Into The Past

Two kinds of time travel fiction are very different from each other.

I can't help it. I do prefer time travel that is into a single immutable past. Anything else is not travel into our past, is it?

Three pure examples of this kind of narrative are:

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Of course, in a single immutable timeline, a time traveller can cause past events but there are greater subtleties than that. He can change the significance of past events. He can seem to have changed the course of events, then turn out not to have done. He can learn about an event, then experience it.

In There Will Be Time, the Eyrie recruits a handful of mutant time travellers, including Jack Havig and Boris, in Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion. Much later along his own world-line, Havig, now organizing an anti-Eyrie group, sends Boris to infiltrate the Eyrie by being recruited into it on the same day as his younger self. Neither the younger Havig nor his recruiters suspect the significance of Boris, sent to that time and place by the older Havig.

Niffenegger's Henry DeTamble knows that his ex killed herself on a particular date. Then he learns that it was his involuntary extratemporal arrival in her apartment that triggered her suicide. He asks her the date. He knows what she will do with the gun that she is wielding. He knows that she will not kill him. He avoids saying anything that will motivate her to shoot herself but she does that anyway - on the date on which she had done it.

Similar things happen in The Anubis Gates. Read them all!

Routine Time Travel?

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Artorius reflects:

"Time travel does odd things to your mind, too. Thank God it only happened to me once! If it was routine I'd go bughouse." (p. 402)

That has to be read as a comment on sf works where time travel does become routine and some of those are bughouse although not any of the ones that are discussed and recommended on this blog. 

James Blish thought that no author had yet done justice to the concept. He envisaged a novel about an entire society based on a finite-spinning-universe theory which apparently would (have) allow(ed) for time travel.

However, just a simple time travel premise like a small group being displaced to a specific date has endless possibilities. SM Stirling shows us what other authors had not thought of. Poul Anderson would have welcomed this antithesis to the Time Patrol project of holding time and history to a single course. And how will this new series develop?

Ben-Hur, Martin Padway And The Time Patrol

To Turn The Tide.

All literature is a conversation with earlier literature, sometimes explicitly:

"Everyone on a Roman naval ship was a free man and part of the military and would fight at need - Ben-Hur had gotten that drastically wrong. 

"Pity. Both movies were great otherwise, though the 2016 one was better..."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, p. 310.

(I have found an on-line list of five Ben Hur films.)

"That was another gift of Martin Padway. Though for some reason he hadn't known the actual formula for gunpowder, odd in an archaeologist, even a fictional one.

"Or maybe not, that book was written a century ago...well, nearly, 1938. Damn, but the English language is not intended for time travel, and Latin's even worse."

-CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, p. 399.

And that concluding sentence might be an indirect reference to the Temporal language of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol. (Although, unfortunately, we do not read a single word of Temporal.)

Four words of Latin in another Anderson time travel work:

"'Es tu peregrinator temporis?'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), VI, p. 62.

DMZ And M7

 

In 49 AD, Manse Everard and Janne Floris of the Time Patrol:

"...had established themselves farther north, in the uninhabited stretch - the American called it the DMZ - between Langobardian and Chaucian territory."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 11, pp. 562-563.

When Artorius compares their surroundings to a DMZ, Filipa looks puzzled:

"...showing that she hadn't actually been born in Korea."

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE, p. 371.

He explains:

"'Demilitarized zone. Buffer territory. The German tribes keep an unpopulated area around their core lands, nice and natural for hunting...and hunting each other, and hiding raiding parties to keep life on the farm from getting dull.'" (ibid.)

When, having penetrated the buffer zone, Artorius ambushes a band of barbarians by using a crossbow, he thinks:

"This is where an M7 would have come in really handy and Fuchs was a fool..." (p. 376)

"I could have finished off all the ones we don't want to take alive nice and quick and safe with one magazine of six--point-eight." (ibid.)

Why did Fuchs not pack M7's? He could not get hold of them? He did not want to take anything that destructive? The author wanted to see how much could be achieved using Type A technology alone?

Identifying

I do not spend much time identifying with fictional characters but which ones might I identify with?

Of Nicholas van Rijn's trade pioneer crew, neither David Falkayn nor Chee Lan but maybe Adzel because of his meditation and studiousness.

Of James Blish's magicians: none. (A book with nothing but villains!) 

Of Alan Moore's Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan.

Of Neil Gaiman's Endless: Destiny.

Of SM Stirling's five American time travellers, Mark, who says:

"'I'm really not good at the nonverbal stuff, you know.'"

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 337.

Paula, who has been dropping hints, has to spell out that, when she suggests going to bed, she means together - a woman who realizes the need to take the initiative.

(We are just about to go to our daughter's place for Fathers' Day.)

A Sound Policy

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Marcus Aurelius agrees with Artorius that toleration of all forms of worship that do not upset the public order is a sound policy but thinks that there will still be problems with Christians because they refuse to participate in sacrifices to the Emperor and Rome. Artorius replies that, as with the Jews, Christians could be permitted to pray for the Emperor. He also clarifies that Christian rituals are not cannibalistic feasts and explains them in a way that reminds the Emperor of Orphic beliefs and Eleusinian Mysteries. Men seeking the Infinite:

"'...find common aspects of it.'" (p. 289)

Persecution of Christians might be halted and persecution by Christians prevented. How symbolic is it that a Jew named Josephus has sponsored Artorius? Also, how symbolic is the name "Arthur"?

(Marcus Aurelius in this novel, like Augustus and Lycius in Neil Gaiman's "August," is an Initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries.)

Artorius seems to be individually wise because he is able to encapsulate the wisdom of subsequent centuries and millennia.

Marcus Aurelius

To Turn The Tide.

Temporal displacement involves place name change. "Vienna, Austria" had been and becomes again "Provincia Pannonia Superior, Imperium Romanum."

Artorius' first meeting with Emperor Marcus Aurelius gets a massive buildup. In CHAPTER FIFTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius while still in Rome. In CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius after he has travelled to Vindobona in the Province of Pannona Superior. In CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, Artorius reflects that he is about to meet someone whose life and death he has studied and whose books he has read, then does meet him. The Emperor closely resembles his own face on coins and statues. Artorius quotes a book that Marcus Aurelius has not written yet and presumably will not write, or not in the same way, in this new timeline. 

This has to be a classic of time travel fiction.

(It was fortunate not only that the merchant Josephus who found the newly arrived and defenceless time travellers did not kill and rob them but instead helped them and treated them with respect but even that they had arrived near a road where they could be and were discovered immediately. However, my friend Andrea informs me that it is inappropriate either to entreat or to thank Fortuna.)

West Of Hibernia

The Turn Of The Tide.

The barbarians use the swine-array which we have seen before.

Irish people that I have known would be amused by this description of their country:

"Hibernia was a proverb for squalor and backward savagery, full of chanting robed Druids making human sacrifices and tattooed, head-hunting lunatics with lime-bleached hair, still driving war chariots to battle." (p. 220)

(Elsewhere and longer ago, Krishna was Arjuna's charioteer at the Battle of Kurukshetra where He spoke the Bhagavad Gita.)

Artorius is from a country:

"'...west even of Hibernia; they call it America.'" (ibid.)

West and in one other direction. The future is another country.

Marcus Aurelius, Galen And Artorius

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

We take for granted what writers of fiction do. They have had to learn how much can be done with written words.

At the end of CHAPTER FOURTEEN, a legate tells Artorius (time traveller):

"'The Emperor in Rome shall hear of you service to the State.'" (p. 213)

From its opening sentence, CHAPTER FIFTEEN is narrated from the point of view of Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus in Rome. (Names of earlier Emperors are confusingly used as a mixture of titles and additional names.)

The Emperor receives reports about Artorius and converses with Galen who has corresponded with Artorius.

They are impressed by Artorius' mixture of knowledge and modesty. He claims to know much that turns out to be true but also acknowledges that there is much that he does not know. The Emperor is impressed with Artorius' clever derivation of distillation from distillare! 

Marcus Aulerius and Galen deduce some of the structure of English from Artorius' written Latin: use of capital letters; spaces between words.

Artorius and his companions have strange powers but are prepared to use them for Rome and mankind. Marcus Aurelius will go to where Artorius is. The mountain will go to Muhammad.

Some Practical Implications

See Theorizing.

The base timeline cannot be changed.

There is no need for a Time Patrol to prevent causality violations in the base timeline.

In that timeline, one theory of "time travel" might be that it is an elaborate form of suicide and should therefore be discouraged or even prevented for that reason. However, once a time traveller has departed, nothing further can be done.

Of course we know that the first departures into the past coincided with the outbreak of a civilization-destroying nuclear war so maybe that is the end of the matter in any case?

Is there a cosmic evolutionary process whereby intelligence that is about to make itself extinct in one timeline creates and escapes into an alternative timeline?

Fly in the ointment: Fuchs, the inventor of the temporal displacement apparatus, has a real, not duplicate, dolabra (Roman soldier's entrenching tool). Has his apparatus reached into the past and extracted this tool? Or has someone travelled into the past and brought the tool with him on returning to the present? - thus upsetting my carefully constructed theory that all "time travel" is into an alternative timeline? Time travel is a very difficult concept to discuss consistently. 

Returning to my theory for the time being, if time travel is invented later in the alternative timeline, then that timeline becomes the base timeline for a second alternative timeline. And so on. 

Theorizing

To Turn The Tide.

We are trying to formulate a theory of time and time travel, nothing new but just enough to account for events recounted in this novel.

Base Timeline

There is a base timeline from which any and all time travellers disappear permanently.

Each moment (t0) is preceded by a single past but followed by one of many possible futures. Each subsequent moment (t1) actualizes only one possible future. Experience cannot be otherwise. If we experience the death of a friend, then we cannot simultaneously experience the survival of that friend. Mutually incompatible events cannot occur in a single timeline. But can there be multiple alternative timelines? Can t0 be followed by t1alpha, t1beta etc?

Alternative Timelines

Whether or not alternative timelines exist naturally, they do exist if there is time travel. Five Americans travel from June 25th, 2032 CE, to June 25th, 165 CE. Some moment (t0) on the latter date is followed not only by t1, history as we know it, but also by t1alpha, the arrival of the time travellers who have disappeared permanently from the base timeline. Their mere arrival changes the course of events, whether unnoticeably or globally. If they had been immediately killed for their valuable possessions and if that wealth had been merely squandered, then the change might have been unnoticed on a global scale. However, if they change the course of history, then the effects of their arrival are global.

That is all that we know about the theory. I think.

Nordics

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWELVE.

We are about to set out on a long walk. However, before we depart:

"Wish I could show some of those noble-Nordic enthusiasts this, Artorius thought..." (p. 186)

- as he surveys corpses of women raped and men and animals blinded and crucified by barbarians, also burned buildings that had had people or animals in them.

Artorius' phrase about noble-Nordic enthusiasts seems familiar. Is it or something like it in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol? Blog readers can do some of the research?

Laterz.

Appendix, just before setting off: OK, folks. I have found the "'Noble Nordic' enthusiasts" in the Time Patrol in the first place I looked but I will leave the question with you all out there for a while longer.

Before The Eddas And The Vedas

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

An apprehended but suiciding assassin invokes a name which Saruke and we recognize:

"'Wodinaz...God of fighters. God of good warrior death, leads warrior dead to halls of Gods.'" (p. 165)

When Denesh leaves the Bakhri, King Thuliash asks:

"'...Indra the Thunderer that he bid his warrior Maruts watch over you for as far as their range may reach...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART SIX, p. 278.

These gods were around a long time ago, still multiple and of limited range, of course, back then.

In Preston ("Priest Town," a hot-bed of Catholicism), near here, by the river, there is a dog leg street with a Hindu Temple at one end and a pub that used to host a Pagan Moot at the other. I contemplate Vedic gods, British gods and the river god... As a matter of fact, the Temple is closed to the public in the afternoon so, on visits to Preston, I used to meditate in a more convenient Jesuit Church in the City Centre. Why am I posting about this now? I am inspired by references to Woden and Indra in different timelines.

Aryans

The Turn The Tide, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

To conclude the ceremonial transfer of Jewish merchant Josephus's Sarmatian woman warrior, Saruke, to time traveller Arthur Vandenberg, now called Artorius, Saruke raises her arms and addresses the four quarters in archaic North Iranian, then bows to Artorius with hands pressed together:

"...in a gesture that looked oddly Hindu.

"No, Artorius thought, with an eerie thrill.

"It's Aryan, original vintage, and survived in India all those thousands of years. And on the steppes where they came from in the first place, evidently; she's descended from the ones who stayed there when the others went south and ended up in the Punjab and became something different." (pp. 157-158)

Keith Denison of the Time Patrol traces:

"'...the migrations of the different Aryan clans.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 2, p. 60.

Three Missions By Denison

(i) Denison and Manse Everard accompanied a prehistoric band from the Don over the Hindu Kush. There were steppes.

(ii) Denison went alone to Iran in 558 BC and played the role of Cyrus the Great in a divergent timeline.

(iii) In 1765 BC, Denison and Agop Mikelian stayed with the Bakhri of the Aryas until the tribe went to winter in the lowlands. When it was time for the two guests also to depart, Denesh (Denison) need only tell King Thuliash that his god beckoned him. Thuliash sensed that Denesh was a wizard.

(Some blog readers will already know this but that year of three emperors in "Star of the Sea" turns out to mean not that there were three contemporaneous contenders but just that two died in quick succession. Bit of an anticlimax.)

Superwine

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER EIGHT.

The time travellers know how to produce "'...superwine...'" which:

"'...gets you good and drunk faster...'" (p. 111)

And Manse Everard escapes by using whisky to get his Mongol captors so drunk that they pass out:

"...most of what they brewed in the thirteenth century ran well under five per cent alcohol, with a high foodstuff content to boot."

-Poul Anderson, "The Only Game In Town" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 129-171 AT 7, p. 167.

They think that they can drink whisky like beer or wine. Some factors remain common between timelines.

The Ashes Of His Fathers And The Temples Of His Gods

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TEN.

Sextus wants to use gunpowder against invading barbarians:

"'This province is my home, the home of my family and my kin, it holds the ashes of my ancestors of many generations, the temples of my Gods, and the hope of my descendants.'" (p. 152)

We remember Horatius.

"And how can man die better...?"

Firing explosives at the enemy from a distance, man will not have to die. A much better outcome! The time travellers can make a genuine attempt to use instruments of war to prevent further wars instead of to perpetuate them indefinitely. But, of course, I do not know how this series is going to turn out any more than any other reader.

Cover Story

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TEN.

The time travellers':

"...cover story was that they were political exiles from a land beyond Hibernia called America, now torn by a terrible war. It accounted for their various strangenesses, and was reasonably plausible, since the Romans had vague accounts of Britannic legends of fantastic realms out there." (p. 133)

That is more than a plausible cover story. It is the truth as far as it can be expressed without going into unnecessarily confusing detail. Remember when, in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, a Tyrian in 950 BC deduced the truth about Time Patrolman Manse Everard:

"'I think,' said Pum, 'my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.'

"Am I that transparent to him?'"

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 32.

Yes, Eborix. You are that transparent to a Tyrian wharf rat. Pummairam has deduced the truth. "Time travel" is just a detail of that "strange realm" where there will be battles with wizards.

(We keep Time Patrol to hand for useful comparisons.)

From Nero To Domitian

We are currently reading fiction and non-fiction in parallel:

"Galba succeeded Nero."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 242.

For the first twelve Roman Emperors and the conflict between Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian after the death of Nero, see Caesars.

For Poul Anderson's additional reference to Vespasian's son and successor, Titus, see Another Caesar And Synagogues.

For Anderson's reference to Domitian, see Domitian.

Thus, Anderson's "Star of the Sea" refers to the last seven of Suetonius' twelve "Caesars."

I have been to the gym today and will shortly go to a meeting. Staying here and blogging would make me lose my reason!

The heavens opened this afternoon but fortunately there is a local bus service from the Bus Station to near here. Civilized life continues in Lancaster.

Some Miscellaneous Remarks

(i) If you had a Time Patrol timecycle and if you realized that you had left your wallet lying on a park bench yesterday afternoon, then you would be able to return instantly to that park and that afternoon and to retrieve your wallet a microsecond after your younger self had left it there. Suddenly all of space and time becomes like your backyard. The Time Patrol exists to prevent abuse of this unprecedented freedom of movement - or does it? Would the Patrol care about crimes that were committed with time machines but that did not violate causality?

(ii) "Nero felt no ambition to extend the Roman empire; he even considered withdrawing his forces from Britain, yet kept them there because such a decision might have reflected on the glory won by his adoptive father Claudius."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 216.

Such a Neronic withdrawal from Britain would have altered the beginning of Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy which opens in Roman Britain centuries later.

(Augustus had a reason for curtailing imperial expansion, according to Neil Gaiman.)

(iii) Suetonius catalogues Nero's acts:

"...in order to segregate them from his follies and crimes, which I must now begin to list." (ibid.)

- as with Caligula.

Nero: a ruler who blustered when things went badly. Assassinations were common among early Roman Emperors.

Modernity And Futurity

To Turn The Tide.

In 165 CE, everyone is superstitious:

"...apart from a tiny handful of philosophical rationalists." (p. 95)

(They would have been at home in University Philosophy Departments where I have studied.)

"Even they mostly believed in the Gods, they just thought the Olympians didn't interact with humans, so you could discount them." (ibid.)

(The last stage before full atheism.)

Paula Atkins thinks:

"Because I'm black I'm a curiosity here, but it isn't important. I'm black but I'm living before the concept of race was even invented. And that feels just as odd as the rest of it." (p. 109)

This new timeline will have no trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Paula is creeped out both by the fact of slavery and by everyone around her taking it for granted. That it has nothing to do with skin colour demonstrates a lot about how ideas, assumptions, expectations etc are historically conditioned. We keep asking: what will the future of the new timeline be like?

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis. 

Time Travellers' Technological Innovations

To Turn The Tide.

Innovations:

wheelbarrows

stirrups

harnesses

horseshoes

a threshing machine

spinning wheels

paper

printing

a nineteenth century plough

gunpowder

These are happening or planned in the opening chapters. There is considerable technical discussion to which I am unqualified to contribute.

I am more inclined to theology than to technology. In fact, we are informed that it is illegal to invoke Jesus but that Jeremy McCladden, supervising the threshing machine, the plough and the planting of potatoes, feels self-conscious invoking Jupiter, Mars or Venus. Imagine coping with that while simultaneously inspiring an industrial revolution. This is a time travel novel inspired by its predecessors but going further.

Manse Everard thinks that attempts to change history make things worse...

Gods And God

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER SEVEN.

"'Stop the goddamned mules!' Jeremy McCladden screamed...

"What he'd actually said was: damned by the Gods mules." (p. 85)

So that could have been: godsdamned mules.

There is a ritual in Lancaster where we chant, "Grant gods send us a thumping good crop." However, if some among us chant, "Grant God send...," there is no way to hear the difference.

I knew a Unitarian who appreciated Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. He commented, "He says, 'the gods,' you know, but you could easily replace that with 'God.'" I would no longer make that substitution, now regarding the gods as traditional and mythical. I can in good conscience invoke gods or Bodhisattvas, understood as personifications, because no one insists that we recite a creed affirming their literal existence.

The two ways from polytheism to monotheism are: "There is only one god" and "All gods are one." But many gods remain in myth and literature. The time travellers would get used to referring to them. Manse Everard of the Time Patrol finds that they are a miserly lot.

Time Travel Theory And Practice

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER SIX.

SM Stirling avoids having to explain time travel theory by having the inventor of the time machine die when the team departs for 165 CE! He dies because parts of his body are left behind.

The team leader thinks:

"This feels more like being in uniform again than being an academic. Or some weird combination of both." (p. 81)

That is the best kind: theory and practice combined.

They can find out whether the past can be changed only by trying to change it. And, if something is going to prevent them, then the simplest way for this to happen would be their deaths which are all too possible in any case. The inventor, Fuchs, seems to have thought that causality violation was possible but it is not known how much he knew about it. In some ways the characters know no more than we do. It is all a steep learning curve for all concerned.

Here

"This wasn't faked up for tourists...

"He was here. People lived in this, and worked in it, as generation followed generation. He could smell their woodsmoke and their roses."

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 62.

"This was the first moment when the realty of time travel struck home to Everard."

-For more of this passage, see Reality And Interpretation.

Everard reflects that he is in a hansom cab that is "...not a tourist-trap anachronism..." And it hits him "...with full force that he was here." (ibid.)

This is how we would feel if we could be there.

A Town In Two Timelines

Agrippina was the wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius.

"...what moderns would have called Cologne...was Colonia Agrippina now."

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 56.

"Now" is 165 CE.

In about 69 CE but in a different timeline:

"...the road from Old Camp...was a military road, paved and arrow-straight, running south along the Rhine to Colonia Agrippensis."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 4, p. 503.

"In the reign of Claudius [Oppidium Ubiorum] was made a Roman colony and named for his wife. Eagerly Latinizing themselves, the Ubii changed their own name to the Agrippinenses. The city waxed. It would be Koln - Cologne, to French and English speakers - but that was far in the future."

-Anderson, op. cit., 8, p. 535.

Far in the future - but it is good to find a familiar name among the twisting timelines.

Caligula

Reading about Romans in fiction by Poul Anderson, Neil Gaiman and SM Stirling motivates us to read some Roman history and I must quote here one sentence from Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars. We have all heard of Caligula whose full name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also called Gaius and Caligula, and listed by Suetonius as "Gaius Caligula."

Suetonius writes:

"So much for Gaius the Emperor; the rest of this history must needs deal with Gaius the Monster."

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London, 2007), p. 156.

Suetonius pulled no punches and told it like it was. 

Fortunately, SM Stirling's time travellers do not arrive during the reign of either Caligula or Nero. However, this is not a  accident. Their destination date was carefully chosen for them both by their author and by the fellow character who is responsible for their "temporal displacement." They benefit from the experience of earlier (fictional) time travellers. (A logical way to write sf.)

Amazing

To Turn The Tide.

All five time travellers have read L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall and one, McCladden, is familiar with Marvel superheroes. (There was a reference not to a Marvel character but to their competitor, Clark Kent, in a very different time travel novel, There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson.) It is a safe bet that Marvel will still be making films in 2032.

Here is a completely unexpected (to me) piece of merchandise for a time travel team: a solar-charging kit for phones, tablets, laptops with a translator AI and their external drives. With equipment like that in addition to their own knowledge and skills, this team just has to make a difference. The powers that be have to learn that these are guys to work with, not to enslave, brutalize etc. Maybe they have been sent to just the right destination date? Only time will tell.

Carefully Chosen Premises

To Turn The Tide.

Having read Twain, de Camp, Anderson and Turtledove, Stirling chooses his premises with extreme care:

not just a single time traveller but a team;

they have not arrived in 165 CE by accident but have been sent to that particular year;

their leader has military training and all have knowledge of the period, crucially including linguistic knowledge (there is an infinite distance between not knowing a word of Greek and being able to speak it badly and incompletely);

they have bags of Roman coins, books and equipment;

the Jewish merchant who finds them newly arrived and unconscious beside their luggage reflects that he is not a bandit and does not cut their throats for their goods but realizes that these strangers are people with whom he can do business to their mutual advantage: a very wise man representing the best that humanity is capable of, certainly in that period.

With all these favourable premises, what is going to happen next? Stirling can write a utopia, a dystopia, something between, something completely unexpected.

Will something like Poul Anderson's Time Patrol intervene? Unlikely. And that would be an additional premise. Sf writers explore different options.

A Grand Old Tradition

SM Stirling, To Turn The Tide (New York, May 2025).

The author acknowledges in his AFTERWORD that this novel is part of a "...grand old tradition...," (p. 443) in sf not just of time travel but of a particular kind of time travel story. The tradition includes Poul Anderson.

The front cover blurb proclaims that this is "A New Time Travel Novel..." and the cover illustration also implies that. However, an sf fan reading the opening pages alone would probably pick up what is going on. In 2032, a former US Army captain with a PhD in Ancient History and four graduate students visit an Institute of Science and Technology where they are hurried into a lab of strange equipment with a stack of boxes and recognizable Roman military equipment occupying a cleared space in the centre of the room. Outside, World War III is just starting...

Their host uses the phrase, "'...temporal displacement.'" (p. 6)

The PhD thinks, "Time travel?" (ibid.)

"Temporal displacement" reads like a term that would be used and almost makes it sound possible.

From CHAPTER TWO, the five Americans are in the year CMXVIII Ab Urbe Condita (165 AD).

Historical Continuity

David Falkayn:

"'Civilization needs more than the few monopolists we've got.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 449-484 AT p. 455.

Coya Conyon:

"I can't say I like most of those money-machine merchant princes..." (p. 456)

The Polesotechnic League become cartelized in Mirkheim.

Centuries later, Chunderban Desai:

"'Technic civilization started on that road when the Polesotechnic League changed from a mutual-aid organization of free entrepreneurs to a set of cartels. Tonight we are far along the way.'"

-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, p. 274.

A tremendous sense of continuity through a long future history series. 

Now I am trying to hear some news, read two other books and attend the Zen group.

Molitor And Diocletian

The Dominate phase of the Roman Empire began with Diocletian.

The rule of the Terran Empire by force alone began with Hans Molitor. (Also here.)

So is Hans the Terran Diocletian? Apparently not because, during Hans's reign, Chunderban Desai says:

"'...we too shall have our Diocletian...'"

-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, p. 274.

So that has not happened yet. (According to Desai.)

Apparently, again according to Desai, Diocletian did make a temporary reconstruction. Flandry had helped Molitor's efforts to restore old institutions (A Stone In Heaven, p. 75) but they were too late.

In any case, Hauksberg thinks that the Empire was won and maintained only by naked power from the start.

These read like conflicting interpretations of past history.

What Josip Said And Hauksberg Thought

Josip, not much:

pleased to see Hauksberg;

doesn't see him often;

the Starkad affair is "'...dreadfully serious and constructive.'" (Ensign Flandry, p. 9);

hopes Hauksberg can relax this evening;

"hmph"'s when Hauksberg says must leave early;

beams when Hauksberg says that, for his nephew, meeting the heir apparent would be "'...better'n a private audience with God.'" (ibid.)

Hauksberg's earlier reflections are more pertinent:

"Everybody knows the Empire was won and is maintained by naked power, the central government is corrupt and the frontier is brutal and the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression and anti-intellectualism." (p. 6)

So don't take the Empire seriously.

What Cairncross Thought

When Emperor Gerhart converses with Edwin Cairncross, information about the state of the Empire is principally conveyed not by what Gerhart says but by what Cairncross thinks:

their period is an age of plots, murders, revolutions, betrayals and upheavals;

Gerhart is widely believed to have killed his brother and predecessor, Dietrich;

however, Gerhart is tolerated because the Empire needs a strong hand against civil war, Merseians and barbarians;

the Molitors' only claim to the Throne is their strength;

they are not descended from the Founder.

The reader either already understands or will soon realize that Cairncross thinks that that strong hand should be his, not Gerhart's.

At least four men plot or attempt to seize the Throne by force during Flandry's lifetime:

McCormac

Molitor

Cairncross

Magnusson

Flandry defeats McCormac and Cairncross. Molitor succeeds. Another Intelligence agent, Targovi, leading a neat little combo including Flandry's daughter, defeats Magnusson. During Gerhart's reign, Flandry is able to influence Crown Prince Karl. And we want to read more.

Romans

I highly recommend everyone to read about Terran Emperors in Poul Anderson's Technic History and about Roman Emperors in Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars. The latter informs us about vices that we might never have heard of. Such things would have happened during the reign of Terran Emperor Josip but Anderson rightly spares us unnecessary details. There are many potential spin-off series from the Technic History... 

Romans in fiction by Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman inspired me to request Gaiman's source, The Twelve Caesars, from the Public Library. Understanding of how an author has woven diverse historical data into a coherent narrative enhances our appreciation of his fiction. 

Other but not unrelated Romans in fiction:

Alan Moore's Top 10 series has a parallel Earth where the Roman Empire has survived into the twentieth century, the first visual clue being a Police Commissioner wearing a head-band engraved with "SPQR." Their "barbaric" customs ask newly arrived travellers whether they are carrying any strange gods. ("Barbaric" is a joke by a "Praet" (Praetorian guard/cop).) 

At Blog Central, we have just received our copy of SM Stirling's To Turn The Tide. The AFTERWORD mentions the following relevant earlier works:

"The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson

Household Gods by Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Light

We know where we have come from but not where we are going to.

The Usurper's Three Sons

When Dominic Flandry arrives at the Coral Palace for the bon voyage party during which he will have a private audience with Emperor Hans, Crown Prince Dietrich receives while his younger brother, Gerhart, gets drunk. Poul Anderson telegrammically summarizes information about both these brothers.

Dietrich:

plain of face;

middle-aged;

stout, becoming corpulent;

had worked with Flandry during the civil war.

Gerhart:

"imperially drunk" (A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, p. 264) with cronies;

sullen as usual.

Adjectival information is added at the end of the audience. Dietrich is dull and Gerhart is scheming whereas dead Otto would have been trustworthy.

When Gerhart is Emperor, he is suspected of having assassinated Dietrich and even Hans although the latter would have been too shrewd for that.

There is still more to post about Emperors but other activities call.

What The Usurper Said

Hans Molitor wears:

"...the pyrocrystal ring of Manuel the Great..."

-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, p. 267 - 

- and has a:

"...huge Roman nose..." (ibid.)

- if the latter is of any significance.

He tells Flandry that he:

has been Emperor for six years;

spent the first three fighting;

needs another twenty or thirty years to make this jerry-built, dry-rotted Empire last a few more generations;

must lead an armada to quell the barbarians in Sector Spica.

His son, Otto, unfortunately killed, would have been a trustworthy heir, unlike Dietrich or Gerhart.

What The Founder Said

Three hundred human slaves have killed every Gorzunian in a spaceship and now decide what to do next:

"Theoretically it was a democratic assembly called to decide our next move. In practice Manuel Argos gave his orders."

-"The Star Plunderer," p. 354.

Argos is in a state transitional between leader and ruler.

He argues:

an empire is necessary for defence;

collecting tribute can make it pay; 

this is one of those historical periods"'...when the enforced peace of Caesarism is the only solution.'" (p. 356);

Caesarism is better than the current devastation;

an empire in fact should be an empire in name;

people fight for symbols;

a hereditary aristocracy will be a valuable archaism;

a dynasty can last with good breeding stock, a hard school and gerontology;

as with the Romans, all worthy individuals of any race can become citizens.

When they return to Earth:

"...the thin winter wind [is] like a cleansing bath around [Reeves]..." (p. 361)

The wind is always with us.

Emperors On The Empire: The Sources

What do the Terran Emperors themselves tell us about their Empire? Or, indeed, do any of them say anything particularly illuminating on this subject?

Our sources are:

Manuel Argos in conversation with John Henry Reeves:

Poul Anderson, "The Star Plunderer" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 325-362 AT pp. 354-360.

Hans Molitor in conversation with Dominic Flandry:

Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 239-426 AT III, pp. 266-271.

Gerhart Molitor in conversation with Grand Duke Edwin Cairncross:

Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 1-188 AT V, pp. 49-55.

Also, Crown Prince Josip, not yet Emperor, converses with Lord Markus Hauksberg in:

Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010) AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 9.

We will find out.

Imperial Phases: Terra

 

Technic civilization was first a republic (the Solar Commonwealth), then an empire (the Terran Empire).

Our main sources are two conversations of Dominic Flandry:

With Chunderban Desai

Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 239-426 AT III, pp. 271-276.

With Miriam Abrams

Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 1-188 AT VI, pp. 70-76.

Flandry tells Miriam that the "'...earlier order...,'" (p. 73) i.e., the Commonwealth, had committed suicide, bringing on chaos:

"'So again, as before, came Caesar.'" (ibid.)

However, in the case of Rome, the Republic, although maybe (?) heading towards suicide, had not committed it yet. Julius Caesar did not restore order after the Republic but instead accumulated power during that period and his successor, Octavius, continued this process, gradually transforming the Republic with a princeps senatus into a Principate with a princeps.

If the Principate was the continued appearance of republican government, then how could there have been a Principate under Manuel I who merely imposed his own imperial rule directly onto the chaos of the post-Commonwealth Troubles?

Desai tells Flandry that the Terran Empire is:

"'...well into our anarchic phase... Or our interregnum, or whatever you wish to call it.'" (p. 273)

Interregnum between what? Flandry spells out to Miriam that she and he:

"'...happen to be living in a critical stage of the Empire's decline, the interregnum between its principate and dominate phases.'" (p. 74)

Again, how can there have been a principate? And surely they are already well into the dominate phase? - since Flandry also tells Miriam that:

"'Now nobody can claim power by right - only by strength.'" (p. 75)

Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization seems to place the Dominate phase much later.

Imperial Phases: Rome

(When I was an unskilled labourer at Lancaster Royal Infirmary, landscaping a car park, there was new construction work going on at the RLI at the same time and one of the cleaning staff told me that the then current building work was "phrase one." I relayed this to Sheila who responded, "I see. How many phrases will there be?" A cleaner does not need to know her phrases from her phases but such linguistic errors are unacceptable in other lines of work. I attended a College where it was noticed that the headed notepaper described the Principal as the "Principle." When this mistake had been spotted, that notepaper had to be used only as scrap paper for handwritten notes, telephone messages etc. This parenthetical paragraph has become a miniature essay.)

Rome was a monarchy, then a republic, then an empire. "Princeps" meant "first" and, during the Republic, the "princeps senatus" was the leading member of the Senate. In the Empire, "princeps" became an Imperial title, I think the main such title although I am still finding this confusing.

In the Republic, because of foreign wars and civil strife, a successful general, Julius Caesar, accumulated personal political power and was assassinated to prevent him from acquiring even more such power. However, this resulted in what we know as the Empire being founded by his heir and successor, Gaius Octavius. 

In 38 BC, Octavius replaced "Gaius" with "Imperator," which meant "Commander" and has come to mean "Emperor." The King of England was "Rex Imperator." In 27 BC, the Senate granted him the name, "Augustus," and he also adopted the unofficial title, "princeps." The Empire is deemed to have begun then, not earlier when Octavius became "Imperator."

The Empire had two phases, Principate and Dominate. This statement may or may not be an accurate analysis. However, (i) it is one analysis that has been made and (ii) it is relevant to Poul Anderson's account of the Terran Empire to which we will turn next. 

The Principate was the appearance of continued republican government whereas the Dominate, beginning with Diocletian, was more autocratic.

The next question is: to what extent does the Terran Empire parallel the Roman Empire?

Roads, Footprints And Ghosts

"Losers' Night."

A Tudor woman says:

"'Christ will receive you...'" (p. 120)

A turbaned white man asks which Christ: Catholic, Lutheran, Greek etc? These indeed differ. Does any objective reality correspond to any of these beliefs? Nothing is known about the historical Jesus who died a long time ago. On the other hand, people have, if not always, then for a very long time, projected deities which have taken different forms. In that sense, Christ is no different from Jupiter whom he replaced in the Roman Empire.

A Native American offers:

"'All roads up a mountain lead to heaven.'" (p. 121)

I agree up to a point. Some roads are dead ends but, but by walking such a road to its end, we can turn back and find another road that will take us further. All roads up point towards heaven by which I mean greater understanding, not a hereafter. 

He continues:

"'Let each walk the one his forefathers trod.'" (ibid.)

I disagree. Let each walk the one that he finds for himself.

"'On mine, I see their footprints in the dust before me, and in the wind I hear their ghosts singing the olden songs -'" (ibid.)

There is that wind again. This Native American remains close to his ancestral way but not all of us do that.

Garbage, Gust And Gates

"Losers' Night."

Villon mixes so many metaphors when complaining that a ballad that he is composing will not take form that he resorts to two more:

"'At least let the wind of your words blow away the garbage clutter of my metaphors! Sit.'" (p. 113)

Then a real wind enters the inn:

"A cold gust made the fire jump and snap. Turning our heads, we saw the front door had opened again. Taverner was greeting a new arrival. We couldn't see past him to that person, but the entrance was full of gray fog and drizzle. I judged the time yonder to be near sundown of a winter's day in a northern land." (pp. 114-115)

My land, as a matter of fact. The man who enters is easily recognizable and is in any case named in the second last sentence.

And it is he that tells a famous painter that his paintings will win something that:

"'...the gates of hell shall not prevail against.'" (p. 122)

And there is one more Biblical reference in a work by Poul Anderson!

It will be a long time before we have squeezed out every detail, implication, reference etc.

Kinds Of Problems And Chesterton

"Losers' Night."

What is the cause of the narrator's mood? An Irish politician who, we happen to know, was disgraced by an adultery scandal, asks him:

"'Woman trouble?'" (p. 110)

- and he, the narrator, responds:

"'In a way... Not as simple as I wish it were.'" (ibid.)

That puts him in the same category as Olaf Stapledon's narrator. (See the above link from "mood.")

Villon proposes to recount a story from his own recent experience involving a woman but pauses, considers the narrator and suggests that that might:

"'...salt the wound, eh?'

"He was too perceptive. In his kind of life, you have to be." (p. 113)

Perceptive? Almost telepathic.

Where does Chesterton come into it, you may well ask. The narrator, describing Villon's "...old nasal French...," (ibid.) quotes Chesterton and a character in Gaiman's The Sandman models himself on Chesterton. Parallels hold.

Turning the page, we find Villon singing about, among others, Harald Hardrada, the title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy. "Losers' Night" pulls together a lot.

Kit Marlowe In Two Inns

"Losers' Night."

"...I'd heard of what happened when Kit Marlowe showed up in [Francois Villon's] presence - one of Taverner's few mistakes, letting two alley tom-cats into the same room -" (pp. 111-112)

In another fictional inn, the White Horse, Shakespeare praises Marlowe's Doctor Faustus whereas Marlowe denigrates Shakespeare's first play. The same author informs us that the Library of Dreams contains Marlowe's dreamed but unwritten The Merrie Comedie of The Redemption of Doctor Faustus.

This author is, of course, Neil Gaiman. Anderson and Gaiman continue to parallel each other as we, editorially speaking, continue to reread both.

I have yet to reread my way to the end of "Losers' Night."