All-Mother

"Star of the Sea."

Odin was Allfather. Veleda addresses Floris as:

"'Niaerdh... All-Mother...'" (14, A.D. 43, p. 592)

This, more than anything else, demonstrates that this prophetess is promoting her goddess to the highest position.

Ulstrup says:

"'...she is making her goddess into a being at least as powerful, as...cosmic...as any.'" (11, A.D. 49, p. 561)

Floris says that Veleda's new religion:

"'...would not become monotheistic or anything like that. But this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered.'" (p. 568)

But that is one kind of monotheism. There are two routes from polytheism to monotheism -

the Hebrew route: there is only one god;

the Hindu route: all gods are one.

If Niaerdh becomes supreme and if everything else gathers around her, then other gods become her aspects or her subordinates, demoted to angelic/messenger roles: a feminine monotheism, which can be found in Hinduism.

Experience And Interpretation

To describe an experience is to interpret it. Thus, if I say that I saw a man in front of a house, then I interpret some coloured shapes as a man and a house with a spatial relationship between them. Indeed, to give this description, I have to recognize some immediate visual impressions as colours and shapes. However, we habitually perceive objects like men and houses as totalities without having to analyze them. And there are finer layers of interpretation, as when I interpret the man's facial expression and body language as benign, neutral or hostile etc. In assessing another person's account of an event, we must distinguish between his perceptions and his interpretations of them. One observer "sees" police harassing demonstrators. Another "sees" demonstrators provoking police. Observers flatly contradict each other. Each of us has to find his or her own way through a maze. Do not just read one account and believe that. I learned to read different newspapers and then to go and see for myself.

Experience

In "Star of the Sea," 13-14, men from a Roman ship tie up Heidhin and rape Edh while Heidhin swears perpetual war against Rome. A woman flies down, kills the men and consoles Edh.

Joint Interpretation By Edh And Heidhin

The woman was the goddess. Edh has been chosen for a mission which can only be to preach war against Rome. To them, with their world-view, this seems obvious. Much later, Edh/Veleda begins to distinguish between the experience and the interpretation:

"'It is not truly what the goddess bade me say, it is what I have told myself she wants me to say.'" (3, p. 500)

Veleda learns wisdom. Heidhin clings to hate.

Ancient Elemental Forces

A passage in a Sherlock Holmes story reminds us of a passage in a Dominic Flandry novel. In Conan Doyle's "The Five Orange Pips," wind screams and rain beats windows in London to such an extent that Watson is forced to:

"...recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage."

-Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Five Orange Pips" IN The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes IN Arthur Conan Doyle: 3 Books In 1 (Mumbai, 2007), pp. 103-124 AT p. 104.

And when we read that:

"...the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney." (ibid.)

- we remember how often the wind plays such a role in Poul Anderson's works.

However, the passage in a Flandry novel is one in which the Pacific Ocean conveys the sense of ancient forces biding their time. We find that we have quoted this passage more than once, here. Indeed, we have also compared it with similar passages in works by several other authors including even another Conan Doyle passage, the one that incidentally mentions the contents of a British barrow - which I first encountered in "Time Patrol."

Now maybe I can get back to rereading Sherlock Holmes?

Joy And Awe

"Star of the Sea," 13.

What young Edh feels when a wagon passes bearing the image of the goddess:

joy;

renewal;

awe;

"...an unspoken underlying fear...." (p. 582)

"Joy" and "renewal" could be Easter.

Rudolf Otto argued that holiness was a synthesis of awesomeness and righteousness. Awe - apprehension of the mysterious, uncanny, "awful" and transcendent - is a kind of fear. As CS Lewis argued, we fear the proximity of a man-eating tiger, a ghost and a "great spirit" in different ways. In the third case, there is a sense of our unworthiness, not of any physical threat or danger. Edh's strong religious sense influences her personal development and also has social, and even historical, consequences in appropriate circumstances. There are potential timelines in which Edh:

dies young;

preaches endless war,

preaches war, then peace.

Search Through The Past

"Star of the Sea."

In 70 AD, Heidhin tells Manse Everard of the Time Patrol that Veleda and he are of the Alvarings but nothing more.

In 60 AD, Gundicar tells Everard and his fellow agent, Janne Floris, that Veleda had come to where she now was from among the Cherusci and, before that, had been among the Langobardi. The Patrol agents hear Veleda speak.

In 49 AD, Jens Ulstrup tells Everard and Floris that Veleda had arrived by ship among the Rugii on the Baltic littoral five or six earlier.

In 43 AD, the captain of the ship on which Veleda and her companion, Heidhin, have just arrived tells Everard that the ship has come from an island held by the Alvarings off the Geatish coast and this enables Floris to identify the island as Oland.

Earlier in 43 AD, Floris intervenes when Veleda is raped by Roman merchants on Oland. This is the event that the agents have sought. Without Floris' intervention, Veleda and Heidhin would have been dead. Was that the original timeline?

Anglii And Edh

"Star of the Sea," 12, A.D. 43.

The Anglii hold a great annual market (p. 572) but we must remember that the Anglii are not yet in England. Earlier in his Time Patrol career, Everard had been in Britain:

"...when the English were moving in."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 4, p. 29.

That was in 464 AD.

Edh who will be Veleda already seems to be part of her goddess's sea environment:

"Edh was a dwindled bit of fluttering darkness, half lost in the sea mist, into which she drifted onward. Wrapped in her dreams or nightmares, or whatever they were..." (p. 578)

Dreams and nightmares. A potential religious foundress unknown to history. How many are there?

The Literary Ghetto

Why did a book like Dinosaur Beach receive such extravagant but clearly undeserved praise? See DINOSAUR BEACH. Sf became a literary ghetto where it was thought that ordinary literary criteria did not apply. Panels at sf cons used to debate whether a story could be good as sf even it wasn't good as anything else. Maybe they still do? Christopher Priest argued that it was pointless to claim that EE Smith could not write good prose because he was writing in the Stone Age. Priest pointed out that Jane Austen knew how to write a novel. I was told that a particular sf mag (I forget which) did not publish literary criticism. 

Can a text be badly written with poor descriptions and characterization yet still develop interesting and entertaining sf ideas? Maybe. Any examples? In any case, a writer of any kind of fiction should still know how to write fiction. The point of this blog is that Poul Anderson's texts are well written with good descriptions and characterization and also present original and entertaining sf ideas and I cannot help thinking that there is a connection between good writing and good ideas. Wells and Anderson do not just tell us that a character has travelled to another time, past or future. They describe that other time with the same wealth of detail as in a historical novel.

In any case, other criteria apart, Dinosaur Beach makes a text book hash of presenting time travel paradoxes. It is a pleasure to turn back to Anderson's "Star of the Sea" where locations are described in multisensory detail and paradoxicality is nothing if not subtle:

"They dared not charge blind into what might well be the source of the instability..."

-see here. (Scroll down.)

The (Prevented) Veleda Timeline

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Is the Veleda timeline entirely prevented? The Tacitus Two text comes from it. 

In the history that is known to us, Burhmund/Civilis made peace with Rome whereas in Veleda's divergent timeline:

Burhmund was crushed;

the prophetess, Veleda, returned to free Germany where her new religion spread;

it grew and developed without competition after her death;

the goddess became the supreme figure, appealing to women who influenced their children;

with the Western Empire collapsed, Christianity did not admit its North European converts to the commerce and culture of civilization;

instead, the Nerthus faith became the core of a Germanic civilization, able, like Zoroastrian Persia, to resist Christianity;

the world was very different by the twentieth century;

"'That's what we're trying to head off,' Everard said harshly." (p. 569)

Only wanting to post once more today, I preferred to return to "Star of the Sea" than to stay with Dinosaur Beach but I will try to get the rest of the latter read and out of the way this evening.

Tomorrow, a new month. We approach the end of the first quarter-century of the Third Millennium. I wish that I could look forward with confidence to a long future ahead.

DINOSAUR BEACH

My copy of Dinosaur Beach arrived today via eBay. I ordered this book because:

it is about time travel (to be compared with Wells and Anderson);

it has an evocative title;

I have known of it as a title for years without having read it;

it might count as an sf "classic."

A Classic is a work that, like The Time Machine, is always in print in multiple editions, that can be picked off the shelf in a large bookshop or, failing that, ordered and whose title is generally recognized even by those who have never read it whereas a "classic" is a work that is remembered by some, regarded as influential, sells well secondhand and is occasionally reissued. 

Beaches have a role in time travel stories:

Wells' Time Traveller encounters giant crabs on a beach in a remote future;

Wells' outer narrator wonders whether the Time Traveller is:

"...wandering...by the lonely saline seas of the Triassic Age."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), EPILOGUE, p. 101;

significant meetings occur on two beaches in Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea" and on another at the end of his The Shield Of Time.

The cover illustration shows a man with a gun and a dinosaur as on Anderson's Past Times.

There are six quotations of extravagant praise. On the front cover:

"UNRIVALLED NOT ONLY IN ITS CLASS, BUT IN A CLASS BY ITSELF."

-GORDON R. DICKSON.

One of the four on the back cover:

"Laumer has a gift for time travel. The technology in this novel is fascinating."

-Riverside Quarterly.

We are used to reading rave reviews on book covers and probably disregard them.

So far, I have read only 7 of the 44 short chapters and will persevere to the end. However -

In some sf - or is it mainly in a particular period of sf? - we find that we are reading not just a novel but, more specifically, an action novel in which characters point guns and shoot at each other. This happens in Dinosaur Beach well in advance of any indication that some of the characters are time travellers. (We know that Poul Anderson liked his action scenes but usually these were subordinate to other aspects of a story.)

"...the big board in Ops that showed the minute-by-minute status of the Timesweep effort up and down the ages."

-Keith Laumer, Dinosaur Beach (Baen Books, New York, 1986), 5, p. 31.

Can an effort that is being made up and down the ages have a minute-by-minute status?

"...maybe at this moment a relief team in crisp field-tan was assembling to jump out to the rescue." (6, p. 34)

A relief team at a station in a different time is assembling at this moment?

There is some more complicated text that it would be more difficult to unravel. I do not think that any of that extravagant praise is appropriate.

"...an intriguing introduction for newcomers."

-Monterey Herald.

No. Start with Wells and Anderson.

Addendum, later the same evening: In Dinosaur Beach, I have read to the beginning of Chapter 26 on p. 116. The novel ends with a one-page Chapter 44 on p. 204. I do not want to read any more. The text is uninteresting, unenjoyable and incoherent. Changes that have to be happening in two different temporal dimensions are described as if they can be experienced along a single timeline:

"'...the deterioration began. The chronodegradation...the memory lapses, and the contradictions. We sensed life unravelling around us.'" (25, p. 111)

Having finished John Grisham and wanting to read something enjoyable for the rest of this evening, I will revert to Stieg Larsson. (Grisham introduces a minor character, Zander, clearly based on Larsson's Lisbeth Salander.) Back to Anderson tomorrow.

Naerdha And The Neos

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Norse mythology had a three-storey hereafter:

warriors killed in battle go to Valhalla;

sailors drowned at sea go to the hall of the sea giant, Njord;

everyone else, even Balder, goes to Hel which is like Hades or Sheol, not like Hell.

Veleda adds a fourth:

"'Women who die in childbed go directly to [Naerdha], like fallen warriors to the Eddic Odin.'" (p. 567)

Despite this, Everard reflects that this goddess is:

"'A pretty grim sort...'" (ibid.)

- and thinks:

"The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everyone was nice." (ibid.)

We have responded to Everard's thought before.

It is easy to knock "neos" but:

I currently have regular contact with members of several different neopagan "denominations." Several of them are scholars of their subject. As such, they know and can expound the differences between ancient practices and attempted reconstructions and newly invented traditions and false claims of continuity with earlier traditions.

-copied from here.

When a dominant monotheism declines, every possible alternative will be tried by someone: secularism, revived polytheism, other monotheist traditions etc. Thus, we know not only atheists and agnostics but also converts to Wicca, Islam etc. Each of us needs to develop his or her own world-view which should include an understanding of past world-views. We can certainly appreciate Odin and the goddess without believing in them and can also engage in dialogue with anyone who does claim to believe in them.

Real And Fantastic Histories

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series encapsulates considerable - concentrated - political and military history and geography covering several ancient and medieval periods. I focus on the mythology, theology and philosophy because that is my field of interest whereas one or two blog readers comment knowledgeably on the conflicts and personalities of Roman and medieval history.

The religious traditions present a series of fantastic reflections of real history:

one of the epic sources of the Pentateuch presented history as culminating in the Davidic monarchy;

however, history continued so various later prophecies were made, e.g., that not David but his descendant and successor would rule a universal kingdom;

Veleda prophesies the imminent overthrow of Rome by Germanic barbarians whereas Virgil/Anchises prophesies an eternal empire for Rome;

some might view the Virgilian prophecy as currently fulfilled spiritually instead of politically.

Poul Anderson does not show us Veleda's alternative history but does show us two alternative outcomes of the medieval church-state conflict.

We live in real history where, so far, no prophesies of Armageddon have been fulfilled. Indeed, empirically, history does not work that way. There is much conflict and unpredictability but all from purely human agencies.

No New God

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Time Patrol ethnographer Jens Ulstrup to Unattached Agent Manse Everard and Specialist Janne Floris:

"'...Edh is not introducing the gospel of a whole new religion. That is outside the pagan mentality. In fact, I rather imagine her ideas are evolving as she goes along. She is not even adding a new deity. Her goddess is known through most of the Germanic range. The local name is Naerdha. She must be more or less identical with the Nerthus whose cult Tacitus describes.'" (p. 565)

Christianity began not as the gospel of a whole new religion but as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah, representing the Prophets, appeared at either side of Christ at the Transfiguration. (The Law was a revelation. The Prophets applied that revelation to historical contexts. History climaxed in the Messiah.) The new movement, not yet called Christianity, was a culmination of the Abrahamic tradition, not the initiation of a new tradition. There was not meant to be a new tradition. The earliest Christians, persuaded by Peter at Pentecost, were Jews who accepted that the historical process was now complete because the Messiah had come and who continued to worship in the Temple. Paul was arrested making an offering in the Temple. After that, the two communities had to split. Later, Muhammad claimed to fulfil the prophetic monotheist tradition but was not accepted as a prophet by either Jews or Christians. Result: three different world religions. We live with that.

Has anyone ever added a new deity? I think that both the Mosaic and the Koranic names for the one God were originally names of tribal gods. Veleda's Naerdha would have become the one Goddess. We wonder what her history would have been like.

The Morning Behind Them

"Star of the Sea," II.

The second mythological passage, which is also the second to be headed by a Roman numeral, begins:

"Out of the east, the morning behind them, rode the Anses into the world." (p. 557)

A striking and memorable sentence, so much so that we have previously quoted it eight times. See here.

Since it is getting late here, since I want to read some John Grisham and since I have probably written all that I am going to write about the Anses riding into the world, let's make this a very short post. Since the cold is not completely cleared up, tomorrow looks like being another day of not going out but staying at home with books and computer. Grisham's hero's problems are a divorce and a rich client, a refreshing contrast from gods and interstellar empires. The Republic of Letters is one.

Rome

"Star of the Sea," 10.

Veleda prophecies about her goddess:

"'Wrathful she rides to bring down Rome..." (p. 556)

But other gods have an opposite agenda.

Anchises prophesies to his son, Aeneas:

And this in truth is he whom you so often hear promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will again establish a golden age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn; he will advance his empire beyond the Garamants and Indians to a land which lies beyond our stars, beyond the path of year and sun, where sky-bearing Atlas wheels on his shoulders the blazing star-studded sphere. Against his coming both Caspian realms and the Maeotic land even now shudder at the oracles of their gods, and the mouths of sevenfold Nile quiver in alarm. Not even Hercules traversed so much of earth’s extent

-copied from Aeneid, Book 6, here.

A Roman interstellar empire?

Finally, Biblical and Classical traditions converge as an enduring universal spiritual authority is exercised from Rome.

Longer Narratives

Time travel and future histories: the two best kinds of sf, provided that they are done right. And, if they are to be interconnected, then that has to be done right as well.  

Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, a very elaborate time travel novel, incorporates Anderson's Maurai future history series into a longer fictional history - of both past and future.

(The incorporation of a historical narrative into a longer and vaster narrative sequence begins with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures where the Torah becomes the first five books of the Christian Bible, thus gaining a completely different significance.)

Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate incorporates his Polesotechnic League series into a longer history extending from early interstellar exploration through the League period and into the early Terran Empire. The Earth Book also covers the exodus of a people from an old world, Ythri, to a new world, Avalon. Thus, if the New Faith has scriptures, then they might include the Sky Book, which we do not read, and the Earth Book, which we do read, both published in Planha and Anglic on Avalon.

Peak

Not for the first time, several reasons why Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate is the peak of American post-Heinlein future historical writing:

its opening story is set during the first Grand Survey;

its concluding story is set during the second stage of the colonization of Avalon;

its middle eight instalments, including one novel, are about different merchants (van Rijn, Adzel, the trader team and others) of the Polesotechnic League;

for those who have already read the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy, the Earth Book presents an entire second League series of comparable length;

it collects five stories about Ythrians at successive stages of their history;

its dozen introductions and single afterword are fictitiously written after the Terran War on Avalon, thus during the early Terran Empire period;

it explains Merseian hostility to humanity, a major issue for the Empire;

thus, a summary of the Earth Book refers directly or indirectly to nearly every period of Anderson's Technic History.

Meanwhile, in 2025, John Grisham's The Widow is amusing.

Births Of Civilizations

"Star of the Sea," 10, A.D. 60.

An embryonic feeling among western Germans that kinship transcends tribalism might be inspired by the prophetess, Veleda, so Everard and Floris have travelled ten years further back in time and will travel further if necessary in order to find out where she came from geographically, psychologically etc. She might change history by causing Western civilization to begin in northern instead of in southern Europe. See A Northern Civilization. Poul Anderson states that Western, like Classical, civilization was born on the shores of the Mediterranean. SM Stirling suggests in the combox that it was born in France.

In another Anderson series, Technic civilization is born in the O'Neill colonies because of:

space-based industries;

a thorough-going revival of free enterprise;

new ways of living, thinking and conducting economic affairs;

the merging of Terrestrial cultures.

Heidhin had told Everard in 70 AD that Veleda and he were of the Alvarings but the Patrol agents' informant in 60 AD, Gundicar, says that Veleda's place of origin is unknown. She came to the Ampsivarii from the Cherusci and before that was with the Langobardi. The agents follow the trail back through space and time.

John Grisham's new legal thriller, The Widow, has arrived from the Public Library and will compete for reading time.

Religious Leaders In Fiction

In Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men:

The Daughter of Man;

The Divine Child.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History:

Nehemiah Scudder, the First Prophet.

In Heinlein's Stranger In A Stranger Land:

Foster, founder of the Church of the New Revelation;

Michael, founder of a Martian-influenced "Thou art God" movement.

In Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea":

Veleda, pagan prophetess, potential founder of a feminine monotheism.

Veleda is historical. Her Wikipedia article references "Star of the Sea" and other fictional accounts. Anderson makes her a real person.

Through The Past

Recently, when I wrote One Internal Structure, I accurately copied a list of Roman and Arabic numerals from the section headings in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol instalment, "Star of the Sea." However, I had noticed a year date after only one of the Arabic numerals. In fact, there are five and I have now added the other four. The relevant Arabic numerals and their associated dates are reproduced below:

10 A.D. 60.

11 A.D. 49.

12 A.D. 43.

13 (no date)

14 A.D. 43.

15 A.D. 70.

In section 1, Germanic rebels besiege Castra Vetera.

In 2, Time Patrol agents, Manse Everard and Janne Floris, meet in twentieth-century Amsterdam.

In 3, while the siege continues, the prophetess, Veleda, addresses tribal chiefs, then she and her messenger, Heidhin, confer.

In 4, Everard and Floris witness the surrender of Castra Vetera to the rebels which occurred in 70 AD. 

5 recounts an event in the aftermath of the surrender.

In 6, the Patrol agents return briefly to twentieth-century Amsterdam.

7 and 8 recount further events in the aftermath of the surrender. At the end of 8, Everard and Floris agree that they:

"'...must follow [Veleda's] spoor through the past, to wherever she began.'" (p. 542)

9 summarizes events during the course of the rebellion.

10 must therefore be the start of the Patrol agents' journey into the further past and we will return to it tomorrow.

Cloud Shadow

"Star of the Sea," 8.

Everard, posing as a Goth from the east, tries to quiz Heidhin as to where Wael-Edh/Veleda and he have come from. However, Heidhin automatically suspects Everard's line of questioning and, of course, natural phenomena obligingly parallel their uneasy conversation. When Heidhin argues instead of answering, a passing cloud shadow darkens his face and sharpens his stare, while his hand moves towards his sword and, at the same time:

"Wind bore a puff of smoke, a clang of iron." (p. 536)

Wind is ubiquitous. Smoke is perhaps unpleasant. Clanging iron is certainly threatening.

Heidhin divulges only that they:

"'...come of the Alvarings...'" (p. 537)

That is one clue but more must be found. Even Floris, the Specialist, does not recognize the name. Unlike Carl Farness who, in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," had travelled futureward by several stages from 300 to 372 to learn the origin of a myth, Everard and Floris must now travel pastward, seeing their quarries becoming younger, in order to learn what had started Veleda's mission. In true time travel paradox style, Floris' arrival at the moment of the turning point event will itself be the turning point event. Time is on our heels.

Time And Time Travel

I have suggested a combined University Literature and Philosophy course a few times:

A Huge Form And Its Owner

Consciousness And Time

Integration And Muttering Wind

The Earliest Moment Of Consciousness?

Not Science Or Philosophy

Fiction And Philosophy

Philosophy And Literature

Personal And Cosmic Futures

Such a course would cover:

the passage of time as represented in fiction;

philosophical questions about the nature of time;

the fiction, logic and physics of time travel.

The "physics" would be not a complete Physics course but just a sufficient introduction to relativistic physics to enable conceptual analysis.

St. Augustine, both theologian and philosopher, said that he knew what time was until anyone asked him what it was. See here.

Two characters in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series ironically refer to time without knowing that they are dealing with time travellers:

"'It shall be my pleasure, if time allows.' Everard noted that Frederick did not say 'God' as a medieval man ordinarily would."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART SIX, 1245beta A. D., p. 395.

Does the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II somehow intuit that he is in a divergent timeline? (Hardly.)

Veleda tells Heidhin:

"'I want you riding to Buhrmund tomorrow. Time is on our heels.'"

-"Star of the Sea," 7, p. 535.

Veleda is potentially initiating a divergent timeline.

Finally, a character in another time travel scenario reflects on both time and time travel:

"It was a strange thing to meet her at intervals of months which for Havig were hours or days. Each time, she was so dizzyingly grown. In awe he felt a sense of that measureless river which he could swim but on which she could only be carried from darkness to darkness."

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), IX, p. 98.

See also:

The River Of Time

GENESIS And Time

Patrol Perspective

Passages And Previous Posts

Innocence And Knowledge

What The Gods Want

"Star of the Sea," 7.

Because of Veleda, much that was formerly given to the sky-gods is being given to the goddess, Nerha. Heidhin has read in the stars, in the weather, in the flight of ravens and in cast bones that the gods will withhold victory if they are not appeased. How do these things tell him that or indeed anything else? It is what he believes in any case. But he adds:

"'And what if I am mistaken? The fear itself is real in men's hearts. They will begin to hang back in battle, and the foe will break them.'" (p. 531)

Again (see Doubts), how the gods respond and how people think/fear/hope etc that the gods respond seem to amount to the same thing for practical purposes.

When Veleda claims that her goddess:

"'...is no bloodthirsty Ans.'" (p. 534)

- Heidhin responds:

"'Hm, aforetime you said otherwise.'" (ibid.)

- and he grins. As Veleda tires of the struggle, her goddess becomes less bloodthirsty.

We do not know this yet but Janne Floris as the goddess will give Veleda a new message of peace. Meanwhile, the text is preparing us for such a change in Veleda herself.

Contrasting Periods

 

"Star of the Sea."

When reading section 6, we vicariously enjoy:

"...the decency of the twentieth-century Netherlands." (p. 521)

In the Ambrosia Surinam-Caribbean restaurant, on Stadouderskade in a quiet neighbourhood near the Museumplein, right beside a canal, the black cook discusses Everard's and Floris' meal in fluent English. Descriptive terms include "evanescence," "warmth," "light" and "savor." (p. 522) When they emerge, the mild air, smelling of spring, has been cleansed by rain and a canal boat passes with glistening wake. 

In section 7, we return to the seasonal life of Germania in Roman times. Spring billows. Days warm and lengthen. Leaves grow. Grass glows. Birds clamour. Lambs, calves and foals are born. People blink, breathe and start to work.

"Yet they were hungry after last year's niggard yields." (p. 530)

I knew that "niggard" was inoffensive but had not realized how much controversy there had been about it.

An understandable misunderstanding.

Sciences Of Mind And Body

"Star of the Sea," 6.

Everard advises Floris to:

"'Ask for psychotech help if the nightmares won't go away...'" (p. 521)

That phrase, "psychotech help," encapsulates Poul Anderson's first future history series, the Psychotechnic History, whose main premise is future sciences of humanity: both of society and of individual psychophysical organisms.

And what might be done with such organisms? Everard and Floris also discuss the fact that future sex-change operations involve neither surgery nor hormones but the rebuilding of an organism from its DNA up. This happens in the "autodocs" in Larry Niven's Known Space History. A body can be regrown from a severed head. Louis Wu is not only cured of his injuries but also transformed from a "protector" back into a "breeder."

But, in that case, bodies can be transformed into almost anything. Time Patrol members from far uptime might not be anything that we would recognize as human. And that reminds us that the Patrol is founded by a post-human species. What really does happen a million years in the future? The Danellians will result not just from natural selection but also from applications of advanced technology.

Another Advantage Of Time Travel

"Star of the Sea," 4.

Manse Everard not only wants to speak with Buhrmund the Batavian but also is able to choose the most convenient moment in Buhrmund's career:

"Preliminary scouting suggested the Batavian would be most easily accessible when he accepted the surrender of Castra Vetera; and the occasion would add a chance to meet Classicus." (p. 516)

(Classicus, Buhrmund's ally, was with him at Castra Vetera.)

Whoever did that preliminary scouting, probably Everard himself, might even have glimpsed Everard in conversation with the two rebel leaders although Time Patrollers try to avoid foreknowledge of their own actions.

Everard and Floris know that Classicus has the prisoners slaughtered soon after the surrender. They hope to be gone before that happens but unfortunately Floris witnesses it and cannot intervene: a disadvantage of time travel.

Turning the page, we find that section 5 opens with:

"Wind rushed bitter, driving low clouds like smoke before it. Spatters of rain flew slantwise past unrestful bows." (p. 518)

Wind and weather, as ever. The past means not only history but also exposure to the elements. 5 also ends with the wind as it rocks a hanged man "...to and fro." (p. 520)

In 6, Everard and Floris rest and recover in twentieth-century Amsterdam.

World-Lines

The Time Machine by HG Wells

"Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time by James Blish

The Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson

These four works convey a sense of a human being as a "world-line" extending from the point of birth to the point of death in a four-dimensional space-time continuum. They are works of science fiction reflecting the world-view of modern physics.

The Time Machine explicitly states the absurdity that a dimensionless immaterial mental existence moves along this world-line at a uniform velocity from birth to death, thus unnecessarily introducing a second temporal dimension. Blish in conversation at an sf con even suggested that such minds might move at different rates so that none of us would have any way of knowing whether another person was mentally present when we were speaking to him. We might be addressing an unconscious automaton!

Clearly an ancient mind-body dualism has intruded into a modern world-view. Each of us is a spatially extended, temporally enduring, psychophysical organism conscious in every waking moment. We move around in space but nothing moves through time. Motion through space takes time.

Poul Anderson gets it right but introduces further complexities with the Time Patrol.

Routine Space Travel

We have said this before. A contemporary novel routinely referring to mobile phones, laptops, the Internet and communications satellites would have been sf if it had been published in the mid-twentieth-century but, back then, we expected that the early twenty-first century would be all about routine space travel. Patrick Moore, interviewed by a younger man on British TV, seriously asked the interviewer to send him a post card from the Moon when visiting it as a tourist about ten years from then. Think about all the wrong assumptions implied by that request. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the stories in Volume II, The Green Hills Of Earth, showing Luna City, indentured servitude on Venus and the colonization of Mars as well as both Martians and Venerians, are set about 2000. 

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, Manse Everard, recruited by the Patrol in 1954, is told about the future but we the readers learn nothing about it until it happens and not much then either. Gorbachev shows up on schedule in The Shield Of Time, published in 1990. A typical room in the Patrol Academy in the Oligocene has the sort of gadgets:

"...you would have expected by, say, A.D. 2000: unobtrusive furniture readily adjusted to a perfect fit, refresher cabinets, screens which could draw on a huge library of recorded sight and sound for entertainment. Nothing too advanced, as yet."

-"Time Patrol," 2, p. 8.

That adjustable furniture occurs in many Andersonian futures but first appeared in The Time Machine.

This post was occasioned by rereading Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, Volume III, and was not expected to encompass the Future History, The Shield Of Time, "Time Patrol" or The Time Machine.

Fork, Split And Instability

"Star of the Sea," 4.

Of Buhrmund, the rebel leader, Everard thinks:

"We need an idea of how he, the key man in all this, thinks, if we're to discover how it is that the time stream forks - and which is the right course, which the wrong one, for us and our world." (p. 506)

Everard and Floris:

"...could not take years to feel out the whole truth. The Patrol could ill spare that much lifespan of theirs. Moreover, this segment of space-time was unstable; the less they from the future moved about in it, the better. Everard had decided to start with a visit to Civilis several months downtime of the split in events." (p. 516)

(Buhrmund has taken the Latin name Claudius Civilis.)

This must be very imprecise language:

the time stream forks;

there is a right and a wrong course for a whole world;

a segment of space-time is unstable;

visitors from the future increase the instability;

events split.

I quote and paraphrase these passages because I cannot devise a dimensional framework to account for them. We have to accept that something as paradoxical as quantum mechanics is happening. However, and fortunately, Everard spends most of his time in concrete historical events, not inside abstract dimensional diagrams. This is a good story, not a bad time travel pig's breakfast like some we could name.

Doubts

"Star of the Sea."

Quite often, I have heard people arguing that their beliefs are as certain as geometrical theorems and have realized that they are primarily trying to convince themselves. In CS Lewis' The Great Divorce, a man wanted proof after proof of survival after death, then he died and survived and had no purpose left because his only purpose had been to prove survival!

The prophetess, Veleda, expresses doubt:

"'You know I am foe to Rome, and why... But this talk of bringing it down in wreck - more and more, as the war wears on, I come to see that as mere rant. It is not truly what the goddess bade me say, it is what I have told myself she wants me to say. I must needs utter it again tonight, or the gathering would have been bewildered and shaken.'" (3, p. 500)

How do those who pray know what their deity bids them to say or do? Sometimes there are experiences as of seeing and hearing a deity but not for most people most of the time. (At this point in the text, we do not yet know that Veleda has seen and conversed with a time traveller whom she mistook for her goddess.) Veleda is honest enough to recognize what she has told herself that the goddess wanted her to say. A true fanatic would never have been able to realize that.

Heidhin does not want to forsake the gods but would that just mean forsaking power and fame? - Veleda asks. Are the "gods" just a way of talking about what is going on anyway? I saw a newsletter in an Evangelical church in which the vicar had written, "Remember how in our prayer time the Lord seemed to be telling us that -?" Did He or was that just group imagination? 

Burhmund, the rebel leader, says:

"'...[Veleda's] fierceness is lessening. Perhaps the goddess herself wants an end to the war.'" (4, p. 505)

Is "The goddess might want an end to the war" just another way of saying that the sibyl now has doubts about the war? Burhmund clearly senses the effects of Veleda's doubts.

As an Andersonian touch, when Buhrmund acknowledges that he also has had his fill of strife:

"His sigh gusted in to the wind." (ibid.)

We can always rely on the wind.

Alternative Reading Orders Revisited

Hloch compiled The Earth Book Of Stormgate shortly after the events of The People Of The Wind. So far then, it follows that the Earth Book should be read between The People Of The Wind and Ensign Flandry. However, all twelve Technic History instalments collected in the Earth Book are set earlier than The People Of The Wind and are presented in that order in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III, with The People Of The Wind collected at the end of Volume III and Ensign Flandry at the beginning of Volume IV. It follows that it is only Hloch's twelve introductions and single afterword that are dated between The People Of The Wind and Ensign Flandry yet these passages are presented before and, in one case, after the appropriate instalments throughout Saga, Volumes I-III. Thus, very early in Volume I, we read references to the Terran War and to Avalonian choths that will not be comprehensible until we have read to the end of Volume III. However, we do not condemn confusion but commend complexity. While rereading Poul Anderson's Time Patrol instalment, "Star of the Sea," but also remembering his Technic History, we alternate between contemplating past history, including that of the Roman Empire, and future history, including that of the Terran Empire. Anderson's works are comprehensive, also including alternative pasts and futures. 

Quantum Effects

Anyone can do this. It's easy. Just reread Poul Anderson in front of a blank computer screen. The texts are so rich that you will find endless material to post about from descriptions of the weather to speculations about quantum mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics

(i) In Anderson's Technic History, a spaceship under hyperdrive circumvents the relativistic light-speed limitation by rapidly making a very large number of quantum leaps between nearby points in space without traversing the spaces between the points.

(ii) In his Time Patrol series, a time traveller who appears as if from nowhere and prevents the events that would have led to his birth is compared to a quantum event on the macroscopic level. Manse Everard cites the quantum nature of the continuum when he explains to the Zorachs that, although he has travelled to 950 BC from the Patrol-guarded twentieth century, he might not return to it.

(iii) A new kind of quantum phenomenon occurs when not a time traveller but a random fluctuation in space-time-energy changes medieval history and this is described as a quantum leap. 

Three Empires

"Star of the Sea," 4.

When Augustus drew the boundary of the Empire at the Rhine, a few German tribes continued to be ruled by Rome but the outermost territories were not occupied. Instead, those tribes paid tribute, obeyed the nearest proconsul and provided auxiliary troops although they eventually revolted, gaining allies from the east, while at the same time, to the south-west, the Gauls also rebelled.

Poul Anderson's text compares these outermost tribes to native states in British-ruled India. Anderson readers also recognize a similarity to provinces of the Terran Empire where entire planets pay taxes, heed a governor, receive protection and can participate in trade but may also find reason to revolt. The Terran Empire is modelled on the Roman Empire and some of its colonial personnel remind us of Brits. 

While reading about one historical context, we are always aware of multiple timelines.

Historical And Cultural Differences Between Time Patrol Members II

We know almost nothing about later civilizations in the Time Patrol timeline which are there only as part of the background for Patrol missions into the past. We are told that an Era of Oneness precedes the Danellians and that the internal Patrol investigator, Guion, coming from a later and higher civilization, might know enough about the Danellians to be terrified. 

An optimal civilization would have difference without division and unity without uniformity but "Oneness" is ambiguous. At worst, it could mean enforced uniformity. A further novel could have been written upending everything that we thought we knew about this fictional universe. After all, do the Danellians employ Nazis to ensure that the Holocaust occurs on schedule? The Patrol agents that we see do not (seem to) know anything about that but what else is going on?

Two posts so far this morning and maybe an interlude.

How Do Religions Change?

"Star of the Sea."

Tacitus Two is an alternative text signaling a potential divergent timeline. Janne Floris tells Manse Everard:

"'Tacitus - Two - remarks near the end of the Histories that the religion of the wild Germans has changed since he wrote his book about them. A female deity is becoming prominent, the Nerthus he described in his Germania. Now he compares her to Persephone, Minerva, and Bellona.'" (2, pp. 490-491)

(An important planet is named Nerthus in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. We project mythological names onto the heavens. "Woden" is a planet in the Technic History.)

The Tacitus Two Nerthus combines death, wisdom and war at a time when, as Everard observes, "'...the male sky-gods...'" (p. 491) should have become dominant. How do religions change, particularly when there is conflict between male and female figures? We see the beginning of this process when the warrior, Heidhin, begins:

"'The Anses -'" (3, p. 500)

- but the charismatic prophetess, Veleda, interrupts:

"'Let Woen and the rest grumble at Niaerdh, Nerha, if they like. I serve her.'" (ibid.)

Heidhin scowls but does not reply. One person can move the world - if she is standing in the right place.

The story culminates with a prayer to:

"Mary, mother of God..." (IV, p. 639)

The female in the highest place? The Catholic Church has resisted a move to have Mary declared Mediatrix. Years ago, a devout Irish Catholic fellow student embarrassingly said to me as someone else was walking past, "But in a way, Paul, the Blessed Virgin is the Mediatrix of all Graces because it was she who consented..." Of the four canonical Gospels, two contain different legendary Nativity stories. In one of these, Gabriel appears and "Announces" to Mary. My friend accepted this fairytale as a historical event. The original of Mary would have consented to nothing more than marital relationships with her husband. But belief is a powerful force. Veleda served the goddess. My friend revered the Mother of God. Poul Anderson dramatizes a historical progression from Germanic polytheism to the complex Christian synthesis.

To Slake The Gods

"Star of the Sea."

Veleda to Heidhin:

"'A Roman host has fallen into our hands, and you believe that we should do what warriors of old did, give everything to the gods. Cut throats, break weapons, smash wagons, cast all into a bog, that Tiw be slaked.'" (3, p. 499)

Tiw of the Anses/Tyr of the Aesir is the Norse god of war, equivalent to Ares/Mars. Tuesday is Mardi in French and De Mairt in Irish.

I read Myths Of The Norsemen by Roger Lancelyn Green in my teens and now realize that that kind of retelling had effectively Christianized the Aesir whose sole role had become to protect both mankind and themselves from the giants, like a superhero team defending Earth from invaders. The suggestion that Tyr might be slaked by human blood would have shocked and appalled Lancelyn Green's readers.

Myths and stories change over time but we need to know their history. And we control the gods. It is we that imagine them.

Heidhin replies that a slaughter of prisoners would be:

"'A mighty offering.'" (ibid.)

-and that:

"'It would quicken the blood in our men.'" (ibid.)

In other words, it is not just its effect on the gods that matters! Its effect on the Romans must also be considered but Heidhin thinks that:

"'...a slaughter will rouse the tribes and bring new warriors to us, more than it will set the foe on vengeance.'" (p. 499)

He adds that the gods will be glad and will remember but for practical, pragmatic, political, rabble-rousing, mobilizing purposes, it is the effect on men that counts...

(And, in my view, if that is the only way that you can rouse the tribes to rebellion, then forget it!)

Two Poul Anderson Series

I was impressed by the number of Time Patrol agents that wound up being mentioned in the previous post:

Manse Everard

Piet Van Sarawak

Chaim Zorach

Yael Zorach

Epsilon Korten

Carl Farness

Janne Floris

Stephen Tamberly

Helen Tamberly

Hugh Marlow

Wanda Tamberly

Tom Nomura

Feliz a Rach

First, this is far from a complete list of Patrol agents. Secondly, all but two of the characters in the above list appear only once. Very few character in this series return. The others that do are:

Merau Varagan (three appearances);

Keith Denison (two);

Raor (two; promoted from spear-carrier to major villainess).

Thus, the Time Patrol series contrasts sharply with the same author's Technic History in which several characters reappear more than once and also interact in various ways. Van Rijn appears five times, Falkayn twice and Adzel once before they meet. Then van Rijn appoints Falkayn to lead the trade pioneer crew of himself, Adzel and Chee Lan. Then we see both what the team is doing on other planets and what van Rijn is doing meanwhile back on Earth. Then a crisis requires van Rijn to get involved and to work alongside the members of the team. And so on: the action continues. And indeed continues long after this set of characters is long dead because the Technic History is a future history series.

Two major and different sf series by a single author.

Historical And Cultural Differences Between Time Patrol Members

In "Delenda Est," we are told that Manse Everard has worked with Unattached agent Piet Van Sarawak from twenty-fourth century Venus before. (Thus, between instalments, Everard has had assignments that we are told nothing about. As the Time Patrol series proceeds, its instalments become more tightly connected chronologically, e.g. "Death And The Knight" is a direct sequel to The Shield Of Time which is a direct sequel to "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks.") Everard and Van Sarawak converse in Temporal.

In Tyre, 950 BC, when Everard is alone with the local Patrol agents, an Israeli couple called Zorach, their deportment changes so that he would have known that they were from the twentieth century without being told. But they might have been from somewhen else. Later, they introduce Everard to Epsilon Korten, director of Jerusalem Base:

"...between the birth of David and the fall of Judah."

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 307.

Korten was born on Mars in the twenty-ninth century. Again, Temporal becomes necessary.

(Incidentally, Korten proposes that the Patrol should be prepared to take measures, if necessary, to swing history back onto the right track even if Tyre is destroyed during Solomon's reign! How much of that kind of treatment can history take? See here.)

Everard tells Carl Farness:

"'I was born in your state in 1924... That's why I decided I should be the guy who interviewed you. We have pretty much the same background; we ought to understand each other.'"

-"The Sorrow of Odin Goth," 1980, p. 352.

Far from relying just on Temporal, Everard tries to approximate the backgrounds of interviewer and interviewee as much as possible.

Because Janne Floris and he:

"'...are more or less contemporaries' - a generation between our births, is it?" -

- he thinks that:

"'...we should be able to cooperate more or less efficiently. That's why I'm the Unattached agent they contacted.'"

-"Star of the Sea," p. 484.

When Stephen Tamberly has disappeared, Everard tells Tamberly's wife, Helen:

"'...he and I were both born and raised in the USA, middle twentieth century. That's why I've been asked to head this investigation. A background shared with your husband just might give me some useful insight.'"

-Poul Anderson, "In the Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol, pp. 641-735 AT 3 November 1885, p. 665.

When Hugh Marlow has to be rescued from his arrest by the Templars in Paris, 1307, Everard tells Wanda Tamberly:

"'...he's my contemporary by birth - not American: British, but a twentieth-century Western man who must think pretty much like me. That might help a bit.' A few generations can make aliens of ancestor and descendant."

-"Death And The Knight," pp. 747-748.

Tom Nomura reflects on the generational gulf separating himself, newly graduated from the Patrol Academy, from Manse Everard, a mature Unattached agent:

"That Everard had been recruited in New York, A.D. 1954, and Nomura in San Francisco, 1972, ought to make scant difference. The upheavals of that generation were bubble pops against what had happened before and what would happen after."

-Poul Anderson, "Gibraltar Falls" IN Time Patrol, pp. 113-128 AT p. 114.

However, Everard has, by now, lived so long and time travelled so much that Nomura suspects that the Unattached agent has:

"...become more foreign to him than Feliz - who was born two millenniums past either of them."

-ibid., p. 115.

Since Feliz a Rach is:

"...an aristocrat of the First Matriarchy..."

-ibid.

- there are indeed cultural differences between her and these two male twentieth-centurians. But Time Patrollers transcend their cultures. Feliz tells Tom:

"'Men like you make me understand what is wrong in the age I came from.'"

-ibid., p. 120.

And I shouldn't be constructing such long and involved posts at my age.