House rules differ. Guests stay for only one night at a time in the Old Phoenix. In both, stories are told. The Worlds' End is a Chaucerian framing device whereas the Old Phoenix is an interlude in a novel, A Midsummer Tempest, and the setting for two short stories. The Old Phoenix landlord is a hospitable gentleman whereas the Worlds' End landlady is an Indian woman who, we come to realise, is Kali.
I imagine another inn where people have ended a journey. In Anderson's "Delenda Est," the Time Patrol deletes a timeline in which Carthage won the Second Punic War. I argue on my "Logic of Time Travel" blog that, when the Patrol "deletes," as they see it, a timeline, that timeline does not cease to exist from the point of view of its inhabitants. Either it simply does not exist (the potential timeline in which I remained a bachelor was prevented when I married) or it does exist as experienced by those in it.
If there is a temporal axis along which it would be true to say that the Carthaginian timeline had existed but now no longer exists, then that temporal axis is at right angles to the timeline itself. Therefore, the cessation of the timeline's existence is not an event on the timeline. If people lived in it, then, from their point of view, they continue to live in it. So I imagine a group of Time Patrollers trapped in the Carthaginian timeline without access to a time machine. With a machine, they would be able to travel back to a time before the divergence, then travel forwards into their home timeline but, without a machine, they are stranded in the wrong timeline where they can only share a drink and talk about old times.
11 comments:
Hi, Paul!
A few thoughts about "Delenda Est." I am not sure I can agree with what you've said. It's plain Manse Everard and the other Time Patrollers believed that to nullify the Carthaginian timeline meant "destroying" in such a way that it never existed at all. That everyone and everything in it which resulted from Carthage winning the Second Roman War simply never EXISTED. Which means any Time Patrol agents stranded there without their time traveling machine were simply lost when Everard and Van Sarawak thwarted the Neldorians who intervened at the battle of Ticinus.
Sean
I agree that the Patrollers subscribe to the belief you have attributed to them but I also seriously question whether that belief is coherent. My line of argument is in my first "Logic of Time Travel" article.
If the Carthaginian timeline simply does not exist, then many passages in "Delenda Est" describe not events that happened but only events that would have happened if that timeline had not been prevented. That is possible but we need to be clear about its implications. When a Patrolman is in a timeline, he thinks, "The deletion of this timeline is possible." Thus, he thinks that it is possible that he who is thinking this does not exist. That is a contradiction.
I can't find it right now but, somewhere in "Delenda Est", Manse, while in the Carthaginian timeline, reflects that, if another Patrolman undoes the temporal alteration, then the Carthaginian timeline will "blink out of spacetime" and he with it. Here, he regards that timeline as existing and as possibly ceasing to exist. That is different from saying that it has no existence. If an entire four-dimensional continuum first exists, then does not exist, then its non-existence succeeds its existence not along the temporal dimension internal to the continuum but along a second temporal dimension external to that entire 4D continuum. Inhabitants of the continuum will see a time traveller disappear, never to return, and, along their own temporal axis, will continue to exist after his disappearance. From the time traveller's point of view, the timeline that he has deleted did exist in the past of the second temporal dimension. Therefore, either way, it is wrong to describe it as having no existence.
I found that passage about Manse and had got it right.
Hi, Paul!
Thanks for your interesting comments. You certainly do raise points and arguments about the existing/non existing of time lines deserving serious consideration. I would not be surprised if Poul Anderson came to have some very similar thoughts in his later years about the Time Patrol stories. Here, I have in mind what he said about "chaotic randomness" or chaos theory in the last part of THE SHIELD OF TIME, "Amazement of the World."
I tend to be fairly conservative or cautious in interpreting or commenting on the books I read. Generallly speaking, my view is we should understand what we read based on what the characters or text say. But speculations like yours are interesting and deserve to be considered as well!
Sean
I corresponded with Poul Anderson about the Time Patrol series. He accepted my comments and said he would keep my letters on file in case he ever wrote a concluding volume for the series.
Hi, Paul!
Alas, in the 24 pairs of letters Poul Anderson and I exchanged, the Time Patrol stories was not one of the topics we discussed. Which means your thoughts and Anderson's views of the TP stories are going to be relevant to any future in depth commentary on his works.
I hope you made copies of the letters you sent to Anderson, to keep with his replies. That is what I did.
If so, our collections may be two of the more complete archives of Andersonian letters.
Sean
I should be able to dig both sides of a correspondence out of a file. And PA said he kept them as well. (The trouble with calling the current posts "A Midsummer Tempest" followed by a Roman numeral is that I can't remember which one is which.)
Hi, Paul!
Actually, what you said was that PA told you he kept the letters from you in which you discussed the Time Patrol stories. I was ANGUISHED when Anderson's son in law Greg Bear told it was not his father in law's custom to keep many letters, including the letters he wrote. That is why I think our two collections may be unusual, in Andersonian terms. And I'm certainly glad I was careful to make copies of every letter I wrote to PA.
Sean
Back to an earlier point, inconsistencies are unacceptable in fiction. The complexities and paradoxes of time travel can conceal irreconcilable inconsistencies.
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