"The Shadows, Like Life..."

ADDENDUM: To read something new, see here and HERE.

AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
I am borrowing Ketlan's lap top because the second hand computer that I have been using has died and there will be a delay before it is replaced. Consequently, blog activity will become sporadic although hopefully will continue. Thank you for recent page views and comments.

I hope that recently I have inspired or revived in some blog readers an interest in future histories. I have been fascinated by this sf sub-genre for decades and it just gets better. Parts of the Man-Kzin Wars period of Larry Niven's Known Space future history are mini-histories within the longer history, as are the early Imperial and post-Imperial ages of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

Remember that Wells and Stapledon wrote future histories before Heinlein but did it differently and that Anderson, following Heinlein, made immense and unique contributions - but I have demonstrated this repeatedly.

I am continually reminded of the comprehensiveness of Sean M Brooks' contributions to this blog (see here) and hopefully these also will continue.

Futures Reassess Pasts

HG Wells wrote history and future history: An Outline Of History and The Shape Of Things To Come are almost companion titles.

Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men and Last Men In London are companion volumes. The first is a future history and the second is one Last Man's assessment of past history.

Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years combines historical sf with future history. As in James Blish's Cities In Flight, future history ceases to be generational when the characters become immortal but centuries continue to elapse nevertheless.

Anderson's Genesis summarizes past history before proceeding into a remote future. And that future restores primordial themes when a member of the new human race, perceiving artificial intelligences as gods and wizards, embarks on a Quest to help one AI against another. Meanwhile, the Terrestrial AI "emulates" (consciously simulates) historical periods and alternative histories.

Anderson's complete works include many historical fictions and fictional futures and several alternative histories.

According to Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's "The Asteroid Queen," Marx, Charlemagne, Hitler and Brennan (the Belter who became a protector) were all members of the same ancient, secret, world-controlling Brotherhood. Not in our timeline! And maybe not in the Known Space timeline either? The Brotherhood suppresses knowledge and propagates:

"...slanted versions of past, present, and future." (Man-Kzin Wars V, p. 26) -

- so maybe it lies to itself about its own past?

Sensory Descriptions

Currently, this blog contemplates multiple future histories of three kinds: Wellsian, Heinleinian and later Andersonian. See here. Future historical issues range from the ultimate fate of the universe to the details of military strategy. In Anderson's Technic History, Aeneans ambush Terrans whereas, during a Man-Kzin War, human guerillas ambush kzinti.

On Aeneas, the ambushers see many-colored leaves while their leader shivers, hears a rustling tree and flowing water and smells the faint odor of the native equivalent of grass. On Wunderland, the guerillas feel cold, see native squidgrass growing under imported roses and orange kzinti raaairtwo among green mutated alfalfa and smell the roses.

Thus, when presenting the viewpoints of individual conscious beings, Anderson and Pournelle & Stirling sustain the literary technique of appealing to at least three of the senses. At the opposite end of the spectrum of future historical writing, Stapledon summarizes historical eras in a few sentences and Anderson recounts millions of years of Solar history on a single page. See here.

Kinds Of Fictitious Histories

We might make a fourfold distinction:

Heinleinian and early Andersonian future histories;
later Andersonian future histories;
Wellsian and Stapledonian future histories;
Stapledonian cosmic history.

This list is conceptual, not chronological. 

The basic distinction is that a Wellsian/Stapledonian future history is:

(i) not a series but a single work;

(ii) not a novel with characters and conversations but a fictitious historical text book.

Thus, we read about the Norman Conquest in a History of England and about Martian invasions of Earth not only in a novel by Wells but also in a future history by Stapledon.

Stapledon's future history covers not just a historical period but the entire future of humanity while his Star Maker summarizes the evolution of consciousness in the cosmos. What has this to do with Poul Anderson? Quite a lot:

Anderson modeled his first future history on Heinlein's;
Anderson's second future history grew into the Heinlein model without pre-planning;
Anderson's last two future histories are respectively a tetralogy and a novel - thus, neither is a series of shorter works;
Anderson's last future history synthesizes Heinleinian future history with Stapledonian cosmic history because some of its chapters are set in future periods whereas others describe cosmological processes. 

Seeing Far

Who wrote this?

A time traveler visits the far future;
men traverse interplanetary space;
Martians invade Earth;
there will be wars and revolutions;
an alternative history unfolds on a parallel Earth.

I have just summarized five major sf works by HG Wells - and also by Poul Anderson.

Moving on from Wells:

Stapledon gave us cosmic sf;

Capek gave us robots;

de Camp gave us a time traveler changing history;

Heinlein gave us a future history series, a generation ship, science fictional treatment of immortality, juvenile sf, elaborate circular causality and magic as technology;

Asimov gave us robotics and a predictive science of society;

Anderson developed all of these themes.

The blog has entered territory where we are comparing future histories, including several by Anderson, and assessing collaborative future histories. Thus:

Niven created a future history series that includes a period of wars between men and kzinti;
Pournalle and Stirling wrote stories set in this period;
Anderson wrote sequels to Pournelle's and Stirling's Man-Kzin Wars stories.

We have come a long way from Wells' Martians invading Earth but are clearly in the same literary tradition. We find Anderson seeing far because he stands on the shoulders of:

Wells
Stapledon
Capek
de Camp
Heinlein
Asimov
Niven
Pournelle
Stirling -

- and we have not yet mentioned Mary Shelley, creator of science fiction and of the Frankenstein theme developed further by Capek, Asimov and Anderson.

Blog Rationale

(Can anyone explain this cover?)

I never know how many blog readers are regular or new so I do not know how often to explain the blog. The focus is Poul Anderson. However, this can involve discussing Anderson's relationships to his predecessors, contemporaries or successors. Sometimes several posts shift to one of those other authors although, so far, the focus has always returned to Anderson. Those predecessors etc are pretty impressive -

Predecessors
science fiction: Mary Shelley
artificial life: Mary Shelley
time travel: Twain, Wells, de Camp, Heinlein
future history: Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein
cosmic fiction: Stapledon
alien invasion: Wells, Heinlein
space travel: Wells, Verne, Heinlein
hard fantasy: Heinlein

Successors
future history: Niven, Pournelle
alternative history: SM Stirling

Having explained this, I will continue to mention Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye. Can anyone explain this Star Trek/Mote cover? I did not find an answer by googling.

In Mote, Imperial Space Navy regulations about alien contact define sentient beings as employing tools and communication in purposeful behavior but then state that an alien hive rat meets this definition yet is not sentient. Surely the regs just need to clarify "communication" as language, not mere signals? Hive insects signal to each other but do not converse about or discuss anything.

Future Histories Overview

Some future histories I am unfamiliar with and would welcome input:

Cordwainer Smith;
H Beam Piper;
Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The ones that I do know divide into four groups:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Aldiss
RC Churchill (not well known)

Campbell-edited
Heinlein
Asimov
Blish
Anderson

An American sequence (overlapping with "Campbell")
Heinlein
Anderson (2)
Niven
Pournelle

Anderson's later future histories
six or seven

The magnitude of Poul Anderson's contributions is evident from these lists.

Frankenstein And The Future

The sf question, propounded by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, is what might scientists do - today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and on into the future?

Frankenstein creates human life -

- as does a post-human AI in Poul Anderson's last future history, Genesis.

In Olaf Stapledon's future history, mankind biologically engineers subsequent human species for increased brain power, then to inhabit other planets.

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, mankind conquers nature, thus creating a paradisal environment in which industrial workers degenerate into the Morlocks and the leisured classes into the Eloi.

I gather that SM Stirling's Draka will change the species by enhancing themselves and reducing the faculties of their serfs - although I have yet to read that further future volume.

Thus, here is a definite continuity of theme from Shelley to Stirling.

Future Historians And Hell

CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is Lewis' reply to the British future historians, Wells and Stapledon, whereas his The Great Divorce is an imaginative account of Hell. The Trilogy and the ...Divorce are connected because Lewis as first person narrator knows Ransom and dreams the ...Divorce which refers, indirectly, to the Trilogy.

In Lewis' "The Dark Tower," Ransom, Lewis and others view the mysterious "Dark Tower" through a chronoscope. When they discuss whether the tower is in the past or the future, Ransom suggests that it might be in the future for any of them because he thinks that it is in hell. Thus, Lewis links the ideas of future history and of the hereafter as a "'...future life...'"
-CS Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), p. 166.

Here is a linear sequence of American future historians:

Robert Heinlein
James Blish
Poul Anderson
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle

- and here is a list of American sf writers who have presented imaginative accounts of Hell:

Heinlein
Blish
Anderson
Niven and Pournelle

I discuss Anderson's Hell here. I am informed that The Great Divorce influenced Niven and Pournelle so I will read their Escape From Hell with interest, having previously read their Inferno.

Boxed Sets

Two, three or at most four omnibus volumes might be packaged as a boxed set. I envisage:

Two-Volume Sets
Heinlein's Future History
Anderson's Psychotechnic History
Anderson's Time Patrol Series

Three-Volume Sets
Doyle's Holmes
Fleming's Bond
Anderson's Technic History Vols I-III

Four-Volume Sets
Blish's Major Works
Anderson's Technic History Vols IV-VII

James Blish's major works, each to be collected in one volume, are Cities In Flight, The Seedling Stars, the "Haertel Scholium" and After Such Knowledge.

This would be a convenient way to contemplate several comparable or connected works. The Bond series is structurally similar to the Holmes series which connects with the Time Patrol.

History is a major feature of these works. Every novel is set in a particular period. Bond is becoming as dated as Holmes. In the works listed here, Heinlein, Anderson and Blish present fictitious histories. Additionally, Anderson presents historical science fiction in the Time Patrol series and Blish presents historical fiction in Volume I of After Such Knowledge. Both Anderson and Blish wrote historical fiction. Blish's output is much smaller than Anderson's but his single historical novel, Doctor Mirabilis, focuses on Roger Bacon, the founder of scientific method, and thus is a conceptual prequel to Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel.

Other works are also relevant. CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is a partial precursor of After Such Knowledge and indeed could be collected in one volume with a few shorter works by Lewis: see here. Before Lewis and Blish were the major works of Stapledon and Wells which do not lend themselves as easily to omnibus collection although there was a one-volume edition of Stapledon's two Last Men novels.

The Future

Sf is often about the future and sometimes features characters learning about their futures:

the Time Traveler can describe human devolution and the end of life on Earth because he has traveled through time and returned;

The Shape Of Things To Come begins with a man dreaming that he is reading a history of the future;

in Stapledon's Last And First Men, a time traveler mentally influences the author who thinks that he is writing fiction and in fact distorts most of the future history that he receives;

Heinlein's Future History begins with the inventor of a machine that can accurately predict the date and time of anyone's death;

Asimov's Seldon and Anderson's Valti and Desai predict the futures of their civilizations;

Anderson's psychic time traveler, Jack Havig, describes the future periods of the Maurai Federation and the Star Masters to Anderson's relative...;

Anderson's Starfarers will build holontic time communicators;

Blish's Dirac transmitter receives messages from the future;

Herbert's users of the drug, melange, exercise prescience -

- a substantial list with Wells appearing twice and Anderson four times.

Happy Christmas, page viewers, and thank you for so far 225 page views on Christmas Day.

Remember Wells

The Great War was renamed the First World War when there had been a Second. The Third World War is a concept and a possibility though not yet history. HG Wells predicted the Great War and called it The War in The Air. This novel is narrated from the perspective of a later scientifically based peaceful world civilization, a perspective that is echoed in Sandra Miesel's Foreword to Poul Anderson's The Psychotechnic League:

"From the standpoint of our mature integrated culture, World War III was a painful childhood illness of our race."
-Sandra Miesel, Foreword IN Poul Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York, 1981), pp. 10-11 AT p, 10.

Miesel's Foreword also echoes the Time Chart of Robert Heinlein's Future History, which culminates in:

"...the end of human adolescence, and beginning of first mature culture."
-Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), pp. 6-7 AT p. 7.

Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come outlines the emergence of a scientifically based peaceful world civilization.

In his Author's Note to The Psychotechnic League, Anderson cites Heinlein and Olaf Stapledon as earlier future historians. Wells preceded both:

Stapledon combines the Wellsian themes of space travel, time travel, Martian invasion and future history in a single volume;

Heinlein has the same four themes in separate works - if we change "Martian invasion" to "alien invasion," - including three "first men in the moon" stories;

 the title character of the title story of The Man Who Sold The Moon somewhere mentions having read Wells, Verne and Smith;

the suspended animation company in Heinlein's The Door Into Summer distributes Wells' The Sleeper Wakes as promotional literature.

Anderson indirectly acknowledges Wells in There Will Be Time - and even less overtly in "Time Patrol" by sending Manse Everard to the year of publication of The Time Machine. I recently discussed references to communism in The Time Machine and Anderson's "The Sensitive Man."

"Remember Wells" is a continual refrain on this blog - but also appreciate Poul Anderson as a major successor.

The Stages Of The Time Journey

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288.

(i) Saunders and Hull easily jump from 1973 to 2073.

(ii) They laboriously struggle back decade by decade by half decade to 2008 but no further, while remaining within the pit that had been their underground workshop.

(iii) Saunders, accompanied at first by Hull but mostly by Belgotai, traverses an entire period of interplanetary conflict, then the entire rise and fall of the First Galactic Empire, then, by applying his imported time travel technology to space combat, helps to initiate the Second Empire.

(iv) Saunders alone travels around the circle of time, and between the end and beginning of the universe, back to 1973.

Saunders' "Flight Without End," after 50,000 AD, corresponds to the Time Traveler's "Further Vision," after 802,701 AD. Cosmic time as a circle is common to this mini-future history and to Olaf Stapledon's novel-length future history, Last And First Men.

The Future

What will the future be like? Meaningless question. How far into the future and starting from when? To my eleven year old self in 1960, we are now living in the future and I am doing one of the things that we imagined, not traveling to the Moon but communicating through a world wide computer network.

Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," published in 1950, begins in the future, 1973, when the gerontology is such that adults might survive for another hundred years. The setting is a rambling old house on a hill near some forested hills and a river above a village in New York State.

Martin Saunders, having twice tested the time projector - which uses vacuum tubes, not transistors -, found the house standing but with no one home in both 1953 and 1993. Saunders is the viewpoint character until Sam Hull and he depart in the time projector at which point we are told that Eve, watching the departure, turns to MacPherson: two stock characters, inventor and Saunders' girl friend. Saunders is a familiar Anderson hero, big and homely.

After a few minutes of swirling grayness seen through their single porthole, the two time travelers arrive in 2073, in a half-filled pit, the former basement. From the long grass at the top of the pit, Saunders sees the familiar landscape but with no village. So that is what the future looks like. As in Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men, a pedestrian beginning to a narrative that will soar through the future.

They return in ten year steps, looking for the small automatic time projectors that had failed to return:

2063 - rain in the pit;
2053 - sunlight;
2043 - rotting timbers;
2023 - charred stumps;
2013 - fire-blackened basement and tarnished automatics;
2008 - ruined basement; still no village.

They realize that, because of an unsuspected physical law similar to the light speed limitation, they will drain their batteries before they get back another ten years. Thus, wanting to travel from 2073 to 1973, they will reach say 2000 and no further.Their only hope is to seek help in the further future. Their aim changes from exploration to communication.

Wellsian And Stapledonian Anderson

In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time, an expedition from the far future travels to the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty in search of cultural inspiration. Similarly, I find inspiration among the blog posts of 2012 and 2013, which I currently revisit for "blog maintenance," a worthwhile and enjoyable but also time-consuming behind-the-scenes activity.

I find that I have referred to, but still have never read, The Infinite Voyage by Poul Anderson. See here. That volume has now been ordered. I have read slightly different accounts of its theme but will soon know.

An early work by Anderson that combines pulp absurdities with cosmic grandeur is "Flight to Forever," which is both Wellsian and Stapledonian, a claim often made on this blog. HG Wells introduced the idea of a scientist who invents a temporal vehicle, then sets off into the complete unknown of the future - tomorrow, the day after that and everything beyond them. The author is limited only by his imagination and by what he might extrapolate from history and from his contemporary period. After the introductory passages, the story could move in any direction. Different authors asked to extrapolate from the same opening section of a time travel story would create entirely dissimilar and unrelated narratives.

In "Flight to Forever," Martin Saunders and Sam Hull follow in the Time Traveler's footsteps, starting not from the author's "present" in 1950 but from his near future in 1973. Like the Time Traveler, Saunders returns at the end of the story to the day of his departure. However, like the narrator of Stapledon's Star Maker, Saunders has seen more than the future and end of life on Earth. He also been on a cosmic journey through time and space to the end of the universe. And, unlike Stapledon's narrator, he brings back the memory of a woman, Taury the Red. "Flight to Forever" ends with a sense of cosmic and personal completion.

Cosmic Perspectives

Olaf Stapledon was at home in realms that other writers do not know about:

the hypertime in which the Star Maker experiments with spatiotemporal creations;

universes composed only of sounds;

the conscious nebulae before they condensed into galaxies;

the galactic mind reviewing in one sentence the history of the Solar System, thus the entire contents of a previous volume;

the Solar System after orbits have been disrupted, planets have been destroyed and later human species have colonized Neptune -

- as was Poul Anderson, e.g., intergalactic space and a cosmic cycle.

In "In Memoriam," in the post-human future:

some octopodidae live longer and care for their young;
later, they work rock, shell, bone and coral with their tentacles;
their language is gestures and color changes;
they learn from their elders and experience;
they practice art and religious rituals;
confined to salt water, they remain in their Stone Age;
their cultures adapt to local conditions and stop innovating;
castes congeal and predetermine individual lives;
intelligence atrophies;
the species loses its ability to cope with environmental changes;
but it survives for twelve million years, much longer than humanity;
it is described in a single paragraph.

Looking Back

Does anyone reread this stuff? I forget what I have posted. Searching the blog for references to Olaf Stapledon, I have found:

"Another Stapledon," which explains why I think that Poul Anderson is a modern Olaf Stapledon;

Cosmic Histories, which lists and describes Stapledon's works, then summarizes the cosmic history of Anderson's "Pride" and Tau Zero;

Stapledon To Stirling, which locates Anderson at a stage intermediate between the classic Stapledon and the contemporary Stirling.

That third item also links to its immediately preceding post which discusses the bases of humanity and morality.

The blog could become endlessly self-referential although not vacuously circular like a cartoon that was circulated at work: woman seated at PC, man standing behind PC, both speaking into mobile phones. Man asks, "Did you receive my email?" Woman asks, "Would that have been the one about your text message?" In that case, the message has got lost among all the media whereas, in the case of the blog, I refer to very substantial works by Anderson, his predecessors and one current successor.

Literary Traditions

As in the previous post, I often list sf writers from Wells and Stapledon although, of course, sf began with Mary Shelley (see image) and several of Poul Anderson's literary antecedents were much earlier: the Bible; the Eddas and sagas; Shakespeare. Post-Shelleyan antecedents were Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. Post-Wellsian antecedents were L Sprague de Camp, John W Campbell, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. (I mention Asimov not because of any qualitative comparison but because Anderson's first future history has both a robot and a science of society while his second future history has the fall of an interstellar empire.)

These are powerful literary traditions. This blog celebrates Poul Anderson as Wellsian sf writer, successor of Stapledon and Heinlein, saga re-teller and myth-maker. More recently, the blog has also focused on SM Stirling as one worthy successor of Anderson. However, here is a question for blog readers. Which other contemporary sf writers not discussed here also make significant contributions to these traditions?

Future Histories And Time Travel

HG Wells' The Time Machine uses time travel to present a dystopian future whereas the same author's The Shape Of Things To Come uses a fictitious historical text book to present a utopian future. Thus, these two works remain distinct and separate whereas:

Olaf Stapledon's fictitious history, Last And First Men, culminates in the Neptunian Last Men who mentally time travel to earlier periods;

Robert Heinlein's Future History culminates in Lazarus Long who (unfortunately) physically time travels to the early twentieth century;

Isaac Asimov's incoherent time travel novel, The End Of Eternity, (unfortunately) connects with his Robots and Empire future history.

Although Poul Anderson's future history series, the History of Technic Civiliation, and his time travel series, the Time Patrol, remain distinct and separate, the same author's time travel novel, There Will Be Time, connects with his Maurai future history. As ever, Anderson explores both possibilities.

Although Larry Niven's Known Space future history contains one story that implies time travel, Niven develops the latter concept in other works, including his Svetz series. As yet, SM Stirling has written alternative, not future, histories, and therefore has written about alternative timelines, not about time travel.

Ultimates

When Brian Aldiss called Olaf Stapledon the ultimate science fiction writer, I agreed. In fact, I think that I had independently applied that phrase to Stapledon.

When James Blish described Poul Anderson's Tau Zero as an ultimate work of hard sf, he probably meant something like this:

first, the novel is based on the ingenious, although on reflection also obvious, hard sf premise of an uncontrollably accelerating relativistic spaceship;

secondly, the author reasons from this premise to a logical but also ultimate conclusion - the ship survives the universe.

If this is what Blish meant, then he was right. However, the book must also work as a novel. And it does, which is why, in the previous post (here), I described it as an ultimate narrative of human endurance.

It is good to connect Anderson to Stapledon with the appropriate term, "ultimate," as applied by Blish and Aldiss, respectively.

And now let me plug another blog by linking to an alternative meaning of the word, "Ultimates." Also, here and here.