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 With dinner concluded and with those who do not "need to know" having withdrawn, Galen begins to convey a message from the Emperor to the three Americans who are present and to their single other confidante on the most important matter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.

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.)