Linguistic And Other Changes

"Flight to Forever."

Would Saunders and Belgotai be mutually comprehensible with a gap of a thousand years between them? 

We are told how English has changed:

Belgotai has a slurring accent although it becomes easier to follow with practice;

vowels sound different;

consonants have been modified;

"r" is more like twentieth century French or Danish;

foreign words, especially Spanish, have been incorporated.

"Chronning," chronology, has also changed. Belgotai does not recognize "nineteen seventy-three." 

"...modern chronology dated from the ascension of John Mteza I." (p. 180)

- because the late twenty-seventh century Planetary League and African Dissenters had ended the earlier Armageddonist/Fanatic rule.

Some of this sounds like (a different version of) Poul Anderson's first future history series, the Psychotechnic History.

Onward.

Comrades And Companions

Although Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" is a pulp magazine story, it is peppered with some short but memorable reflective passages, e.g., a paragraph that begins:

"Men lived in their own times..." (p. 182)

- which we have previously quoted in full at least twice in:

Flight To Forever

A Brief Flash Of Light

In 3000 AD, it is known that time travel occurs at least futureward. There was even a Time War when an army defeated in the twenty-third century had attacked the twenty-fourth! Belgotai of Syrtis, an unemployed mercenary, has never time travelled but has developed a cavalier attitude to the concept. He asks "Mahtin Saundahs" to carry him forward to:

"'...some time when a free comrade can fight again.'" (p. 181)

Meanwhile, he will be a good companion:

"'...Ih'll help. Ih'm a good man wid a gun or vibrodagger. Yuh can't go batting alone into de future.'" (ibid.)

Does a time traveller need a companion? The Time Traveller finds Weena in 802,701 AD but she does not, and indeed would not have been able to, accompany him on the Time Machine. Saunders loses Sam but gains Belgotai but must brave the furthest future alone. The Doctor must have at least one companion, however implausible. They just have to entertain a TV audience. Let's leave it at that.

Prefigurement

"Flight to Forever."

Sometimes an early passage in a fictional narrative prefigures later developments although a first-time reader cannot be aware of this, e.g.:

"At that rate, they had enough energy to travel to the end of the world.

"Eve, Eve, I'll come back. I'll come back if I have to go ahead to Judgment Day...." (p. 172)

In fact, Saunders will return to Eve by travelling through "Judgment Day" and beyond.

Similarly:

"'Marlowe to the contrary, misery does not love company.'

"Baring his teeth, Baines said, 'We'll see about that.'"

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT p. 336.

The first speaker is the black magician, Theron Ware. Later, Baines will commission Ware to release a host of major demons from Hell for an entire night, thus unleashing nothing less than Judgement Day. (The sequel is entitled The Day After Judgement...)

But only on rereading do we appreciate the significance of Saunders' and Baines' remarks.

Temporal Agents

Poul Anderson wrote a historical sf series about agents of the Time Patrol. Robert Heinlein wrote a single sf short story about a temporal agent of the Temporal Bureau.

Each of us is a temporal agent of the eternal. By the eternal, I mean that which is, the single mass-energy, spacetime totality which has at least four internal dimensions and is conscious of itself through us. A temporal agent is someone who acts in time. Time is the only medium in which anyone can act unless, maybe, the existence of everything is regarded as a single transtemporal act.

Temporal agents do not need to be time travellers although we sometimes imagine and read about them. We will probably return to Anderson's "Flight to Forever" later today.

The Other Time Travellers

"Flight to Forever."

"'Time travelers!' Vargor's intense blue eyes widened. 'I heard of such things once, but - time travelers!'" (p. 203)

So there have been others.

"'The Ixchulhi made such structures on planets they conquered, no one knows why. But then, no one knows where they went, or where they came from, or where they ultimately went. It is hoped that some of the answers may be found in the pyramids.'" (p. 194)

Maybe time travellers persuaded the conquerors to move ahead in time?

Earth in 50,000 AD is colder than geology can account for:

"There had been a weapon used which consumed atmospheric carbon dioxide." (p. 208)

Again, maybe time travellers were involved in that war. They might have saved Earth from being made completely uninhabitable.

Since they can travel pastward for a maximum of seventy years, they are bound to attempt causality violation but we do not know the results.

Disappearing Characters

"Flight to Forever."

The opening pages, set in 1973, introduce four characters but two, Eve and MacPherson, do not reappear until the concluding paragraph and one, Sam Hull, is killed very soon in 2500! Martin Saunders gains another time travelling companion, Belgotai of Syrtis, in 3000 AD but Belgotai is left behind in 50,000 AD. Saunders must proceed alone around the circle of time before he can rejoin Eve and MacPherson in 1973 right at the end. The other main characters that Saunders interacts with, principally Taury, he encounters in 50,000 AD.

Another time traveller with changing companions, although on a much larger scale, is the Doctor. Doctor Who fans should read The Time Machine and "Flight to Forever" just as Star Trek, Dune and Foundation fans should read Poul Anderson's Technic History. Everything that they like is done better here.

Keeping A Time Travel Narrative Consistent

"Flight to Forever."

Small automatic time projectors sent from 1973 to 2073 have failed to return to 1973. Vacuum tubes blew or something?

Saunders and Hull travel to 2073 in the big (thirty feet long, ten feet high) projector: 100 years ahead minus the number of days since they sent the first automatic. But the automatics are not there. Hull thinks that they started back and blew out en route. But then they should still be lying there, albeit weathered? Unless someone or something has moved them?

In 2013, they find the weathered automatics which had got a bit further back but drained their batteries.

Although this is not stated - maybe it is obvious - Saunders must have kept the automatics in the projector after examining them in 2013. It is this that explains why he and Hull did not find them in 2073.

These are small points but also the sort of points on which time travel fiction can come unstuck.

Time Travel Series

Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" is a potential series. 

Imagine:

another small group constructs a time projector independently;

like Saunders, they learn that it is impossible to travel more than seventy years into the past and therefore they continue into the future;

they visit some of the same periods as he did but also others;

not trapped inside an Ixchulhi pyramid, they meet these interstellar conquerors;

each stop that they make is a complete adventure and an instalment of a series which can be continued indefinitely.

Is there any future for time travel series? 

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, each instalment features a different past (historical or prehistorical) period with discussion (or demonstration) of the consequences of temporal alterations.

The Doctor Who TV series began with a malfunctioning TARDIS (spacetime machine) which performed like a pendulum, swinging backwards and forwards between past Terrestrial and futuristic/extraterrestrial periods. Thus:

the stone age;

Skaro, the planet of Daleks and Thals;

back to the past, I can't remember when.

The two Doctor Who feature films changed the Doctor from an alien Time Lord into an English inventor, like Wells' Time Traveller, and re-presented the first two Dalek stories:

Skaro;

Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

(Daleks and Thals a bit like Morlocks and Eloi; Daleks Invasion Earth a bit like The War Of The Worlds.)

Observations

(i) We notice Wells' influence.

(ii) Wells didn't do series but The Time Machine could have become one.

(iii) And "Flight to Forever" could have become a good additional series.

Reintroducing "Flight to Forever"

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 161-240.

To introduce this story, I cannot do better than I did in 2020. Almost everything that I would have wanted to say now is there although with one exception.

The characters are:

Martin Saunders

Eve Lang

Sam Hull

"Doc" MacPherson

We do not recognize any of them. They are all created de novo for this story. None of the names resonate except - "Eve" can obviously be symbolic and "Lang" is familiar as the name of a heroine in Superman/Superboy comics although that is probably irrelevant!

Must go. Laterz.

Two Mornings And Time

"Son of the Sword."

OK. We have reread to the end of this story which has legs. It goes somewhere. As I write and drink coffee, the sun rises above roofs across the garden.

"We meditate on the lovely light of the god, Savitri. May it stimulate our thoughts."

-Rig Veda.

The sun can be addressed as many solar deities. This story ends:

"Dawn showed them the sea, and rising out of eastern waters the sun, day-god, the bright and loving Aton." (p. 160)

Aton is good as long as he stays in the sky and is not identified with ruinous teachings.

The text on the facing page begins:

"That morning it rained, a fine, summery mist blowing over the hills and hiding the gleam of the river and the village beyond."

-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 161-240 AT p. 161 -

- but this story, published in 1950, is set in 1973. We have left ancient Egypt far behind.

"That morning..." is referred to as such because it was a morning when something important happened. A circuit of cosmic time begins and ends.