Beginnings Of Future Histories II

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, which both literally and literarily comes between Robert Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Technic History, begins not with excitement but with desolation:

"It was raining again, with a bite in the air as the planet spun toward winter. They hadn't restored the street lights, and an early dusk seeped up between ruined walls and hid the tattered people who dwelt in caves grubbed out of rubble."

-Poul Anderson, "Marius" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (Riverdale, NY, 2017), pp. 5-17 AT p. 5.

Rain, bite, winter, dusk, ruins, tatters, caves, rubble... Recovery from World War III.

Eventually, the last novel in this future history series will open:

"There is a planet beyond the edge of the known, and its name is Rendezvous.

"Few worlds are more lovely to the eyes of men. As the weary ships come in from space and loneliness, they see a yellow star against the great cold constellations..."

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), CHAPTER I, p. 1.

Ships are weary, space is lonely, constellations are great and cold but Rendezvous is lovely to the eyes of men. As in the Technic History, despite a less auspicious start:

"...we are on our way."

I am also. I will travel to London early tomorrow and return late on Sunday. We are inspired by visiting the capital city and by the people that we meet there. This will probably be the last post for June.

Beginnings Of Future Histories

Isaac Asimov's equivalent of The Green Hills Of Earth or The Earth Book Of Stormgate is I, Robot. Its historical culmination is the Machines, giant robotic brains controlling the global economy.

Poul Anderson's Technic History begins with a sense of excitement about the move into space. The introduction to the first Nicholas van Rijn collection begins:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"

-Poul Anderson, Trader To The Stars (St. Albans, Herts, 1975), p. 7.

The introduction to a later story in the collection begins:

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,

"Fraught with a later prize..." (p. 105)

The opening story of the Earth Book begins: 

"Our part in the Grand Survey took us out beyond the great suns Alpha and Beta Crucis."

-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-102 AT p. 79.

Great age, loftier Argo, later prize, Grand Survey, great suns:

"...we are on our way."

-Trader To The Stars, p. 7.

Heinlein And Anderson

I am still contemplating a comparison between Robert Heinlein's Future History and Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series:

two long sf series;

each can be collected in two long volumes (also true of Anderson's Psychotechnic History);

both deal with history;

both convey a sense of adventure about the immediate future;

each has a historical culmination, the Danellians and the "first mature culture."

Anderson has:

immortals living through history, then through the present and into the future in The Boat Of A Million Years;

several future histories;

time travel in several works, including one that intersects with a future history.

Heinlein has a time travelling immortal, Lazarus Long, in his Future History - if we accept Time Enough For Love as a valid addition to the Future History, which I don't.

However, Lazarus is in Volume IV of the Future History and time travel is hinted at in the Time Chart. The section of Time Enough For Love where Lazarus time travels is called "Da Capo," which is also the title of the very last item in the Time Chart, one of the "Stories-to-be-told," although Heinlein does not mention or discuss this potential narrative in his "Concerning Stories Never Written." It looks as if Heinlein had already thought of someone time travelling from the very end of the series although it would have made sense to include "Da Capo" at the beginning as well as at the end. A spear-carrying character, like a spaceship captain, in The Green Hills Of Earth could have turned out to be an earlier alias of Lazarus. It puzzled me to see Lazarus' lifespan extending right through the Time Chart in Volume I but all was explained in Volume IV.

Read the Future History but then read Anderson's future histories and Time Patrol. 

Authors Who Link Time Travel To Future History

Olaf Stapledon in Last And First Men

Brian Aldiss in Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand

Poul Anderson in his Maurai History

Robert Heinlein in Time Enough For Love

Isaac Asimov linking Eternals to Foundation

That is more than I had expected and there is probably more than that but I do not rate either Time Enough For Love or The End Of Eternity.

Time In Fact And Fiction

The past is fixed, the present is fleeting and the future is unknown, therefore multiple option. At least, that is how time appears to us at every moment. Every moment is the present moment to any beings that are conscious within it. It is also possible to discuss a period of time, e.g., 1001 AD to 2000 AD, as divided into days and years but without referring to any moment within that period as a now separating a past from a future - while always remembering that every moment appears that way to any beings conscious within it. Abandon any idea of immaterial consciousnesses taking time to move along time even though this idea crops up all the time in casual conversation and discussion.

Given that the future is multiple option, sf authors write alternative fictional futures and future histories. We should not want any author's works to comprise a single future history but should regard them as multiple options with a single creator. We appreciate reminders and parallels like a Solar Commonwealth both in Poul Anderson's Technic History and in his Time Patrol series.

Uniforms

"Time Patrol."

At the Time Patrol Academy, Dard Kelm wears:

"...a skin-tight gray uniform with a deep blue cloak which seemed to twinkle, as if it had stars sewn in." (2, p. 7)

When Everard and Whitcomb hunt in the Oligocene:

"Both wore Academy uniform, light grays which were cool and silky under the hot yellow sun." (2, p. 15) 

When two Patrolmen arrive to arrest Everard and Whitcomb, they wear:

"...Patrol gray..." (6, p. 50)

Belatedly, we are told in The Shield Of Time that an hourglass in a shield is:

"...the emblem of the Patrol, the insigne on uniforms that were seldom worn." (p. 296)

That emblem will have to be shown from the beginning in any screen or graphic adaptation. The image shows the shield of time on Everard's timecycle.

A Kind Of Policeman

Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53.

Mr. Gordon says too much when recruiting Manse Everard. He tells him that he is:

"'...going to be a kind of policeman... Everywhere. And everywhen.'" (1, p. 5)

No, he is not, not immediately. Everard, like all of his class, begins as a attached agent, remaining in his own period, his first task merely to read newspapers looking for signs of time travel. 

"'Your work will be mostly in your own eras, unless you graduate to unattached status. You will live, on the whole, ordinary lives...'" (2, p. 11)

At the very end of the story, Everard is told:

"'You've shown yourself obviously unfit for steady work.'" (6, p. 53)

But:

"'You'll want more training, of course. Your type of personality goes best with Unattached status - any age, any place, wherever and whenever you may be needed. I think you'll like it.'" (ibid.)

- which is what Gordon had said, prematurely.

Even if the Patrol does not usually look ahead, they obviously knew what they were getting with Everard and Whitcomb. The Danellian says that Everard's appeal on behalf of Whitcomb:

"...was known and weighed ages before you were born...'" (6, p. 51)

The Danellians exist over a million years after us, not ages before us, but of course they can time travel. They also knew of a discrepancy in Whitcomb's record but waited to see what Everard would do to rectify it.

Everard and Whitcomb were sent off on a dangerous mission as if at least one of them were already Unattached - but without proper preparation and no backup. Mainwethering told them that the stolen time shuttle had been recovered by two Patrolmen named Everard and Whitcomb before they had even set off. He should not have done that, either.

The Patrol already knew that they would lose Whitcomb but gain Everard as:

"'...one of the more important agents operating within the past three millennia.'"

-The Shield Of Time, p. 263.

A Sense Of Adventure

That sense of adventure in the early period of space travel that is conveyed by the opening volumes of Robert Heinlein's Future History is surprisingly also expressed in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. Manson Everard is recruited to the Patrol in 1954 but his class at the Patrol Academy are from the period, 1850-2000, thus some of them can be expected to come from the early space travel period. 

"He had entered something new and exciting, that was all he truly grasped with all layers of consciousness...as yet."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 13.

Of course, what is most new and exciting is time travel itself but that means contact with other times, including the immediate future. Everard is taught how to handle spaceships. He learns that time travel will be discovered in a galactic era. A cadet in another class was born on Mars in the Solar Commonwealth and plans to infiltrate places like Peenemunde and White Sands because of their importance to history.

The Future History Idea

The idea behind Robert Heinlein's Future History was that common background references like place names such as "Drywater" on Mars would link otherwise independent short stories narrated as if addressed to a magazine-reading public living just a few years after the events described. This is how it was in those earliest days of space travel... sort of thing. What was (thought to be) just in our future was just in their past.

Only The Green Hills of Earth really conforms to this template. The Man Who Sold The Moon describes earlier technological advances whereas later volumes focus mainly on large scale political events: the Second American Revolution and the subsequent persecution and interstellar exile of the Howard Families.

This Future History idea really belongs in a multi-volume series whereas Heinlein's Future History, four and a half volumes, became only a small part of his complete works. Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is a fuller embodiment of the idea despite being dominated as it is by three series characters, van Rijn, Falkayn and Flandry.

Anderson's equivalent of The Green Hills Of The Earth is The Earth Book Of Stormgate. In the Earth Book, the opening story, "Wings of Victory," helps to set the scene by introducing the Ythrians and mentioning the planets, Cynthia, Woden and Hermes. "The Problem of Pain" features an Aenean on Avalon. "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" shows domestic life in the Solar Commonwealth, giving the future a daily life, as was claimed for Heinlein. "The Season of Forgiveness" is a Christmas story set on an extra-solar planet. There is very little in the way of continuing characters among these early Technic History stories. We do not yet realize how important van Rijn will become.

Anderson fulfils Heinlein's idea.

The Lives And Times Of Dan, Part II

If Dan always returned from the pre-stellar past to timeline (i), then he would not know of other timelines and would have no reason to apply the numeral, (i).

If he returned from the past to Deirdre's home timeline, then he would be able to join Patrol agents at the lodge or the Academy and to help with the intervention in the Second Punic War. However, he would need to know when to arrive at the lodge or the Academy. Otherwise, he would merely be disturbing agents who knew nothing of the temporal alteration.

If Dan never travelled into the past but remained permanently in the Danellian era, then he would not know of any alternative timelines.

The Danellians must found the Patrol because they want to ensure that they will always be free to travel into the past and then to return to their home era.

The Lives And Times Of Dan

 

The Time Patrol Academy exists for 500,000 years:

"...long enough to graduate as many as the Time Patrol would require..."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 6.

The Patrol requires a finite number and that number is known. Imagine a Danellian whom we may call "Dan." He is based at Danellian HQ over a million years in the future. HQ has complete records of the lives and activities of every Patrol agent that ever was. Dan copies the entire contents of the records into a computer inside an enclosed time machine. In that machine, he travels pastward and spends a microsecond in the early pre-stellar universe. He returns to the Danellian era a microsecond after his departure from it. Then he checks for any discrepancies between HQ records and the records in his time machine. There is no discrepancy. Dan conducts this procedure periodically. Eventually, there is a discrepancy.

According to Dan's records:

Manson Everard and Piet Van Sarawak vacationed at the Patrol Pleistocene lodge. Growing bored there, they left the lodge, completed their vacation in New York in 1960, then returned separately to their Time Patrol duties.

According to HQ records:

Manson Everard and Piet Van Sarawak vacationed at the Patrol Pleistocene lodge, Growing bored there, they left the lodge but did not arrive in New York in 1960. Instead, they returned to the lodge half an hour after leaving it, accompanied by Deirdre Mac Morn who had never existed in this timeline before. Much Patrol activity was necessary for an intervention in the Second Punic War. Then Van Sarawak returned to twenty-fourth century Venus, taking Deirdre with him.

Observations

The Danellians now have records of two timelines and some information about an intermediate timeline where Deirdre originated. 

Dan has travelled from Danellian timeline (i) to Danellian timeline (ii). 

Deirdre has travelled from her home timeline to Danellian timeline (ii).

The Dan of Danellian timeline (ii) will also have travelled to the pre-stellar past and returned to his present.

Therefore there are now two Dans, unless we call one of them "Daniel."

Danellians And Quantum Mechanics

A time traveller who initiates a divergent timeline disappears from his original timeline at the moment of divergence and knows that this has happened whereas a personal causal nexus who initiates a divergent timeline lives beyond the moment of divergence in both timelines but does not know that this has happened but how much do Danellians know about personal causal nexuses? Might quantum mechanical brain enhancement empower a Danellian to initiate and live in multiple timelines and to communicate between them? Time Patrol agents believe that only one timeline exists but that belief is necessary to motivate them to guard the timeline that leads to the Danellians. How much is there that the Time Patrol does not know?

Wanda In Wind And Winter

The Shield Of Time.

Manse Everard asks Wanda Tamberly what is haunting her. When she responds that he observes more than he pretends:

"The wind nearly stole her words from him, as low as they were. It shrilled and boomed above rumbling surf, sheathed faces in cold, laid salt on lips, ruffled hair." (p. 431)

This time, the wind's role is to emphasize that Tamberly is indeed subdued. She speaks so low as to be scarcely audible. However, when she at last articulates her feelings and then breaks off:

"Her voice had been rising into the wind." (p. 433)

The Danellian appears and reassures both. As he does:

"The wind cried, the sea growled nearer." (p. 434)

Wind and sea represent chaos which approaches and threatens even while the Danellian affirms that the Patrol has overcome it. By the end of this chapter and thus also of the novel, Tamberly's disquiet is healed. Despite all the shrilling, booming and rumbling of winter:

"'...this is a lovely coast, Manse. Let me show you.'" (p. 436)

Quanta And Lorenzo

The Shield Of Time.

In the Danellian timeline, Lorenzo de Conti neither kills Roger II nor marries Ilaria di Gaetani. A quantum fluctuation in Lorenzo's brain causes him to attack Roger II at Rignano, thus initiating the Alpha timeline. When Manse Everard averts that timeline, another quantum fluctuation in Lorenzo's brain causes him to accept betrothal to Ilaria, thus initiating the Beta timeline. When Everard, while averting this second divergence, accidentally kills Lorenzo, the latter's death prevents his brain from generating a Gamma timeline. Consequently, reality reverts to the Danellian timeline. Does that account finally bring together the two levels of description of reality?

Levels Of Description And Lorenzo De Conti

The Shield Of Time.

A material object or process can be described on increasing scales:

subatomic/quantum

atomic

molecular

macroscopic

Manson Everard reflects on two levels of description of "...changes in time..." (p. 399):

complicated interplaying quantum functions

chains of cause and effect, including human motivations

In either case, a complete account of the lowest scale level, even if possible, might not be enough to enable a prediction of macroscopic causality.

In the Alpha timeline, Lorenzo de Conti kills Roger II at Rignano and thus prevents the birth of Roger's grandson, Frederick II, whereas, in the Beta timeline, Lorenzo marries Ilaria di Gaetani, thus preventing the birth of Gregory IX and also becoming the great-grandfather of a powerful adviser of Frederick II. The Danellian timeline needs both Frederick II and Gregory IX.

January-February-March, 1990

The Shield Of Time.

"There followed a telephone number and a list of hours on successive days in this February."

-PART FOUR, 1990 A. D., p. 176.

"When he had finished, the time in California was the third of the hours she had named." (p. 178)

Everard and Tamberly discuss Beringia in February 1990.

"Today was a midweek early in January, overcast and chill."

-PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 431.

Returning from their mission in the twelfth century, Everard and Tamberly arrive in 1990 a month before they had discussed Beringia. As time travellers, they can do this although usually they live their twentieth century lives consecutively. Tamberly visits her parents on both occasions. They must not realize that Wanda in February is younger than she was in January.

The last time that we see Everard and Tamberly is on Thursday, 8 March 1990, in "Death and the Knight." They have holidayed from January to March and thus have coexisted with their younger selves who discussed Beringia in February.

Lorenzo And Religion

The Shield Of Time.

Another understated Biblical allusion:

"'Enough,' said Everard awkwardly. 'Go and sin no more.'" (p. 426)

Maybe this time I can leave it to blog readers to recognize or locate this reference?

Lorenzo plays games with religion. Wanda Tamberly lets him begin to seduce her so that archangel Everard can appear and order Lorenzo to celibacy and the Crusade. Having prayed over her medallion in her native dialect (alerted Everard through her communicator in American English), Tamberly encourages seduction by saying:

"'I feel purified enough to be ready for mischief.'" (p. 423)

Lorenzo warns her that her remark:

"'...edges the Catharist heresy.'" (ibid.)

Who can split hairs about doctrine while beginning a seduction? Lorenzo.

The seduction will take place in "'...the Apollo bower.'" (p. 421) Lorenzo explains that the bower must have been sacred to some god and that that god should have been Apollo. He proposes to thank God for His bounty by taking pleasure in the bower. There is some oscillation between pantheons here but Lorenzo finally comes down on the side of Paganism:

"'Deny not Cupid, here in his own abode.'" (p. 424)

Appropriate language and ideas if inconsistent with his professed concern about Catharism.

Angels And Gods

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1146 A. D., pp. 414-429.

"Tamberly had proposed taking Lorenzo back in time and making him decline the proffered marriage at the outset." (p. 426)

If they took Lorenzo back in time, then he would coexist with his younger self so what would they do with the younger Lorenzo? Kill or kidnap him?

Everard as an angel:

"'Sinner, beware!... Hell gapes for you!'" (p. 424)

He continues:

"'Lorenzo de Conti, most wicked among men...'" (p. 425)

That inverts:

“Blessed are you among women, (Luke 1: 42)

Everard tells Lorenzo that he will damn more than himself. His words recall Keith Denison's act as an angel:

"'O infamous vessel of iniquity, heaven's anger is upon you!

"'...this child Cyrus is favored of heaven...

"'...if you stain your soul with his innocent blood, the sin can never be washed away.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 9, p. 109.

- and similar Patrol performances:

"'You have seen the wrath of Poseidon.'"

-The Shield of Time, PART TWO, 209 B. C., p. 114.

"'Know that thou has guested Woden and Thunor, who will hereafter guard thy folk from harm.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Time Patrol, pp. 1-53 AT 5, pp. 33-34.

And, of course, Carl Farness appears as Odin and Janne Floris as Niaerdh. How many apparitions are Time Patrol agents? Apparently the Middle Mohenjodaro office often uses angelic disguises.

Stupor Mundi

The Shield Of Time.

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, nicknamed stupor mundi, "amazement of the world," had Frederick Barbarossa and Roger II of Sicily for grandfathers! Now we realize that Roger II is important not only in himself but also in this descendant.

As Frederick II rides ahead of his followers, evening sunlight makes a halo of his auburn-gold hair tossing under a feathered gap so that, despite signs of baldness, weight and age, he looks like a god. Bearing an aura of the supernatural even in the Time Patrol timeline, Frederick has been regarded both as a redeemer and as the Antichrist. In the Beta timeline, that conflict is past. He has prevailed.

Visitors To Frederick II's Court

The Shield Of Time.

Frederick II is visited by:

scholars from Spain and Damascus;

the astrologer, Michael Scot;

Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, importer of Arabic numerals;

Munan Eyvindsson, Icelandic outlaw, who gifts a Greenland falcon, relates sagas and recites Eddic and skaldic poems.

The falcon is from the Time Patrol pre-Indian North American ranch which we saw in 15,926 BC on pp. 281-282. Frederick is impressed with how well the bird has travelled from Iceland whereas, of course, Munan/Everard has had to carry it only a short distance from his timecycle arrival point.

Frederick's response to Norse mythology is mine:

"'You open another whole universe!'" (p. 396)

In 1254beta

The Shield Of Time.

Only two chapters are set in the Beta timeline:

1989beta  A. D., pp. 368-373.

1254beta  A. D., pp. 393-413.

The Patrol, alerted, does not blunder in but sends two scouting expeditions. The two paragraphs of p. 393 describe the Apulian plain:

white villages

green orchards

golden fields

brown meadows

frequent woods

yellow sunbeams

blue shadows

warm air

earth odours

gleaming city

pealing bells

Four senses.

The following page describes Emperor Frederick II's hunting party:

rainbow garb

belled falcons

masked ladies

trailing attendants

dangling game

slung hampers

costly bottles

On p. 395, this emperor in a divergent timeline, who has not heeded the call to prayer, says not "...if God allows..." but "'...if time allows...,'" as if he intuits the problem addressed by the Patrol.

Frederick will order that a copy of his book on falconry be given to Munan (Everard). (See image.)

Wanda Tamberly In Anagni

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1146 A. D., pp. 381-392.

A Time Patrol agent has discovered that Ilaria di Gaetani of Anagni married Bartolommeo Conti de Segni and, in 1147, became the mother of the future Pope Gregory IX but Wanda Tamberly and Emil Volstrup arrive in Anagni in 1146 to learn that Lorenzo de Conti is engaged to Ilaria di Gaetani! The Patrol must prevent the marriage of Lorenzo and Ilaria.

The text periodically summarizes relevant history. Tamberly remembers that:

"By 1099 the First Crusade had gained its objectives, with a massacre of civilians that would have done Genghis Khan proud, and the conquerors settled in." (p. 384)

Crusaders were conquerors who committed massacres. I attended a public meeting in Preston where an imam described the liberation of Jerusalem from Crusaders to cheers from the audience.

Tamberly also reflects that local sexual mores are easy-going:

"Even gays, no matter the law says they should be hanged or burned."  (p. 389)

More burning. How can anyone have thought that this was right?

Everard And Montalbano

We are watching Montalbano which is set in Sicily and mentions Palermo. Thus, I am free to imagine Manson Everard and Salvo Montalbano on the same island in different centuries and in different media. Notionally, all the history recounted in Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time happened long before the events of Montalbano's career. Notionally also, the Time Patrol exists in Montalbano's time although he never has occasion to cross paths with it. It is difficult to conceptualize such series as coexisting and usually we have no reason to do so. Nevertheless, the possibility remains of a narrative or drama linking very dissimilar fictional characters without compromising the integrities of their distinctive series. Indeed, Everard does coexist with Sherlock Holmes so we are half way there already.

The Misery Of History

The Shield Of Time.

Lorenzo says:

"'We'll cast [the house of Hauteville] into the sea and bring the island back to Christ!'" (p. 333)

Everard thinks:

"To the Inquisition, when it gets founded. To the persecution of Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians. To the burning of heretics." (ibid.)

Lorenzo:

"'You're a Saxon... Charlemagne sprang from your country, Manfred. Let us stand ready to be knights of a new Charlemagne!'" (p. 334)

Everard:

"As a matter of fact, Everard recalled, he was a Frank, who massacred the Old Saxons with Stalin-like thoroughness. But the Carolingian myth has taken hold." (ibid.)

(Two Charlemagnes: historical and mythical.)

Emil Volstrup:

"'The thirteenth century was the century in which medieval society lost its earlier measures of freedom, tolerance, and social mobility. Heretics were burned, Jews were herded into ghettos when they were not massacred or expelled, peasants who dared to claim some rights suffered a similar fate.'" (p. 378)

The Middle Ages invented Nazi treatment of Jews.

I know someone who thinks that animal and human consciousness involve so much suffering that it would have been better if there had never been any consciousness. Imagine a time criminal who tries to prevent the formation of stars and planets that can generate life. A very negative interpretation of Buddhism implies the same conclusion but I think that meditation is beneficial here and now.

Wind And Sea

The Shield Of Time, II37 A. D.

The Beta timeline lacks the strong Pope Gregory with the result that the Popes become the Emperor's puppets. When Volstrup relates this to Everard and Tamberly:

"The wind sobbed." (p. 378)

That wind works overtime. It whooped when demands on Volstrup increased. Now it sobs for the weakened Papacy. Time Patrol agents are not (all) Papists but they need a Papacy that can resist the Empire just as they need an Empire that resists the Papacy. They need a Cyrus the Great that ends Jewish captivity in Babylon and Nazis that can be defeated, but must first exist, in the twentieth century.

By the end of this novel, the Patrol has ensured the growth of science and of "'...the first strong ideal of liberty.'" (1990 A. D., p. 434)

- and, when a Danellian points this out:

"The wind cried, the sea growled nearer." (ibid.)

Seething City And Whooping Wind

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1137 A. D.,, pp. 374-380.

"...Palermo seethed with tidings. Each newcomer brought a new story." (p. 374)

But the stories confirm that King Roger is victorious so:

"Sicily rejoiced." (ibid.)

The Patrol cannot rejoice yet. Manse Everard must ask even more than before of agent-in-place Emil Volstrup. While Volstrup's face pales:

"Outside, wind whooped and a dash of rain blew from wolf-gray heaven." (p. 376)

The sky is a threatening colour. A dash of rain could be the start of a downpour. While the city seethes, wind whoops. Of course. Poul Anderson knows how to set the scene for the greatest temporal crisis yet.

Two Alpha Timelines

The Shield Of Time.

Keith Denison enters a divergent timeline in 1980alpha. He is immediately arrested and handed over to Archcardinal Albin. Wanda Tamberly enters that same divergent timeline in 1989alpha. She learns that a Time Patrolman has been held prisoner for several years and, scouting back in time, rescues him from 1984alpha.

Back in 18,244 BC, Denison says that Wanda:

"'...lopped five years off my sentence...'" (p. 362)

She did not. We must now differentiate between two divergent timelines.

The Alpha (1) Timeline

In 1980alpha (1), Denison arrived, was arrested and was handed over to Albin. In 1989alpha (1), Tamberly arrived and realized that someone (Denison) was being held prisoner. In many stages, she travelled from 1989alpha (1) to 25 March 1984alpha (1), 1337 hours, saw Albin and Denison and decided to rescue the latter then.

The Alpha (2) Timeline

On 25 March 1984alpha (2) at 1337 hours, Tamberly arrived and rescued Denison.

In the Alpha (1) timeline, Denison would have continued to live beyond the moment in 1989alpha (1) when Tamberly, having realized that a Time Patrolman was being held prisoner, set out to rescue him. In the Alpha (2) timeline, Albin, and everyone else in the world, would have continued to exist after Denison had been rescued.

The moment in 1989alpha (1) when Tamberly begins her pastward journey to find and rescue Denison should not be the concluding moment in the Alpha (1) timeline. The moment in 1984alpha (2) when Tamberly rescues Denison should not be the concluding moment in the Alpha (2) timeline. Both of these timelines, in their four dimensional entireties, will have been "deleted"/have ceased to exist from the point of view of Time Patrol agents later in this narrative but the deletion of an entire timeline is a different matter from a terminal moment within that timeline. 

Like A Bullet

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 18,244 B. C.

Keith Denison explains his timecycle to Archcardinal Albin:

"'I told him my chariot flew too fast to see, like a bullet.'" (p. 362)

The Psychologist explains the disappearance of the model Time Machine:

"'We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air.'"

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 2, p. 16.

Observations

(i) Denison echoes the Psychologist.

(ii) Denison is lying. The timecycle simply does not exist between its departure and its arrival.

(iii) The Psychologist is contradicting the Time Traveller's premise that material objects do not move but merely extend along the Fourth Dimension.

(iv) The Psychologist is also perpetuating the fallacy that endurance or duration is motion.

(v) I have only just noticed his odd use of the word, "appreciate."

(vi) Anyone who stands in the way of a flying bullet certainly appreciates it.

The Archcardinal

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 18,244 B. C.

"The archcardinal...was a top-drawer nobleman of France, which included the British Isles." (p. 362)

In our timeline, the Duke of Normandy became the King of England while remaining Duke of Normandy so England could have become part of France or the King of England, defending his Duchy of Normandy, could have conquered more French territory and thus incorporated France into England. Instead, the two countries have had a very mixed relationship down the centuries.

Keith Denison continues:

"'He had to order the burning of heretics and the massacre of peasants who got above themselves. Not that he minded, he considered it his duty, but he didn't enjoy it either, like some characters I met.'" (p. 362)

He didn't enjoy it! That's big of him! How could anyone think that burning was a legitimate form of execution for any offence, let alone for heresy? When I was twelve, I read a textbook that acknowledged that a man had been burned to death but, in mitigation, informed us that, while dying, he had cried out the most shocking blasphemies, even denying the existence of God! That's not so bad, then.

Exuberance And Celebration

The Shield Of Time, Part Six, 18,244 B. C., pp. 358-368.

"Those who were staying at the Pleistocene lodge made for the common room, exuberant and loud, to celebrate." (p. 358)

This sentence captures a good feeling, when an individual is part of something greater than himself, especially when the something greater has just been successful or victorious: a team that has won a match, a political party that has won an election, a trade union that has won a dispute, an army that has won a battle. I have not experienced that fourth example. I had some of this feeling this morning, rising early to mobilize with others for a particular action while also looking forward to a conference in London next weekend. And who knows what shape this country will be in just a week from now?

The following sentence:

"Everard wasn't in that mood." (ibid.)

- captures the experience of an individual who is surrounded by exuberance but has private reasons for not joining in the celebration. All human life is there, even in the Time Patrol. In fantasy and sf, the situations are fantastic but the human responses must be authentic.

Arrivals And The Earliest Departure

I am now noticing accounts of arrivals of temporal vehicles. (See Disappearing Act.)

"A vehicle blinked into his presence..."

-The Shield Of Time, p. 347.

"Cycle and rider appeared..." (p.357)

"Some who had been at Rignano were appearing too." (p. 358)

"Someone appeared."

-Time Patrol, p. 454.

And there was the first disappearance of a time machine. There was a breath of wind, a lamp flame jumped, a candle was blown out:

"...and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone - vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 2, p. 14.

Everyone was silent, then Filby was damned. Time travel by candlelight!

We take all this for granted in fiction by now but machines and people appearing and disappearing like that would be quite a thing.

Those Four Battles

See A Pivotal Point And Four Battles.

The dinner guests merely discuss observing the Battle of Hastings but you have got to start somewhere.

The outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg is changed because the time travelling historian, not having read The Time Machine, did not consider how his mere physical presence might affect events.

The outcome of the Battle of Ticinus was changed because two Neldorian time criminals deliberately intervened in the battle.

The outcome of the Battle of Rignano was changed without extratemporal intervention by a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy but, as with Ticinus, it was the task of the Time Patrol to rectify events.

Battles are altered in L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall but this is part of a campaign by a stranded time traveller to prevent the Dark Ages.

I think that that is a comprehensive synopsis but maybe there are some other examples.

A Pivotal Point And Four Battles

Manse Everard on the battlefield at Rignano is at a pivotal point in time because King Roger, if he survives the battle, will establish the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies which will survive in different forms until the nineteenth century and will then become the core of the new Italian state. Everard participates in this battle to save the two Rogers, father and son, just as he had already participated in the battle of Ticinus to save the two Scipios, father and son. Time Patrol agents are able first to know of a battle, then to participate in it, without being recognized as anachronisms by anyone who belongs there. One of the Time Traveller's dinner guests had proposed merely to observe the Battle of Hastings. Did HG Wells have any idea of the implications when another guest suggested that extratemporal observers might attract attention by ancestors who had no great tolerance of anachronisms? But Patrol agents are skilled at passing unnoticed among their ancestors. 

The Battle of Hastings: The Time Machine.

The Battle of Gettysburg: Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore.

The Battles of Ticinus and Rignano: Time Patrol and The Shield Of Time.

This is (a large part of) the history of time travellers on historical battlefields.

Lorenzo

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1138alpha, pp. 328-336.

The first time Manse Everard met a Danellian:

"He could not look at the shape which blazed before his eyes."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 6, p. 51.

When Everard meets Lorenzo de Conti who will turn out to be a personal causal nexus:

"...the man somehow blazed."

-The Shield Of Time, p. 330.

Everard's first impression is "...of vividness." (p. 329) Lorenzo rises like a panther. Expressions cross his face like sun-flickers in a breeze on water. That reads like one of the descriptions of mutable reality. It is conditional, like a wave pattern, like diffraction rings, a spectral flickering...

Lorenzo does not doubt that St. George and his patron saint watched over him in battle. He felt God's hand on him when he attacked. Everard asks whether anything supernatural was seen. He means a time traveller but he has yet to learn that Lorenzo was the only "supernatural" element when the course of battle changed at Rignano.

Brindisi And Barbarossa

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1138alpha, pp. 326-336.

"The ship landed him at Brindisi..." (p. 331)

That reminded me of something:

"'...interstellar liner Brindisi...'"

-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), CHAPTER ONE, p. 32.

In Blish's Cities In Flight, the Mayor of New York is John Amalfi. This was Blish's acknowledgment of the contribution of Italian Americans to the governance of New York.

"'I fear the Empire will be troubled for a long time to come.'

"Till Frederick Barbarossa at last restores order, Everard knew."

-The Shield Of Time, p. 332.

That also reminded me of something:

"'Not many exceptions to the law of death have come my way,' observed MacPhee.

"'And how,' said Grace with much emphasis, 'how should you expect to be there on more than one such occasion? Were you a friend of Arthur's or Barbarossa's? Did you know Enoch or Elijah?'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 17, 4, p. 738.

Lewis' trilogy is set in a timeline where all these guys are still alive:

"'For Arthur did not die; but Our Lord took him to be in the body until the end of time and the shattering of Sulva, with Enoch and Elias and Moses and Melchisedec the King.'"

-The Hideous Strength, CHAPTER 13, 1, p. 635.

And, of course, Poul Anderson matches all of these with Holger Danske.

A Series And A One-Off

Whereas "Time Patrol" was written to launch a series, and indeed its first sequel was published later that same year, The Time Machine was designed to be a complete-in-itself one-off narrative with a conclusion explicitly precluding any sequel. The Time Traveller does not return. End of story. Similarly:

the Cavorite sphere is lost at the end of The First Men In The Moon;

the submersible sphere does not return from its second descent in "In the Abyss";

the Invisible Man is killed and his secrets lost.

This kind of sf ends by explaining why the world has remained as it is. Even Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come ends in its author's present. The future described in the text might not "come." Meanwhile, we also value speculative future histories as diverse as Poul Anderson's Technic History and his Genesis.

Could there have been a Time Machine series as there is a Time Patrol series? It would have had to have been designed differently from the outset. As it is, we value The Time Machine as "...that little masterpiece..." (JB Priestley) and the Time Patrol for its length and complexity.

Invisible Time Travellers

It all seems very cosy when the model Time Machine, resting on a small octagonal table in front of the Time Traveller's fireplace - with two legs of the table on the hearthrug - begins its interminable but invisible voyage through time. However, if narrative coherence is to be salvaged, then some rationale other than that offered by the Time Traveller must be found. What can make a material object simultaneously undetectable and time dilated? Whatever the explanation, it can equally apply to Jack Havig and his fellow mutants in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time. The chronokinetic force that operates in the Time Machine is also present in their brains. However, the Time Traveller's future comprises civilizational advance followed by human devolution whereas Havig's future contains the War of Judgment, the Maurai Federation and, later, the Star Masters - who are an acceptable alternative to the Danellians.

Five Means Of Time Travel

(i) With a T-machine, a time journey is also a long space journey in a spaceship, as in Poul Anderson's The Avatar.

(ii) Corridors rotated onto the temporal axis are unique to Anderson's The Corridors Of Time.

(iii) Wells' Time Machine and the mutants in Anderson's There Will Be Time become undetectable and time dilated and can reverse temporal direction.

(iv) Time Patrol timecycles merely disappear from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates and appear at another.

(v) The Doctor's TARDIS and the time projector in Anderson's "Flight to Forever" spend a very short period of time in another realm and emerge at a very different time in the external universe.

Anderson covers every option.

Disappearing Act

Why should a time machine disappear on departure and appear on arrival? The Time Machine offers an explanation that does not add up. The travelling Time Machine is compared to the spoke of a wheel spinning too fast to be seen or to a bullet flying through the air. First, the Time Machine is not moving anywhere. Secondly, we will certainly feel the spoke or the bullet if we get in its way whereas the Psychologist, one of the Time Traveller's dinner guests, passes his hand through the space where they had seen the model Time Machine before its departure.

Appearance and disappearance are convenient for fictional purposes. They also make more sense in the case of the Time Patrol timecycles because these vehicles do not exist in the space-time between departure and arrival.

"She and her vehicle blinked out of sight. He paid no heed to the usual snap of air rushing in where they had been."

-The Shield Of Time, p. 297.

"Machine and rider vanished."

-ibid., p. 318.

"A Patrol machine appeared."

-Time Patrol, p. 281.

"There followed a puff, and he was gone."

-ibid., p. 694.

"Whoosh. The second machine above the first, its riders flattening themselves below the ceiling."

-ibid., p. 713.

"But whoosh. Luis is gone."

-ibid.

And so on.

No Need To Know

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1137 A. D.

This chapter, headed 1137 A. D., is followed by another headed 1137alpha A. D. because the temporal alteration to which the Time Patrol is responding occurs later in that year. The text uses the Greek letter, "alpha," which is not on my keyboard.

In 1137, at Patrol milieu HQ in the city of Mainz in the Holy Roman Empire, Manse Everard informs two other agents about the imminent temporal alteration: the director, Otto Koch, who addresses Unattached agent Everard as "'Herr Freiagent,'" (p. 312), and Karel Novak, a temporal policeman who will accompany Everard into 1137alpha as his backup. No one else is to be told because no one else needs to know. If anyone else did know, then their knowledge could cause "'...unnecessary sub-effects...'" (p. 315) of the alteration. As far as possible, no one else will ever know even that there had been a temporal alteration.

Novak says that, while he is "'...in the wrong world...'" (p. 316), he will know that everything that he does, sees and thinks "'...will become nothing...'" (ibid.) Not in that timeline, it won't, but I have taken issue with this aspect of Time Patrol theory often enough before.

Lingua Franca

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1137 A. D.

I thought that "lingua franca" just meant "a language adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different." This is one of its meanings. I have heard English used in this way in Europe. I could understand two guys because they were communicating in my language. But another meaning of "lingua franca" is "a mixture of Italian with French, Greek, Arabic and Spanish, formerly used in the eastern Mediterranean." This must be what is meant on p. 314. Everard already knows medieval Latin and Greek and electronically acquires enough German, French and Italian to get by but decides against Arabic because any Saracens would probably at least know lingua franca.

The languages that he does acquire are still sometimes mutually incomprehensible sets of dialects. A linguist like JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis might have been able to write some interesting dialogues between time travellers and Tolkien would have been able to make a start on constructing Temporal.

Sincerity And Honesty

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1137 A. D., pp. 311-316.

"The habit of disguise took over. Koch crossed himself, again and again. Or maybe he was a sincere Catholic." (p. 313)

Is it possible for a Time Patrol agent to be a sincere Catholic, i.e. to believe that the Resurrection of Christ was a historical event, that a dead body not only revived but also was transformed, became immortal and was later seen to ascend into the sky? Then why does Carl Farness ask:

"...how could I in honesty have argued for Christ?"

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1858, p. 404.

The Patrol must know what happened. Concerning the Jewish War in 69-70 AD, Manse Everard reflects:

"'Patrol units are concentrated on protecting Palestine. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freebooters who want to change what took place in Jerusalem, researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it....I don't pretend to understand the physics, but I can sure believe what I've been taught, that the continuum is especially vulnerable around such moments. As far away as barbarian Germany, reality is unstable.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Time Patrol, pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 492.

If that is true of 69-70 AD, the surely it is even truer of circa 33 AD? Is it a matter of physics? If reality is unstable not only in Germany but, even more so, in Palestine, then is it all the attention by time travellers that causes something unusual to happen?

Anderson maintains ambiguity.

Signal Through Time

The Shield Of Time.

Keith Denison, captive, but with some influence over his captor, directs the construction of a garden visible from above as an hour glass in a heraldic shield but surrounded by a circle and crossed by a red line, a warning to time travellers. However, before the garden is completed, while Denison, his captor and armed guards walk through its proposed site, Wanda Tamberly arrives on a timecycle to rescue Denison. She prevents the signal that had alerted her to the presence of a trapped Time Patrol agent.

When comparing the weather in the two versions of 25 March 1984, Tamberly reflects that, in her home timeline, human beings had cut down forests, ploughed plains and filled skies and rivers with chemicals but had also invented liberty, eradicated smallpox and launched spacecraft. That conflict between progress and pollution approaches its climax in our timeline.

Someplace At Every Moment

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1989alpha, A. D., pp. 306-310.

"...the Time Patrol had operatives someplace at every moment of a million years or more." (p. 308)

Did we know that? So, if a stranded time traveller has a communicator, s/he should be able to summon help - provided that s/he is in the right timeline. Wanda Tamberly spends four pages thinking that she is merely in the wrong time but there is no response on her communicator. Beginning to suspect the truth, she crosses the Atlantic instead of returning to the Pleistocene. If she loses her timecycle, then she will be permanently stranded. The following chapter returns to Manse Everard although he is now in 1137 AD. Unlike "Delenda East," "Amazement of the World" follows parallel narrative strands in its alternative history.