Into Darkness

"Flight to Forever."

Vargor points a "stun pistol" at Saunders. (Dan Dare used to have paralyzing guns.)

"The gun flashed. There was a crashing in Saunders' head and he tumbled into illimitable darkness." (p. 276)

This is an appropriate place to end for this evening, with twelve pages of the story remaining. Have you ever felt your consciousness go out like a candle flame? Once, after being given a general anaesthetic, I tried to cling to consciousness but almost immediately felt an irresistible force push me down into impenetrable darkness. I was aware of the moment when my consciousness was extinguished. And it would not have returned if I had died under the anaesthetic. 

Vargor cannot bring himself to kill his rival, Saunders, so he stuns him, binds him and sends him off into the future in the time projector. Further adventures await.

Space-Time Battle

"Flight to Forever."

As the much larger Anvardi fleet attacks the Solar System, Saunders takes one dreadnaught three days back in time, then forward through space to where the Anvardi flagship will be in three days time, then forward through time to destroy the enemy flagship and to attack the rest of the enemy fleet from within while the Imperial fleet attacks from without. The Anvardi fight but then break and flee. The Dreamer telepathically calls across space for surrender while offering amnesty. Suddenly, Taury the Red is Galactic Empress de facto as well as de jure. Belgotai will be happy fighting out in the Galaxy and it looks as if Saunders will settle down in the Empire but there are still more twists in the tale. It is not over until it is over. The concluding CHAPTER SIX is entitled "Flight Without End."

Dystopian Inspiration

Inspiration from my visit to Andrea today? Wide-ranging discussion. Maybe inspiration for a dystopian novel. Collapse of the West by 2028? Civil war in the US with the UK drawn in? China restoring order if not - certainly not - freedom? Could an sf author write a novel about that, then a novel set in a further future with a future history linking the two? Certainly. They have done that sort of thing already. Poul Anderson contemplated dystopias. His Psychotechnic History begins with recovery from World War III while his Technic History begins with recovery from the Chaos which, arguably, we are now in. Never say that sf is escapist. Well, some of it is. It covers everything.

A Moment Of Realization In Brontothor

"Flight to Forever."

The approaching Anvardi will attack soon. The Solar System will have to be evacuated. The Imperials lack adequate weapons for defence. However:

"The Dreamer stiffened." (p. 265)

Why does he do that? Andersonian characters stiffen suddenly only when they have just realized something important. Sure enough, the same thought has occurred to Saunders. The two beings share:

"...a sudden wild hope..." (ibid.)

As always, we are not immediately told what it is. The message to us is: continue reading. However, we have already been informed that, despite technological advances:

"'...the principle of the time projector was lost long ago.'" (p. 255)

Saunders and Belgotai have just arrived in a time projector. Can time travel turn the tide of battle?

Wind At Brontothor

"Flight to Forever."

Empress Taury and her reduced court of human and non-human beings receive the two time travellers in a small council chamber with hanging tapestries, skin carpet, white fluorotubes and a cheerfully crackling fire:

"Had it not been for the wind against the windows, they might have forgotten where they were." (p. 255)

However, the wind always has its say in a Poul Anderson text! When Belgotai asks about the Dreamer, a hyper-intelligent Imperial counsellor:

"It was like a sudden darkness in the room. There was silence, under the whistling wind, and men sat wrapped in their own cheerless thoughts." (p. 256)

The present Dreamer is the last of his race. The wind often underlines conversational silences and, on this occasion, it whistles appropriately when a nearly extinct race is mentioned.

The council chamber is in the great old alien stone fortress of Brontothor, half ruined by powerful energy weapons, worn by millennia of weather and only partly renovated. Its helmeted guards carry energy rifles and their cloaks are:

"...wrapped tightly against the wind..." (p. 252)

- hostile elements symbolizing the hostile aliens that will arrive soon.

The great hall where the court does not meet is huge, empty, dark and hollow. 

Wind And Howling In 50,000 AD

"Flight to Forever."

Saunders and Belgotai arrive in 50,000 AD:

"A raw wind caught at them, driving thin sheets of snow before it." (p. 248)

"The wind blew bitterly around them, scaring them with its chill." (p. 249)

"The wind blew and blew." (ibid.)

Two flying shapes approach:

"'Aircraft,' said Belgotai laconically. The wind ripped the word from his mouth." (p. 250)

Wind raw, bitter, relentless and ripping away Belgotai's words clearly signifies that the time travellers will encounter resistance in 50,000 AD. 

Vargor, who greets them, speaks of:

"'...wild beasts howling among the ruins.'" (p. 252)

We have heard howling in ruins before. See the above link.

History Continues

"Flight to Forever."

I will visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop tomorrow so might not blog then but should receive some inspiration.

History continues from that recorded in the previous post.

In 34,000, the city of the Matriarchy is burned ruins and fresh skeletons.

In 35,000, a peasant hut under old trees.

In 36,000, a village and an outpost of the waning Galactic Empire. 

In 50,000, Saunders wins a space battle with time travel and thus revives the Empire.

In 60,000, Saunders, sent futureward against his will, finds that the time projector is under the sea.

Four million years later, he is an incomprehensible city which tells him to go beyond the end of the universe...

I could continue but maybe I should just advise everyone to read or reread the conclusion.

(The following evening: I had to check to be certain but that is definitely Anonymous, not Andrea, standing in front of the shop.)

Erosion

"Flight to Forever."

A massive alien stone monument traps the time projector in the time stream for twenty thousand years. In 25,296 AD, a house-sized block slips out half way up the monument and the projector is released. With an artificial outer casing either removed or worn away, soil, grass, trees, roots, wind, rain and frost are eroding the stone.

In 26,000, the monument has become a wooded hill.

In 27,000, there is:

"...a small village of wood and stone houses..." (p. 245)

In 28,000, men quarry the hill for stone.

In 30,000, the monument has gone and a small city has been built from it.

In 31,000, there is a city with tall towers, swarming aircraft and a spaceship.

Saunders and Belgotai see all this and stop briefly in 31,000 when they learn that there is a Solar Matriarchy. In passages like this, history is the hero.

Time Travel Through Future History

"Flight to Forever."

Belgotai, ever a mercenary, wants to travel far enough into the future so that he can join the fighting that there must be on the Galactic frontier. In 4100 AD, the Solar Council decrees that the Galaxy already has too many barbarians so that Saunders and Belgotai must continue into the future. In 4300 AD, mercenaries are welcome out in the Galaxy but Sol is visited so rarely that Belgotai might have to wait years for transport. Again, he stays with Saunders. (When the Doctor loses an assistant, he immediately gains another thanks to BBC casting but Saunders might not be so lucky.)

Time travel now merges with future history. Priogan's modified relativity theory allows for faster-than-light travel by warping through higher dimensions but Priogan's reformulation of spatiotemporal theory entails that infinite energy is required to travel more than seventy years into the past. 

Saunders and Hull made it twenty years into their past and back without any problem - also twenty years into their future and back. Could someone travel further into the past in stages? Travel back twenty years, then switch off the projector and let it cool down. Then another twenty years and another twenty and so on?

The Council regards the time travellers as "'...unintegrated individuals...'" (p. 234) whose mere presence threatens Solar sanity. We remember "integrate civilization" in Anderson's Psychotechnic History.

The Centre Of The Earth

 

Jules Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth is one big disappointment. The explorers do not get anywhere near the Earth's centre. Instead, they are diverted into a vast electrically albeit naturally lit cavern with a sea, dinosaurs, piles of bones and a twelve-foot man although the narrator later doubts his perception of the man! And they exit impossibly via a volcano. 

A 20th or 21st century sf writer of the caliber of Poul Anderson or SM Stirling would be able to write a retro-novel set in the 19th century with a plausible scientific rationale for no molten core and a route via passageways to the centre and back.

Verne could have written such a book but preferred to remain neutral or ambiguous on issues like a molten core or not. Much of his text is dramatized documentary.

The copy that I read has already been returned to the Public Library. I am unlikely to read any more Verne.

The Anakro And The Time Projector

A time machine or a self-moving time traveller either remains stationary on the Earth's surface, thus "travelling" only through time, or passes from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates to another, thus "travelling" through both time and space or, as we have learned to say, through space-time. We need hardly list again the examples with which we have become familiar. There is at least one exception. In Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis, the anakro, a space-time vehicle, passes over the Earth's surface while time travelling.

Anderson covers every option. At present, we are rereading "Flight to Forever" in which a conventional time machine, the time projector, remains stationary not only on the Earth's surface but also at a fixed point in space during an entire cosmic cycle!

Onwards and upwards.

They Live II

Polesotechnic League Tetralogy characters whom we see again although at earlier stages of their careers in The Earth Book Of Stormgate are:

Nicholas van Rijn

Adzel

David Falkayn

Chee Lan

Sandra Tamarin

Coya Conyon/Falkayn

Merseians (the species, not specific individuals)

Also, Christopher Holm and Emil Dalmady's daughter between them write half the Earth Book instalments.

The Earth Book tells us:

how the Ythrians were first contacted

how Avalon was explored, then colonized in two stages

how Adzel studied on Earth

what happened later and elsewhere on Diomedes

how Emil Dalmady outwitted the Baburites

how the trader team saved Merseia

how van Rijn, conquered Borthu and Diomedes, met Sandra Tamarin and came to Mirkheim

how piracy grew in the League

All these data are relevant to the Tetralogy.

Shadows And A Warehouse

 

"'The shadows, like life,

"'moved beneath summer daylight.

"'Evening reclaims them.'"

-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, VIII, p. 91.

I responded to this perfect haiku with:

Anderson's haiku:

Life is beautiful but brief.

All we know and need.

A weekend drive past Liverpool Docks has inspired a sequel:

Abandoned warehouse,

Broken windows growing trees.

Nature reclaims it.

Companionship And Caution

"Flight to Forever."

Does a time traveller require a companion? According to some narratives, yes. 

Martian Saunders loses Sam Hull in 2500 and is joined by Belgotai of Syrtis in 3000. They proceed cautiously:

3100, radioactivity;

3200, desolation;

3500, forest;

4100, buildings and people -

- and a longer stop for the time travellers, to be returned to tomorrow by us. Look how far Saunders has come from 1973 and this is only the beginning.

What Happens To Time Travellers?

"Flight to Forever."

So what does happen to time travellers into the future?

"Time travelers were few anyway, the future was too precarious - they were apt to be killed or enslaved in one of the more turbulent periods." (p. 227)

So now we know. Or rather, temporarily suspending disbelief, we know what answer is given in this particular narrative. (It is like asking what Martians are like...)

"Flight to Forever" contains several quotable passages. See also:

A Brief Flash Of Light

Flight To Forever

Flight To Forever II

Flight To Forever III

Time Wars

In Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, the time war is the Warden-Ranger conflict throughout history with each side aiming for military victory in their future which they are prevented from entering by time travel by their successors. 

In Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the Time War is a defeated Terrestrial Directorate army leaping from the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth century and attempting conquest but suffering another defeat.

What Time Wars, created by Poul Anderson, is I am yet to learn.

As ever, Anderson gives us the impression that he covers every angle on any topic.

Problems With Time Machines

"Flight to Forever."

A ten-foot high, thirty-foot time projector is a conspicuous object to leave lying in the open especially on a city street even at night while Saunders sets off on foot to explore the city.

The Time Traveller has a problem when the Morlocks lock his Time Machine in the White Sphinx. 

A Time Patrol agent can send his timecycle aloft to hover on antigravity to be called back down when needed.

The TARDIS is supposed to camouflage itself but has got stuck looking like an antiquated British police telephone box.

Wardens and Rangers have to find time portals concealed underground.

Jack Havig doesn't need anything except maybe a place where he can disappear inconspicuously.

Six examples, four from Poul Anderson. 

An Intellectual Exercise

"Flight to Forever."

The previous post was an intellectual exercise. In practice, there was no way that Saunders was going to perform such an experiment. He has burst into the time projector, fleeing from men firing guns and aiming a bazooka. He throws the main switch, then shudders as the projector puts as much time as possible between him and the men in black. He thinks that five hundred years is not too much. 

In the conditions of time travel as they are described in this story, 3000 AD is much too far away for him to try to travel back to save Hull and he does not even think of it. We may hypothesize that such circumstances prevail in this timeline. Either a time traveller does not even think of trying to change the recent past or, if he does try to, something will happen that prevents him. We should assume a single immutable timeline unless we are given some reason to think otherwise.

Duplication?

"Flight to Forever."

Unable to travel very far into the past, thus unable to return to 1973, Saunders and Hull go forward to 2500 AD, hoping that by then someone will have solved the problem of pastward travel. Hull is killed but Saunders escapes to 3000 AD.  

Could Saunders, instead of going so far forward, have travelled back to the short period between their arrival in 2500 AD and Hull being shot? Could he then have warned his younger self and Hull to travel forward immediately? If this was possible, then Saunders would have disappeared forever from timeline 1 but saved Hull and duplicated both himself and the time projector in timeline 2.

Light And Heat

We can neither reach nor surpass light speed because it would require infinite energy. No, sf characters travel through hyperspace and the cleverest version of this is the quantum jump hyperdrive in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

We cannot travel to the centre of the Earth because it would be too hot. No, Jules Verne's Dr Lidenbrock rejects the theory of inner heat! Another sf character denying what is thought to be true.

Verne writes a travelogue from Hamburg to Iceland, eventually recounting the composition of a volcano. The characters do not start to penetrate the Earth until nearly p. 100. This pace does not suit me but I am interested to find out how the descent is described as it is made to read like a real expedition.

Verne would never have thought of time travel. He wanted to base everything in current reality.

The Automatics

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT p. 215.

Saunders, Hull and MacPherson had sent two small automatic time projectors from 1973 to 2073. (We remember the Time Traveller's model Time Machine and the Time Patrol's message shuttles.) These "automatics" should have returned automatically but didn't. Saunders and Hull travel to 2073 in the big projector. They are now in an open pit instead of the basement of a house. There is no sign of the automatics. Hull thinks that they had started back but blew out on the way. But, if they blew out in, e.g., 2063, then, other things being equal, they should have lain where they were for ten years and still have been there in 2073. But maybe other things were not equal. An animal or a human being could have moved them.

Starting back, Saunders and Hull encounter increasing resistance the further they go. In 2013, they find the automatics:

"...tarnished with some years of weathering." (p. 215)

They had got a little further back, then stopped and lay where they were. Saunders examines them and finds that their batteries are completely drained. Now we know that the automatics were not in 2073 because, in 2013, Saunders took them into the big projector to examine them.

Greater adventures lie ahead. This is just the beginning. 

They Live

CS Lewis wrote somewhere (I think) that Christianity is the story that everyone would most like to be true. Surely not! However, on reflection, I think that he must have meant one aspect of Christianity, not the scourging and the impalement, just the discovery that a friend, who had been thought to be dead, is alive. 

Authors can write apparent deaths followed by unexpected returns in works of fiction. Another way to revive a character who has died is in a prequel. If we read Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization in its original order of book publication, then:

the Polesotechnic League fills the first four volumes;

the end of the fourth volume, Mirkheim, is written as an elaborate farewell to several continuing characters;

the fifth volume, The People Of The Wind, set centuries later, refers historically to League merchant David Falkayn as the Founder of the colony on Avalon;

the sixth volume, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, fictitiously published in the aftermath of the events of The People Of The Wind, opens with an Avalonian Ythrian introducing twelve stories that will illuminate the circumstances of the founding of Avalon;

eight of these twelve works are a second Polesotechnic League series featuring all of the characters whose stories had been brought to an end at the conclusion of Mirkheim!

They live again.

"The Master Key" II

When we located "The Master Key" in Poul Anderson's Technic History here, we referred directly or indirectly to fifteen of the sixteen Polesotechnic League instalments. Thus, "The Master Key" is preceded by five instalments about van Rijn and by another five about Falkayn and/or Adzel and is succeeded by four about problems in the League. That totals fifteen. The one remaining instalment that is not about van Rijn, Falkayn, Adzel or League problems is "The Season of Forgiveness" about another group of League merchants celebrating Christmas on the planet Ivanhoe which had been introduced in the first Falkayn story. Thus, everything connects and the connections are almost as complicated as IRL (in real life).

What "The Master Key" Gives Us Apart From Cain

 

This is a rich story.

(i) "...the name of the Polesotechnic League was great in the land."

-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 195-233 AT p. 197.

The name of the League was great because the unnamed first person narrator and his friend, Harry Stenvik, had humbled:

"...a king who set himself above the foreign merchants." (ibid.)

(ii) Then the two merchants celebrated by patronizing:

"...the Solar Spice & Liquors factor..." (ibid.)

Regular readers know that SSL is van Rijn's outfit.

(iii) The narrator is on only a very brief business trip to Earth. He has been on a planet where there is ammonia in the air and some conflict.

(iv) Because they are both guests of van Rijn, the narrator and Stenvik meet in the SSL owner's Winged Cross penthouse which we have seen before and will again. There is a view of Chicago Integrate, roses and jasmine in the garden and a long trollcat rug inside.

(v) Stenvik raises mastiffs and sons in a house that he has built above Hardanger Fjord.

(vi) His oldest son, Per, was apprenticed on a van Rijn ship in the Hercules region and has recently become a Master Merchant.

(vii) Per's ensign is from Nuevo Mexico beyond Arcturus.

(viii) Cain, where they have recently been, is in the direction of Pegasus.

(ix) Van Rijn has been on enough planets to recognize patterns. Saying that he has been on Cain not in the flesh but in his brain, he is most like Poirot.

Culminations And Ultimates

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III (of VII) are an ultimate American sf future history series, encompassing the Polesotechnic League series, The Earth Book Of Stormgate and its companion volume, The People Of The Wind, and a few more stories.

The Time Patrol is an ultimate time travel series.

There Will Be Time is a time travel novel completing a future history series.

"Flight to Forever" is a time travel story incorporating a miniature future history.

And so on. 

(We keep returning to the Technic History.)

"The Master Key"

We appreciate Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" less for the unpleasant happenings on the fictional planet, Cain, than for this story's position within Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.

(i) "The Master Key" is the sixth and last Technic History instalment to feature Nicholas van Rijn unaccompanied by any of his regular supporting cast.

(ii) By this time, van Rijn has initiated his first trade pioneer crew, led by David Falkayn from "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "A Sun Invisible" and also including Adzel from "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," and we have seen the crew in action in "The Trouble Twisters" and "Day of Burning" but now we see what van Rijn is doing meanwhile back on Earth.

(iii) This is the second of three occasions on which we are shown the inside of van Rijn's penthouse on the Winged Cross in Chicago Integrate. Van Rijn solves a problem on an extra-solar planet while lounging in his penthouse surrounded by subordinates and dinner guests.

(iv) The story introduces several new one-off characters and imparts a strong sense of the power and prestige of the Polesotechnic League and its members as well as the vast volumes of space that their activities encompass.

(v) The story immediately precedes four instalments outlining growing and eventually fatal problems within the League:

Satan's World

"A Little Knowledge"

"Lodestar"

Mirkheim

What's not to like?

Travelling Through Time

Assessment of Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time: All the time travel paradoxes and historical periods work out fine but the recently completed rereading has increased my misgivings about what exactly goes on inside these time corridors. Why do all the travellers not meet each other every time they move up or down a corridor? This question would have to be cleared up somehow before I could be fully satisfied with this novel.

Tomorrow will be another day not much different from today but it would become an exotic other country if someone were able to travel to and through it and then return to today:

"'The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow.'"

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 4, p. 24.

The Time Traveller's dinner guests will live through that tomorrow just like everyone else but for now it is a mysterious place that he has visited and that they cannot, yet.

Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" was published in 1950 but its time travellers set off from 1973. Martin Saunders and Sam Hull have been to 1953 and to 1993 and have seen the house standing but no one home either time. Saunders says that the jaunts are dull but from 1973 to 1993 and back again is anything but dull. I would be relieved to find no one home on a first expedition. Just being there then - in 2045 in our case - would be more than enough. When the story opens, they are about to embark for 2073 which will prove to be not dull but deadly.

Tomorrow will be another coach trip, not as far as London but taking up much of the day.

Storm And The Bronze Age

The Corridors Of Time.

Storm had wanted to build a hidden power base for her people, the Wardens, in what was to become the Bronze Age. If any future technology was in use in that period, then it was not detected by their enemies, the Rangers, and therefore was not detectable by the Wardens either. Therefore, she had at least the possibility of success.

Lynx keeps the Bronze Age free from both Warden and Ranger influence. When the Wardens learn that Storm has been killed not by their own enemies but in a local skirmish, then those who had been her rivals among the Warden Koriachs will stand by their original preference not to meddle in this period which is little known and seen by them as best avoided.

Both sides in the time war have lost a powerful leader - Storm for the Wardens and Brann for the Rangers. This might signal the beginning of the end of the conflict in their future era. But, if not this, then it is already known that something else will end the conflict which is succeeded by a peaceful future.

Flower Feather And The Bronze Age

The Corridors Of Time.

In Neolithic Denmark, Lockridge meets:

"Auri, whose name meant Flower Feather..."

-CHAPTER SIX, p. 47.

Native Americans:

"...tell of a wise kindly god and of a goddess named Flower Feather."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, p. 204.

Thus, Lockridge/Lynx and his people fare widely and:

"...might even touch America..." (ibid.)

Lynx thinks:

"We will build a sanctuary here...to the worship of Her Who one day will be called Mary." (pp. 203-204)

She is also in the Time Patrol timeline: Ave Stella Maris!

Lynx founds a realm in the Bronze Age which at that time is a "...new age..." (p. 204)

"...the first land the world ever saw which was both strong and free..." (ibid.)

"...a time rich, peaceful, and happy..." with no "...burning, slaughter, or enslavement." (ibid.)

"...the Northern races become one." (ibid.)

"...a thousand fortunate years...generations of gladness..." (ibid.)

Storm wondered whether the Wardens and Rangers killed the dinosaurs and scarred the Moon. Lynx shows a beneficial circular causality.

Prescience

The Corridors Of Time. 

Prescience is not omniscience. When Lynx leads the attack on Avildaro, he already knows that:

a small group led by his younger self will escape from the village during the confusion of the attack;

before leaving, his younger self will free the Ranger Brann from the interrogation machine, will kill the Warden Hu and will appropriate Hu's energy gun which the older Lynx now holds.

Thus, when Lynx fights Hu, both using the same gun, Lynx is able to let Hu escape, knowing that the latter will very soon be killed in any case.

That leaves only Storm with her energy gun and the local warriors loyal to her. Lynx does not foreknow the outcome of this battle. In fact, he captures her and his men defeat hers. The final twist of the knife is that Storm, now a prisoner bound and helpless, is strangled by the dying Brann who has only just been freed by the younger Lynx. Destiny is now complete.

Through A Portal

The Corridors Of Time.

Lockridge who is Lynx leads his few people through a portal into a time corridor just before the portal is about to close, then leads this small group back out through the same portal just after it has opened. Thus, they use the same portal twice and do not have to travel along the corridor but wind up twenty-five years pastward. Thus also, they elude Storm who does not know where they have gone and who cannot now use the vanished portal either to pursue them or to seek them out. Also, they have gained twenty-five years in which to prepare themselves to mount the attack on Storm which had enabled their younger selves to escape and to make their way to the portal. We have not quite reread to the end of The Corridors... but we are also trying to do some other reading this evening.

Space And Time Travellers

There is a particular kind of sf narrative in which the characters travel through space or time or both. The author is obliged to imagine a succession of places or times for his characters to arrive in. Although he is free to imagine absolutely anything, as soon as a particular scenario has been introduced and described, it ceases to be just "anything" and becomes specific, one possibility as against any of the many possible alternatives. And, if these temporary destinations are future periods, then each must follow from its predecessors with reasonable plausibility. Here, time travel overlaps with future history. Wells' Time Traveller has the advantage of witnessing events flickering past before he makes his first stop in 802,701 AD. Poul Anderson's nearest equivalent to that original Time Traveller is Martin Saunders in "Flight to Forever" who starts his journey in 1973, travels a century futureward and then surveys the whole future history of mankind on Earth and in the Galaxy. Like Manse Everard, Jack Havig and Malcolm Lockridge, Saunders is one of Anderson's time travelling heroes. 

(I must get back to that book in defense of life after death and then go out to a meeting. Retirement is a brilliant institution.) 

Extraordinary Voyages

I have begun to read an annotated 2009 translation of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. (See image.)

I usually think of Poul Anderson as a successor of Mary Shelley, HG Wells and Robert Heinlein but Verne is somewhere in there as well. Think of the directions of exploration in the nineteenth century (in fact or in fiction):

beyond certain northern and southern latitudes

through the air

into the upper atmosphere (a Conan Doyle short story)

under the Earth

under the sea

through space

through time

Unless modern authors want to go retro, which they sometimes do, they are not going to describe journeys into a non-molten Earth's core, hollow Earth etc. Poul Anderson is at the space-time end of this list, particularly in Tao Zero and "Flight to Forever."

Activating A Time Tunnel

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR.

The longest of the time corridors extend for about three thousand years in both directions, each from its own particular individual activation point. 

"Every few centuries there is a portal, twenty-five years wide. The intervals cannot be less than about two hundred years, or the weakened forcefield would collapse.'" (p. 33)

In the twentieth century, Wardens led by Storm activated a tunnel into the Ranger heartland two thousand years later. There must have been a portal at or soon after the activation point because the Wardens intended to travel through the tunnel to attack the Rangers. However, two thousand years later, Brann of the Rangers was informed both of the existence and of the spatial location of this otherwise secret tunnel which would have had a portal into the Wardens' and Rangers' "present." (Both sides are prevented from using the tunnels to travel futureward so that, apart from their journeys into the past, they are confined to a shared "present" like non-time-travellers.)

It is wrong to think (if anyone does) that:

Brann waited for the corridor to arrive in his present;

at the same moment when the corridor was activated, the Wardens attempted to attack through it but were repulsed by the Rangers' counterattack.

If the corridor has in fact been activated in the twentieth century, then it does not arrive but already exists in the Wardens' and Rangers' period. Knowing the spatial location of the corridor, Brann needs only to make his way to it, either find a portal already in place or wait for the next one to begin its twenty-five year existence, then enter the corridor. Wardens and Rangers do not enter the corridor at the same moment in historical time although I think that they should enter it at the same moment in its own internal temporal sequence.

Life After Death

Good Morning. A philosopher has emailed me the text of his book defending life after death, asking for comments. It will take me a while to read it because my screen scrolls up and down too fast. This will take some time from blogging, especially since I intend to walk to the gym first. 

In Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, a character is seen wandering in the hereafter. Survival after death is a major part of literature and fantasy fiction. I am skeptical because I see consciousness as originating in animal sensation which was a qualitative transformation of organismic sensitivity. However, I remain open to arguments and evidence.

A Hypothetical Causal Circle With Already Known Effects

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR.

Storm to Lockridge:

"'I sometimes wonder if, at the last, engineers will not go back sixty million years and build great space fleets, for a battle that wiped out the dinosaurs and left eternal scars on the moon....'" (p. 33)

The longest time corridors are about six thousand years long so sixty million years would need a lot of corridors. But we know that the "time wardens," successors of the Wardens and Rangers, use more conventional time machines so maybe such machines will be used in the time war before it ends? Killing the dinosaurs and scarring the Moon would have been a fitting conclusion. A time travel novel should explain both future and past events.

One More Causal Circle

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TWENTY.

"It came to him what he must do. He sat moveless so long that Auri grew frightened. 'Are you well, my dear one?'

"'Yes,' he said, and kissed her."

-CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 190.

This is an Andersonian moment of realization. Lockridge has realized what he must do but the reader must wait and see although not for too long because the novel ends on p. 204.

Lockridge, Auri and a group of her kin have been able to escape because the village where they were being oppressed has been attacked by a fleet. Now they must travel back in time and become that fleet. The battle has already been won but they have yet to fight it.

We have reread far enough to remember this final plot twist but are unlikely to reread any more this evening.

The elements have been playing their usual role:

"For some time Lockridge prowled the hall. The night was noisy with wind, but he heard a thrusting silence."

-CHAPTER NINETEEN, p. 178.

"Rain started before dawn. Lockridge awoke to the sound of it..."

-CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 180.

Rain gives way to mist which hides the approaching fleet...

See also:

Dimensions, A Realization And Circularity

Understanding Conflict

 

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR.

When Storm asks whether a man from Lockridge's past could:

"'...really feel what the basic difference is that divides East and West in your time?'" (p. 34)

- Lockridge replies:

"'I reckon not... In fact quite a few of our own don't seem to see it.'" (ibid.)

What that means is that Lockridge has his opinion and other people have theirs but Lockridge's way of expressing this is to claim that he understands the East-West division whereas the others do not! It would probably be difficult to get him to accept that there are more than two perspectives on the issue. 

In 1916, Irish Republicans proclaimed, "We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland!" I cite that as a (perhaps) less controversial way to make a point. When many people have been persuaded that there are two and only two sides, it is possible to claim allegiance to a third. Again, "England's disadvantage is Ireland's advantage..."

Lockridge is taken far away from the Cold War, first into the Wardens-Rangers conflict of the future, then into the Bronze Age.

Conflicts In The Time Corridors

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR.

When Lockridge asks Storm whether the Wardens and Rangers know their own future, she replies:

"'No. When the activator is turned on to make a new corridor, it drives a shaft equally far in both directions. We ventured ahead of our era. There were guardians who turned us back, with weapons we did not understand. It was too terrible.'" (pp. 33-34)

She also relates that the Wardens drove a new passage from the twentieth century into the Ranger heartland:

"'But the moment the corridor was finished, Brann came down it with an overwhelming force. I do not know how he got word. Only I escaped.'" (p. 36) 

Two groups, the corridor guardians and Rangers led by Brann, had advance warning that a time corridor extended into their era. As soon as they had access to a portal into the corridor, they entered that corridor and moved down it to repel those attempting to advance up the corridor from its activation point. The rival groups did not simply travel along the corridor without encountering each other which is what usually does happen to time travellers throughout this novel...

Free Choice And The Future

 

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Storm to Lockridge:

"'Don't talk to me about free choice...unless you think every war should only be fought by volunteers.'" (p. 177)

Robert Heinlein thought that. He opposed conscription. Free men fight. I saw a comic strip adaptation of Starship Troopers in which a general called for more conscription! A travesty of Heinelin's message. Not that I support Heinlein's militaristic message but nor should it be travestied.

Storm reminds Lockridge and us that Wardens and Rangers do not know their own future because the "'...corridor guardians...'" (p. 167) prevent them from travelling futureward. They learn their future only day by day like those of us who do not have time travel. If Storm had succeeded in mounting an attack through a new corridor driven into the Ranger heartland, then that attack would have taken Brann by surprise. However, treble-agent Lockridge warned him. Lockridge's role is crucial.

Koriachs And Corridors

The Corridors Of Time.

Storm's title is "'...Koriach of the Westmark.'" (p. 136)  Wardens believe that a Koriach is "'...an actual immortal incarnation of the Goddess...'" (p. 137) Neither elected nor selected, she choses her successor (p. 155), making for even more power politics. A Koriach has even more absolute authority over the Wardens than a Director has over the Rangers. (p. 138)

There are two mysteries about time corridors:

(i) Why does everyone who enters a corridors not enter it simultaneously in terms of the internal chronology of the corridor?

(ii) Given that that does not happen, what does determine the order of events within a corridor?

The Warden Hu seems to think that there is a correlation between his biographical time and corridor time. (See "Now.") Having recently, in biographical terms, been involved in the capture of Director Brann, he thinks that that capture will decrease the probability of him encountering Rangers while passing through a corridor but how would that work?

Grisly Paradoxes

 

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Hu's group has arrived in 1827 BC some weeks later than he had wanted. The width of the human body causes an uncertainty factor when exiting a time corridor. He considers reentering the corridor and trying again but decides against this when his men show alarm and one even begins to object. Hu says:

"'No. That sort of thing can entangle you in the grisliest paradoxes, if you're unlucky.'" (p. 156)

What paradoxes? Hu's remark recalls the "curious possibilities" that HG Wells mentions but leaves unspecified. Later in The Corridors..., Lockridge and Auri do catch sight of their younger selves but that paradox is otherwise avoided in this narrative. Hu has had some couriers back and forth during a few weeks so he has some idea of what to expect in 1827 BC at least as of about month before this latest arrival. If any disaster has struck in that time, he does not know about it yet...

Wardens And The Wind

 

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"[Lockridge] stood for a time and raged. Outside, the wind gusted under the eaves." (p. 154)

As within, so without.

When he goes outside:

"The wind streaked around him, with a rattle of dead leaves." (ibid.)

Dead leaves - death. The moon looks shrunken and he also hears the hunters.

When he rejoins Auri, who immediately says that Storm is not and cannot be the Goddess, Lockridge replies:

"'She isn't...'" (p. 156)

He has seen enough to know that Storm is not the Goddess as understood by Auri. 

He has also begun to move towards a position independent of both Wardens and Rangers. More must happen in just under fifty pages. The conclusion approaches and, unlike Jack Havig, Lockridge's contribution will be in the past, not in the future.

Fundamental Questions

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. 

"'You're so pale,' the woman said. 'Would you care for drink?'

"'Christ, yes!' [Lockridge] meant no blasphemy: not of that god." (p. 152)

He has seen the savagery of the Wardens' reign. They debase their pantheism by hunting and burning human beings.

Suddenly a novel with an exotic futuristic setting addresses basic social issues.

See:

"Extra People"

There are too many people to serve the purposes of bureaucrats or aristocrats but not too many people to serves the purposes of people themselves! - who should be ends, not means. But we have discussed this issue in two previous posts.

Serious sf always returns to fundamental questions.

Pantheism And Materialism

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Warden religion is:

"...a mystical, ritualistic pantheism..." (p. 125)

- whereas Ranger philosophy is:

"...a harsh materialistic theory of history." (ibid.)

Can a theory be harsh? We can only read between the lines here. I take these phrases to mean that Ranger philosophy is mechanically reductionist, i.e., that it asserts that all that exists is mechanically interacting particles with only the quantifiable properties of mass and volume and that consciousness is "nothing but"/entirely reducible to neuronic interactions. This is an outmoded scientific theory. A more advanced materialist philosophy asserts that energy is dynamic, not mechanical, and that quantitative changes in complexity and sensitivity generate irreducible qualitative transformations, including consciousness. 

I would add to this that individuals and groups can intuit their oneness with being/energy and can express this oneness through rituals. Therefore, I expect the later "time wardens" period to synthesize Warden and Ranger world-views. 

History And Biography

In time travel fiction, we encounter two distinct orders of events: historical and (for time travellers) biographical. Historically, the twentieth century continues to precede the twenty-first century as it has always done, no matter how many time travellers pass back and forth between the centuries. 

Biographically, a time traveller:

departs from the twenty-first century;

arrives in the twentieth century;

spends some time in the twentieth century;

departs from the twentieth century;

arrives back in the twenty-first century, in the simplest case scenario some time after his departure from it.

Historically, the order of these events is:

arrival in the twentieth century;

time spent in the twentieth century;

departure from the twentieth century;

departure from the twenty-first century;

arrival back in the twenty-first century.

In The Corridors Of Time, both Storm and Brann are born long after the twentieth century but die long before it. Historically, their deaths precede their births. Biographically, in the order in which an individual experiences the events of his life, no one's death can or ever does precede his birth.

That all seems straightforward although I think that I once conversed with someone who had problems even with that. But there might be an unconscious assumption that biographical orders that are out of sync with the historical order should nevertheless remain in sync with each other. The Warden Hu, having lived through the experience of capturing the Ranger Brann in Neolithic Denmark, seems to think that, from this moment on during his travels through time, he should encounter only Rangers who also know of Brann's capture. The very nature of time travel means that this is not the case. Indeed, Lockridge accompanies Hu to the Wardens-Rangers period precisely in order to contact the Brann who, biographically, has not yet been captured in order to persuade him to travel to Neolithic Denmark where/when he will be/has already been captured.

"Now"

 

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Hu the Warden takes Lockridge and Auri through a succession of time corridors to his home era. When Lockridge wonders why Storm had not returned home by this same route, Hu replies that, having encountered Rangers in a corridor when she was with Lockridge:

"'...she estimated too big a probability of doing so again. Only now, when we have Brann, is this a reasonably safe course to follow.'" (p. 124)

What does "now" mean? They have just come from Neolithic Denmark where the Wardens have taken Brann prisoner but Brann before his capture still exists at different times in the future as do other time travelling Rangers who could still apprehend Hu and his companions.

This time travel logic needs more work.

Werewolves

 

Steve Matuchek, the narrator of Poul Anderson's Operation Otherworld, is a werewolf. "The Hunt" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Fables And Reflection, which I am rereading late at night, is narrated by a werewolf. I was looking for a connection and realized that this was it. Synchronicity time, again.

We have found several parallels between Anderson and Gaiman. See here. However, the one kind of fiction that Gaiman never writes is sf whereas hard sf is what Anderson wrote most of.

Today was gardening. Tomorrow morning might be gym. Always, usually, also some blogging. The past and future history in The Corridors of Time grab me but I am still finding the corridors themselves problematic. I have not reread as far as the future periods yet and will stay with Gaiman for the rest of this evening.

Paradox

The Corridors Of Time.

Brann captures Storm and Lockridge.

Brann tells Lockridge that he, Lockridge, will defect from the Wardens and will come to tell Brann where to go to capture Storm and himself.

Lockridge escapes and brings Wardens who capture Brann and rescue Storm.

Storm asks Lockridge to pretend to defect.

What would happen if Lockridge refused? He remains loyal to Storm and does not refuse. If Lockridge were the sort of person who would have refused, then this sequence of events would not have occurred.

A Star And The Sea

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER THIRTEEN. 

Storm:

"...shone, Lockridge thought dizzily, like that sea which was also the Goddess'." (p. 115)

We find parallels with another time travel narrative:

"...often she rose early, long before the sun, to watch over her sea. Upon her brow shone the morning star."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 467.

(Unfortunately, there are no cover images for "Star of the Sea" because it was never published as a single volume.)

"Upon her brow a star burned white as the fire's heart.'" (II, p. 557)

"'There's something about a star and the sea, but I know nothing of that, we're inlanders here...'" (10, p. 552)

"Hers are the sea and the ships that plow it." (III, p. 628)

"Pure as yourself, your evenstar shines above the sunset... Lay your gentleness on the seas...

"Ave Stella Maris!" (IV, p. 640)