Werewolves

 

Steve Matuchek, the narrator of Poul Anderson's Operation Otherworld, is a werewolf. "The Hunt" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Fables And Reflection, which I am rereading late at night, is narrated by a werewolf. I was looking for a connection and realized that this was it. Synchronicity time, again.

We have found several parallels between Anderson and Gaiman. See here. However, the one kind of fiction that Gaiman never writes is sf whereas hard sf is what Anderson wrote most of.

Today was gardening. Tomorrow morning might be gym. Always, usually, also some blogging. The past and future history in The Corridors of Time grab me but I am still finding the corridors themselves problematic. I have not reread as far as the future periods yet and will stay with Gaiman for the rest of this evening.

Paradox

The Corridors Of Time.

Brann captures Storm and Lockridge.

Brann tells Lockridge that he, Lockridge, will defect from the Wardens and will come to tell Brann where to go to capture Storm and himself.

Lockridge escapes and brings Wardens who capture Brann and rescue Storm.

Storm asks Lockridge to pretend to defect.

What would happen if Lockridge refused? He remains loyal to Storm and does not refuse. If Lockridge were the sort of person who would have refused, then this sequence of events would not have occurred.

A Star And The Sea

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER THIRTEEN. 

Storm:

"...shone, Lockridge thought dizzily, like that sea which was also the Goddess'." (p. 115)

We find parallels with another time travel narrative:

"...often she rose early, long before the sun, to watch over her sea. Upon her brow shone the morning star."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 467.

(Unfortunately, there are no cover images for "Star of the Sea" because it was never published as a single volume.)

"Upon her brow a star burned white as the fire's heart.'" (II, p. 557)

"'There's something about a star and the sea, but I know nothing of that, we're inlanders here...'" (10, p. 552)

"Hers are the sea and the ships that plow it." (III, p. 628)

"Pure as yourself, your evenstar shines above the sunset... Lay your gentleness on the seas...

"Ave Stella Maris!" (IV, p. 640)

Voyages

 

All of Jules Verne's novels are classified as "Extraordinary Voyages":

to the Moon

around the world

under the sea

off on a comet

in a balloon

in Robur's vehicles

to the centre of the Earth

etc

HG Wells has:

in the Moon

through time

to the bottom of the sea

Poul Anderson follows them with:

a relativistic interstellar ramjet in Tau Zero

the quantum hyperdrive in the Technic History

other kinds of hyperdrive in other works

time travellers in STL spaceships in There Will Be Time (an ingenious idea even though I say it who did think of it before reading it)

other kinds of time travel which we listed here

Auri And Zen

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER NINE.

Auri:

"...accepted everything as it came to her, though she kept a fox's alertness: an attitude that Zen masters might envy." (p. 83)

Yes, acceptance and alertness are Zen. No, Zen masters are beyond envy! 

We have been out for the evening. On returning, it has taken me some time to respond to comments and then to scan back through The Corridors... to find this one passage which has required only a two-sentence response.

Wardens and Rangers, acting behind the scenes throughout history, have brought about the religious conflicts - sea and earth goddesses against sky gods, Catholicism against Protestantism - that they already knew about! But they hope to influence their future. Lockridge learns that some ancient myths and rites will return in his future but that there will also be more for humanity beyond that. I think that Zen will survive.

Wind And Rain

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTERs TEN-ELEVEN.

In Viborg, Lockridge finds the sound of church bells and the sight of the cathedral lovely but:

"The wind shifted and filled his nose with graveyard stench." (p. 90)

In other words, the wind comments and reminds him that he is in danger of death.

Lockridge's ally, Fledelius, points his crossbow at the knight who has arrested Lockridge and Auri and suggests that they settle their dispute peacefully:

"A silence closed in that made Lockridge's breath more loud in his ears than the wind and thickening rain outside." (p. 93)

The wind often emphasizes significant pauses in the dialogue.

"Rain roared on the hut." (p. 94) (See also Rain, Wind And Saxon Galleys.)

They have escaped and are with friends although the elements continue to remind them that they are surrounded by hostility.

Wind and rain forever, it seems.

Wind Shrilled

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TEN.

"North Jutland was still a ghostly country after last year's revolt, broken by the cannon of Johan Rantzau." (p. 85)

A historical statement about Denmark in 1535 AD. This sentence is immediately followed by:

"The wind shrilled through leafless branches." (ibid.)

Pathetic fallacy: leafless branches represent a devastated country and, of course, this wind is not inappropriately peaceful but appropriately shrill. By now, we can almost predict that the wind will comment on the action and will almost punctuate Poul Anderson's text. The two travellers approach Viborg. 

Megamultiverse Revisited

Two HG Wells titles, The War In The Air and The War Of The Worlds, read as if they could have been volumes of a series about future wars - aerial, interplanetary etc - whereas in fact they are independent works.

In the case of Poul Anderson's first two time travel volumes, Guardians Of Time and The Corridors Of Time, Guardians... was, at that time, the complete Time Patrol series whereas The Corridors... is not only not part of that series but also fundamentally contradicts it in their basic premises. However, some readers' minds would like to fit everything together if that was somehow possible.

Many universes make one multiverse. An even bigger dimensional framework, a megamultiverse, would be necessary to incorporate not only different timelines but also different kinds of timelines in which:

time travel is impossible;

time corridors are constructed;

time travel is a mutant power;

technology does not transport but transmits time travellers;

conventional "time machines" are used;

"time machinists" (so to say) can "change the past" so that a Time Patrol is needed.

Thus, the Time Patrol exists at the end of a comprehensive list.

Outside Of Time?

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER NINE.

Lockridge and Auri are in a time corridor:

"They couldn't linger, though. At any moment, someone might enter through some other gate and spy them.(Just what did that mean, here in this time which ran outside of time? He'd think about it later.) Moving his hands experimentally to cover the control lights, he found how to operate the vehicle and send it gliding futureward." (p. 81)

Is the bracketed question metafiction: the author acknowledging to his readers that this does not make sense - but we can make sure that Lockridge does not think about it until after the novel has ended?

The length of the corridor runs along our temporal dimension. Therefore, the temporal dimension of the corridor runs along one of our three spatial dimensions. Each of these two temporal dimensions is "outside" the other in that sense but only in that sense. Neither is atemporal. Outside the corridor, many people approach the portal at different times. Therefore, Lockridge and Auri should see all those people arriving in the corridor at different points along the corridor but at the same time, not at different times, within the corridor.

This consideration is making it hard for me to accept the narrative as it stands.

Fight Scene

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER NINE.

It is good to reread a Poul Anderson text and find points to discuss but earlier questions about the time corridors are still bugging me. 

There is a two-page Andersonian fight scene when Lockridge escapes. Anderson liked his action.

I used to work with a guy who tried my patience beyond its limits. One of his stunts was as follows. Some of us were eating our sandwich lunches in a workplace staffroom. I had a copy of The Corridors Of Time lying on a table. This guy picks up the book, opens it, reads aloud a paragraph from Lockridge's fight scene in a sarcastic tone of voice, puts the book back down and walks off, totally oblivious to what he has just done. Someone else asks me, "That's not yours, is it, Paul?" The book has just been mocked on a basis of total ignorance.

The mistreatment of Auri is the spur that motivates Lockridge to go on the attack, quickly disposing of several antagonists with his future combat techniques and thus making the remaining warriors back off. They cannot discern his moves in the dark and, crucially, still think that he is a wizard. Thus, Anderson makes this escape plausible. And I need not add here that there is much more in this book than just this fight scene.

Why does the text call the invaders Indo-Europeans, not Aryans?

(Searching the blog, I find that I have been annoyed enough about that staffroom incident to post about it before. See here.)

Sides

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER EIGHT.

Brann addresses Lockridge:

"'No doubt [the Koriach/Storm] told you that her Wardens stand for absolute good and we Rangers for absolute evil. You would have no way of disproof. But think, man. When was such a thing ever true?'" (p. 65)

This begins to sound more like a plausible international/political/ideological conflict and less like an Edgar Rice Burroughs good guys-bad guys routine. (Burroughs has one villain say, "I am an I.W.W. I am working for the Germans. I hate all Americans.")

Of course, being a late twentieth centurian, Lockridge is able to offer the Nazis as an example of absolute evil but Brann responds:

"'Where is your evidence, other than Storm's word, that the situation in the time war is analogous?'" (ibid.)

Brann begins to chip away at Lockridge's trust in Storm.

When I first read these opening chapters well over half a century ago, I thought then that Lockridge had joined the wrong side. Before long, Poul Anderson will disabuse us of any idea that either of these two sides is "right."

Into the further future.

More Extratemporal Interventions

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTERs SEVEN-EIGHT.

Lockridge's rifle makes a difference in the battle but so does something else. Lockridge is struck and burned while the rifle is melted - an anachronistic arms race.

When Brann of the Rangers sits in the Long House of the conquered village, the holy fire has gone out but a crystalline globe lights the interior. The future invades the past - and that phrase that I have just written reminds this reader of a remark about invasion from the future in Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, quoted here.

Lastly, for now, Brann offers his prisoner, Lockridge, a drink:

"'The wine is Bourgogne 2012. That was a wonderful year.'" (p. 64)

The Corridors Of Time was first published in Amazing in 1965 when 2012 was forty-seven years in the future. Now it is thirteen years in the past. Was 2012 a good year for Bourgogne wine? Sf continually engages with the future in ways that change during the lifetimes of its readers.

We always remember that the opening story of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set in 1951.

Battle

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER SEVEN.

Poul Anderson describes a battle, a frequent occurrence in his fiction:

the leading charioteer sounds his bison horn;

his troops howl their wolfish war cries;

horses gallop;

wagons bang;

foot soldiers leap and yelp;

axes boom on drum-head shields;

the leader signals;

slingers and archers halt;

stones and arrows whistle;

Lockridge squeezes the trigger of his rifle...

The leader goes down.

Extratemporal interference but no way near enough to influence history, of course.

Review

See:

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK REVIEWS

There is a glaring error in the opening sentence.

There was a time when the only two Poul Anderson time travel volumes were Guardians Of Time (with four stories) and The Corridors Of Time and they were based on opposite, mutually incompatible, premises. After that, thankfully, the Time Patrol series grew, two more novels were published and other stories were collected.

The review accurately quotes Storm's summary of the Wardens-Rangers conflict:

life as it is imagined versus life as it is;

control versus freedom;

rationalism versus wholeness;

machine versus flesh.

The reviewer rightly says that these are false choices. We value a television (machine), the people that we see on it (flesh), the people who watch it with us (flesh) and indeed ourselves (flesh).

Storm asks:

"'If man and man's fate can be planned, organized, made to conform to some vision of ultimate perfection, is not man's duty to enforce the vision upon his fellow man, at whatever cost? That sounds familiar to you, no?'"

-The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 34.

Yes, we plan and organize but not on the level of fate! Enforcement and "whatever cost" conflict with perfection. False choices.

Time War

The Corridors Of Time.

How does a war through time work in am immutable timeline? Why do the Wardens or Rangers not guard time portals to apprehend enemies trying to go through them? Maybe they do guard some. Maybe they have checked and found that the portals are not guarded and therefore do not try to guard them what with known events being immutable? Maybe both sides tried to guard the same portal, got into a fight about it and had to back off? Storm is able to escape from the twentieth century because, as she thinks, her enemy, Brann, had not thought to guard the Danish portal. However, it turns out that he had known that she would go through that portal and that he would apprehend her after she had done so. ("After" on her world-line, not chronologically "after.") So Brann had a good reason to leave the Danish portal unguarded. When Wardens and Rangers go into battle against each other, how much does either side already know about the outcome of the battle and to what extent can they take that knowledge into account from the outset? They would be able to accept any number of losses if they knew in advance that the eventual outcome was going to be victory for them.

Malcolm Lockridge chooses to fight for his friends in the past as Carl Farness does in the Time Patrol story, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."

Life

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER SIX.

Malcolm Lockridge compares life in 1827 BC and 1965 AD:

"Life was physically harder in some places, harder on the spirit in others, and sometimes it destroyed both. At most, the gods gave only a little happiness; the rest was merely existence. Taken altogether, he didn't think the were less generous here and now than they had been to him. And here was where Auri belonged." (p. 53)

I like this use of "gods." Clearly, Lockridge does not believe that gods literally exist but he uses the word in a way that is really about life and that fits with the thought patterns of 1827 BC. Maybe time travellers would naturally do this? 

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol does and we have quoted him eight times.

Wildness And Death

The Corridors Of Time.

Is everyone born free, as Lockridge suggests? Storm responds:

"'Free to do what? Ninety percent of this species are domestic animals by nature.'"

-CHAPTER TWO, p. 20.

Nicholas van Rijn says that he and his colleagues are wild animals, doing what they want or what is right, but then asks with scorn whether the millions living in the city that curves around the Earth are free.

Lockridge asks Storm:

"'...did you start the cult of the Goddess to get the idea of peace into men?'"

-CHAPTER FIVE, 45.

We remember a Time Patrol agent who did transform a warlike goddess into a peaceful one. But Storm scorns peace, proclaiming that the Triple Goddess includes Death. 

These are comparisons with the Technic History and the Time Patrol, Poul Anderson's two main series.

Eagle And Aurochs

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FIVE.

Here is a bird of prey that I do not think that we have noticed before:

"High overhead wheeled an eagle, the young light like gold on its wings." (p. 38)

Whatever their means of travel into the past - and Poul Anderson's time corridors are unique -, any time traveller must have a moment when it suddenly hits him that he is indeed here and now. When Storm tells Lockridge that a remote but thunderous "...bass bellow..." (ibid.) is not a bull but an aurochs:

"The fact that he was really here, now, personally, stabbed into him." (ibid.)

This should remind Anderson's readers of the corresponding moment for Manse Everard of the Time Patrol, quoted in full at least three times before on this blog:

Reality And Interpretation

Not A Museum

In The Past

 And we also find that we have compared Lockridge's and Everard's moments before:

The First Moment

Coming And Going

If I had had any consultative or advisory role when Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time was being written, then I would not have been happy for the text to go ahead without some elucidation of the question of duration within the corridors. When approaching a portal to exit a corridor, travellers walk along a line that corresponds to a part of a year in the outside world. While they are doing this, they should also see other travellers arriving through the portal and walking along or between lines corresponding to the same and to adjacent years. As it is, we are to understand that travellers are approaching the corridor from outside so why are they not being seen to arrive inside it? 

If, standing outside a portal, we see another traveller emerging from within and if we ourselves then enter the corridor, then, on our arrival within, we should see that other traveller exiting as we enter. I think. The external temporal interval between his exit and our entrance corresponds only to an internal spatial distance.

Nor do I see how these questions can be answered. 

Trying To Wrap Up The Physics

The Corridors Of Time.

Throughout history, there are time corridors, each invisible from the outside apart from its portal which is concealed underground. At each portal, many people at different times enter or exit the corridor. Therefore, the corridor should be full of people moving in both directions. Instead, Storm merely tells Lockridge that there might be enemies on the other side of a portal. In fact, they enter an apparently empty corridor and travel along it for a while before being pursued by two Rangers whom they kill. Thereafter, Lockridge and others travel along only empty corridors. So where are all the other travellers, including their older and younger selves?

That clarifies this issue about as far as I can do it for the time being.

The Physics Of Time Corridors III

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR.

This is what I was trying to lead up to.

(v) Every spatial position within a corridor corresponds to a different time, not to a different place, outside the corridor. Every time outside the corridor corresponds to a different position, not to a different time, inside the corridor. Therefore, everyone who enters the corridor from a different time outside the corridor should arrive in a different position but not at a different time within the corridor. Therefore, everyone who arrives in the corridor should see others arriving from different external times all along the length of the corridor. But that is not what happens. Duration within the corridor is said to occur:

"'...on a different plane.'" (p. 32)

But what does that mean? It ducks the issue.

(vi) If Lockridge and a companion are ever separated by weeks after leaving a corridor together, then Lockridge should immediately go back into the corridor. They will be able to rendezvous because of that different plane of duration. So Storm says. By my logic, everyone who enters a corridor rendezvous there. By Storm's logic I don't know what happens.

(vii) Storm says:

"'If Brann knew that the killers of his men had entered from 1964, and found an extra conveyance here, he would know the whole story.'" (CHAPTER THREE, p. 30)

How would Brann know that anything done in the corridor had not been done by someone who had entered the corridor from an entirely different time? 

The Physics Of Time Corridors II

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER THREE.

(iv) Storm describes the relationship between a time corridor and the outside world:

"'...from the viewpoint of one within, cosmic time - outside time - is frozen. By choosing the appropriate gate, one can step out into any corresponding era... Every few centuries, there is a portal, twenty-five years wide.'" (p. 33)

The terms, "gate" and "portal," seem to be interchangeable. When Storm and Lockridge first approach the entrance - hidden underground - to a corridor, it is described as:

"...a doorway some ten feet wide and twenty high." (p. 26)

It is filled by a flickering veil which initially resembles a curtain and then is referred to as "...the curtain." (ibid.)

Warning Lockridge that there might be enemies:

"'...on the other side of this gate...'" (ibid.)

- Storm orders him to follow her, then bounds through the "curtain." He follows and they are in the corridor, a hundred feet wide and stretching apparently for miles in both directions. On the inside, the gate, now called a portal, is the same height but two hundred feet wide. A series of parallel black lines, inches apart, stretch from the portal:

"...some distance across the corridor floor." (p. 27)

At the end of each line, there is an inscription in an alphabet unrecognizable by Lockridge but also, every ten feet, there are Arabic numerals: 4950, 4951, 4952... Each such number heads a group of lines. Storm leads Lockridge exactly along a single line, holding his hand, as they exit the corridor.

I have summarized all this in detail because the details matter for discussing what I have been calling the physics but what I should really call the time travel logic of this narrative but I am also not sure how much more I will post this evening! This post should provide a sound basis for the next one.

The Physics Of Time Corridors

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR.

We have discussed the physics of the time corridors before but here is a summary.

(i) If a corridor is:

"'...a tube of force, whose length has been rotated onto the time axis..." (p.33)

- and if there are only four dimensions, then the time axis of the tube of force has been rotated onto one of our three spatial dimensions. Therefore, it should be possible to construct a corridor in ordinary space that would give access to different moments within the internal history of the tube of force or corridor.

(ii) If there are more than four dimensions and if the time axis of the tube/corridor has been rotated onto a fifth dimension, then the history of the corridor is not accessible from our three-dimensional space but more complicated arrangements should be possible.

(iii) Storm tells Lockridge that:

"'...the human body has a finite width equivalent to a couple of months.'" (p. 32)

Not in relativistic physics where 186,000 miles equals only one second. A character in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time calculates that a hundred-year-old man extends for five hundred and eighty-six trillion, five hundred and sixty-nine billion, six hundred million miles along the temporal axis. Is that 586,569,600,000,000 miles? It is hard to get the number of zeros right.

A corridor that:

"'...extends from circa 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2000...'" (p. 33)

- should stretch for 6000 light-years through space before it is rotated onto the temporal axis.

That does not summarize all the physics of the time corridors but meanwhile here I have to eat something, then go out for part of the evening.

Into futurity.

Past And Future

Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time makes historical references to the German occupation of Denmark and to a Ukrainian rebellion in the twentieth century as well as to many events much further in the past as when Lockridge looks at a dolmen:

"...as if for some assurance of eternity." (CHAPTER THREE, p. 24)

- and reflects that:

"...a vanished people raised [the upright stones] to be a tomb for their dead." (ibid.)

Poul Anderson's works make us aware of times past or future and sometimes, as in this case, of both. As we reread, we remind ourselves that, in The Corridors..., this history carries humanity forward not to Technic civilization or to the Star Masters but to "time wardens." The Wardens and Rangers who precede the time wardens are based in the future but wage war throughout history, hence Storm's mysterious recruitment of Lockridge which has yet to be explained as CHAPTER THREE proceeds.

Issues Arising

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TWO. 

When Storm, self-professed freedom fighter, disparages:

"'...governments that blither of a detente." (p. 17)

- that briefly ignites Lockridge who expresses some political opinions but only very briefly and cuts himself off in mid-sentence with:

"'...- never mind.'" (ibid.)

Clearly, the purpose of this passage is not to initiate a debate but to inform the readers of what kind of guy Lockridge is: forthright, thinking for himself, outspoken and so on. His opponents in the bull sessions to which he refers would have called him loud-mouthed and opinionated. Indeed:

"'My arguments didn't make me any too well liked.'" (ibid.)

My issue would be not simply that I disagree with Lockridge but, more fundamentally, that I do not think in anything like the same terms. I would have to ask him to back up his generalizations with some examples in order to try to identify a set of parameters for a discussion. But the text does not move in that direction. We are just looking at Lockridge as a person.

Again we remember how reference to contentious issues is used to gauge character in Manse Everard's interview for the Time Patrol. When Everard has grasped some knobs on his chair, Mr. Gordon fires questions without waiting for answers. How does Everard react to physical danger? What are his views on internationalism, communism, fascism and women? What are his personal ambitions? Everard is understandably "What the devil?"-ing but is assured that this is only psychological testing and that his opinions do not matter:

"'...except as they reflect basic emotional orientation.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 1, p. 3.

We learn something of Everard's opinions as the series proceeds.

Storm prefers the Triple Goddess to:

"'...the Father of Thunders.'" (p. 21)

Historically, patriarchal monotheism displaced Goddess-worship although, despite St. Paul's iconoclastic denunciation of Diana of Ephesus, Christianity incorporated a Mother of God in a Council at Ephesus. Storm expresses a preference for the Goddess but humanity as a whole has to understand past stages of religion and move on.

Storm's Cover Story

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TWO. 

Storm Darroway employs Malcolm Lockridge, a man with military training, telling him that:

Ukraine rebelled against the Soviet Union several years previously;

the freedom movement headquarters was in Copenhagen;

after a long fight, the revolt was defeated;

Germans occupying Denmark had dug a tunnel for a secret project in Jutland;

the Ukrainian resistance hid a war chest of gold at the end of that tunnel;

the few survivors of that group have decided to let a new more general liberation movement have the gold which will fund -

"'...propaganda, subversion, escape routes to the West...'" (p. 17);

it is her task to fetch the gold and he is her helper;

an American tourist will not be suspected;

the gold, beaten into leaf, will be sewn into their clothes, sleeping bags etc.

Of course he does not know whether she is telling the truth or which side she is really on but he is persuaded to trust her.

Ukraine! Another topical reference.

Storm begins to disclose her real side when she says that:

"'...the Triune Goddess...will come again...'" (p. 21)

(That Goddess is a recurring theme in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.)

So far, what we have is the plot of a contemporary thriller. Lockridge mentions James Bond.

Foreignness

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER ONE.

Is it possible to speak to someone from the future without picking up some hint of temporal alienness?

Malcolm Lockridge:

"...couldn't quite tell what part of the world had shaped [Storm Darroway's face]..." (p. 8)

"He couldn't place her accent either..." (ibid.)

She reminds him of some Cretan images and this will be significant.

"...he saw a tiny, transparent button in her left ear." (p. 12)

Hearing aid? Translator.

Poul Anderson's readers remember Manse Everard's job interview. Mr. Gordon's smile is unlike any that Everard has seen before. Gordon has a dark complexion, no hint of beard, Mongolian eyes, Caucasian nose and an overall foreignness. His assistant is white-skinned (white, not pink?) and completely hairless. Meter readings are unrecognizable.

"Perhaps [Everard] was already beginning to realize the truth, even then."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 1, p. 4.

In one of my draft pieces of fiction, I tried to indicate that someone was from another time by stating that he looked Irish but neither from the North nor from the South.

By the end of CHAPTER ONE, there have only been these barely noticeable hints about Storm.

From The Future II

When a time travel story opens in the historical or the prehistorical past, this is because some or at least one of the characters have time travelled to that period from our present or future. It could hardly be otherwise. 

Time travel stories do not usually begin in the future. We do not often see a futurian deciding, or setting out, to visit the twentieth or the twenty-first century. We do see the effects in the present of time travellers from the future, e.g., in Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" and The Dancer From Atlantis. 

Anderson's The Corridors Of Time opens with a contemporary setting and, in its opening sentence:

"The guard said, 'You got a visitor...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (St. Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER ONE, p. 7 -

- begins to introduce a character who will turn out to be a time traveller from the future. But it will take quite a while for this text - as opposed to the title, cover illustration and blurb - to disclose that the novel is sf and not any other genre. Let us reread the opening chapters of The Corridors... in order to remind ourselves of how the author presents his theme.

Kinds Of Time Travel Narratives

A time traveller can travel to a single other time, remain in that time for the entire duration of a prose narrative or screen drama, then return home - or not - at the end.

Thus, in Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis, Duncan Reid is pulled back to the era of Atlantis and is returned to the twentieth century only at the end.

In James Blish's A Midsummer Century, John Martels is time projected to about 25,000 AD and eventually opts to remain in that era.

Originally, Doctor Who would spend say six episodes in one past period on Earth, then six in an extraterrestrial or future setting, then back to the Terrestrial past and so on but there was never any time travelling back or forth within any six-episode segment.

I once spoke to someone who thought that that was the only kind of time travel story. The existence of a Time Patrol was a revelation to him.

The other kind of time travel story:

in Anderson's "Flight to Forever," Martin Saunders travels only into the future but keeps on going through many future periods;

Anderson's Time Patrollers, mutant time travellers and Wardens and Rangers travel back and forth in time many times during a single narrative.

Let us return to the Wardens and Rangers (The Corridors Of Time) next.

Autumnal Stars

There Will Be Time.

The concluding sections of the text are extremely condensed. We are informed in less than a page that Jack Havig builds not just an organization but a community of several thousand time travellers with its main base in the middle Pleistocene. We realize that a series of stories could have been written about such a community.

The concluding chapter is nostalgic, elegiac and autumnal. (You will find the word, "autumnal," in the concluding sentence.) Havig and Leonce will be in the distant future on a planet of another sun but Robert Anderson will never see them again so that for him they are in the past. We reach the last page and look at it for a while as Robert Anderson stands:

"...under the high autumnal stars..." (p. 176)

It is past midnight here.

Havig Versus Wallis III

There Will Be Time.

See:

Havig Versus Wallis and Havig Versus Wallis II, both here. (Scroll down.)

We, editorially speaking, find that we have already summarized this part of the novel in more detail than we would have thought possible! No need to do it again. 

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, the Patrol fights Neldorians, Exaltationists, other time criminals and even temporal chaos itself throughout history.

In Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, Wardens and Rangers wage war throughout history, hoping to influence their common unknown future.

In There Will Be Time, Havig's group must outmaneuver Wallis' Eyrie while remaining within the bounds of what is already known about future, and also some past, events. Enough remains unknown to allow them sufficient freedom of action. 

1970

There Will Be Time, XIV.

See:

1970

1970-1973

1970: In the same year when young Jack Havig is in Berkeley, the older Jack Havig and his partner, Leonce, visit Robert Anderson in Senlac. In 1951, young Jack had told this Anderson (not ours) about his experiences in Berkeley. Now the older Havig will try to get some discrete confidential help from what Anderson calls:

"'...good, responsible scholars at Berkeley!'" (p. 153)

No doubt that word, "responsible," carries political overtones! But never mind. What matters here is that Havig is starting to get academic and organizational help in setting up his anti-Eyrie time travel group.

Anderson meets Leonce, his first and only time traveller from the future or indeed from any other time. That freaks him. Poul Anderson, who will fictionalize Robert Anderson's notes, cannot have such an encounter.

I am rereading a comic book by Elliot S. Maggin in which Clark Kent meets a woman whom he knows to be from the twenty-ninth century because he has already met her in a prose novel also by Maggin. The republic of letters (and sometimes also of sequential art) is one.

From The Future

Either one of our contemporaries finds a way to travel through time:

The Time Machine by HG Wells;

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson -

- or one of our contemporaries is contacted by travellers from the future:

the Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson;

The Corridors Of Time by Poul Anderson.

As ever, Wells makes a start and Anderson gives us more.

A JB Priestley character argues that travellers from the future are more plausible.

See:

Literary Dialogues

Or just less implausible?

This might indicate which Anderson work we will reread next.

Laterz. 

The Story So Far

There Will Be Time.

Havig was not able to evade the Eyrie indefinitely but Leonce rescued him.

Wallis did not learn the secret of the thirty-first-century post-Maurai civilization but Havig and Leonce did because they were able to learn the Ingliss-Maurai-Spanyol hybrid language and to travel through the strangely pastoral yet high-tech global society.

Now only twenty-eight pages and three chapters of the novel remain. In that span, Havig must found a rival time travel group, defeat the Eyrie, usurp its role, bring about the Star Masters civilization and embark on an interstellar journey with Leonce, leaving Robert Anderson to wonder about the future and the past and later to bequeath his notebooks to Poul Anderson.

Regular blog readers probably know what I am going to say next: "Not at this time of night!" Tomorrow should be gym in the morning and Zen in the evening with some time for blogging between. Will we finish There Will Be Time? What will we reread next? Something else about time travel?

Human Diversity And Star Masters

There Will Be Time, XIII, p. 146.

Poul Anderson shows his understanding and appreciation of human dynamism/diversity/plasticity/mutability. Human beings have changed their environment and continue to change themselves in the process. Jack Havig refers to:

a paleolithic hunter

a neolithic farmer

the divine right of kings

the welfare state

a conquering pirate whose grandson is an enlightened king

His point is that people will be even more different in future.

Elsewhere, Anderson presents a longer list which we have discussed twice before.

See:

"Homo Sum"

The Discovery Of The Past II

Havig and Leonce know that, long after the Maurai period, the mysterious "Star Masters" - possibly time travellers - irregularly visit their:

"'...ultra-mechanized, energy-flashing bases...'" (ibid.)

- which are protected by:

"An invisible barrier..." (p. 147)

The irregularity is not a problem. Having walked to the outskirts of a base, just outside its invisible barrier, the two time travellers move uptime until they see that a flying vehicle or spacecraft has arrived at the base. Then they stop, glimpse the human and alien Star Masters and flee downtime. They have solved the mystery of the future society. Its inspiration is not inner but interstellar.

Important Questions

We reread a passage in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and find that we have already responded to it three times:

Science

The Questions That Matter

Mysticism And Science

I have carefully reread these posts and cannot think of anything to add. However, it has been good to reread three personal responses written independently at different times. 

The questions remain fresh and immediate. Our ability to say anything new about them needs some time to catch up. But I expect to return to these questions in future posts. Every day, we are able to meditate and to read about new scientific discoveries. Knowledge of solar and extra-solar planets is increasing now.

Who Is Real?

We find that this blog includes several posts on the theme of "fiction within fiction." They came up on a blog search here.

In Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, Malcolm Lockridge refers to James Bond as a fictional character. An early indication that Storm Darroway is not native to the second half of the twentieth century is that she has to ask who Bond is. 

In Anderson's "Time Patrol," Manse Everard meets a Victorian private investigator whom we recognize. This is one detail in which the Time Patrol universe differs overtly from ours.

In the timeline of Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Hamlet, Macbeth, Oberon, Titania, Romeo, Juliet, King Lear, Falstaff and Othello existed, there were cannon and a University of Wittenberg in Hamlet's time and clocks in Caesar's time, Richard III was a hunchbacked monster, Bohemia had a seacoast and witchcraft works.

In Anderson's There Will Be Time:

Jack Havig refers to Superman as a fictional character;

Anderson's Maurai stories and There Will Be Time are works of fiction;

a real time traveller gives the time travel idea to a nineteenth century English writer.

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake, Clark Kent, disliking dreams in which he is an actor in a bad TV version of his life, asks his companions whether they get those. The Batman asks doesn't everyone and the Martian Manhunter replies that he doesn't.

Imaginative writers turn reality inside out. One character is referred to by different names in There Will Be Time and in The Sandman: The Wake.

Comprehensiveness And Completeness

Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time:

incorporates the earlier and later phases of the Maurai Federation of one of Anderson's several future history series as two of the periods visited by the time traveller, Jack Havig;

extends that future history far beyond the three or four centuries of the Maurai Federation;

also reflects on past history, e.g., Caesar And Civilization (not the only example).

Thus, this single short novel conveys a sense of historical and fictive comprehensiveness and concludes on a note of completeness - as do several other works by the same author. By the end of this particular novel, we know that Havig and his time travelling companion, Leonce, have brought about and passed into an interstellar future for mankind and that they will not return from it. 

Of course, a sequel could either show us that further future or present a plausible explanation for why Havig does find some reason to return to the twentieth century or earlier. However, time travel narratives based on the circular causality paradox do not invite sequels. When the circle is complete, so is the story.

On A Personal Note

There Will Be Time, XI.

A quick breakfast post before walking across town for a coach to London.

Havig marries Xenia in thirteenth century Constantinople. She is Orthodox. He is posing as Catholic:

"'...we found us an Eastern priest who'd perform the rite, and a Western bishop who'd grant me dispensation for, hm, an honorarium.'" (p. 121)

When Sheila and I married while I was still at University, we paid four clergymen:

the Archbishop of Dublin charged me £1 for dispensation to marry a Protestant in his diocese;

the priest whose church we borrowed;

a Presbyterian minister who had taught Sheila at University and a Jesuit priest whom I had befriended at school concelebrated the ceremony.

A Religious Studies lecturer at Manchester Polytechnic commented, "Cheeky devil!" when I told him about that Archbishop.

OK, folks. That's it until very late this evening or some time tomoz.

Go with God or gods.

Freedom And Diversity On Avalon

Anderson's twin values of freedom and diversity are best exemplified by the planet Avalon in his Technic History. Having read the Founder's writings, his descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, knows that:

"'He and his followers wanted not one thing except unmolested elbow room.'"

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT VI, p. 501.

Regarding diversity, first there is the diversity provided by two intelligent species, human beings and Ythrians. Secondly, we are given to understand that the Ythrian social organizations, the choths, can be even more diverse than they are shown to be in this narrative. Thirdly, an individual of either species is free to adopt the lifestyle of the other. Human beings can "go bird." Ythrians can become "Walkers." There is a Parliament of Man, a political arrangement with which we are familiar. However, every member of a choth, whether Ythrian or human, can vote in a Khruath. Ythrians and human beings who learn from them are able to make this work.

Avalonians fight to remain in the looser Domain of Ythri rather than to be incorporated into the larger Terran Empire. One of their fears is that the Empire would allow unrestricted immigration and that immigrants might simply outvote the established Avalonian way of life. I believe in freedom of movement on a planetary surface but would have to consider whether that should be extended to faster than light movement between planetary systems which is a completely different scenario. No vote in the Parliament of Man would be able to interfere in the internal affairs of any choth. Each choth is sovereign and governs itself by custom, not by coercion. In Flandry's time, we understand, Avalonian human beings have shed the habit of government so that there would then no longer be any question of a way of life being outvoted in Parliament. Human beings would have learned the Ythrian way of living in self-governing communities and I question whether, in those circumstances, the number of immigrants would remain contentious. With forcible annexation into an Empire no longer an issue, anything else would become locally negotiable.

Personal Past And Future

There Will Be Time, XI.

When Jack Havig knows that the Eyrie are on his case, he closes down his public persona in the twentieth century. He knows that the Eyrie cannot attack him in his personal past because they did not but he is vulnerable and must take precautions in his personal future which is partly with his wife in thirteenth century Constantinople and partly investigating the Maurai Federation in the twenty-third century. 

When Havig snuck out on Leonce in a Paris hotel in 1965, he could, if events had gone differently, have returned to her within the hour even after two intercontinental plane flights and a time journey through seven centuries. We have to learn to think like time travellers in order to appreciate this narrative.

Regarding the Maurai, one of them assures Havig, who is posing as Brother Thomas from a Merican stronghold, that the Federation does not want to impose global uniformity:

"Lohannaso smote the rail with a mighty fist. 'Damnation, Thomas! We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!'" (p. 119)

We are certain that, on this occasion at least, the author, Poul Anderson, speaks directly through his character, Captain Rewi Lohannaso, engineering graduate of the University of Wellantoa, N'Zealann. Anderson's two values were freedom and diversity.

Threes

Rereading There Will Be Time, we come again to the Maurai Triad which we have compared to:

the Hindu Trimurti

the Christian Trinity

the Three of Ys

the Triple Goddess

We should also mention:

the Taoist Trinity

the three Norns or Fates

the Buddhist Triple Body

the Buddhist Three Jewels

the Hindu Sat Cit Ananda (corresponds to one interpretation of the Christian Trinity)

The Three Jewels are neither three beings nor one triple being but Buddha, Dharma and Sangha but it has been pointed out to me that, in their broadest senses, the Buddha is all reality, the Dharma is all experience and the Sangha is all beings. I am getting with that right now.

This has taken us away from Poul Anderson's text, of course, but Anderson's texts do that, bring up every other subject.

Tomorrow will be a day trip from Lancaster to London, time-consuming and tiring. Expect no posts.

Conflicts And Paradoxes

There are issues here that would put some of us on opposite sides in an armed conflict. Think of that. (Maybe not for too long.) Poul Anderson could have written a historical trilogy:

I, a Cavalier hero;

II, a Roundhead hero;

III, they meet.

Multiply such examples throughout history. 

Anderson's The People Of The Wind presents sympathetic characters on both sides in the Terran-Ythrian War. The Terran Empire is defended in some Technic History instalments and opposed in others and the opposition is in some cases successful but in other cases not - as in real history.

In the Time Patrol universe, some "time criminals" would be motivated solely to prevent the horrors of the twentieth century. Which side would we support? (Especially since I argue that "deletion" of timeline 1 means that the events of that timeline have never occurred in timeline 2 but not that they have never occurred period. We need Temporal tenses.)

We have wandered between issues here. Poul Anderson takes us from armed conflicts to time travel paradoxes.

Time travellers in combat can double back in time to attack each other earlier but Jack Havig, quicker witted than his antagonists, manages to kill three and make the fourth flee. His rebellion against the Eyrie has begun.

Topical References By Time Travellers

Caleb Wallis from the nineteenth century says:

"'Shucks, I admire your Israelis, what I've heard about them. A mongrel people, racially no relation to the Hebrews of the Bible, but tough fighters and clever.'"

-There Will Be Time, VII, p. 69.

The Zorachs, an Israeli couple, maintain a Time Patrol base in Tyre in 950 BC but they also:

"'...manage to help local people now and then. Or we try to, as much as we can without causing anybody to suspect that there's anything peculiar about us. That makes up, somehow, a little bit, for...for what our countrymen will do hereabouts, far uptime.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (December, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 246.

Time travel does not always take us away from current affairs. 

The Sack Of Constantinople

There Will Be Time, IX.

While the Crusaders sack Constantinople, Jack Havig scouts for the Eyrie. If he sees Crusaders enter a building and emerge with loot, then he writes off that building. However, if he sees the approaching Crusaders cut down by machine gun fire, then he notes the building. The Eyrie can be told to guard that building and to take the loot for themselves. Havig has already seen the building guarded. Dressed as Crusaders, Eyrie commandos will carry the loot to a prearranged ship. Thus, the Eyrie gathers funds for its own activities in historical periods without upsetting history. This demonstrates how much time travellers would be able to achieve even in an immutable timeline. There must be a lot more that could be done that no one has thought of yet.

The hijacked loot would fund:

"'...a systematic search through the medieval period.'" (p. 92)

- for more time travellers to recruit to the Eyrie. The more agents the Eyrie has, the more it can influence its own mostly unknown future.

See also:

There Was Time

Limits Of Knowledge

There Will Be Time.

The timeline is immutable. 

The Pacific-based Maurai Federation, forming during the twenty-first century, will become the ruling world power for three or four centuries but Caleb Wallis, founder of the Eyrie, an organization of time travellers based in North America in the twenty-first century, hopes to bring about the eventual restoration of white supremacy. 

Can Wallis travel far enough into the future to confirm or disconfirm the restoration of white supremacy? He can travel into the further future but society and indeed the entire Earth have by that time become so unlike anything previously experienced by Wallis or by anyone else that he has to interpret what he sees and can only hope that his favoured white race really does wield power behind the scenes. Nor can he spend too much time trying to understand that further future because most of his finite lifespan must be devoted to just the first phase of his plan, covering two hundred years of the history of the Eyrie before it moves from its original stronghold to a more powerful underground base elsewhere. The time travelling Wallis meets his very old self at the end of Phase One and does not have much time left for any further explorations.

This demonstrates the limits of the knowledge even of a time traveller.