Outcomes

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the Psychotechnic Institute fails to end social and psychological conflicts even though, in the Solar Union period, some planetary populations are described as "integrate," but the Solar Union flies apart and, according to "The Chapter Ends," there are millennia of interstellar empires before there is eventually a Galactic civilization in which psychotechnicians control cosmic forces. 

In Anderson's Technic History, the Chaos is followed by Technic civilization and the hyperdrive and eventually there is a peaceful interstellar civilization in another spiral arm of the galaxy.

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, the Patrol guards future millennia of continued conflicts and wars before an Era of Oneness and the evolution of human beings into Danellians.

In SM Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series, a nuclear war in 2032 is followed, in a second temporal dimension, by industrial revolutions in the Roman and Han Empires.

Are we living in a Chaos? Yes. Is a nuclear war possible? Yes, as long as nuclear weapons exist. Is a positive outcome possible? I think that it has to be possible because we do not know what will happen. At least we have to work towards something better - and probably without the help either of a hyperdrive or of time travel.

Future Historical Details

Periodically I return to summarizing parts of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then become dissatisfied with summaries that leave out too much.

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.

-copied from Catching Up With References.

First, let us note that Adzel is a Wodenite. Then we add:

Falkayn will lead the joint human-Ythrian colonization of Avalon;

Philippe Rochefort, an officer in the Terran Imperial attack on Avalon and a Jerusalem Catholic, will have an affair with a direct descendant of Falkayn;

later, Dominic Flandry will defend the Terran Empire and his daughter, Diana Crowfeather, will work as a tour guide for a Wodenite Jerusalem Catholic priest.

But that still leaves out a lot of details.

A Realistic Assessment

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Fortunately, Artorius is able to assess the Chinese temporal expedition realistically from the outset.

(i) He knows what the Chinese regime was/would have been like in 2032. (In 2026, China is expanding economically, not militarily, but what will happen in the next six years?)

(ii) Now the early nuclear strike on Vienna makes sense. The Chinese had stolen Fuchs' temporal displacement process and were trying to forestall a Western temporal expedition.

(iii) It is reported that a member of the Chinese expedition killed a man by shooting him in the head.

The Romans have no alternative but to go to a war footing. It is the kind of thing that we expect although we still hope to see the Chinese secret police chief defeated and progress resumed.

The Blind Man

A guy came to fit blinds. He was impressed by a bookcase of sf, thought that Dune was great and hadn't heard of Poul Anderson. Ye gods! Read The Day Of Their Return, man. I usually refer to, e.g., Dune or Foundation only to point out how much better Poul Anderson wrote that kind of sf about interstellar empires etc and also wrote much more than that.

From a blog perspective, we appreciate SM Stirling as a current worthy successor of Anderson. Compare and contrast Time Patrol and Make The Darkness Light. Hence some recent and upcoming posts. 

Some people say, "I like sf," and then turn out to mean TV and films. I was in an sf shop that sold only media-related items, models, Star Wars novelizations etc. No Wells or Anderson.

Oh, well. Subcultures should flourish, of course.

A Well-Controlled POV

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER THIRTEEN, pp. 173-202.

This long chapter opens:

"Galenos looked around the dinner table..." (p. 173)

At least for the time being, Galen is the pov character. The dinner conversation and Galen's thoughts impart information to the reader rather than advance the plot.

Near the top of p. 185:

"...Galenos thought."

He is still, consistently, the pov character. With dinner concluded and with those who do not "need to know" having withdrawn, Galen begins to convey a message from the Emperor to the three Americans who are present and to their single other confidante on the most important matter (time travel), Josephus. There is a double space between paragraphs...

After the space and with the message delivered, the leading American, Artorius/Arthur, not only slams his fist down but also sees that Galen is observing their reactions. Thus, the pov has shifted from Galen to Artorius. (I notice all this because I am a pov cop.)

The narrative must shift from imparting general information to delineating how the Americans respond to the devastating news that they are not the only time travellers in 170 CE and that is more than I can cope with this evening. Sorry to build up to a climax, then trickle to bed.

Cultural References

The Winds Of Fate.

A senator thinks that his client has a:

"Lean and hungry look..."

-CHAPTER SIX, p. 100 -

- anticipating Shakespeare.

A farmer who finds it hard to adjust to the urgency of saving and investing in new equipment says:

"'...all the Gods damn it, you have to run fast these days just to stay in the same place!'"

-CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 158 -

- anticipating the Red Queen's Race in Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Realistically, Artorius has to face an angry crowd of people displaced by the nova res ("new things") but is able to offer them alternatives: land grants with financial help or new employment with good wages. At this early stage, the economy is still expanding in such a way that the displaced can be not replaced but relocated. (I just thought of that way of putting it now.) This is in CHAPTER TEN on pp. 138-139.

Jeremy thinks:

"'Lay on, MacDuff..."

-CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 107 -

- more Shakespeare, but, in this case, Jeremy remembers it.

Artorius corrects Jeremy's "'The game is afoot, Batman!'" with "'The game is afoot, Watson...'" in CHAPTER ELEVEN on p. 166.

The Batman is a great detective and there are stories in which they meet.

After tracking down those references, your friendly neighbourhood blogger needs a food and drink break.

Time And Times

What makes a narrative a time travel story? 

First, characters can travel from one time to another and that does happen once both in SM Stirling's To Turn the Tide and in its sequel, The Winds Of Fate: Americans from 2032 to 165 in the first book; then Chinese from 2032 to 165 in the second. 

Secondly, characters from one time can spend a lot of time in another time. That is mainly what happens in both books.

Except of course that both sets of characters, the Americans and the Chinese, are, from the moment of their arrival, in a divergent timeline, therefore not in the past of their original timeline, therefore, in my opinion, not really in a different time. However, the object of the exercise is to find out what kinds of changes they can make and that is fascinating. Stirling is thorough about technological, economic and social changes. The Americans are helped both by good preparation and by good luck. (Favoured by Fortuna.)

When the two groups learn of each other's presence, they should be able to pool their resources and change the world even more quickly than they have been doing already. Except that the Chinese plan was that China would expand across the world, preventing the nuclear war from which they had fled by making the world a single state. And the Chinese leader, Colonel Liu, regards the Americans as an obstacle! In other words, he will reintroduce the kind of conflict that had led to nuclear war in the original timeline.

Can he be so short-sighted? Yes, with his upbringing and culture, he can. This is not an inevitable, but it is an all too plausible, outcome. What will happen next? We are in the hands of the author and of the gods.

Genetics

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER TEN.

"He'd once read that as late as 1914 sons of English members of the House of Lords were a full five inches taller at eighteen than people from the bottom of the social pyramid...though they'd attributed it to genetics back in Edwardian England, rather than nutrition." (p. 144)

Not being scientifically well informed, I had to check on whether they would have called it "genetics" back then but they would have. The term was coined in 1905.

The molecular basis of heredity was discovered in 1953. See also The Fiction/Science Fiction Interface. I remembered something relevant from Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and was able to find it on the blog instead of having to go to the bookshelf upstairs.

That is as much as I can manage this evening. Tomorrow maybe: gym, Zen and booking a train journey to meet a Buddhist friend from Birmingham at a mid-way point next week.

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.