Everard's Apartment III

See here.

Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

Manson Everard of the Time Patrol:

has a date with Wanda Tamberly in 1988;
then has two missions for the Patrol;
could have returned to 1988 after the first mission;
however, instead, sublet his apartment to another Patrol agent who needed such a base from 1988 to 1990;
returned to New York in 1990 after the second mission;
therefore, was in his apartment shortly after Wanda had phoned in 1990 but had not experienced as much duration as her since 1988.

It is meaningless to say that Everard sublet his apartment while he was on the two missions. Probably, the missions were in different historical periods and therefore were completed long before his birth. If not for the sublet, he would have returned to 1988 after the first mission and maybe to that same year after the second. In that case, an older Everard would have responded to Wanda's recorded telephone message in 1990.

When I say that their date was in 1988, I mean that she returned to her parents' home after the date in that year but they had had dinner in Paris in 1925.

"...the Rive Gauche..." (p. 180) is the Left Bank;
"...the Deux Magots..." (ibid.) is a famous cafe formerly frequented by many artists and intellectuals, more recently a tourist destination;
Everard mentions Wanda's and his "...Alphonse-Gastonette act..." (p. 181). I took this to be a reference to a couple in French literature. However, Alphonse and Gaston were two male cartoon characters in the New York Journal.

The Prehistorical Patrol: The Miocene

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

The Miocene is the first geological epoch of the Neogene period. "Miocene" means "less new" or "less recent" because this epoch has fewer modern sea invertebrates than the succeeding Pliocene. Earth cooled into a series of ice ages through the Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene epochs.

In the Miocene, apes arose, diversified and spread. Ancestors of human beings split from ancestors of chimpanzees. Grasslands continued to spread and forests to recede. Plants and animals were fairly modern.

Wikipedia states that the Miocene boundaries are not marked by any distinct global events because this epoch comprises a stage between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene. However, Time Patrol informs us that the inflow from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean basin:

"...would move the planet from its Miocene to its Pliocene epoch." (p. 119)

The Patrol maintains a small base for about a hundred years in southern Iberia in order to study and experience the inflow.

The Prehistorical Patrol: The Oligocene II

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006); The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

The Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene American West existed from about 31,725,389 BC until about 31,225,389 BC;

Manson Everard and Charles Whitcomb attended the Academy in about 31,724,389 BC;

Wanda Tamberly and Tu Sequeira attended in exactly 31,275,389 BC;

the Oligocene epoch was followed by the Miocene, then the Pliocene, epochs;

a small Patrol base existed for about a hundred years in southern Iberia during the transition from the Miocene to the Pliocene.

I need to learn a minimum about these two later epochs before locating other prehistorical Time Patrol bases.

The Prehistorical Patrol

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006); The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

"The Prehistorical Patrol" might make a good title but here just means the Time Patrol operating prehistorically. The Patrol guards history but its support services may be in prehistory. Several epochs are mentioned.

The first mentioned and also the longest ago is:

"...the Oligocene period, a warm age of forests and grasslands when man's ratty ancestors scuttled away from the tread of giant mammals." (TP, pp. 5-6)

The Oligocene, according to Wikipedia not a period but a geologic epoch of the Paleogene period, lasted from 33.9 to 23 million years ago. The Time Patrol Academy existed in the Oligocene American West for just half a million of the 10.9 million years of the epoch. The Academy comprised long, low buildings of shifting colors on a reinforced elevation between large trees near a river, with titanotheres and sabertooths audible at night.

Charles Whitcomb, London, 1947, and Manson Everard, New York, 1954, attended the Academy a thousand years after it was built. Wanda Tamberly, San Francisco, 1987, and Tu Sequeira, Mars, Solar Commonwealth, attended in 31, 275, 389 BC (ST, p. 127), fifty thousand years before the builders demolished it. (That could have been a single job. The same team that had completed the construction of the Academy could immediately have traveled forward half a million years to begin its demolition - or could have done the demolition first.) By 31, 275, 389 BC, the Academy buildings, gardens and lawns had endured through many millennia.

Everard and Whitcomb, wearing gray Academy uniforms, ride on horses whose smaller ancestors run before them. Everard brings a rifle, hoping to shoot a shovel-tusker which, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, was a tapir-sized mammal living 35 million years ago. Tamberly and Sequeira also ride and see wolf-hound sized equine ancestors. In their period, holiday makers have long since shot "...lionlike nimravus and saber-toothed eusmilus..." (p. 128) that had attacked them near the Academy but cadets with a few days free usually travel further away.

"Oligocene" means "few new" because there were few additional mammal species by contrast with a burst of evolution in the preceding Eocene epoch. The warm Oligocene was transitional between the archaic tropical Eocene and the more modern Miocene. The Oligocene began with the extinction of many European fauna to be replaced by Asian fauna. Grasslands expanded globally while tropical forests regressed toward the equator.

The alert reader might infer that there will be a short series of posts on successive epochs of "the Prehistorical Patrol." Readers are invited to volunteer information about the epochs and, in particular, to correct any errors that they might notice here.

THE IMPERIAL GARDENER, by Sean M. Brooks

This note focuses on one aspect of Poul Anderson's Terran Empire stories usually passed over quite quickly by commentators, Josip III.  The twenty years reign of this Emperor was crucial because this period saw the Empire reaching the end of its Principate phase.

ENSIGN FLANDRY is set three years before Emperor Georgios, the father of then Crown Prince Josip, died.  Chapter 1 of that book, the only time in the Flandry stories that we see him in person, shows Josip as weak, self indulgent, homosexual, and mentioned as having a notoriously short memory. The best summing up we have of Josip's character is from Admiral Kheraskov's briefing of Dominic Flandry in Chapter II of THE REBEL WORLDS.

"Three years, now, since poor old Emperor Georgios died and Josip III succeeded. Everybody knows what Josip is: too weak and stupid for his viciousness to be highly effective.  We all assumed the Dowager Empress will keep him on a reasonably short leash while she lives.  And he won't outlast her by much, the way he treats his organism.  And he won't have children--not him!  And the Policy Board, the General Staff, the civil service, the officers corps, the Solar and extra-Solar aristocracies...they hold more crooks and incompetents than they did in former days, but we have a few good ones left, a few...

"I've told you nothing new, have I?"  Flandry barely had time to shake his head. Kheraskov kept on prowling and talking.  "I'm sure you made the same quiet evaluation as most informed citizens.  The Empire is so huge that no one individual can do critical damage, no matter if he's theoretically all powerful.  Whatever harm came from Josip would almost certainly be confined to a relative handful of courtiers, politicians, plutocrats, and their sort, concentrated on and around Terra--no great loss.  We've survived other bad Emperors."

The plot of THE REBEL WORLDS revolves around how Flandry neutralized a danger to the Empire from a favorite of Josip who was not an ordinary courtier or politician.  And how Flandry then thwarted a fleet admiral deliberately goaded into rebellion by that favorite.

Here I wish to pause and briefly comment on the Dowager Empress and widow of Emperor Georgios mentioned by Admiral Kheraskov in the text I quoted from THE REBEL WORLDS.  Plainly, this lady was a woman of some force and strength of character if she was able to restrain Josip.  And, of course, Josip would at least sometimes heed the wishes and advice of his own mother (who was probably one of the few persons who could talk firmly in a no nonsense way to him).  At least while Aaron Snelund, the chief villain of THE REBEL WORLDS, was not at court to counteract her influence.

Josip III was a bad, weak, and irresponsible Emperor.  One example of that last quality being his refusal to do his dynastic duty of assuring the succession by marrying and begetting children.  As Flandry told Miriam Abrams in Chapter VI of A STONE IN HEAVEN: "Once as a young fellow I found myself supporting the abominable Josip against McCormac--Remember McCormac's Rebellion?  He was infinitely the better man.  Anybody would have been.  But Josip was the legitimate Emperor and legitimacy is the root and branch of government.  How else, in spite of the cruelties and extortions and ghastly mistakes it's bound to perpetrate--how else, by what right, can it command loyalty?  If it is not the servant of Law, then it is nothing but a temporary convenience at best.  At worse, it's raw force."

Josip was thus, despite his vices and flaws, supported by men like Flandry due to the urgent need to uphold Law and legitimacy.  However, in one or two other texts I found hints of something better than degeneracy and incompetence in Josip.

WE CLAIM  THESE STARS! is set late in Josip's reign, during the Syrax crisis.  In this confrontation with Merseia the Empire was forced to concentrate so much of the Navy at the Syrax cluster that Merseia was able to use its Ardazirho clients to attack Terra at another frontier.  E.g., the Ardazirho seized the border colony planet Vixen.  While discussing the Syrax/Vixen crisis with Flandry, Admiral Fenross said of the fleet commander sent to Vixen (in Chapter VI): "The Emperor himself gave Admiral Walton what amounts to carte blanche."  Which made Flandry think: "It must have been one of His Majesty's off days, decided Flandry.  Actually doing the sensible thing."  Meaning there were times when Josip had the wit to make the right decision.

Next, also in Chapter VI of WE CLAIM THESE STARS!, Fenross mentioned how the Vixenite who brought the news of the colony's seizure by Ardazir asked to meet the Emperor.  Flandry sardonically said: "And didn't get it," foretold Flandry.  "His Majesty is much too busy gardening to waste time on a mere commoner representing a mere planet."  Fenross expressed surprise by asking "Gardening?," Flandry replied ironically, "I'm told His Majesty cultivates beautiful pansies."

When I finally paid attention to this bit of dialogue my thought was that if an Emperor as bad as Josip had enough appreciation of beauty to grow his own flowers, then there was some good in him.

However, I then wondered what Flandry had meant by "pansies."  THE RANDOM HOUSE HOUSE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1973) had this as the third definition for the word "pansy": "3. Slang. a. a male homosexual."  If that was what Flandry meant, it explains why Fenross reacted so nervously to Flandry's comment: "Fenross gulped and said in great haste..."  It would also be an example of some slang words retaining their meanings over a millennium from now.

It can thus be seen how "The Imperial Gardener" is an ironic title for this essay.  I admire as well the technical skill shown by Anderson in deftly inserting works set early in Flandry's life (such as THE REBEL WORLDS, 1969) into a series including works placed later in his life (one example being WE CLAIM THESE STARS, 1959).

I absolutely agree with what Flandry said in Chapter VI of A STONE IN HEAVEN about how "legitimacy is the root and branch of government." Lacking that, any government is likely to be nothing but "raw force."  And this applies to all governments, whatever their forms may be.  To preserve and defend legitimacy, it may well be necessary to support rulers a person privately despises.  Many examples from history could be listed here of weak, foolish, and contemptible leaders from Chinese, Roman, Byzantine, French, British, and American history.  Leaders it was better to accept if they held power legitimately.

Time Patrol, Multiverse And AI

I have finished rereading Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and, for the time being, am reluctant to descend from this high point back down to rounding up a few remaining non-series short stories. After Anderson's long, substantial, historical time travel series, anything else seems like an anti-climax - especially mere one-off short stories, even when written by Anderson himself.

I expect this blog, now nearly two years old, to gain new life with the publication (this year?) of Multiverse. When that happens, I will welcome views other than my own - but that is always the case.

Meanwhile, there is never a shortage of material to post about, even if not on this blog. Yesterday and today, I have added to both "Science Fiction" and "Comics Appreciation." The Time Patrol had interrupted my reading of Iain M Bank's third Culture novel, Use Of Weapons. Having returned to that novel, I found in it a dialogue between an artificial intelligence (AI) and a human being about AI so I have posted about that.

Once, on this blog, I listed Anderson's various approaches to AI. Notably:

in the Harvest of Stars Tetralogy, AI begins to make human beings redundant within the Solar System although humanity flourishes elsewhere;
in Genesis, mankind is extinct but Solar AI re-creates it.

Banks' "Culture" is an interstellar civilization fully integrating both humanity and AI.

Anderson And Verne

I have read Chapters I-VII of the XXVII in Jules Verne's From The Earth To The Moon (London, 1979).

Any Similarities to Anderson?
Scientific precision.
American enterprise - Verne's approach initially satirical.
I am having to google some words, like "guttapercha" (p. 14).
Some humor - more in Verne.

Differences
The quality of Verne's writing is closer to ER Burroughs than to either Wells or Anderson.
So far, the technicalities of a Moon launch have merely been baldly stated either by the narrator or by the characters in conversation.
Anderson's Orion Shall Rise is incomparably better both as a novel and as an account of a space program. 

Ironically, the Gun Club plans to fire at the Moon only because the end of the American Civil War has put its members out of business. Chapter XXV is entitled "Fire!" Like Robert Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon," this book is about all the necessary Earth-based activity that precedes a Moon launch. As yet, there has been no suggestion that anyone will travel inside the projectile.

Addendum: Having now finished From The Earth To The Moon, I have posted about it on the Science Fiction blog.

West, Space And Time II

Copied from Comics Appreciation:

I went out in haste, posting the previous post without having finished it.

Classics Illustrated adaptations also included Jules Verne's bizarrely- themed Off On A Comet. Google confirms that this comics imprint also adapted Verne's From The Earth To The Moon. I am not sure whether the sequel, Round The Moon, would have been adapted separately or in the same volume or not adapted.

In any case, recently rereading Poul Anderson's first man on the moon story, "The Light," I reflected that this story could be included in a themed anthology with stories like Robert Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and with extracts from novels like Wells' The First Men In The Moon.

It then occurred to me first that Verne's characters do not land on the Moon and secondly that I have not read any of Verne's three interplanetary novels so I am now ordering them through the Public Library. Whether this will lead to any comparisons with Anderson remains to be seen.

Thus, the progressions from comics to prose fiction have been:

from Dan Dare to Anderson's Dominic Flandry;
from the comic strip The Time Machine to the prose The Time Machine to Anderson's The Time Patrol;
from the comic strip Off On A Comet to the three Verne interplanetary novels;
from "Riders of the Range" and TV Westerns to - nothing really, although I have read Shane a couple of times.

In terms of graphic adaptations, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has a space race between Victorian Britain with Cavorite and France with a big gun and, later, various European colonies on the Moon.

West, Space And Time

This is one of those posts that starts somewhere else but works its way back to Poul Anderson.

In the early 1950's, I got the weekly British comic strip paper, The Eagle, even before I could read it. This comic featured "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future" and "Riders of the Range," a Western series that had a fictitious central character but that also incorporated historical figures and events. I realized even then that, although I loved Westerns, I preferred pictures of men in spacesuits to pictures of cowboys on horseback, thus sf to Westerns.

Many of my contemporaries had the same enthusiasm for football that I had for Westerns and sf. Why do people have such strong, and different, interests from such an early age? I don't know.

Dare's main adversaries, the Treens, were bald, green, hostile, humanoid extraterrestrials, thus similar to Dominic Flandry's opponents, the Merseians. Dare was a preparation for Poul Anderson's Flandry - who sometimes also wears a spacesuit. Despite his mastery of many genres, Anderson never wrote Westerns, except a joke Hoka story with Gordon R Dickson. ER Burroughs, who is also relevant here, did write four Western novels. ERB wrote comic book type characters but in prose fiction, including sf.

In addition to a fascination with space travel, I also acquired slightly later on a very great fascination with two other sf ideas, time travel and future histories. Flandry, of course, is a major figure in a long future history series. My introduction to time travel was another comic strip, the Classics Illustrated adaptation of HG Wells' The Time Machine. And Wells' novel was a precursor to Anderson's Time Patrol.

1902 AD

Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

"Shalten's flat in Paris was large and luxurious, but on the Left Bank overlooking the Boulevard St Germain. Had he chosen that street purposely? He did have a devious sense of humor." (p. 119)

I don't get the joke. Why "...but on the Left Bank..."? This district, on the left bank of the Seine, is noted for its artistic and intellectual life. Shalten of the Time Patrol enjoys the Bohemianism and his neighbors are used to eccentrics.

Anderson presents his usual multi-sensory description: a warm afternoon in autumn, smoke, horse droppings, trees changing color, busy shops and cafes, an era that will last for another twelve years. Shalten's cluttered bric-a-brac etc "...declared a solidity that had endured and accumulated since the Congress of Vienna." (ibid.)

At the Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815, European ambassadors agreed a settlement following the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, like the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945. Britannia ruled the waves from 1805 to 1945 thanks to Nelson's victory at Trafalgar. Thus, Anderson's references both to the Congress of Vienna and to the "...dozen years [after which] this world would crash to ruin" (ibid.) evoke a century of consolidation followed by the First World War. Everard's reflections continue into the future:

"...California, 1987. That was quite another world, remote as a dream - a nightmare?" (pp. 119-120)