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.

Places On Planets

We are now living in the projected future of Global Warming. There is a heat wave and trains have been cancelled. On the assumption that such cancellations will not still be in place a week hence, I will be in London Thursday to Sunday next week without a computer. Books ordered, including SM Stirling's second Roman time travel novel, are scheduled to arrive some time after that. I have eighteen years left to live according to a Romany palm reader - not that I believe that with absolute certainty (indeed, it could be disproved today) but nevertheless such people have more than once said things that turned out to be true.

When someone travels across a planetary surface, there are places that they visit and other places that they know of but do not visit. Poul Anderson's fictional planets are complex enough for this to be the case. High Commissioner Desai leaves Imperial House to visit the University of Virgil but unfortunately does not also visit the industrial Web - at least not while we are watching him, which is what matters here.

Ivar Frederiksen travels with tinerans, then Riverfolk, to the Orcans but does not visit the Highlanders although Tatiana Thane concocts a ruse to use the Highlanders as a decoy to mislead the authorities hunting for Ivar.

In The Game Of Empire, Diana Crowfeather and her companions, while on Daedalus, travel along the Highroad River from Aurea to the Cynthian village of Lulach but, because of a change of plan, do not also visit the Donarrian settlement of Ghundrung, instead flying directly to the island of Zacharia.

Like real places.

On Aeneas

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

Some ironies:

While High Commissioner Desai is interviewing Aycharaych, he must pause to check the relevant data received from Sector HQ in Catawrayannis on Llynathawr. Desai politely asks Aycharaych whether he minds waiting for a few minutes. Of course not! As we later realize, this short wait gives the telepathic spy an even longer opportunity to scan the High Commissioner's surface thoughts. Even more so when Desai then invites Aycharaych to an early lunch and an extended conversation... The Chereionite's personal magnetism and charm are insidious. However, longer term, Desai remains on his guard and makes enquiries. But, by that time, Aycharaych, agent of Merseia, has vanished into the Aenean wilderness.

Nova Roma at night:

in Desai's office, blackness relieved only by glowboards and shifting Creusan moonlight;

outside and above, stars, moons, Milky Way and three planets;

elven city;

radiant shadowy houses;

dark dappled streets;

mercury river and canal;

afar, a ghostly desert dust storm;

cutting keening wind.

Is Aeneas the most detailed colony planet in the Technic History?

Its inhabitants:

University scientists, scholars, students and support staff

Landfolk squires, yeomen and tenants

Townfolk guilds and corporations

Web manufacturers, merchants and managers

tinerans

Riverfolk

Orcans 

Highlanders

However, these are all human. Dennitza has zmayi/ychani (Merseians by species, not by loyalty) represented in a third House of Parliament whereas Avalon has Ythrians represented by choths existing alongside the Parliament of Man.

What a complicated universe.

Addendum: See An Unexpected Contradiction by Sean M. Brooks

Many Mariuses

Everyone has heard of Caesar. Everyone who has read Poul Anderson's Psychotechnc History has heard of Marius. The opening story of this future history series is entitled "Marius," its point being that the Roman Marius had been a great general but a disastrous politician. (I know that there are always opposing views of politicians! - but here I am going with what one of Anderson's characters tells us.) 

At one stage, Julius Caesar had to hide in a different place every night from the secret police of the dictator, Sulla, who, when he at last gave way to the eminent men who had pleaded Caesar's case, warned them:

"'There are many Mariuses in this fellow Caesar.'"

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 1.

As another point of interest, one woman, Julia, was the wife of Marius and an aunt of Caesar.

While we live, we learn.

Aycharaych And Axor

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

Aycharaych knows of the Chinese Taiping Rebellion and tells Desai:

"'The leaders were inspired by a militant form of Christianity - scarcely what Jesus had in mind, no?'" (p. 92)

We receive various data later in this novel, then in later novels:

Aycharych is a Chereionite;

the Chereionites were the Ancients;

Fr Axor will seek for evidence of the Universal Incarnation among inscriptions of the Ancients;

Aycharaych is probably killed when Flandry orders the bombardment of Chereion - but not necessarily;

if Aycharaych survives, then he will no longer have any reason to work for the Merseians and might even work against them;

Axor might stay in touch with the Terran Intelligence agent, Targovi.

And a speculative outcome of all that - Axor and Aycharaych meet and together research the Ancients, starting with whatever Aycharaych remembers of the immense base of knowledge that he had had (and that Flandry destroyed) on Chereion.

Desai Interacts With An AI And And An Alien

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

"'Send him in, please.' (By extending verbal courtesy even to a subunit of a computer, the High Commissioner helped maintain an amicable atmosphere. Perhaps.)" (p. 88)

I think that it was Kevin in the Gregson the other night who said that internet companies want users now not to waste time or energy on politeness to AI's. We really have come a long way technologically.

Desai asks for the alien, Aycharaych, to be sent in without the slightest idea of what he looks like and catches his breath when he sees him. Not to be xenophobic or anything but would you be happy to have an alien coming in without knowing what to expect? Of course, human beings have had a lot of contact with a lot of different kinds of aliens by Desai's time. But still.

The receptionist computer is programmed to mimic languages instantly and accurately which:

"...gratified visitors, especially nonhumans." (ibid.)

- although we can rely on Aycharaych not to give a damn. (Except that this is our first sight of him if we are reading the Technic History in chronological order.) 

Tempora Mutantur

It means "Times change."

I remember my father's widowed mother and her sister and brother-in-law, then contemplate my daughter and granddaughter. The change in beliefs, values and life-styles is complete. Five generations. To my parents and grandparents, the difference between Catholic and Protestant was enormously important. My daughter has always understood that she lives among Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and secularists.

Fran once reflected, "The people with whom I do not speak the same language! Like my mother to whom it matters enormously whether I am a Catholic or a Protestant... And I am either a Catholic or a Protestant... or else an atheist... or else something very strange!" (I did not think that Fran was going to pop up here but he sure helps.)

Science fiction future histories and time travel stories should show such social changes and Poul Anderson does in the generation gap between Nicholas van Rijn and Coya Conyon and in a future doctor's comments on Carl Farness' sexual mores.

Anderson does it.

Details On Aeneas

Extrasolar terrestroid planets colonized by human beings in Poul Anderson's Technic History - there are a few:

Hermes

Avalon

Dennitza

Aeneas

Nyanza

Altai

Unan Besar

Vixen

Imhotep

Daedalus

Some are realized in minute detail. Frex, in Nova Roma on Aeneas:

"...the gray ashlars bore a veneer of carefully chosen and integrated slabs, marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite, materials more exotic than that; and often there were carvings besides, friezes, armorial bearings, grotesques; and erosion had mellowed it all, to make the old part of town one subtle harmony."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 3, p. 87.

There is much more - statues and plants among fishponds and fountains in vitryl-roofed courts, cramped and twisted streets where countryfolk ride horses or stathas - but I don't want to quote lengthy paragraphs. As I always say, read Anderson.

Buffer Zone

Any future history series has an indefinite number of potential spin-off series. Star Trek has become a future history because it covers more than one generation. Years ago, in Waterstones Bookshop, I came across a paperback novel, title and author's name long forgotten, which was the opening volume of a series about a Klingon Bird of Prey Commander. Does anyone know whether this Bird of Prey still flies?

One sentence in Poul Anderson's Technic History suggests a comparable spin-off:

"Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 82.

OK. A Terran Navy special forces team works in the buffer zone where it explores, establishes advance bases, covertly contacts any natives that have not yet been contacted by Merseia and spies on any that have been. The Merseians maintain a similar force, not necessarily all of their own species, although we know that they have no Chereionites to spare.

What would it be like for intelligent species to live in such a zone? Such a series could have legs.

Two More From Suetonius

We can get used to reading history in parallel with historical fiction.

"Some of Domitian's campaigns, that against the Chatti for instance, were quite unjustified by military necessity; but not so that against the Sarmatians, who had massacred a legion and killed its commander."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 299.

This is the kind of remark that interests and amuses us when we have just read a novel like SM Stirling's To Turn The Tide whose characters include a Sarmatian former gladiatrix who is a skilled fighter and bodyguard.

"Only an amazing stroke of luck checked the rebellion which Lucius Antonius, the governor of Upper Germany, raised during Domitian's absence from Rome; the Rhine thawed in the nick of time, preventing the German barbarians in Antonius' pay for crossing the ice to join him, and the troops who remained loyal were able to disarm the rebels."

-ibid.

This supports the much-discussed "history is a series of accidents" theory. Sf readers imagine an alternative history in which the Rhine remained frozen and Lucius Antonius overthrew Domitian. This might also happen in the Time Patrol timeline:

time criminals could deploy a weather-control potential distributor from the Cold Centuries;

a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy could keep the Rhine frozen for longer.

This is another of those posts where I did not know in advance where I was going to wind up.

Comparing Empires

 

Poul Anderson's Terran Empire reminds us of both the British and the Roman Empires.

British when Flandry drawls:

"'Abominably poor manners, but that's policy for you, what?...

"'See here, d'you mind if I bore for a few ticks? Mean to say, I'd like to diagram the situation as I see it. You correct me where I'm wrong, fill in any gaps, that kind of thing, eh?'"

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 239-426 AT VII, p. 308.

- and when Lady Varvara asks Flandry:

"'Do you know what it's like, Captain, to associate with no one but an inferior class? It rubs off on you. Your soul gets greasy.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 303-339 AT II, p. 312.

Roman when Chunderban Desai is sent to take over as High Commissioner of a planet that has recently spearheaded a rebellion and where post-Imperial sentiment is increasingly transcendentalist with potential for a new religion to spread across known space.

More From Rome

This is indirectly relevant. We have discussed Romans in fiction by:

Poul Anderson

Neil Gaiman

L. Sprague de Camp

SM Stirling

Alan Moore 

Lew Wallace

In 1989, DC Comics refused to publish "Morning of the Magician" by Rick Veitch, a Swamp Thing story in which the time travelling title character meets Jesus who is a powerful white magician. This month, that story has been very belatedly published. Last night, at the Gregson, John the farmer lent me a copy. Among its surprises are the revelations, so to say, that the DC character, the Golden Gladiator, who claims to have been a galley slave in the Roman navy, was a customer of Mary Magdelene and was also the Roman captain who said, "...truly...this man was the Son of God."

Authors insert their fictional characters into historical events.

A Pivotal Technic History Story

I will shortly depart for the Gregson Institute.

If we read Poul Anderson's Technic History in chronological order of fictional events, then, by the time we reach "The Master Key," we know that Nicholas van Rijn has initiated his first trade pioneer crew led by David Falkayn although those characters are not mentioned here whereas other employees of van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors company are. This is the last Technic History instalment in which we see van Rijn unaccompanied by the members of that first trader team and it is also the last instalment before the no less than four instalments showing increasing problems for the Polesotechnic League:

Satan's World

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar"

Mirkheim

Reading history and historical fiction reminds us that we can also read sf future histories which, in some cases and to some extent, match the complexity of real history - or at least have fun trying.

Again Suetonius

We read Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars hoping to learn about the Northern revolt which was the background of Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea." However, Suetonius focuses on events that were significant to him or that he thought that his Roman readers needed to be informed about. We do learn - or at least I did - that, after the overthrow of Nero, the "four Emperors" in quick succession were Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian and that the fourth of these was succeeded by his two sons, first Titus, then Domitian. Thus, in this briefest possible summary, we have listed no less than seven of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." The first of the twelve is Julius who is not counted as an Emperor but was assassinated to prevent him from becoming something like one. 

"With Nero, the line of the Caesars became extinct."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 242.

Thereafter, "Caesar" continued not as a family name but as a title although the Romans do not seem to have differentiated names and titles the way we do.

This is all important background information for certain works of historical fiction and time travel fiction and makes us wonder how societal attitudes will differ in another two thousand years assuming that there is going to be any society in another two thousand years. Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" makes us feel what it would be like to be in the same room as a merchant prince of the Polesotechnic League. It is fitting to bow to him. And another man attends dinner bearing a much-used holstered blaster...

Endings And New Beginnings

To Turn The Tide.

The novel climaxes with vastatio (devastation) and slaughter to be followed, according to Marcus Aurelius, by:

"'Peace...'" 

-CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO, p. 439 -

- hopefully a permanent positive peace, not merely a post-vastatio wasteland.

The novel ends with the good news that, although an illness has arrived on schedule from the east, it is not measles but smallpox which can be and is being treated.

Nowhere to go but up? Or will there be unexpected obstacles in Volume II which is en route to me via eBay?

Artorius is a new Noah. The Biblical creation had been the separation of the waters above from the waters below and the moving aside of the waters below so that the dry land appeared. The Flood had been the undoing of that Creation. The withdrawal of the waters was the creation of a new Earth to be populated by Noah's, the new Adam's, descendants. Artorius and his team escape the destruction of an old Earth and remake their new Earth. A Biblical theme.

Into The Past

Two kinds of time travel fiction are very different from each other.

I can't help it. I do prefer time travel that is into a single immutable past. Anything else is not travel into our past, is it?

Three pure examples of this kind of narrative are:

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Of course, in a single immutable timeline, a time traveller can cause past events but there are greater subtleties than that. He can change the significance of past events. He can seem to have changed the course of events, then turn out not to have done. He can learn about an event, then experience it.

In There Will Be Time, the Eyrie recruits a handful of mutant time travellers, including Jack Havig and Boris, in Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion. Much later along his own world-line, Havig, now organizing an anti-Eyrie group, sends Boris to infiltrate the Eyrie by being recruited into it on the same day as his younger self. Neither the younger Havig nor his recruiters suspect the significance of Boris, sent to that time and place by the older Havig.

Niffenegger's Henry DeTamble knows that his ex killed herself on a particular date. Then he learns that it was his involuntary extratemporal arrival in her apartment that triggered her suicide. He asks her the date. He knows what she will do with the gun that she is wielding. He knows that she will not kill him. He avoids saying anything that will motivate her to shoot herself but she does that anyway - on the date on which she had done it.

Similar things happen in The Anubis Gates. Read them all!

Routine Time Travel?

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Artorius reflects:

"Time travel does odd things to your mind, too. Thank God it only happened to me once! If it was routine I'd go bughouse." (p. 402)

That has to be read as a comment on sf works where time travel does become routine and some of those are bughouse although not any of the ones that are discussed and recommended on this blog. 

James Blish thought that no author had yet done justice to the concept. He envisaged a novel about an entire society based on a finite-spinning-universe theory which apparently would (have) allow(ed) for time travel.

However, just a simple time travel premise like a small group being displaced to a specific date has endless possibilities. SM Stirling shows us what other authors had not thought of. Poul Anderson would have welcomed this antithesis to the Time Patrol project of holding time and history to a single course. And how will this new series develop?

Ben-Hur, Martin Padway And The Time Patrol

To Turn The Tide.

All literature is a conversation with earlier literature, sometimes explicitly:

"Everyone on a Roman naval ship was a free man and part of the military and would fight at need - Ben-Hur had gotten that drastically wrong. 

"Pity. Both movies were great otherwise, though the 2016 one was better..."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, p. 310.

(I have found an on-line list of five Ben Hur films.)

"That was another gift of Martin Padway. Though for some reason he hadn't known the actual formula for gunpowder, odd in an archaeologist, even a fictional one.

"Or maybe not, that book was written a century ago...well, nearly, 1938. Damn, but the English language is not intended for time travel, and Latin's even worse."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, p. 399.

And that concluding sentence might be an indirect reference to the Temporal language of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol. (Although, unfortunately, we do not read a single word of Temporal.)

Four words of Latin in another Anderson time travel work:

"'Es tu peregrinator temporis?'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), VI, p. 62.

DMZ And M7

 

In 49 AD, Manse Everard and Janne Floris of the Time Patrol:

"...had established themselves farther north, in the uninhabited stretch - the American called it the DMZ - between Langobardian and Chaucian territory."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 11, pp. 562-563.

When Artorius compares their surroundings to a DMZ, Filipa looks puzzled:

"...showing that she hadn't actually been born in Korea."

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE, p. 371.

He explains:

"'Demilitarized zone. Buffer territory. The German tribes keep an unpopulated area around their core lands, nice and natural for hunting...and hunting each other, and hiding raiding parties to keep life on the farm from getting dull.'" (ibid.)

When, having penetrated the buffer zone, Artorius ambushes a band of barbarians by using a crossbow, he thinks:

"This is where an M7 would have come in really handy and Fuchs was a fool..." (p. 376)

"I could have finished off all the ones we don't want to take alive nice and quick and safe with one magazine of six--point-eight." (ibid.)

Why did Fuchs not pack M7's? He could not get hold of them? He did not want to take anything that destructive? The author wanted to see how much could be achieved using Type A technology alone?

Identifying

I do not spend much time identifying with fictional characters but which ones might I identify with?

Of Nicholas van Rijn's trade pioneer crew, neither David Falkayn nor Chee Lan but maybe Adzel because of his meditation and studiousness.

Of James Blish's magicians: none. (A book with nothing but villains!) 

Of Alan Moore's Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan.

Of Neil Gaiman's Endless: Destiny.

Of SM Stirling's five American time travellers, Mark, who says:

"'I'm really not good at the nonverbal stuff, you know.'"

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 337.

Paula, who has been dropping hints, has to spell out that, when she suggests going to bed, she means together - a woman who realizes the need to take the initiative.

(We are just about to go to our daughter's place for Fathers' Day.)

A Sound Policy

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Marcus Aurelius agrees with Artorius that toleration of all forms of worship that do not upset the public order is a sound policy but thinks that there will still be problems with Christians because they refuse to participate in sacrifices to the Emperor and Rome. Artorius replies that, as with the Jews, Christians could be permitted to pray for the Emperor. He also clarifies that Christian rituals are not cannibalistic feasts and explains them in a way that reminds the Emperor of Orphic beliefs and Eleusinian Mysteries. Men seeking the Infinite:

"'...find common aspects of it.'" (p. 289)

Persecution of Christians might be halted and persecution by Christians prevented. How symbolic is it that a Jew named Josephus has sponsored Artorius? Also, how symbolic is the name "Arthur"?

(Marcus Aurelius in this novel, like Augustus and Lycius in Neil Gaiman's "August," is an Initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries.)

Artorius seems to be individually wise because he is able to encapsulate the wisdom of subsequent centuries and millennia.

Marcus Aurelius

To Turn The Tide.

Temporal displacement involves place name change. "Vienna, Austria" had been and becomes again "Provincia Pannonia Superior, Imperium Romanum."

Artorius' first meeting with Emperor Marcus Aurelius gets a massive buildup. In CHAPTER FIFTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius while still in Rome. In CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius after he has travelled to Vindobona in the Province of Pannona Superior. In CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, Artorius reflects that he is about to meet someone whose life and death he has studied and whose books he has read, then does meet him. The Emperor closely resembles his own face on coins and statues. Artorius quotes a book that Marcus Aurelius has not written yet and presumably will not write, or not in the same way, in this new timeline. 

This has to be a classic of time travel fiction.

(It was fortunate not only that the merchant Josephus who found the newly arrived and defenceless time travellers did not kill and rob them but instead helped them and treated them with respect but even that they had arrived near a road where they could be and were discovered immediately. However, my friend Andrea informs me that it is inappropriate either to entreat or to thank Fortuna.)

West Of Hibernia

The Turn Of The Tide.

The barbarians use the swine-array which we have seen before.

Irish people that I have known would be amused by this description of their country:

"Hibernia was a proverb for squalor and backward savagery, full of chanting robed Druids making human sacrifices and tattooed, head-hunting lunatics with lime-bleached hair, still driving war chariots to battle." (p. 220)

(Elsewhere and longer ago, Krishna was Arjuna's charioteer at the Battle of Kurukshetra where He spoke the Bhagavad Gita.)

Artorius is from a country:

"'...west even of Hibernia; they call it America.'" (ibid.)

West and in one other direction. The future is another country.

Marcus Aurelius, Galen And Artorius

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

We take for granted what writers of fiction do. They have had to learn how much can be done with written words.

At the end of CHAPTER FOURTEEN, a legate tells Artorius (time traveller):

"'The Emperor in Rome shall hear of you service to the State.'" (p. 213)

From its opening sentence, CHAPTER FIFTEEN is narrated from the point of view of Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus in Rome. (Names of earlier Emperors are confusingly used as a mixture of titles and additional names.)

The Emperor receives reports about Artorius and converses with Galen who has corresponded with Artorius.

They are impressed by Artorius' mixture of knowledge and modesty. He claims to know much that turns out to be true but also acknowledges that there is much that he does not know. The Emperor is impressed with Artorius' clever derivation of distillation from distillare! 

Marcus Aulerius and Galen deduce some of the structure of English from Artorius' written Latin: use of capital letters; spaces between words.

Artorius and his companions have strange powers but are prepared to use them for Rome and mankind. Marcus Aurelius will go to where Artorius is. The mountain will go to Muhammad.

Some Practical Implications

See Theorizing.

The base timeline cannot be changed.

There is no need for a Time Patrol to prevent causality violations in the base timeline.

In that timeline, one theory of "time travel" might be that it is an elaborate form of suicide and should therefore be discouraged or even prevented for that reason. However, once a time traveller has departed, nothing further can be done.

Of course we know that the first departures into the past coincided with the outbreak of a civilization-destroying nuclear war so maybe that is the end of the matter in any case?

Is there a cosmic evolutionary process whereby intelligence that is about to make itself extinct in one timeline creates and escapes into an alternative timeline?

Fly in the ointment: Fuchs, the inventor of the temporal displacement apparatus, has a real, not duplicate, dolabra (Roman soldier's entrenching tool). Has his apparatus reached into the past and extracted this tool? Or has someone travelled into the past and brought the tool with him on returning to the present? - thus upsetting my carefully constructed theory that all "time travel" is into an alternative timeline? Time travel is a very difficult concept to discuss consistently. 

Returning to my theory for the time being, if time travel is invented later in the alternative timeline, then that timeline becomes the base timeline for a second alternative timeline. And so on. 

Theorizing

To Turn The Tide.

We are trying to formulate a theory of time and time travel, nothing new but just enough to account for events recounted in this novel.

Base Timeline

There is a base timeline from which any and all time travellers disappear permanently.

Each moment (t0) is preceded by a single past but followed by one of many possible futures. Each subsequent moment (t1) actualizes only one possible future. Experience cannot be otherwise. If we experience the death of a friend, then we cannot simultaneously experience the survival of that friend. Mutually incompatible events cannot occur in a single timeline. But can there be multiple alternative timelines? Can t0 be followed by t1alpha, t1beta etc?

Alternative Timelines

Whether or not alternative timelines exist naturally, they do exist if there is time travel. Five Americans travel from June 25th, 2032 CE, to June 25th, 165 CE. Some moment (t0) on the latter date is followed not only by t1, history as we know it, but also by t1alpha, the arrival of the time travellers who have disappeared permanently from the base timeline. Their mere arrival changes the course of events, whether unnoticeably or globally. If they had been immediately killed for their valuable possessions and if that wealth had been merely squandered, then the change might have been unnoticed on a global scale. However, if they change the course of history, then the effects of their arrival are global.

That is all that we know about the theory. I think.