Genetics

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER TEN.

"He'd once read that as late as 1914 sons of English members of the House of Lords were a full five inches taller at eighteen than people from the bottom of the social pyramid...though they'd attributed it to genetics back in Edwardian England, rather than nutrition." (p. 144)

Not being scientifically well informed, I had to check on whether they would have called it "genetics" back then but they would have. The term was coined in 1905.

The molecular basis of heredity was discovered in 1953. See also The Fiction/Science Fiction Interface. I remembered something relevant from Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and was able to find it on the blog instead of having to go to the bookshelf upstairs.

That is as much as I can manage this evening. Tomorrow maybe: gym, Zen and booking a train journey to meet a Buddhist friend from Birmingham at a mid-way point next week.

An Alternative Future

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIVE.

Maybe this chapter concludes ironically?

General Fronto, who had been a bit disturbed and momentarily uneasy at the prospect of many slaves becoming wage workers, reflects that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius is:

"...popular. With most of the upper classes...

"And with the masses, too, for what little that latter was worth." (p. 95)

This makes Fronto optimistic:

"Fronto smiled at the future, his own and the Empire's.

"Roma aeterna victrix! he thought. Imperium sine fine! Next...Parthia. After that...who knows?" (ibid.)

Who knows indeed? Sf readers think of interplanetary expansion and colonization. But another prospect is implicit. If masses of industrial workers wield their economic power in a struggle for social and political power, then the masses are worth more than a "little" and Fronto might frown at the future of Empire...

I can read this implication in the text but cannot be sure that it is the author's intention!

Industrial Revolutions In Three Periods In Two Timelines

In SM Stirling's The Winds Of Fate, time travellers have informed the Roman Empire of sources of precious metals and also of advanced industrial techniques.

In Poul Anderson's "Lodestar," the new Supermetals company sells industrially valuable supermetals to already established companies in the Polesotechnic League.

In Anderson's "Starfog," the discoverers of the Cloud Universe cluster will sell abundant iron, gold, mercury, tungsten, bismuth, uranium and transuranics to civilizations in several spiral arms of the galaxy.

This progression has taken us from a large part of the Earth to a small part of the galaxy to a vaster volume of the galaxy. But it is the time travel scenario that we are reading currently. Alternative histories are a welcome addition to future histories.

Workers

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIVE.

It is decades since I read Spartacus. I remember that a Roman was shown around a perfume factory where the work-force were free wage earners. These strange, silent, industrious and diligent men disturbed a slave-owner as well they might.

Slaves labouring at the time traveller Artorius' new blast furnaces are offered:

"Cash and the prospect of manumission..." (p. 88)

- on an unprecedented scale. A Roman general thinks:

"A bit disturbing. Though I couldn't say why, exactly." (ibid.)

We know why. A mass working class is about to enter history centuries ahead of schedule. The general dismisses "...his momentary unease..." (ibid.) because he is delighted at the prospect of increased productivity. 

Workers no longer making iron by the old methods can grow more food or make other things. Artorius even envisages:

"'...many works bidding against each other for contracts.'" (p. 90)

A social revolution is under way with unpredictable consequences - although time travellers have some notion of some of the consequences.

Catching Up With References

See Standard Practice and its combox.

Here are the Cro-Magnons:

"A Cro-Magnon guide went by across the snow-covered yard, a tall handsome fellow dressed rather like an Eskimo (why had romance never credited paleolithic man with enough sense to wear jacket, pants, and footgear in a glacial period?), his face painted, one of the steel knives he had earned at his belt."

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 1, pp.173-174.

The combox discussion refers to the Neolithic.

See also Merchants And Languages and its combox.

Van Rijn converses with a non-human head on a screen in an:

"...eerie set of whistles and quavers."

-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 235-424 AT VI, p. 275.

When his chief secretary asks him how many languages he speaks, he replies, as already noted in the combox:

"'Twenty-thirty bad. Ten-fifteen good. Anglic best of all.'" (ibid.)

(This is a joke. Van Rijn's dialogue is full of mispronunciations, malapropisms etc.)

I can't help referring back to the opening volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga without again appreciating the slow steady build-up of Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first six instalments introduce:

the Jerusalem Catholic Church

Ythrians

the Ythrian New Faith

Nicholas van Rijn

Adzel

David Falkayn

In the seventh, Falkayn works for van Rijn's company but has not yet met him. Only in the thirteenth instalment does van Rijn found his first trade pioneer crew consisting of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan and only in the sixteenth, Satan's World, do van Rijn and the "trader team" share the spotlight. And, by that time, the crisis of the Polesotechnic League approaches.

The best of the future history series.

Standard Practice

The Winds Of Fate, PROLOGUE.

An author can make something sound so authentic that we have to pause to reflect that he has invented it. Thus, when the Emperor Marcus Aurelius begins to address Roman soldiers, their standard response is to bellow:

"'ROMA! ROMA! ROMA!'" (p. 16)

How do we know this? It was taken so much for granted that no one wrote it down or, if anyone did write it down, then that written record has not survived. So, again, how do we know? We don't. But American time traveller, Arthur Vandenberg/Artorius, finds out when he is with Marcus Aurelius as the latter begins to address the troops. For a moment, we accept that this is genuine. Then we realize that SM Stirling cannot have known it either so he has had to make it up - but very plausibly.

In "Delenda Est," Poul Anderson surmises that Cro-Magnons in the Pleistocene would have had the sense to wear protective clothing, including trousers, in snowy terrain.  

Sf authors have to think of the logical consequences of their premises, not just share and reinforce their readers' (usual) lack of imagination!

Merchants And Languages

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THREE.

"Josephus spoke Greek and Latin and Aramaic and three other languages well, and several more passably. He knew his uncle outdid him there. For a merchant it was a valuable skill, even if you could get by in Latin and Greek in most of the Empire, in the cities and larger towns at least and as far as bargaining was concerned." (pp. 48-49)

Although I am not a merchant, I continually regret my incompetence in any language but English. 

How many languages does Poul Anderson's interstellar merchant, Nicholas van Rijn, speak, whether well or badly? I think that we are told this in Satan's World. However, Sheila's and my adult granddaughter, Yossi, is currently staying in the room where the books are shelved so I do not have easy access but blog readers should be able to answer a question about van Rijn.

I am sheltering from the heat wave, listening to a report on the Iran War and concurrently reading two other works that provide blog material.

As John Carter said, "We still live." (I think he said "I" but "We" is better.)

Wothenjaz Versus Mars - And The Chinese

 

SM Stirling, The Winds Of Fate (Riverdale, NY, May 2026), CHAPTER ONE.

The PROLOGUE had recapitulated.

In the opening chapter, barbarians attack Romans. Our old friend, the "swine array" (p. 27) is here. The barbarians had been taught it by an "uncouth" God called Wothenjaz. We know him well. 

The Romans are armed with explosives provided by American time travellers of whom it is said:

"'Mars Himself whispers in their ears!'" (p. 28)

CHAPTER TWO informs us that Chinese time travellers will arrive from 2032.

Many of you out there have read this already but I am catching up.

The future of time travel sf is alive and well.

Two Enquiries

Some of Poul Anderson's characters engage in two completely different kinds of religious enquiry:

enquiry into the historical origins of a particular religion;

finding out which is the most appropriate or beneficial spiritual practice.

These two enquiries can be either completely independent or completely interdependent. Thus, to check out zazen, I do not need to study the life of the Buddha. It is sufficient to receive some personal instruction, then to sit facing a wall. By contrast, before I can practice Christianity, I must believe it and, to do that, I must first assent to certain historical claims.

Adzel meditates.

Axor says:

"'If science can show that the gospel account of Christ is not myth but biography; and if it then finds that his ministry was, in empirical fact, universal -'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverside, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 210.

Empirical fact would not be faith. There are two "if"'s there, so I am not sure how far Axor has got in his quest. He has not confirmed the Universal Incarnation yet. How certain is he of scientific verification of "...not myth but biography..."? Surely the Gospels contain elements of both? The practical conclusion of his two "if"'s is that (he thinks that) Diana Crowfeather might decide that it was reasonable to accept Christ as her Saviour. I do not think that we decide matters of reason. We either find that something is reasonable or we do not. Meanwhile, we can, in any case, meditate at any time and in any place, whatever our beliefs.

Earlier in the Technic History, Yakow Harolsson, High Commander of the Companions of the Arena on Aeneas, makes the following points in conversation with Ivar Frederiksen, future Firstman of Ilion:

religion means faith in the supernatural;

most Aeneans are monotheists and therefore observe various ceremonies and injunctions;

the more sophisticated acknowledge that their faith is not scientific, i.e., is subject neither to empirical confirmation nor to disconfirmation;

divine intervention might cause miracles which, however, involve suspension of natural law and therefore are not experimentally repeatable;

an event might have happened but be scientifically explicable, e.g., if Jesus Christ existed and reemerged from a tomb, he might have been in a coma;

if a saint did not exist, the creed associated with him might nevertheless be valid.

(Even if the Buddha did not exist, meditation still works.)

One further observation: both Jesus and the Buddha lived. We share with them the task of understanding and responding to reality.

(It is great and unusual to have all this in sf texts.)

Historical And Fictional Accounts

Ancient Graeco-Roman and Jewish authors put speeches into the mouths of legendary and historical figures and either rewrote existing narratives or created new stories to suit the needs of their audiences. Is there anything that was written in this way that has been taken to be literally true? Quite a lot, I think... An angel appearing and explaining an event is a literary way of telling readers that the event is important, not proof that supernatural beings exist.

How much of Poul Anderson's Technic History is fiction within the fiction? Quite a lot. Look through the contents of The Earth Book Of Stormgate plus "The Star Plunderer" and, of course, "Sargasso of Lost Starships." (The latter features some almost supernatural beings but demonic rather than angelic.)

This means that two kinds of additions to the Technic History are possible:

new instalments fitted between existing instalments;

rewrites, recounting what "really happened" when van Rijn was stranded on Diomedes, when Manuel Argos led a slave revolt and founded the Terran Empire etc.

Someone might even write The Sky Book Of Stormgate. 

The Technic History is long but implies a literally endless narrative.

Traditions

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, one large quadrupedal Wodenite, Adzel, converts to Mahayana Buddhism and another, Axor, later, to Jerusalem Catholicism. We welcome this re-use of a fictional species which adds substance and continuity to a future history series. Individuals, then planets and their inhabitants, recur while historical periods pass. The species re-used most frequently in the Technic History are Merseians and Ythrians. Each of these species has its own distinctive polytheism and monotheism which need not concern us here. I wanted to focus on the Terrestrial Indian contemplative and Abrahamic prophetic traditions represented by Adzel and Axor.

In a prophetic tradition, it is necessary to be neither polytheist nor atheist but monotheist. Also, monotheism can become monist but this is regarded as heretical whereas, in a contemplative tradition, it is possible to be polytheist, monotheist, atheist or monist! Vaishnavites (Hindu worshippers of Vishnu) mythologize the Buddha, founder of an atheist/monotheist tradition, as an avatar of their deity, a role that he shares with Krishna. I really dig spiritual diversity. We can practice alongside others who reflect reality differently. Traditions coexist in Anderson's Terran Empire. 

Lamentations

Sean Brooks suggested in the combox that a recent post could have ended with the conclusion of Anderson's "The House of Sorrows" which quotes from Lamentations 1 and 5 in a timeline where the Jews had been unable to return from Babylon. I agree and also apologize for brevity here. Places to be. Things to do.

Onward and upward.

"...Will Not Taste Death..."

 

My main reading at present is an analysis of the New Testament:

"Amen I'm telling you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power." (Mk, 9:1)

"Amen I'm telling you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." (Mt, 16:28)

Matthew edits a Markan passage in which Jesus predicts an imminent political and spiritual liberation.

This makes me even more appreciative of Poul Anderson's reproduction of such expectations and aspirations in a work of fiction. Tatiana Thane asks Chunderban Desai:

"'Still, Commissioner, what if bein's five or ten million years ahead of us should decide Terran Empire is in need of reconstruction?'"

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 7, p. 131.

Gabriel Stewart announces to Tatiana that the Builders will make her son more than human while his eyes shine with belief. One of the Aenean Riverfolk asks whether the dead will rise when the Old Shen return...

On Aeneas, as in Palestine, people and generations live on after these prophecies have not been fulfilled.

An Elder Race does make contact in Anderson's The Avatar.

Acres And Wildfowl

Before anyone else points this out, while quoting passages in the preceding post, I skipped past a relevant paragraph in There Will Be Time. This was because it was rather long and did not quite fit in with the others but here it is in full - I do not seem to have quoted it before -:

"...Jesus might be nothing more than an Osirian-Essene-Mithraic myth. Suppose he wasn't, though? Suppose he was, well, not the literal incarnation of the Creator of these acres, those wildfowl, yonder universe...but at least the prophet from whose vision stemmed most of what was decent in all time to come. Could a life be better spent than following him on his ministry?

"Well, Havig would have to become fluent in Aramaic, plus a million details of living, and he would have to forget his quest...."

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, New York, March 1073), VI, p. 60.

Obsevations

(i) The ministry was short so a life would not be spent.

(ii) But fluency in Aramaic would be difficult.

(iii) But it could be gained there and then.

(iv) The mutant time travellers also need longevity.

(v) If I had Jack Havig's power, then Jesus is certainly one of the people that I would research and want to meet.

(vi) He could not possibly have suspected what future millennia would make of him.

(vii) Most decency has not stemmed from a single prophet.

Search The Scriptures (Or At Least The Time Travel Texts)

"Let's Go To Golgotha" by Garry Kilworth

Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock

The Nantucket Trilogy by SM Stirling

The Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson

Past Times by Poul Anderson

Somewhere on Stirling's Nantucket, the question is asked: if time travellers go BC and prevent Christianity, will they thus also prevent salvation? A question for Christian theologians. Knowing them, indeed knowing people in general, they will give different answers.

The Time Patrol

"'England will be one kingdom, with Saxon strength and Roman learning, powerful enough to stand off all invaders. Christianity is inevitable, of course, but I will see to it that it is the right kind of Christianity, one which will educate and civilize men without shackling their minds.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 5, p. 40.

"'Maybe you don't know how much Christian belief and ritual is of Mithraic origin, but believe me, it's plenty. Not to mention Judaism, which you, Cyrus the Great, are personally going to rescue. Remember?'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Time Patrol, pp. 55-112 AT 7, p. 87.

"....without the balance-of-power effect of Rome, the Syrians did suppress the Maccabees; it was a near thing even in our history. Judaism disappeared and therefore Christianity never came into existence.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Time Patrol, pp. 173-228 AT 4, p. 197.

"...how could I in honesty have argued for a heathenism in which I had no belief and which I knew was going under? For that matter, how could I in honesty have argued for Christ?"

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT 1858, p. 404.

"'Patrol units are concentrated on guarding Palestine. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freebooters who want to change what took place in Jerusalem, researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it....'"

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Time Patrol, pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 492.

"'...this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered. She would give folk as much, spiritually, or almost as much, as Christ could. Few would ever join the Church.'"

-ibid., 11, p. 568.

"The habits of disguise took over. Koch crossed himself, again and again. Or maybe he was a sincere Catholic."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), p. 313.

One Patrolman cannot in honesty argue for Christ but another might be a sincere Catholic.

There Will Be Time

"'...what he was, or if he was, makes only an academic difference. What counts is what people through the ages have believed. My life expectancy isn't enough for me to do the pure research I'd like.'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), VI, p. 56.

A thirteenth-century man-at-arms who tries to rescue the Saviour is stunned by the question:

"'How do you know that man really was your Lord?'" (p. 62)

"I do not know if my friend ever looked upon Jesus." (p. 64)

Past Times

"Thank you, Holy Father. This holy fire you have given us - we must never let it die."

-Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, November 1984), pp. 142-163 AT p. 163.

A bit cryptic in parts, maybe? OK. Just read them all.

Language

Diverted from rereading The Anubis Gates, we are concurrently reading two recently acquired volumes, one about interpretations of the Bible, the other describing a divergent timeline in which paper and printing with punctuation, upper- and lower-case letters and spaces between words are introduced in the Roman Empire in 167 CE. This convergence of texts focuses our attention on communication and we will now post about that subject, referring of course to our favourite authors, including Poul Anderson, but placing them in a wider context. 

That cooperative manipulation of the environment which generated speech differentiated homo sapiens from all other animal species. Consider the following progression:

spoken language

written language

literature

scriptures

We have evolved a long way from non-, then pre-, linguistic organisms and indeed before them from inanimate matter. The latter is not just inert and dead. Its capacity to change (energy) overcomes its resistance to change (inertia). Without these two contradictory forces, no events would occur and no objects or organisms would remain in existence from one moment to the next. There is spiral development to more dynamic levels of energy-inertia interaction, from inanimate matter through unconscious organisms and animal consciousness to ascending levels of human (and other?) intelligence and self-consciousness. At this stage, we can imagine more highly developed consciousnesses helping and guiding less developed consciousnesses as in the Cosmenosist philosophy in Anderson's The Day Of Their Return. However, this is unnecessary. Ascent to more dynamic and creative levels of consciousness continues - at present - even if only in a single species. At the same time, social inertia pulls us back towards self-destruction. Interaction continues but with unpredictable outcomes: continued ascent or abrupt descent?

Spoken Language

Until they spoke, our ancestors were at most pre- or proto-human. They developed oral traditions which - those that survived - have long since been written down. We read Homeric epics and Buddhist scriptures in Penguin paperbacks.

Written Language

The earliest written language was still largely oral, i.e., with no spaces between written words, people read aloud to make sense of the text and also for the benefit of those who were still illiterate. It was a big discovery that it was possible to read without being heard! Scriptures are still ritually read aloud in places of worship.

Literature

Written language could be just signs, hand-written notes or instructions, shopping lists, private correspondence etc. However, literature, writing handed down the generations, transmits knowledge and culture, improving on the work of the earlier oral traditions. All our friends are here, including Poul Anderson following:

the Bible

the Verse and Prose Eddas

the Sagas

Shakespeare

Mary Shelley

HG Wells

L. Sprague de Camp

Robert Heinlein

etc

Scripture

We have already mentioned Buddhist scriptures, the Bible and the Book of Thoth.

Scripture is literature regarded as authoritative and foundational. Every religious tradition has scriptures. Also, I regard certain texts as proto-canonical, i.e.:

the Greek "Homer and the poets" formally parallel the Hebrew "Moses and the prophets" and were also regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality;

the Eddas are not called "scriptures" only because that was not done in pagan traditions but they are our sources for Norse myths, knowledge of the gods.

When a text is canonized, it is universally known that it is officially regarded as authoritative even by those who can neither read nor understand it and it becomes effectively a blank screen onto which later generations project whatever they want. Christian Nazis: Jesus was Aryan, not Jewish. An extreme example but nevertheless an example. He is also a shaman, a yogi, a Bodhisattva, an astronaut and everything else imaginable.

SM Stirling's American time travellers arrive after the closure of the Christian and Jewish canons but nevertheless they radically change history and also introduce printing very early. How will that affect later uses of the Bible in public worship, private reading, social ideology etc?

One of Poul Anderson's time travellers must avoid changing the content of the Germanic literature that he studies.

In one of Anderson's divergent timeline, a medieval theocracy survives into the twentieth century. Clergy rule in the name of the Bible but, obviously, most people will not need to read even a word of it. It will not even have been translated into the vernacular. The church controls printing.

Now I want to get back to some reading! (And a little eating and drinking. Satisfy the inner man.)

Other Reading, All Relevant II

Two books arrived via eBay today:

The Winds Of Fate by SM Stirling (that is one amazing cover, reproduced very indistinctly here);

Jesus Of Nazareth: an independent historian's account of his life and teaching by Maurice Casey.

I met Maurice once briefly through his student, James Crossley. Checking through this newly arrived book, I realize that I had misunderstood one detail of what Maurice had said in that single conversation but that is hardly surprising. Learning continues.

In Poul Anderson's works, two sets of time travellers skirt around the origins of Christianity but Anderson avoids answers which we must seek where we can find them elsewhere.

All this is relevant.

Other Reading, All Relevant

Hello. Yesterday I returned from four days in London. While there, I bought a newly published book on "Imperialism," which brings the story right up to 2026, and finished reading it today. We have read about Roman imperialism in history, in historical fiction and in alternative historical fiction and about Terran imperialism in futuristic sf but there is also modern economic and geopolitical imperialism preparing for its Third World War. 

Before departing, I had begun to reread The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. On the opening page of this text, we read:

"...the old man turned around to watch the sun's slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra..."

-Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates (London, 1986), p. 11.

This reminds us, obviously, of Poul Anderson's title, The Boat Of A Million Years.

Hieroglyphs shining from ancient papyrus:

"...were written here in the world's youth by the god Thoth, the father and spirit of language itself."

-ibid., p. 16.

This might remind us of:

"This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil's bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the star called Mercury on Earth, but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven."

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 10, 4, p. 587.

"For the lord of Meaning himself, the herald, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, was with them: the angel that spins nearest the sun. Viritrilbia, whom men call Mercury and Thoth." 

-ibid. CHAPTER 15, 1, p. 687.

The Boat Of A Million Years is hard sf with a mythological reference in its title.

The Anubis Gates is a hard sf-fantasy synthesis: scientific laws work in some times and places whereas magic works in others.

The Cosmic Trilogy is a soft sf-fantasy synthesis: some beings are both extraterrestrial and supernatural.

(Lewis is hopelessly Platonic: "Language herself"! Human beings created language, not Mercury/Thoth. All meanings are arbitrary. None are "...inherent..." (p. 587))

Power's description of a time traveller's perception of London in 1810 reminds us of Poul Anderson's description of two time travellers' perceptions of London in 1894. Historical sf.

Again Heinlein And Anderson

The previous post again prompts reflection on how Poul Anderson succeeds and supersedes Robert Heinlein.

"Life-Line" was:

Heinlein's first published work of fiction;

published by John W. Campbell in Astounding, August 1939;

the opening story of his Future History;

set in 1951 -

- and, although not a time travel story, it presented a temporal paradox.

Thus, this single short story prefigures much. Heinlein wrote the Future History; Anderson wrote eight future histories. Heinlein wrote three works about the circular causality paradox; Anderson wrote three works about that paradox and a series about both causality paradoxes. Anderson's culminating future history, Genesis (2000), re-presents the Frankensteinian theme on a Stapledonian scale.

Heinlein and beyond.

(And what a half-century to have lived through. I was born in '49.)

Causal Circles

I prepare for early train travel tomorrow. My travel reading will be The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers which might lead to some comparisons of mythological writing, historical fiction and time travel paradoxes.

The Anubis Gates, like Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and Robert Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps," is set in a single immutable timeline where past events can be caused but neither prevented nor altered. In such a story, when a causal circle has been completed, the story is complete and there is no room for a sequel. 

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series also features causal circles but in a context of potential causality violation where closure of circles prevents alterations. One paradox is used to prevent another:

"'The single way to make [an incipient causal loop] safe is to close it. When the Worm Ouroboros is biting his own tail, he can't devour anything else.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2016), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 449.

There are causal circles without time travel in:

Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line";

Brian Aldiss' "Man In His Time";

James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time.

Heinlein's character, Pinero, has invented a machine that accurately predicts dates of death. A young couple consult him. He says that, since there is something wrong with his machine, he will have to give them their readings the following day and then keeps them talking for as long as possible. When they finally leave, they are killed by a clock falling from the front of Pinero's building. That clock would have fallen at that time. If Pinero had not been the kind of guy who would keep them talking but instead had let them leave immediately then either they would have died of some other cause at the time that the machine had predicted or they would not have died so soon, the machine would have predicted later dates of death, Pinero would have given them their readings and would not have kept them talking. What kind of guy Pinero is becomes a causal factor.

Favourite Chapters And Stories

My favourite chapters in Poul Anderson's Technic History include The Day Of Their Return, 3, and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, III.

In the former, Chunderban Desai converses with:

Uldwyr of the Vach Hallen;

Aycharaych, supposedly of "Jean-Baptiste";

Peter Jowett of the industrial Web in Nova Roma on Aeneas.

In the latter, Dominic Flandry converses with:

the Duke of Mars;

Emperor Hans Molitor;

Chunderban Desai. 

A spectacular cast of characters. I agree with Sean Brooks that A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows could also have included a conversation with an ennobled Leon Ammon, the man whom Flandry had met when he, Ammon, was still a gangster on an Imperial border planet. Future histories include fictional biographies, like those of Falkayn and Flandry, and Ammon would have been a sound addition. 

My favourite Technic History short stories are "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and "Lodestar" for reasons previously stated. The Technic History is better than good both as a series and as a (large) number of individual narratives.

Present And Future Cities

As mentioned recently, I will be in London from Thursday to Monday otherwise engaged and without a computer. At least, than is the plan. Two recent one-day trips to London had to be cancelled because of ill health and tiredness. Arriving in London, I feel like Miriam Abrams arriving in Archopolis. The diversity of Birmingham feels like a precursor to the diversity of the Terran Empire - although some of us now see multi-species/FTL futures as old-style sf and more akin to fantasy. A friend said that he preferred the old-style stuff like Poul Anderson's Technic History with its hyperspace and multiple aliens to, e.g., Anderson's later Genesis with STL interstellar travel by post-organic intelligences and no aliens but I have to ask which is now more plausible? The number of exoplanets is a hopeful sign: plenty of life in favourable conditions, at least unicellular? Much more can be learned in our lifetimes, provided that we survive, of course.

Connections

We are reconsidering the first five of the fifteen instalments in the Flandry period of Poul Anderson's Technic History and asking which persons or planets introduced in these instalments either reappear or are referenced later in the series. These five instalments are:

Ensign Flandry

A Circus Of Hells

The Rebel Worlds

"Outpost of Empire"

The Day Of Their Return

Ensign Flandry introduces:

Dominic Flandry, series character

Crown Prince Josip

Miriam Abrams, a child in a picture seen by her father but later Flandry's wife

Max Abrams, later remembered by his daughter

the land Starkadians, including Dragoika who reappears in "The Game of Empire"

John Ridenour who reappears in "Outpost of Empire"

Persis d'Io whose son by Flandry appears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows -

- but does not introduce Merseia or the Merseians because:

Falkayn's team had been on Merseia in "Day of Burning";

Merseians had joined the Baburite Space Navy in Mirkheim;

the Merseian Roidhunate is a distant but growing threat in The People Of The Wind -

- or the Terran Empire which:

had been announced in "The Star Plunderer";

is expanding in "Sargasso of Lost Starships";

adjusts its frontier with the Domain of Ythri in The People Of The Wind.

A Circus Of Hells introduces:

the planet Talwin which is mentioned in The Day Of Their Return and reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows;

Aycharaych of Chereion although only as mentioned by a Merseian;

D'jana whose psychic power will possibly influence Flandry in The Rebel Worlds and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

The Rebel Worlds introduces:

the planet Dido in the Virgilian System;

Josip now as Emperor although this time off-stage;

Vice Admiral Kheraskov, later mentioned in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows -

- but does not introduce:

The planet Aeneas which had been mentioned in "The Problem of Pain";

the planet Shalmu which had been mentioned in "Sargasso of Lost Starships";

the Ferrans, one of whom had appeared in Satan's World.

"Outpost of Empire" introduces:

the planet Freehold which is later referenced in "The Sharing of Flesh."

The Day Of Their Return, set on Aeneas, introduces:

Chunderban Desai who reappears in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows;

Aycharaych in person, destined to become Flandry's adversary in "Honorable Enemies," "Hunters of the Sky Cave" and A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows and to be referenced again in The Game Of Empire;

the Aenean rebels some of whose descendants rejoin interstellar civilization in "Starfog."

That is one massive collection of connections and I have probably missed some.

Galactic Civilizations And Global Conflicts

No posts today until now because we (editorially speaking) have been with Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. 

 Andrea usually says something blog-relevant. He knows of an sf TV series with the premise that there is about one technological civilization in every twenty or so galaxies but some of them have FTL (faster-than-light space travel). 

Observations:

the FTL must be very F if there is regular intergalactic travel;

are they taking any steps to populate the galaxies?;

Poul Anderson would be able to take that premise and write prose fiction set in that universe;

I am inclined to accept the scarcity of technological civilizations but not FTL.

Andrea's other contribution today: although nothing much is changing internationally right now, we are heading for a major conflict and indeed are already in the first stage of World War III although it is not yet recognized as such - it took a while for 1939-'45 to become a global conflict.

Are we the only intelligences in a vast volume of space and also about to destroy ourselves? 

Poul Anderson wrote a few short dystopias.

Aycharaych Before Or After

Years ago, second-hand bookseller Pete Pinto suggested to Poul Anderson that Dominic Flandry's main adversary, the universal telepath and last surviving Chereionite, Aycharaych, should return but in an Aycharaych novel, not in a Flandry novel. I agreed. Such a novel could have been about Aycharaych's earlier life and, in that case, would not have needed to tell us whether he had survived the Flandry-ordered bombardment of Chereion. But suppose he did survive. What would have happened then? Although he would no longer be motivated to work for Merseia, I accept the combox argument that the bombardment of his home planet would have demotivated him from offering his services instead to Merseia's enemy, the Terran Empire.

Aycharaych's subsequent life would have had to involve some reflection on his earlier career and on the history of Chereion. I still think that a meeting with that student of Ancient artefacts, Axor, would be one possibility although not through the agency of Terran Intelligence.

I cannot imagine sequels. My brain conjures only absurdities, e.g., Aycharaych fleeing outside known space and finding Nicholas van Rijn in suspended animation, which Anderson definitely would not have written. Poul Anderson combined creative imagination with historical plausibility. Although he never showed us the death of any major character, it is a given that such characters are long dead in later periods when others come forward:

van Rijn and Falkayn

Argos

Christopher Holm and Philippe Rochefort

Flandry and Aycharaych

Roan Tom

Daven Laure

(Not a complete list.)

I have stopped writing about Aycharaych because inspiration has dried up.

Emperors And Philosophy

We have discussed Roman Emperors in connection with fiction by Poul Anderson, SM Stirling and others. Julius Caesar had been made a dictator for life and had accepted the titles, "Imperator" and "Father of his Country," and referred to the republic as something that might be restored so why is he not counted as the first Emperor? He is the first of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." Is it just because his position was not supposed to be hereditary? - which ironically it became precisely because of his assassination.

Fiction dramatizes the philosophical mind-body question although usually we do not notice this because usually we do not philosophize. In Poul Anderson's "The Problem of Pain," the first person narrator informs us that the planet Lucifer has long days - an objective fact - and also that he and his colleague had toiled, sweated, itched, stunk and become grimy and weary through one of those days - a subjective experience.

One objective condition, e.g., the application of heat to a liquid, causes another objective condition, the boiling of the liquid into steam. We observe both conditions. Another objective condition, a neural interaction, causes a subjective event, a sensation. In this case, we can observe the objective condition but not the subjective event. We know of the subjective event because we experience sensations and detect them in others. Someone winces when pricked with a pin. But we do not observe his sensation because that is subjective, not objective. 

Philosophers enquire about the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, two aspects of reality.

What Happens Next?

The Day Of Their Return.

It is revealed that Jaan was a false prophet in a very real sense - technologically possessed by an agent of Merseia - and it is simultaneously announced that Ivar Frederiksen, heir to the Firstmanship of Ilion, who had tried to lead a rebellion, will now make his peace with the occupation forces of the Terran Empire. Will even these two devastating developments be enough to derail the movement for Aenean independence that we have seen gathering momentum throughout this novel? I would not think so. There will be further years of turmoil ahead and we need another novel especially Sector Alpha Crucis is close to the Domain of Ythri and we also want to know what has been happening on Avalon. Poul Anderson's Technic History needed to have been two or three times its finished length. JRR Tolkien said that The Lord Of The Rings was "too short" and I agree - although lengthy, it feels rushed - and the Technic History is definitely too short.

Spiritual Development II

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane, just before she mentions duty: 

"'...[Cosmenosists] think reality is always growin' toward what is greater than itself...'" (pp. 129-130)

"...greater..." is mystically vague but she means intensifications or refinements of consciousness. So is reality always growing towards this? Well, no. What has happened so far?

There was an earliest moment with no earlier moments just as there are no points further north than the North Pole. At that earliest moment, condensed energy was released with natural forces that allowed for the emergence of a complex ordered universe rather than a random chaos. Were the forces "fine tuned"? Not by any intelligent being because intelligence had not emerged yet. 

Energized complex molecules changed randomly until one became self-replicating, the first unicellular organism. Chemistry was not "growing toward" biology although presumably a random event would have happened some time. I understand that multicellular organisms are unlikely although they have evolved at least once. Consciousness was an accidental byproduct of natural selection. Organisms were selected for sensitivity. Pleasure and pain, if they were possible, would have survival value. Therefore, sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into sensation. 

Now that we are not only conscious but also self-conscious and intelligent, we can decide to work towards the goal of self-development but reality had not been growing towards such an outcome. There might be universes where some of the earlier random events like the fusion of two simple cells into a single complex cell allowing for the emergence of multicellular organisms did not happen.

Now that we are here, we can do something about it but we should not think that preconscious reality had had any inbuilt tendency to work towards us.

Spiritual Development

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

The previous post was cut short by a Sunday walk. What else did Tatiana say? That:

"'...first duty of those who stand highest is to help those lower -'" (p. 130)

That makes sense in her universe where intelligent species are as numerous as snowflakes but not in ours as yet. Ivar Frederiksen later makes the point that the evidence from all those known species indicates that natural selection develops intelligence only so far - and that does seem reasonable. However, spirituality is not just intelligence. It involves psychological and moral development, self-knowledge, insight and wisdom. Surely some species will be further developed spiritually and therefore able to help or guide others? In fact, from his theological perspective, Axor to ask why all those known species are "Fallen." Surely some at least should not have Fallen? Or was there just one cosmic Original Sin for everyone? That seems unlikely but the question only arises from a particular theological perspective. To me, it makes sense that instincts for self-preservation and species-propagation had survival value for conscious species but then became obstacles to spiritual development in intelligent species. Pleasure, pain and consciousness became not "sin" (Biblical terminology) but "greed, hate and delusion" (Buddhist terminology) and can be transmuted into their opposites: nonattachment, compassion and wisdom.

But Tatiana unreasonably expects the Builders to return and liberate everyone. We liberate ourselves. 

Rumours On The Wind

The Day Of Their Return, 7.

Tatiana Thane looks to what she calls the transcendental, not the supernatural, and claims that her Cosmenosis is a philosophy, not a religion. These are words. In fact, with no evidence, she expects the Builders to return and heeds the rumours of a forerunner even though such rumours are, as she acknowledges:

"'...forever driftin' in on desert wind...'" (p. 130)

Of course that wind plays its role!

I would advise Tatiana: continue to practice science and meditation and don't listen to rumours! Consider what you know scientifically about the Builders/Elders/Ancients/Forerunners and their artefacts and go no further than that unless and until you find new evidence as Axor tries to do. He hopes to confirm an explicitly religious belief but Flandry is right to fund his research. Who knows what will turn up? I know the answer to that question: something completely unexpected.

Today is Sunday. Attend church and/or worship/contemplate in the temple of earth and sky.

Wind In Gotham City

Sometimes late at night, I want to add once last post for the day but don't want to have to do any complicated reading first. I am really going out on a limb with this one but I can't help it. Poul Anderson's texts really have sensitized me to the wind as a sound effect, as punctuating or underlining the dialogue, as commenting on the action, as pathetic fallacy, sometimes almost as an additional dramatic character. But this means that I notice the wind in other authors' works probably even where it has no significance whatsoever. Thus, the plant elemental, the Swamp Thing, has greened Gotham City. The streets are full of trees with normal life at a standstill:

"I listen...to a city that has not known silence...since the coming of the automobile...

"The cars are dead now...and wind strums the high branches."

-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing: Earth To Earth (New York, 2002), p. 24, panel 5.

Yes. Wind strumming the high branches expresses and symbolizes the guardian of the environment triumphing over urban civilization!

(I would not have thought that without Poul Anderson.)

Alright. That's it. Normal service will be resumed tomoz or soon.

Places In Time

Places That Are Realized In Two Time Travel Works

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series

Everard's apartment

The Time Patrol Academy

The Pleistocene lodge

In Anderson's There Will Be Time

Senlac

The Havig group's main base

Manse Everard is often shown in his apartment. He is trained in the Academy in "Time Patrol" and attends an emergency meeting there in "Delenda Est." Wanda Tamberly is trained there in The Shield Of Time. Everard vacations at the lodge with Piet Van Sarawak in "Delenda Est" and with Wanda in The Shield...

Senlac, Jack Havig's home town, is realized in detail whereas his time travel base, although I have listed it here, is really only described telegrammically despite its being the main equivalent of the Academy in a different timeline. There Will Be Time is a thin and terse novel whereas the same narrative could have been presented and elaborated in a much longer volume.

Fictional Universes II

Fictional universes contain not only persons but also places that take on a life of their own. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Virgilian System includes the planets, Dido and Aeneas. The latter, lighter and dryer than Earth, kind of like a Mars with a breathable atmosphere, would have been more suitable for colonization by the nearby Ythrians. However, human scientists, wanting to study the tripartite inhabitants of the even less hospitable Dido, established a base, which became a University, on Aeneas. The Rebel Worlds, set mainly on Dido, has one chapter set on Aeneas. Its sequel, The Day Of Their Return, is, except for a single early flashback, set entirely on the surface of Aeneas. 

Hermes, important as the home planet both of David Falkayn and of Sandra Tamarin, remains off-stage until it becomes a major setting in Mirkheim and is again visited in A Stone In Heaven.

Avalon, is shown at four different stages of development in three short stories and one novel. Its notable locations include the Weathermother mountain range and the cities of Gray and Centauri, the latter containing Livewell Street named after a local flower.

Dennitza appears only in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where, however, it imparts a real sense of place to the Kazan, the Obala and Zorkagrad.

Returning again to another author in another medium and genre, Alan Moore fully exploits the connotations and implications of the familiar place name, "Gotham City," before bringing on stage its most notorious inhabitant.

Fictional Universes

Readers like to immerse themselves in fictional universes. I need hardly cite examples. An author who immerses himself in such a universe, whether his own or someone else's, can utilize it as a background to create new kinds of stories about new characters. Asked to contribute to a few juvenile anthologies, Poul Anderson took the opportunity to write short stories about the colonization of Avalon, with David Falkayn referred to only as the grandfather of the viewpoint character, Nat.

Anderson also familiarized himself enough with several other sf universes to be able to write stories set in those universes as summarized in the combox here. These included Asimov's Robots series. Anderson's story, "Plato's Cave," features the regular US Robots troubleshooters, Powell and Donovan, and also refers to Stephen Byerley who was running for Mayor somewhere in another story at that time - an excellent use of existing material.

These observations are occasioned by my appreciation of Alan Moore's transformations of multiple DC Comics characters, some universally known, others obscure, in his Swamp Thing series to which I will now return over a second mug of breakfast coffee. A normal Saturday in Lancaster stretches ahead.

New Instalments?

We will be able to read new instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History only if someone else writes them but this should be done either very well or not at all. I do not accept any later additions to Stieg Larsson's Millennium series - which have not been based on whatever unfinished manuscript was left by Larsson. I do not even accept Robert Heinlein's later additions to his own Future History!

We fully accept that some kinds of fictional characters are written by multiple authors, e.g.:

Sexton Blake, 4000 stories by 200 authors in 5 media;

comic strip and TV characters.

Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller have been able to re-create comic book characters and to write substantial graphic novels about previously inconsequential heroes and villains. A writer with such skills would be able to make new additions to a future history series that is already consequential but this is unlikely to happen.

Meanwhile, we appreciate how much a single author was able to put into the Technic History.

Important Or Unimportant?

Are Earth and humanity important or unimportant on a cosmic or even just a galactic scale? Obviously they can be either or in some intermediate position. Sf in general and Poul Anderson in particular show us both. Anderson has a collection, The Gods Laughed, about superior aliens. On glancing through this volume just now, I had no recollection of having read "When Half-Gods Go." (That phrase, "Half Gods," is hyphenated on the opening page of the story although not on the contents page of the book.)

Here is an intermediate position. Aycharaych, when it has not yet been disclosed that he himself is of the species known as "the Ancients," admires human variety:

"'Your versatility approaches miracle.'"

-The Day Of Their Return, 3, p. 90.

Some aliens in some sf say this but surely any intelligent species would have to be versatile? Intelligence is versatility. Aycharaych is dishonest and is saying whatever will evoke the response that he wants to get from Chunderban Desai who thanks him but adds:

"'I don't believe, myself, we are unique. It merely happened we were the first into space - in our immediate volume and point in history - and our dominant civilization of the time happened to be dynamically expansive. So we spread into many different environments, often isolated, and underwent cultural radiation...or fragmentation.'" (ibid.)

That would explain the "'...wonderful variety...'" (ibid.) that Aycharaych claims to have found while travelling through the Terran Empire.

What is the probable reality in our universe? Brian Cox has persuaded me that even multicellular organisms might be rare. We already know that consciousness, manipulation, intelligence, civilization, technology, space technology and lasting civilizations with all of these attributes might be rare. What does that leave us with? Our uniqueness? Or spacefaring civilizations so few and so far apart in space and time that they never even detect each others' existence let alone communicate or meet physically?

In either of those two scenarios, we are very important indeed. It is our responsibility to survive, to develop and to make contact if that is remotely possible. (Meanwhile, there remains a continued motivation to destroy what has already been built.)

In the universe of Anderson's Technic History:

"We are one more-or-less intelligent species in a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."

-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.

Even in that scenario, every single species and every single sophont would have immense value and significance although less obviously so.