A Short Novel

Whether a narrative fiction is a novel is a matter of length which means word-count, not page-count. Since I do not know how to make word-counts, my very imprecise rule of thumb is that a novel is 100+ pages. "Star of the Sea" is 106 pages in the hardback The Time Patrol and 174 pages in the paperback Time Patrol so I count it as a short novel although it has never been published as a single volume or even as the title story of a shorter collection which is unfortunate because it would have generated some colourful cover illustrations:

"'I will come to you on the rainbow,' Niaerdh plighted."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverside, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 469.

Time travel narratives differ considerably:

explorations of the future, of history or of time travellers' lives;

either elaboration or avoidance of time travel paradoxes.

"Star of the Sea" is history and a paradox.

"Flight to Forever" And "Star of the Sea"

 

Two long time travel stories from opposite ends of Poul Anderson's career.

"Flight to Forever," published in Super Science Stories, 1950.

"Star of the Sea," published in Poul Anderson, The Time Patrol (New York, 1991).

"Flight to Forever" is a one-off story published in a pulp magazine whereas "Star of the Sea" is the last long addition to the Time Patrol series, published for the first time in the omnibus collection of the series.

"Flight..." culminates when a single time traveller completes a circuit of the cosmic cycle whereas "Star..." culminates in a prayer focusing imagery associated with a Norse goddess on the Mother of God.

"Flight..." presents future history about a Galactic Empire whereas "Star..." presents past history about the Roman Empire.

"Flight..." recounts a single long journey into the future whereas, in "Star...," two Time Patrol agents travel through several stages of the historical past in search of a crucial event that turns out to be their own arrival in the past. 

Infinite Energy

"Flight to Forever."

Infinite energy is necessary to travel more than about seventy years into the past. However, could a time projector not overcome this limitation by making multiple short pastward journeys? Maybe each pastward journey builds up a potential that increases the energy needed for each "subsequent" journey? In any case, the projector would be halted by obstacles like mountains etc. Unable either to continue pastward or to emerge in the present, it would be obliged to return to the future. 

We know that Saunders and Hull were not the only time travellers. There is unlimited scope for other stories set in this timeline. And what I would really like to see is a much longer Technic History.

Then And Back Again

I have to write a talk on "human nature" but it won't take long. Let's finish posting about "Flight to Forever" but then stay with the theme of time travel if possible. 

What Saunders sees after the universe begins to reform:

a long journey futureward to avoid being pulled into the point-source

a molten planet

rain on naked rocks

under seas

strange jungles

glacial ages

the familiar Moon

"...low forested hills and a river shining in the distance...." (p. 286)

the village of Hudson, New York

a tear-off calendar and a wall clock in a bank

June 17, 1936, 1:30 P.M.

return to 1973 when the time projector, moved in the future, is now outside the house

After all that time, home at last. A sufficiently long space-time journey returns the traveller to his starting point. The Time Traveller had to turn back whereas Saunders continues forward.

Newtonian Explanation

Every particle has the same position and velocity at the beginning of every cosmic cycle.

Einsteinian Explanation

The continuum is spherical in all four dimensions.

To us now, Einstein sounds more plausible.

In Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse, we imagine many linear (not spherical) four-dimensional continua separated by a fifth dimension: a fourth spatial dimension? I think. In the DC Comics multiverse, many universes occupy the same four-dimensional space-time by vibrating at different rates. Characters travel between universes by changing their vibrational rates. This might happen to some of the quantum jump hyperdrive spaceships in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, we imagine a single four-dimensional continuum changing in a second temporal dimension. I think. However, Time Patrollers' accounts of their experiences do not present a completely coherent metaphysic.

On this blog, we try to imagine a megamultiverse incorporating all the different kinds of timelines. Such a multidimensional framework must also include the spherical continuum of "Flight to Forever." Olaf Stapedon's Last And First Men also features a circular timeline.

Endings

Today has been unusually active with no time for blogging. The day ended with a lively meeting and a drink in the Water Witch on Lancaster Canal (see image) where some people that I care about met for the first time.

We, editorially speaking, barely had time to reread the conclusion of Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever." Saunders' penultimate time travelling experiences are:

under the sea

the city of energies

a being in the snow

a city on a plain

the sea again

inside a mountain

a bare Earth

blood-red Sun

darkness

dead universe

universe reforming...

Beyond the end is the beginning. It is after midnight here. Tomorrow, gym and another evening meeting.