Wind Above The Cliffs

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

"...the clouds were breaking up, weren't they? Too much wind for them. The wind went shrieking across a plain of whins and stiff grass, here and there a leafless tree, everything gray under hurried moonlight and unmercifully sharp stars. Holger couldn't see the smoke from the troll's bolthole; the wind scattered it too fast." (p. 147)

"Holger looked across the tumbled gray land. The wind struck him in the face." (p. 148)

"The wind was still loud, but Holger paid no heed." (p. 149)

When Carahue shouts that the huntsmen are coming:

"The noise flew torn in the wind..." (p. 150)

Loud wind breaks up clouds, shrieks, scatters smoke from the fire that killed the troll, strikes Holger's face and tears the noise of Carahue's warning shout and of the approaching horns. As we often observe, Andersonian winds do a lot of work! The wind-driven action builds to a crescendo.

Another Caesar And Synagogues

See Caesars.

Manse Everard, reflecting during his conversation with Janne Floris:

"...the Jewish War. That was what detained Vespasian and his son Titus after their victory over Vitellius."

-Time Patrol, p. 492.

OK. Here is a direct reference to the next of Suetonius' Caesars:

DIVUS TITUS

Everard continues:

"The rising of the Jews, the bloody suppression of it, the destruction of the Third Temple - with everything that that was to mean for the future, Judaism, Christianity, the Empire, Europe, the world." (ibid.)

The Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. A council of rabbis closed the Jewish canon in 100 AD. Thus, Judaism as we know it, organized around the reading of the Torah in synagogues, was getting started at the same time as Christianity. The Time Patrol is kept busy:

"'Patrol units are concentrated on guarding Palestine. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freebooters who want to change what happened in Jerusalem, researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it....'" (ibid.)

Reality is unstable. Poul Anderson makes us feel this more than anyone else. One quantum fluctuation might change everything. And the Patrol maintains the status quo, no matter how much suffering is involved.

Caesars

I have borrowed The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves, from the Public Library. The title characters are:

DIVUS JULIUS

DIVUS AUGUSTUS

TIBERIUS

GAIUS CALIGULA

DIVUS CLAUDIUS

NERO

GALBA

OTHO

VITELLIUS

DIVUS VESPASIAN

DIVUS TITUS

DOMITIAN

Janne Floris of the Time Patrol to Manse Everard:

"'You remember, at the overthrow of Nero, civil war broke out. The year of the three Emperors - Galba, Otho, Vitellius - then, in the Near East, Vespasian - devastating the Empire as they contended."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 488.

Thus, two sentences in Time Patrol summarize important information about five of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." 

Lycius the dwarf writes in his memoirs that:

"Augustus's will set the bounds of the Empire; forbade any expansion."

(Poul Anderson mentions this Augustan policy in "The Discovery of the Past." See Perspectives.)

Lycius continues:

"And in his will Augustus also appointed Tiberius as his successor. Our divine rulers have, since then, been successively evil, mad, foolish and -- now -- all three."

-Neil Gaiman, "August" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables And Reflections (New York, 1993), pp. 98-122 AT p. 122, panel 4.

I think that Lycius means:

Tiberius, evil;

Caligula, mad;

Claudius, foolish;

Nero, all three.

Thus, Janne and Lycius summarize information about nine of the Caesars.

Killing The Troll

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Problem: The troll's wounds heal instantly. Its severed limbs crawl back and reattach themselves to the torso. Even its severed head rolls back. So how to kill it?

Solution: Cut off body parts and throw them into a fire. The ashes do not reassemble.

For a longer account from nearly ten years ago, see Troll.

We approach the novel's climax and Holger's apotheosis. Only two CHAPTERs and one NOTE left to go, on pp. 146-156. Meanwhile, on Earth Real, I await a pause in the rain at which point I will walk into town. Blogging happens in a real life context.

After Holger's adventure, a brief return to the Old Phoenix, I think.

Wind And Cave

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Approaching the troll's cave, "Holger's tobacco-dulled nose..." (p. 140) prevents him from smelling the troll until after the others:

"The wind was more or less in his face. He heard it go whoo-oo and shake his plume and cloak; he felt how chill it was. Nothing more." (ibid.)

Two senses, sound and feel, but not yet smell. However, when they reach the cave mouth, he gags at a stench described as "...thick and cold..." (ibid.)

And when they enter the cave:

"'I would we might see the stars once more,' Alianora said. The wind blew her words away." (ibid.)

The wind comments that her hope is in vain?

There follows an adventure in the cave.

Nearly There

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

faulted mountain

sharded rock

gap through cliff

hours-long climb

barren soil

tall monolith

strengthening wind

camp fire

orange flames

flying sparks

black sky

gibbous moon

monstrous clouds

whistlings

rustlings

croakings

blowing wind

murmuring grass

screaming owl

murk beyond wavering firelight

When Morgan le Fay approaches Holger, the wind as usual punctuates dialogue:

"Morgan watched him for a long moment. The wind whistled around them." (p. 135)

The hillmen return and are defeated but the travellers must now risk an encounter with the allegedly undefeatable troll. Into the next chapter...

Further Into The Wilds

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY.

glimmering lake

white vapours

chill weather

scudding gray clouds

leaden overcast

barren mountain slopes

harsh silver grass

eroded pinnacles

sheer scarp

a gap to the wold

savage towns

troll stench

caves

burrows

rocky defile

heavily armed, barking hillmen

Holger intimidates the hillmen by blowing smoke at them, a trick learnt from A Connecticut Yankee..., we are infomed.

The hillmen flee and we turn to the next chapter although not necessarily this evening.

Perspectives

Homer, expressing the Greek perspective, describes Odysseus as crafty and wise whereas Virgil, expressing the antagonistic Trojan perspective, describes Ulysses (the same character) as cruel and deceitful.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Fall of the Terran Empire is followed by a period of chaos called the Long Night. Pete Pinto, the second-hand bookseller, made the point that later civilizations which had grown out of that period would not refer to it as "the Long Night."

Poul Anderson imagines an sf writer in Augustan Rome who considered three possible futures:

the Empire will conquer the whole world;

in accordance with Augustan policy, the Imperial borders will remain unchanged;

the Empire will fall as barbarians move in, leaving - 

"...nothing...but ruins and wilderness."

-Poul Anderson "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 190.

Instead, Anderson tells us that:

"A heretical offshoot of the religion of a subjugated people, afar in a corner of the Mediterranean ambit, took over Romans and barbarians alike, completely transforming them and breeding new, utterly different civilizations." (ibid.)

Augustus himself, in a fictional account, tells Lycius the dwarf that the prophetic volumes foretold that either the Romans would:

"...last a few hundred years and then [be] gone - - eaten from outside by barbarians, from inside by strange gods."

-Neil Gaiman, August IN Gaiman, Fables And Reflections (New York, 1993), pp. 98-122 AT p. 113, panel 5 -

- or that they would conquer the whole world.

And here is my point about perspectives: what Anderson describes as transformation by a foreign heresy, Augustus describes as being eaten by strange gods!

The Future

Life and fiction meet in the blog. A post can be inspired by a lengthy series written by Poul Anderson, by a single phrase in an Anderson text or by an everyday event.

Life remains turbulent in Britain and around the world. Will the twenty-first or twenty-second century bring forth:

a World Federation (Robert Heinlein's Future History);

a Solar Union (Anderson's Psychotechnic History);

a Solar Commonwealth (Anderson's Technic History);

a nuclear war (Anderson's Maurai Federation etc);

a global political dictatorship (some Anderson short stories);

ecological collapse (happening now);

alien invasion (highly unlikely!);

an American theocracy (also the Future History);

humanoid robots (Asimov; one Anderson short story);

regular space travel (in much sf but long delayed);

post-organic intelligences (Anderson's Genesis);

the completely unexpected (certainly)?

What we definitely will experience is a single as yet unknown future.

Conscious Simulations

 

Andrea usually says something relevant. 

In Poul Anderson's Genesis, a far future post-organic intelligence creates simulated environments with conscious inhabitants who think that they really are living in ancient Greece, in nineteenth century England or in an alternative history etc. Andrea summarizes current arguments to the conclusion that we are now living in such a simulation.

(i) If there is one material environment containing many simulated environments, including simulations within simulations, then it is statistically more probable that we are living in one of the simulations than in the original material environment.

(ii) Apparently, sub-atomic particles are observed to exhibit properties that would conform to the simulation theory but I have lost track of the argument. 

See:

Simulation hypothesis

It gets complicated - and it is getting late here. But Anderson's sf is still at the forefront of speculation.