Poul Anderson has at least four titles which are complete sentences:
in Poul Anderson's "Honorable Enemies," a drug that makes a person believe whatever he is told (see Sorgan and Flandry On Alfzar);
in Anderson's There Will Be Time, chemicals with the same effect (see Sorgan And The Maurai Drug);
in Anderson's "I Tell You, It's True," a machine with the same effect (see It's True);
in Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, a "zombie" drug that makes people do as they are told, believe what they are told and answer any question (not mentioned on this blog before).
Robert Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (London, 1970).
Not really. Not at the moment. Heinlein's causal circles hang together and he makes them work just as Poul Anderson, Audrey Niffenegger and some others do in their time travel novels. Heinlein makes the point that some events that could have happened did not happen:"...the very existence of that line of print depended on my not seeing it; the apparent possibility that I might have seen it is one of the excluded 'not possibles' of the basic circuit design." (p. 188)
If the narrator had read that line of print, then he would have done something that would have prevented its existence but it does exist, therefore he did not do anything that would have prevented its existence.
James Blish thought that all previous circular causality narratives were limited. He proposed at some time to write a finite-spinning-universe-theory-of time-travel novel with its entire plot and characters based on the paradox. That is one of the might-have-beens, like Stieg Larsson's seven further Millennium volumes.
In the previous post, we willfully conflated transition to the future with "travel" into it but greater precision is necessary. Everyone transitions. Everyone here has transitioned from nonexistence to existence and from childhood to adulthood (- although, of course, nothing has really begun or ceased to exist; mass/energy/being has changed form). Wells' Sleeper transitions to a later century just by sleeping long enough. What does Wells' Time Traveller do? And also the Time Traveller's literary successor, Poul Anderson's Jack Havig?
The Time Traveller does not move in any direction. What he experiences is time dilation accompanied by an inexplicable (in my opinion) sensation of headlong forward motion. He slows down while everything else (from his point of view) speeds up. He just sits still for far longer than anyone else, in both temporal directions. And, while this is happening, he should remain both visible and palpable to everyone else.
Jack Havig:
stands instead of sitting;
exercises a psychic power instead of driving a vehicle;
shares the perception of external events rushing past but not the sensation of headlong motion;
also becomes inexplicably invisible and intangible.
Futureward "time travel" by the Time Traveller and Havig is a fictional extension or exaggeration of the transitioning that all of us do anyway. It is not a kind of "travel" although we have inherited that word from Wells.
Matter both extends and moves through space, the difference being that motion takes time whereas extension does not. We endure through time. If we moved through time, then that motion would take time in a second temporal dimension which is unnecessary to describe our experience of time. Four dimensions suffice: three spatial; one temporal.
First biological evolution, then agricultural, scientific, industrial, social, political and new technological revolutions. Some sf is about people travelling or transitioning into a changed world. Poul Anderson's Brain Wave begins in the then contemporary world but then people and society are transformed. The cause of the transformation is speculative and fictional but it reflects the fact of real change as well as cosmic interconnection.
This was meant to be a longer post but it is being cut short. Laterz.
See the above link for the haunting opening and closing sentences of this story.
See The Oneness Of Time for a rare connection in sf between a future history and prehistory.
See Port Nevada for a summary of Poul Anderson's vivid description of the spaceport on this future Earth.
These are the main aspects of this story that I would have wanted to post about this time and a search of the blog reveals that I have already posted about them in far more detail than I would have felt able to now.
The coming week and a day will present some real life obstacles to blogging but maybe we need a break anyway? Other reading continues. I agree with Sean's recent comment that even pre-"off the rails" Heinlein is not necessarily that good to read. However, I continue to find his The Door Into Summer interesting and will say more about it when time allows.
Next Music Festival event: jazz in The Castle Chapel.
