As with Poul Anderson's Technic History, I am endlessly fascinated by the structure of the series.
Sunday 31 July 2022
The Revised Order
Endings
Ermanaric, lame in hand and foot and in endless pain, looks at Wodan's Wain and the Eye of Tiwaz and says:
"'I did not heed you, gods.'..." (p. 464)
Is he about to confess? Not in any terms that we would recognize. He continues:
"'I trusted in my own strength. You are more tricky and cruel than I knew.'" (ibid.)
Has Ermanaric experienced trickiness and cruelty or some measure of justice and the consequences of his own actions? He recognizes that:
"...the men who fell with Hathawulf and Solbern, the flower of the East Goths...would have hurled back the Huns, Ermanaric at the forefront." (ibid.)
Instead, his Ostroths will be defeated and subjected and Ermanaric cuts his own throat, while hearing thunder like "...the Hunnish midnight." (p. 465)
Annals Of The Time Patrol, now superseded by Time Patrol, collected two collections:
The Guardians Of Time, culminating in "Delenda Est," about an altered timeline;
Time Patrolman, culminating in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" and thus in Ermanaric's death and "Hunnish midnight."
Subsequent additions to the Time Patrol series revised the order of the stories.
From 300 To 1990
Carl Farness withdraws from his Gothic descendants. He bids a final farewell to Alawin who takes the family west and is baptized. Carl assures himself of Alawin's subsequent well-being but in different disguises. He is no longer the Wanderer. Alawin distinguishes himself against the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. He dies in old age in the Visigothic kingdom in southern Gaul and:
"'Descendants of his took a leading part in founding the Spanish nation.'" (43, p. 462)
"The Year of the Ransom."
The Spanish Conquistador, Don Luis Castelar, becomes a large landowner in South America. His descendants flourish and include:
"'...a woman who marries a sea captain from North America...'" (25 May 1987, p. 734)
- thus becoming an ancestress of Wanda Tamberly whom Manse Everard recruits to the Time Patrol over dinner on 25 May, 1987.
We have followed a historical progression from Winnithat the Wisentslayer in 300, pp. 347-350, to Wanda Tamberly whom we last see in 1990.
Ermanaric
"'...Ermanaric is a historical figure, prominent in his era. The date and manner of his death are a matter of record. What came immediately afterward shook the world." (p. 450)
I am still not quite sure what shook the world although:
"'...- the Volkerwanderung was under way.'" (43, p. 462)
"Ermanaric" means "universal ruler." See here. Reading the Wikipedia summary shows how much of the historical record Poul Anderson has incorporated into this Time Patrol instalment, as he did with Veleda in "Star of the Sea" and as he and Karen Anderson did with the King of Ys in their Tetralogy.
Circular Causality In Wells And Anderson
the Chronic Argonaut, the literary precursor of the Time Traveller:
moved into an empty and shunned house;
travelled a short distance into the past while remaining spatially within the house;
was attacked as an intruder by the house's then occupants, a man and his two sons;
killed the father in self-defence;
returned to his present.
In the absence of any evidence of an intruder, the two sons were prosecuted and executed for the murder of their father. Therefore, the house was empty and shunned.
In Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," the Wanderer must appear and tell Hathawulf and Solbern that their doom has come because Manse Everard has deduced that the story of Odin appearing and betraying Hamther and Sorli was based on fact but the fact that it was based on was the Wanderer appearing and pronouncing the brothers' doom.
Sagas And Sorrow
Svanhild was the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun. The Gothic King Jormunrek had Svanhild trampled to death by horses either because she was his wife and was wrongly accused of infidelity or because she was the wife of someone who plotted against him and was hanged. Gudrun urged her sons, Hamther and Sorli, to kill Jormunrek. En route, they met their half-brother, Erp, who wanted to go with them but they cut him down. Invulnerable to steel, they killed many of the king's men and wounded him but either Hamther let slip that they were vulnerable to stone or Odin appeared and said it. Jormunrek's remaining men stoned them to death.
In Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth"
Swanhild was the daughter of Tharasmund and Erlieva. The East Gothic King Ermanaric had her trampled to death by horses and hanged her husband, Randwar, who had plotted against him. Tharasmund's widow, Ulrica, urged her sons, Swanhild's half-brothers, Hathawulf and Solbern, to attack Ermanaric. Swanhild's brother, Alaric, wanted to go with them but the Wanderer forbade it. Hathawulf, Solbern and their followers entered Ermanaric's hall, killing many of his men. The brothers wounded Ermanaric in an arm and a leg. The Wanderer arrived, announcing that the brothers' doom was upon them but that their names would live. He instructed Ermanaric to send his men out the back to attack the Teurings from the rear. For once in his life, Ermanaric heeded the word of Wodan. Some of his men cast cobblestones. Some of his followers staunched Ermanaric's wounds and carried him barely conscious from a hall full of corpses.
Saturday 30 July 2022
Full Circle
Even without any time travel involved, it is a legitimate ploy to begin a narrative in the midst of the action, in media res, then to recount what had happened earlier later. Paradise Lost opens with the fallen Satan, then subsequent dialogue recounts the war in heaven and the creation of the world.
In "The Sorrow...," the opening chapter, 372, pp. 333-341, ends as Hathawulf and his followers prepare to attack Ermanaric the following morning. Subsequent chapters headed:
300
300-302
302-330
337
337-344
344-347
348-366
366-372
- return readers to the same point but now we know all the characters and issues involved. 366-372 ends:
""Undaunted, Hathawulf, Solbern and their men rode forth at dawn." (p. 446)
Full circle. All that remains to be told is the outcome of their attack? No. There is more.
Worlds' Ends
"'You have worn yourself out for us,' Hathawulf said to him at the end of his last stay in the hall." (p. 442)
His last stay: Hathawulf will see the Wanderer only twice more, only once in this hall and not to stay overnight.
Hathawulf continues:
"'If you are of the Anses, they are not tireless.'
"'No,' sighed the Wanderer. 'They too shall perish in the wreck of the world.'" (ibid.)
Carl knows that this is not literally true but it fits the facts, nevertheless.
Hathawulf asks:
"'But that is far off in time, surely?'
"'World after world has gone down in ruin ere now, my son, and will in the years and thousands of years to come. I have done for you what I was able.'" (p. 443)
Worlds end all the time. In the Inn of the Worlds' End, Chiron the Centaur says:
"...we will be safe in this place. The tavern itself cannot be harmed; that is the way of things. It is being continually created; after all, worlds are ending all the time."
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 146, panel 2
A cosmic truth and yet another Anderson-Gaiman parallel.
Carl At The Arval
When Tharasmund dies:
"An arval followed that went on for three days. On the last of these, the Wanderer appeared." (p. 429)
(What is an arval?)
Yet the next time the Wanderer visits, he asks:
"'How fare Tharasmund and his kin?'" (pp. 433-434)
Stunned when he is "reminded" about the arval, he immediately leaves but privately questions a cowherd at length about Tharasmund's death.
Straightforward? No. A friend in Lancaster did not understand why the Wanderer had "forgotten" about his grandson's funeral. People think that time remains the same linear sequence for everyone even if there is time travel.
A Christian comments that the Wanderer's forgetfulness:
"...showed how the old gods were failing and fading." (p. 434)
- as in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys. Not that they never existed but that they are fading. Is this the fate of all gods? In Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, the immortal Hanno converts to Christianity when expedient but outlives all gods. If we combine all of Anderson's works together into a single multiverse, then we wind up with something quite remarkable.
366-372
This is a long passage of historical fiction building toward the climax in 372, pp. 450-455.
We notice several appeals to multiple senses:
"Dusk was closing in, blue-gray in the open windows, murky in the room. Coolness bore smells of leaf and soil, trill of nightingale..." (p. 429)
We appreciate the compactness of the description: gray dusk brings coolness bearing smells and sounds.
"...trees soughed and caught sunlight, birds sang. Her hair flowed golden, her eyes were big and heaven-blue..." (p. 431)
Clouds dazzle white, cows are ruddy and:
"The coolness of the wind was veined with a smell of sun-baked earth and of growth." (p. 438)
The Wanderer ensures that his descendants are allied to West Goths and Christians. He knows where the world is going. He tries but fails to persuade Randwar, husband of Swanhild, daughter of Tharasmund, to move west. If Randwar and Swanhild had followed his advice, then the story of Svanhild trampled to death by horses would not have been based on fact.
Another final parting, this one recognized as such by the Wanderer but not by his great-granddaughter:
"The Wanderer could not move [Randwar], and after a few more days said farewell. 'When will we see you again?' Swanhild asked as they stood in the doorway.
"'I think -' he faltered. 'I can't - Oh, girl who is like Jorith!' He embraced her, kissed her, let her go, and hurried off. Shocked, folk heard him weeping." (p. 441)
By lingering and intervening, Carl is putting himself through Hell.
Hunters
Another final farewell that is not recognized as such at the time - Tharasmund goes hunting:
"Hounds bayed, horse whinnied, hoofs thudded, horns lowed. At the edge of sight, where the road swung around a shaw, he turned about to wave at [Erlieva].
"She saw him again at eventide, but then he was a reddened lich." (p. 427)
Coincidence: I have just reread Mike Carey's graphic adaptation of Neil Gaiman's prose novel, Neverwhere (based on Gaiman's TV series of the same title). The character called "Hunter," armed with a magic spear, hunts the Beast in London Below. Both die. Tharasmund and his men track a mighty wild boar, referred to in the text as "the beast." (p. 427) It has silver bristles and "...tusks like curved dagger blades." (ibid.) Attacking on sight, it kills Tharasmund and is killed by his men. Was this brute a demon or bewitched or a sending? Maybe. However, the narrative is historical sf, not historical fantasy.
Neverwhere deploys the familiar mythical settings of Atlantis and Heaven which also feature in Poul Anderson's works. All writers inherit the same sources but use them differently.
Friday 29 July 2022
Farewells
"...I had been warned at the beginning that a Time Patrol agent's life becomes a series of farewells. I had yet to learn what that really meant." (1980, p. 351)
He learns in this story.
"'You are a field agent of the Time Patrol; this is not the last mourning you will ever have reason to do.'" (2319, p. 378)
"The Wanderer took his hand, made as if to speak, but blinked hard, wheeled, strode off. The last sight Tharasmund had of him was his hat, cloak, and spear, away down the winter road." (366-372, p. 426)
This third passage is an excellent example of two people seeing each for the last time without knowing that it is the last time. And "the winter road" is a fully appropriate road for the Wanderer to walk. Tharasmund dies on the following page.
Winter And Spring
Shops display Christmas lights but shoppers are few in the Depression. There are Salvationists and Santa Clauses in the wind at street corners. The Goths had less to lose materially but Farness does not know about spiritually.
"Laurie and I went walking in Central Park. March gusted boisterous around us. A few patches of snow lingered, otherwise grass had started to green. Shrubs and trees were in bud. Beyond those boughs, the city towers gleamed newly washed by weather, on into a blueness where some clouds held a regatta. The chill was just enough to make blood tingle.
"Lost in my private winter, I scarcely noticed." (1935, p. 422)
Between December 1934 and March 1935, we have read about the years, 348-366, including the original of the Rhinegold and the conflict that it causes. Farness' mood remains wintry.
Time Patrol And Star Trek
two sf series;
two high tech organizations, the Time Patrol and Star Fleet, visiting often lower tech environments;
Enterprise crew members "transport"/teleport onto planetary surfaces just as Time Patrol agents materialize in earlier periods;
three episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series featured time travel and James Blish linked these episodes together in his screen adaptations as if initiating a time travel sub-series;
after seeing Star Trek: Generations, I wanted to read something good about time travel so I reread Anderson's "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."
Arianism
Carl Farness watches a hologram recording of himself as the Wanderer in dialogue with the Arian Christian missionary, Ulfilas:
"I saw men of mine nodding thoughtfully. Arianism better fitted their traditions and temperament than did a Catholicism of which they had no knowledge anyway. It would be the form of Christianity that all Goths finally took; and from this would spring centuries of trouble." (p.404)
Why should Arianism suit the Goths better than Trinitarianism? And what trouble? As far as I can see from Wikipedia, the two forms of Christianity coexisted like modern denominations for a while until Arianism died out.
The main issue for readers of time travel fiction is that history might have gone differently. Familiar forms of Christianity might have been replaced by something entirely different. The next time you hear an Evangelical street preacher, imagine his multiple analogues in alternative histories.
Long Ago And Far Away
"'...it all happened long ago and far away.'"
-Frederik Forsyth, Avenger (London, 2004), p. 431.
An sf story ends:
"'That was long ago and far away.'"
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER FOUR, p. 333.
That phrase, "long ago and far away," is extremely evocative in relation to personal experience. For some of us, our earliest childhood was long ago and, even if it was not literally far away, might as well have been. The world has become a different place, a foreign country. Of course, a human life is short in historical, evolutionary or cosmic terms. We imagine that the historically long ago and far away could be personally close to a time traveller. In 2319, Carl Farness looks at Earth from the Moon:
"I lost myself in the sight of that glorious white-swirled blueness. Jorith had lost herself there, two thousand years ago."
-"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," p. 375.
Two thousand years ago: not that long ago for Carl Farness.
Thursday 28 July 2022
1858 And 344-347
Why does Herbert Ganz say:
"'I should save pity, sense of guilt, for my poor unwitting friends and colleagues, the brothers Grimm.'" (p. 401)?
I have never wondered that before but now it is easy to check Wikipedia. See here. 1858 was ten years after the year of revolutions. The Grimms stand for more than folktales. The overwhelming message of the Time Patrol series is change - in the fourth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and certainly in the future.
344-347, pp. 404-406.
The Wanderer is asked to name the first son of Tharasmund and Ulrica. When he is told that the name is to be Hathawulf, he stands still for a long time, his hat brim shadowing his face. He has realized how Hathawulf will be elided to Hamther. This is the moment when he understands that the story from the Volsunga Saga is coming true with his own great-grandsons in starring roles:
"'Hamther. He and his brother Sorli died trying to avenge their sister.'" (1934, p. 408)
Doomed indeed.
Still?
the central character of the BBC TV series, Doctor Who;
a time traveller;
an alien who periodically "regenerates," i.e., is played by a different actor, as Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry would have to be after his biosculp and as another BBC TV series character, Andromeda, also was.
Like any time traveller, the Doctor can meet his younger or older self. Thus, when Doctor Four travelled to the period of Doctor Three, we suddenly saw and recognized Doctor Three punting on a canal. A friend commented to me, "I didn't realize that, when the Doctor changed actors, the old versions of the Doctor were still around somewhere!" Of course they are not still around anywhere. She had forgotten that we are talking about time travel. With that kind of misunderstanding, no wonder time travel is confusing.
Poul Anderson would have been able to do this well, e.g., Manse Everard has occasion to intervene in his earlier missions without his younger selves suspecting that he is doing so.
Tharasmund
Dagobert was born in 302. All that we know of his life and death is in Chapters 302-330 and 337. Tharasmund succeeds in 337-344. His mother, Waluburg, and her second husband, Ansgar, give leadership until Tharasmund comes of age. Constantine pacifies but divides the Empire and promotes Christianity. Travelling for three years in the company of the Wanderer, Tharasmund visits Constantinople and becomes betrothed to Ulrica, daughter of Athanaric, king of the West Goths.
"...in those days many changes passed through the world." (p. 396)
We know that the story and its internal history build towards a yet to be revealed climax.
Wednesday 27 July 2022
Outer Threats And Inner Conflicts
"'...beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990, p. 435.
- so maybe internal conflicts have been transcended.
But, meanwhile, what is the current state of world civilization?
337 And After
This chapter is an Andersonian battle-scene, historical fiction with one element of sf. The Wanderer arrives on "...his eldritch steed..." (p. 394) but only when the Goths are pursuing the fleeing Huns and their leader, Dagobert, lies dying.
Before that:
Gothic infantry withstand repeated Hunnish cavalry assaults;
arrows darken the sky;
lances lower;
banners stream;
earth shakes;
pikes slant;
swords, axes and bills gleam;
bows twang;
slingstones fly;
Goths shout;
Huns yip;
horses shriek;
feet and hoofs crush ribs and trample flesh;
iron dins, rattles and bangs;
the sun sinks, blood-red;
carrion fowl wheel;
wind whistles as if calling forth the corpses;
drums thutter;
a trumpet shrills;
Dagobert has united the Teurings with other Goths and trapped the Huns.
He dies. His father, the Wanderer, holds him.
1933, p. 395.
Farness laments that Jorith's descendants are doomed to die. Well, of course they are. He does not yet seem to realize that some of them are the characters in one of the stories that he has come to research.
337-344, pp. 395-399.
Tharasmund succeeds his father, Dagobert, as leader of the Teurings at the age of thirteen.
Tuesday 26 July 2022
What Everard Knows II
The second time Carl Farness and Manse Everard confer in 1980, Farness has experienced the death of Jorith in 302 but not yet the death of their son, Dagobert, in 337. Everard refers to his own:
"'...study of this episode, as far as it has gone...'" (p. 391)
That implies that Everard's knowledge of events in the fourth century is about the same as Farness's. However, Farness reflects that Everard:
"...must have read everything I would write." (p. 385)
That would extend all the way to the deaths of Farness's great-grandsons, Hathawulf and Solbern, in 372 and of their enemy, Ermanaric, in 374. Everard should therefore know more than he acknowledges to Farness in 1980?
The Temporal Sequence
Gods And Days
"'The Romans thought Donar, whom the Scandinavians called Thor, must be the same as Jupiter, because he ruled over weather; but to the Goths, he was a son of Tiwaz. Likewise for Wodan, whom the Romans identified with Mercury.'" (p. 389)
And, in the new Thor film, Thor says that he had admired and learned from Zeus! Thursday is Jeudi in French. Wednesday is Mercredi. Tuesday is Mardi in French and De Mairt in Irish. The identification of Wodan with Mercury seems odd. However, Wodan is:
"'...the Wanderer. That's why the Romans thought he must be Mercury under a different name, same as they thought the Greek god Hermes must be.'" (p. 390)
I grew up thinking that the Greeks and Romans had different names for the same gods but apparently they had been different gods that were identified. Gods went through a process of differentiation, then reidentification.
What Everard Knows
Carl Farness reflects:
"Looking at [Everard's] dark, bowed head, I had the eerie knowledge that he must have read everything I would write. He knew my personal future as I did not - as I would not until I had been through it." (1980, p. 385)
The climax of this story is that Farness must appear in his role as Wodan and betray his descendants. Will he write a report of that? He must do. He had set out to discover the origin of the story of Wodan/Odin betraying his descendants. But, in that case, Everard must know all that now. He will not have:
"'...to steep myself in knowledge of that milieu, and rove it from end to end, over and over, before the situation was clear to me.'" (1935, p. 448)
What the Patrol sets out to learn, it already knows. This is a contradiction.
Monday 25 July 2022
Pains And Rewards
Farness is on furlough in New York in 1932.
Everard calls him to confer in New York in 1980.
They listen to a medieval koto performance by an unchronicled player.
Afterwards, they will see Lola Montez in Paris in 1843.
Farness comments:
"Time travel has its rewards as well as its pains." (p. 385)
Perhaps Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is the only sf series about a community of time travellers experiencing those pains and rewards?
Having recently immersed myself in Anderson's Technic History and Time Patrol series, I now wish that both of these series had been longer even at the expense of some later works. Did Harvest Of Stars deserve to become a Tetralogy? I do not think that it bears as much study or scrutiny as those two earlier series.
Social Changes In 302-330
Winnithar has a house built for Carl and Jorith. Carl keeps one room locked, never stays in it long and no longer visits Tiwaz's Shaw. Once, a wise-woman emerges from that room but cannot save Jorith when Dagobert is born. After Jorith's death, her father, Winnithar, burns the house as an offering to her. Dagobert leads sacrifices at the shrine where Carl decrees that only first fruits should be offered. (Something similar in The Corridors Of Time.) Apples cast into the fire become the Apples of Life... They do not but the Goths are essentially right to belief that Carl has eaten the Apples of Life.
West Goths have migrated to the Danube and the Roman frontier with possibilities of barter but also danger of war if the Romans resolve their civil conflict.
Geberic of the Greutungs becomes the first king of the East Goths, including the Teurings. Henceforth, they pay scot and attend the Great Moot. Geberic's son is Ermanaric.
"...a Roman lord hight Constantine..." (p. 383) unites the Empire.
(Great changes, not necessarily recognized as such.)
The East Goths defeat the Vandals who seek refuge in the Empire.
Dagobert leads the Teurings south.
Tribes are moving and the world is changing.
302-330
Jorith dies giving birth to Dagobert whose first child is Tharasmund. Thus, the line of descent from Carl, the Wanderer, is:
Dagobert
Tharasmund
Hathawulf, Solbern and Alawin
In the opening chapter, 372, the Wanderer had described Jorith as Alawin's "'...father's father's mother...'" (p. 340)
Dagobert's father visits him briefly every few years. Dagobert himself leads the Teurings south from the Vistula to the Dnieper. His grandparents stay behind:
"When the wagons had creaked away, the Wanderer sought those two out, one last time; and was kind to them, for the sake of what had been and of her who slept by the River Vistula." (p. 384)
"...one last time...," "...what had been..." This is the passage of time measured in lifetimes. p. 384 is a poignant ending but the main drama is still to come, two generations later.
300-302
This chapter describes the events of two years but also mentions their longer term consequences:
"These stories faded away in the course of the following lifetime or two... What mattered was that for a half-score years, the Goths along the upper Vistula knew peace." (p. 369)
Seventy four years of Gothic history stretch ahead of us. The opening chapter was 372 and the concluding chapter is 374, ending with the death of Ermanaric. After 300-302, there is an interlude in 2319, then a chapter covering the longer period, 302-330. Thus, that chapter carries the narrative well beyond the half-score years of peace gained by Carl's intervention against the Vandals. The shape of the narrative is shown by the full list of chapters:
372
1935
300
1980
300-302
2319
302-330
1980
337
1933
337-344
1858
344-347
1934
348-366
1935
366-372
1935
372
1935
372
43
374
More time passes in the fourth century than in the twentieth. There are also excursions to 43, 1858 and 2319.
Sunday 24 July 2022
Tiwaz's Shaw And Literary Sources
On Midwinter Eve, in Tiwaz's Shaw, horse, hound and slave are offered to the Binder of the Wolf who then banishes darkness and cold. No one goes there at any other time - except Carl who is seen to enter the Shaw by a boy who follows him once when he leaves the thorp. What more practical or appropriate place for Farness to conceal his timecycle? - just as time corridors are placed under dolmens in The Corridors Of Time. It is as if such places had been prepared for time travellers to make use of them.
The literary sources of Wagner's Ring Cycle and of Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" are:
the Volsungasaga
the Nibelungenlied
the Elder and Younger Eddas
Farness recounts a story to Everard. Wagner has used the first half and Anderson the second. Most of the events described by Farness in the second half of the story happen to his own descendants in the fourth century.
Winter And Spring
Time travel fiction should recognize the ordinary passage of time. HG Wells' Time Traveller and Poul Anderson's mutant time travellers witness the passage of days, nights and seasons while time travelling whereas Time Patrol agents jump instantly from one place and time to another. However, the people visited by the agents experience time in the ordinary way:
"Winter descended and then slowly, in surges of wind, snow, icy rain, drew back." (p. 362)
Winter is lightened in the thorp by the river by the presence of Carl. He comes and goes and we know that he sometimes jumps ahead in time but that is unknown to his hosts and not mentioned in this chapter.
"Spring stole northward, snow melted, buds burst into leaf and flower, the river brawled in spate. Homebound birds filled heaven with wings and clamor. Lambs, calves, foals tottered across paddocks. Folk came forth, blinking in sudden brightness; they aired out their houses, garments, and souls. The Spring Queen drove Frija's image from farm to farm to bless the plowing and sowing, while garlanded youths and maidens danced around the oxcart. Longings quickened.
"Carl went away still, but now he would be back on the same evening. More and more were he and Jorith together." (p. 365)
Indeed. Longings quicken, including in Carl. He is becoming involved in one place and time in a way that a Time Patrol agent should not.
Interventions In Past Events
Everard asks:
"'Who knows what a happening early on - a victory or a defeat, a rescue or a death, a certain individual getting born or not getting born - who knows what effect that could have, as its results propagate through the generations?'" (p. 355)
Farness replies that he is concerned with stories and poems, not with events. Despite this, he intervenes in a war and causes a pregnancy! His defence of his intervention in the war is that:
he did not kill anyone;
if anything, by throwing illusions and making the Vandals retreat, he saved lives;
history did not record that raid or its outcome.
He adds that the line of descent that he started was a minor statistical fluctuation in the gene pool of the kind that soon averages out.
But this does not respond to Everard's original question. Saving lives might be as dangerous as ending them. The fact that the raid was not recorded means that the effects of intervening in it are unknown and therefore potentially dangerous. The line of descent that he started comprises the characters in the story that he is studying! When he learns this, he seems to take it for granted.
Cosmic Consciousness
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 435.
Why not answerable? One answer would be that the pre-conscious universe could not do anything in order to do anything else. That would have been a purpose before there could have been a purpose.
But was there an inevitability about the emergence of consciousness? Mass and energy always had the potential to become conscious so maybe statistically it had to happen somewhere and some time?
We try to understand the universe. Does it have not an intention but at least a tendency to try to understand itself through us? So far, empirical scientific knowledge and introspective self-knowledge do not connect: subatomic particles and neuronic interactions as against subjective experiences and mental processes. But it is the reality composed of particles and neurons that becomes conscious of itself through experiences and minds so they must connect somehow.
Carl With Winnithar; Farness With Everard
In 300, Carl arrives at the home of Winnithar the Wisentslayer above the River Vistula as a stranger who must have travelled far yet has clean garments with no change of clothes and no food and acknowledges that he has not stayed at any walking-distance dwelling en route. When asked about this, he replies:
"'There are things I may not talk about.'" (p. 350)
Thus, he has established himself as supernatural from the kick-off. Surely he should have taken steps to make his arrival seem normal?
In 1980, Farness (same person as Carl but we use a different part of his name in a different century) says to Everard:
"'...all you need do is read the reports I'll have filed in my own personal future. If the early accounts show me bungling, why, just tell me to stay home and become a book researcher. The outfit needs those too, doesn't it?'" (p. 355)
But that would involve changing the course of events which is what the Patrol avoids doing. Everard replies that he has inquired and that Farness will have performed satisfactorily. Surely Everard should not have inquired and should not have told Farness how he would perform?
Farness, Everard And Ganz
Manse Everard was off-stage in 372, 1935 and 300 but returns with elder statesman status as recounted by Carl Farness in 1980. Of course, there could have been many Time Patrol stories that never mentioned Everard. However, we will learn that he is always present even if only in a supporting role.
Farness wrote papers on Deor and Widsith. His mentor in the Patrol, Herbert Ganz, wrote a paper on the Gothic Bible. Ganz's paper was published in Berlin in 1853 and Farness read it before joining the Patrol. In 1858, pp. 399-404, Farness shows Ganz the hologram recording of his meeting with Ulfilas. Farness tells us that Ulfilas translated the Bible but see the link to "Gothic Bible" above.
Farness tells Ganz that he has found:
"'New poems; lines in them that definitely look ancestral to Widsith and Walthere.'" (p. 404)
I cannot find Walthere. We get a sense of the scholarship involved in the Patrol's researches into past periods.
Saturday 23 July 2022
Donar's Lightning
"'I do give you my oath - may Donar's lightning smite me if it is false -...'" (p. 350)
This is one of several references to Thor in Poul Anderson's works. The gods live. In our imaginations. Where else? But in very different forms. I had problems with accepting the new Thor film but I like the version of Thor in Marvel Comics' Ultimates line. (See here.) That is a final thought for tonight after returning from the cinema. Good Night.
300
When Carl approaches:
"At first, spying him at a mile's reach, they took him for a mere gangrel, since he fared alone and afoot." (p. 348)
A gangrel - or Gangleri?
In 372, the Wanderer, addressing Alawin, referred to:
"'...that kindred which sprang from your father's father's mother Jorith...and myself.'" (p. 340)
At the end of the chapter headed 300, Carl, the Wanderer, first meets the maiden, Jorith. (p. 350)
Seventy two years of family chronicle link these chapters. In 372, Alawin's father, Hathawulf, is present and we are told that, five years previously, he had inherited tribal leadership from his father, Tharasmund. Thus, we already know the line of descent from Carl, believed to be Wodan.
In 1980, pp. 351-362, Carl Farness, newly graduated from the Time Patrol Academy, is interviewed about his proposed first assignment by Unattached agent, Manse Everard. A family saga among the Goths was a routine work assignment for a Time Patrolman.
In 1935
A change of century - from 372 to 1935 - is expected. However, this is the first time in the Time Patrol series that the narration changes from third to first person. We soon understand that the narrator in 1935 was the Wanderer in 372. He leaves his spear strapped to the side of his time hopper. The Goths do not suspect where their gods disappear to, in this case to a warehouse in New York. The Patrol front is a construction company. Farness, the narrator, knows that New York will become "...uninhabitable." (p. 342) When? Anderson describes the fourth and twentieth centuries and hints at future troubles. Disintegration will accelerate, in Farness' opinion, after the 1964 election. A character's opinions are not necessarily those of the author. Sometimes, they are.
The ghosts of the Goths crowd around Farness until the streets and buildings seem unreal. That would make a good cover illustration, conveying both time travel and Pagan ideas of a hereafter.
Patrol antithanatics do not merely slow but arrest the aging process, again implying that agents live until killed by accident or violence.
A Longer Narrative
The Time Patrol series is transformed: a longer narrative with a wider cast of characters.
Speaking Parts In 372, pp. 333-341
Hathawulf
Solbern
Ulrica
Alawin
Liuderis
the Wanderer (we have not yet been told that he is a time traveller)
Also Mentioned
Tharasmund
Erelieva
Randwar
Swanhild
Ermanaric
Jorith
We are told something of the relationships between these characters and will learn more. No mention of Manse Everard as yet.
I think that imagination is essential to humanity and that gods have been powerful in the collective imagination but do not literally exist. I welcome narratives that give the gods a major but not ultimate role:
"'That is as Weard wills, who sets the doom of gods and men alike." (p. 338)
The Buddha is a teacher of gods and men.
Sound Effects
The carved gods, beasts and heroes seem to move in the shifting shadows while:
"Whoo-oo said the wind, a noise as cold as itself." (p. 334)
As often in Poul Anderson's works, the wind comments on the action. I do not seem to have noted this example before. However, we have heard the sound "Whoo-oo" twice before (see here) (scroll down), once as a sound in battle and once yet again as the wind become almost a protagonist. It is said to whip Dahut as she runs through the streets of Ys.
Maybe some mentions of the wind are just mentions of the wind! When the Wanderer enters the hall:
"Wind flapped the edges of his blue cloak, flung a few dead leaves in past him, whistled and chilled along the room." (p. 339)
Maybe just the wind but also appropriate for the advent of Odin.
Friday 22 July 2022
The Twin Horsemen
The gods carved on pillars are:
one-handed Father Tiwaz
Donar of the Ax
the Twin Horsemen
Odin displaced Tiwaz as Allfather. Tiwaz became Tyr, the god of war, the equivalent of Mars.
Donar was Thor.
Who were the Twin Horsemen? I do not seem to have asked this before. Are they to be identified with two Hindu figures? I do not know. Good Night.
Annals
Within Annals...:
The Guardians Of Time
"Time Patrol," Everard and Whitcomb
"Brave To Be A King," Everard and Denison
"The Only Game in Town," Everard and Sandoval
"Delenda Est," Everard and Van Sarawak
"Gibraltar Falls," Nomura, with Everard in a supporting role
A pattern, "Everard and -," is established, then broken. "Gibraltar Falls," although collected as Part III, was written a decade and a half later.
Time Patrolman
"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," Everard and Pum
"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," Farness, with Everard in a supporting role
Both the pattern and its alternative return. "Ivory..." seems to feature Everard on his own but the supporting character, Pum, grows in importance, becomes Everard's partner and joins the Patrol.
Anderson's Technic History covers several thousand years of future history. The Time Patrol series covers a much longer period of time but is able to present only brief visits to a few periods.
Everard In Tyre
In case any Exaltationists lurking in Tyre had the means to detect the arrival in the city of a timecycle, Everard took several days to travel there by ship in an appropriate disguise. On arrival, he would probably have immediately been killed by an Exaltationist assassin if not for the intervention of Pum. Would the Patrol have sent an Unattached agent to Tyre, knowing that he was going to be killed on arrival? I think that the following would have happened:
Everard sets out to depart from New York to 950 BC;
the Middle Command tells him not to go;
this does not prevent Everard from arriving in 950 BC, travelling to Tyre and being killed;
But it does free the Everard who has not departed from New York to pursue the Exaltationists by other means.
We know that the Patrol breaks its own rules in controlled conditions to achieve specific ends.
Pum And Gisgo
Gisgo survives the attack on the ship because Time Patrol intervention prevents the Exaltationists from shooting him in the water while he clings to his oar. But the Patrol knew when and where to intervene because Gisgo had survived to tell his story to Everard. The action of this story fits entirely inside circular causation within a single timeline.
Pum saved Everard's life when the latter was attacked by an Exaltationist assassin. Pum advised Everard to make contact with Sarai of the palace staff. Everard enquired about any exotic visitors to the court of Hiram's father, Abibaal. Sarai remembered that the under-groom, Jantin-hamu's, father, Bomilcar, had worked in the palace then. Bomilcar described the Sinim, who sound like Exaltationists, but said that they had died in a storm at sea. Pum tracked down Gisgo, who had survived the shipwreck, then volunteered to join the Patrol - although he did not know about the Patrol yet. Pum, placed in the doomed ship twenty six years earlier, informed a waiting Patrol squadron of the Exaltationist attack by radio. Thus, forty Patrol cycles were able to enclose seven Exaltationist cycles at the moment of the attack.
Captain Pummairam
Pum will become a Time Patrol agent in place and will marry both Sarai and Bronwen: all loose ends tied up neatly and together. When Everard/Eborix gives Hiram a gold ingot, he will ask for the slave Bronwen and her children, will free Bronwen and will give her a dowry. Pum will spend years at the Academy but will return to this same month as the sailor, soon to be Captain, Pummairam. If Sarai and Bronwen notice any similarity between Eborix's former assistant and their new husband, they will keep quiet. This is a very neatly ended time travel story that leads directly into the opening chapter of The Shield Of Time. When we read on p. 326 that the escaped Exaltationists would be hunted, this could just have meant that the work of the Patrol would continue but in fact there is a direct sequel in PARTs ONE and TWO of The Shield...
Pum And Adiyaton
"
When I had seen either a Back To The Future or a Star Trek film about time travel, I wanted to read something good about time travel so I reread "Ivory..." Poul Anderson knows the tricks of the trade. The mariner, Gisgo, tells Eborix/Everard and Pum about "'...an eldritch journey...'" (p. 314) One of the crew, Adiyaton, looked like Pum. Maybe it was his grandfather? No, that was Pum, as an alert reader might anticipate. Things in heaven like winged bulls with men on them swooped down. Timecycles. Flame raged between these dragons or flying chariots. Time Patrolmen fighting Exaltationists. Everard has just heard an account of the climax of the story when he and his squadron will defeat their enemies. After that, all the loose ends - Sarai, Bronwen and Pum - will be tied together and the reader will turn to "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," a completely different kind of time travel narrative.
Thursday 21 July 2022
Gisgo's Souvenirs
a Babylonian cherub
a Greek syrinx
a faience hippopotamus from the Nile
an Iberian juju
a Northern bronze dagger
An impressive list, especially since I had to google most of it. Of course we have heard of cherubim and jujus but what are they in detail?
The syrinx recalls a poem quoted by Aycharaych in Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. The Time Patrol and the Technic History are Anderson's two greatest bodies of work so it is always good to bring them together.
A Tall Tale
"Over the years [Gisgo's] cronies had tired of hearing about his remarkable experience. They took it for just another tall tale, anyway." (p. 313)
This raises a moral question. Children learn to distinguish between true statements, lies and fictions but is there a fourth category: the yarn or tall tale?
Someone told me of an experience in India. I relayed it to a third party. The third party responded, "Jim tells a good story!" or "You didn't believe him, did you?" My response was annoyance not at Jim for lying to me but at myself for being taken in. In other words, I seemed to accept the legitimacy of the "yarn." Its characteristics are:
it is presented as a true story;
it is meant to be enjoyed but not believed;
even if believed, it does not deceive the hearer in any way that matters;
the hearer plays along, maybe by laughing or by expressing surprise, but does not contradict.
Is the yarn a legitimate narrative form intermediate between a lie and a fiction?
Hiram And Solomon
To paraphrase Epsilon Korten:
Without Hiram's support and second-hand prestige, Solomon will be unable to hold his tribes together. The Philistines will take revenge. Monotheism will not survive. The Hebrew god will sink back into the pantheon.
Everard chips in:
That would eliminate much of Classical civilization. Judaism influenced philosophy and Greek and Roman historical events. No Christianity would mean no Western or Byzantine civilizations or their successors.
"'No telling what will arise instead.'" (p. 308)
Korten responds impatiently:
"'Yes, of course...'" (ibid.)
Impatience is warranted. Everard has no need to spell this out to Patrol colleagues but Korten cannot realize that Everard really speaks as he does for the benefit of Poul Anderson's readers.
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