An Alternative Future

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIVE.

Maybe this chapter concludes ironically?

General Fronto, who had been a bit disturbed and momentarily uneasy at the prospect of many slaves becoming wage workers, reflects that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius is:

"...popular. With most of the upper classes...

"And with the masses, too, for what little that latter was worth." (p. 95)

This makes Fronto optimistic:

"Fronto smiled at the future, his own and the Empire's.

"Roma aeterna victrix! he thought. Imperium sine fine! Next...Parthia. After that...who knows?" (ibid.)

Who knows indeed? Sf readers think of interplanetary expansion and colonization. But another prospect is implicit. If masses of industrial workers wield their economic power in a struggle for social and political power, then the masses are worth more than a "little" and Fronto might frown at the future of Empire...

I can read this implication in the text but cannot be sure that it is the author's intention!

Industrial Revolutions In Three Periods In Two Timelines

In SM Stirling's The Winds Of Fate, time travellers have informed the Roman Empire of sources of precious metals and also of advanced industrial techniques.

In Poul Anderson's "Lodestar," the new Supermetals company sells industrially valuable supermetals to already established companies in the Polesotechnic League.

In Anderson's "Starfog," the discoverers of the Cloud Universe cluster will sell abundant iron, gold, mercury, tungsten, bismuth, uranium and transuranics to civilizations in several spiral arms of the galaxy.

This progression has taken us from a large part of the Earth to a small part of the galaxy to a vaster volume of the galaxy. But it is the time travel scenario that we are reading currently. Alternative histories are a welcome addition to future histories.

Workers

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIVE.

It is decades since I read Spartacus. I remember that a Roman was shown around a perfume factory where the work-force were free wage earners. These strange, silent, industrious and diligent men disturbed a slave-owner as well they might.

Slaves labouring at the time traveller Artorius' new blast furnaces are offered:

"Cash and the prospect of manumission..." (p. 88)

- on an unprecedented scale. A Roman general thinks:

"A bit disturbing. Though I couldn't say why, exactly." (ibid.)

We know why. A mass working class is about to enter history centuries ahead of schedule. The general dismisses "...his momentary unease..." (ibid.) because he is delighted at the prospect of increased productivity. 

Workers no longer making iron by the old methods can grow more food or make other things. Artorius even envisages:

"'...many works bidding against each other for contracts.'" (p. 90)

A social revolution is under way with unpredictable consequences - although time travellers have some notion of some of the consequences.

Catching Up With References

See Standard Practice and its combox.

Here are the Cro-Magnons:

"A Cro-Magnon guide went by across the snow-covered yard, a tall handsome fellow dressed rather like an Eskimo (why had romance never credited paleolithic man with enough sense to wear jacket, pants, and footgear in a glacial period?), his face painted, one of the steel knives he had earned at his belt."

-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 1, pp.173-174.

The combox discussion refers to the Neolithic.

See also Merchants And Languages and its combox.

Van Rijn converses with a non-human head on a screen in an:

"...eerie set of whistles and quavers."

-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 235-424 AT VI, p. 275.

When his chief secretary asks him how many languages he speaks, he replies, as already noted in the combox:

"'Twenty-thirty bad. Ten-fifteen good. Anglic best of all.'" (ibid.)

(This is a joke. Van Rijn's dialogue is full of mispronunciations, malapropisms etc.)

I can't help referring back to the opening volumes of The Technic Civilization Saga without again appreciating the slow steady build-up of Poul Anderson's Technic History. The first six instalments introduce:

the Jerusalem Catholic Church

Ythrians

the Ythrian New Faith

Nicholas van Rijn

Adzel

David Falkayn

In the seventh, Falkayn works for van Rijn's company but has not yet met him. Only in the thirteenth instalment does van Rijn found his first trade pioneer crew consisting of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan and only in the sixteenth, Satan's World, do van Rijn and the "trader team" share the spotlight. And, by that time, the crisis of the Polesotechnic League approaches.

The best of the future history series.

Standard Practice

The Winds Of Fate, PROLOGUE.

An author can make something sound so authentic that we have to pause to reflect that he has invented it. Thus, when the Emperor Marcus Aurelius begins to address Roman soldiers, their standard response is to bellow:

"'ROMA! ROMA! ROMA!'" (p. 16)

How do we know this? It was taken so much for granted that no one wrote it down or, if anyone did write it down, then that written record has not survived. So, again, how do we know? We don't. But American time traveller, Arthur Vandenberg/Artorius, finds out when he is with Marcus Aurelius as the latter begins to address the troops. For a moment, we accept that this is genuine. Then we realize that SM Stirling cannot have known it either so he has had to make it up - but very plausibly.

In "Delenda Est," Poul Anderson surmises that Cro-Magnons in the Pleistocene would have had the sense to wear protective clothing, including trousers, in snowy terrain.  

Sf authors have to think of the logical consequences of their premises, not just share and reinforce their readers' (usual) lack of imagination!

Merchants And Languages

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THREE.

"Josephus spoke Greek and Latin and Aramaic and three other languages well, and several more passably. He knew his uncle outdid him there. For a merchant it was a valuable skill, even if you could get by in Latin and Greek in most of the Empire, in the cities and larger towns at least and as far as bargaining was concerned." (pp. 48-49)

Although I am not a merchant, I continually regret my incompetence in any language but English. 

How many languages does Poul Anderson's interstellar merchant, Nicholas van Rijn, speak, whether well or badly? I think that we are told this in Satan's World. However, Sheila's and my adult granddaughter, Yossi, is currently staying in the room where the books are shelved so I do not have easy access but blog readers should be able to answer a question about van Rijn.

I am sheltering from the heat wave, listening to a report on the Iran War and concurrently reading two other works that provide blog material.

As John Carter said, "We still live." (I think he said "I" but "We" is better.)

Wothenjaz Versus Mars - And The Chinese

 

SM Stirling, The Winds Of Fate (Riverdale, NY, May 2026), CHAPTER ONE.

The PROLOGUE had recapitulated.

In the opening chapter, barbarians attack Romans. Our old friend, the "swine array" (p. 27) is here. The barbarians had been taught it by an "uncouth" God called Wothenjaz. We know him well. 

The Romans are armed with explosives provided by American time travellers of whom it is said:

"'Mars Himself whispers in their ears!'" (p. 28)

CHAPTER TWO informs us that Chinese time travellers will arrive from 2032.

Many of you out there have read this already but I am catching up.

The future of time travel sf is alive and well.

Two Enquiries

Some of Poul Anderson's characters engage in two completely different kinds of religious enquiry:

enquiry into the historical origins of a particular religion;

finding out which is the most appropriate or beneficial spiritual practice.

These two enquiries can be either completely independent or completely interdependent. Thus, to check out zazen, I do not need to study the life of the Buddha. It is sufficient to receive some personal instruction, then to sit facing a wall. By contrast, before I can practice Christianity, I must believe it and, to do that, I must first assent to certain historical claims.

Adzel meditates.

Axor says:

"'If science can show that the gospel account of Christ is not myth but biography; and if it then finds that his ministry was, in empirical fact, universal -'"

-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverside, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 210.

Empirical fact would not be faith. There are two "if"'s there, so I am not sure how far Axor has got in his quest. He has not confirmed the Universal Incarnation yet. How certain is he of scientific verification of "...not myth but biography..."? Surely the Gospels contain elements of both? The practical conclusion of his two "if"'s is that (he thinks that) Diana Crowfeather might decide that it was reasonable to accept Christ as her Saviour. I do not think that we decide matters of reason. We either find that something is reasonable or we do not. Meanwhile, we can, in any case, meditate at any time and in any place, whatever our beliefs.

Earlier in the Technic History, Yakow Harolsson, High Commander of the Companions of the Arena on Aeneas, makes the following points in conversation with Ivar Frederiksen, future Firstman of Ilion:

religion means faith in the supernatural;

most Aeneans are monotheists and therefore observe various ceremonies and injunctions;

the more sophisticated acknowledge that their faith is not scientific, i.e., is subject neither to empirical confirmation nor to disconfirmation;

divine intervention might cause miracles which, however, involve suspension of natural law and therefore are not experimentally repeatable;

an event might have happened but be scientifically explicable, e.g., if Jesus Christ existed and reemerged from a tomb, he might have been in a coma;

if a saint did not exist, the creed associated with him might nevertheless be valid.

(Even if the Buddha did not exist, meditation still works.)

One further observation: both Jesus and the Buddha lived. We share with them the task of understanding and responding to reality.

(It is great and unusual to have all this in sf texts.)

Historical And Fictional Accounts

Ancient Graeco-Roman and Jewish authors put speeches into the mouths of legendary and historical figures and either rewrote existing narratives or created new stories to suit the needs of their audiences. Is there anything that was written in this way that has been taken to be literally true? Quite a lot, I think... An angel appearing and explaining an event is a literary way of telling readers that the event is important, not proof that supernatural beings exist.

How much of Poul Anderson's Technic History is fiction within the fiction? Quite a lot. Look through the contents of The Earth Book Of Stormgate plus "The Star Plunderer" and, of course, "Sargasso of Lost Starships." (The latter features some almost supernatural beings but demonic rather than angelic.)

This means that two kinds of additions to the Technic History are possible:

new instalments fitted between existing instalments;

rewrites, recounting what "really happened" when van Rijn was stranded on Diomedes, when Manuel Argos led a slave revolt and founded the Terran Empire etc.

Someone might even write The Sky Book Of Stormgate. 

The Technic History is long but implies a literally endless narrative.

Traditions

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, one large quadrupedal Wodenite, Adzel, converts to Mahayana Buddhism and another, Axor, later, to Jerusalem Catholicism. We welcome this re-use of a fictional species which adds substance and continuity to a future history series. Individuals, then planets and their inhabitants, recur while historical periods pass. The species re-used most frequently in the Technic History are Merseians and Ythrians. Each of these species has its own distinctive polytheism and monotheism which need not concern us here. I wanted to focus on the Terrestrial Indian contemplative and Abrahamic prophetic traditions represented by Adzel and Axor.

In a prophetic tradition, it is necessary to be neither polytheist nor atheist but monotheist. Also, monotheism can become monist but this is regarded as heretical whereas, in a contemplative tradition, it is possible to be polytheist, monotheist, atheist or monist! Vaishnavites (Hindu worshippers of Vishnu) mythologize the Buddha, founder of an atheist/monotheist tradition, as an avatar of their deity, a role that he shares with Krishna. I really dig spiritual diversity. We can practice alongside others who reflect reality differently. Traditions coexist in Anderson's Terran Empire.