Judgements About Empires And Options About Time Travel

Robert Heinlein's Future History avoids empires and culminates with a first mature culture. 

SM Stirling's Draka are an evil empire in an alternative twentieth century. (They are "evil" in my judgement and in that of some other readers. The author will remind us of the view that all such judgements are subjective.)

The Antonine Roman Empire in Stirling's Make The Darkness Light series is a benign empire in an alternative second century. Thus, the Antonines present a formidable antithesis to the Draka.

Poul Anderson's Terran Empire is just another empire in a fictional future. It is perceived as benign or oppressive depending on the viewpoint of any particular character. Certainly, "The Game of Glory" shows the intelligence officer, Dominic Flandry, routinely participating in the conquest and oppression of the sovereign planet, Brae.

The arrival of two books interrupted our (editorially speaking) rereading of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates. Again, the two time travel options: the past can be changed in Make The Darkness Light but not in The Anubis Gates. Poul Anderson is distinguished by the facts that he (i) addressed both options and (ii) addressed both well.

Thoughts And Connotations

Please bear with us here. Fiction reflects life. We will start with life (or something like it), then return to fiction. 

Imagine: a sensitive recording, computing and communicational device which detects and records electromagnetic radiations, sounds, other vibrations, chemical compositions, nuclear reactions, gravitational waves etc, computes and calculates about these inputs and communicates with other such devices. Imagine further that this device randomly replays previous recordings, computations and communications and continually interrupts its own operations with further random and disjointed repetitions. If we add the single extra mysterious ingredient of consciousness, then this device becomes a superior human brain albeit with a very enhanced sensory apparatus.

What has gone wrong with the device to cause these constant replays? Well, we have been not artificially devised but naturally selected and therefore are primarily motivated not just to record and assess data but also to preserve, promote and gratify self. This motivation generates many additional mental processes, including regrets, recriminations, apprehensions, anticipations etc. 

This has consequences for both life and fiction.

First, some of us meditate, i.e., practice awareness of our own incessant and involuntary thought processes, not from narcissism but in an attempt to gain some handle on what is going on.

Secondly, a chapter or a narrative passage in a novel can locate a character in a particular time and place but can then mainly comprise that character's thoughts and reflections. This can inform readers either about the character or about his knowledge of the background situation without necessarily advancing the action of the novel. Thus, on pp. 317-324 of SM Stirling's The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER NINETEEN, the Chinese agent, Black Jade, hears her superior, Colonel Liu, conversing with Kushan aristocrats and, at the end of p. 324, we know that she is:

"...trying to decide to do..." (p. 324)

- something!

We guess, correctly as it turns out, that the something is defection to the Americans and here we must divest this word, "Americans," of its connotations. In this context, "Americans" means not White House, State Department, Pentagon, CIA, aircraft carriers, military bases or boots on the ground. It means only five individuals of very high expertise and very good intentions.

Both the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and his chief advisor, the American, Artorius:

"...agree that being Emperor is a burden, not something for which a sensible, self-controlled man would strive! Unless duty compelled, of course."

-CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 325.

The Emperor can trust Artorius because he knows that the latter is not scheming to replace him. A perfect setup. Things can get done:

"...Artorius...is genuinely uninterested in rank for its own sake. An unusual man. He values it only for what can be done with it, as he does with money. He labors ceaselessly for Rome, as I strive to do." (p. 329)

Really, it is for the world with Rome as the instrument.

Slaughters

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

SM Stirling is a master of descriptions of military slaughters - which is why we re-use the attached cover illustration and indeed have found a clearer image of it.

Romans hit Parthians with extratemporal weapons supplied by time travellers. Sometimes, I summarize such accounts. This time, I just advise blog readers to read or reread this chapter - which I would also have done in any case, of course.

Marcus Aurelius and the time travellers really are aiming at a genuine Pax Romana, not just a brutally imposed pacification, and this does seem to be the only way to do it. I am interested not just in descriptions of exploded equine and human bodies but also in where all this is going. This is a major divergent timeline and potentially a long sf series.

Same basic premise as Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series - that the past can be changed - but a completely different development of it.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.

60

In his introductions to The Game Of Empire and The Night Face, Poul Anderson directly addresses his readers, that is to say you and me as we open these books. Thus, these are non-fictional introductions whereas a passage written as if by Hloch of Stormgate Choth as he addresses his fellow Avalonians is fictional. In this sense, the total number of works of fiction comprising Anderson's Technic History is greater than you think:

forty-three instalments, ranging from short stories to long novels;

twelve introductions and one afterword in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

one original introduction in Trader To The Stars and three more in The Trouble Twisters.

Total: 60.

We might also count the fictional introduction to "The Star Plunderer" although that definitely accompanied the story when originally published as opposed to being added when the story was collected.

These additional passages are short but they impart information and enhance the series so they count.

What was a good series in any case becomes even better with these additions.

Wings

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"The cavalry was on the flanks, which was why cavalry regiments were called alae, 'wings,' in Latin." (p. 258)

Hence also, Alatanism in Poul Anderson's Technic History and "wingers" in football. Appropriately, England has just lost the Football World Cup Semi-Final to Argentina. We have been surrounded by St George's flags for weeks, some sporting, others political.

How do we like the cover illustration of an armed Diomedean in flight?

It is taking a while for SM Stirling's American time travellers to enter into conflict with their Chinese antagonists. First, there is a war with the Parthians which is what brought the alae into the text. 

Another end to the day with other activities and maybe some blogging expected tomoz.

Fair winds forever. High is heaven and holy.

Misreading And Pronouns

The Winds Of Fate, CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

The viewpoint character of this chapter is consistently Mark Findelmann, one of the five American time travellers. When a paragraph ends:

"He peered gratefully in that direction." (p. 229)

- the pronoun that is the subject of this sentence refers unequivocally to Mark. However, next, because of an interruption to my reading and also because of my misreading of pronouns, I went completely wrong. The text continues:

"Marcus Aurelius was - of course - on horseback, with a number of mounted men around him. His Imperial Horse Guards, of course: and a number of bigwigs...including Tribune Artorius.

"He suppressed an impulse to wave; gravitas forbade.

"Also around him were several centuries of Praetorians..." (ibid.)

Returning to the text after a brief interruption, I mistook the sentence beginning "Marcus Aurelius was..." to be the start of a new narrative passage that should really have been preceded by a double space between paragraphs and therefore that Marcus Aurelius was the new viewpoint character, thus that it was he, the Emperor, who suppressed an impulse to wave, presumably at the watching crowd...

Of course, what the paragraph means is that, when Mark peered in a certain direction, he saw that Marcus Aurelius was on horseback. It was Mark who had an impulse to wave at Artorius or even at the Emperor. 

However, the third person singular pronoun has to do a lot of work. Thus:

"[Mark] suppressed an impulse to wave...

"Also around [Marcus Aurelius] were several centuries..."

Having gone wrong, I went further wrong but I have got it straight now. Probably no other reader has made this set of errors.

The Two Future Histories

Recent summaries bring out the differences between Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories.

In the former, certain groups try - unsuccessfully - to direct the course of society. The main factors that they are unable to cope with are the effects of technological unemployment and political movements motivated by antiscientific worldviews. By contrast, in Anderson's second future history, Technic civilization and its first political form, the Solar Commonwealth, merely emerge from the Chaos. No one is trying to control the course of events. However, this new post-Western civilization then becomes subject to recurrent historical cycles later studied by Chunderban Desai.

Desai, studying history and detecting patterns, contrasts sharply with Valti, applying equations to make specific predictions.

Anderson's works are richer for including both of these future history series although we can, of course, rightly say that the second is better than the first. 

Social SF

Blog attention spiraled back to Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History when (here) it became possible to consider that future history alongside two other series by Anderson and one by SM Stirling. Although modeled directly on Robert Heinlein's Future History, the Psychotechnic History is part of a particular sub-genre together with - among certain other authors' works, of course - HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come and The World Set Free. (However, those two Wellsian volumes are independent novels, not short story collections.) 

The common sub-genre comprises those works, sometimes "utopian," addressing the question: how to change society with the help of science? CS Lewis parodies this question in his Ransom Trilogy, Volume III, That Hideous Strength, where his scientific social reformers are literally demonically controlled.

I see this as the central dynamic of twentieth century sf: Wells and Stapledon opposed by Lewis but followed by Heinlein, Anderson, Blish etc with Anderson and Blish addressing theological questions. Lewis wrote The Problem Of Pain and Anderson wrote "The Problem of Pain." Lewis describes the sinless planet, Perelandra (Venus) and Blish describes the sinless planet, Lithia (extra-solar). And so on.

In the Psychotechnic History, the question is: how does the world reconstruct after a limited nuclear exchange?

UN world government, becoming the Solar Union.

A secret service led by the fanatically anti-nationalist Fourre.

Un-men and the cloned Rostomily Brotherhood.

Suppression of conspiracies by nationalists and other turn-back-the-clock merchants.

Centralized agriculture.

Massive single-structure urban residential complexes.

Colonies under the sea and on other planets.

The work of the Psychotechnic Institute both in a predictive science of society (impossible but this sf) and in human psychophysiology.

Everything fails! But there are psychotechnicians in a peaceful Galactic civilization millennia later. 

Outcomes II

See Outcomes and its combox. 

Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends" is set in a remote future when there is a Galactic civilization that has been preceded by a long history involving a "First," and by implication at least one other interstellar, "Empire." See Missing Empires. This is entirely at odds with the Stellar Union and its (un-imperialistic) Coordination Service that had featured in earlier instalments of Anderson's Psychotechnic History. On the other hand, that Union had flown apart to be followed by the Third Dark Ages which could certainly have brought forth empires.

From Earth, the Galactic civilization is beyond Sagittarius. Interstellar civilization had been moving in that direction earlier in the series. (See Sagittarius.) The term, "integrator/Integrator" connects the two periods. (See Chronological Questions II.) Also, the Galactic civilization is ruled/managed/coordinated/whatever by psychotechnicians which seems like a culmination of this particular future history series.

Finally, the Psychotechnic History was collected with "The Chapter Ends" at the end of its concluding volume with Anderson's knowledge.

Dreams Or Nightmares

It is the time of the evening for one last post that does not require any more reading. However, inspiration has dried up. 

I had hoped that making this image of the opening page of "The Troublemakers" extra large would make it legible but it has not.

I was impressed when I had compared Poul Anderson's first two future histories and his Time Patrol series with SM Stirling's new time travel series in terms of their accounts of outcomes after different kinds of catastrophes: four works of imaginative fiction all relevant to our experience of the early twenty-first century.

Something to dream or have nightmares about. Good night.