The Greatest Sacrifice?

(I prefer a cross without a body on it.)

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 14.

"...the tribe...had to appease heaven with the greatest sacrifice of all: human life taken according to law." (p. 137)

A barbaric belief. Could it return in the future? It still exists in the present. It might return to its earlier, more literal, form if civilization destroyed itself but humanity survived. Indeed, ideas of appeasement by blood sacrifice might then run rampant.

The Buddha said somewhere that the best sacrifice is an offering not of flesh to the gods but of fruit to the poor. This demonstrates what immense moral strides can be made within spiritual philosophical traditions. What the Buddha said addresses us now whereas only a Jewish minority seeks the building of a Third Temple with resumed animal sacrifices.

In The Council Hall

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 14.

Dalespeople crowd into their Hall for a vitally important Council meeting with their Chief, clergy ("Doctors") and elders:

"This was more than [Carl's] own life. Perhaps the future of the world would be settled today." (p. 135)

Perhaps. Imperceptibly, the future is settled every day but some days are more significant than others, historically speaking.

Before rushing on to consider the content of the meeting, we should pause to notice the description of the Hall. Gods, heroes and animals are carved in oak. We are not told the names or functions of any of the gods. Are the heroes only from since the Doom or also from before it? Would we recognize any of their faces or names? We might be surprised to find that some figures heroic to the Dalespeople had been unheroic to us or vice versa? The carvings would have to be shown in any screen adaptation. 

"...wooden pillars...were graven with leaves and fruits from the Tree of Life." (ibid.)

Which Tree of Life? The Biblical one? Yggdrasil? A composite image? Again, a film would have to present these carvings, not just ignore the author's account. However, at the same time, visual details would have to be created. 

We can read a future history series either in its order of publication or in the chronological order of fictional events. Those who read the series while it is being published can only read it in publication order but later readers have a choice. When we do read the series in its original publication order, we come to instalments that were written later but set earlier. In these cases, we know something of the future of the events about which we are currently reading. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, "The Saturn Game," set earlier than any of the other instalments although written later than most, introduces the Jerusalem Catholic Church although instalments set much later have already featured characters who were described as Jerusalem Catholics. We know, when reading "The Saturn Game," that these characters will include an alien (Wodenite) priest, Axor, even though no aliens have yet been contacted at the time of "The Saturn Game." We develop a historical perspective.

I was reminded of this when visiting Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop earlier today. He and I follow a superhero TV series. Superhero universes can become even more complex than future histories. The universes have different but roughly parallel "continuities" in different media. In any standard continuity, Superman and Lois Lane should eventually get together although it might take a long time. This afternoon, the mention of the construction of a particle accelerator in a particular city reminded us that this will lead to the origin of a new superhero and, beyond that, to the discovery of the multiverse - and, of course, that reminds Poul Anderson's readers that he too has a multiverse which we would like to see on screen.

The Past And Its Ghosts

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 11.

The Chief of the City explains the time vault to the Lann invaders:

"'It is time itself, and all the ghosts and powers of a past that is not dead, only sleeping, which are locked in here. Enter at your peril." (p. 108)

Time itself? Will someone who enters the vault be cast into a past time or haunted by a ghost? Not exactly. But anyone who can read will be able to learn about a past whose powers are asleep, not dead. (Lovecraft wrote that about Cthulhu.) The vault contains not only exhibits but also written records. Language alone gives us knowledge of other times and places, of the imaginary, the theoretical, the abstract, the fictional and the nonexistent. A dog can, by its action of running towards the door, express its present tense belief that its master is at the door but it cannot believe that he will return a week next Thursday because it lacks the language for that. We can think about the concept of justice or about the square root of minus one with language but not without it. Language makes us human and preserves our past. The vault contains not weapons but knowledge of how to make them. Anyone who engages with the contents of the vault does so at his peril.

Either abandon or embrace hope, all who enter here. 

Gods Again

We are busy here. I have not got back into reading yet. Why do I focus so much on gods in Poul Anderson's works?

(i) I do not believe that gods literally exist.

(ii) I do believe that they are an important part of our imagination and that, in that sense, we would not exist without them.

(iii) We know Odin as a character in the Eddas and in works of fiction by Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman.

(iv) Thor is mentioned in Anderson's War of The Gods and there are different versions of him in Gaiman's The Sandman and in Marvel Comics.

(v) We see the human originals of Odin and Thor in Anderson's The Golden Slave.

(vi) Although a Christian monotheist, CS Lewis gives a surprising degree of autonomy to Greek gods in Narnia and Ransom.

Every Option

Hello. I am back from London.

Are the gods active in the world or only in the human imagination? Poul Anderson's fiction covers every option. Gods are viewpoint characters in some of Anderson's fantasy novels. In The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson), the gods do not appear but do visibly make their mark. Other works are set in the world as we experience it, i.e., some characters believe in gods or God whereas others do not. Finally, all these kinds of worlds coexist in a multiverse with some limited travel between universes. Our world is one of many possible universes whether or not it is also one of many actual universes. Fiction imaginatively actualizes multiple possibilities.

In James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy, demons are believed in in Volumes I and III and are real in Volume II which is the real dramatic climax.

Gods and demons are a major part of world mythologies.

Jenzik And Maleldil

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 11.

Lenard, escaped from his Dalesmen captors, leads his Lann warriors into the City. When one warrior mumbles that such places are cursed, Lenard snaps that the power of their own gods is with them. The warrior replies:

"'Our gods are far away in the north...'" (p. 107)

- but their "Doctor," i.e., priest, claims to carry what he calls "'...the House of Jenzik...'" (ibid.) with the god in it. After chanting ancient words over "...a small iron box...," (ibid.) he claims that he and his companions are now guarded against spells.

Carl thinks that the chanted words:

"...must be in the old language itself, which had changed greatly since the Doom." (ibid.)

But might they be even older? Latin? What is in the box? The god's name begins, "Je..." Biblical names beginning with "J" are derived from the Mosaic tetragrammaton. (Carl thinks that he makes out a few words but many English words have Latin roots.)

If someone who has been displaced or exiled believes that he has left his gods behind, then there are several possible solutions:

a god can be carried around or made to be effectively present;

other gods are really the same gods under different names;

one god is omnipresent.

Christian slaves in the Roman Empire had the first and third solutions. One god can be both omnipresent and also specially, sacramentally, present in material form in a particular place or places.

In Chapter 1 of Perelandra, Lewis as narrator mentions a mysterious being called Maleldil, obeyed elsewhere in the Solar System, adding:

"I knew what Ransom supposed Maleldil to be."

CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 155.

En route to Ransom's cottage, Lewis passes a "...little Wesleyan chapel..." (p. 154) Is Maleldil more actively present there than anywhere else on Lewis' journey?

Most sf fans are not concerned about such theological issues.

Pulling Everything Together, Maybe

The previous post, Gods And Wars, referred to a battle between Dalesmen and Lann. For the Dalesman battle formation, see A Blunt Wedge. For three young Dalesmens' discussion of whether someone must have made the world, see not only Just A Story but also Someone. For one of several items seen, in different contexts, against the Milky Way, see Progress. And that Milky way reference is part of yet another of Poul Anderson's vivid descriptive passages appealing to at least three of the senses:

"Carl lay in tall, wet grass, hearing the sigh of wind and the distant creaking song of crickets. Looking upward, he saw the [guard] go past, a dim sheen of metal against the Milky Way."

-Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9, p. 97.

Sighing wind is appropriate to the Dalesmen's post-battle exhaustion whereas the crickets are indifferent to human conflict.

Gods And Wars

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9.

I have summarized Andersonian battle scenes on land, at sea or in space before. We have just read through and past Anderson's description of the battle between the Dalesmen and the Lann. Military sf is a distinct sub-genre. Some readers appreciate this aspect of works by Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling. Such readers might even include military experts or veterans, which I am not. My expertise is philosophy, which explains why I focus on textual references to "gods" rather than on accounts of combat. However, Anderson addresses every aspect of human experience so this blog welcomes comments from readers who focus on other aspects - and also from those who read something other than sf! which is what I should spend the rest of this evening doing. 

Only one more full day before I am in London Thursday to Sunday.

Just A Story

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9.

Carl wonders whether the gods are not just a story. Tom thinks that:

"'Someone must have made the world...'" (p. 96)

Why? Someone making things is part of a world. The universe has not been made by anyone but has developed from the simplest of elements by natural processes. I was brought up on arguments for the existence of God. People tried to rationalize a received belief in every way that they could think of. CS Lewis reasoned his way to theism but I disagree with his reasoning. Essentially: if rational mental processes are effects of non-rational material processes, then there is no basis for their rationality. But reasoning is a valid process. Therefore, reason has always existed, in God before He imparted it to men. (This is my summary of an argument that I used to accept because I wanted to. Anyone who would like to discuss it further can read Lewis' Surprised By Joy and Miracles and get back to me.) Lewis' linear causality is an inadequate explanatory framework. Organisms interacting with their environments became conscious and manipulative. Reason emerged as a way to think about and act on the environment. Sometimes it works. People learned how to make and control fire. But reason remains surrounded by irrationalities as we realize as soon as we start to argue about anything important!

Carl says that he could believe in the great God of the time vault but not in the small, childish gods of the stories. I question whether a centuries-old monotheism would recede before primitive polytheism even in post-nuclear war conditions. However, when Carl gets as far as believing in his "great God," philosophical discussion can begin.

Giving Thanks

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 8.

In battle:

"The Dalesmen were holding - the Dalesmen stood firm - oh, thank all gods!" (p. 84)

There are times when I feel grateful but to whom or to what? Expressing thanks for the course of events is part of animizing nature. We have been selected to interact with other persons, therefore sometimes to thank them, so we interact in the same way with impersonal forces and thus the gods are born. But I still want to feel, if not grateful, then at least appropriately appreciative of aspects of actuality. 

But is it appropriate to thank "all gods" during a battle? Surely some of the gods will be on the other side, whether literally or metaphorically? If I were asked to pray in public, then the only honest prayer that I would be able to offer would be as follows:

"All gods, we ask your help. But, if not, we'll do it ourselves."

That might sound disrespectful but, in fact, it is as respectful as I can make it: 

first, by acknowledging that it is possible that I am mistaken to believe that no superhuman beings exist;

secondly, by affirming that we should not just pray (if we believe in praying) but should both pray and act. 

The gods expect action. Krishna speaks the Bhagavad Gita on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra and urges his friend, Arjuna, to act in the world, not to withdraw from it. Theists and non-theists can agree on the necessity of action.

Twilight

We posted once yesterday but on another blog, here. The Jade Emperor is the supreme deity in the Taoist pantheon.

In Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages, four of the twenty chapter headings refer to gods:

10 Vengeance of the Gods

11 The Gods Are Angry

16 Defiance of the Gods

20 Twilight of the Gods

In addition, Chapter 19 is entitled "The Last Battle," an apocalyptic phrase. We do not expect literal gods to come on-stage but will there be a change in human attitudes to these "...great shadowy powers..."? I think that Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods" means the beginning of an Age of Men, as Valhalla burns in the background.

In The Near Future

Let us look ahead, not for the next five hundred years, just for the next two weeks. Tomorrow will be 30 June and I will probably end this month with a round number of posts, thus with this one. The coming Thursday through Sunday will be spent in London (including travel time), therefore away from this computer. The following Tuesday, I will hopefully visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. A day trip to another town is planned for the following Friday. What will happen globally during this fortnight or so? I confidently predict that something unexpected will occur.

In "day after tomorrow" sf, the recognizably familiar contemporary world is the setting for a revolutionary invention or discovery. James Blish refers to a dying breed of attic inventors. His readers remember Frankenstein, the Time Traveller, Cavor, the Invisible Man, Doctor Moreau, Robur etc. Blish's Adolph Haertel discovers anti-gravity and flies a tree hut to Mars. In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, scientists keep a guillotined head alive although the intelligence that speaks through the "Head" is demonic, not human. In Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, the discovery is that animal and human intelligence is increasing because Earth has moved out of an inhibiting radiation field. In all these cases, the point is that mankind interacts with the cosmos - with gravity, Mars, hyper-somatic intelligences, cosmic radiation - not just with itself. The universe waits while governments fight over parts of the Earth. (I was not leading towards that conclusion but now it seems inevitable.)

CS Lewis wrote somewhere that only the first visit to another world is of interest to a reader with imagination. We see what he meant without necessarily agreeing in detail. When a Lunar or Martian base has become an everyday environment for colonists and space travellers, then it has lost its newness. However, Anderson maintains the planet Avalon as an intriguing environment through three short stories and one novel.

Ad astra.

What Should The Lann Do?

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 7.

Lenard, captured son of the Chief of the Lann invaders, explains that his people - hunters, herders and small farmers in a harsh and barren country - have always fought cold, rain, blight and each other for diminishing resources while their numbers steadily grow. Brothers fight like wild dogs. Now they have come together to attack possessors of better lands. Dalesmen will be displaced or become servants. The Lann do not vote but follow their Chief. They will not accept an offer of empty forest tracts and, in any case, Lenard does not think that there is enough room for both tribes.

If I were the Lann Chief, then I would accept any offer of empty tracts while also sending scouts or leading groups further south in the hope of finding empty lands to colonize. But, if I were a Lann, then I would not become Chief. I would leave home and trek south alone or with a small group to live by hunting or by finding employment among other tribes.

An individual solution should be possible even if a social solution is not. 

See you in Sky-Home. (I don't think so but it is a good story.)

Shadowy Powers

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 7.

"...the gods..." have been mentioned since p. 21 but that becomes just a phrase, a part of the spoken language. At last, we get some sense of what is meant:

"...those great shadowy powers of sky and earth, fire and water, growth and death and destiny, before which men quailed." (p. 72)

Powers to be feared and propitiated? Elsewhere, Poul Anderson shows us "the gods" developing beyond that earliest and most primitive of roles. See Gods And Men.

A Unitarian that I knew in Dublin read the Roman philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, and told me, "He talks about 'the gods,' you know, but you could easily replace that with 'God' and the rest would remain the same." 

I am happy to have "the gods," including the monotheist versions, angels and saints etc, in speech and literature, provided only that we have moved beyond that earliest stage of fearing them as if they were ghosts.

The universe is haunted by an awesome presence.

The Old Enemy

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 5.

After driving off a tiger with arrows, Carl mentally lists and reviews the enemies of men:

tiger

bear

snake

dog packs

demons

ghosts

gods

night 

storm

flood

fire

drought

winter

man

That last enemy, remorseless, deadly, old, strong and crafty, wrecked civilization and has returned as taboos and barbarians.

Exactly the same phrase:

"...that enemy was old and strong and crafty." (p. 58)

- occurs both here and in Anderson's first future history series.

See previous posts on the "protean enemy."

Vault... is pre-future history.

Servants

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 5.

"'The Chief,' Ralph had said, 'is the first servant of the tribe.'" (p. 54)

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave

-copied from here. 

Comments

An unusually good Biblical passage.

Says same as Ralph.

Poul Anderson could have inserted this passage from Matthew. However, few books have survived the Doom and few people have learned to read. Ralph's remark is an example of inherited wisdom.

I might chose this passage if I were asked to read at the funeral of a trade union steward or campaigner.

Leaders are not rulers.

POV Cop

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 4.

Six Lann pursue three Dalesmen at night, both parties on horseback. This passage is definitely narrated from the point of view (pov) of the leading Dalesman, Carl. A metal object is:

"...cold in his hand..." (p. 46)

When he has used an ancient, hand-cranked flashlight to make the superstitious Lann flee:

"Carl sat for a minute, not daring to believe..." (p. 47)

However, during the pursuit, we are informed that:

"Owl's horse stumbled on a root and went rolling." (p. 46)

This information about the cause of the stumble is directly imparted by the omniscient narrator to his readers. Carl cannot have seen the horse's hoof hit a root. At most, he sees or hears the stumble and infers its cause. So a narrative entirely confined to Carl's pov might have included the sentence:

"Owl's horse stumbled, maybe on a root, and went rolling."

Most readers perhaps neither notice nor care whether a narrative steps outside its pov but I have been sensitized to such issues by years of reading and rereading a writer as careful and methodical as Poul Anderson whose texts always repay close analysis.

A New World?

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

"'...the Dalesmen will come here in force, learn how to make weapons like the ancients had - and drive the invaders away!'" (p. 42)

This is a historic opportunity. Drive the Lann invaders back, yes, but then make peace, share the benefits of technology and build a new world no longer divided into hostile armed camps. The combination of restored technology with the lesson of the Doom should make this possible. On that basis, further advances in technology should make competition for reduced resources even less necessary whereas cooperation against the advancing ice will become necessary. 

Poul Anderson usually ends a novel optimistically but anticipating his twin values of freedom and diversity, not universal peace. How does he end this novel? I cannot remember from previous readings. (Peace, of course, should be dynamic, not static, but our competitive economy encourages aggression and almost equates peace with death. Do I exaggerate? No.) 

Red And Gold

"...the sky was ablaze with red and gold streaked across aquamarine.

"...the brilliant shore slip[ped] by across the mother-of-pearl mirror of the sea."

"The yacht...slid quietly across the broad bay, now lemon and gunmetal in the last light, towards the anchorage. The small township beneath the mountains was already dark with indigo shadow in which a sprinkling of yellow lights showed."

I quote these passages because they share the quality of colourful natural description that we regularly find in Poul Anderson's works. However, this is our "other reading" time of the evening. The passages are quoted from:

Ian Fleming, "The Hildebrand Rarity" IN Fleming, For Your Eyes Only (London, 1964), pp. 150-191 AT pp. 187, 189.

How many people associate James Bond with this kind of descriptive prose? And how many also realize that "The Hildebrand Rarity" and a couple of other short stories are not Secret Service adventures but Ian Fleming trying out other kinds of writing albeit with his mascot, 007, remaining on stage?

Flandry is not Bond in space but read both anyway.

You Who Come After

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

Words engraved on a bronze plaque on a wall inside the Time Vault:

"TO YOU WHO COME AFTER: THE WORLD IS ON THE EDGE OF THE FINAL WAR, THE WAR WHICH I THINK WILL DESTROY ALL CIVILIZATION AND HURL MAN, IF MAN SURVIVES, BACK TO SAVAGERY AND IGNORANCE..." (p. 40)

It continues...

Many sf works, including several by Poul Anderson, are set during recovery from a nuclear war. This plaque reminds me of an episode in the live action Planet of The Apes TV series. Someone finds a video beginning with something like "We, the scientists, greet you..." The video introduces a store of scientific knowledge, like the Vault, but a gorilla general destroys it. The ancient knowledge is dangerous. It is taboo in Vault...

The scientist who composed the words on the plaque did not record his name. Ronwy thinks that he wanted to be thought of as "'...the whole human race...,'" (p. 41) bequeathing knowledge. If I were in his place, then I also would prefer anonymity. I would not have created all the knowledge that I was transmitting.

At the end of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, Evey can unmask the dead anarchist terrorist, V, but does not because who he might have been is greater than who he is. Or something. If I were Evey, then I would want to know something about the individual who had been V while at the same time remembering that the public image and the legend were always greater than the individual who had created them.

In this post, we have compared a novel, a TV episode and a comic strip. The sky is the limit.

See also:

V On Stage

Dredd And V

Who Are No 1 And V?

Dredd And V III (I can't find a II)

Vault And Palace

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

On a dark night, Ronwy takes Carl, Tom and Owl into the Time Vault. We remember three chapter headings in The Time Machine:

10 WHEN THE NIGHT CAME

11 THE PALACE OF GREEN PORCELAIN

12 IN THE DARKNESS

The building that the Time Traveller calls a "Palace" is a museum but its books have decayed into hanging rags resembling tattered flags whereas Carl by contrast sees glassed-in shelves:

"...of books from floor to ceiling..." (p. 40)

Nevertheless, we feel that Anderson's characters walk in the footsteps of Wells'. Carl seeks means to resist the Lann. The Time Traveller seeks means to resist the Morlocks. After leaving the Morlocks and Eloi, the Time Traveller flees into the further future. Anderson's Martin Saunders is obliged to flee into an even further future. Wells and Anderson span the twentieth century. We have come a long way with them.

Moonless Dark And Forbidden Place

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

In this chapter, one paragraph begins:

"In the moonless dark..." (p. 39)

- and ends:

"...to the forbidden place." (ibid.)

Here, we quoted this paragraph and commented on its references to:

the Milky Way

a wild dog

"humans"

"ghostly" breeze and humans

Let us now further highlight first that this wild dog howls ("Howling" has come to be associated with the end of civilization) and secondly that the ghostly breeze is yet another Andersonian wind commenting appropriately on the action. A breeze that would be unthreatening by day feels "ghostly" on a moonless night. 

The paragraph is dense with Andersonian allusions and associations. It also has looming shadows, tunnels of night, a hurrying rat and swooping bats, that wealth of descriptive details that I am also currently finding by rereading Ian Fleming's much-read but under-rated novels. 

Commentaries On Futures

Sometimes I astonish myself. However, it is not I but the material that I am working with that does it. The previous post began with a quotation from Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages because I wanted to comment on a particular passage. I did not know when I began to write the post that it would come to incorporate pertinent references to:

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Genesis and "Lodestar";

HG Wells' The Time Machine and The War In The Air;

Isaac Asimov's "That Thou Art Mindful Of Him."

These seven works, including Vault ..., are all relevant to the question of where mankind goes next, a question made urgent by current crises. We are living through our version of the Chaos, as in Anderson's Technic History (which includes "Lodestar.")

I value these works for their commentaries on mankind. They address the issues of our immediate and long term futures which always start now. Other sf readers might appreciate the same works for their entertainment or escapist values. Every approach is valid on Poul Anderson Appreciation.

Utopianism

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

Ronwy to Carl and his companions:

"'Yes, [the ancients] were cruel and foolish and brought the Doom on themselves. But why can we not learn from their mistakes? Why can we not use their science to live as they did, and at the same time be kinder and wiser? The world today is a world of want, and therefore a world of war; but we could build a world in which there was no hunger, no fear, no battle against man and nature. Think it over, boys! Think it over!'" (p. 38)

An excellent speech! We are certainly capable of learning from mistakes, especially from mistakes on the scale of the Doom. A similar learning process occurs in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History although, in that case, initial gains made are soon overwhelmed by deeper rooted problems. Some human beings, at least in this generation, might be irredeemably foolish but we can certainly be less cruel, especially if the wisdom of the ancients, which we call science and technology, is used to eliminate want for everyone on Earth, not just for some as against others. I say "in this generation" because I am hopeful of a general rise in understanding and intelligence with improvements in material conditions and social interactions. 

These are Wellsian themes. In The Time Machine, as in Anderson's Genesis, mankind degenerates because it has won its battle against nature but that is a mistake that can be guarded against. Sf authors can write utopias - as well as dystopias and everything else. Some potential mistakes can be anticipated, as Wells did. (He also anticipated the consequences of the use of aircraft in warfare.) There is no blueprint for a better future except - people, individually and collectively, must have the freedom and capability to build their own better future. Isaac Asimov's Machines, giant robotic brains controlling the global economy and ecology, reasoned that self-determination was the highest human good and therefore phased themselves out. But genuine self-determination requires a level playing field as David Falkayn - not Nicholas van Rijn - realized in "Lodestar."

These fictional characters are with us through all our present conflicts.

Wind In The City And Time In A Vault

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

The witch-folk or City dwellers use hammers, chisels and a crude blowtorch to extract lengths of steel from a skyscraper. Carl says:

"'Piece by piece, they're ripping out the steel to sell to the tribes.' A shivering wind rippled about his words and blew them down the hollow canyon of the avenue." (p. 33)

On cue, an appropriately shivering wind accompanies and underlines Carl's words and even blows them through the wrecked city. Over the page, an entire paragraph articulates Carl's feelings:

"There was a huge sadness in it - the little men of today, gnawing apart the mighty works they no longer understood. In a few hundred years, or a few thousand, what did it matter? Nothing would be left, nothing but rubble and waving grass and the wild dogs howling where men had once lived." (p. 34)

That explains why this is a shivering, rather than, e.g., a soothing, wind.

"Howling" often means the end of civilization.

Shortly, they find the "TIME VAULT." (p. 35)

Owl thinks that time cannot be kept anywhere because:

"'Time's not a thing. It's a - well - it's time. Days and years.'" (ibid.)

Owl's units of time are natural, days and years, not artificial, minutes or hours.

Tom thinks that storing time would be "'...a very strong magic...'" (ibid.)

And it is although not in the way that he thinks. 

Old Pits

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

As you know, we can sometimes insert a purely personal note into the discussion of a text. 

Carl and his companions will explore the City while its council meets:

"'Be careful, though,' said Ronwy. 'There are many old pits and other dangerous places hidden by brush and rubble.'" (p. 32)

My father was mining engineer in a gypsum mine in Cumberland (now Cumbria) decades ago. In the summer of 1961, some of us visited and entered the mine which was approached by a downward slanting tunnel, not by a vertical descent. That mine, long closed, is near here and it is possible to walk very close to it but there are signs warning, "Danger. Keep Away." Although I would really like to walk onto the remembered site and to see the buildings and the mine entrance, it would obviously be unacceptably dangerous to walk past the signs: either illegal or at least should be.

Every building or other location that we visit or spend time in will one day be disused. Sometimes it happens in our lifetimes. Poul Anderson and other sf writers imagine the far future when nothing familiar to us will remain.

Sources Of Light And Heat

Vault Of Ages, Chapter 2.

Ronwy, the Chief of the City dwellers lives on the first floor of an ancient tower where he:

"...lit candles, chasing the gloom back into corners..." (p. 30)

Again, darkness cannot be completely driven back, even indoors.

When one of his guests shivers in the evening chill, Ronwy stokes the fireplace which:

"...had been built in later days, with a chimney going up through the cracked ceiling." (p. 31)

Improvisation. Ronwy retains knowledge of ancient times:

"'In the ancient time,' said the Chief, 'there was always warmth in here, without fire; and if you wanted light, it game from little glass balls which only had to be touched.'" (ibid.)

Ronwy describes the achievements of the ancients as "'...magic...,'" (ibid.) which reminds us of Clarke's third law. The term, "magic," suffices for practical purposes, post-Doom.

We know about electricity but not about every other source of energy. It is to be hoped that we will survive long enough to learn more. Futuristic sf seems very relevant here and now.

What Will Future Cities Be Like?

(i) Cities spread, merge and cover the Earth which thus becomes a single city. Poul Anderson's A Stone In Heaven.

(ii) People live in isolated houses and villages, separated by grass and forests. However, transport and communication are so rapid that Earth is effectively a single city. Old style cities are reborn around spaceports on colony planets. Anderson's The Peregrine.

(iii) Few people remain on Earth. There are starport towns. In Niyork, a few groundcars and pedestrians move between empty, ivy- and lichen-covered towers. Anderson's World Without Stars.

(iv) Cities, burned and wrecked in the Doom, a nuclear war, are taboo to the tribes and mostly uninhabited. Although encroaching forest and incessant weather have almost destroyed the suburbs where wild animals now lair and prowl, central towers still stand with many fallen walls, rusting steel frameworks, empty windows and wind blowing through dusty rooms. Anderson's Vault Of The Ages.

We can rely on Poul Anderson for comprehensive coverage of every imaginable option.

Cities fly through space faster than light in James Blish's Okie series and there is a flying city in Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Fury From The Air

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 1.

The Doom was:

"...terrible fury from the air..." (p. 20)

- which:

"...wrecked and burned..." (ibid.) cities.

Poul Anderson's twentieth century readers knew what that was. 

Many early explorers of the wrecked and abandoned cities:

"...died of lingering sickness..." (ibid.)

- so the cities became taboo. Taboos make sense. They were the only precaution that could be taken. 

However, something else happens:

"...many thought that the 'glowing death' was the sign of godly anger." (ibid.)

"...godly...," not "Godly." John says:

"'...the gods go with you.'" (p. 21)

The story is set in a:

"...region of the Allegheny Mountains.'" (p. 19)

Would polytheism return to a formerly civilized region? Is polytheism a kind of natural religion to which societies revert when civilization is removed? In some works by Anderson and by James Blish, interstellar travellers invoke "the gods." (Personally speaking, polytheism appeals to my imagination but not to my intellect.)

Darkness And Dogs

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 1.

Without electricity, darkness seeps back indoors. The long single room of the farmhouse is lit by a fire in a stone hearth and by:

"The soft light of home-dipped tallow candles..." (p. 15)

When the fire has been built up:

"A wavering red light danced through the room, weaving a pattern of huge rippling shadows in the corners from which Arn looked superstitiously away. The farmer's eyes gleamed out of a face that was half in darkness..." (p. 16)

During an after-dinner conversation, Arn, a farm worker, fears the darkness not only outside the house but also inside the room with them. However, he and his fellow worker, Samwell, must take a brand from the fire to check the sheepfold when the wild dog howl comes closer. It is confirmed that these now dangerous animals are descended from domesticated dogs that had run loose at the Doom. There are indeed things to fear in the outer darkness, both animals and men, as the text will soon confirm.

Stillness Broken

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 1.

Carl says:

"'...a divided tribe is a weak tribe.'

"He sat for a while in a stillness broken only by..." (p. 18)

This is a pause at a dramatic moment in the dialogue. Anderson readers have learned to expect the wind to have its say during such a pause. It might howl around the farm house, for example. It will not be a gentle wind in these circumstances. This time, there is no wind but there are other appropriate sound effects. The sentence continues:

"...crackling of the fire and the whisper of the loom where John's wife worked. Somewhere outside, a wild dog howled [yes!], and Bull stirred where he lay on a deerskin and snarled an answer." (pp. 18-19)

John is the farmer. Bull is his dog. John has just told Carl that the northern Dalesmen will not muster for war but will stay at home - to guard their local peace and domesticity which Anderson's prose represents by the crackling fire and the whispering loom. But there is a howling outside! Some dogs have returned to the wilderness in the post-apocalyptic world and wild men will come out off that wilderness just as Huns come from the east and barbarians with spaceships come from beyond the marches of the Terran Empire in other works. We are very much in an Andersonian milieu.

Anderson's characters either defend or restore civilization. His works are a history of civilizations and of the interregnums between them.

Intimations Of Futurity II

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 1.

Carl:

"'...our ancient cities yield so much metal that we can even trade it with other people.'" (p. 71)

With the benefit of having read later works by Poul Anderson, we recognize themes from his Maurai History and from his The Winter Of The World. This passage also confirms that Vault... is set in a post-apocalyptic future. 

"'...I can see where these northerners, these Lann as they call themselves, would envy us.'" (ibid.)

Impending war is a familiar Andersonian theme as is men hearing the call and gathering to fight:

"'The men are gathering... the Dalesmen have heard the war-word of their Chief and are sending their fighting men to join him.'" (p. 16)

This happened when the Goths resisted the Huns in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."

Also:

"'...this is a matter I do not understand very well but some say the world is getting colder.'" (p. 17)

Even more like The Winter Of The World! Over the centuries, mankind must cope not only with world wars but also with world climate changes. Everything is here in embryo.

Tokens For The Future

"When a Chinese emperor in the third century B.C. tried to destroy certain texts, scholars hid copies in the hope that later generations would find them. This hope was realized, and so such writings as the Confucian Willow Books were saved for posterity."

-Vault Of The Ages, p. viii.

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. See here.

When I attended a College in Kent in 1988-'89, my friend, Peter, wrote and published what was generally regarded as a fairly damning critique of the training that we had received. The College Principal did not like it and might have disposed of some copies although I cannot remember details after all this time especially since I had completed my assessments and left early. Peter hid some copies around the College and might have contacted students of the following year to tell them where they were. Not exactly of Confucian standard...

"Time like an ever rolling stream..."

That emperor is millennia dead. Our College is no more. Peter and I are retired. I imagine that most staff are dead. The things that happen to us seem important at the time.

Intimations Of Futurity

Every work of fiction is set in the present from the point of view of its characters. No one thinks that he lives in the future although 2000 was "the future" when I read sf comics in the 1950's. It might help us to appreciate a fictional point of view by imagining that an sf novel is set not in a remote future but in an alternative present. This would mean that the past also had been different but that is conceivable because technology could have developed more rapidly than it did.

Poul Anderson makes us very familiar with periods when men travel on horseback and carry swords. Such periods are often historical but can also be located in post-apocalyptic futures or alternative timelines. Vault Of The Ages begins in this kind of period but, after three pages of text, informs us that the viewpoint character, Carl, looks at:

"...a faded picture of a man, one of the marvelous works which must have been handed down since the Day of Doom."

-Chapter 1, pp. 15-16.

A photograph. And the Day of Doom is the end of our civilization. In Anderson's There Will Be Time, the characters refer to an equivalent event called the Judgment War and do not remember much of what it was about. How could they? Why should they? Their duties are to survive and to avoid more Judgments. Ours is to prevent them.

Time Travel And Causality

How would time travel affect causality? To be time travel, it would have to involve travel into the past which would mean an effect, arrival, preceding its cause, departure. This alone is enough to allow the first time travel paradox, circular causality, an earlier event both causing and caused by a later event. Anything else that happens depends on the nature of time.

In A Single Continuous Timeline

An effect precedes its cause, e.g., a time traveller arrives in the twenty-first century and will depart from the thirty-first century, although he experiences departure as preceding arrival.

In A Single Discontinuous Timeline

An effect prevents the event that would have been its cause, e.g., a time traveller with memories of having grown up in a thirty-first century civilization arrives in the twenty-first century but then prevents that remembered civilization from coming into existence. ("Memory" acquires a different or extended meaning.)

In Successive Timelines

An event in an earlier timeline causes an event in a later timeline, e.g., Neldorian time criminals from a timeline where Rome won the Second Punic War arrive in a timeline where they will help Carthage to win the Second Punic War. In this example, the words, "earlier" and "later," describe a temporal relationship between the two timelines, not a temporal relationship within either of the timelines.

I think that that covers most coherent options.

When Did The Time Traveller Go?

We know, because it is the basic premise of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, that those who go into the past on timecycles can alter the course of past events, whatever our theoretical understanding of this paradox, but we do not know the same of HG Wells' Time Machine. The outer narrator of The Time Machine reflects that time travelling suggests curious possibilities (scroll down) but Wells leaves it to his successors to explore such possibilities and Anderson is the most comprehensive such successor.

We have wondered what happened to the Time Traveller and also tried to tie him in with other fictional time travellers. Causality violation suggests somewhen else he could have gone. If he altered a past event, then he would have initiated a divergent timeline and gone into that timeline, disappearing from ours. Am I the first to suggest this?

"Changing The Past" Again

If someone, seating himself on either a Wellsian Time Machine or an Andersonian Time Patrol timecycle, threatens to travel into the past and to prevent my parents from meeting, then departs/disappears, should I fear that I will cease to exist after his departure? If he was in the past for half an hour before preventing my parents from meeting, will I then cease to exist half an hour after his departure?

Of course, it is logically possible for me to cease to exist at any time but why should that happen after this guy's departure, let alone half an hour after? (Matter ceasing to exist would break conservation laws but not logical laws.)

If we are in a single timeline, then the fact that I exist now is sufficient proof either that he did not attempt to prevent my parents from meeting or that, if he tried, then he failed. If he succeeds in preventing them from meeting, then he initiates an alternative or divergent timeline in which I was never born and never existed, not an impossible sequence of events in which I was not born and did not grow up but nevertheless somehow managed first to exist before his departure and secondly to cease to exist after his departure! Nor, if any of that did somehow happen, would there be any reason for a half hour delay.

People think of different times as different places existing at the same time, thus that someone who departs from the twenty-first century and spends half an hour in the twentieth century is obliged to return to the twenty-first century half an hour after his departure from it because that was how long he had been away!

Regular blog readers will know that these arguments have been presented many times before but they always seem fresh and there is always someone who assumes that preventing someone's birth makes him disappear in the present.

Timelines III

Maybe we need to be clearer about "timelines" and about hypothetical relationships between them? An sf story can be about timelines, about time travel or about both. Timelines are one solution to the time travel causality violation paradox, "changing the past." The only other paradox, circular causality, fits entirely within a single timeline. In my opinion, time travel within a single timeline is the only real time travel. Someone who travels from 2025 to 1939 and who then, by his own actions, puts himself into a timeline where he has assassinated Hitler, thus preventing World War II as we knew it, assuming of course that this is even possible, is no longer in our past which is surely what we want to visit if we time travel. If we travel through space, then we want to visit the Mars that exists in our Solar System. We do not want to wind up on either Edgar Rice Burroughs' or Ray Bradbury's version of Mars. Those would be interesting but they are not where Elon Musk is trying to go.

We inhabit a single timeline with three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension, a four-dimensional continuum. We can conceptualize although not visualize four or more spatial dimensions. Can one timeline have two or more temporal dimensions? Maybe not. I think that a second temporal dimension would be not within a single spatiotemporal continuum but between two or more such continua. In a temporal relationship, timeline 2 would be not parallel to timeline 1 but subsequent to it. Within each timeline, each event would be either antecedent to or subsequent to other events but both timelines would be at right angles to the second temporal dimension connecting them. The Temporal language of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol needs more tenses than ours. At the end of "Delenda Est," it is true that Rome won the Second Punic War, in the history of the timeline protected by the Time Patrol, but it is also true that Rome lost that war in a now deleted timeline. Two past tenses are needed. If we try to discuss this in English with only one past tense, then conceptual confusion reigns.

Our timeline is one of many possible timelines even if it is not also one of many actual timelines. Regular readers will know that all of this is relevant to works by Poul Anderson although I have not being referring to particular titles - but here are some examples:

circular causality in a single timeline is in The Corridors Of Time, The Dancer From Atlantis and There Will Be Time;

multiple parallel timelines are in the Old Phoenix sequence;

deleted timelines, however explained, are in the Time Patrol series.

Our timeline has a particular set of physical laws and a particular course of Terrestrial history. Sf writers imagine:

alternative histories;

divergent histories;

different physical laws, e.g.: gods exist and/or magic works.

Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy is not alternative history because, in their account, the gods did manifest on Earth but have withdrawn.

In quantum theory, timelines possibly split and diverge every time a choice is made or a dice is thrown etc? In the Old Phoenix, Valeria Matuchek says that the multiple universes are distinct from the beginning but that the differences between them only become noticeable at some later point.

As a solution to the causality violation paradox, I prefer successive timelines to splitting timelines. The latter means entire universes being created. In change as we experience it, the entire three-dimensional spatial universe exists in a different state at every successive moment of a single temporal dimension. On exactly this model, an entire four-dimensional continuum can exist in a different state at every successive moment of a second temporal dimension.

Tempus fugit.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.

"Time, you old gypsy man..."

"No enemy but time."

"Bid time return."

Poul Anderson's Three Major Series

Because of a cataract operation this afternoon, I have a shield over my right eye which must not be removed until tomorrow morning. Although this shield is transparent, it does interfere with reading so maybe I will make this the last post for today and hope to do more tomorrow.

Over a long period of time, I have posted a great deal about Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, far more than about any of his several other future history series.

I am fascinated by time travel, by its paradoxes and by Anderson's blend of time travel with historical fiction in his Time Patrol series.

A comparably substantial series is the The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson).

These three series are:

a science fiction future history series;

historical science fiction with time travel as the sf element;

historical fiction with a fantasy element.

History is the common factor. The Terran Empire appears in the first of these series and the Roman Empire in the second and third.

In other reading, Goldfinger has a fascinating plan to raid Fort Knox.

Logic And Literature

I am not qualified to discuss the physics of time travel. The logic becomes abstract but that is the nature of logic and it is necessary for consistency. In fact, logic is consistency. People who do not understand "logic" or who get their idea of "logic" from Mr. Spock instead of from Aristotle, or who think that being logical means being unemotional nevertheless acknowledge that they should not contradict themselves in conversation. Someone who states that Socrates was executed in 399 BC, then that he was executed in 299 BC, accepts, when it is pointed out, that this is inconsistent and corrects what they have said, giving only a single date. If they did not do this, then they would not succeed in telling us when Socrates died. In fact, they would not succeed in giving us even an inaccurate account of when he died.

An inconsistent time travel story recounts a sequence of events that cannot happen even if some kind of time travel is possible. But this is no surprise. An inconsistent non-time travel also recounts impossible events.

However, Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is infinitely more than just an exercise in logic. Many of its instalments are very detailed and concrete works of historical fiction. The time travel paradoxes are made real in this context:

Carl Farness investigates the origin of the Volsungasaga story that Odin appeared and betrayed his followers and learns that he himself, mistaken for Odin, must appear and enact the betrayal;

Manse Everard and Janne Floris travel backward through time to find the mysterious event that had launched the prophetess, Veleda's, campaign against Rome only to learn that that event was their own dramatic arrival and unplanned intervention at a crucial moment;

Everard and Whitcomb fight and kill the time criminal, Stane, in post-Roman Britain and retrieve the time shuttle that he had stolen but leave its fuel chest because that will be buried with Stane, thus becoming the mysterious contents of an ancient British barrow that will put them on his trail.

The Time Patrol is embedded not only in history but also in classical literature.

Timelines II

See Timelines.

Second Theory

Mutable Timeline/Successive Timelines (two ways of saying the same thing, I think)

It is obvious - we might think! - that the relationship between timelines 1 and 2 is a relationship of before and after. Timeline 2 - which, for the sake of argument, we might imagine that we are in - exists after timeline 1 which therefore existed before timeline 2. We are now using temporal language: the prepositions, "before" and "after," and the past tense of "exist." However, this does not mean that the events of timeline 1 occurred long ago in the past of timeline 2. That would make these two sequences of events parts of a single timeline. 

In timeline 1, there is a Holocaust and, later, the Danellians who found the Time Patrol. In timeline 2, there is no Holocaust and, because history has gone so differently in this timeline, no later Danellians. Each timeline is a complete four-dimensional continuum from the beginning to the end of the universe.

They are like two versions of a story, each with its own beginning, middle and end. In the example that we are considering, the stories diverge at some point in the 1939-1945 period and therefore have very different conclusions.

If timeline 2 is said to succeed, or to come after, timeline1, then this succession or coming after occurs in a second temporal dimension which is at right angles to the temporal dimensions of timelines 1 and 2 just as the three dimensions of space are at right angles to each other.

Every position in space exists at every moment of the first temporal dimension. Every event in timeline 1 exists in a single moment in the second temporal dimension. Many people live their entire lives in timeline 1 but do not exist in timeline 2 but there is no moment in either timeline when they first exist, then cease to exist. They are unaware of and unaffected by any historical changes made by time travellers.

We can say either that there is a single timeline which changes from one state to another or that there are different timelines which either precede or succeed each other. I think that this difference is terminological: either one mutable timeline or many successive timelines.