A Pivotal Technic History Story

I will shortly depart for the Gregson Institute.

If we read Poul Anderson's Technic History in chronological order of fictional events, then, by the time we reach "The Master Key," we know that Nicholas van Rijn has initiated his first trade pioneer crew led by David Falkayn although those characters are not mentioned here whereas other employees of van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors company are. This is the last Technic History instalment in which we see van Rijn unaccompanied by the members of that first trader team and it is also the last instalment before the no less than four instalments showing increasing problems for the Polesotechnic League:

Satan's World

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar"

Mirkheim

Reading history and historical fiction reminds us that we can also read sf future histories which, in some cases and to some extent, match the complexity of real history - or at least have fun trying.

Again Suetonius

We read Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars hoping to learn about the Northern revolt which was the background of Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea." However, Suetonius focuses on events that were significant to him or that he thought that his Roman readers needed to be informed about. We do learn - or at least I did - that, after the overthrow of Nero, the "four Emperors" in quick succession were Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian and that the fourth of these was succeeded by his two sons, first Titus, then Domitian. Thus, in this briefest possible summary, we have listed no less than seven of Suetonius' "twelve Caesars." The first of the twelve is Julius who is not counted as an Emperor but was assassinated to prevent him from becoming something like one. 

"With Nero, the line of the Caesars became extinct."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 242.

Thereafter, "Caesar" continued not as a family name but as a title although the Romans do not seem to have differentiated names and titles the way we do.

This is all important background information for certain works of historical fiction and time travel fiction and makes us wonder how societal attitudes will differ in another two thousand years assuming that there is going to be any society in another two thousand years. Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" makes us feel what it would be like to be in the same room as a merchant prince of the Polesotechnic League. It is fitting to bow to him. And another man attends dinner bearing a much-used holstered blaster...

Endings And New Beginnings

To Turn The Tide.

The novel climaxes with vastatio (devastation) and slaughter to be followed, according to Marcus Aurelius, by:

"'Peace...'" 

-CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO, p. 439 -

- hopefully a permanent positive peace, not merely a post-vastatio wasteland.

The novel ends with the good news that, although an illness has arrived on schedule from the east, it is not measles but smallpox which can be and is being treated.

Nowhere to go but up? Or will there be unexpected obstacles in Volume II which is en route to me via eBay?

Artorius is a new Noah. The Biblical creation had been the separation of the waters above from the waters below and the moving aside of the waters below so that the dry land appeared. The Flood had been the undoing of that Creation. The withdrawal of the waters was the creation of a new Earth to be populated by Noah's, the new Adam's, descendants. Artorius and his team escape the destruction of an old Earth and remake their new Earth. A Biblical theme.

Into The Past

Two kinds of time travel fiction are very different from each other.

I can't help it. I do prefer time travel that is into a single immutable past. Anything else is not travel into our past, is it?

Three pure examples of this kind of narrative are:

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Of course, in a single immutable timeline, a time traveller can cause past events but there are greater subtleties than that. He can change the significance of past events. He can seem to have changed the course of events, then turn out not to have done. He can learn about an event, then experience it.

In There Will Be Time, the Eyrie recruits a handful of mutant time travellers, including Jack Havig and Boris, in Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion. Much later along his own world-line, Havig, now organizing an anti-Eyrie group, sends Boris to infiltrate the Eyrie by being recruited into it on the same day as his younger self. Neither the younger Havig nor his recruiters suspect the significance of Boris, sent to that time and place by the older Havig.

Niffenegger's Henry DeTamble knows that his ex killed herself on a particular date. Then he learns that it was his involuntary extratemporal arrival in her apartment that triggered her suicide. He asks her the date. He knows what she will do with the gun that she is wielding. He knows that she will not kill him. He avoids saying anything that will motivate her to shoot herself but she does that anyway - on the date on which she had done it.

Similar things happen in The Anubis Gates. Read them all!

Routine Time Travel?

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Artorius reflects:

"Time travel does odd things to your mind, too. Thank God it only happened to me once! If it was routine I'd go bughouse." (p. 402)

That has to be read as a comment on sf works where time travel does become routine and some of those are bughouse although not any of the ones that are discussed and recommended on this blog. 

James Blish thought that no author had yet done justice to the concept. He envisaged a novel about an entire society based on a finite-spinning-universe theory which apparently would (have) allow(ed) for time travel.

However, just a simple time travel premise like a small group being displaced to a specific date has endless possibilities. SM Stirling shows us what other authors had not thought of. Poul Anderson would have welcomed this antithesis to the Time Patrol project of holding time and history to a single course. And how will this new series develop?

Ben-Hur, Martin Padway And The Time Patrol

To Turn The Tide.

All literature is a conversation with earlier literature, sometimes explicitly:

"Everyone on a Roman naval ship was a free man and part of the military and would fight at need - Ben-Hur had gotten that drastically wrong. 

"Pity. Both movies were great otherwise, though the 2016 one was better..."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, p. 310.

(I have found an on-line list of five Ben Hur films.)

"That was another gift of Martin Padway. Though for some reason he hadn't known the actual formula for gunpowder, odd in an archaeologist, even a fictional one.

"Or maybe not, that book was written a century ago...well, nearly, 1938. Damn, but the English language is not intended for time travel, and Latin's even worse."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, p. 399.

And that concluding sentence might be an indirect reference to the Temporal language of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol. (Although, unfortunately, we do not read a single word of Temporal.)

Four words of Latin in another Anderson time travel work:

"'Es tu peregrinator temporis?'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), VI, p. 62.

DMZ And M7

 

In 49 AD, Manse Everard and Janne Floris of the Time Patrol:

"...had established themselves farther north, in the uninhabited stretch - the American called it the DMZ - between Langobardian and Chaucian territory."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 11, pp. 562-563.

When Artorius compares their surroundings to a DMZ, Filipa looks puzzled:

"...showing that she hadn't actually been born in Korea."

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE, p. 371.

He explains:

"'Demilitarized zone. Buffer territory. The German tribes keep an unpopulated area around their core lands, nice and natural for hunting...and hunting each other, and hiding raiding parties to keep life on the farm from getting dull.'" (ibid.)

When, having penetrated the buffer zone, Artorius ambushes a band of barbarians by using a crossbow, he thinks:

"This is where an M7 would have come in really handy and Fuchs was a fool..." (p. 376)

"I could have finished off all the ones we don't want to take alive nice and quick and safe with one magazine of six--point-eight." (ibid.)

Why did Fuchs not pack M7's? He could not get hold of them? He did not want to take anything that destructive? The author wanted to see how much could be achieved using Type A technology alone?

Identifying

I do not spend much time identifying with fictional characters but which ones might I identify with?

Of Nicholas van Rijn's trade pioneer crew, neither David Falkayn nor Chee Lan but maybe Adzel because of his meditation and studiousness.

Of James Blish's magicians: none. (A book with nothing but villains!) 

Of Alan Moore's Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan.

Of Neil Gaiman's Endless: Destiny.

Of SM Stirling's five American time travellers, Mark, who says:

"'I'm really not good at the nonverbal stuff, you know.'"

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 337.

Paula, who has been dropping hints, has to spell out that, when she suggests going to bed, she means together - a woman who realizes the need to take the initiative.

(We are just about to go to our daughter's place for Fathers' Day.)

A Sound Policy

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Marcus Aurelius agrees with Artorius that toleration of all forms of worship that do not upset the public order is a sound policy but thinks that there will still be problems with Christians because they refuse to participate in sacrifices to the Emperor and Rome. Artorius replies that, as with the Jews, Christians could be permitted to pray for the Emperor. He also clarifies that Christian rituals are not cannibalistic feasts and explains them in a way that reminds the Emperor of Orphic beliefs and Eleusinian Mysteries. Men seeking the Infinite:

"'...find common aspects of it.'" (p. 289)

Persecution of Christians might be halted and persecution by Christians prevented. How symbolic is it that a Jew named Josephus has sponsored Artorius? Also, how symbolic is the name "Arthur"?

(Marcus Aurelius in this novel, like Augustus and Lycius in Neil Gaiman's "August," is an Initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries.)

Artorius seems to be individually wise because he is able to encapsulate the wisdom of subsequent centuries and millennia.

Marcus Aurelius

To Turn The Tide.

Temporal displacement involves place name change. "Vienna, Austria" had been and becomes again "Provincia Pannonia Superior, Imperium Romanum."

Artorius' first meeting with Emperor Marcus Aurelius gets a massive buildup. In CHAPTER FIFTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius while still in Rome. In CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius after he has travelled to Vindobona in the Province of Pannona Superior. In CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, Artorius reflects that he is about to meet someone whose life and death he has studied and whose books he has read, then does meet him. The Emperor closely resembles his own face on coins and statues. Artorius quotes a book that Marcus Aurelius has not written yet and presumably will not write, or not in the same way, in this new timeline. 

This has to be a classic of time travel fiction.

(It was fortunate not only that the merchant Josephus who found the newly arrived and defenceless time travellers did not kill and rob them but instead helped them and treated them with respect but even that they had arrived near a road where they could be and were discovered immediately. However, my friend Andrea informs me that it is inappropriate either to entreat or to thank Fortuna.)