Conversation Above A Bookshop

 

"The Saturn Game," the opening instalment of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, is set around 2055 and describes the exploration of the outer Solar System. Is that where we are going to be thirty years hence?

I trust Andrea's judgement up to a point so - provisional predictions from this afternoon's conversation:

Civil war in the US and the UK in 2028?

We have passed some ecological tipping points so - a billion dead in thirty years?

The species will survive but will have to rebuild?

Our Chaos will last longer than that of the Technic History?

In 1960's sf, most futures had spaceships in the twenty-first century, a few had post-nuclear-war survival. Anderson, of course, had both and also combined them. Maybe our future, later in this century, is post-ecological-catastrophe survival? I am glad to have a daughter and granddaughter now but wonder what they will have to endure.

"'Oh, God, the young, the poor young!'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), p. 6.

"'The tough and lucky will survive...'" (ibid.)

Poul Anderson and his fictional relative, Robert Anderson, discuss:

"...the probable shape of the future..." (ibid.)

We remember HG Wells' title: The Shape Of Things To Come. That is always on our minds both in sf and in reality.

Mammoth, Wind And Cold

13,211 B. C., I. 

Aryut's daughter, made pregnant by the invaders, dies with her baby in childbirth. When this has happened:

"Afar, a mammoth trumpeted. The wind loudened. This was going to be a cold summer." (p. 193)

The wind, commenting as ever, is this time accompanied by a trumpeting mammoth and by a cold summer. This summer will be "cold" for the Tulat because they will continue to be oppressed by the Cloud People. Something else will happen but that is the situation right now...

Breakfast post. Second coffee. I can just about guarantee to reread a short passage of a Poul Anderson text and find a phrase to post about. The wind continually comments on the action.

Getting ready to go out.

Laterz.

Early Exploitation

13,211 B. C.

The invaders command that the locals, the Tulat/"We," must carry gifts to them continually during the spring. This means that the Tulat have less time to hunt and gather for themselves.

This demonstrates a point about the origins of slavery. When the productivity of human labour was so low that the work of a single individual was sufficient to maintain only that single individual, then no one was able to enslave anyone else. If A ate what B produced, then B would starve so that A would be unable to enslave B. Oppressed though they are by their new masters, the Tulat must already be able to produce more than they need for themselves. Otherwise, this new exploitative system would not work.

But was there an earlier time when productivity was so low that exploitation was impossible? I have thought so but I realize that my understanding has been based on particular books that I have read. The Time Patrol is able to go and find out.

The Brown Bear

The Shield Of Time, 13,211 B. C., pp.187-249.

In winter:

"...the brown bear shared dreams with the dead but the white bear walked the sea ice." (I, p. 187)

The brown bear hibernated, therefore dreamed, therefore entered the realm of the dead.

To our ancestors, it seemed that, while asleep, they left their bodies and entered another realm where they could meet, i.e., dream about, the dead. It followed that there was in fact another realm to be entered temporarily in sleep and permanently at death. That realm was neither a heaven nor a paradise but the mere absence of life: darkness, silence etc. It would have been better if it did not happen.

“Say not a word in death's favor; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead." -Achilles”

― Homer, The Odyssey

Dreams result from sleeping brain activities. Consciousness is a property of organisms with central nervous systems. Or so I think. But there is nothing to warrant all the certainty that is expressed on the matter.

Two Bookshops

Tomorrow will be my monthly visit to (male) Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. Regular blog readers know that this means no posts during the day but possibly something interesting later. (That could be me in the picture.) (No, having enlarged the picture, I think not.)

In The Shield Of Time, 1990 A. D., pp. 176-186, Everard and Wanda meet in:

"'The bookshop...'" (p. 178)

- more specifically a high quality second hand bookshop in San Francisco whose proprietor is also a Time Patrol agent. 

We have remarked before that anachronistic surroundings, whether old hotels or this particular bookshop, are appropriate settings for time travellers. Most visitors to the bookshop know nothing of time travel. This might best be brought home to readers by a contemporary novel whose characters interact with the bookshop proprietor, Nick, this to be followed by a Time Patrol novel, like indeed The Shield Of Time, showing Nick to be a Patrol agent. Different genres coexist in Poul Anderson's multiverse and their coexistence could be realized more concretely. Aliens, immortals, deities and time travellers walk among us on parallel Earths which means that we also walk among them - so let's see some of Manse Everard's New York neighbours, for example.

Potlatch

See blog search result for potlatch. (Scroll down.) The post, "Potlatch And Prayer," includes a link to a Wikipedia article explaining "potlatch." My only point at this late hour is that my late night other reading is again relevant. In Mike Carey's Lucifer: Evensong, God proposes a potlatch to Lucifer. How Lucifer responds, I leave it to readers to discover.

Good night.

Surf, Birds And Wind

The Shield Of Time, 13,212 B. C., pp. 172-175.

Members of the Tulat/"We," the tribe known to Wanda Tamberly, stand and wait as a group of the newcomers approaches:

"Behind [the Tulat] surf growled, above them birds shrilled, around them wind whistled emptily." (p. 173)

On this occasion, the wind is joined by surf and birds and all three natural phenomena anticipate a bad outcome:  by growling, shrilling, whistling - not cheerfully but emptily.

In autumn, the Tulat like to wallow in hot mud and wash in hot spring water but, as they await the intruders, wind scatters the warmth of a nearby pool:

"...into nothingness." (p. 174)

The same message. Sure enough, the encounter involves proposed exploitation followed by unsuccessful resistance. We have already heard a partly familiar prayer:

"You Who Know Strangeness, why have you forsaken Us?" (p. 173)

Meanwhile, in 1990 AD, Wanda tries to do something about this. (I follow HG Wells in pretending that time travel allows us to speak of different times as if they were the same time: "...even now...")

Why?

The Shield Of Time.

The Time Patrol prevents time criminals:

"...from destroying that history which leads through the ages to the Danellians. For them this may be a matter of simple survival. They have never told us, we hardly ever see them, we do not know." 

- 1965 A. D., pp. 159-171 AT pp. 163-164.

It seems that there is a very great deal that we, the readers, do not know but that we might have learned some of if the series had continued. As it happens, we do learn more than we would have done if the series had remained just its original four instalments.

Imagine if someone showed up now who not only claimed to remember a different history of the twentieth century but who also displayed documentation and other physical evidence to back up his account? Like coinage that would have been minted if the British Royal Abdication had not happened? Documents signed and sealed by an alternative President of the United States? And so on. What would be the simplest explanation of such phenomena? Entire other universes or just some quantum fluctuations?

I only work here.

Wind In Beringia

The Shield Of Time.

Paleo-Indians from Siberia, led by Red Wolf, arrive in Beringia and confront the archaic Caucasoids, led by Wanda's friend, Aryut, whose ancestors had come from Asia earlier. 

"Red Wolf stopped three paces from [Aryut]. Eyes stared into eyes. Silence stretched amidst the wind." (p. 156)

Wind often underlines pregnant silences.

Wanda, now absent, had protected Aryut at his first encounter with Red Wolf but:

"'Where is your protector today?' Red Wolf jeered. Only the wind replied." (p. 157)

This means that there is no reply but often the wind comes across as an active participant. 

Poul Anderson's universes are haunted by winds. Anderson quotes Shelley in Trader To The Stars so here is some relevant Shelley:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

-from here. 

Narrative Developments

Each of the four stories collected in Poul Anderson's Guardians Of Time is narrated from Manse Everard's point of view and in the third person. The uniform format is that each story features Everard working with one other Time Patrol agent just as the uniform format of one subseries of Isaac Asimov's Robot stories is that each story features the same pair of US Robots troubleshooters, Powell and Donovan, but each time working with a different problematic experimental robot. (Indeed, Anderson later contributed one such Powell and Donovan story.)

In a later edition of Guardians Of Time, re-entitled The Guardians Of Time, the one extra story is again a third person narrative but differs in two other respects. First, it is shorter and, secondly, its viewpoint character is Patrol agent Tom Nomura with Everard still present but now as a background supporting character. Everard has achieved an elder statesman status.

These five stories have in common that they had been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction before they were collected.

The second collection, Time Patrolman, presented several innovations. First, its two, longer, stories had not previously been published anywhere else but were original to this collection. Secondly, although the first instalment, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," reverts to Everard as viewpoint character, the second, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," introduces Patrol agent Carl Farness who is not only a new one-off viewpoint character, with Everard again relegated to a supporting role, but also, for the first time in this series, a first person narrator. Thirdly, several chapters present the points of view neither of Farness nor of any other time traveller but of people living in the past. These chapters show us "Carl" as he appears to others who do not know that he is a time traveller - or indeed that there is any such thing as time travel - but who do come to think that Carl is Odin. These chapters are third person narratives.

The complicated narrative structure of the third volume, The Year Of The Ransom, is summarized here where I should also have mentioned that Wanda Tamberly's viewpoint passages are first person narrations although Wanda becomes instead a third person character in The Shield Of Time. When that novel, the fourth volume in the series, informs us that:

"Red Fox and his men could not harry the mammoths much farther..." (II, p. 149)

- we are again in the point of view of a character in the past who meets time travellers without understanding what they are. There will be more of that in this novel.

"Star of the Sea" presents not only past but also mythological points of view. 

"Death and the Knight" opens with the viewpoint of Hugues Marot in 1307 but then reverts to Everard with whom the series concludes.

Quite a ride through time.

Impoverished

Before Wanda Tamberly attends the Time Patrol Academy, Manse Everard tells her that pre-civilization Earth was "'...fit for gods...'" (Searching the blog reveals that we have quoted this phrase several times.)

In Beringia in 13,212 BC, Wanda sees for herself. Nine kinds of birds fly "...in their hundreds...":

"After two years she still found marvel in the lavishness of life, at the very gates of the Ice. Not before leaving her home world had she really known how impoverished it was."

-Poul Anderson, 13,212 B. C., I, IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 139-149 AT p. 140.

In case I have made anyone curious and they do not have the book to hand:

gulls

ducks

geese

cranes

swans

plover

snipe

curlews

one hovering eagle

But the main point here is that our world is impoverished. That is a point not to be read past but to be pondered. Maybe we have a responsibility to restore that lavishness of life? And to put industries into space?

POVs In THE SHIELD...

In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time, PARTs ONE, THREE and FIVE are short introductions or interludes. Everard is the viewpoint character of ONE and FIVE; Wanda of THREE.

PART TWO is about Everard in Bactra in 209 BC but each chapter about him there/then is preceded by a chapter about an "earlier" event elsewhere/when. Two such chapters recount conversations between Everard and Wanda, in 1987 AD and 1988 AD, respectively. When Wanda telephones to change a dinner date, Everard time travels to the changed date.

PART FOUR is about Wanda in Beringia in 13,212 BC. Two chapters recount conversations with Everard in 1990. The first is narrated from Everard's pov. The second, which is the concluding chapter of PART FOUR, seems to be entirely objective narration unless it is slightly Wanda's pov. She is awed, she wonders and she hugs herself as if in a glacier wind. (The wind, yet again.)

PART SIX is equally about both characters with strong input from Keith Denison whom we saw before in "Brave To Be A King."

This second post of today might also be the last. I am feeling unaccountably tired and am also drawn back to other reading - which often has resonances. Earlier, I set off to walk across town to meditate in a side chapel of the Cathedral but was diverted to a massive and impressive exhibition on Islam in the Town Hall. Lancaster manifests its diversity yet again. Other members of my family were at the ballet at the Grand Theatre. It's all happening and all that.

Narrative Points Of View In One Story

"The Year of the Ransom"

10 September 1987 Wanda Tamberly (grabbed by Castelar)

3 June 1533 [Julian calendar] Luis Ildefonso Castelar y Moreno (with Tanaquil)

15 April 1610 Stephen Tamberly/Fray Esteban Tanaquil (with Castelar)

11 May 2937 B.C. Stephen Tamberly (with Castelar)

3 November 1885 Manse Everard (with Helen Tamberly)

30 October 1986 Wanda Tamberly (with Everard)

11 May 2937 B.C. Stephen Tamberly (with Castelar)

12 May 2937 B.C. Stephen Tamberly

22 July 1435 Wanda Tamberly (with Castelar)

22 May 1987 Wanda Tamberly (with Castelar)

23 May 1987 Everard (with Wanda)

15 April 1610 Everard

24 May 1987 Everard (with Wanda)

6 February [Julian calendar] Castelar

24 May 1987 Everard

18 August 2930 B.C. Stephen Tamberly

25 May 1987 Wanda (with Everard)

Seventeen dated episodes. That summary might recall some of the plot of the story to those who have read it.

Wanda x 5

Castelar x 2

Stephen Tamberly x 5

Everard x 5

Wanda becomes a major viewpoint character and this continues in The Shield Of Time.

Wanda Tamberly

When Guion asks Manse Everard about Wanda Tamberly in The Shield Of Time, PART ONE, that was my first indication that I had missed a Time Patrol instalment, namely The Year Of The Ransom. Thus, when The Time Patrol omnibus collection was published, I was able to read two instalments for the first time, "The Year..." and "Star of the Sea," the latter published for the first time in this collection. Finally, I read "Death and the Knight" in Tales Of The Knights Templar, edited by Katherine Kurtz, before this last Time Patrol instalment was incorporated into Time Patrol.

Wanda plays an increasing role in The Shield..., becoming a viewpoint character co-equal with Everard, and is still around as a supporting character in "Death..." Their relationship has just begun and the story is not completed. 

Wind And What Is

Poul Anderson, 1988 A. D. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 95-101.

By now we notice every reference to the wind in Poul Anderson's works and this is a good one. On Twin Peaks:

"Wind boomed, full of sea. It was too cold to stand in for long." (p. 99)

But Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly enjoy standing in it for a while. We have all had experiences like that.

Wanda says that it is hard to get in touch with her feelings, then accuses herself of:

"'Psychobabble!'" (p. 98)

Each of us can criticize him- or herself. I overheard a guy saying:

"My ex-wife was coming out with all this psychobabble..."

Extremely insensitive! - or so I thought, at least.

The two Patrol agents reflect on their work:

"We guard what is. We may not ask whether it should be. We had best not ask what 'is' means." (p. 99)

Someone has to ask whether it should be! And philosophers will always ask what "is" means.

Not Beyond Time

A very long time ago, when I was a teenager in the 1960's, I very vaguely thought that the Danellians, in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, lived at the End of Time at which point they somehow transcended time in an apotheosis of trans-human consciousness. This misconception was abetted by the fact that I had been brought up to believe that both human history in general and individual human destinies in particular were already moving in that kind of direction - towards an ultimate goal beyond time. There was some kind of End Point involved. 

Of course, a mere million years hence is nowhere near the End of Time. Also, all that the Danellians - to our knowledge - do with time is to regulate time travel in their past for purely pragmatic reasons. If nothing else, they want to ensure that they will always be able to travel into their past and return to their unaltered "present."

Nevertheless, there are two aspects of the Danellians that lend them some kind of superior status. First, they are our evolutionary successors. Secondly, one of them explicitly states that they have been taken:

"'...beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 435.

Anderson's Dominic Flandry series concludes by referring to a transcendent goal, Fr. Axor's search for the Universal Incarnation. Do the Chereinonites have something in common with the Danellians?

A Continually Developing Series

For a decade and a half, Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series existed as only four stories with no Exaltationists and no Wanda Tamberly. "Delenda Est" was the culmination.

Then:

"Gibraltar Falls" continued the series;

Time Patrolman introduced the Exaltationists;

The Year Of The Ransom introduced Wanda Tamberly and reintroduced Exaltationists;

The Shield Of Time reintroduced both, developed them both further and also developed the basic concept of the series further;

"Star of the Sea" introduced a new concept of variable reality.

"Delenda Est," The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, "Amazement of the World," and "Star of the Sea" are arguably three culminating points of a series that never ceased to develop. 

"Let's Go."

"'Let's go,' Everard said, and led them away."

-Poul Anderson, "Death and the Knight" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverside, NY, 1991), pp. 737-765 AT p. 765.

This is both the very last sentence in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and our last sight of Manse Everard. The end of the series and our last sight of Everard were not necessarily going to be identical but there was always a good chance that they would be. The very beginning of the series is Everard's interview for his job with the Patrol. Then, after that introduction, he appears in every subsequent instalment including the few in which he is not the central character.

A chapter of The Shield Of Time has a similar ending:

"Through the transceiver: 'Come join us and let's get this business finished.'"

-209 B. C., p.118.

This also is the end of a mission although not the end of the novel or even of PART TWO. Instead, this fifth and final "209 B. C." chapter is followed first by Everard's debrief with Shalten in Paris in 1902 A. D., then by an authorized Time Patrol alteration of an event in 1985 A. D. Only then does the narrative proceed to PART THREE and to Wanda Tamberly at the Patrol Academy in the Oligocene period in 31,275,389 B. C., a setting with which we are already familiar from the opening instalment, "Time Patrol." The series goes a long way and could have gone much further.

Precise Deployment

Poul Anderson, 209 B. C. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 102-118.

Contrast the Time Traveller's mad flinging of himself "'...into futurity.'" with Manse Everard's precise deployment of timecycles while apprehending the last Exaltationists in 209 BC.

At a temple of Poseidon outside the city of Bactra, a priest, a devotee and a pilgrim are two Exaltationists and Everard in disguise. One Exaltationist, Draganizu, wears a stolen Time Patrol communicator disguised as a medallion. Despite several Syrian soldiers guarding the Exaltationists, Everard attacks and kills Draganizu, disables his companion, snatches and activates the medallion and says in Temporal:

"'Unattached Everard. Come immediately. Combat.'" (p. 113)

Time Patrol agents on five timecycles arrive and stun the soldiers. Another two Exaltationists in the city have a detector that will inform them of the arrival of timecycles. Everard, taking charge of one timecycle, leads two others in flying above the city. Everard and Imre Ruszek, on their single timecycle, appear in the Exaltationists' dwelling one minute before the detector sounds its alarm. They arrive in front of a locked door previously noticed by Everard, thus blocking access to the Exaltationists' timecycles. One Exaltationist runs around a corner and is shot dead by Ruszek. The other surrenders.

Everything depends on the five timecycles arriving when Everard calls them, then Everard and Ruszek arriving before the alarm sounds, which means that Everard and Ruszek arrive in the Exaltationists' house one minute before the five timecycles arrive at the temple.

In The Dark

 

Poul Anderson, 209 B. C. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), pp. 47-65.

"Quiet had fallen; before streetlights, most people were indoors by dark." (p. 60)

Presumably they were. At least that is a sound inference.

"Mental map or no, it wasn't easy finding your way with neither lamps nor signs. Everard lost his a couple of times, and cursed." (p. 63)

We banish darkness with electric light. How much difference has this made to human consciousness by ending superstition and fear of the unknown?

"'...the ghosts of night-bound peoples evaporate from their mythologies as soon as they're able to produce light even at midnight simply by tripping a switch.'"

-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-506 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 507.

I had to trek upstairs to find that Blish quote but it was worth the effort.

Cuicuilco

I do not remember reading about Cuicuilco before but I find that I have posted about it four times. See here. (Scroll down.) And now a fifth.

There is a finite number of time travellers on Earth in 209 BC - including in Cuicuilco. When all of these time travellers have completed their business in that year, that will be the end of the matter and there will be no further need or occasion for anyone to travel to 209 BC. That year can be regarded as closed, completed and done with - and the same applies to every other year.

Everard learns that the time travel traffic in 209 BC includes himself leading the capture or killing of the last of the Exaltationists - not a routine task like the work of the Patrol base staff or of the historical investigators but nevertheless a single finite operation that, once completed, can be left when it is as part of the fixed past and need not be revisited. In that sense, the entire history of the Patrol is complete, including the retirement and death of the last graduate of the Academy. Reading the series might generate an impression of endlessness but that would be misleading.

Life really is busier here. Maybe only one post today.

Fatalism And Profit

209 B. C.

Poul Anderson makes an intelligent guess:

"...most people in the ancient world were more or less fatalistic. Events to come might work out for the better instead of the worst. Undoubtedly many a mind was occupied with how to make an extra profit from the situation." (p. 49)

(The situation being invasion and imminent siege.)

The gambler's philosophy:

"This year, the Jade Emperor's turn. Next year, mine."

When the future was uncertain at work, we received some professional pep talks/morale boosts etc. Someone said that most of what we worry about does not happen and that what does happen would have happened anyway. That helps, I think.

I have also read that the lowest social strata welcome news of war because war means change and, for them, any change can only be for the better! (Experience might contradict this but, before experience, there is hope.)

Ancient fatalism expresses a lot of experience and wisdom. Nowadays there is more knowledge to hand. We can try to gain a better collective understanding and grasp of events.

Teaching

Poul Anderson, 209 B. C. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991) AT pp. 47-65. 

In 209 BC, Buddhism still flourishes in India. There are converts and visiting co-religionists in Bactra. We are told that:

"At last the teaching of Gautama Buddha would ebb from his native India until there it was all but forgotten." (p. 47)

While Buddhism receded in India, the Buddha was repackaged as an avatar of Vishnu, the most comprehensive monotheist deity. Vaishnavism and Buddhism are a personalist and an impersonalist religion, respectively. If I ever came to be persuaded of a personal deity, then I would be drawn towards the former. But my present understanding is that the Teacher is all reality, the Teaching is all experience and the Community is all beings.

Poul Anderson treats religious traditions so sympathetically that we can (sometimes) be drawn into saying what we think about them.

Homage...

Change And Chance

Poul Anderson, 209 B. C. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991) AT pp. 17-25.

This is the first of five chapters headed 209 B. C. in PART TWO of Volume II of the complete Time Patrol collection.

Physically, all that happens in this chapter is that Hipponicus' caravan, including the guard Meander (Manse Everard), approaches and enters Bactra. But high technology is at work. An unmanned spacecraft had tracked the caravan, revealing that it would suit Everard's purposes to join it. So Meander was with the caravan when it was tracked. 

We read the usual Andersonian details about the countryside, then the city. Everard recalls Afghanistan, 1970, and reflects:

"A lot of change and chance would blow from the steppes in the millennia to come. Too damn much." (p. 22)

Too much? But we would not want the region or the world to remain as it was in 209 BC? "Change and chance" is an evocative phrase encapsulating much that is to be found in Poul Anderson's historical fiction, historical science fiction, time travel fiction and future histories. That phrase says it all. The particular works fill in the details.

Change and chance... 

Myths, Tales And Dreams

Manse Everard tells Wanda Tamberly that Galileo never said:

"'Nevertheless, it moves.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p.27.

Everard adds:

"'It's a myth.'" (p. 28)

- and reflects:

"The kind of myth humans live by, more than they do by facts." (ibid.)

For Stalin on the Pope, see here.

Morpheus tells Auberon and Titania:

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."

-Neil Gaiman, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: Dream Country (New York, 1995), pp. 62-86 AT p. 83, panel 5.

The two main kinds of Buddhism are Theravada and Mahayana. Zen is Mahayana. A Sri Lankan Theravadin graduate student, attending our Zen group, enquired about the differences between traditions. For one difference, Theravada refers to the historical Buddha whereas Mahayana also refers to mythological Buddhas.

There you have the wisdom of Manse Everard, Morpheus and the Buddha Dharma.

Everard's Experiences

Where should we go after rereading to the end of Poul Anderson's "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks"?

In Time Patrolman (two stories), "Ivory..." is followed by "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."

In The Time Patrol (nine), "Ivory..." is followed by "The Sorrow...," then by two other installments.

In Time Patrol (ten), "Ivory..." is followed by "The Sorrow...," then by three others.

In Manse Everard's experience, "Ivory..." is directly followed by The Shield Of Time, PART ONE.

The narratives become more elaborate. The Shield..., PART TWO, is divided into chapters with the headings:

1985 A. D.

209 B. C.

1987 A. D.

209 B. C.

976 B. C.

209 B. C.

1987 A. D.

209 B. C.

1988 A. D.

209 B. C.

1902 A. D.

1985 A. D.

209 A. D. is Everard's pursuit of the last Exaltationists in Bactria. The other dates are various "earlier" events except 1902 A. D. which is "later."

What Are The Danellians?

Manse Everard tells Wanda Tamberly that the Danellians are:

"'...what comes after us in evolution, a million or more years uptime. The way we come after apes. At least that's what most of us suppose. Nobody knows for certain.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 29.

There is obviously scope here for a story that would reveal the true nature of the Danellians, showing that they were not what had been supposed. 

The meaning of the Time Patrol is revealed on p. 435 (of 436) of The Shield... A further volume could have ended with the meaning of the Danellians.

Anderson's Time Patrol series, like his Technic History, could have been extended a lot further.

TIME PATROL And THE SHIELD OF TIME

(i) Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2012) AT pp. 641-735; 23 May 1987 IN "The Year of the Ransom AT pp. 713-719.

(ii) Poul Anderson, 1987 A. D. IN Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991) AT PART ONE, pp. 26-33.

(iii) Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Time Patrol AT pp. 229-331; penultimate passage IN "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" AT pp. 326-327.

(iv) Poul Anderson, 976 B. C. IN The Shield Of Time AT PART ONE, pp. 42-46.

(i) describes a conversation between Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly. (ii) continues that conversation.

(iii) informs us that, after capturing some Exaltationists, Time Patrol agents led by Everard conferred on a small Aegean island. (iv) recounts a conversation on the island between Everard and one of the prisoners.

Thus, The Shield... is hooked to these two previous installments. "The Year..." and "Ivory..." could be collected as The Thieves Of Time to be read immediately before The Shield... These would be companion volumes to be preceded by The Guardians Of Time and The Gods Of Time.

Pum's Insight

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

While Manse Everard ponders how to apprehend Exaltationist time criminals twenty six years earlier, his Tyrian guide, Pum, says:

"'I think...my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.'" (p. 320)

A strange realm: the past.

Wizards: time travellers.

Thus, Pum has seen what is happening. He just needs to be told the details.

That is a good quotation from Pum, worth posting about, except that I find that I have already posted about it four times. See here. 

It is time for me to return to other reading before entering the realm of Morpheus. Tomorrow, Monday, should be gym in the morning and Zen in the evening (choir for Sheila) with maybe some posting in between.

Everard's dialogue with Varagan in The Shield Of Time is noteworthy but we have not got there yet. 

Time Travel Detective Work II

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" is a time travel detective story. Everard follows a trail from person to person:

Pum

Sarai

Jantin-hamu

Bomilcar

Gisgo

- to track down the Exaltationists.

See Pum And Gisgo, also more here.

This is a very carefully constructed narrative. Everard thinks that the Exaltationists must have made their enquiries in King Abibaal's court after bombing a temple, leaving a ransom note and trying to kill him, Everard, during the reign of Abibaal's son, Hiram. Why after? This suits Anderson's story-telling purposes. By capturing the Exaltationists as they sail away from Abibaal's court, the Time Patrol does not prevent them from doing what they had already done later in Hiram's reign.

Life really has got busier here. This afternoon, I attended an event at Preston North End Football Club and therefore did not attend another event at Lancaster Town Hall.

Migrations

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Indo-Europeans migrated across Eurasia, becoming Indians, Europeans etc.

Norsemen settled in France and became Normans who conquered England and invaded Ireland.

"...the Sea Peoples - that buccaneer horde of displaced Cretans and European barbarians, some of them from the far North..." (p. 284)

- mostly raided Egypt and became ancestors of the Philistines although a smaller number of them entered and intermarried in Lebanon and Syria, becoming ancestors of the Phoenicians. 

The Time Patrol has to know about unrecorded migrations. Specialist Keith Denison traces Aryan clan migrations in "Brave To Be A King" and "Amazement of the World." Poul Anderson summarizes the ancestry of both Philistines and Phoenicians in "Ivory..." He embeds his readers in history and prehistory.

Then And Now

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Manse Everard and his Tyrian guide, Pummairam/Pum:

"...threaded their way through jostling, shouting, odorous throngs." (p. 265)

Pum:

"...had become an acolyte at a dockside temple of the comparatively unimportant god Baal Hammon. (Everard harked back to tumbledown churches in the slums of twentieth-century America.)" (p. 266)

And I read about Everard in twenty-first-century Lancaster where, in Market Square today, there were:

Evangelical preachers accompanied by black musicians;

Jehovah's Witnesses displaying pamphlets in English and Polish;

left newspaper sellers;

curries, samosas and bhajis sold by an Asian man and his two sons - the older son informs me that he is conservative in religion but not in politics.

I observe all this, read Poul Anderson, remember Baal Hammon and feel kinship with humanity throughout the ages. 

Time Travellers And Famous People

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Manse Everard has an interview with King Hiram of Tyre. What happens when time travellers meet famous people? Different things. Keith Denison is Cyrus the Great in one timeline.

The Doctor met:

Henry VIII who threw (I can't remember what) at him which the Doctor threw back and was sent to the Tower - where the TARDIS was concealed;

Marco Polo who decided not to write about journeys through time because that would not be believed;

Winston Churchill, but they already knew each other whether from a previous episode or from an incident between episodes;

Queen Victoria who founded an organization to defend the British Empire against threats either extraterrestrial or supernatural.

OK. A trivial introduction to a big topic before going out for the evening.

The Significance Of Tyre And Phoenicia

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Tyre was the main civilizing influence on the Hebrew kingdom and its main trading partner. Tyrians supplied the materials and the skilled labour for the construction of the Temple and advanced many goods to Solomon. Tyrians and Hebrews:

"...would embark on joint exploratory and commercial ventures..." (p. 248)

Solomon sacrificed to Phoenician gods and hostility to Phoenician polytheism motivated the Hebrew prophets.

Hiram became the most powerful Canaanite king. Tyre stood off the Assyrians, traded as far as Britain, founded colonies, including Carthage, provided most of the Persian fleet that attacked Greece and delayed Alexander's progress. 

Several Greek gods began as Phoenician. Phoenicians invented the alphabet, advanced shipbuilding and seamanship and brought back knowledge of Africa, Europe and Asia. Their ideal was the merchant adventurer/explorer/entrepreneur. Hiram presided over the sufettes/magnates and required their approval. Phoenicia and Tyre possibly influenced Greek democracy.

See also:

The Importance Of Tyre

Prophetic Fiction

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Chaim and Yael Zorach's children will join the Time Patrol. Manse Everard reflects:

"If not...could you stand it, watching them grow old, suffer the horrors that will come, finally die, while you are still young of body." (p. 247)

The phrase that attracts my attention here is "...the horrors that will come..." Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series was published from 1955 to 1995, this instalment in 1983. Anderson avoided describing any near future events and this paid off. The series has not become dated by specifying any "horrors" that have not come to pass, e.g., in the 1990's or in the early twenty-first century - but it was a safe bet that there would be horrors. In 2025, we have experienced and are still experiencing them. Anderson was able to leave it vague and yet get it right. The Time Patrol could still be part of our timeline - and yet no, it could not, because, in the Patrol's timeline, Sherlock Holmes was a real person! Also maybe Cyrus the Great was not really a Zoroastrian? Changes in historical understanding can date time travel fiction.

In any case, the "...horrors that will come..." is accurate.

Some Details In Tyre

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Warm, windless weather;

creaking, splashing sweeps;

coxswain's drumbeat;

blue wavelets, glittering, chuckling and swirling;

dazzling water blurring sight;

"...trade through the known world..." (p. 230);

multi-storey houses of stone or cedar;

bustling piers;

list descriptions of men and their activities;

Tyrian dyes;

rolling sounds;

overwhelming vitality;

crippled beggars;

ancient Eastern smells.

There is more.

Tyre

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Sorry, folks, today we are mainly gardening and preparing to deliver a talk this evening.

Years ago, an sf fan remarked to me that usually a time travel story merely informs its readers that its characters are in a particular past year whereas Poul Anderson describes the world in any given past year in minute detail. For example, he devotes several pages to the sights, sounds, smells and life in the harbour and streets of Tyre in 950 AD and all of this is well worth reading even before we arrive at the action: an attempt on Manse Everard's life. Another author might have started with the action.

Meanwhile, since I am an active being, that is all that I have time for right now.

Tyre, 950 BC

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

Manse Everard/Eborix the Celt arrives in Tyre in 950 BC. The Time Patrol base has received a blackmail threat to destroy the city. Everard suspects Merau Varagan. If we are reading the Time Patrol series in its original publication order, then we are as yet unfamiliar with Varagan. Everard recounts his first encounter with that individual, which has to have occurred between episodes, and, at the end of this story, he does indeed apprehend Varagan. Thus, like Moriarty, Varagan is introduced and defeated within a single episode. However, there is more. Another incident involving Exaltationists including Varagan had occurred between the first encounter and the Tyre incident and that is recounted in the later written "The Year of the Ransom." Finally, the tracking down of the remaining Exaltationists occurs in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO, which also involves a flashback to a conversation between Everard and Varagan after the arrest of the latter. Varagan has been promoted to the status of a continuing villain.

Everard And Exaltationists

Manse Everard encounters Exaltationists four times in three instalments in two volumes.

(i) The encounter in Colombia is recounted in a flashback in "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacock," collected in Time Patrol.

(ii) The encounter in Peru is recounted in "The Year of the Ransom," collected in Time Patrol.

(iii) The encounter in Phoenicia is recounted in "Ivory..." but with a coda in a flashback in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO.

(iv) The encounter in Bactria is recounted in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO.

This becomes confusing which is why I thought that it was worthwhile to set it out. That is the entire saga of the Exaltationists.

A Long Way

 

What a long way we have come from The Time Machine to the Time Patrol! 

The Time Machine is a single long story or short novel in which a single Time Traveller makes a single journey on a single Time Machine while the outer narrator considers "...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..." (see here) whereas the Time Patrol is a series of stories and novels in which an organization of time travellers with bases throughout history avoids anachronisms and averts utter confusion. 

In The Time Machine, we engage with the discussion of Time and enjoy the descriptions of time travelling. With the Time Patrol, we engage with the discussion of time travel paradoxes and enjoy the history. 

Although Patrol timecycles bypass spacetime instead of dilating through it, the mutant time travellers of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time recapture the Time Traveller's experience of observing external events flickering past. Anderson, in the Time Patrol and in his other time travel narratives, fully develops all those implicit "curious possibilities."

Leaving The Time Structure Intact?

"The Year of the Ransom."

Manse Everard tells Helen Tamberly that:

"'...the friar Estaban Tanaquil vanished mysteriously two years before, in Cajamarca.'" (p. 669)

(Tanaquil was Steven Tamberly.)

Julio Vasquez tells Everard and Helen Tamberly:

"'Apparently the friar and a soldier went into the house where the hoard was kept one night. When they did not reappear by dawn, the guards grew nervous and opened the door. They were not inside. Every door had been watched. Sensational rumors flew.'" (p. 678)

(A locked room mystery. But a time machine can get in and out of a locked room.)

Vasquez concludes:

"'When I left, the general idea was that sorcerers had been at work. Hysteria was building rapidly. It could have hideous consequences.'" (p. 679)

Everard comments that such consequences:

"'...are not in the history we learned...'" (ibid.)

About another action of the Exaltationist time criminals, Everard reflects:

"We dare not undermine even this forbidden pattern of events." (p. 720)

Yet he later tells Wanda Tamberly:

"'Well, we do have to terminate matters in a way that leaves the time structure intact. We'll put Fray Estaban Tanaquil and Don Luis Castelar in that treasure house in Cajamarca, 1533, a minute or two after the Exaltationists bore them away. They'll exit on foot, and that will be that.'" (p. 732)

When Wanda recalls that the guards became worried, looked inside and found no one and that this generated sensational rumours, Everard replies:

"'...in such cases, when the past has been deformed, the Patrol does annul the events that flow from it. We restore the "original" history, so to speak. As nearly as possible, anyhow.'" (pp. 732-733)

Thus, they annul Vasquez learning that the room had been empty and that sensational rumours flew. Do they also annul Vasquez relaying this information to Everard and Helen Tamberly? I would answer yes because Vasquez relays this information after, not before, the events that he describes.

It seems that Patrol agents know exactly how much they can alter the timeline without causing greater unwanted changes but I do not see where they are able to draw the line.

Castelar And Varagan Escape, Lucifer Falls

"The Year of the Ransom" is carefully slotted into its place in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. Castelar, escaping from the Exaltationists, stabs Merau Varagan but:

"...wasted no time finishing him." (p. 666)

Castelar cannot finish Varagan because Everard must apprehend the latter in "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks." However, by the same token, Varagan's wound is so bad that two of his men immediately whisk him off for medical attention elsewhen which means that they are not in Macchu Picchu to be apprehended by the Patrol agents who attack as soon as Castelar has escaped. Again, Varagan has to be around later so he cannot be apprehended now.

Not every loose end is tied up satisfactorily but these are.

Now I must eat some curry and return to reading Neil Gaiman and maybe also some of Mike Carey who inherited the retired Lucifer Morningstar from Gaiman. 

In "The Year of the Ransom," an Exaltationist who had been hovering on a timecycle above Macchu Picchu:

"...fell as Lucifer fell." (p. 721)

Sometimes all fiction feels like a single series.

A Time Machine In A Spaceship

I was in a science fiction bookshop that sold no science fiction at least not in the sense that I was looking for. There were no novels by Wells, Heinlein, Anderson etc. The "science fiction" of this bookshop was all media-related:

Star Trek

Star Wars

Doctor Who

Battlestar Galactica

Alien

etc

We might as well be talking about different genres.

In Poul Anderson's "The Year of the Ransom," Manse Everard's timecycle appears in the receiver bay of a black spacecraft orbiting Earth on 15 April 1610. This reminded me of Kirk etc "transporting" on and off the Enterprise in Star Trek: a very rare occasion for something in sf proper to remind me of something in sf media-related. 

I first knew of Star Trek before it came on British TV because I was looking for sf by James Blish and came across his first ST adaptation collection. (See the attached image.) That is one of the few links between the two kinds of "sf."

Amend The Tale

"The Year of the Ransom."

Castelar proposes to change history:

"'I should begin by learning what did happen in Peru after I...left it,' Luis is saying. "Then I can plan how to amend the tale. Tell me.'" (p. 708)

That is so easy in fiction. Imagine: an author has written a well-known novel with a lesser known sequel; the sequel is out of print; the author's estate appoints a second well-known author to write another direct sequel to the well-known original novel but with a completely different plot and resolution. Both sequels exist. However, the earlier, out of print sequel is all but forgotten whereas the newly published sequel is widely read and accepted as such by current readers of the original novel. Any sf reader who learns of the earlier sequel can easily rationalize the contents of these two mutually incompatible texts as resulting from a split in time generating two divergent timelines. It sounds so easy. Luis Castelar will think that God sees history like that - and will also prefer to forget about the earlier sequel which he has "amended." 

In The Wilderness

"The Year of the Ransom."

Wanda Tamberly's kidnapper, Castelar, tells Wanda that her Uncle Steve:

"'...is my hostage, left in a wilderness where starvation will soon take him off, unless wild beasts do so first. It is for you to earn his ransom.'" (p. 698)

Castelar, new to time travel, has grasped one of its paradoxes. When the only kind of travel that is involved is through three-dimensional space - whether across the Earth's surface, through the air or between planets - if a captor spends an indefinite period of time away from the wilderness where he has left his hostage, then that hostage can be expected to starve or to be killed by animals. (In fact, Steven Tamberly is resourceful enough to survive but, for the moment, we are reasoning from Castelar's premises.) Since in this case time travel is involved, Castelar can spend any length of time - even years or decades - away from the wilderness and yet can return there soon enough to rescue his hostage. At any time between now and his death, Castelar, provided of course that he retains the timecycle, can decide whether it has been the case that his hostage was left for only a short time in the wilderness or for an uncomfortably long time or was just left there to die. Castelar does not yet know which of these eventualities happened to the hostage but at any time he can decide which - and that is odd.

I used to imagine a time traveller spending a week in the twenty-first century and of his friends in the twentieth century waiting a week for him to return and, of course, they might for some reason decide to do it that way.

Timecycle

"The Year of the Ransom."

A timecycle is:

a spacetime vehicle, able to disappear from one set of spatiotemporal coordinates and appear at another with zero duration for its rider(s);

a flying vehicle with its own "...antigravity drive..." (p. 691)

It has saddles, a console and steering bars and records every spacetime jump.

The console can:

display a map with current location;

show the rest of the Earth's surface;

"...show a region at any scale desired..." (ibid.)

This map unit makes the space control easy to use as long as precise positioning is not required.

A rider can:

"Press for the date." (p. 690)

- which appears in easy-to-learn post-Arabic numerals.

Of course Roman numerals would be useless for such purposes but I would need a lot of persuading that Arabic numerals can be improved on.

See also:

Miniaturization