Encroaching Brush And Whittering Wind

1989beta A. D. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 369-373.

Civilization has reached further west in North America in the beta timeline than in the alpha timeline but also seems to be in retreat. Over the Golden Gate, there is still white fog. Nature has not changed. There are also:

shining bay;

summer-tawny earth;

ruined walls, towers and strongholds;

brush reclaiming crumbled adobe buildings;

a village where Sausalito should be;

a few fishing smacks at sea;

where timecycles hover at eagle height, "...whittering wind." (p. 369)

That Andersonian wind has its say. "Whittering" seems appropriate for crumbling buildings. Something has happened here but what? The Patrol agents do not risk descent but go to look elsewhere.

Poul Anderson's strengths include detailed descriptions even of briefly glimpsed scenes that will never be seen again. Now on its guard, the Patrol will avoid any entanglements on the ground in the beta twentieth century.

Between Missions

 

18,244 B. C.

This is a catching up chapter. There are four characters. We have met:

all four earlier in this novel;

Komozino only in this novel;

Wanda Tamberly in the previous volume;

Keith Denison in a very early Patrol story;

Manse Everard in every previous instalment.

Everard and Tamberly meet and recount their experiences in the alpha timeline, then visit Denison who recounts his experiences in that timeline. Although he had been held prisoner for four years in the alpha timeline, Denison had not been able to deduce how it had diverged from the standard timeline so Everard tells him that before Denison relates the rest of the alpha history that Everard had not learned yet. Then Komozino arrives to inform them that the mission to restore the standard timeline has failed and that they must now cope with a beta timeline. The following chapter is headed 1989beta A. D.

"Delenda Est," with only a single divergent timeline easily deleted was like a rehearsal for the greater complexities of The Shield Of Time, PART SIX.

Light Up Lewis

I got to some of Light Up Lancaster this evening. The most impressive display consisted of images projected onto a building accompanied by an actor playing CS Lewis completing a letter of advice to a younger writer before accepting his own death and walking away with a suitcase. He said, among other things (paraphrase): "Do not tell your readers that an experience was frightening but describe the experience in such a way that they will think, 'That would be frightening.'"

Many of us appreciate and analyze what fiction writers do without being able to do it ourselves. This observation is relevant to what we are doing here on Poul Anderson Appreciation. James Blish wished that Lewis had written more fiction because of his psychological and moral insights. I have recently reread Lewis' Ransom Trilogy but Anderson left a vaster output to reread. We have learned to appreciate Anderson's multi-sensory descriptions of nature and the seasons and his use of the Pathetic Fallacy. Lewis would have approved.

See:

Writing Advice From C.S. Lewis

(The young American writer was called Joan Lancaster.)

SF Traditions

When sf became a literary ghetto, stories were written assuming that fans had read earlier stories by other authors. Two very basic themes were:

space travellers discover intelligent life on the Moon or Mars etc;

a time traveller intervenes on a battlefield and changes the course of history - unless another time traveller counter-intervenes and changes history back.

"Delenda Est" by Poul Anderson was not the first story on the second theme but it was a culmination of sorts until Anderson added more instalments to his Time Patrol series.

That second theme really began in pre-ghetto science fiction. One of the Time Traveller's dinner guests suggests that a time traveller might:

"'...verify the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings...'"

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), p. 11.

But another guest, the Medical Man, comments that a time traveller might attract attention from our ancestors, who were intolerant of anachronisms. Neither suggests intervening in the battle but observation and avoidance of overt anachronism would be two first steps.

Given that there is a tradition of discussing such issues, it should be possible to devise a common conceptual framework and terminology. However, the necessity to think in terms of two temporal dimensions causes endless confusion. If Wanda Tamberly had remained in the alpha timeline, then it would have been true that she had ceased to exist in the Patrol-guarded timeline and also in the second temporal dimension but not that she had ceased to exist at any moment along her own world-line.

(Timelines exist successively along a second temporal dimension just as three-dimensional states of matter exist successively along the first temporal dimension.)

Spatiotemporal Metaphysics II

Poul Anderson, 18,244 B. C. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 358-368.

Referring to the alpha timeline, Everard tells Wanda:

"'If you'd gotten stuck there, nobody would ever have come after you. That world doesn't exist any more. You wouldn't have!'" (p. 359)

I agree with this. The alpha timeline did exist but no longer does but these past tense propositions refer to no events in the Patrol-guarded timeline and therefore do refer to an entire four-dimensional continuum that did exist in the past of a second temporal dimension. This contradicts statements made elsewhere to the effect that the events in a "deleted" timeline never occurred. If Wanda had remained in the alpha timeline, then she would have lived for the rest of her life there/then. New temporal terms are needed but that is what the Temporal language is for. Wanda would have become permanently inaccessible to Everard but not because she had ceased to exist at any moment along her world-line.

Spatiotemporal Metaphysics

Unfortunately (maybe) rereading Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time makes me more aware of how much I disagree with Time Patrol spatiotemporal metaphysics. (To them, it is just physics.) An entire chapter describes Keith Denison's experiences in the alpha timeline. Two chapters describe Wanda Tamberly's experiences in that same timeline. That alpha timeline would have continued to exist around both of them if they had remained in it until their deaths and would have continued to exist for other people after that. There was no reason why the alpha timeline should have ceased to exist the moment after they had departed from it and, even if it did somehow arbitrarily disappear at that moment, it would still have remained true to say that it had existed until that moment. Later in the novel, Manse Everard, speaking in the Time-Patrol-guarded timeline, says that the alpha timeline has never existed. The events of the alpha timeline have never occurred in the past of the Patrol-guarded timeline but the entire alpha timeline did exist in the past of a second temporal dimension. Surely this concept is straightforward and accounts for everything that is described both in chapters headed with ordinary year dates and in chapters headed with alpha or beta year dates?

In time we trust. 

Arriving Late

In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time, it is wrong to think that Wanda Tamberly spent longer than she should have done in 1989alpha AD and therefore she arrived back correspondingly later in 18,2444 BC. Obviously, 18,2444 BC and any version of 1989 AD are not different places existing at the same time but different times. Wanda spent less than a month in the alpha timeline but arrived back in 18,2444 BC a month after she had departed from that year on purpose. Instead of returning, in accordance with Time Patrol rules, to the moment of her departure, she allowed Manse Everard a month to gather intelligence and to get organized to deal with the temporal upheaval without her and her rescued man, Keith Denison, underfoot. Everard thought that Wanda was lost in the divergent and now "deleted" timeline although I still do not understand why he had not even considered the possibility that, like most futureward travellers, she had remained within the Patrol-guarded timeline. Except that - beyond a certain point, the options become too complicated for clear story-telling.

Symbol And Shadow

Poul Anderson, 1989alpha IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 349-357.

When Wanda Tamberly on her timecycle hovers above the garden of Versailles, she sees that some of the flowerbeds have been arranged in the shape of the Time Patrol symbol, an hourglass on a shield, but enclosed in a circle and crossed with a red line and also that this arrangement is guarded by concealed but armed soldiers. A trap.

As soon as Wanda realizes the implications:

"Shadow flowed across the world." (p. 354)

Sure. That shadow flowing then exactly corresponds to Wanda's sudden apprehension. Other natural phenomena concur:

a weather vane flashes once but then darkens;

the sun sets;

dusk follows;

stars tremble;

cold deepens;

wind dies;

silence enters.

Everything sets the scene. Then the Andersonian heroine acts instead of fleeing.

I have returned from my sag aloo and the sun has set here. Tomorrow will be a normal Saturday in Lancaster.

Keith Denison In The Alpha Timeline

Poul Anderson, 1980alpha IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 284-292.

(Life really has become busier here. After a morning at the gym, I must shortly travel by train around Morecambe Bay to meet former work colleagues for a curry, thus missing the Light Up Lancaster Festival.)

Keith Denison's (second) capture serves his author's story purposes but how plausible is it? When it is immediately apparent that Denison has arrived in the wrong timeline:

"Shock froze his hands on the control bars." (p. 284)

Surely trained reflex should have made him depart immediately? Instead, he is described as:

"Untrained for combat missions..." (ibid.)

- and, because he hesitates:

"A man in blue..." (ibid.)

- a policeman? - is able to pull him from his timecycle while the rest of the alternative historical Parisian street crowd is still reacting in panic with prayers and invocations.

The one thing that Denison does do right, and by reflex, is:

"...to hit the emergency go-button." (ibid.)

This is because outsiders must never gain possession of a timecycle.

"His disappeared." (ibid.)

And that leaves Denison exactly where Anderson wants him, trapped in the alpha timeline and able to learn something of its history before he is rescued by Wanda Tamberly.

Wanda Tamberly In The Alpha Timeline

Poul Anderson, 1989alpha A. D. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 349-357. 

Wanda Tamberly imagines herself ringing the Liberty Bell.

Wanda has belatedly realized that she must have arrived in a divergent timeline. She has been told that, in such an eventualty, she should immediately return to the past. Instead, she decides to stay a little longer to gather some information.

If she is going to be able to travel pastward, then futureward again into the Patrol-guarded timeline, then it makes no difference whether she spends five minutes or fifty years in the alpha timeline. That timeline is not going to exist until some arbitrary moment, then cease to exist, while she is in it. However, the longer she is there, the greater the danger that some accident will separate her from her timecycle. In that case, she would be stranded in the wrong timeline. That is the only reason why she should get out of there fast. As a matter of fact, that is what has happened to Keith Denison and Wanda is able to rescue Keith. 

Wanda and Keith had each first appeared in a previous instalment. As it proceeds, the Time Patrol series becomes more complex.