Free Flight

William Atheling, Jr./James Blish, "Things Still To Come: Gadgetry and Prediction" IN Atheling/Blish, More Issues At Hand (Chicago, 1970), pp. 41-50.

Atheling/Blish asks why no one is imagining "free flight" (p. 46) any more.

"...[Jorun] held out his arm, and [Julith] clasped it with one hand while her other arm gripped his waist. The generator inside his skull responded to his will, reaching out and clawing itself to the fabric of forces and energies which was physical space. They rose quietly, and went so slowly seaward that he didn't have to raise a windscreen."

-"The Chapter Ends," pp. 259-260.

Free flight. 

However, "The Chapter Ends" was published in 1953 whereas "Things Still To Come..." was originally published in 1964 so maybe Atheling/Blish was right that no one, except comic strip and film script writers, was still imagining free flight when he wrote the latter.

Free flight is one of our "impossibles" - for the time being.

A Rich Story

What a rich story is Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends."

We have posted about:

Solis Township (and here)

Sol City

Earth Seen From Space

Super Powers

a house interior

a metaphorical mountain (and here)

the galactic periphery

the statue on the fountain in the market square

the beach

uninhabited regions

a sunset

(In Market Square, Lancaster, we no longer have a fountain but a plinth on which people perform or demonstrate and from which they speak or preach.)

After appreciating many details in this single story, we can:

discuss whether the story really belongs in Anderson's Psychotechnic History;

in any case, discuss that entire series as well as its relationships to other future history series written by Anderson and by other sf authors;

imagine inhabitants of these alternative histories visiting Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

Anderson informs us that both Heinlein's Rhysling and his own van Rijn have been in the Old Phoenix.

Adzel and Axor, two Wodenites from different periods of Anderson's Technic History, have converted to alternative Terrestrial religious traditions and therefore might meet to discuss their differences.

This post has rambled but it is all one multiverse.

On Another Beach

"They landed on the beach."

-"The Chapter Ends," p. 260.

See: On The Beach

This broad beach comprises white dunes separating salty grass from roaring, tumbling surf. Damp air blows. Sand grits as Jorun sits. Sun sets at sea, a huge gold disc. Wet wind rumples hair. Jorun feels the intricacy of a conch and hears "the sea" in it. Rolling waves boom and spout.

"The Terrans called [the waves] the horses of God. A thin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold." (p. 261)

For more horses in the sea, see also:

Elves And The Sea

The End

Depopulated Earth

See:

Oceans Rush...

The Quiet Earth

Forests Green And Fair

In "The Chapter Ends," Jorun flies over uninhabited expanses on Earth:

wind-rippled plains like oceans of grass;

herds of wild cattle darkening the plains;

hoof beats like thunder in the earth;

hundreds of kilometers of old, mighty trees;

gleaming rivers piercing the forests;

fish leaping in lakes;

sunshine spilling like warm rain;

eye-hurting radiance;

swift cloud shadows;

all empty of man;

frightening vitality;

life covering earth, filling oceans and making heavens clangorous.

Jorun's grim planet has moors, crags and spindrift seas.

Three Market Squares On Two Planets

We have discussed the market squares (scroll down) in Lancaster and in Olga's Landing on Imhotep. Today Lancastrians had a procession with two lions and a dragon around the town centre, then music and food in Market Square.

There is also a market-square in Solis Township on Earth in the far future of Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends." The statue of the dancing girl on the fountain in the centre of this square is one of the memorable images in Poul Anderson's works, I think because mankind is about to evacuate Earth so that the statue will be left to crumble without ever again being seen.

Searching this blog for "dancing girl" (scroll down) brings up two references to this fountain and two others to a living dancing girl in Tyre.

First And Last

We can think of perhaps eight sf authors who have each written one or at most two future histories and we can then compare their works with no less than eight future histories written by one author, Poul Anderson. Further, Anderson's first future history, the Psychotechnic History, and his eighth, Genesis, are so dissimilar as to seem to belong to different fictional categories.

In the Psychotechnic series, many planets bear life and many intelligent species cross space faster than light whereas, in the single text of Genesis, life is rare and post-organic intelligences emanating only from Earth cross space slower than light. Interstellar travel is the only common idea and these two conceptions of it are diametrically opposed.

Also, the fictional history of the Psychotechnic series has been superseded by the ongoing course of events whereas Genesis looks like standing indefinitely - except that so many exoplanets have now been detected that maybe unicellular life at least is quite common? But how much of it has made the difficult transition to multicellular life? Hopefully, much more will be learned in our lifetimes. New future histories begun now might be superseded quickly.

Some Short Future Histories

Future histories differ in length. A long future history series is multi-themed, dealing only with whatever happens in the future, whereas a shorter series can have a single theme with a definite conclusion. Although Poul Anderson's Twilight World is not listed as one of his future histories, it is a collected series covering more than one generation and concluding in a further future. Its single theme is that World War III causes so many mutations that some are beneficial and even enable subsequent generations to colonize other planets so that the outer Solar System is inhabited after Earth has become uninhabitable. Without that War, would the race have survived?

James Blish's The Seedling Stars is a single volume in four parts, originally five stories, about the single theme of pantropy, the science of adapting human beings to other planetary environments. It conclusion is that, when Adapted Men have filled the galaxy, Earth has changed so much that it is colonized by Adapted Men.

Twilight World and The Seedling Stars both address changes to the human form and extraterrestrial colonization.

Anderson's Maurai And Kith is a collection of only three Maurai stories and two Kith stories although later a third story was added to the Kith series and a long novel to both series. The theme of the Maurai Federation series is that, after a nuclear war, seafaring people of the Southern Hemisphere become the world power. We get a sense of Poul Anderson exploring every possibility.

James Blish's Okie series was complete as four stories in one volume. However, Blish added a prequel, a juvenile novel and a sequel. Okie culture ends in Volume III and the universe ends in Volume IV.

Larry Niven's Known Space is a long future history series with a definite ending. Because human beings are artificially selected for the inheritable psychic power of luck, Known Space and the Thousand Worlds become utopian societies of lucky people about whom Niven becomes unable to write any more stories! As Fran Cobden remarked, "...an amazing idea!"

Other short future histories:

The Moon Maid by ERB (a sequel to John Carter);

City by Clifford Simak;

Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand by Brian Aldiss.

Future History Parallels

See Inner And Outer Conflicts.

In future histories, society has to change and the changes have to be explained.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, technology progresses but society regresses, leading to a theocracy and the Second American Revolution.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the currency for interstellar trade is the germanium-based Oc dollar so that, when the germanium standard fails, there is widespread bankruptcy and the end of the Okie culture.

(No cities fly in Volume I.)

Heinlein, Blish and Anderson had to think about how society works and about how that would affect the lives of their characters. We can think of several future histories in parallel.

Inner And Outer Conflicts

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, when a civilization collectively makes a wrong decision - the cartelization of the Polesotechnic League -, the resultant conflicts lead to the Troubles, then the Empire, then the Long Night. The later civilizations are technological but no longer of the post-Western "Technic" culture.

In Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History, the conflicts that bring down the Solar Union, leading to the Second Dark Ages, then the Stellar Union, leading to the Third Dark Ages, are not only social but also psychological. Sandra Miesel's interstitial commentary informs us that, although external enemies could be defeated:

"...against the enemy within there was no defense. Given the prevailing stage of psychodevelopment, the innate contradictions with individuals and societies could not be resolved."

-Star Ship, p. 252.

Millennia later, a psychotechnician not only mentally controls cosmic forces with his artificially mutated brain but can also control his emotions with:

"...his trained nervous system..." (p. 258)

- so it sounds as if psychodevelopment has at last resolved the contradictions.

Ad astra.

How To Write A New Time Travel Series

Poul Anderson's works include a time travel series based on the possibility of causality violation, "changing the past," and some single works based on the circular causality paradox. It would be difficult to write a series set in a single immutable timeline although that is what I would prefer.

Write some independent historical, contemporary and futuristic novels without any overt references to time travel, then show that some of the characters had been disguised time travellers. If a time traveller, for example, had worked in the bar at the Cavern Club knowing in advance that the Beatles were about to make their first appearance there, then that time traveller's experience would, for me, be a sufficient basis for an intriguing narrative. We do not need causality violations, attempts to change the past etc.

Of course that is just my personal opinion.