Poul Anderson's Three Major Series

Because of a cataract operation this afternoon, I have a shield over my right eye which must not be removed until tomorrow morning. Although this shield is transparent, it does interfere with reading so maybe I will make this the last post for today and hope to do more tomorrow.

Over a long period of time, I have posted a great deal about Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, far more than about any of his several other future history series.

I am fascinated by time travel, by its paradoxes and by Anderson's blend of time travel with historical fiction in his Time Patrol series.

A comparably substantial series is the The King Of Ys Tetralogy (with Karen Anderson).

These three series are:

a science fiction future history series;

historical science fiction with time travel as the sf element;

historical fiction with a fantasy element.

History is the common factor. The Terran Empire appears in the first of these series and the Roman Empire in the second and third.

In other reading, Goldfinger has a fascinating plan to raid Fort Knox.

Logic And Literature

I am not qualified to discuss the physics of time travel. The logic becomes abstract but that is the nature of logic and it is necessary for consistency. In fact, logic is consistency. People who do not understand "logic" or who get their idea of "logic" from Mr. Spock instead of from Aristotle, or who think that being logical means being unemotional nevertheless acknowledge that they should not contradict themselves in conversation. Someone who states that Socrates was executed in 399 BC, then that he was executed in 299 BC, accepts, when it is pointed out, that this is inconsistent and corrects what they have said, giving only a single date. If they did not do this, then they would not succeed in telling us when Socrates died. In fact, they would not succeed in giving us even an inaccurate account of when he died.

An inconsistent time travel story recounts a sequence of events that cannot happen even if some kind of time travel is possible. But this is no surprise. An inconsistent non-time travel also recounts impossible events.

However, Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is infinitely more than just an exercise in logic. Many of its instalments are very detailed and concrete works of historical fiction. The time travel paradoxes are made real in this context:

Carl Farness investigates the origin of the Volsungasaga story that Odin appeared and betrayed his followers and learns that he himself, mistaken for Odin, must appear and enact the betrayal;

Manse Everard and Janne Floris travel backward through time to find the mysterious event that had launched the prophetess, Veleda's, campaign against Rome only to learn that that event was their own dramatic arrival and unplanned intervention at a crucial moment;

Everard and Whitcomb fight and kill the time criminal, Stane, in post-Roman Britain and retrieve the time shuttle that he had stolen but leave its fuel chest because that will be buried with Stane, thus becoming the mysterious contents of an ancient British barrow that will put them on his trail.

The Time Patrol is embedded not only in history but also in classical literature.

Timelines II

See Timelines.

Second Theory

Mutable Timeline/Successive Timelines (two ways of saying the same thing, I think)

It is obvious - we might think! - that the relationship between timelines 1 and 2 is a relationship of before and after. Timeline 2 - which, for the sake of argument, we might imagine that we are in - exists after timeline 1 which therefore existed before timeline 2. We are now using temporal language: the prepositions, "before" and "after," and the past tense of "exist." However, this does not mean that the events of timeline 1 occurred long ago in the past of timeline 2. That would make these two sequences of events parts of a single timeline. 

In timeline 1, there is a Holocaust and, later, the Danellians who found the Time Patrol. In timeline 2, there is no Holocaust and, because history has gone so differently in this timeline, no later Danellians. Each timeline is a complete four-dimensional continuum from the beginning to the end of the universe.

They are like two versions of a story, each with its own beginning, middle and end. In the example that we are considering, the stories diverge at some point in the 1939-1945 period and therefore have very different conclusions.

If timeline 2 is said to succeed, or to come after, timeline1, then this succession or coming after occurs in a second temporal dimension which is at right angles to the temporal dimensions of timelines 1 and 2 just as the three dimensions of space are at right angles to each other.

Every position in space exists at every moment of the first temporal dimension. Every event in timeline 1 exists in a single moment in the second temporal dimension. Many people live their entire lives in timeline 1 but do not exist in timeline 2 but there is no moment in either timeline when they first exist, then cease to exist. They are unaware of and unaffected by any historical changes made by time travellers.

We can say either that there is a single timeline which changes from one state to another or that there are different timelines which either precede or succeed each other. I think that this difference is terminological: either one mutable timeline or many successive timelines. 

Timelines

The time travel issue has come up again. See combox for Hero Meets Villain. As the first of two stages in addressing this -

If someone remembers having lived in a timeline where there was a Holocaust but experiences living in a timeline where there was no Holocaust, then we can designate these timelines as 1 and 2, respectively, without as yet committing ourselves to any theory either about the existence of either of these timelines or about the relationship between them.

Two Theories

(I) A Single Discontinuous Timeline

Only timeline 2 exists. Timeline 1 does not exist and never has existed in any dimension of time. Indeed, timeline 2 itself (now misnamed) is the only temporal dimension. The quantum nature of the universe is such that sometimes a time traveller randomly appears/arrives from nowhen with spurious memories of a timeline that does not exist and has never existed. This explanation is offered in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

Problem:

Sometimes a Time Patroller says that he might travel into the past and delete the timeline that he is now in. If a deleted timeline has no existence and if the Patroller does carry through with deleting this timeline, then it follows that this timeline that he is now in - he is conscious of it and talking about it - does not exist. This is a contradiction.

Second stage later.

Carl, Son Of Ralph

Vault Of The Ages.

In Chapter 1, our viewpoint character, Carl:

travels on horseback;

is the son of the local Chief;

is sixteen;

is "...large and strong for his age...," (p. 14);

has long, brown hair, a sun tan and "...wide-set brown eyes..." (ibid.);

bears sword, dagger, shield, bow and quiver;

can live off game and farmers' hospitality;

carries news of impending war;

is impatient with Dalesmen who talk of trivia while eating.

Thus, he sounds like an ideal hero for a juvenile novel which this is. To regular readers, this is a very familiar Poul Anderson scenario although it was in fact his first novel.

To 6938

We get a lot of archaeology around Lancaster what with Roman remains and all. Someone unearthed an altar to Mars. In his introduction to Vault Of The Ages, Poul Anderson discusses the limitations of archaeology:

"...relics are usually few and in poor condition."

-Poul Anderson, Vault Of The Ages (New York, 1969), p. vii.

Anderson's Time Patrol solves this problem but their discoveries are of benefit only to dwellers in periods when it is known that time travel occurs - and only in their own timeline, of course.

Anderson presents a fascinating summary of the contents of the Time Capsule in New York which is meant to be opened in 6938. The novel features a larger "time vault" which is discovered and opened in a fictional future about five hundred years after Vault... was written. If this is going to be our only way to communicate directly with our descendants, then we should do more of it. 

See also a poem by James Elroy Flecker here.

Periods Of SF

Is it right to continue discussing decades-old popular fiction while global conflict escalates? Some would say not. However, fiction continues to be written during major conflicts. CS Lewis' major contemporary sf-fantasy novel, That Hideous Strength, was published in 1945.

In his introduction to the 1976 Science Fiction Master Series edition of Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, Brian Aldiss refers to:

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

- but not to HG Wells' In The Days Of The Comet which is surely the most directly relevant other sf novel?

Keyes' and Doyle's novels are mentioned because they have plot points in common with Brain Wave. The other three are mentioned because, like Brain Wave, they were published in the early 1950's which Aldiss identifies as a good period for sf.

He identifies 1976 as a period of commercialism in sf when quantity of output overcame quality. He acknowledges that Anderson was a big output man but praises what he calls this first novel as "...fresh and interesting." (p. 7) I have argued on this blog that Anderson excelled in both quantity and quality through his exceptionally long career.

High is heaven and holy.

Introductions To Books And A Book Of Introductions?

An introduction to a book can be written by the author or by someone else. There can be introductions to different editions. An introduction can outline the factual background to the text or can address the issues that it raises. Alternatively, an introduction can be an additional layer of the fiction as when Le Matelot, otherwise unknown but clearly identifying himself as a participant in Technic civilization, introduces Poul Anderson's Trader To The Stars or when Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon introduces Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate as well as each individual instalment collected in the Earth Book.

Thus, in the Earth Book, Hloch introduces "Lodestar." The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, includes Hloch's introduction but also reproduces Anderon's own earlier introduction as an afterword.

Poul Anderson's introduction to Vault Of The Ages is a factual account of archaeology and time capsules whereas Brian Aldiss' introduction to a later edition of Brain Wave addresses the issues that the novel raises.

A collection of introductions to major works as a lead in to reading some of the works themselves?

Chronologies

Any work of fiction holds a chronological position within its author's career. Thus, "Tomorrow's Children" (1947) was Poul Anderson's first published story, I think. (I regularly get historical or numerical details like this wrong.) Secondly, a story can have a different kind of chronological position as an instalment within a series. Thus, "Tomorrow's Children" became the first part of Twilight World. (Please correct me if I am going wrong here.)

Brian Aldiss' 1976 Introduction to Anderson's Brain Wave describes the work as "...this first novel..." (p. 7) However, Vault Of The Ages (1952) and Three Hearts And Three Lions (1953) preceded Brain Wave (1954). (I am assuming here that I got all these dates right when I compiled Significant Dates but I might check on that.)

Thus, we might say that Vault Of The Ages preceded Anderson's Technic History in the first kind of chronological order although not in the second kind. However, "Tiger By The Tail," (1951) "Honorable Enemies" (1951) and "Sargasso of Lost Starships" (1951) all preceded Vault Of The Ages and were later incorporated into the eventual Technic History. "Significant Dates," assuming that its dates are accurate, shows how various works and series interpenetrate in the first chronological sense. The novels and stories that separate into distinct series are parts of a single creative process.

Tuesday afternoon will be taken up with my cataract operation and the weekend after next will be spent in London in the cause of greater understanding of current conflicts.

Fair winds forever.

From 1953 To 2025

Yesterday, there was Armed Forces Day by the sea and an "East Meets West" cultural event with food in Lancaster Library. Today there was a Vintage Festival, a Norman Festival and Gay Pride in different parts of the District. I am getting onto my computer late in the day.

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave was published in 1953. Brian Aldiss wrote an Introduction to the Science Fiction Master Series edition in 1976. We are now in 2025. That gives us a vast historical perspective. What else happened in 1953?

Stalin died.

Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay reached the summit of Everest.

Casino Royale was published.

I was alive but not yet at school.

SM Stirling born (added later)

That is a short and selective list, of course.

Brian Aldiss' introduction reflects the world in 1976. Because they are relevant to the plot of Anderson's novel, he mentions:

therapy

Eastern religions

new religions

drugs

"Karl Marx's prediction that the State would wither away..." 

-Brian Aldiss, Introduction IN Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977), pp. 5-8 AT p. 5.

Aldiss comments that this prediction "...has been revealed in all its foolishness." (ibid.)

This is a common misunderstanding of Marx. His idea was never that States as we know them would wither away. Instead, they had to be overthrown and replaced by a qualitatively different kind of state. Then that state would rapidly make itself redundant and would start to "wither away" almost from its inception. But we do not need to debate that issue further here.

But it is relevant to Brain Wave where, because of a massive increase in human intelligence, familiar States do cease to function/"wither way." Individuals with enhanced intelligence come together to reorganize social activities in everyone's interests as Marx had hoped would/thought could happen as an outcome of struggles first within, but then going beyond, the old order.

In 2025, we still have all the problems.