of stardrives so much as hoped that Phoenix's drive was the technologic successor to jump. Only having to drug up one navigator instead of a whole crew would be a serious improvement.

Other strong clues from the final pages of Homecoming, based only on my recollection: Silver jumpsuits on all the humans, an A/U/C hallmark. IMO if :cherryh: had wanted them truly separated, she would have had the foresight to alter the uniform aesthetic. It's not like the 50's where everyone's jumpsuits were silver...

There was also an aside revelation by Tully that there were two other Human Compacts. Of course they weren't named, that was left for an actual honest-to-God diplomat (with rank and authority) to tackle once talks were actually entered into. Besides, if he even tried, that glitchy translator might have just rendered both of those words as "Compact"...along with Federation, Confederacy, Hegemony, Empire, and every other word for "enormous political unit". If it rendered the words at all! So, absent another universe by :cherryh: where humanity is split into three factions, one of them being Earth/Sol, it almost had to be A/U. Then there's the Cyteen references...

Tully neither confirmed nor denied that his ship had weapons, a very specific and suspicious silence on the issue. I think there was some (justifiable) fear that humans has actually fired on knnn.
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hrhspence
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Personally, I feel that as long as the author/creator is alive and accessible, his or her opinion is highly important. S/he can explain what s/he was attempting to accomplish. After his/her death, however, interpretation is in the eye of the beholder and subject to the whims of interpretative fashion. Like your example, Star, of a piano piece by Bach.
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Kroyd
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One noticed that the CJ Universe link stated that A/U novels are those linked to the Merchanter Wars. As the Compact novels are very peripheral to those, it follows that they would not be categorized as such. Personally, I think that its the same "universe".
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starexplorer
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Quote:
 
Personally, I feel that as long as the author/creator is alive and accessible, his or her opinion is highly important.  S/he can explain what s/he was attempting to accomplish.  After his/her death, however, interpretation is in the eye of the beholder and subject to the whims of interpretative fashion.  Like your example, Star, of a piano piece by Bach.


This is clearly very subjective. We regard the matter quite differently. As I see it, what remains in the author's mind is perhaps interesting, but not definitive. A primary purpose in art is to bring out that which is inside and express it. What was intended to be expressed but was not expressed may even be a measure of failure. How easy it is to see the strangeness in asking a painter to explain his painting or the poet to explain his poem. And is the painter right when he says "It is a table" and I see angels? No. Beyond that, artists create not only from their conscious minds. They may be largely unaware of many aspects of their creations, but others with conscious access to relevant cultural references may see connections and associations the artist himself failed to recognize. No, for me the artist/writer is not the authority on his work and its meaning. The case is more democratic than that. :wiseguy

:nope:
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