Last Sights Of The Sun

 

"'At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens.'"

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 14, p. 93.

"Saunders saw part of the sun's huge blood-red disc shining wanly.

"So good-bye, Sol, he thought. Good-bye, and thank you for many million years of warmth and light. Sleep well, old friend."

-"Flight to Forever," p. 235.

Plunged into darkness by an eclipse, the Time Traveller flees back to his present:

"'So I came back.'" (15, p. 95)

Saunders has no alternative but to continue forward into "...the elemental dark." (ibid.)

"The universe was dead!" (ibid.)

A good place to close for the night. It is dark outside.

See also Good-byes

Space And Time Wars

I am not a fan of military sf but am a fan of any sf by Poul Anderson and Anderson's military sf is excellent, particularly the space battle in Ensign Flandry. See Battle In Space Revisited and the links from it.

Some Andersonian wars are fought not in space but through time. See Three Wars Through Time.

And, like a prescient Hegelian synthesis, a space battle had been combined with time travel in Anderson's earlier "Flight to Forever." See Time Wars and Space-Time Battle.

As several times before, there is a sense of completeness, of an author who explores every possible answer to several major questions. Can time travellers change the past? Yes, in Time Patrol. No, in There Will Be Time. Etc.

All The Gods

"Flight to Forever."

The alien general, Hunda:

"'By the gods, if we had decent weapons!'" (p. 217)

Saunders:

"...thought how beautiful [Taury] was - by all the gods, how beautiful!" (p. 218)

Does a new polytheism seem appropriate for a multi-species, interstellar civilization? It does to me but, in any case, we have already addressed this question in more detail than I would have felt able to do at present. See here.

James Blish's phrase, "gods of all stars," common to his Okie and pantropy series, seems especially pertinent.

See also The National Anthem.

More Ultrawave

The ultrawave is also mentioned in "Flight to Forever" (p. 216)

Although James Blish's fictional futures feature an ultrawave/ultraphone, this is clearly different from the one in the Andersonian futures.

Sf jargon like "hyperdrive," "warp drive," "Terra," "Terran" etc can generate a spurious sense of continuity between diverse narratives. My father, having heard "warp drive" mentioned in Star Trek, remarked to me that it was also referenced in Lost In Space whereas to me, of course, this was just familiar sf terminology. We need sf that breaks out of genre cliches. The future will be different from anything that has been imagined so let's imagine something that has not yet been imagined. I started this post just with the word, "ultrawave," and did not know where I was going with it. Now I must watch some TV news and get back to rereading Stieg Larsson.

We have not yet exhausted the temporal epic, "Flight to Forever."

Imperial Claim

"Flight to Forever."

Hunda says that:

Maurco the Doomer was the last properly anointed Galactic Emperor even though he held only three planetary systems five thousand years ago;

Taury is his direct descendant;

therefore, she, and not any of the 100+ human or nonhuman barbarian pretenders, has the only real Imperial claim even though she is now holed up in a single fortress in the galactic periphery.

How strong a case is that? In 50,000 AD, on a Galactic scale and across five millennia, formal anointment and hereditary rule? Someone with superior firepower could sweep it aside and then a new de facto would become a new de jure as happened here: British monarchs are "...since the Conquest." (My emphasis.)

In any case, the two time travellers will secure Taury's claim. The Empire will be restored - and Saunders will be compelled to leave it behind in his "Flight Without End." The narrative is both temporal and cosmic.  

Dialogue Between Martin Saunders And Vargor Alfri

"Flight to Forever."

"'Welcome to the hold of Brontothor! Welcome to the Galactic Empire!'

"'The Empire?'

"'Aye, this is the Empire, or what's left of it. A haunted fortress on a frozen ghost world, last fragment of the old Imperium...'" (p. 204)

We Notice:

(i) "Brontothor" is an evocative place name, like "Archopolis."

(ii) The time travellers have brought a psychophone from 4100 AD and thus are able to converse with the Imperials immediately on arrival.

(iii) Vargor describes this last fragment of Empire in yet another memorable phrase. (This story contains several.)

(iv) The fortress is not literally haunted and Earth, although frozen, is not literally a ghost world. The story is sf, not fantasy, although Vargor's phraseology suggests some alarming possibilities...

(v) The last fragment of Empire might have been on another planet or on another continent but nevertheless happens to be visible from the fixed spatial location of the time projector on the Terrestrial surface.

(vi) Vargor Alfri is a prince of the Empire and his alien companion, Hunda of Haamigur, is a (or the?) general of the Imperial armies.

Quite a lot of info there. Your Lancastrian blogger must pause for a meal break.

See also: Wild Beasts Howling

The Second Empire II

"Flight to Forever."

See:

The Second Empire

Five First Empires

The New Empire

The Dreamer, a member of the Vro-Hi species:

"'...was working further on the philosophical basis which the Second Empire must have.'" (pp. 211-212)

In our history, no one worked out the philosophical basis for a civilization, then built the civilization! Plato and Hegel understandably but mistakenly thought that ideas preceded realities. In reality, people worked to survive, then produced a surplus which supported more complex societies in which a minority had the leisure to philosophize. Thales and the other pre-Socratics theorized about the constituents of matter and nature but Socrates preferred to analyze concepts and his disciple, Plato, made the mistake of thinking that concepts or "Ideas" were primary whereas the manual labour of slaves which fed Greek aristocrats and philosophers was secondary.

Later theorists analyzed, rationalized and criticized the material/economic basis of their society, e.g., Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Maybe a Vro-Hi philosopher can conceptualize in advance of the building of a new society but, if so, he can do this only on the basis of all that has gone before on Earth and elsewhere.

The Time Traveller And Martin Saunders

HG Wells' Time Traveller spends time with Eloi and Morlocks in 802,701 AD, then embarks on the Further Vision before returning to the nineteenth century.

Poul Anderson's Martin Saunders spends time with Taury the Red and the Galactic Empire in 50,000 AD, then is sent on the Flight without End before returning to the twentieth century. 

The two narratives have structural similarities. Anderson is a Wellsian sf writer and acknowledges Wells in There Will Be Time.

This was a last minute thought before setting off for routine Saturday afternoon city centre activities.

Ad futurum.

Self Mastery

"Flight to Forever."

In 4300 AD, Martin Saunders contemplates:

"...the far suns that man had conquered without mastering himself." (p. 189)

"...without mastering himself..." reads like an unexamined cliche. Is it just a given that man can master his environment but not himself? In Anderson's own Psychotechnic History, methods of self-knowledge and self-control are developed. In his Brain Wave, intelligence gains control of instinct. Moves in this direction have already been made in Saunders' timeline. In 4100 AD:

"'...the Council will probably order your temporal deportation as unintegrated individuals. The sanity of Sol will be in danger otherwise.'" (p. 186)

"They even pleaded Belgotai's case to the Solar Council, via telescreen. But the answer was inexorable: the Galaxy already had too many barbarians. The travelers would have to go." (p. 187)

In 50,000 AD, the Dreamer offers to remove the time travellers' neuroses but Belgotai declines.

Self mastery is possible.

3100-50,000 AD

"Flight to Forever."

In several periods, Saunders and Belgotai do not pause long enough to have any adventure.

3100 AD radioactivity.

3200 AD a vitrified, lifeless crater.

3500 AD, and centuries afterward, forest.

4100 AD a College with a psychophone (translator).

4300 AD merchants' children's playground.

4400 AD space barbarians sacking a villa.

5000 AD projector trapped inside a massive construction until -

25,296 AD Galactic Empire.

26,000 AD the pyramid has become a wooded hill.

27,000 AD agricultural village.

28,000 AD men quarrying the pyramid.

30,000 AD a stone city.

31,000 AD Solar Matriarchy.

34,000 AD devastated city.

35,000 AD peasants.

36,000 AD mercenaries hired to protect Earth.

50,000 AD when the time travellers do spend time and make a difference

- but, as I often wind up saying, no more tonight!