All-Mother

"Star of the Sea."

Odin was Allfather. Veleda addresses Floris as:

"'Niaerdh... All-Mother...'" (14, A.D. 43, p. 592)

This, more than anything else, demonstrates that this prophetess is promoting her goddess to the highest position.

Ulstrup says:

"'...she is making her goddess into a being at least as powerful, as...cosmic...as any.'" (11, A.D. 49, p. 561)

Floris says that Veleda's new religion:

"'...would not become monotheistic or anything like that. But this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered.'" (p. 568)

But that is one kind of monotheism. There are two routes from polytheism to monotheism -

the Hebrew route: there is only one god;

the Hindu route: all gods are one.

If Niaerdh becomes supreme and if everything else gathers around her, then other gods become her aspects or her subordinates, demoted to angelic/messenger roles: a feminine monotheism, which can be found in Hinduism.

Experience And Interpretation

To describe an experience is to interpret it. Thus, if I say that I saw a man in front of a house, then I interpret some coloured shapes as a man and a house with a spatial relationship between them. Indeed, to give this description, I have to recognize some immediate visual impressions as colours and shapes. However, we habitually perceive objects like men and houses as totalities without having to analyze them. And there are finer layers of interpretation, as when I interpret the man's facial expression and body language as benign, neutral or hostile etc. In assessing another person's account of an event, we must distinguish between his perceptions and his interpretations of them. One observer "sees" police harassing demonstrators. Another "sees" demonstrators provoking police. Observers flatly contradict each other. Each of us has to find his or her own way through a maze. Do not just read one account and believe that. I learned to read different newspapers and then to go and see for myself.

Experience

In "Star of the Sea," 13-14, men from a Roman ship tie up Heidhin and rape Edh while Heidhin swears perpetual war against Rome. A woman flies down, kills the men and consoles Edh.

Joint Interpretation By Edh And Heidhin

The woman was the goddess. Edh has been chosen for a mission which can only be to preach war against Rome. To them, with their world-view, this seems obvious. Much later, Edh/Veleda begins to distinguish between the experience and the interpretation:

"'It is not truly what the goddess bade me say, it is what I have told myself she wants me to say.'" (3, p. 500)

Veleda learns wisdom. Heidhin clings to hate.

Ancient Elemental Forces

A passage in a Sherlock Holmes story reminds us of a passage in a Dominic Flandry novel. In Conan Doyle's "The Five Orange Pips," wind screams and rain beats windows in London to such an extent that Watson is forced to:

"...recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage."

-Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Five Orange Pips" IN The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes IN Arthur Conan Doyle: 3 Books In 1 (Mumbai, 2007), pp. 103-124 AT p. 104.

And when we read that:

"...the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney." (ibid.)

- we remember how often the wind plays such a role in Poul Anderson's works.

However, the passage in a Flandry novel is one in which the Pacific Ocean conveys the sense of ancient forces biding their time. We find that we have quoted this passage more than once, here. Indeed, we have also compared it with similar passages in works by several other authors including even another Conan Doyle passage, the one that incidentally mentions the contents of a British barrow - which I first encountered in "Time Patrol."

Now maybe I can get back to rereading Sherlock Holmes?

Joy And Awe

"Star of the Sea," 13.

What young Edh feels when a wagon passes bearing the image of the goddess:

joy;

renewal;

awe;

"...an unspoken underlying fear...." (p. 582)

"Joy" and "renewal" could be Easter.

Rudolf Otto argued that holiness was a synthesis of awesomeness and righteousness. Awe - apprehension of the mysterious, uncanny, "awful" and transcendent - is a kind of fear. As CS Lewis argued, we fear the proximity of a man-eating tiger, a ghost and a "great spirit" in different ways. In the third case, there is a sense of our unworthiness, not of any physical threat or danger. Edh's strong religious sense influences her personal development and also has social, and even historical, consequences in appropriate circumstances. There are potential timelines in which Edh:

dies young;

preaches endless war,

preaches war, then peace.

Search Through The Past

"Star of the Sea."

In 70 AD, Heidhin tells Manse Everard of the Time Patrol that Veleda and he are of the Alvarings but nothing more.

In 60 AD, Gundicar tells Everard and his fellow agent, Janne Floris, that Veleda had come to where she now was from among the Cherusci and, before that, had been among the Langobardi. The Patrol agents hear Veleda speak.

In 49 AD, Jens Ulstrup tells Everard and Floris that Veleda had arrived by ship among the Rugii on the Baltic littoral five or six earlier.

In 43 AD, the captain of the ship on which Veleda and her companion, Heidhin, have just arrived tells Everard that the ship has come from an island held by the Alvarings off the Geatish coast and this enables Floris to identify the island as Oland.

Earlier in 43 AD, Floris intervenes when Veleda is raped by Roman merchants on Oland. This is the event that the agents have sought. Without Floris' intervention, Veleda and Heidhin would have been dead. Was that the original timeline?

Anglii And Edh

"Star of the Sea," 12, A.D. 43.

The Anglii hold a great annual market (p. 572) but we must remember that the Anglii are not yet in England. Earlier in his Time Patrol career, Everard had been in Britain:

"...when the English were moving in."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 4, p. 29.

That was in 464 AD.

Edh who will be Veleda already seems to be part of her goddess's sea environment:

"Edh was a dwindled bit of fluttering darkness, half lost in the sea mist, into which she drifted onward. Wrapped in her dreams or nightmares, or whatever they were..." (p. 578)

Dreams and nightmares. A potential religious foundress unknown to history. How many are there?

The Literary Ghetto

Why did a book like Dinosaur Beach receive such extravagant but clearly undeserved praise? See DINOSAUR BEACH. Sf became a literary ghetto where it was thought that ordinary literary criteria did not apply. Panels at sf cons used to debate whether a story could be good as sf even it wasn't good as anything else. Maybe they still do? Christopher Priest argued that it was pointless to claim that EE Smith could not write good prose because he was writing in the Stone Age. Priest pointed out that Jane Austen knew how to write a novel. I was told that a particular sf mag (I forget which) did not publish literary criticism. 

Can a text be badly written with poor descriptions and characterization yet still develop interesting and entertaining sf ideas? Maybe. Any examples? In any case, a writer of any kind of fiction should still know how to write fiction. The point of this blog is that Poul Anderson's texts are well written with good descriptions and characterization and also present original and entertaining sf ideas and I cannot help thinking that there is a connection between good writing and good ideas. Wells and Anderson do not just tell us that a character has travelled to another time, past or future. They describe that other time with the same wealth of detail as in a historical novel.

In any case, other criteria apart, Dinosaur Beach makes a text book hash of presenting time travel paradoxes. It is a pleasure to turn back to Anderson's "Star of the Sea" where locations are described in multisensory detail and paradoxicality is nothing if not subtle:

"They dared not charge blind into what might well be the source of the instability..."

-see here. (Scroll down.)

The (Prevented) Veleda Timeline

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Is the Veleda timeline entirely prevented? The Tacitus Two text comes from it. 

In the history that is known to us, Burhmund/Civilis made peace with Rome whereas in Veleda's divergent timeline:

Burhmund was crushed;

the prophetess, Veleda, returned to free Germany where her new religion spread;

it grew and developed without competition after her death;

the goddess became the supreme figure, appealing to women who influenced their children;

with the Western Empire collapsed, Christianity did not admit its North European converts to the commerce and culture of civilization;

instead, the Nerthus faith became the core of a Germanic civilization, able, like Zoroastrian Persia, to resist Christianity;

the world was very different by the twentieth century;

"'That's what we're trying to head off,' Everard said harshly." (p. 569)

Only wanting to post once more today, I preferred to return to "Star of the Sea" than to stay with Dinosaur Beach but I will try to get the rest of the latter read and out of the way this evening.

Tomorrow, a new month. We approach the end of the first quarter-century of the Third Millennium. I wish that I could look forward with confidence to a long future ahead.

DINOSAUR BEACH

My copy of Dinosaur Beach arrived today via eBay. I ordered this book because:

it is about time travel (to be compared with Wells and Anderson);

it has an evocative title;

I have known of it as a title for years without having read it;

it might count as an sf "classic."

A Classic is a work that, like The Time Machine, is always in print in multiple editions, that can be picked off the shelf in a large bookshop or, failing that, ordered and whose title is generally recognized even by those who have never read it whereas a "classic" is a work that is remembered by some, regarded as influential, sells well secondhand and is occasionally reissued. 

Beaches have a role in time travel stories:

Wells' Time Traveller encounters giant crabs on a beach in a remote future;

Wells' outer narrator wonders whether the Time Traveller is:

"...wandering...by the lonely saline seas of the Triassic Age."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), EPILOGUE, p. 101;

significant meetings occur on two beaches in Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea" and on another at the end of his The Shield Of Time.

The cover illustration shows a man with a gun and a dinosaur as on Anderson's Past Times.

There are six quotations of extravagant praise. On the front cover:

"UNRIVALLED NOT ONLY IN ITS CLASS, BUT IN A CLASS BY ITSELF."

-GORDON R. DICKSON.

One of the four on the back cover:

"Laumer has a gift for time travel. The technology in this novel is fascinating."

-Riverside Quarterly.

We are used to reading rave reviews on book covers and probably disregard them.

So far, I have read only 7 of the 44 short chapters and will persevere to the end. However -

In some sf - or is it mainly in a particular period of sf? - we find that we are reading not just a novel but, more specifically, an action novel in which characters point guns and shoot at each other. This happens in Dinosaur Beach well in advance of any indication that some of the characters are time travellers. (We know that Poul Anderson liked his action scenes but usually these were subordinate to other aspects of a story.)

"...the big board in Ops that showed the minute-by-minute status of the Timesweep effort up and down the ages."

-Keith Laumer, Dinosaur Beach (Baen Books, New York, 1986), 5, p. 31.

Can an effort that is being made up and down the ages have a minute-by-minute status?

"...maybe at this moment a relief team in crisp field-tan was assembling to jump out to the rescue." (6, p. 34)

A relief team at a station in a different time is assembling at this moment?

There is some more complicated text that it would be more difficult to unravel. I do not think that any of that extravagant praise is appropriate.

"...an intriguing introduction for newcomers."

-Monterey Herald.

No. Start with Wells and Anderson.

Addendum, later the same evening: In Dinosaur Beach, I have read to the beginning of Chapter 26 on p. 116. The novel ends with a one-page Chapter 44 on p. 204. I do not want to read any more. The text is uninteresting, unenjoyable and incoherent. Changes that have to be happening in two different temporal dimensions are described as if they can be experienced along a single timeline:

"'...the deterioration began. The chronodegradation...the memory lapses, and the contradictions. We sensed life unravelling around us.'" (25, p. 111)

Having finished John Grisham and wanting to read something enjoyable for the rest of this evening, I will revert to Stieg Larsson. (Grisham introduces a minor character, Zander, clearly based on Larsson's Lisbeth Salander.) Back to Anderson tomorrow.

Naerdha And The Neos

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Norse mythology had a three-storey hereafter:

warriors killed in battle go to Valhalla;

sailors drowned at sea go to the hall of the sea giant, Njord;

everyone else, even Balder, goes to Hel which is like Hades or Sheol, not like Hell.

Veleda adds a fourth:

"'Women who die in childbed go directly to [Naerdha], like fallen warriors to the Eddic Odin.'" (p. 567)

Despite this, Everard reflects that this goddess is:

"'A pretty grim sort...'" (ibid.)

- and thinks:

"The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everyone was nice." (ibid.)

We have responded to Everard's thought before.

It is easy to knock "neos" but:

I currently have regular contact with members of several different neopagan "denominations." Several of them are scholars of their subject. As such, they know and can expound the differences between ancient practices and attempted reconstructions and newly invented traditions and false claims of continuity with earlier traditions.

-copied from here.

When a dominant monotheism declines, every possible alternative will be tried by someone: secularism, revived polytheism, other monotheist traditions etc. Thus, we know not only atheists and agnostics but also converts to Wicca, Islam etc. Each of us needs to develop his or her own world-view which should include an understanding of past world-views. We can certainly appreciate Odin and the goddess without believing in them and can also engage in dialogue with anyone who does claim to believe in them.