Damned Ideologies

In his Afterword to "Eutopia," Poul Anderson quotes Robinson Jeffers:

"'Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.'"
-Poul Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), p. 141.

One meaning of "ideology" is a set of ideas that is generated by, then rationalizes, justifies and sanctifies, a status quo. Thus:

absolute monarchies generated the idea of the divine right of kings;

when James VI of Scotland became James I of England, thus uniting the kingdoms, he claimed to be restoring a lost Arthurian British unity, taking as his text Geoffrey of Monmouth's (unhistorical) History of the Kings of Britain;

the trans-Atlantic slave trade generated racism of skin color for the first time in history and with it came ideas of white superiority.

However, if by "ideologies," we mean simply theories of society, then we need them. In fact, we need several at this stage of history because we are in such disagreement. In politics as in science, theory guides practice but practice tests theory. We need not the practical instead of the theoretical but both of them and good theories instead of bad.

More On "Eutopia"

Continued from here.

"White Neathenai swept in grace and serenity down to the water."
-Poul Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), p. 139.

Does anyone know what "Neathenai" means?

Daimonax says of the Westfallers:

"'...they use nerves, glands, muscles more. So they know an aspect of being human which our careful world has denied itself.'" (ibid.)

However:

Eutopia has "...athletic fields..." (p. 115);
Iason himself is tall and broad and has been trained by Olympeion wreath winners.

So the Eutopians do already combine physicality with philosophy.

Of the Westfallers:

"'The family, the kingdom, the race is something to live and die for.'" (ibid.)

That is because these social units are still in dangerous conflict with each other. The human race can become something to live for, the only conflicts being with disease and with the recalcitrance of the physical environment that requires human action to satisfy human needs.

The History Of Westfall

Poul Anderson, "Eutopia" (see here).

The History Of Westfall
Arabs, Vikings and Magyars destroyed Christendom;
civil wars destroyed the Islamic Empire;
European barbarians developed undisturbed;
eventually, crossing the Atlantic but lacking the power to exterminate the natives, they instead came to terms with them;
lacking industry, they adapted to the forests, plains, deserts and mountains;
despite remaining divided into petty states, like Norland and Dakoty, the Westfallers have developed radio, gas engines, electric motors, aircraft and nuclear weapons;
several realms have built a lunar base and sent expeditions to Ares;
whereas the American timeline is an example of man gone wrong, the Westfallers have something to teach the complacent Eutopians who sacrifice their humanity to rationality.

Like Anderson's "Losers' Night," this is a story with a double surprise ending. See here. At the end of "Eutopia," we might be so shocked by the revelation in the last word that we forget the earlier realization that "'...Westfall is also the Good Land.'" (p. 137)

Eutopia, Westfall And America

Poul Anderson,"Eutopia" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp.112-141.

Cross-time traveler Iason Philippou:

lives on a continent called "Eutopia";

is currently visiting a timeline where that continent is called "Westfall";

remembers visiting yet another timeline where it was called "America."

A region that is preserved as a wilderness for hunting on Westfall is, on Eutopia, groves, gardens, aesthetically designed villages and athletic fields. Because dielectric motors have not yet spread this far north on Westfall, Iason smells gasoline fumes and:

"He had thought that stench one of the worst abominations in America - that hogpen they called Los Angeles!..." (p. 118)

We are still rereading SM Stirling's Conquistador in which New Virginians unfavorably compare FirstSide, including LA, with their own unpolluted North American environment.

Iason mentally reviews the history of the American timeline:

Alexander the Great died from the fever that he had contracted in Babylon;

wars of succession destroyed his empire;

"Hellas and the Orient broke apart" (p. 125);

early science degenerated into metaphysics, then mysticism;

cold, cruel, uncreative Romans, claiming the Greek heritage while destroying Corinth, took over;

men despairing of life adopted a mystery cult founded by a heretical Jewish prophet;

this intolerant cult denied all but one way of seeing the God;

its priests cut down the holy groves, destroyed idols, martyred free men and kept their grip for nearly two thousand years;

after that, it became possible for science to be reborn;

however, the idea of conformity in belief remained;

hence, totalitarianism and the threat of nuclear war;

that history is filthy, wasteful, ugly, restricted, hypocritical and insane;

pretending to be an American was Iason's hardest task.

The Laws Of Cultures

The interpreted past meets the imagined future (see here) when Chunderban Desai exhaustively analyzes Terrestrial history. However:

"'...we don't have the knowledge to say how far [the historical pattern] may apply to nonhumans, if at all,' Desai admitted."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 390.

But he intends to find out. When Flandry questions whether the Merseians are also decadent, Desai asks:

"'...what is decadence to a nonhuman?'" (ibid.)

I think that the Merseian resolve begins to weaken shortly afterwards when the Magnusson Rebellion fails. Tachwyr's rationalization:

"'By adversity, the God tempers the steel of the Race. Let us get on with our quest.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 447 -

- rings hollow.

By contrast with Desai, the Vro-Hi in "Flight to Forever," having advised the First Galactic Empire of many intelligent species on a billion planets, has learned "...the great laws in the rise and fall of cultures..." -Past Times (New York, 1984), p. 262.

If transported to the History of Technic Civilization, the Vro-Hi would be able to assess Terra, Merseia, Ythri etc - unless "...the great laws..." differ between timelines? But I doubt it.

A Terrestrial Religion

"We see a resurgent Islam and wonder how to deal with it - and start by witlessly taking for granted that the proper article is 'a,' that there is just one Muslim world and they're all a bunch of Arabs."
-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT pp. 193-194.

No religion is a single group with a single purpose throughout history. Religious institutions survive social changes by changing their base of support. Thus, in different historical periods, mosques and imams have been funded by:

Arabian traders;
imperial bureaucrats, landowners and merchants;
and modern industrialists -

- while meanwhile offering consolation to the poor and oppressed.

Popular Islam has incorporated older religious practices like cults of saints or relics regarded as idolatrous by the orthodox;

Sufis emphasize mystical and magical experiences rejected by fundamentalists;

Khomeini denounced 1,300 years of Muslim history, claiming that true Islam had lasted for only a brief period after its inception.

Appropriately, in Past Times, "The Discovery of the Past" immediately precedes "Flight to Forever" - from the interpreted past to the imagined future.

An Opening Paragraph

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

How does an opening paragraph set the tone for the ensuing narrative? Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" could have begun, "It was raining..." Instead, we read:

"That morning it rained..." (p. 207)

What morning? We do not know yet but this phraseology sufficiently alerts us that something important is about to happen. This is not just any morning. The opening paragraph continues:

"...a fine, summery mist blowing over the hills and hiding the gleam of the river and the village beyond." (ibid.)

Not a storm, then. But it might be the quiet before a storm? We begin to be informed about the protagonists' physical surroundings. The paragraph continues:

"Martin Saunders stood in the doorway letting the cool, wet air blow in his face..." (ibid.)

We get the viewpoint character's name and more information about his surroundings. He is in a building overlooking the river and village.

"...and wondered what the weather would be like a hundred years from now." (ibid.)

Why does he wonder that? Not only about future weather but also specifically a hundred years hence? This is our first indication in the text that he is about to time travel. The title at the head of the page is "Flight to Forever." And I have not yet mentioned that, between the title and the opening sentence, we read:

"CHAPTER ONE

"No Return"

So there is "...a fine, summery mist..." but also a sense of impending doom...

The Second Empire

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

The Dreamer vibrates:

"'...I was working further on the philosophical basis which the Second Empire must have.'" (p. 260)

So far in our history, Empires have come first, philosophical rationalizations second. But what might an advanced race be able to do? What happened with the First Empire and how must the Second differ? Saunders, from his experience of time traveling, remarks that golden ages have "'...death in them...'" and adds, "'To travel hopefully...is better than to arrive.'" (p. 261)

The Dreamer at least partly agrees:

"'That has been true in all past ages, aye.'" (ibid.)

So it might be possible to make it different in the coming age? The Dreamer continues:

"'It was the great mistake of the Vro-Hi. We should have known better, with ten million years of civilization behind us...But we thought that since we had achieved a static physical state in which the new frontiers and challenges lay within our own minds, all beings at all levels of evolution could and should have developed in them the same ideal.'" (pp. 261-262)

Come off it, Dreamer. At least four problems here:

(i) Nothing physical is static. Therefore, "...a static physical state..." is a contradiction.
(ii) There are frontiers within the mind but there will always also be frontiers in the exploration of the physical universe.
(iii) By definition, beings at earlier levels of evolution are not at the same evolutionary level as the Vro-Hi!
(iv) If the Vro-Hi have achieved a particular state, then that state is for them a reality, not an ideal. It should not be regarded as an ideal for other beings who either have not achieved it yet or whose destiny might lie elsewhere.

He continues:

"'With our help, and with the use of scientific psychodynamics and the great cybernetic engines, the coordination of a billion planets became possible.'" (p. 262)

OK. But how much coordination is desirable on that scale? Each planet, or maybe planetary system, should be self-sufficient and any interaction between them should be free - thus uncoordinated?

"'It was perfection, in a way - but perfection is death to imperfect beings...'" (ibid.)

This requires elucidation but surely it is obvious that any "coordination" of beings has to be based on an understanding of them, thus of their imperfections, not on the imposition of a "perfection" that, with the benefit of hindsight, is described as "death"? Maybe this is how the Second Empire will differ?

"'...and even the Vro-Hi had many shortcomings. I cannot explain all the philosophy to you; it involves concepts you could not fully grasp, but you have seen the workings of the great laws in the rise and fall of cultures. I have proved rigorously that permanence is a self-contradictory concept. There can be no goal to reach, ever.'" (ibid.)

There are many goals to reach, just not permanent ones: universal education, literacy, health, wealth, peace, freedom, continued scientific research and artistic creation. Of the First Empire, we are told that:

"...corruption and civil war tore it apart from the inside..." (p. 247)

What? We can certainly make it a goal to build a society free from corruption and from civil conflict. We do not fight for the air we breathe, but would if we were down to the last oxygen cylinder in a space station. Similarly, we would not have to fight for wealth if technology made it abundant or for power if all were empowered.

A Spatial Inconsistency?

(Warren St, Hudson, New York)

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

We are used to finding temporal inconsistencies in time travel stories. At least, I am. Some people don't notice, then argue that it doesn't matter. Have I found a spatial inconsistency?

The house in 1973 is on a hill which is not miles high. When the time projector stops in 50,000 AD, Brontothor is "...a few miles off..." (p. 249) Later in 50,000 AD, the projector is moved - I thought into Brontothor. Yet, when it returns to 1973, it is half way up the hill, not several miles away. In 50,000 AD, it had been "...left...standing in a shed..." (p. 276), so was I mistaken to think that the shed was within the walls of Brontothor?

In some of the time travel stories collected in Past Times, Poul Anderson places limitations or restrictions on time travel. These have the welcome effect of counteracting paradoxes - but then he finds ways around the restrictions. In "Flight to Forever," a temporal vehicle can easily go forward but can only move about seventy years pastward. But a time traveler could try to change events within that seventy year period. Saunders could try to prevent the death of his friend, Sam Hull. Also, it becomes possible to access any period of the past by moving forward around the circle of time. The beings whom Saunders calls "The gods..." (p. 287) act like Danellians, intervening to prevent any human meddling in the past.

The Old Comradeship Of Brontothor

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

First, Anderson makes us aware of Brontothor as a place:

"A gray stone mass dominated the landscape. It stood enormous a few miles off, its black walls sprawling over incredible acres, its massive crenellated towers reaching gauntly into the sky. And it lay half in ruin, torn and tumbled stone distorted by energies that once made rock run molten, blurred by uncounted millennia of weather - old." (p. 249)

So it is gray, of stone, massive, dominating, enormous, black, sprawling, unbelievably big, with battlements, gaunt, half ruined, weather-beaten, old. It is also described as grim, barbaric and monstrous in size with some towers half a mile high. Further, it is surrounded by wind, snow, rocky hills, pine trees, naked crags and ice. The structure looks dead but Belgotai sees a banner flying, then two aircraft rise from it.

Later in the narrative, Anderson writes:

"...the old comradeship of Brontothor was dissolving in the sudden fury of work and war and complexity which claimed them." (p. 273)

Since we are now invited to think of Brontothor not only as a place but also as a comradeship, we think back to the characters who met and made their plans there:

the time travelers, Saunders and Belgotai;
the Galactic Empress, Taury the Red;
Vargor Alfri, prince of the Empire;
half a dozen old men with long beards;
a centauroid;
Hunda of Haamigur, general of the Imperial armies;
a long-beaked avian from Klakkahar;
the Dreamer, last of the Vro-Hi, counsellor of the Empire.

Hunda is four-armed, tailed, fanged, yellow-eyed, blue-furred and naked except for a leather harness. The Dreamer is four feet high with stumpy legs and many seven-fingered hands, beaked, golden-eyed, telepathic and half a million years old.

A fine fellowship! And it would indeed be quite a feat to get such disparate beings to work together.

(Does Hunda sound like the First Officer of Flandry's first command?)

Time Wars

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

There are perhaps two "Time Wars" in "Flight to Forever."

(i) In the twenty third century, the Martian colonies revolted against the Terrestrial Directorate. A defeated Directorate army leaped to the twenty fourth century and attempted reconquest but was smashed.

(ii) In 50,000 AD, when the Anvardi attack Sol, the Imperial ship Vengeance travels three days back in time, calculates the exact position of the Anvardian flagship seventy two hours hence, travels to that position and rematerializes beside the flagship simultaneously bombarding it with vortex cannon, blasters, gravity snatchers, atomic shells and torpedoes etc while the rest of the Imperial fleet, only one tenth the size of its enemy, attacks the Anvardi fleet which then recoils and breaks up when assaulted from within and without.

These are low key affairs when compared with the time wars between:

Wardens and Rangers in The Corridors of Time;
Havig's group and the Eyrie in There Will Be Time;
the Patrol and the Exaltationists in the Time Patrol series.

I have seen an anthology called Time Wars including Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Delenda Est," (Patrol versus Neldorians) and have read references to a series called Time Wars created but not written by Poul Anderson. I would be grateful for any information on the latter.

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.

Ancient Futures

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

Much sf, including the works in question, presents almost a contradictory scenario. On the one hand, a technologically advanced civilization exists in the far future. On the other hand, it is an ancient civilization with an overwhelming sense of a long past. Thus, anyone who time travels into the far future arrives from a far past. The present, of course, is an entirely relative concept. I know that this is obvious but I am trying to articulate the contrasting connotations involved.

Also, with the mere passage of time, any work of futuristic fiction recedes to an earlier period and can become dated. Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," about all of the future, was published in 1950 in the Golden Age of pulp sf, a period that we look back to with nostalgia if we are old enough. I was one year old at the time. (A novel called 1984 was published in 1949, the year of my birth. "Flight to Forever" was collected in Past Times, published in 1984. I think that the paradoxical term "past futures" becomes relevant here.)

In 50,000 AD, the massive stone fortress of Brontothor, with its "...donjon..." (p. 252), exists in an Ice Age caused not by geology but by "...a weapon...which consumed atmospheric carbon dioxide." (p. 256)

Past and future blend together. The time travelers and their hosts confer in a room which:

"...had been made livable, hung with tapestries and carpeted with skins. Fluorotubes cast a white light over it, and a fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. Had it not been for the wind against the windows, they might have forgotten where they were." (pp. 254-255)

They should be able to forget when they are because this scene could have occurred in many past eras, especially the crackling fire. They are the remnant of an ancient and nearly dead empire - but it is the Galactic Empire and they are surrounded by consequences of interactions with extrasolar species:

there are non-humans among them;

the Ixchulhi had conquered Earth and built the massive pyramid inside which the time projector was trapped for twenty thousand years;

Brontothor was built seven thousand years previously by the Grimanni "...and blasted out of action a millennium later..." (p. 257);

the last, half million year old, member of "...the fantastically old and evolved race of the planet called Vro-Hi..." (p. 242) survives in the caverns and tunnels beneath Brontothor;

the hostile Anvardi are approaching the Solar System.

The perennial sf theme of a rising and falling interstellar empire is addressed and this time the Vro-Hian, applying "'...scientific psychodynamics...,'" has "'...proved rigorously that permanence is a self-contradictory concept.'" (p. 262)

Earlier, Saunders had reflected that human works were impermanent:

"...he thought with a sadness of the cities and civilizations he had seen rise and spend their little hour and sink back into the night and chaos of time." (p. 238)

The Vro-Hian confirms that this must always be so. But imagine the ability to travel through that night and chaos!

"Homo Sum"

"Homo sum" is Latin for "I am a man." (Two words instead of four: no article and an inflected verb, not requiring a pronoun.)

After quoting this Latin phrase, Poul Anderson rightly celebrates the diversity of humanity. He lists, and says that he can learn from:

a Navajo herdsman;
an Australian bushman;
a Yankee capitalist;
a European socialist;
a Confucian scholar;
an Islamic warrior -

- so diverse that they seem to be of different species!

I was reminded of this Andersonian list when I reread SM Stirling's account of three caravan guards from "...some very rough places indeed."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Fourteen, p. 248:

"...a thick-shouldered, bandy-legged Mongol with a quiver and recurved bow over his shoulder...";

"...a very black African with no tongue and hideous scars on his back...";

"...a man with tattooed cheeks and red hair who was of no race or tribe King could recognize and who carried what looked like a jointed iron flail." (ibid.)

Thus, Mongol, African and unrecognizable-despite-red-hair! I like that third guy. Stirling's shorter list of diverse human beings reminds us of what people do to each other (tongueless; scarred back) and to themselves (tattooed cheeks) and there is plenty of violent intent (bow and arrow; iron flail). We may add that these three serve a Jewish man who is loyal to the Angrezi Raj.

From Twain To Anderson

I found Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee implausible, tedious and unsatisfactory. However, any work by Twain is part of American and world literature and this work is a precursor of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. A Connecticut Yankee was of interest first because, despite its theme, it does not address the causality violation paradox (which even Wells merely hints at) and secondly because, as a pre-Wells text, it refers not to "time travel" but to "transposition of epochs."

The works that I think should be read before Time Patrol are:

A Connecticut Yankee;
The Time Machine;
Lest Darkness Fall by L Sprague de Camp;
Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore;
Anderson's own Past Times, preferably revised.

Anderson's contributions to time travel could be published in four volumes:

an omnibus edition of his three circular causality time travel novels;
a collection of his time travel short stories;
his Time Patrol series in two volumes.

"Welcome," about time dilation, and "Time Heals," about temporal stasis, should both be in Past Times because they present characters surviving into the future and are appropriate precursors to "Flight to Forever," which is about travel to and beyond the end of the universe.

I think that I once read in an anthology an Anderson short story about some kind of future hive consciousness which sends to the present an agent whose activities in the present have the unintended effect of preventing that hive consciousness from coming into existence but I cannot remember the title and am not even sure about that story being by Anderson. Even if it is, I do not think that it would quite fit in with what I perceive as the theme of a Past Times: Revised Edition.

The Freedom Of The Will

"'...we have free will. The fixed-time concept need not, logically, produce fatalism...man's will is itself one of the links in the causal chain.'"
- Poul Anderson, "Wildcat" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 7-57 AT p. 32.

I agree so far although, since the speaker is a chaplain, he and I would probably disagree if we discussed free will further.

Determinism is the belief that every event is caused. Fatalism is the belief that every human effort is futile. (Futilism?) I can only know whether my efforts are futile by making an effort and making an effort makes a difference. It may be that some people are caused to make an effort and that others are not but those who do make an effort do make a difference. Otherwise, we would not have a civilization.

Determinism and "...fixed-time..." are not necessarily identical. We explain an event in three ways. It is:

(i) caused, an effect of an earlier event;
(ii) uncaused or random;
(iii) a free act.

However, I suggest that "free" means "unconstrained" but not "uncaused." And, if a free act were uncaused, then it could be classified as random. Thus, (i) and (ii) are sufficient to explain all events, including free acts.

Transoco

HG Wells, the seminal sf writer, presents only one single solitary individual time traveler, the Time Traveler, who sets off into the future on his newly invented Time Machine. The title characters of Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early" and "The Little Monster" are also individual time travelers but each is propelled into the past by an accident.

However, the first accident is an extremely rare natural occurrence whereas the second is a mishap involving regularly used time travel technology. Thus, the inventor of the Time Machine is conceptually intermediate between "The Man Who Came Early," with no time travel technology, and "The Little Monster" growing up in a civilization where the use of such technology has become routinized.

Such a civilization ought to generate organizations of time travelers. In previous posts, I have observed that Poul Anderson's time traveling characters include:

a gang of brigands;
a police force;
two sets of warring armies.

I should also have mentioned the Transtemporal Oil Company (Transoco) whose crude oil, extracted in the Jurassic, is sucked from the small temporal unit by the main projector in the twentieth century.

"Project Mastodon" by Clifford Simak is about trade between the sovereign nation of Mastodonia, established by time travelers in the Pleistocene, and the United States.

Wellsian premises; science fictional developments; Andersonian culminations.

Wildcat

I have discussed some aspects of Poul Anderson's "Wildcat," IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 7-57, previously but not recently.

Scientific knowledge includes knowledge of dinosaurs. Therefore, science fiction includes imaginative accounts of encounters with dinosaurs that are to be found in the most ingenious of locations:

a lost World;
a Land that Time Forgot;
the center of the Earth;
a Dinosaur Island;
an African valley;
other planets;
a Jurassic Park;
the Jurassic Period.

Explorers in jungles, in the Pacific, within the Earth, on other planets and in time encounter dinosaurs. Once, according to the Brigadier in Doctor Who:

"Large prehistoric reptiles began to appear in the center of London. Needless to say, there was a certain amount of panic and some loss of life. The criminal element took advantage of the situation. We have contained the criminals and the reptiles within a five mile radius of the center."

(Or words to that effect.)

Anderson's wildcatters encounter brontosaurs, tyrannosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterodactyls because they travel to the Jurassic Period just as his Time Patrolmen meet Sherlock Holmes because they travel to the Victorian period. However, the dinosaurs, although dangerous, are essentially just part of the Jurassic scenery. What mainly happens is that the wildcatters interact economically and politically with the Cold War period of the twentieth century:

"...there would not be such a shortage of oil up in the future if Transoco had not gone back and drained it in the past. A self-causing future -" (pp. 16-17)

"Hoyle's idea seemed to be right, [oil] had not been formed by rotting dinosaurs but was present from the beginning. It was the stuff which had stuck the planets together." (p. 17)

Fred Hoyle? I thought that oil was formed by rotting vegetation?

Past Times: Revised Edition

My proposed revised version of Poul Anderson's Past Times (New York, 1984) would contain:
 

"Wildcat"	Jurassic
"The Nest"	Oligocene
"The Little Monster"	Pleiocene
"The Man Who Came Early"	Vikings
"Welcome"	2497 AD
"Time Heals"	2837 AD
"Flight To Forever"	the circle of time

"Time Patrol" would have made a good concluding story if it were not the opening story of Time Patrol. Past Times introduces time travelers and Time Patrol presents time travelers changing the past.

In "Welcome" (1960),Tom Barlow has gone from 1997 to 2497.

In "Time Heals" (1949), Philip Hart goes from 1952 to 2837 and is about to go further.

In "Flight To Forever" (1950), Martin Saunders goes from 1973 to 2073, then does go further, all the way around time and back to 1973.

I discussed "Flight To Forever" a while back and "Welcome" yesterday. The next task is to compare and contrast "Welcome" and "Time Heals." To start with, I imagine that "superenergy," in "Welcome," and "level-entropy," in "Time Heals," are opposite ways of saying the same thing?

Time Leaper

Poul Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984).

In Poul Anderson's "Welcome," Tom Barlow calls himself a "time leaper, " (p. 61), not a time traveler. He can only "leap" futureward. But where is he while he leaps?

He experiences some duration, less than half an hour, while the world endures for five centuries. However, he is not enclosed by any artifact like an invisible "time machine" or a visible stasis box nor is he himself visible to external observers. They see him arrive or appear in 2497. They know where and when he will arrive, and are able to prepare a place for his coming, because he left "...messages...sealed into marked blocks of concrete..." (ibid).

So where is he and what does he see around him during his less than half an hour of time leaping in "...the superenergy state..." (p. 58), from which he is said to emerge? Our inability to answer this question strikes me as one detail that Anderson, uncharacteristically, did not think through while writing the story. We can regard the unanswered question simply as a mystery or as an issue that could be addressed if the story were ever to be adapted into a visual medium.