"The Pirate"

Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, Homeward And Beyond (New York, July 1976), pp. 92-126.

Of the stories in this collection, I am most drawn back to this one, even though I have reread it most recently. It is a later addition to Anderson's first future history series and has a palpably elegiac tone. A long series like the Pychotechnic History is bound to be uneven in quality especially if maturer works are inserted into earlier sections of the fictional timeline. 

In his introduction to the story for this collection, Anderson writes:

"Of readers who have commented on it to me, the young have generally confessed to being a bit puzzled, while the older have instantly seen what was going on." (p. 92)

Indeed, the text opens and closes by observing that:

"We guard the great Pact; but the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand." (p. 92)

"But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 126)

I see what is going on but I am old but I do not remember being puzzled when I was any younger and that is enough for tonight, folks.

Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop on Tuesday, I hope. Maybe more music tomoz.

Other Reading Update

Each of us that reads Poul Anderson also reads other authors and each of us reads different authors. Thus, each of us appreciates Anderson in a different literary context. Am I alone in comparing Anderson to both Neil Gaiman and Stieg Larsson? - between whom there is no direct comparison. Will I reread Heinlein's The Door Into Summer in order to compare it to Andersonian time travel or will I no longer find Heinlein's text interesting?

I reread Larsson's Millennium Trilogy the way many others reread Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. My granddaughter buys me Alan Moore's prose fiction. I am quite unexpectedly finding Anderson's collections worth rereading. That is about it right now. Life contains several activities other than reading, of course.

Lancaster Music Festival update: local people marched through Market Square singing, the Community Choir; when musicians performed in a covered shopping precinct, the public danced spontaneously - the musicians thanked their audience for the dancing; walking past shops that are open for business, we hear live music from inside, including a band in a shop window.

Suspended Animation Or Temporal Stasis (And Time Travel)

OK. We, editorially speaking, are thinking about HG Wells, Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson. Heinlein is a successor of Wells and Anderson is a successor of both.

Wells' When The Sleeper Wakes, about suspended animation, was serialized in The Graphic in 1899.

Anderson's "Time Heals," about temporal stasis, was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949.

Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, about both suspended animation and time travel, was serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1956.

(Both The Door Into Summer and Anderson's first story about Nicholas van Rijn, "Margin of Profit," were published in late 1956 when I was in my first term at a Scottish boarding school. In a science fictional future, I write about these works on a world-wide web of computers in 2026.)

The Sleeper's inherited wealth has been put into a trust that has become the basis of the world order.

In "Time Heals," Hart has invested all his money before going into temporal stasis. That money does not survive historical changes but, in 2837/2841, he avails of free public transport and an unlimited government credit card.

In The Door Into Summer, Dan Davis had lived in Connecticut, recalling the title of Mark Twain's time travel novel. Insurance companies promoting suspended animation give away free copies of Wells' book and Davis knows all about compound interest and stock appreciation. People with incurable diseases go into suspended animation as they had gone into temporal stasis in "Time Heals."

We can also list one time travel novel by each of these three authors:

Wells, The Time Machine (1895)

Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (1956)

Anderson, There Will Be Time (1972)

Anderson, of course, wrote much more than just this single volume about time travel. However, There Will Be Time seems particularly appropriate as a successor to The Time Machine. Anderson's mutant time travellers, like Wells' Time Traveller, see the world flashing past them while they are in transit.

Noetics

Poul Anderson wrote about goetics and also mentioned noetics. (I am trying to keep the terminology straight here.)

Anderson respected Edward Mitchell's school of noetics because Edwards had been on the Moon. I do not think that that is a reason to respect a man's views on anything else. Nevertheless, I do approve of the aims of Mitchell's Institute of Noetic Sciences which at least overlap with those of the Society for Psychical Research. 

IONS researches:

psychic abilities

channeling

mind-matter interaction

energy healing

intention

spontaneous remission

meditation

alternative healing

consciousness-based healthcare

spirituality

human potential

psychokinesis

survival of consciousness after physical death

yoga

ESP

lucid dreaming

telekinesis

precognition

Every alleged phenomenon should be investigated. The outcome should be either debunking or confirmation and understanding of a specifically identified phenomenon. Maybe telekinesis works but precognition doesn't or vice versa or both or neither. I don't know. That's what we need to find out, just as we try to learn about anything else: electromagnetism; gravity; the strong and weak nuclear forces; quantum mechanics etc. The fact that any particular line of enquiry is difficult makes it worthwhile.

Dunne, Rhine And Mitchell

Poul Anderson, "The Long Remembering" IN Anderson, Homeward And Beyond (New York, July 1976), pp. 22-36.

I wanted to comment on Poul Anderson's reference to JW Dunne but find that I have already done so at some length. See here. But there are two other references. The first is to Rhine.

The second, to quote the entire passage, is as follows:

"'I've done nothing more than systematize the work of predecessors, from as long ago as Dunne and Rhine if not further. I owe a tremendous debt to Mitchell and his colleagues; in fact, what I've done amounts largely to fusing their discoveries in noetics with some new concepts of physics and cosmology, and using modern laboratory equipment to check out the hypotheses that followed.'" (p. 25)

I took Mitchell to be a fictional future researcher like the speaker, Rennie, or like James Blish's Adolph Haertel and Thor Wald. However, in his introduction to another story collected later in Homeward And Beyond, Anderson writes:

"When an Edward Mitchell sees fit to found a school of noetics, I pay respectful attention. He's been on the Moon." (p. 166)

See IONS.

While trying to track down the references to Dunne, I have only just now, over breakfast, made this connection between the two references to Mitchell in this Anderson collection.

Ythrians And Two Supernovae

Poul Anderson's short story, "Wings of Victory," introduces the Ythrians, intelligent flying carnivores that play a major role in Anderson's Technic History. His "The Pirate," featuring Coordinator Trevelyan Micah, is a later written prequel to The Peregrine, the culminating novel of the same author's earlier Psychotechnic History. Yet both of these stories contribute to his thematic collection, Homeward And Beyond, where it does not matter that each is also a single instalment of a different future history series.

John Campbell's idea that led to "The Pirate":

"...what might be the effect of a supernova, a gigantic exploding star, within a few light-years of an inhabited planet?" (p. 92)

- is also the premise of a Technic History story, "Supernova"/"Day of Burning."

In "The Pirate," an intelligent species is killed and an interstellar civilization must preserve its heritage whereas, in "Day of Burning," a very different interstellar civilization is able to intervene at an earlier stage and to prevent the megadeaths although at great cost and consequence.

Poul Anderson explores every option.

HOMEWARD AND BEYOND II

Homeward And Beyond. 

To continue from the above linked post:

"Peek! I See You!" (pp. 37-73) began as idea about how advanced aliens might conduct themselves when visiting Earth but required a letter from John Campbell to turn it into a story.

"Murphy's Hall" (pp. 74-91) contrasts with the previous three stories by being pessimistic and was co-authored by Karen Anderson.

"The Pirate" (pp. 92-126) returns to standard sf, even, according to Poul Anderson, to space opera and the idea came from Campbell. 

"Goat Song" (pp. 127-165) is a fantasy motif in a hard sf setting.

"The Visitor" (pp. 166-181) is fantasy unless psionics is accepted as a science.

"Wolfram" (pp. 182-188) is a fiction about a science so is it science fiction?

"The Peat Bog" (pp. 189-242), set in the first century AD, is archaeological fiction.

And there is plenty here for us to reread.

What Else We Notice In "Time Heals"

"Time Heals."

We notice:

(i) Poul Anderson's several rationalizations of FTL are matched by at least two different rationalizations for temporal stasis: a level-entropy field in "Time Heals" and a superenergy state in "Welcome" - although the increased rate of existence of the latter makes no sense. It should make the protagonist move and age very quickly, not leap ahead five hundred years.

(ii) Temporal stasis is not time travel mainly because it is impossible to return. Nevertheless, the protagonists of these two stories are in exactly the same position as the futureward time travellers that we have discussed. They must cope with their sudden arrival in future periods. 

(iii) Mainly because of Wells (I think), it is generally believed (wrongly, I think) that a time traveller should be invisible and intangible while in transit but this does not apply to temporal stasis. Hart, like all the others in the Crypt, is enclosed in a totally reflecting cubical field. He is not seen but only because of the reflecting shield, not because light passes through him. (Why should it?) We are not told about Barlow in "Welcome" but it seems that he does just disappear and reappear.

(iv) When Hart emerges in 2837, people live on Earth, on other Solar planets and at Centauri although little is heard from Centauri. We get the impression that interstellar travel is STL.

(v) We recognized the term "psychotechnics" (p. 190) and the categorization of Hart as "unintegrated (ibid.) from Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

Solutions That Are Problems/Problematic Solutions

Poul Anderson, "Time Heals" IN Anderson, Dialogue With Darkness (New York, February 1985), pp. 165-191.

I will summarize what I remember from a White Hart story by Arthur C. Clarke, then show how this applies to "Time Heals." In Clarke's story:

a guy snores so loudly that he wakes up everyone else in the house;

someone cures him of snoring by curing him of sleeping so that he becomes a 24/7 insomiac;

tiring of this, he asks to be put back to sleep;

he is then put into such a deep sleep that it becomes suspended animation;

he winds up in a bed in a shop window to advertise the bed.

In Anderson's story:

Hart has cancer so he goes into temporal stasis - "'...in a level-entropy field...'" (p. 166) - until a cure is found;

however, by then, society has changed so much that he cannot adjust to it and becomes catatonic;

he is returned to stasis but, since society no longer has any mental diseases and therefore also has no curative techniques, it will be a long time, if ever, before he can be taken back out of stasis and by then society will have changed even more so that he will be even less likely to be able to adjust. 

There is more to be said about this story but in another post.

A Revision Revisited

I have more than once proposed a revised edition of Poul Anderson's collection, Past Times, and still agree with what I wrote then.

The seven stories to be included break down as follows:

Into The Past

Groups

"Wildcat"

"The Nest"

Individuals

"The Little Monster"

"The Man Who Came Early"

Into The Future

"Welcome"

"Time Heals"

"Flight to Forever"

The NESFA collections present a couple of other time travel stories which, however, are less significant.

Having just reread "Time Heals," I will have more to say about that story after attending some Music Festival events, starting with a harp performance in an indoor market venue. Life continues.