Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

We have learned that:

futuristic sf becomes dated but -

the future does not turn out as expected. 

Thus, after the first Moon landing, many of us expected a period of regular, routine interplanetary travel with bases and tourism on the Moon and flights to Mars. In that case, a lot of interplanetary sf would have become dated very quickly but it hasn't done. Well, the habitable Venus with oceans or swamps and jungles and Heinlein's frog-like Venerians has gone. But lunar bases have not happened yet and are still taking a long time to happen. Is our Musk like Heinlein's Harriman or Anderson's Guthrie? Will time tell?

Whatever happens, it will not not be as anyone had expected. (I say this also about a hereafter in the extremely unlikely event that there is one.)

Our entire supply of bags of crisps, chocolate bars and glowsticks was not enough. Twice the amount needed for next year.

Tomorrow, I will be away from home for most of the day and might not post. Next week, we might return to rereading Poul Anderson's collections but let's see how that pans out.

With the Time Traveller, into futurity -

Diversity And Hallowe'en

We anticipate the diversity of Poul Anderson's Terran Empire - although I do not really expect anything like that interstellar civilization to come to pass. (Are FTL and multiple extraterrestrials going to happen?) My recent and current inter-faith dialogues comprise those with:

a woman Methodist minister last weekend;

a Muslim layman today;

Soto Zen Buddhist monks tomorrow;

Fortuna-devotee, Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop, this Tuesday.

We are well prepared for Hallowe'en visitors. A lit pumpkin head outside the front door invites them to call. Each will receive a packet of crisps, a bar of chocolate and a glow-stick/bracelet. Anything not handed out will be kept for Christmas. Three young Asian boys have just called. I want to write one more post after this one, then get back to rereading Ian Fleming who is an extremely underrated good writer. He needs a new series of films based exactly on what he wrote - just as Poul Anderson needs a first-time-ever series of films based on exactly what he wrote. 

Graphic adaptations of Time Patrol and "Flight to Forever" could be visually spectacular.

Another three at the door. I also have a journal of current political analysis to read. Let me try to wind up this post now.

Different Directions In Hypertime

When our consciousness has expanded to encompass Poul Anderson's Technic History in its entirety, it can continue to expand in perhaps three directions. We need a multi-dimensional mega-verse to incorporate everything. 

(i) Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse fills four novels and two short stories and connects with the Technic History to the extent that Nicholas van Rijn from the Polesotechnic League period of that future history visits the Old Phoenix, the inter-universal inn, in one of those two short stories. The Old Phoenix also interacts with Robert Heinlein's Future History, with William Shakespeare's major plays, with other works of fiction and literature and with much of the history of our timeline.

(ii) The Technic History, albeit important, is only one Andersonian future history. These alternative fictional histories address contradictory theoretical possibilities. Thus:

there is faster-than-light interstellar travel - two different versions of "hyperspace" - only in the Psychotechnic and Technic Histories;

there is a near-future nuclear war only in the Psychotechnic and Maurai Histories;

intelligent life is commonplace in the Technic History whereas any organic life is rare in Genesis;

in Genesis, only post-organic intelligences are able to traverse interstellar distances;

and so on.

(iii) The Maurai History provides one of the future periods visited by time travellers in Anderson's There Will Be Time, thus linking this future history to one of the author's several, mutually incompatible, time travel scenarios.

Thus, a direct link between the Technic History and the Time Patrol, no, but a direct link between the Maurai Federation and mutant time travellers, yes.

And I advise everyone to read or reread all that.

The Whole Technic History

Recent posts have shown (no surprise) that Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization divides into two main parts and that each of these parts can be analyzed almost, although not completely, on a tripartite basis. Thus:

(i) League

The People Of The Wind, in the early Imperial period

Earth Book

(ii) Young, Captain and Admiral Flandry in the later Imperial period.

The Earth Book covers some, although not all, of a pre-League period and some, although not all, of an intermediate period. Flandry has his contemporaries and his successors. Indeed, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, is Flandry's Legacy, covering both his later life and three post-Imperial periods:

Long Night;

Allied Planets;

Commonalty.

And now we have referred, however briefly or tangentially, to the entire contents of the Technic History.

Some might call this obsession but I call it fascination. (We alternate between referring to Saga and pre-Saga reading orders.)

Kinds Of Series: TV; Fleming; Anderson

Arthur Conan Doyle invented the series as a new kind of serial to be published in a periodical in which each episode is a complete story with continuity provided by characters (Holmes, Watson), setting (Baker St, Victorian England) and genre (detective).

In a typical TV series, the episodes are interchangeable with few or no cross-references and consequently no required viewing order. They are like axes radiating from a common centre rather than like successive segments of a progressive sequence.

Ian Fleming and Poul Anderson write in sequence. Bond tells Viv Michel that the top man of SPECTRE escaped and got it going again. Aycharaych congratulates Flandry on l'affaire Nyanza.

Anderson added a Young Flandry prequel and Admiral Flandry sequels to his Captain Flandry series and began to tell us about Flandry's daughter whereas Fleming, like the increasingly inauthentic films, began to keep Bond impossibly young but then rewrote the continuity. Bond is unchanged at the end, now fighting neither SMERSH nor SPECTRE but the KGB and:

"For James Bond, the same view would always pall."

-Ian Fleming, The Man With The Golden Gun (New York, 1965), p. 158.

That is the concluding sentence of the posthumous novel and a fitting epitaph. 

Flandry gets Diana started on her career which, unfortunately, we do not read.

LONGevity

We saw in Untold Series that Lazarus Long lived a long time. This highlights something else that Poul Anderson did better than Robert Heinlein with:

Hugh Valland

Hanno and the other mutant immortals

Hanno etc live right through history, then into a fictional future. A guy that I know disliked that future section of The Boat Of A Million Years. However, Anderson had prepared his regular readers to combine historical fiction with sf.

Anderson followed Heinlein with:

future history

longevity

time travel

magic treated as technology

- and, in each case, improved on Heinlein's performance. Read (the early) Heinlein first. Then read and reread Anderson.

This might be the last post for this month but let's see how that pans out. 

Untold Series

Reading Robert Heinlein's Future History Time Chart in The Man Who Sold The Moon decades ago, we were intrigued to notice first that the lifetime of one character, Lazarus Long, extended for the length of the Chart and secondly that six titles were bracketed as "Stories-to-be-told." We wondered whether these stories had by now been told in some other volume. Now we know that five of them would have filled one extra volume but they have never been told. 

Poul Anderson's Technic History implies entire potential series that have never been told although it is down to us readers to identify them. The following periods have either one or no stories set during them:

the first and later Grand Surveys

young van Rijn

Adzel's student days on Earth

Jim Ching's career

the trade pioneer crew with Coya in it

the second crew that Chee Lan joined

van Rijn patching up the League

his expedition outside known space

his visits to the Old Phoenix

the Time of Troubles

the reign of Manuel I

Aycharaych if he escaped from Chereion

Diana Crowfeather's career

the last days of the Empire and of the Roidhunate

the Long Night

the Allied Planets

Rangers of the Commonalty

But Poul Anderson would have to have devoted a lifetime to just one maxiseries. (We remember one other such author.)

Beginnings In The Technic History

History is one beginning after another.

Beginnings

In "Wings of Victory": human-Ythrian interaction.

In "The Problem of Pain": Ythrian and human involvement with Avalon; human knowledge of Ythrian religions.

In "The Three-Cornered Wheel": David Falkayn's career.

In "A Sun Invisible": Falkayn's employment by SSL.

In "Esau": human-Baburite interaction.

In "The Trouble Twisters": van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew.

In "Day of Burning": League-Merseia interaction.

In "Lodestar": the Supermetals company; Falkayn's and Coya Conyon's relationship.

In "Wingless on Avalon": colonization of the Hesperian islands on Avalon.

In "Rescue on Avalon": colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon.

In "The Star Plunderer": the Terran Empire.

In Ensign Flandry: Dominic Flandry's career; his recruitment to Intelligence.

In "Tiger by the Tail": involvement of the Scothani in the Terran Empire.

In "Honorable Enemies": Flandry-Aycharaych contact/conflict.

In A Stone In Heaven: Flandry-Miriam Abrams relationship.

In The Game Of Empire: Diana Crowfeather's career (we don't know what it is yet).

In "Starfog": a new age of prosperity in one human civilization.

Never The End.

New Beginnings

A series begins with its first episode. Right? But sometimes an author backtracks and tells us what had happened before, beginnings before the beginning. Let us consider four by now familiar authors, culminating of course with Poul Anderson.

Ian Fleming's novels just follow each other chronologically, starting with Casino Royale. In that novel, Bond recounts how he had earned his 00 number so there is no later need to backtrack to that.

CS Lewis tells us how the Pevensies first went to Narnia, then later tells us how, earlier, people had started to travel between worlds.

Watson tells us how Holmes and he met, then later Holmes tells Watson about his first case and the case that had started his career.

See:

The Structure Of A Series: Conan Doyle (merely introductory)

The Structure Of A Series: Conan Doyle II

When Poul Anderson's Technic History began to be collected, Volume I, Trader To The Stars, opened by quoting Shelley: "The world's great age begins anew." However, this volume did not include, although it quoted, the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit." Also, the van Rijn novel, The Man Who Counts, and some other Technic History installments are set earlier than the first story in Trader..., "Hiding Place."

The Earth Book Of Stormgate begins with "Wings of Victory."

The Technic Civilization Saga begins with "The Saturn Game."

At last, the chronologically earliest story is presented first. 

Some Past Futures

Robert Heinlein's Future History began the day after tomorrow. The first thing that happened was a series of technological innovations.

Backtrack: CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, published in 1945, is set after the war, another day after tomorrow. There was one technological innovation, a pragmatometer, an information processor, described as a marvelous gadget. (I am not about to seek out the precise quotation at this time of night.) That Hideous Strength is not a future history but is a Christian response to Wellsian and Stapledonian secularist future histories.

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, modelled directly on the Future History, begins very soon, in the aftermath of World WAR III. The world has regressed - except that a new science of society is being applied and is helping the recovery.

Anderson's Technic History started with FTL interstellar exploration - except that a single story about interplanetary exploration in the outer Solar System was added later.

This is a partial history of future histories and is all that I am going to write tonight!

(Past futures are big time nostalgic.)