Texas Rangers

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIV, 3.

"...the Texas Rangers rode with vengeance in their hearts." (p. 286)

Poul Anderson incorporates every possible historical detail. So the Texas Rangers have to be mentioned. Suddenly I realize that:

I do not know what the Texas Rangers were (or are?);

all I know about them is that the Lone Ranger had been one - and he is fiction.

Fortunately, we now have Wikipedia. See Texas Ranger Division. So now I know that the Rangers have a complicated history, still exist and are the local state equivalent of the FBI. 

OK. That is something else that I have learned. Tomorrow I will decide whether to dig into other historical details in this chapter. Meanwhile, I will try to finish the fascinatingly revelatory book about Jiddu Krishnamurti. Good night again. 

The River Of Time

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIV, 2.

Time is like a river. See:

Individuals In The Time Stream

- and:

"...what could be more appropriate for a time travel series? There is real human experience and there is imagined time travel experience and a skilled sf writer blends them together:

"It was a strange thing to meet her at intervals of months which for Havig were hours or days. Each time, she was so dizzyingly grown. In awe he felt a sense of that measureless river which he could swim but on which she could only be carried from darkness to darkness.
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), IX, p. 98.

"We have already looked at time as a river in the Time Patrol."

-copied from here.

- and rivers are like time:

Time And The River

(The passage about Jack Havig's awesome sense of that measureless river is quoted several times.)

Now Hanno the immortal refers to the River:

"O Hiram, Psammetk, Pytheas, Althea, Athenais-Aliyat, Armand Cardinal Richelieu, Benjamin Franklin, how far has the River borne me from you!" (p. 280)

Characters in different timelines have a lot of common experience. 

Time And Poul Anderson II

Jack Finney wrote evocative nostalgic time travel short stories and one of his collections was called The Clock Of Time.

In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, a clock on a mantel ticks while wind flows past like a river. I have quoted that passage three times. See here. See also Two Grandfather Clocks.

Anderson's Genesis begins:

"The story is of a man, a woman, and a world. But ghosts pass through it, and gods. Time does, which is more mysterious than any of these."

-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, 1, p. 3.

See GENESIS And Time.

This opening paragraph backs up my statement that time is important in Poul Anderson's works. See Time And Poul Anderson.

I agree that time is more mysterious than men, women, worlds, ghosts or gods.

Time dilation hardly matters in Genesis because the effectively immortal post-organic intelligences can contemplate mathematics or aesthetics or can switch themselves off during long slower than light interstellar journeys. Nevertheless, time dilation helps. And billions of years elapse while consciousness evolves. We see only a beginning, a genesis.

History Advances

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIV, 2.

"...buffalo were fast getting scarce." (p. 278)

We remember that they were being killed in increasing numbers in XII.

The Battle of Appomattox, i.e., the end of the Civil War, is seven years in the past. There were still slave states in XIII. 

Rufus Bullen has a hook instead of a right hand. Rufus had lost his right hand in VI. He has lost two front teeth but they are growing back. He and Jack Tarrant converse in Latin:

"'Inutilis est...'" (p. 278)

We infer that Tarrant, in charge of the expedition, is Hanno. Their Mexican guide recognizes some words of their speech from the Latin liturgy. The guide is a Comanchero and shoots a peccary. His sons light a fire of buffalo chips and mesquite.

Read and learn.

Time And Poul Anderson

I said here that time is important in Poul Anderson's works but that is an understatement.

Time Travel

We need hardly list these titles yet again: six volumes, including an omnibus collection.

Time Dilation

Tau Zero

Starfarers

The Kith short stories

The Rustum History

"Time Lag" (and here)

The Boat Of A Million Years

We hardly notice the time dilation in Boat because the characters are immortal and do not return home. Nevertheless, time dilation as well as immortality helps them on their slower than light interstellar journeys.

History

historical fiction

historical science fiction (time travel; immortality)

future histories

lessons from history applied in individual stories

alternative histories

Immortality

World Without Stars

Boat (as above)

Anderson covers the past as much as the future.

The War

Should we write "the war" or "the War"? We usually know which war we mean. Very often, "the war/War" means the Second World War unless stated otherwise. To take an example from a book that I am currently reading:

"In the autumn of 1947 Krishna, fully recovered, left Ojai on his first trip abroad since before the war."

-Radha Rajagopal Sloss, Life In The Shadow With J. Krishnamurti (London, 1991), PART THREE, 20, p. 215.

("Krishna" is not the Hindu god but someone named after him.) Obviously, in 1947, "the war" can only mean World War II but it continued to mean that for decades afterwards.

Flora, the immortal escaped slave says:

"'Po' young Marse Brett, he done get killed in de waw.'"

-The Boat Of A Million Years, XIII, p. 272.

We accept this reference to "de waw." Then we reflect that Flora must be speaking before the American Civil War. Edmonds wonders and asks:

"'What war?'

"'De Rebolution, it was. Yay, eben us slaves heard 'bout dat.'" (p. 273)

That makes her about a hundred - which the Edmonds do not believe. A more plausible explanation is that:

"'She's overwrought.'" (ibid.)

 - and:

"'...kind of crazy.'" (ibid.)

Well, it is obvious that "de waw" has different meanings in different contexts. I remember a good-humoured exchange between some students and a barman:

First student: "Ah, but I was referring to the Second World War, Jim!"

Barman: "So was I, you cheeky devil!"

Second student: "I assumed you meant American Civil!"

If only we lived that long.

Two Grandfather Clocks

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIV, Men of Peace, 1, pp. 275-177.

In this subsection, there are no familiar characters unless they are hiding under different names. Comanche attack a farm house but then withdraw. In the ensuing silence, the big old grandfather clock sounds loud and is compared to "...a hammer nailing down a coffin lid." (p. 277) That reminded me of the grandfather clock in XIII which "...had seemed to tick as loud as doom." (p. 272)

I had meant to note this when posting about XIII but then forgot. Time is important in Poul Anderson's works:

time travel

time dilation

history

longevity

immortality

A ticking clock measures time, marks the passage of time and reminds us of time. The second grandfather clock reminded me of the first and now we approach midnight. Good night.

New Copy

My hardback The Earth Book Of Stormgate arrived. See the attached image for its front cover. The only part of this edition that I have not already read is the cover-flap blurb which contains several errors but let's leave that, should we? My ideal edition of the Earth Book would be hardback but would have the front cover illustration of the paperback edition. See here.

Next I need to use eBay to replace most if not all of the volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga. One has lost its cover. Another is now in two parts on the bookshelf. And so on. However, eBay is so easy to use that it seems not a matter of urgency to avail of it. And let's order only one volume at a time for obvious practical and financial reasons. 

Two weekday evenings per week, Sheila and I leave the house for different reasons. Since this evening is one such, we probably approach the end of blogging for today.

The Boat Of A Million Years is an amazingly rich volume. I have read right through it before and have focused on completely different details in the text. 

Romans And Exodus

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIII, Follow the Drinking Gourd.

There are three more Biblical quotations in this single short chapter.

Edmonds says:

"'"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves..."'" etc (Romans 12:19) (p. 270)

He follows this by dreading God's punishment:

"'...of this sinful land, when it comes.'" (ibid.)

Is this an auctorial comment? Have subsequent national tribulations constituted divine punishment? Or, in nontheistic language, reciprocal consequences of earlier injustices? 

Edmonds reads:

"'"...And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people..."'" etc (Exodus 3:7-9) (p. 271)

Politically relevant on a world scale now.

Flora responds:

"'Let ma people go...'" (Exodus 9:1) (ibid.)

Readers might miss this but Flora's phrase is also a quotation.

She tells the Edmonds how old she is. (If this did not happen, then Chapter XIII would be pointless within the novel.) They think that her ordeal has made her lose her wits. Thus, the secret of immortality is kept. A slave owner, disturbed by her longevity, would sell her on, "down de ribber," (p. 271) without alerting the buyer to her oddness. Thus, even her oppressors colluded in keeping the secret.

Flora addresses Edmonds as "'...massa...,'" (p. 270) then, when she is corrected, "'...suh...'" (p. 271)

Edmond's language is so Biblically influenced that it can sound like quotations, e.g.:

"No, please, God, of Thy mercy, no. Withhold Thy wrath that we have so richly earned. Lead us to Thy light." (p. 273)

The Edmonds, good people by (almost) anyone's standards, appear only in this single chapter. They are like timebound helpers of Jack Havig's group in There Will Be Time.

We used to run a food thread here. The Edmonds serve Flora:

pork roast

mashed potatoes

gravy

squash

beans

pickles

cornbread

butter

jam

milk cooled in the springhouse

pie

coffee

I nearly missed "springhouse."

The Drinking Gourd is the Big Dipper.

Have we missed anything in this rich chapter?

Luke 4:18

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIII.

Matthew Edmonds, a Quaker who runs a station on the Underground Railway, tells the three men who are hunting an escaped slave:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

-copied from here. 

This is Luke 4:18 and yet another Andersonian Biblical quotation. Poul Anderson's narrative moves into an indefinite future, taking the message of liberation with it.