-copied from here.
The two links in the above quotation show:
passages from Anderson's The Shield Of Time;
his creatively imagined interactions between alternative timelines;
parallels with an alternative history novel by SM Stirling.
Alternative history by SM Stirling will be, and a rereading of The Shield Of Time will probably be, early themes on this blog.
29 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I clicked on the link leading to Stirling's THE PESHAWAR LANCERS and the bits you quoted from it about Benjamin Disraeli. Very interesting, and ingenious, how Stirling used Yasmini's power to sense either the "real" past or alternate scenarios to show us Disraeli at the moment when he probably realized WHAT he had to do save SOMETHING of Britain after the devastating comet strikes that book used as the beginning of an alternate history.
I think Peshawar has become one of your favorite Stirling books. And the author dedicated it to the memory of Poul Anderson.
Sean
Sean,
PESHAWAR and CONQUISTADOR. I am mostly off the Internet at present but hope to be fully back on it shortly.
Paul Shackley.
A new lap top should arrive some day next week.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I can see why you like PESHAWAR and CONQUISTADOR. They are among my favorite Stirling books too. And I like many others of Stirling's books, despite the criticism I make re the implausible numbers of women soldiers.
And I have wondered where you've "been"! Plainly, you ware having computer problems. I hope you soon get a really GOOD laptop, one that will last for years!
Sean
Sean,
The lap top that has died was one that Ketlan had fixed at home whereas the one that has been dispatched has been bought 2nd hand from Amazon.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Undestood! I have my doubts about buying many things second hand, but I hope this one lasts a good long time.
Sean
Sean,
I have to prove that I am not a robot to comment from the Public Library. I am drafting the next couple of posts on paper. The lap top might arrive on 18 Feb and will then need some inputs from Ketlan. Sheila and I will be away from home 20-24 Feb. Life remains active with or without the internet.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!?
Good! I even thought of suggesting you write out in long hand drafts for your next blog pieces. And then copy/revise into your blog when you get the new laptop after February 18. I'm sure both myself and others will read them with interest!
I hope you and Mrs. Shackley have a good time during your next trip. Preferably somewhere warm and with no snow!
Sean
Sean,
I have just commented her but my comment has not appeared yet. If it does not appear after a while, I will try again.
Paul.
Sean,
I am having problems with this. I have just commented again at greater length and it has not appeared.
Paul.
I had to change my mobile no. I have to go thru gmail to post on the blog but, because I am using a different computer, google sends a verification code to my old no. All I can do currently is comment anonymously.
I will show that the Technic History is a culmination of a tradition initiated by AC Doyle and that there are 2 connections between Holmes and the Time Patrol.
Kaor, Paul!
I understand, and sympathize, with your troubles getting comments to show up. Frustrating, I'm sure!
And I look forward to your comments about A. Conan Doyle and Anderson's Technic Civilization stories. Considering how PA was a fan of Doyle I'm not surprised connections between the two can or could be found.
Sean
Sean,
These connections are unsurprising, however. I am so far drafting 5 posts. Right now, I am experimenting with this process of commenting anonymously.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I would still read them with interest. And I've been trying to think which of the Technic Civilization stories can be tied to Sir Arthur's Sherlock Holme's tales. I can't think of any in either the Nicholas van Rijn or Dominic Flandry series.
I do remember Anderson making allusions like having "666" as an all too apt number for Leon Ammon's office in A CIRCUS OF HELLS. And how PA quoted Elizabeth Barrett Browning in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
Sean
Sean,
I have drafted 6 posts and am reading DIES THE FIRE.
Doyle (I think) invented the series as distinct from the serial and Sherlock Holmes was the first series character. In that sense alone, every subsequent series character, including van Rijn, Flandry and Everard, is a successor of Holmes. Heinlein invented the future history series. The Technic History succeeds the Future History and incorporates van Rijn and Flandry so that in this sense it also succeeds Holmes! Of course, there are closer connections between Holmes and Everard.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! Why didn't I think of that? I think many critics credit the American Edgar Allan Poe with inventing the mystery GENRE, but I agree A. Conan Doyle invented the SERIES character. Which means every writer since then who invented series characters are successors of Doyle. And that obviously includes Old Nick and Dominic Flandry, two of PA's series characters.
Needless to say, even here, it's possible to find PRECURSORS. The four parts of Jonanthan Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS are arguably four different stories. Which would make the narrator/view point character, Lemuel Gulliver, also a series character. But it was still Sir Arthur who truly developed and worked out the idea's possibilities.
Yes, as we have discussed, there are closer "connections" between Manse Everard and Sherlock Holmes in Anderson's Time Patrol stories than in others of PA's works. I'm surprised to realize that I don't remember any direct allusions to the Sherlock Holmes stories in the Technic Series.
Some of the Nicholas van Rijn stories do show us how Old Nick solved problems and answered mysteries, which is what detectives do in the mystery genre. "Hiding Place," "Territory," and "The Master Key" being the examples I thought of. And "The Master Key" reminded me of how Old Nick behaved like Rex Stout's equally massive and obese detective, Nero Wolfe, listening to reports of a mystery and deducing the correct answer, from the comforts of his home.
Yes, Robert A. Heinlein invented and worked out for science fiction some of the possibilities of a "future history." Something Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson took up and developed further in their Foundation and Technic series. With, in both my and your opinion, Anderson's work being by far the most successful of the three.
Needless to say, other SF authors have also used these ideas or methods. Such as Avram Davidson and Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling. I esp. like Turtledove's Basil Argyros stories (collected in AGENT OF BYZANTIUM, reminiscent of Anderson's AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE). But I think we both agree Stirling has surpassed L. Sprague De Camp and Anderson in the writing of "alternate history or universe stories and series.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
I have to quibble on Doyle inventing the series, or even merely the mystery series. Edgar Allan Poe's detective Dupin (to whom Doyle actually had Watson compare Holmes), appeared in three stories, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", and "The Purloined Letter". It was a very SHORT series, but it WAS a series.
Kaor, DAVID!
But I agree with you! In the first paragraph of my comment immediately above I pointed out how critics think it was Edgar Allan Poe who invented the mystery GENRE. And, yes, it seems Poe also invented the series CHARACTER. I would still argue A. Conan Doyle more FULLY developed the genre and the idea of a series character.
Sean
David,
Thank you for your comment. I knew of Poe and Dupin but was putting them in a different category. I will expand on this when I am back to posting.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And S.M. Stirling also seems to have liked Sir Arthur's stories of the Great Detective. In his THE PESHAWAR LANCERS we see an amusing discussion by Prince Charles and one of the other characters about the Holmes stories existing even in that drastically different timeline.
Sean
Sean,
Google is taking forever to acknowledge that I have changed my mobile no. I am getting used to not posting on the blogs. SM Stirling's DIES THE FIRE, like George R. Stewart's EARTH ABIDES, shows a new mythical age beginning after a disaster.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I hope you DON'T lose your taste for writing blog pieces about Poul Anderson and other SF writers! I enjoy reading them. And I hope others do as well.
Yes, and I recall one or two of the characters in DIES THE FIRE themselves saying they had passed out of history into a new age of myths or legends (because of the Change). I look forward to any blog pieces you care to write about DIES THE FIRE and its sequels.
One important thing to remember about the horrible disaster of the Change is that it was not a "natural" catastrophe. The Change was not a result of merely a civilization falling due to a long process of bad ideas, bad choices, decisions, internal decline, etc. Something or Someone unfriendly to mankind caused it.
And since Stirling is a devoted fan of the works of Poul Anderson (as well as Tolkien!) alert readers familiar with Anderson's works will find allusions to them in the DIES THE FIRE series.
I look forward to reading the five or sic notes you mentioned as drafting for here after you get your new laptop.
Sean
Sean:
The effects of the Change remind me of those in the short story "Pax Galactica" by Ralph Williams, first published in 1952. Extraterrestrials decided to do Earth a "favor."
"These people have to be controlled for their own good, we can't let them just run loose to slaughter each other and perhaps even destroy the planet."
All Earth's stores of fissionable material, and facilities for processing such, were annihilated. And then the "inhibitor" settled into the atmosphere: "above a pressure of two hundred psi, chemical reactions were self-damping. Hydroelectric and steam plants functioned normally, low-compression engines and jets idled without power; but guns fizzled damply and high-compression engines stalled."
The resulting collapse wasn't as overwhelming as in Stirling's series, although the U.S. population fell in a year from about 150 million to less than 60 million. (Europe had it worse, when the Central Asian nomads swarmed again....) There still remained, in particular, a United States government, and a U.S. military ... relearning the use of the bow and pike, and developing a technique of strategic and tactical evaluation that was an even deadlier weapon in itself.
The aliens came back 20 years later to renew the inhibitor. "From five thousand feet, the country looked green and prosperous.... [h]e could not see ... the scars and bitterness and hatred still tangled in people's hearts. If he saw, he did not particularly note the little groups of hard-faced observers here and there who studied his craft through binoculars and carefully filmed its every move."
Thirty years after THAT, the extraterrestrials came back again, apparently intending to make peaceful contact. Ho, ho, you fellows surely aren't upset that we caused so many of your people to die....
Kaor, DAVID!
This was a very interest note you wrote, far more so than my own! I don't think I've ever heard of Ralph Williams and his works, and I've certainly never read "Pax Galactica."
The genocidally meddlesome aliens in this Williams story had absolutely no right to act as reported by you. Earth (or Terra) was NOT their planet. Whether wisely or foolishly, only HUMANS should have decided the fate of their race and planet. And I'm not sorry the smug aliens were lethally put in their place by the vengeful survivors fifty years later.
Williams "Pax Galactica" reminded me of Poul Anderson's "No Truce With Kings." That story had do gooding aliens who were not mass killers, but still arrogantly convinced they knew better than primitive, barbaric humans how the world should be run. THEY too got their comeuppance!
Sean
Kaor, DAVID!
I need to correct my prior note. I googled the Ralph Williams story and found out I have a book which contains it: in Volume 1 of THE IMPERIAL STARS: THE STARS AT WAR, edited by Jerry Pournelle and John Carr (Baen, 1986). So I might have read Williams' "Pax Galactica" as long as 30 years ago and forgotten that.
I can imagine interfering aliens brutally forcing the human race back to a mid 19th century technological level (minus things like gunpowder and the internal combustion engine).
And I can also imagine strategic thinkers in the surviving US sharpening and refining strategy and tactical evaluation. And using the insights thereby gained to successfully attack a Galactic Survey ship--ONCE. But would that be enough for mankind to break the "inhibition" imposed on the planet and get OFF it fast enough to DECISIVELY attack the aliens?
Wouldn't there be other GS ships orbiting Earth which would have struck at a US which had captured or destroyed one of their ships?
I think Strategy and Tactical Evaluation needed to the think thru this problem more deeply. Unless there was a plan for getting off Earth that Williams did not tell us about.
Sean
Sean:
The impression I got at the end was that STE wasn't planning to overrun the aliens by force, but to MANIPULATE them and conquer by guile. A discussion during the pacification of Europe stated that different approaches applied for different cultures; when mopping up the savages, simple force was what worked, while economic and political influence brought the British into the Americans' camp.
There's an irony in that the aliens are shown GENUINELY intending the attack to be for humanity's own good. John Stuart Mill had something to say about THAT attitude:
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."
Even the aliens admitted, about halfway into the story, that it was plain they hadn't thought their procedure through carefully enough.
And yeah, I've got *Imperial Stars Volume 1* ... and Volume 2, as well.
Kaor, DAVID!
Now that you've mentioned it, I think you are right. What STE had in mind was, I think, to use GUILE against the aliens. And mention was made of how the US used different methods for different kinds of people in extending her de facto empire. Simple, but skillfully used force was sufficient against the nomadic savages, etc. A pity we don't know what kind of guile was going to be used on the aliens!
Yes, I recall reading of how the GS admiral and the observer from Minorities and Backward Peoples were increasingly uneasy about the results of their meddling with Earth. Which did NOT mitigate the guilt they acquired from the murder of more than a billion people at their hands.
I've read John Stuart Mill's famous book, ON LIBERTY, and while I'm not sure I agree with everything he wrote, I do agree with the bit you quoted. And there are times, IMO, when a criminal has done so MUCH harm that he can rightly even be executed.
I have all three of Jerry Pournelle's IMPERIAL STARS volumes. His introductory essays are well worth reading. And I also have Brian Aldiss' two volume GALACTIC EMPIRES.
Sean
Kaor, DAVID!
Another thought I had about Williams' "Pax Galactica" was to wonder if the US in that story began to recover TOO quickly from the aliens genocidal meddling. Would the US in that story really have needed only one or two years to begin recovering from the disaster of the "inhibitor"? I wondered if any nation which lost 100 millions or more of its people in one year could begin recovering so quickly even if the national gov't somehow managed to survive. Three, four, or five years seems more plausible to me.
Even the Black Death of the 1340s still needed three or four years to kill one third to one half of Europe's population. I think that gave the socio/political organizations and states of that period some TIME to somewhat adjust and try to get a grip on the disaster of the Plague.
Sean
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